Robert Radin - Teaching English to Refugees

She asked me what it was called and I told her I didn’t know. She explained to me in Arabic, even though she knew I didn’t speak Arabic.

ضع العجين في الآلة. اختر التصميم. اضغط على المكبس. ضع ملفات تعريف الارتباط على ورقة الخبز.

When everyone arrived I gave them each a sheet of notebook paper. I performed the actions silently and they told me the command. I wrote the command on the board and they copied it on their paper. When we were finished I had them read each command off the board before I erased it.

Sabeen stayed after class. She wanted to talk some more.

You are Jew, she said. Yes?

I nodded.

Iraq people no believe, she said.

I was the first Jew many of them had ever known. They didn’t realize there was a difference between a Jew and an Israeli.

We are same, she said.

I still remembered the first day she came to class. She wasn’t covered, which was striking enough, but then she had the nerve to talk about it, telling everyone how she’d been a journalist in Baghdad, how when she rode her moped to her bureau office to file a story she had to wear a hijab or she could get killed, but that she took it off as soon as she got inside. She was so glad she didn’t have to worry about this now. When women from Iraq asked her why she didn’t cover, when they said she should be ashamed of herself, she told them she didn’t care, because she knew God was in her heart.

Someday I take you Baghdad, she said. When safe.

I would love to do that, I said.

We go Amarah. I born this city, you know.

Usually when a student said something like this I took it as an expression of gratitude; I was teaching them English and they wanted to reciprocate in some way. But this felt different. I thought Sabeen might be serious.

For a moment I imagined us walking along the banks of the Tigris. She pointed to the sky and said ﺳﻤﺎء. She pointed to a tree and said ﺷﺠﺮة. She pointed to the water and said ﻣﺎء. It never occurred to me that she could be indicating anything different, that what I took to be sky could instead be the word for the color blue, or that what I took to be tree could be the word for leaf, or that what I took to be water could be the word for river.

I was only able to understand what she was pointing at because I had a language—English—that I spoke and thought in, and because I’d engaged in this kind of activity before. Without this I wouldn’t have had a clue.

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