the pessoptimist

camino de sevilla

(By Saleh Addonia)

I translated She is Another Country into Arabic, a language I once knew intimately. I say once because when I arrived to London, I decided to forget it (i.e. the written form at least–spoken Arabic is different from written Arabic), for then I felt it was the language of a master. I had to replace it from scratch, and perhaps without being conscious of it, with the language of another master. But learning English wasn’t that easy, if you take into account my deafness; because of it, my main source of learning was the written word. Perhaps, that is why I studied art and design: even if I failed at it, it was an attempt to communicate in images rather than words.

In translating the story, I was also unearthing memories. For when I was searching for words, online or in dictionaries, and found a few alternative meanings, I found myself exclaiming: Ah! yes! I remember this word. I remember that word. I felt enriched by both, the past and the present associations. My sensations and feelings about those words sometimes veered from their given meaning in the dictionary. When I was living in Sudan, I was called a refugee (لاجئ), in Saudi Arabia, a foreigner (أجنبي), and in Britain, I am an immigrant (مهاجر). At the time, I didn’t like the terms ‘refugee’ and ‘foreigner’ in Arabic, and now ‘immigrant’ in English. But ‘immigrant’ in Arabic has a positive connotation. Perhaps that is to do with the prophet Mohammed’s migration to Medina and that of his companions to Ethiopia (المهاجرين).

If I had originally written my stories in Arabic, I think I would  have over-written them. Arabic is a decorative language. I could needlessly have been lost in sea of adjectives and seduced by its lyrically derived words from (mostly) three root letters. I am struck by the child-like intensity of feeling I get upon reading an Arabic word aloud now. I couldn’t say the same with respect to English, which does not prompt me to utter the word and feel it sensually. However, writing the stories in the limited English I have acquired over these 20-odd years made me write very slowly, as the right words would not come easily. This failure to find the words to express my thoughts and the failure to write a sentence correctly after repeated attempts would often lead me to abandon my writing for long periods. Though time-consuming, this slowness gave me more time to think about what I was writing, until perhaps, my intentions had matured. This delay then would become a creative act. Writing in English, the thoughts lead my writing; were I to write in Arabic, the words would.

I am half Eritrean, half Ethiopian. We escaped the war to Sudan when I was 3 or 4 years old. I barely speak my mother’s tongue; Tigrinya. I speak Arabic as well as the Arabs and I speak English well enough (in my own accent) to communicate my ideas. I don’t know how I learnt those two languages, Arabic and English, nor do I know how I lost Tigrinya. And this leads me to say that language doesn’t belong to people nor is it given; it is found and can be lost too. But I would say you’d be better find it young, and when you find it, let it be erotic.

http://www.specimen.press/articles/she-is-another-country/

(with arabic subtitles)

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convocatoria

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