Mixing Arabic plural endings to English words could cost you your freedom. Or, that is what an Algerian man (identified in the NYT as Laid Said, I suppose this is al-3Ai'd) said what happened to him. He was taken from Tanzania, to Malawi and on to Afghanistan. Sixteen months later, he was sent to Algeria and freed without ever being charged.

Said claims, it all has to do with a phone conversation with his wife's family in Kenya about airplanes. Here is how it went according to the NYT article:

In prison, Mr. Saidi said, he was interrogated daily, sometimes twice a day, for weeks. Eventually, he said, his interrogators produced an audiotape of the conversation in which he had allegedly talked about planes.

But Mr. Saidi said he was talking about tires, not planes, that his brother-in-law planned to sell from Kenya to Tanzania. He said he was mixing English and Arabic and used the word "tirat," making "tire" plural by adding an Arabic "at" sound. Whoever was monitoring the conversation apparently understood the word as "tayarat," Arabic for planes, Mr. Saidi said.

"When I heard it, I asked the Moroccan translator if he understood what we were saying in the recording," Mr. Saidi said. After the Moroccan explained it to the interrogators, Mr. Saidi said, he was never asked about it again.