My uncle to my mother after we returned home from Russia: does your daughter speak Arabic?
I was born after the 1989, and everyone in my country knows what does 1989 mean. I was born after the Islamic/Arabic influence, that started to get stronger, and to be slowly part of us. I was born when I only knew this context is the actual one, is maybe who we are. Then I moved to somewhere where I studied in Arabic Iraqi school. We had about four or five subjects of pure Arabic. Arabic wasn’t only a language to me, Arabic was me. Three years of the Iraqi school were enough to make me start being aware of the Arabic culture, the culture of the language. When I returned home, and engaged to local schools, the Arabic stimulus was still inherently vibrant, sometimes you get the feeling that it is like we were forced to be Arabs, and we are justifying that by: it is the language of the Quran. Forgetting that there are more non-Arab Muslims than the Arab Muslims. However, they were saying we are Arabs. When I was in the Iraqi school, I knew those were Arabs and I am not, I am something different. I can speak your language but it is not who I am. My Arabic teachers, who were Iraqi, Syrian and Lebanese, were surprised with this less-arab (or non-arab at all) girl who can talk, read and write arabic better than the Arab kids.
My mother to my uncle: she does very well.
So I came, here, to a curriculum that doesn’t have very strong Arabic language, to colleagues who cannot accurately speak Arabic, to teachers who do not pronounce it right! I was, the young silly me, getting infuriated of their verbal and pronunciation mistakes. I was correcting the teachers, once a teacher got really angry of me and told me this is how we say it here! It is the “mistaken” Arabic language of us when we change the sound of specific letters, when we lighten let's say the heavy letters that need to come from our deepest throats! I was amazed how this can totally change the meaning and they do not pay attention to it! or, I was wondering, maybe they don't care. it was killing me. also do the Egyptians and the rest of Arabs.
One of my colleagues at high school: how can you enjoy something not so enjoyable like the Arabic Grammar?
When I am 9, I was speaking fluent Arabic, Sudanese Arabic, Iraqi Arabic and Russian. No English. I was properly and nicely reciting Quran from an early age, at some point I was teaching women Tajweed. And they were asking, where did you learn that? Where did you come from? Is it Saudi Arabia? Those kind of questions help to emerge thoughts like, what is Arabic language to us? Is it our mother tongue? And why it is our mother tongue? Or it happened to be the language of Islam, and that we should learn it. Why should we? Why can’t we read Quran in Sudanese language? Like Chinese Muslims who learn it in Chinese. What is Sudanese language in the first place? Is it something? Is it a thing, that we must have a language of our own? You may think of all the -let's restfully call them- native languages; Nubian in the north with all their classifications, eastern languages like Hadandwa, western languages of Darfur and nearby areas, southern multiple languages in the south. Of course each one has been crucially influenced from the neighbouring region, culture and social fabric. So, are these mixed tongues representing what so called Sudanese language? then where does Arabic stand? Or we dare to say that arabisation is a sign of civility. Am I ashamed of my grandmother who does not speak a single word of Arabic?
My friend once said to me: if there is an IELTS for Arabic, you will score 9.
Let us go back in history, about 1400 years ago. The first Arabs who came into our lands and brought their language with them, and they maybe half grandparents for us, are we them? Or we are who were in the lands?
Nevertheless, the language we're speaking is tied with people who speak it and happened to be Muslims. So are we speaking Arabic because our country is an islamic country? Of course it is easier and more practical, but that means Arabic may not be our mother tongue. Quran says "iqraa'" ie. read, and to read is a passive action that does not necessarily determine certain language. I can read a line in Arabic or Russian, each way I would be actually read it. Regardless of the fact that Chekov's short stories are way better than their translation, but that's a downside of the translation, not the other language, because the opposite can be clearly seen from Arabic to Russian, for instance.
I am confused, I may be having identity crisis. We are living in a region that shares a language, but not necessarily its culture.
Me silently to my uncle: I do, better than you.
