Silence and Sound

I went to the youth center to teach my morning Engish class. Most of them are beginning English, so for my first lesson, I decided to teach pronouns. I listened to them echo my words: I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they, me, you, him, her, us, you, them, my your, his, her, its, ours, yours, theirs. They say the words, their eyes are glazed over. It hadn't quite connected that these words are used to describe things and the subject pronouns are the English verb "to be". The verb "to be" has no Arabic equivalent, so I try to break it down into simple sentences for them: I am a teacher, you are a student, the teacher is me, this is my book, this is our classroom. I thought of how religions would use old languages; the traditional Tridentine Catholic Mass used to be spoken in Latin, but the feeling of saying words one does not know makes one uncomfortable, so they changed it in the 1970's, Buddhist practices are in Sanskrit. We have the translations, but saying the words in the old language rings hollow at times. This is the meaning behind sounds being so silent. In a way, it feels like a thick sheet of glass has bene placed between the speaker and the listener, an unpassable chasm and spreads between the divine and the mundane. The class finished, and I hoped that at some point, the connection would sear itself into the minds of my students.

When the class was over, I sat outside of the youth center and listened to the sounds around me. The sound of people speaking a language they did not know was replaced by the sound of the wind in the trees, and small birds flying overhead. It is autumn, and a cool wind finally began to blow through Errachidia. As I sat there, I wondered how these seeming small sounds can become so loud. I sat and waited for the other two volunteers to come. We had promised the week prior to go to the house of one of my students for lunch. It was now 11:30, and neither of them had shown up. One of the volunteers hadn't called me in a few days, while the other had said an hour earlier than he would show up. The student asked me where everybody was, and I answered I do not know. My phone beeped and I read the message from the volunteer. HEY ON SECOND THOUGHT I THINK IM GOING TO SKIP LUNCH HAVE FUN. I had no money on my phone, so I asked him to at least call the other volunteer to see if she could come. He did so, and later I received a message saying that she didn't want to come. I left the youth center with five men who speak only Arabic and French. The two volunteers who cancelled spoke Arabic, while I spoke only the dialect that none of them really knew.

I sat in a large room, ten by twenty feet, painted green and adorned with red couches. Now it was my turn to listen to words that I did not understand. I emptied my mind and tried to pay attention to the sounds that left their lips. I was able to guess that they were speaking of Gaddafi, of Libya, and of other places in Africa. I could offer nothing to the conversations, and so I remained silent and listened. We went through courses of salad with tuna, chicken, beef with plums, a plate of fruit, and finally a dish of cold couscous with buttermilk. I have returned to vegetarianism, and so the host had made a special plate of vegetable couscous for me to eat. He kept apologizing to me, but I simply replied "no problem." He was able to understand that much of the dialect. Because I could not contribute verbally to the event, I decided to focus my attention on eating the bites slowly. The rice in the salad had a hint of lemon in them, the tomatos had acquired the sourness of the onions. The couscous wrapped around my teeth as I tried to chew, the baked carrots were sweet, and the cucumber had become tart. The pomegranate seeds exploded as I bit down on them. The buttermilk couscous dish provided a strange taste of both sour and savory. Finally, after my host apologized to me yet again about meat, I replied in my dialect, "No, the kindness of your heart is as large as the ocean." Someone tried to translate, but it didn't connect. In Morocco, I learned, feelings are felt through the liver, not the heart.

As the conversation continued, I began to imagine what it must have felt like to be Catholic in the 1960's, knowing that something divine was taking place, but that I had no way of understandingt it. The chasm between myself and the Arabic speakers grew; the sheet of glass grew thick. I have been trying to learn Arabic, but knowing how little time I have left here, and how much energy I used learning the dialect, makes concentrating on it difficult, at best. The sounds once again took on the characteristics of silence, and my mind kept telling me to simply smile and look around the room, tilting my head occasionally as though I had managed to understand a word or phrase, saying "mm hmm", laughing when others laughed. There are so many other characteristics to communication beyond the mere sounds of words. The lunch completed, we made our way back to town.

Tonight, I teach a yoga class. The exercise classes are not as successful as the English classes. I have yet to have a student express interest in either yoga or pilates. I have learned, instead, to be satisfied in the aloneness of the room, the meditative bamboo flute music I play usually permeates the room, but occasionally I hear the sound of birds outside, and when the wind picks up at night, I can understand that the earth is sighing, as though to say, "This is simply how things are."