W'7di. I came here with only a Bachelor’s-degree’s-worth of scholarly knowledge in modern standard Arabic, and a vocabulary and pronunciation in Syrian, acquired during one year of study in Damascus forced upon me. During those years, I learnt that to say ‘alone’ one should say ‘ li wa7di ’ which to my western terms of reference meant… ‘alone’. I never had to ponder on the term much, I only encountered it in newspaper articles' translations into English, and during my study year I lived with English speakers, so telling someone 'get out, I want to be alone' was always going to be understood. When I came to Algeria, after about three months of living from friends’ homes to family members’ homes, it became vital to learn how to express ‘I need to live alone’, not so much as in ‘you all drive me bonkers’ but more as in trying to express the dire wish to place my body and self in a space with no other bodies and selves within that space, apart from perhaps the...
Blog dedicated to Algerian literature. الجزائر تكتب