Do I?

Every time I taught here at Bard College, it was like a miracle. I can’t believe that I had enough English words in me to express all my ideas and to communicate with my students. I can’t say, even now at the end of this Spring Semester 2004, that I speak this language fluently. But the students were kind and patient with me. My mistakes didn’t bother them. They got the message (I hope!): that’s what matters.

I'm still obsessed by my shortcomings in this language. I want to write one day in English. Actually I did it. I wrote a short story: MOROCCAN SLAVE. I asked a friend of mine to correct my mistakes. (You can read it in this website, Click here…)

Ignorance can sometimes be very interesting. What can we do with the few things, words, truhts about life we have in our hands? What would be the result if we try to make, to construct something with them? What would our lives be without knowing some hidden secrets? Milan Kundera wrote a novel (in French ) based on this idea. The title? L’IGNORANCE.

I don’t know everything about English. I can read, watch movies, listen to songs, but I don’t get all the meanings. I still get lost.

I’ve been here in America since last January. I’ve been several times to New York City. I’ve been also to Boston and San Francisco. Do I know the States well? The answer is: No! This country is still a mystery for me. It is at the same time a wonderful and an awful land, fascinating and frightening. Maybe, when I’m back in Paris, where I live, I will be able to see it clearly. The distance will surely help me.

Bard College is so beautiful now that the Spring is here. The first weeks were hard: I’m from Morocco, I’m the son of the sun, the snow is not for me. Definitely.

I’m a writer, and I feel that soon ( this summer?) I will write something about this College. I know what I will write.

Bard College will be forever the place where I was a Professor for the first time in my life. I tried to teach some things (and to correct some clichés) about Morocco (an Arab and Muslim Country), about the American writers who have been in Morocco (Edith Wharton, Paul Bowles). Mohamed Choukri’s FOR BREAD ALONE (translated from Moroccan Arabic by Paul Bowles in 1973) was particularly appreciated. I also tried to encourage my students to write: my class was a Creative Writing Seminar where the student’s papers were discussed, analyzed. It wasn’t always easy. To face the students is, at once, exciting and scary. I had le trac every time. Being a Professor is like being an actor who is his own screenwriter and director. It’s very stimulating! And very hard. But, it’s life, as my mother says every time I talk with her. Sure, I tell her, sure. She is right.

I invented a Questionnaire related to the Topic of my seminar, Dual Identities. The first intention was to have fun, but the student’s answers (like their other papers) caught me by surprise. I understood that this, for them, had not been only a game. Now I can say that I know them a little bit. Sometimes, I think I can see what they will be in the future. But I won’t tell them.

I’m 30 years old, and for the first time in my life I think of my age as a privilege.

Abdellah TAIA