When I made Aliyah 31 years ago, I told the bespectacled bureaucrat at the Ministry of Interior that his repeated demands for arcane, unobtainable and unnecessary documents were driving me bananas. I ...

Every language is filled with idioms that can perplex a non-native speaker. Why would it ever rain cats and dogs? Whose uncle was Bob exactly? And how does a cat get one's tongue? Arabic has its fair ...