Untranslateable Words: Wasta

There are some words in Arabic that don't have an English translation.  One of them is the word "wasta", which loosely translates as "connections".  However, even that words doesn't really get at the full meaning of the word.  Here is a comic I received in an email earlier today that might help with the translation of the word.

Wasta is a very important concept here.  One of my students once described wasta in this way:  imagine you wanted to get your drivers license, but you still had another year before you were old enough.  However, your dad knows the minister of traffic.  So he calls his friend the minister and asks him to push the paperwork along.  Because of the Minister's wasta, he was able to get you your license. 


Another student, who was not Bahraini, asked, "Isn't it like corruption?" Good question, and of course, the Bahraini student was very quick to answer no.  For us in the west, we would tend to say yes.  However, in Bahrain (and in much of the Arab world), wasta is just a part of daily life. 

In the west, some people don't have enough money to get something done.  Isn't that unfair?  Well, maybe.  But its an unfairness we've accepted (to some degree).  Here,some people have lots of wasta and some people don't.  Its a culturally accepted unfairness and accepted way to maneuver the system.