7-10 minutes reading time
Disclaimer:
This piece was originally written in 2013 and submitted to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Although it was not selected for publication and I never received a response from the editors, the story remains close to my heart. It has undergone a few minor revisions recently in 2025, but I have let the language proficiency remain the same. I lost touch with Safurah a few years ago and haven’t been able to find her since. I hope she’s doing well and that someday, she gets to read this.
“It has not been definitively proved that the language of words is the best possible language”
-Antonin Artaud
“Write something!” She was yelling, or at least that is what I assumed she wanted to tell me. All the other kids in class started to fill up their pages with letters that looked like Greek symbols to me.
2005: It was my first day in school. An English convent school in India. I was a 14-year-old who had just stepped into India, and was enrolled in a Convent English school in grade 8th without knowing the Language. I can still recall the horror of the First day at school in a strange country where people just presumed everyone knew English! It would take me around 30 minutes to understand why everyone was moving their feet synchronously in the morning assembly, and another 30 to locate my class. I knew it was 8 A.
The teacher looked at me again, this time fuming with anger, trying to make me understand the instructions, but I still couldn't make out a single word she was saying. How could I have? When I had no idea how to write even the letters of the alphabet, how was I supposed to fill pages with sentences? I felt a hard ball in my throat that I could neither swallow nor allow to burst into tears. I wanted to just get up and run away. I wanted my mom, I needed to talk, vent, cry in my language and feel understood. While I was feeling dizzy and trying to put up an uncomprehending but brazen face to hold back my tears, the bell rang. I was glad. Little did I know that getting out of the classroom and trying to blend with hundreds of other girls who spoke an unknown language would be worse and probably my scariest time ever. Those five hours were the longest 5 hours of my life. When it was 1:00 PM, I ran outside, hoping my mom was around to receive me. While I was running towards the gate, I kept telling myself that I was going to pretend my day was fine and make mum feel happy about her decision, but within a fraction of a second, in her arms, and I was weeping. Was it me imagining, or was she actually crying too? And only when noticing the other parents standing there and staring at us, I realised this was no nightmare but a real moment of pain for both of us.
With a toddler and a teenage daughter, my mother had migrated from our country to India in 2004, with the hope and ambition of providing a better education to her children, something that seemed to be a common practice in our family. However, choosing India, was the most uncommon decision a family member took. My little sister went to an English-speaking kindergarten right after we settled, but for my own comfort, I continued to go to a Persian School for a year. That's when Mum realised that keeping me in a Persian-speaking environment was conflicting with the whole idea of relocating to India.
So the hunt began: A single mother with no knowledge of the language wandered from school to school seeking admission for her daughter, who didn't know the language either. I can now confidently say God planned that one of the best convent schools in the city agreed to grant admission, provided I repeated a class. The reason was that grade 9 was the preparation year for the final school Year examination boards, and that they would give no guarantee that I could pass this academic year.
Nothing has ever demotivated me more than not being able to speak the language.
Every morning, waking up with moist eyes, I didn't know whether I had cried while dreaming or I was awake because of crying. My first mid-term test was dreadful. I scored zero in Maths, which actually multiplied by the teacher’s comments on how on earth I was ever going to be able to pass (or at least that is what I felt she said from her terse tone). But after all the tears shed and the emotions, somewhere deep down in my heart, I knew I had it in me to do it. Having continuously topped 8 years in a row, in my earlier school and the state, it wasn't easy for me to digest a zero. I knew it was only about finding a way to tell the teachers what I had to say; to prove that I was not dumb, that I just didn't know the language
My mom helped me set a tight daily schedule starting at 6:00 in the morning and ending at midnight. I found a tutor to go to after school. I would sit with him for a grueling session of 8 hours at a stretch. The first few hours were spent in learning basic English, and the later hours in explaining the content of the school textbooks. I would reach home famished at 9:30 PM, and after a healthy dinner, I would sit in the hall with my mum, trying to make sense of the homework of the day. This went on for months, more often than not, each of the nights ended with Mum and me holding each other, crying because I was blank about the homework I was supposed to submit the next day. I could sense Mum’s slight regret, and she could feel my grief. Being a teenager, sometimes I would just sit and sulk about the whole idea of my life. I would wonder if I will ever be able to find friends ever again. I needed to go out and socialize, but to socialize, I needed to feel confident and learn the language, and the only way of achieving that was to spend 24/7 trying!
But gradually the clouds began to lift, and I started to see a ray of sunlight when my class was shifted to 8 B. The moment I was taken into that class, I heard one of the students speaking the language I was very familiar with, yes, my mother tongue and her statement was
"هی، تو همون هستی که انگلیسی بلد نیستی، درسته؟ نترس، بیا بشین پیش من، من زبون تو رو بلدم."
“Hey, you are the same foreign girl who doesn’t know English, right? Oh girl, don't freak out, come sit next to me, I speak your language.”
After spending four months not being able to make even a single friend, that day was my turning point. Her name was Safurah, she was bold, popular and friendly, but for me, she was an angel sent by God. Thereafter, things began to change, and life changed. That day, I discovered that the school has a canteen and even a basketball court. By just having one person with whom I could communicate with my entire self-esteem returned, and I was myself. I passed the grade that year with 45%, which was unbelievable to everyone, including myself.
2013, 6 years later, not only do I speak English fluently, but I also write and read it well. I have completed my B.A - Bachelor in Arts, B.Ed - Bachelor in Education, a course from Harvard Graduate School, and importantly, have become a trained teacher to teach English as a foreign language to children in an International School. The degrees, though a very minor part of my achievement, are a validation of my effort. I have now chosen to be an International Baccalaureate (IB) Teacher and make an impact on my students’ lives. I choose to be there for my students and let them know that no matter what language they speak, they can do wonders and go places.
Now that I look back, I realize I was challenged by life and given a hard time, not because of bad Karma but because I was meant to be who I am now. After all, I am able to write my story using the same Greek Symbols to share.
Note:
I feel like now that there is a picture attached, I need to clarify that in no way do I intend to demean or disrespect the teacher mentioned in this piece. Despite everything, I hold a deep respect for them; they were, and remain, excellent educators. My reflections are not a critique of their intent or ability, but rather of the system itself, which left little space for teachers to truly reach out to every student beyond conventional academics.
Picture credit:
Creator: kokuto2
Title: I don't understand foreign languages