luumii

Audio with Theyab's pronunciation

Trying to write Arabic words using the Western alphabet is a nothing short
of a bugbear. Take today's word for instance, in Arabic it's spelt لومي and never
changes. But when translated into English, it becomes: luumii, loomi, loomy,
lumii, lumi and so on.

waayid yinarfiz.

Bugbears aside, let's move onto sweeter things, or sweet, bitter and smoky things.
Black limes. The magic bhaar of the desert.

Ripe green limes are picked from the shajarah, boiled in salt water then left on
biSaaT to dry for hours in the sun. Once crisp and black, a whole luumii might
infuse its sweet tang into a slow-cooked stew, or be ground to a spice and blended
with water to make a light fragrant tea, served piping hot or iced.

Perhaps the greatest thing about luumii is that outside the Persian Gulf region,
it is still a secret and its potential to add cryptic and beautiful flavours to shrimp,
lamb and Basmati rice remains unknown. It's true that luumii is hard to find
in Europe - but not impossible. Avoid buying the powder though - the flavour peaks
the moment it's smashed. So buy the fruit whole and be the one to do the smashing.

In the words of a sage, this strange fruit can do nothing short of "bring a dish to life."

On a separate note, make way for an amazing grammatical pun using today's word,
copyright the Kuwaiti Meme Guy. A sack of dried luumii is available for any
non-Arabic speaker who can make sense of it:

وايد ينرفز	waayid yinarfiz	Very frustrating
بهار	bhaar	Spice
شجرة	shajarah	Tree
لومي	biSaaT	Plastic sheet
ولا	wala	Or
لومچ	luum-ich	Your lime*
واااااااااك	waaaaaaaak	Hahahaha

*luum-ich is a fake word that is composed of the equally fake word luum with the feminine possessive

-ich tacked on to the end. The joke is that the ending of the real word luumii sounds like it could be

the first person possessive -ii, as in luum-ii which doesn't mean anything. So the Kuwaiti guy is showing

off (and trying to impress a girl) by joking with her, "luum-ii or luum-ich?"