klass

As an immigrant, I went through the universal experience of learning a complete new language in order to thrive in the new society I was placed in. Originally from Egypt, I immigrated to the United States at the age of 9 and was forced to learn English in order to somewhat feel normal again. I had already thought I belonged to a society ,Egypt, but when I was stripped from that society I needed to feel a sense of belonging again and in order to do that I had to learn English. English and Arabic don’t share any similarities, so learning the language was extremely difficult and mentally draining. As a child all I wanted was to be able to interact with the other children and feel like I belonged to a community. It wasn’t until I was introduced to the ESL class where I met others that I felt a connection to. I finally met other Arab children that had fled their own societies in search for a new community to belong to. For the first time ever, I had met other Arabs that weren’t Egyptian. It had brought me a larger sense of belonging than before. Being able to use Arabic words such as “Wallah” ( I swear/by God) with others while speaking English made me realize that me and the other kids had created our own community where we weren’t specifically one thing. We were muslim Arab-americans that took parts of each culture and combined them to create our own community that helped all of us cope with the initial loss of belonging we had all felt when we came here.