A few weeks ago, our Big Boss asked for suggestions for a unit motto. Tradition in the military is that every unit have something that you use as a greeting, and a response with which the person originally greeted replies.

One of my sergeants came up with a great motto for our organization...since what we do is advise the Saudis on their modernization program, it was simply this...

"Advise to Modernize!!" (what we do...)

"Inshallah!" ("If God wills it!!")

It seems like we hear that a lot when dealing with them...usually, though, it means "Yeah, right...like THAT's gonna happen!" rather than its intended implication that every action is controlled or allowed by God.

In Arabic class today, we learned another expression, sort of along the same lines...Fil mishmish, which means (literally, I think), "If the apricots bloom" but is used much more like the above implication of Inshallah.

Oh yeah...the motto was greeted less enthusiastically by our big boss than by us underlings. Back to the drawing board...