Dear H,
Sometimes when you are teaching me the language of love, I remember the feeling of a past tongue.
My memory of it is minuscule - collected over years of overheard daawat conversations, and the lyrics of my father’s Bangla gaan collections. It follows me despite my unfamiliarity with it, then fades and falters on my tongue like the contents of a train’s window.
This language you are teaching me is royal. Golden on the edges, dripping in rosewater, diamonds falling off the brow. Urdu is such a beautiful language, you tell me. And it is the language of love because it articulates love like no other, and because it is the language you speak.
Sometimes these languages sound similar. I hear them over soft octaves, warm combinations of sounds that echo off each other to form words I once knew, once heard, but never fully understood. Then there are times when they sound so alien to one another, like they were born out of different soils, which means I dig deep into my memory to recall a new set of sounds. Like how one of the many words for love in Urdu is mohabbat, but in Bangla, it is bhalobhashi.
I hear these words with a sense of juvenile logic:
mohabbat - pronounced exactly like a heartbeat, rhythmic.
bhalobhashi - like the word for good (bhalo) and home (basha).
Both make enough sense: my love for you is like a natural rhythm, and you are home to me.
But everything is always more complicated than that.
And nothing really is black and white you remind me, that much I have learned from being married to you. Language is not exempt.
Post Partition, Urdu cast its shadow over East Pakistan, despite Bangla being the language of the people of those lands. On 26 March 1971, the Pakistani military initiated a genocide upon these people in response to their protest. Months of warfare in rice fields, crimson streets and shattered families, birthed a nation called Bangladesh. Desh meaning country: Bangladesh, The Land of Bangla.
I wonder what that means for us. Is there something in the blood I inherited that refuses to grasp Urdu? Were my tantrums during Bangla lessons because I decided that language was not mine? Did my father stop teaching me because he knew I was born from resistance? Will I always be tugging at the strings?
You are cooking something and I find my way back to you.
Food has always been that, a bridge to meaning. It is through food that I taste culture, a language I can access, an articulation of love greater than anything spoken. You feed me dishes and we share a love for feasting; the saffron infused flavours of your lineage mingling with my kewra water. When you mention the names of these dishes - I hear Bangla responding back like a warbled echo, like drinking Urdu through a straw.
sabzi // shobji kichdi // kichuri
baigan // begun tarbuz // turmuj
mithai // mishti chai // cha
But even your Urdu is from Hyderabad, pockets of Telugu-influenced slang and shortcuts populated across speech. I am learning this remix of Urdu, and hearing a remix of Bangla played back to me. Sometimes when you say a word I hear it in Bangla instantly, and sometimes the playback is delayed, or it is radio silence.
Kya bole?
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Ki bole?
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What did you say?
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What did you say?
When I hear Bangla from anyone’s mouth other than my father’s, I am bewildered. It taps my shoulder over and over again in Lakemba, phrases and trimmings of talk passing by me and striking me with such a ferocious familiarity that I have to stop and look back. They ask me, what are you doing here, and, where have you been? My body replies, who is this feeling inside me? The flavours of a past tongue appear and disappear within me in a sequence of sensations.
me // the smell of subcontinental mothballs.
rooftop child // economy meals on cathay pacific.
These on repeat in my mind as we pass the restaurants,
their bright green signs, fruit stops
soaked in malai cha air, wafting across the roads.
All this and more we discuss over the watery dhal that I still haven’t mastered. It is not my fault or anyone’s that I have yet to learn the ratio of lentils to liquid, that I still measure spices with sentiment. But it is always a frustration for me because I want to make a thousand dishes for you. A thousand dishes I have eaten and cannot name, prepared by named and nameless bhabis and aunties.
I want to share myself too. I offer you scraps from my road cone tongue. Orange from the sweets I ate, yellow taped by shame. All the words I remember are thick, rolled in ghee and coated in milk powder.
What I can teach you is the language of sweets,
roshmalai // roshogulla // pati shapta // jilapi
the language of childhood nostalgia,
the colours of our katha
// joy bangla
arranged in a box and wrapped in a gold ribbon.
I mourn the fact that I may never truly be able to understand either Urdu or Bangla in a way that is effortless for you. I mourn not being able to understand the language of love, that sticks to your fingers like sweet pomegranate blood, that you generously try to share with me through rusty translations. Instead I will read the Youtube captions, listen to you again, narrating over the music, again as you smile, this is a lyric I can’t even explain, I wish you could understand. I feel this, but I will probably never fully know this. But you will still love me because you share the language of love with me, expecting nothing in return.
Kya hua? // Ki holo? // What happened ?
This is the language of love that I can understand, I hear it when you ask me this. It echoes like a lullaby in a seashell- tell me what is wrong. Tell me what you are thinking about. I want to love you well. I think about my father who gave in to my bleeding knees and rage, and you with your eyes brimming with silver. I answer, kuch bhi nahi - nothing.
(everything)
(সবকিছু)
I want to make you cha not chai, kiss you in the barish, dance with you in the gully of our hearts
under echoes of our mohabbat, mohabbat, mohabbat.
Khana khaliye, meri jaan? / Have you eaten, my love?
Love, R
Ronia Ibrahim is a writer and artist based in Naarm. Originally from Aotearoa with Taiwanese and Bangladeshi roots, her non fiction and poetry focuses on experiences of diaspora and coming of age. She has been published in Overland, Starling, Stasis, and, The Pantograph Punch.
