Living and teaching in the United States for the last 20 years in departments of languages and cultures, I have become keenly aware of the phrase ‘native speaker’. It reminds me of a similar one in Perso-Urdu: ahl-i-zabaan — one who has the rightful claim to eloquence in a language. Zabaan subsumes both tongue and language, as does tongue. Then there is the age-old concept of ‘mother tongue’. More recently, we have first language, second language gradations. There are language families, dialects and registers of language. There is spoken language and literary language and everything in between. Jacques Derrida, in Monolingualism of the Other, talks about the relationship of language to its speakers: language as it relates to birth, birth as it relates to soil, birth as it relates to blood. Ultimately, language is connected to birth, culture, nationality and even citizenship.

Is language a possession? Who exactly possesses it and whom does it possess? With increasing globalisation, hyphenated identities are common. Children born to immigrant parents have a complex relationship with the mother tongue. One can understand but not speak, speak but not write, speak only set phrases, have a ‘kitchen’ vocabulary and so on. Where exactly does the hyphen fit? My focus here is on being at-home in language, a state of belonging towards which we never stop returning. Where would I categorise myself? An educated Urdu speaker, dare I say scholar, who writes in English?

These past few years I’ve been drawn into social-cultural-adabi groups scattered throughout North America. I can only speak to the ones specifically in Virginia, where I live. I deliberately insert ‘adabi’ instead of ‘literary’ because it references the cultural nuance of these groups. What brings the group members together is a short period of time and space where they can be at-home in language. The groups are revitalised whenever a poet-writer-scholar from home is passing through and can be invited to share his/her work. Fortunately, several eminent Urdu poets are permanently residing in Canada and America, who are a source of inspiration for the arbab-i-zauq.

What does it mean to be surrounded by another language while writing in the so-called native one? Or vice-versa. Ghurbat is a multi-valent word in literary Urdu (and Persian) that has deep association with language and its cultural associations. Here is a poignant verse culled from Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s ghazal in Abida Parveen’s haunting voice that I like to hear when driving long distances by myself: “Diyar-i-ghair mein jab ham zabaan nahin milta/ To Faiz zikr-i-vatan apne ru baru hi sahi” [When you can’t find a speaker of your tongue in a stranger’s land/ Then Faiz, you can talk about your homeland with yourself].

Recently I had the pleasure of meeting Sarmad Sehbai, a person of many talents, not the least of them being Urdu poetry. Sehbai recited his ghazals at a gathering in Roanoke, a town in southern Virginia. He had relocated to Williamsburg, Virginia, barely two years ago. I was curious about how he was coping with the out-of-culture environment; his wife mentioned that he travelled a lot. That evening he presented gems from his published collections. Towards the end of the programme he pulled out a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket and announced these were two fresh ghazals. I had hoped he’d recite something new and I wasn’t disappointed. I asked if he wouldn’t mind sharing those ghazals with me. A few weeks and one reminder later he sent them to me. I’ll share the following verses:

“Ankhon se meri kaun hatayega sang-i-shab/ Umron se dafn main kisi khwab-i-kuhan mein hoon” [Who will lift the stone of night from my eyes?/ For ages I’ve been buried in some bygone dreams].

“Rehta hai mujh se mera hi hamzaad ham kalaam/

Tanha hoon aur phir bhi kisi anjuman mein hoon” [I keep talking to myself at all times/ I am alone yet in the midst of a gathering].

“Sarmad hai ek ghurbat-i-benaam har taraf/ Main hoon diyar-i-ghair ya apne vatan mein hoon” [Sarmad, a nameless feeling of being a stranger is everywhere/ Am I in a stranger’s land or in my own homeland].

The verses resonated with Faiz’s verse I quoted earlier. But deeper than mere resonance is the intertextual dialogue that a poet or writer has with his forbears. This dialogue has a lot to do with language; the language of the self. Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib wrote in two languages; he took inordinate pride in his Persian and wrote a lot more in Persian than Urdu. Yet Urdu became the vehicle of his fame for historical reasons. In the course of writing the concluding chapter of my book, I often wondered what was the language of Ghalib’s ‘self’. Was it Urdu or Persian?

According to Derrida, there is never such a thing as absolute appropriation or re-appropriation of language because language is not property. But because it is not property, language gives rise to appropriative madness. Arundhati Roy’s essay on the complex, shifting policy of language and translation in India, ‘What is the Morally Appropriate Language in which to Think and Write’, rakes up incendiary questions pertinent to language and identity. It is entirely possible that one’s language is deepened, enriched by association with another. Some narratives have to be imagined in several languages. One can think in one language and write in another. Here is Sarmad again:

“Kayi zamane tarrapte hain mere lehje mein/ Yeh mera girya-i-jan khaak-i-raftagan tak hai” [Many ages past throb in my poetry/ My tears connect with the ashes of the ones who are gone].

Before closing, I want to touch upon translation because that is intimately connected with the cultural aspects of language. We are constantly translating, searching for cultural equivalences in words. But there is a wall of untranslatability too. The cultural groups who gather in ghurbat away from the familiarity of language seek to recapture a few moments of being-in language. I leave you with a translation of Ghalib’s Persian verse that reflects the angst of communication and hope to continue this conversation in my next column: If there is a knower of tongues here, fetch him/ There’s a stranger in the city and he has many things to say.

The columnist is associate professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Virginia

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, August 12th, 2018