Tongues and Ancestral Displacements

Николас

**Photo of Nicolás: Tatiana Zhuravleva**

It might not take much labor to understand the tongue, the actual wet organ, as a major channel of bodily pleasure, but also as a weapon. Afterall, language can nurse the deepest love and also detonate wars and cause unimaginable damage at all levels, from the very personal to the collective. This has been evident in the vitriolic speech that dominates politics in the United States, to name a place. A spear, a vine, a tentacle, a whip, a knife–the malleable tongue can relate to any of these items in form and function. Where I was born in the Dominican Republic, a person can threaten with or actually deliver to another person a fierce pela ‘e lengua, a tongue lashing. But my interest in this member of the body’s community, which together with others, plays a key role in the act of oral communication, is that of ancestral displacements and in re-membering. I am tempted to employ the overused word trauma to delve into this writing, and I will opt not to do so, as a means to remain true to what emerges without naming it in psychological terms.

I am currently in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, a country in Central Asia. I am 15-hours away by airplane from my home in the South Bronx, and perhaps a bit longer from Santiago, in the Dominican Republic, where I literally lost a piece my umbilical cord that my mother had sandwich between the cardboard and the sticky see-through sheet of a photo album. Gone. The umbilical cord nowhere to be found still exercises a pull in me toward the island. My mother and her siblings embody the first-generation Lebanese-Dominicans in the family–I am second in this order–yet I was raised pretty close to Lebanese cultures and the immigrant experience. In other words, while being deeply rooted in Dominican everyday life, I was reminded that part of our family had come from somewhere else far distant. In the Dominican streets we were thought as Turkish, and the longing for connection pushed some of my relatives to join a local Syrian-Lebanese social club. Any nuanced cultural differences that may have previously existed and might be present today between Syrians and Lebanese, I guess, were overlooked. In the Caribbean, they/we were one. Many decades later, I would receive a WhatsApp text from my mother to remind me not to forget that I was Arab, to what I responded: “…among other identities.”

More than 60 years ago, my grandfather left Lebanon on a ship that took him, his two brothers and his 15-year-old sister to the Americas. On the neck of the sister hung a gold chain with a crucifix that my great grandmother had placed on her daughter before departing from Miziara. They never saw each other again. My grandfather changed his Arabic name to the Spanish one Miguel, his bother changed his to Pedro, yet my aunt continued to be Anissa and my other uncle retained his named Dumit, after which I was named. Their stories in the Caribbean were full of hardships, and great successes for some of the four. While my uncles and aunt made fortunes in Santo Domingo, my grandfather decided to stay in the countryside, near the border with Haiti, and live with all we needed, but simply. We were not taught our ancestral language and we gathered whatever Arabic we could from listening to relatives talk among themselves in their seemingly strange tongue. As my family gained full acceptance into Dominican society, we lost something in the act of relinquishing one of our languages. On the other hand, I can sense my Lebanese family’s critical urge to belong, to look forward, even at the expense of surrendering part of who they/we were. “How was it for my grandfather, his brothers and sister to not been able to express pain or pleasure to anyone other than themselves?” Visitors from the Middle East would come and bring rose water candies, a taste from home. Our tongues would awaken momentarily and remember–re-member. In the 1970s my mother and a newly arrived Lebanese cousin, Wadiah, would sit on the bed of the hotel where the cousin was first staying and look at each other in the eyes. My mother would only speak a few words in Arabic and Wadiah was not versed in Spanish. Tears would become part of their truncated conversations.

More than half a century later, I find myself in a predominantly Russian speaking country with a tool that my forebearers never imagined would exist, a Google translator. However, their longing /be-longing (as my dear mentor Suzi Tucker would say), has activated in me like a sleeping volcano that was ready to erupt. In this new place I might pass for “white” of some kind. I have been perceived as French, or as an American who speaks broken English, like a participant at Lazy Art Festival–an annual camp for artists in Tosor–would refer to me. I swallow a big gulp of saliva, thinking how, while still a colonial term that I do not seek to embrace, we Haitians and Dominicans are–if we choose to do so–the first Americans in the whole continent (1492). This is before the United Sates usurped “Americanness” for itself. I smile, when the same person who detects my ability to break English with the weapon of my tongue, talks about how she can understand me clearly, but no so much the visitors from Scotland sharing a meal with us in the yurt! I grow a bigger smile and proceed to add more crushed hot pepper seeds to the dish I am enjoying!

In the streets of Bishkek and outside of the art milieu, I figure how to communicate using my Android and hand gestures. The kindness of the people in Kyrgyzstan is good medicine. Four individuals gather around me to help me deal with the Yandex Go taxi that I have called. During similar occasions, passersby open digital maps on their cell phones to get me out of getting lost. Others point to solutions to my queries. We more than manage, and still the ancestral dislocation accompanies me. I open to the hugs that I receive in the journey through Central Asia. I also sit to delight in the oblong Asian melon that the fruit vendor downstairs in the building where I stay taps for me–to make sure that it is ripe. I look for canned chick peas to bring the ancestral flavor back, to remember. I do not find them in the racks of the nearby supermarket. I welcome the Tosor nylon bag that a clerk hands me as gift, and which folds like a cute strawberry. I fill this container with the loaves of the traditional lepyoshka or tokach that I eat here daily. At times, loneliness punches my heart. Why so, when I so much cherish being alone and becoming a hermit. Then I witness somatically my Lebanese relatives guarding me; looking after me while abroad where I cannot easily communicate orally. Their non-visible presence walking by my side in Kyrgyzstan brings us back together. “How was it for you? I feel your struggle in me now. I am sorry. I thank you for bringing me forward into life at such cost for you, emotionally.” They assure me that I will be ok and well cared for, that this is their way of schooling me in subjects of tongues and languages. To which I ask, “What about Lebanon next?”

Some for the questions that I am interested in exploring are: How does one channel language and the actual meaning of words beyond literal translation-interpretation? What reveals itself in the act of shaping communication with hands, objects, actions, food, movement and other non-verbal responses? What is the field that opens up when spoken language is rendered obsolete, and instead we are asked to live, feel, and give shape to words from our deepest selves?

My journey through Kyrgyzstan is presented with ArtEast and CEC ArtLinks. CEC ArtsLink supports transnational cultural mobility and collaboration, empowering artists and arts leaders to engage communities in dialogue and creative projects for a more equitable, compassionate and sustainable world. For more information, please visit www.cecartslink.org.

"The ritual performances that I presented at Lazy Art Festival were supported, in part, by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant"

Thank as well to The University of Texas at Austin, Liza Matveeva, ArtEast, Susan Katz, Zhenia Stadnik, Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev, David Hinkle, Olivia Georgia, Ansar. And the amazing artists at Lazy Art Festival.