In secondary school he recalled that on the first day he was asked what neighborhood he was from, as the custom was to call students by their first name and the name of their neighborhood as last name. Hailing as he did from Zuqaq Burghul (Bulgur Alley), by this logic he would have for the rest of his schooling been linked to dried cracked wheat. Thus he lied, and told his teacher that he hailed from the neighborhood of Tadil, which he was familiar with since that is where his father had lived as a boy.