Sticks and stones?

It clearly is possible to hurt someone with words in the UAE, as a Canadian expat could tell you — as soon as he gets out of jail.

Insults are taken very seriously in the UAE, as the case of the soccer coach Walter Zenga and a local reporter demonstrated. Zenga called the reporter “nothing” and a “nobody”, the reporter filed a complaint, and Zenga last year was fined 2,000 dirhams (about $540) for the abuse.

In the recent case, a Canadian called an employee at Etisalat, one of the country’s two telecoms, “useless”.

And because of that, the Canadian is serving a month in jail for slander.

We assume every country has their equivalent of the Department of Motor Vehicles. Or whichever government or business entity is known, where you live, for something less than absolute competence.

Etisalat employees, usually found at kiosks in malls, are perhaps not the most efficient mini-bureaucrats in the country. Most anyone who has dealt with local telecoms have a story about long waits and unhelpful “help”.

But you do not get to insult someone here. (And actually, isn’t that considered odd behavior, for a Canadian? Where did the politeness go?)

Insults are taken quite serious, as are gestures. Expats living in the UAE have spent time in jail for obscene gestures.

And the Canadian is in the stir for calling the Egyptian clerk “useless” and, apparently, adding some obscenities, too, while in a mall in Dubai.

(To get a sense of local feeling about strong language, watch a movie; most every off-color word is excised.)

The lesson, again, is that when you are in another country, never assume language and gestures will be shrugged off or forgotten, as they might be at home.

It’s another world.