I need a course "ARABIC ALPHABET FOR DUMMIES" !!

Awww, I am feeling so "blind", like an analphabet. It is so silly! I am staring at this wonderful imagemap Sherazad created, and again I realise: I have no clue! - I still cannot read, cannot write Arabic characters. (Although I have the Arabic fonts installed on my computer! But what is it good for when I do not know what is what. - This alphabet gives me a hard time! :-))

I have come to the conclusion that for me it is the best way to learn the Arabic characters when I start like little schoolchildren do in their first class: Character by character, and word by word.

So I open my own little series here. Hey, what was the first character we learned at school? Right, the "A".

OK, let us start with first handwriting - and Hazem and Sherazad, you please will always correct me when the writing direction is wrong, won't you?

Update 1st February:
To the right - this is the vowel A (called "Alif") at the beginning of a word. To the left we see the Alif also, but with a little hook. Awww - that's easy, isn't it? Then one must know that the Alif is always detached - so I have been corrected in the meantime! This means the "Wortanfang" and "Wortende" on the picture is not valid!
I will replace the picture later.

Well, now let us look - where do we have this Alif on our keyboard? (By the way, you do not need any additional programs for typing in such exotic charactersets like Arabic. It is all on your computer, you only need to adjust it in your system settings, under regional settings.) Ah well, I have found it! (And when you move your mouse over the picture, you can hear me talking in German about what is the difference between the alif with hook and without hook):