Page 18 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 11(2) (2023)

month in the summer when they would meet up country, and with the linguistic community in
with their friends from Algeria in the South of France. This sense of insularity, the feeling of
France. Even in their homes’ privacy and deal- belonging and being excluded, followed people
ings with neighbours, they were careful to speak into exile, with their ‘broken tongue’: it pointed
as neutral French as possible, not to have an ac- not to a hyphenated identity but a mark of their
cent and to use the ‘right’ words. Rare were the othernesses, their double or triple unbelonging
moments, usually of anger or emotion, when an and a cultivated feeling of division. As they re-
expression, a turn of phrase, a sentence in Arabic flected in their language, they could not choose
or an accent came out. In the summer, they sud- between their different allegiances: or rather,
denly began to speak a different language, to in- they choose one or the other, and neither the one
habit other gestures. It was as if they were redis- nor the other.
covering their naturalness and, with it, their joie
18 de vivre. From Home, Other Worlds Beyond Sight
They could not belong to either Algeria or People went into exile either from Algeria, Tu-
France, so they strove to appear to be from ‘no- nisia, Morocco, or Egypt; with them, their lan- ti
studia universitatis hereditati, letnik 11 (2023), številka 2 / volume 11 (2023), number 2
where’, ‘no time’, and ‘no country’. Their moth- guages and memories. What does it mean for
er tongue was not ‘the only possession that could languages to be in exile? How do we grasp exile
not be taken from them’ as an indestructible in language and retrace a biography of the stra-
part of identity, a home and a homeland (Cas- ta of tongues like we can build a biography of in- ta
sin 2013). They had no mother tongue, or sever- dividuals? Furthermore, what to do with blank
al which coexisted and constantly acted as smug- pages, particularly those concerning the pres-
glers behind each other: they were ‘all exiles, like ence of other languages that a priori have noth-
transhumants who have burnt their ships’. They ing to do with the political and cultural con-
‘[would] never again find [their] past intact, any text of the countries in question and their use di
more than the mythical bell towers of [their] in naming places and objects? How did they be-
childhood, the splendid charm of drowsy syn- come part of these countries’ past?
agogues or the cry of the muezzin calling the Just as I learnt the broken tongues of the
faithful to prayer at dawn. [They were] from here people I grew up with, I shared their lost land-
and there. Indefectibly’ (Hassoun 1993, 66–67). scapes, absent relatives, and blank pages as a part
This concomitance of languages was not of myself. It was a legacy from an era of histo-
only the lasting mark of exile but also the im- ry that just cannot be eradicated, the era of col- here
print of a past of linguistic coexistence made up onisations and decolonisations. But at the same
of mixing, division and a desire for separation. time, these broken tongues as post signs of mem-
The complexity of this phenomenon has been ory also bore the mark of silence surrounding my
exacerbated by the interference, in some cas- family’s life in Algeria. However, silence does not
es, of religious affiliations and by a colonial po- mean oblivion; it encompasses different ways of
litical context that has created a conflictual and dealing with the past – ‘don’t remember, don’t
emotional relationship with languages. The pre- talk about, don’t know, and don’t care.’ It is not
dominance of French reflected this phenome- a ‘complete absence of sound. Rather, it refers to
non of linguistic hierarchy, which served as a the absence of certain discourses about the past’
norm for social divisions and sheltered external (Xu 2022, 69).
antagonisms. But as the most culturally valued Algeria was present in the exchanges and ex-
language by many of these displaced persons, pressions, inhabiting the memories and shaping studiauniversitatis
French was in a situation of insularity: both the memories of inhabiting. In the social housing
with the demographic majority, Arabic-speak- estates of the grey suburb of eastern Paris where
ing and/or Berber-speaking, depending on the I was born, disintegrated colonial worlds consti-