“You crossed my nose!” the Nagi man shouted at his brother, angrily drawing his finger across his nose.
What?
Idioms – those phrases that don’t literally make any sense but convey a lot of meaning – are tough to master in any language. Yet can you imagine trying to hold a conversation – or teach – without using them?
“I’m hanging on by the skin of my teeth.” Huh? Teeth don’t have skin. Where’d that phrase come from?
“The cake is a lie.” My teenage son said that. I have no idea what it means.
“Airing your dirty laundry in public.” Who even airs their laundry anymore? Or maybe I think no one does that because I live in Florida, where it’s so humid that hanging clothes outside would just make them more damp.
But in sense, that’s what the Nagi man was doing.
His brother was having an affair with the man’s wife. And as far as the missionaries who are learning the Nagi language can tell, “you crossed my nose” is similar to saying, “you did this right under my nose.” Which is also a rather odd expression, unless you have a very large nose.
The offense resulted in a village meeting, and that eventually led to an agreement and a penalty that the brother paid. Everyone involved said they were satisfied – or, to use another Nagi idiom, their stomachs were good.
But that wasn’t really the end of it.
Hushed discussions continued for a while afterward. Not about the affair. About whether everything had been done “right.” Never mind whether the people involved were satisfied; was everything done the way the spirits wanted it done?
If not, someone could still get sick from sorcery, the Nagis feared.
Unsurprisingly, it all came back to that. Fear.
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