Many times.

There are many times my mother speaks, as most people do.

But some moments when she speaks, I don’t understand her.

A language foreign to me escapes her lips, though I’ve grown up with the words constantly all around me.

From family to friends to strangers, the language hisses at me through their mouths, mocking me.

Mocking my lack of knowledge.

Oftentimes I ask my mother why I don’t know Arabic, and every time she tells me it’s because she had worried that I wouldn’t speak at all.

“One language will have to do,” she would say.

But one language never satisfied my shame. 

The shame I felt whenever someone else in my family spoke to me in Arabic, expecting me to do the same.

The shame I felt when I had to wave it off and say,”Sorry, only English!”

The shame I felt when I was told, “Just learn!” As if I hadn’t been told that many times before.

Of course I’ve tried, I’ve always longed to understand the language, like a parent to their difficult child. 

But in past times I tried, I grew small against the difficult language as it laughed at my attempts to twist my tongue.

As small as the letters of what my name would look like in Arabic, if I knew how to write it.