“I love you…”
No… not like that…
Love should be confessed in the motherhood of languages—the mother tongue—the way your great granddad said it to his wife;
Before the language of the colony dressed itself up as more elite, more romantic, more refined. Before your grandparents—forced— sold land, fled cities, and crossed borders. Fleeing wars they did not start… running away, and running toward the opposites of language.
It’s undeniable—and frankly, repulsive—how the language of the coloniser has this sickening ability to water down the meaning, the intensity, and the sounds of indigenous feelings…
Feelings so often dismissed as savage.
Aren’t all words the same… Just translated?
“I love you”
Not like that.
The “I love you”
“I miss you”
“I love your eyes”
“Stay away from me”
They lack the sentimental ability to hit me in the heart… Unlike
Bahebek “بحبك”
Eshtaa’t elek “اشتقتلك”
Behebk Oyounik “بحب عيونك”
Eb’ed Anni– Etrekni l hali “ابعد عني.. اتركني لحالي!”
Do I want to hear and say them because I want them to hit me in the heart? Or is it easier to say the English ones because they wont?
Is this now a matter of what’s easy… versus what’s real?
I was taught in four languages: English, French, Deutsch—that never stayed with me—and Arabic: my mother tongue, my mother’s mother’s before her, and hers before that… I guess.
But the pride that announced my intelligence: the A+ I got, the certificates of appreciation that I know my mother is keeping safe to show my future husband, were all in English.
When I discovered my love for writing, it happened in English class. When I first learned how to sing, it was still in English.
My mother was made to believe that her mother tongue was too soft to pronounce success.
But my heart still aches to speak in Arabic…
To yearn in Arabic…
To love in Arabic…
“ I love you.”
No! Not like that.
What felt even scarier was that every time I sat with writers and activists,
We condemned the pain our homelands endured at the hands of the coloniser. We said the word “decolonisation” a thousand times… until our voices cracked, mint tea growing colder, almost helpless—but we said it in English.
It’s not our mother tongue…
But it’s the only way we can understand each other.
And here we are, still speaking in English. Is it because this is the voice of “academia”? Is it the so-called unifying language of the world? Or is it simply because all our homelands were colonised?
We were taught in English—whether we chose it or not…
“I love you…”
No- I hear my ancestors’ prayers— uttered in Arabic.
Who condemned us as less educated? Before the English, the French, the Spanish, or whoever came next? Who said we weren’t capable of feeling, arguing, speaking, or healing?
Who decided we were unworthy of knowledge—one of our own?
Who carved their flag into my tongue?
Who told me I had to get rid of my ع and my ظ and my deep, guttural ق? Why is my ح barely pronounced now… just a half-fake H?
Who said we didn’t already have the right verbs, the right nouns, the most striking adjectives? Why did we need to borrow manners, laws, love… colours, time, language? And why is there interest on a forced debt!!!
“But, I love you…”
No. Not if it’s like that!
Lost in translation—
Between what is felt in my mother tongue and what is uttered in the coloniser’s language—
Lost—
Borrowed– half chewed–
only to be “found.”
— Linguistically
Weak.
Heartedly—
watered
down.
Lost in translation.
And here goes half of my heart.
