It was a wonderful century by Michael Clarke yesterday to save his country from potential 3-day embarrassment against England in the Ashes, but what caught my eye (amazingly for the first time) was the Arabic tattoo that became apparent on his arm as he celebrated.

Here’s a picture which shows the second line quite clearly:

Clarke

After looking at a few pictures it is clear that both lines say:

ألم الإنضباط هو شيء مثل الألم من خيبة الأمل

This can be translated as:

The pain of discipline is something similar to the pain of disappointment

Now it’s pretty obvious that this is a poor statement because as we all know there is simply no comparison between the two with disappointment being far worse; a quick google search shows that quite a few people have been trying to work this out over the last year or two and all of them have been puzzled over its exact meaning, with the majority of them actually translating it as:

“The pain of discipline is nothing like the pain of disappointment.”

Now this makes sense, fits the sport, fits his profile, fits the Aussie maxim in cricket. The only problem is that the Arabic doesn’t translate to this i.e. the Arab who wrote it has clearly completely messed it up and left out the negating word “laysa“!

This is absolutely hilarious, especially considering that Clarke is a big tattoo fan, thinks it was really stylish of him to stick his motto in an exotic language, and thinks that he’s got a good job done.

Well Pup, I’ve got news for ya buddy: tattoo-ing is haram, Arab tattooists are rubbish and you’ve been made to look like a tillah. But hey, no-one else knows right? Well, until this post eventually climbs the google rankings that is…

:-)

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