Language is a funny thing. Having taken four years of French in high school, I greatly struggled with utilizing my studies in the city. Greetings and one worded responses I can understand, and signs are easy to read (some even have English translations), but I have not been the best at keeping up a French conversation. I haven’t practiced the language in over a year, and I really only did (very) light review before the trip. If I was out with one of our fellow francophones, I would just hand off the speaking to them and let them lead the way.

Oddly, it wasn’t my (broken) French that I had to pull out and speak with locals, it was my Arabic. There is a plethora of taco/kebab shops in the city, AT LEAST four in the 500 meter radius of our dorms. I’ve been sampling these restaurants at the times I crave a shwarma. Whenever the cashiers and I struggled with a conversation of Frenlish (French-English), I ask for my order in Arabic hoping they’ll understand, and they do! I’ve spoken to mostly Tunisians, some Algerians– the North Africans of the Middle East, people who who have been telling me they immigrate for better lives, better futures, due to the conflicts back home. And with the high concentration of North African migrants comes a creation of a community in the city, in Lyon. Walking through the Etas-Unis neighborhood, I saw so many more taco/kebab stores with men sitting outdoors with their coffee. I saw hijabi mothers speaking with each other on the courtyard benches (and I attempted to understand their Tunisian dialect) while they watch their kids run around with each other. It was very reminiscent of the Middle East.

In yesterday’s La Biennale de Lyon visit, I saw a Fatma Cheffi’s Langue Distance Relationship, a piece expressing the artist’s struggle of navigating her identity while she tries to juggle overlapping languages (resulting from colonialism) that carry different cultures. Identity shifts with each language switch, and it leaves the person… confused. Lost in formulating their identity. She writes her series of text in Arabic, English, and French. I stood there for a long time, reading the series of papers three times through. Being bilingual carries weight already. I wondered how deep her struggle must be with being in a linguistic maze of three languages.

This bilingual/polylingual identity battle is one that is common, and I wonder (and hope) that the North Africans of Lyon continue these communities in these open spaces that allow positive exchanges, because a struggle with others is much easier to overcome than a struggle alone.

Translation:

“Untie the knot from my tongue, that they may understand my speech”

Surah Taha: 27-28