“My English will never be right”

It was a dream come true for me to attend English speaking school. This first day was marked by small insults: in retrospect, these tragedies may seem normal, but a feeling like childhood inadequacy will haunt you into adolescence.

My family moved to Kenya, where English was the official language. I was 7 years old and I did not speak a word of this language because I had grown up in an Arabic speaking country and studied at an Arabic institute. I sat in the classroom, stunned, hoping that no one would notice my disability. But I had the misfortune to put my chateau in the wrong place. The professor finally had to communicate with me through gestures, demanding that I know where I had placed him. Trying to hide my things and not being noticed as much as possible, I stuffed the bag into a cupboard in the back of the classroom, which was unusually large and filled with groceries by a curious mother. I was silent as the enraged teacher subjected me to increasingly serious interrogation. The whole class was laughing out loud. I stopped crying. The bullying of my classmates started that day and did not stop until I learned enough English to erase the stigma of difference.

The funny thing is, even though it may seem impossible at the time, I don’t really remember learning this language, which is explained by the fact that children can easily learn a new nonsense, I think. All I can remember is feeling humiliated behind my desk, talking the next day, reading a serious book from start to finish.

Although

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Nesrin Malik

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