"The Cave and the Olive Tree" by Dalal Al-Buzurri... The Meaning of Belonging to the Language
Lebanese sociologist Dalal al-Buzuri has published the book “The Cave and the Olive Tree” (Mawrid Forum, Beirut), in which the author reflects on the meaning of belonging to a language, alongside the condition of displacement that has accompanied her life, and the pathways of debate between two opposing sets of vocabulary, considering it as a necessity imposed by the communicative environment on the one hand, and also as a conscious choice adopted by the speaker over time through various stages of their journey. She engages thought with the primordial existence in which the individual perceives the world through vocabulary they do not choose, but which is bestowed upon them at birth, during upbringing, and through gradual development in the hierarchy of perception. When one becomes aware of the limitations of a single language, the process of taming linguistic consciousness gradually unfolds, yielding what was initially a given in favor of contingent choices.
The narrator emphasizes at the beginning of her memoir that the girl born in Dakar, Senegal, to Lebanese parents, initially spoke French, like other Senegalese people. Her mother spoke French, Arabic, and English, as well as the local Wolof language. The father, despite his pan-Arab Nasserist leanings, spoke to her, her sister (Nariman), and her brother (Saeed) in French, both at home and in the street, out of laziness and “haste.”
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French emerged as an inescapable given, while Arabic, heard from Muhammad Abdel Wahab records and parental discussions, was closer to a private family archive, used sparingly and received for its resonance, filled with ambiguous emotions and shrouded in ambiguity. French appeared as a flexible tool for grasping and shaping meaning, quickly becoming the foundation for perception, the reference for comparison, and the mental starting point for vocabulary formation, even in other languages. Then Arabic suddenly reappeared, in a manner closer to daily realities, when the family moved to Casablanca.
