There are moments when words betray me—not by their absence, but by their refusal to carry what I mean. They feel like strangers who don’t understand me; they can’t quite wrap themselves around what I need to say, and I can’t wrap myself around them.
I speak three languages—Arabic, French, and English—and yet, I often feel like an outsider in all of them.
Darija is my home tongue. It dances in the clatter of markets, the clink of spoons in couscous bowls—It’s the language of my streets, the laughter of my friends, the warmth of my family. In Darija, my thoughts almost spill out effortlessly, like tea from a “Berrad“. But even this comfort turns brittle. A teapot cannot be endlessly poured into and there’s so much I don’t say, so much I can’t say. The words catch in my throat when the feelings run too deep—especially with those I love most. Maybe it’s because in Darija, I am still the daughter, the sister, the friend—the version of me that doesn’t know how to be raw.
In the language closest to me, I am paradoxically least able to speak my truth.
Then, there’s Arabic “Fusha”—the classical Arabic that should cradle me like a mother tongue, yet greets me like a distant relative. I understand it perfectly, and I can string together phrases, mimic the cadence, feel the echo of its eloquence in my chest. But when I try to make it mine, my voice falters. There’s a silence that grows between what I want to say and what I can. It is a language stitched with the threads of scripture and revolution, poetry and prayer—and I, with all my effort, feel unworthy of wearing it. The words feel sacred, too grand for my unpracticed tongue. And each time I stumble, there’s a quiet ache: not of failure, but of loss. I grieve the distance between me and something I should have belonged to. Something that belongs to me.
French is the language I know well but wear like a borrowed coat. I read it with reverence. I write in it like it knows my secrets. But when I hear it too often from the mouths of my people, replacing what was once ours, it unsettles me. There’s a quiet erosion happening—not just of words, but of memory. I walk through schools where students no longer know how to dream in their own language, where French rolls off tongues like inheritance. The syllables are elegant, yes. But I cannot help but hear the silence beneath them. A language can be learned, but can it ever be mine if it asks me to forget who I was?
I speak French when needed, and I speak it well. But to hand over my tenderness to it—to make it the soil from which my emotions bloom—is something my pride cannot bear. I cannot cave in. My truest feelings won’t cross that bridge. And maybe, that’s a form of resistance.
English however, is the language that tiptoed into my life like an afterthought and stayed like a secret I didn’t know I was keeping. I never imagined it would feel this natural, this intimate. It started quietly—subtitled films, Justin Bieber lyrics memorized by heart at 4 year old, words taught by my sister during a shower. And then one day, I realized my thoughts no longer needed translating. English had become the language of my solitude and survival, the one I reached for when no one was watching. My dreams began to speak it. My fears unfolded in its syllables. My hopes took their first breaths in it, and it offered me a mirror untouched by expectation, but I wonder if in making space for it, I too, might leave little for everything else.
And here’s the quiet fear I carry: that in reaching too far into the ease of English, I might let go of myself. That if I don’t hold tightly enough to Darija, to Arabic Fusha, to the echoes of my homeland, I might lose the very essence of who I am. In a world where language is power, I sometimes wonder if mine is slipping through the cracks between cultures, between selves.
Vulnerability is supposed to be the thread that stitches us to one another. But for me, it’s the hardest gift to give. To say, plainly and without armor, “This is what I feel” terrifies me. Even in the languages I know best, I still find myself circling around the truth, searching for the words that don’t quite exist.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the searching is the soul speaking. Maybe it’s not about having the perfect words, but daring to speak at all. To live in the space between languages, to stop hiding in translation, and start existing in the raw, unfiltered silence that holds all the things I’m afraid to say.
So here I am—choosing honesty. Choosing to be read, even in the margins. Choosing to become an open book, one trembling sentence at a time.
And maybe, just maybe, that’s where the real language of my soul begins.