Ajla Sacic
I have always loved talking about my dreams. As a child, when I had to make up love stories between the squares in the carpet to coax myself into slumber, my dreams were always so long and intricate that I never seemed to have the right words to describe them but I would always find a willing listener, my mum or my dad, to hear me out.
When I came to NYU Abu Dhabi, I would often start my mornings with Bisha at D2 recounting the storyline of last night’s dream, looking at her expressions change as the nonsense I was spewing finally jolted her awake. In these daily recaps, I began relying on words in Bosnian, Arabic, or Urdu to convey ideas that simply wouldn’t fit into English.
It's not that English isn’t an incredible language, it bridges three continents in my friend group alone, but it is a language which lacks personality. I can say “I love you” in English without capturing even a fraction of the emotion I feel when I summon the courage to say “volim te” in Bosnian. In our group of seven languages, we have all become accustomed to weaving each other’s phrases into everyday conversation without even noticing. There’s a depth of emotion Bosnian conveys, the love carried in Arabic, and the jokes that only sound right in Urdu. It is for these reasons that the narrative of my dreams each one of my friends is used to hearing is adorned with the words and phrases they have taught me during my four years at NYUAD.
During those rare times all eight of us managed to gather, our conversations were always loud. I remember walking over to get my food in D1 and realizing I could easily hear our conversation despite the blaring music and being nearly twenty meters away. No matter how loud or embarrassing, the conversations were always a mix of our native languages woven with English, punctuated by questions from anyone who couldn’t quite catch every word or phrase being tossed around.
Although I might not be daydreaming about carpet squares anymore, the practice of retelling my dreams has taught me to speak in ways I knew not of before. It allowed me to speak of my first love in seven languages, each one capturing the hope I carried. And even though that love remained just a dream, what remained reality is our patchwork of languages that continues to connect us. We’ve built something lasting, an unwritten dictionary of inside jokes, gentle teases, and quiet comfort. No matter where we go, we’ll always have the words, and each other.
