Learning Arabic in Beirut

A reader sent me this:  "When I first got to Beirut, I made the big mistake of taking Arabic classes at the American Language Center across from main gate at AUB. The photocopied textbooks were manually typed up in the 70s, and they used a transliteration system (different from the cell phone system that my students use) which to this day I don't get since if you have to learn a new system of learning, why not just learn the new alphabet?  The classes were obviously for the diplomatic core and businessmen of the era. There were dated expressions used that made my students laugh, and the local language had moved on a
long time ago (no one says "min fadlak" or "bykhatrak" anymore).  There are weird passages that reflect how fucked up things are here, like:
-Who's that fellow?
-A Druze from the South.
But I had to leave the class when we got to weekly readings that went something like this:
-Shoe shine boy, come and polish the gentleman's shoes.
and:
-Do you have a cook?
-No, but we have a very good maid.
-How much do you pay her?
-350 pounds.
-Where did you get her from?
-Our neighbor's maid brought her to us.
This passage in particular sparked a discussion in the classroom about maids among AUB employees that made me sick. No one from that original class speaks Arabic today (7 years later)."