Chapter 4: A Language Learned Through Tragedy

When you learn a new language, you rarely remember the moment a word enters your life. You don’t recall the day, the hour, or the state of mind in which you learned black, or culture, or any other ordinary word. They arrive quietly and settle in without ceremony.

And yet, there are some words, very specific ones, that carry their own stories. Words that arrive through moments rather than lessons and you never forget how you learned them.

When you learn a second or third language, much of it comes from books or classrooms. Grammar is explained, vocabulary memorised. But some words are not taught. They are experienced.

When I began studying abroad in September 2020, I did not know that I would learn the phrase “my condolences” through a tragedy that belonged to my people.

On January 8, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 (“Flight PS752”) was shot down minutes after taking off from Tehran, Iran, by two Iranian surface-to-air missiles.

An incident that after six years I still think of just like today’s highlights.A day after which nothing fully returns to what it was. A day that marked an irreversible moment for our nation.

Messages from my non-Iranian friends began to arrive. They all ended the same way: “My condolences.” I had to search the phrase to understand it before replying. A day or two later, when the cause was officially confirmed, I found myself looking up another word “missileso I could answer my professor when he asked, “But what happened to the plane?”

I did not know any of the passengers personally. And yet, with each message I received, the loss became heavier. I felt as though I had lost 176 people, not by name, but by heart.

When English is not your first language, words often arrive through context before definition. You learn what they mean by watching how they are used, by what they are attached to. In 2015, when a large number of Syrians sought asylum in Germany, I learned the word refugee. Its meaning aligned with the definition given by the 1951 UN Refugee Convention: someone unable or unwilling to return home because of a well-founded fear of persecution.

Years later, in 2024, I was working in an office. Part of the space was under construction, and to escape the noise, some of us moved to a quieter area. Around noon, a colleague approached and said to the British colleague sitting beside me, “I was looking for you on the other side of the office.” She replied lightly, “It’s because of the noise; we’re all refugees on this side of the office.” She wasn’t wrong. But for me, that word is too heavy to be carried so casually.

Sometimes I imagine a life in which I never learned words like missile or my condolences in English. A life in which refugees are not accompanied by images of overcrowded boats or children standing behind the fences of camps, staring into a camera with curious eyes. 

It must be a different life. Perhaps a happier one. Certainly, a lighter one.