By Issam Raad | Staff Writer
“I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go.”
⎯ Rumi
Across earth and probably beyond, civilizations exist similarly yet differently. From the ‘Norðurljós’ (Northern Lights) of Iceland to the vital ‘Κυκλάδες’ (Cyclades) of Greece and all the way to the honorable ‘武士’(Samurai) ancestors of Japan, populations glorify their cultural and natural landmarks and artifacts not only through museums of values but also through inherited words and expressions that beautify their dearest assets, whether tangible or intangible. Languages arose from the very origin of diverse environments to allow communication among their dwellers, but I believe there’s a lot more than that.
As the inhabitants of Latin America enjoy the ‘Cordillera de Los Andes’ (Andes Mountains), and Arabs honor the ‘ أَ هَراما تَ (Pyramids) of Egypt and its history, while Italians wander around ‘il Colosseo’ (The Colosseum), I cannot imagine a world where such sites or landmarks could be all named in the same language or using one common alphabet to either spread their uniqueness to the world or just nickname them. Their places of inception and journeys through time embed layers of love and belonging to their environments. True, such sites have witnessed a lot and were adopted and embraced by not only people but also all types of beings who passed by or loved them, whether residents or travelers from humans, animals, and even plants. And thus, I’m inclined towards what Julius Cesar once declared: ‘Veni, Vidi, Vici’ (I came, I saw, I conquered), but in this case, conquering means loving the whole of what composes each culture and its history and ancestors who carved their monuments of glory and love throughout time.
Never before have I visualized that I might dive into the field of languages, but I was dragged by my passion for adventure and now I keep finding myself attracted not only to different places, but also to what every notion and thing means in places around the globe. My dragging was not planned, but rather occurred unexpectedly when I was seeking a new experience outside my homeland. I’m now a beginner in Italian, a lower intermediate in Spanish, learned a couple of things in German, and a few symbols in Japanese, and am mesmerized by my favorite language, Greek, which I’ve not yet started learning out of the fear of losing its mystery – sometimes it’s good for some things to remain unknown to keep their magic. Moreover, as Rumi expresses, I still feel that I have endless knowledge to discover and will keep seeking more, as long as my heart is beating, to experience existence to the fullest. My roots are rooted everywhere, which makes them rootless in a way, and instead, I use languages to anchor my roots to a platform of exchange and connection to the world on which diversity shines. It’s as if my roots are dispersed everywhere and I need to chase them to become whole. In the end, we are wanderers in the dark, whether conscious or not, craving light through adventure and love in diverse languages and places, with hearts roving and belonging to whatever muses them.