Leaping over language barriers

This article was first published on Aquila Style.

Adventures in picking up a new language doesn’t have much to do with meeting new people.

Image: Pixabay

At this moment, I live unwillingly in the Netherlands. I didn’t move here because I loved the language or the culture. After three and a half years, I can understand most of what people are saying, but since I haven’t had (read: couldn’t afford) any formal lessons and I’m not particularly fond of the language, the Dutch language requires the activation of a whole other part of my brain.

I’ve nothing against learning new languages. Or European languages for that matter. I stuck through French lessons in middle school before I finally realised how I actually loved speaking it when I participated in an immersion programme in a sleepy French town (and later, studied there for a year). I still speak decent French and try to not lose my skills by watching French films. And because I already speak English by virtue of being born and bred in a former British colony, I think two imperialist languages are enough for me, thank you.

The thing about speaking Dutch in the Netherlands is that… you don’t have to. Most people in the big cities speak decent English, which is enough to get by if all you want is to buy groceries at the supermarket, or find your way with public transport.

But there’s a double standard when it comes to speaking the local lingo. If you’re a Caucasian or European, you’re not expected to speak Dutch. Laws that allow free movement in the European Union also mean that for Europeans, learning Dutch is merely voluntary. However, for me as a non-European permanent resident, I have to take a language exam in the next two years or risk a severe fine.

Here, there are two types of people who are usually assumed to be unequivocally Dutch: White or Brown (thanks to colonial history). Because my appearance is typically Javanese or Indonesian, I’m often mistaken as being Dutch. Many Dutch people also have grandmothers or great-grandmothers who came over from the former colonies. These women often attempted to integrate totally by adopting the local language and ways of life.

At one point in time, I figured I’d similarly integrate by forcing myself to speak and listen to Dutch. I decided to start in a prenatal yoga group that I had just joined. I figured that I would do okay since I could understand most words relating to movement and parts of the body. Plus, it was a good opportunity to learn the relevant vocabulary for labour and delivery.

It turned out to be a very lonely 10 weeks. Even though I tried my best to speak a little bit of Dutch each lesson to the yoga instructor and to the other participants, I never got around to actually striking up a semblance of a friendship with the other mothers. Perhaps it was our age difference: Almost all the other women were well into their 30s, and some in their 40s. Perhaps we lived in different places: They live in the suburbs and I live in the city. Or perhaps I was just the only non-White person in the whole group.

I had a very different experience in a postnatal Pilates class I’m currently attending. It’s a small and cosy studio not too far from where I live, run by an English woman and attended by many English-speaking people (even though most of the instructors are Dutch). I take two different classes, and both instructors willingly carry out their lessons in a mix of Dutch and English to make sure I can understand.

I’ve also met some kindred souls in this class – a total change from awkward attempts at conversation in my previous yoga class. Whether it’s because women are more sympathetic when they can bond over how bad their hospital experience was, or whether it’s just a friendlier group of women, I haven’t needed to speak Dutch at all. (Besides, my go-to excuse is that my brain is too sleep-deprived caring for a baby to string together a sentence.)

I realised then that it’s not about the language we speak, but about our willingness to know the other. Now when someone speaks to me in Dutch, I don’t feel obligated to reply in the same language to prove I’m a “good” migrant. I’m perfectly happy to speak what is most comfortable to me because what is more important is our effort to communicate, not the language we communicate in.

A letter to my future daughter

My dear daughter,

I will give the same to you as I give a boy. They will tell you that a boy should receive two times the wealth due to you, for no other reason that he has a penis. They like to assume that all men are chivalrous and honorable knights, ready to protect and save the women in their lives from their own frivolously irresponsible decisions.

I will teach you that you will receive what you deserve. They might appreciate your talents and your labour for as long as it is useful to them, but then to reassure themselves of their own beliefs, they will continue choosing men as leaders; doing what has always been done. They will not give you any financial responsibility because they are waiting for you to find a man to do that for you.

I want you to learn to do what you are good at, inside and outside the home. They will tell you that any combination of cooking, washing dishes and ironing clothes are more suitable for you. Never you mind that there are hardly any chores that are more suitable for boys and men; it is more appropriate for them to do nothing at home and that instead, working outside the home and giving money is enough.

I will keep your body intact and thriving, to honour its integrity and the natural laws that govern it. They will tell you that if you do not make a tiny cut on your private parts that you will be too wild, dirty, impure, promiscuous and too much to handle. They will say that childhood is the time to enjoy sugar and all other kinds of poisons, forgetting that you will have to grow from these substances. They will keep you out of the sun because a tan makes you dark and therefore ugly. They will keep you from cycling because riding a bicycle will make you lose your virginity, and from swimming because you have to wear tight-fitting clothes.

I want you to know that only you control your own body. They will tell you that if someone touches you, it must be your fault because you did not wear enough clothes. They will tell you that it must have been something you said or you did that gave them the impression that they could take something that did not belong to them.

I will keep you unaware, for as long as I can, of the perversions that men and women will impose on you. They will tell you that your sexless childish body cannot swim in a bikini, dance in a leotard, run on the beach topless, or jump in the sea naked. They will tell you that you cannot bathe naked with your younger brother, who has a body equally sexless. They will use the same reason to prevent you two from sharing a room. They will frown if you expose your childish legs or shoulders at home. They think that if they don't police you now, you will get used to being immodest and will stay like so until you are old.

Most importantly, I want you to love seeking knowledge and to be able to think critically and carefully about anything and everything because nothing is unquestionable. They will send you to school, but because they are not ready to listen to a woman ask questions and do things in ways other than how they have always been done, they will say you are too educated. They will want that which is sacred and holy to them to be equally sacred and holy and unquestionable to you.

I want your soul to shine as bright as it was created to be.

Love,
Mama

For our own good.

She could not say that Mrs Denbigh's conduct was positively wrong - it might even be quite right; but it was inexpressibly repugnant to her to think of her father consulting with a stranger (...) to manage his daughter, so as to obtain the end he wished for; yes, even if that end was for her own good.

We grew up thinking this was normal, accepted and even, desirable. That as a child you should be controlled, managed and moulded. That as a daughter even more so, because it was for our own good.

A dark cloud came over Jemima's face. She did not like this close observation and constant comment upon her manners; and what had Ruth to do with it? 'I am glad you were pleased,' said she, very coldly. Then, after a pause, she added, 'But you have not told me what Mrs Denbigh had to do with my good behaviour.' 

'Did she not speak to you about it?' asked Mrs Bradshaw, looking up. 'No; why should she? She has no right to criticise what I do. She would not be so impertinent,' said Jemima, feeling very uncomfortable and suspicious.

We were told, scolded, beaten into believing that our negative feelings should be hidden, tamped down, swallowed into oblivion. The slurry of gossip disguised as information fed to those in authority over you about who they saw you with (the opposite sex will never just be 'a friend', but this is more believable if they are of a different ethnicity than you), and the passive-aggressive advice given to you to be obedient are meant to be accepted whole.

For our own good.

Quotes are from Elisabeth Gaskell's Ruth.

On trying to not be an anak derhaka.

(This actually started out as a Facebook post, and then I realised I had more to say)

Even though I was brought up to listen to authority, I now know that a well lived life is more than just being "obedient". As a child, I was told plainly to obey my parents and obey teachers. Presumably, this was to prepare me for life as a wife who should obey her husband. (That didn't go down well, obviously.) Obedience was prized as a mark of a good child and a good student - and in the context of Singapore, a good citizen.

At the root of this was love. We thought that if we obeyed well enough, we would be loved. But then when I was much older I realised that love should not be bartered for obedience, especially in a child. The ideal parent was supposed to be a benevolent dictator: the father and/or mother held power by virtue of being older/bigger/the parent, but s/he was supposed to exercise it with responsibility and kindness towards the child. So everything that the parent asked for was supposed to always be in the child's interest. 

But the saying "absolute power always corrupts absolutely" couldn't be truer in this case. When does this benevolent power stop its reign? According to what I was taught, for girls it was supposed to stop when you got married. Then you were passed over to your husband, who would be your guardian (in other words, for women it never stops).

The last four years have been life-changing for me in many ways. Moving to a new country by accident, getting married (multiple times), giving birth, raising a little boy, and another big life decision in the works. Along the way I have had to make many decisions which were not exactly the most popular ones, and faced a lot of backlash and drama for it. Soul-sucking, but I won't go down without a fight. 

Along the way I've learned strategies to deal with it: explanation, direct resistance and hiding (in that order). Unfortunately, the strategies don't always work out because there's always that cloud of anak derhaka (Malay, lit. unfilial/disobedient child) hanging over your head. At some point, you start to realise that this kind of power and control uses fear woven into cultural stories and myths.

The most important thing I learned is this: the worst thing is, in the name of obedience, to let someone else make decisions for your life that you regret and/or resent. If you want to do something for your life, whether mainstream or offbeat, then do it. Just take responsibility for it - that's good enough for me.

If you do something that someone else wants, and you think it's part of being obedient or a good child or whatever, then learn to own it or leave it. If you don't have the time, the money, or the physical and emotional energy to carry it out, then just don't do it. The martyr mentality really kills me: you do something because it's "the right thing" and then you totally find yourself in a rut or you totally hate it. Or you whine and make everyone else's life hell because your own life is hell. 

I don't want that for myself and I don't want to carry such baggage down to my own children. I don't want to teach them to suffer in the name of blind obedience. I want to teach them to make careful and balanced decisions, consulting me if they feel that I can help. It's my job to cultivate that connection with them so that they feel I can be someone they can turn to. No child is going to come running to their parents for love out of nowhere when the child-parent relationship has always been that of power and control.

I have been told I don't do what I am "asked to do". I have also been told I am "too educated" (a comment reserved exclusively for a woman, though I'm amazed to hear such a thing) because I ask questions and refuse to be bullied into life-changing decisions. 

Thank you, I take these as compliments. My life is more than the sum of other people's ideas. 

On death and why I do what I do

Last night, I was having a heart-to-heart with the Dutchman about ideas of death, and God. While we both have wildly varying ideas, we take comfort in the fact that we are at least impossible to understand by much of the mainstream.

He told me that as a kid, he prayed extra hard during funerals that were held in churches because he felt like there was a stronger chance that God was there during that sombre moment. Helping to create the atmosphere was some serious organ music (playing Ave Maria), flowers, people wishing each other "Gecondoleerd", crying because he felt sad that other people were crying, and the ubiquitous and uniquely Dutch "coffee table" of sandwiches and cakes served after the memorial service.

I told him about the time I waited in the living room of a late grandaunt as a jenazah professional (JP) prepared her body for burial. She removed the wads of cotton wool that had been stuffed into the body's ears and nostrils (after being washed, to trap excess fluids), applied makeup (loose powder, eyeliner and lipstick) to the exposed face, and sprinkled drops of attar perfume. Her face was the only part of her left exposed, and JP asked the attendees if anyone wanted to give their last kisses to my late grandaunt.

A few persons away, my mother nudged me to come forward. I must have been about 7 years old and I tried to silently, telepathically communicate to my mother that I didn't want to kiss a cold face. (She looked so cold.) I had no idea if she was going anywhere else after she was placed in the ground.

I've been raised to fear a Hell (and dang those Sunday school teachers know how to describe it), but not to love a Heaven. As I grew older, I often found myself making decisions based on the fear of "going to Hell", even as the idea of a hot place grew less and less real to me.

A very good friend said to me once, "What if it was an all an illusion? What if, on Judgement Day, God said everyone gets to go to Paradise?" While my idea of justice makes me lean to the other side of this argument (how can evil people get away with it in this world and the next?), I do wonder if the version I was sold tells just a tiny part of the story?

Then I think, it could have been so easy for me. If I just prayed, fasted, wore a hijab, married an ustaz, got a stable job, had a few kids, saved up for hajj, spent my retirement reading the Qur'an and doing dhikr non stop, and spent the rest of the time advising others to do things just like I do, would it have been enough? If life is - as they say - about pleasing God, and the formula has already been decoded into a simple series of steps, would that guarantee me (or at least give me a pretty good chance of) Paradise? Is living life without rocking the boat the key?

The Dutchman can hear that I am asking rhetorical questions. "Obviously, you don't think this is the only way."

That's true, I don't. I'd like to think that rocking the boat, creating shit storms when trying to defend the oppressed and upsetting people into thinking differently matter too. This was not taught to me for many reasons: patriarchy and authoritarianism are the most important. I was taught that authority is only to be obeyed, not to be challenged or God forbid, usurped.

So where does that leave me? On days when it seems everyone hates what I write and what I do and can't stop calling me names, I try to remember the reason I believe I am living for: I am a creation of Allah, and this is my testimony of faith.