A Memoir

     As an IB student, especially in Raha, diversity is a huge factor in the school. The more diverse you were, the more experience you were heralded to have. I am a very common type of diverse. Arabic, and English. I can communicate and conversate with both, and I am somewhat from countries that speak both. But I also am a Muslim, which is also very common.
    When I came to Raha, about six years ago, I had arrived from a very undiverse school. It was very common to be Muslim and Arab. It was very uncommon to be otherwise. I remember how odd it was when a Russia girl had come to my class. I remember people were frantically switching gazes from the girl to the classmates, and again. I was uneasy at first but I realized, she's just Russian, I have Russian friends outside of school. But that uneasiness cemented and embedded itself into me and was triggered every time I saw here walking around, like coding.
   Moving schools was overwhelming as it is, now, I had to be able to switch between Arabic and English repeatedly and fluently. I also had to meet people with unpronounceable names and are from countries that I never heard of. I had put myself in a different mindset. The first thing I had to get used to was talking English about 75% of the time. I felt like I was being pushed from my language and forced into a new hive full of bees buzzing English.
   It took me a while to get used to it, but it was kind of an aid to my conversating skills since I was horrible at English. It made me jump out of my comfort zone but, new things usually end in good results, right? That wasn't the case for me.
   Through the years of speaking English, it kind of besmirched Arabic to me. I was learning the complexity of English, learning about adjectives, and predicates, but Arabic became second-hand to me. When I would speak to someone, I would first speak Arabic, and then, if he did not understand me, speak English. Now, I just speak English, and if he doesn't respond, Arabic doesn't even come to mind. and this was very rife.
    I felt like my Arabic lexicon was broken, but it would take acres of work and studying to be able to bring back that part of me. But what was even worse was Arabic went from being basic to being complex in months. I was dropping in my grades, my parents would have a hard time conversating with me and I couldn't communicate the same with my friends. My mother offered to move me down to the lower standard class, but I held up my pride and declined. I regret that decision but, I look back and I am proud of it sometime.
   Arabic is very important to me. It was the language of my people, my nation, my family, and my religion. But whatever I tried, I could not revive that part of me. I felt like a huge portion was missing from me. I was known as the "American" due to my lack of Arabic and having an American passport and the school identifying me as an American. I just had my heart ripped out when I saw it. I try to put these thoughts aside, but it happens really often. When I recite Qur'an, "Reading was good but you have to improve your speech and annunciation".
   I realized now how important Arabic was to me. How a language could change me and I felt like I was forced into a new one. I still try to speak somewhat but to no prevail. I heard a story about a pigeon who was not content with the way he was walking. He wanted to walk like an Eagle, proud and chest forward. So the pigeon tried to walk like the hawk but did not succeed. After a couple of months he forgot how he used to walk, he couldn't go back to it. So he started hoping since it was instinctual.