Spread the word: Obama says he digs Urdu poetry“‘I would love to visit. As you know, I had Pakistani roommates in college who were very close friends of mine. I went to visit them when I was still in college; was in Karachi and went to Hyderabad. Their mothers taught me to cook,’ said Mr Obama.
‘What can you cook?’
‘Oh, keema ... daal ... You name it, I can cook it. And so I have a great affinity for Pakistani culture and the great Urdu poets.’
‘You read Urdu poetry?’
‘Absolutely. So my hope is that I’m going to have an opportunity at some point to visit Pakistan,’ said Mr Obama.”
(snip)
Fear not if your Urdu — one of two official languages in Pakistan — is a little rusty. Obama likely reads one of the many translated compilations of the texts, according to Kirk. Or if he is a truly savvy Urdu poetry enthusiast, he may choose to listen to the poems recited or sung, as it is commonly performed in the region.
Yeah, maybe he reads the translations. Or maybe not.
He had a Pakistani roommate at Occidental, but Urdu, even if he speaks it, is not Farsi. There is no evidence that I know of that he speaks any significant amount of Farsi or Darii, let alone at a native speaker level. He almost certainly didn’t learn either language in Indonesia. Moreover, given that Obama is evidently intellectually lazy and has not apparent gift for languages, I doubt that he spent thousands of hours on his own working intensely to learn Farsi.
I can’t imagine that the CIA would find a young dope smoking, Marxist Obama useful.