By Anonymous
What uses a few simple words but tells an entire story? An accent.
Whether it is a southern drawl, a New Yorker’s assertive little quips, or our own beloved Chicago prattle, a person’s accent can be their passage to immediate acceptance or a sign for complete rejection.
Growing up in an Arabic-speaking, Egyptian household, I was always soaking up every word my parents dropped in their native language or that I could catch from the TV shows we laughed along with each night. I would hear a new word and ask Mama what it meant immediately, craving the language that kept me connected to the family I saw once every seven years, if that. So, my parents spoke and I listened. The characters on the screen spoke, and I recited the words quietly to myself. The prayers in our church were spoken, and I memorized.
Our family friends always complimented how well I spoke the language of our home country, despite knowing no other life than the one I led here. But despite all I knew, there was an enigma around my parents’ language that I could never quite unravel.
In Egypt, different governorates have their own dialects, with some regarded as superior to others. The dialect flowing from Alexandria and Cairo takes many turns as it travels South along the Nile to El Sa’id, where the southern dialect is seen as less “civilized” than its northern counterpart.
My parents were born and raised in a small village near El Minya in El Sa’id. A year after I was born, they received the immigration lottery and came to America seeking the great American dream for their little family, barely two years in the making. Fast forward to a girl all grown up and speaking Arabic better than some of her friends who immigrated at a much older age than she.
As I got older, I began to notice that my parents had different ways of saying things they themselves had taught me to say — vowels that were elongated in different parts of a word and consonants that sounded very unlike themselves. But whenever I tried to copy as I had always done, Mama would tell me, “No, you need to ‘cancel,’” meaning to use the northern dialect instead of the southern.
One day, I decided enough was enough. Why were my parents suddenly speaking a different language than they had taught us? Why was I not allowed to share in it? I asked my mom why I always had to ‘cancel’ when speaking, while she herself was inexplicably using a dialect she had never used with me before.
“When we first arrived here and you were very young, we were at church and you were speaking Arabic in front of some friends. You repeated a word that you had heard us say, as all children learn language from their parents, but did not ‘cancel’ when speaking. I watched as the others laughed at the way you spoke and decided then and there that you would not grow up learning the southern dialect that Baba and I speak. My daughter would not be laughed at again for using a southern dialect in a church of mainly northern speaking friends. Baba and I began ‘canceling’ when we spoke to you and your brother, and you grew up speaking like your friends at church. Now that you are older and not as influenced by every word we speak, Baba and I are free to speak whichever dialect we prefer.”
Oh. It was for me.
It was yet another sacrifice my parents had made for their children. It was not enough to leave their home behind and go to a place with a new language they did not know, new rules they had never had to follow before, and a life they must build to support their family. Their language was taken from them by the fear of others’ perception. Not fear for themselves, never that. Fear for their children.
She explained it all so casually, as if I did not finally see the struggle my parents were silently going through, forcing themselves to speak a certain way so that we never felt like less than those around us, but wanting to speak the words they had lived with their whole lives.
Beyond that, I began noticing how they had to change dialects depending on who they were speaking to. “Someone who also speaks the southern dialect would see it as pretentious if we used the northern one while speaking with them. Our family would say, ‘Look, they went to America and now believe they are better than us, they even dropped our accent.’ But others whom we met here would be confused if we did not speak with the same tongue as them.” Where is the justice in that? Where is the justice in choosing every word carefully, making sure no one had reason to believe the worst of them?
My strong, over-bearing mother, my rock in this place where the four of us have no family but each other. The freedom I am granted is truly a gift compared to the constraints she still faces to this day, even in this land of free speech.
Reading papers and filling out forms for your parents is the well-known job of any child from an immigrated family. My parents would jokingly say, “If you and your brother had spent more time speaking English to us, we might be more fluent than we are now.”
I do not think it is a joke.
If my parents had forced my brother and I to speak English with them more often, yes, they probably would have learned more. But that would have left us with considerably less Arabic in the house, with my brother and I possibly not knowing what we do now.
All those parents who say they wish their children had picked up their native language, and my parents were one of the ones who actually did it. Why, oh, why did it have to be at their own expense? For their children to be raised multilingual and able to understand their grandparents during weekly Sunday phone calls, my parents had given up yet another part of their language, of themselves.
Every day, I am finding newfound respect for all the unnoticed sacrifices my parents have made. I thank God for Mama and Baba, who are understanding, kind, and open-minded individuals raised in a culture opposite to the one they had to raise their children in. The stubborn Egyptian mindset clashes so often with the easygoing American flow, and yet, they did it. To whatever end, they have and will continue to raise us with love and patience, never seeking a voice for themselves.
“All we do is for you. All the work and struggle fades away when we see you happy and successful.”
I will take their justice for them. With the education they paid for with sweat and tears, with the experiences they worked longer hours to give us, with all I am as my parents have made me, a daughter of two tongues and two cultures, I will use my language to ensure they never struggle in theirs again.