The Hazara refugees and the language translation dilemma

Case one:

Fatima and her parents have been living in London for four years. They are Hazaras. Recently, in a conversation on WhatsApp, she told me, “My parents are facing a serious problem. When they go to the doctor, they hire a Persian or Dari interpreter. Neither the interpreter understands Fatima’s parents, nor Fatima’s parents understand the interpreter’s translation.” Her parents speak Hazaragi, a Farsi-based creole language with borrowed words from Turkic-Mongol languages. It is spoken only by the Hazara people in central Afghanistan and those in the diaspora. 

Several times, she and her sister have accompanied her parents to the appointments. Yesterday, when we spoke on the phone, “My sister and I are both working. We can’t quit our jobs and become interpreters for our parents," said Fatima, explaining the family's dilemma of juggling work and volunteering as translators for their parents. "But we also know that no one can translate what my parents say except a Hazara interpreter.” 

She also mentioned that a Hazara family in their neighborhood has stopped going to the doctor and government offices altogether because of the difficulty in communicating with a non-Hazaragi interpreter, unless a volunteer community member comes to their aid.

Fatima's parents' dilemma with finding Hazaragi translators is not an isolated issue. A relative of mine in Canada has the same problem. She is a Hazara. Every time a Dari or Farsi translator is hired, neither she nor her husband understands the translator, and the translator does not understand them either. I sometimes volunteer to translate for them remotely when I have time.

Case two:

Four years ago, in the United States, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hired a non-Hazara translator (someone from a Pashtun or Tajik background) for a young Hazara man who had just crossed the Mexican border into the United States. After an hour of translation, the young Hazara was separated from the other immigrants and thrown into solitary confinement. Two months later, three FBI agents showed up at the door of one of his relatives in another state.

"That morning," Abbas says to me at his apartment as we are sipping green tea, "the doorbell rang. I opened the door. There, three men and one woman in plain clothes were standing."

Before he could finish asking how he could help them, they showed their badges and identified themselves as FBI agents.

Abbas continued: "They asked me, 'Do you know Ghulam Hussain?' I said, 'Yes. He is from our village. We went to school together. After 12th grade, he went to Kabul and studied at university, then got a job in the government and worked on US projects. He worked in the government until it collapsed."

Abbas, who is a distant relative of Ghulam Hussain, says the officers looked at each other, paused, and then asked whether Ghulam Hussain had gone to Iran and fought in Syria.

"Absolutely not," Abbas responded. "As far as I know, he never left Afghanistan. I have all his documents and records on my computer, by the way." Abbas told me that Ghulam Hussain had scanned and emailed all his documents before burning the originals to protect himself from Taliban persecution. "I opened my laptop and showed them all his school, university, and government records."

Then the FBI agents asked him to email all the PDFs to them, which he did. 

The non-Hazara translator mistranslated and lied to the customs officers, saying that Ghulam Hussain had traveled to Iran and fought in Syria. Abbas told me that the officers left his apartment, and in two weeks, Ghulam Hussain was released from the prison and granted asylum based on evidence of his collaboration with the Afghanistani government and US development projects.

As we are taking a break from drinking too much green tea and pondering whether to step outside for a walk, I asked Abbas, "Why do you think the translator lied to the CBP officers?

His response was short: "The same thing they did to the Hazara in Afghanistan. They are Hazaras, and if you hire a Dari translator who is Pashtun or Tajik background, they mistranslate, and even lie with the purpose of harm."

The Hazaras' persecution continues in the diaspora, partly at the hands of the same people with whom they shared a country, culture, and history. Hazaras have been persecuted in Afghanistan mainly at the hands of Pashtuns and often Tajiks, and that appears to continue in the diaspora as well. 

"Here is the solution," said Abbas, raising both hands, pressing his fingers together. "Recognizing and registering Hazaragi as an independent language in government offices in Western countries is a humane and urgent need. Doing so would not only solve the problem of administrative communication but would also help end the cycle of systematic discrimination against Hazaras and reduce the suffering of Hazara communities in the Western world. Therefore, Hazaras should work toward having Hazaragi formally registered as an independent language in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Canada, and every other country where Hazaras have settled."

Beyond silence: Hazaragi music in diaspora

This article in The New York Times by Elian Peltier on Afghanistani music and artists in Pakistan warns that it is in danger of being silenced. Although this claim may be somewhat true, its danger is that it misses the whole picture. Afghanistani music is not only the music performed and recorded by Pashtun and Tajik refugees in Peshawar. Take a trip to Quetta, Balochistan once. There, Hazaragi music is flourishing and offers a fresh promise for the production and proliferation of Afghanistani Hazara music in the diaspora.

One only needs to search for Hazaragi music on YouTube, and you will come across dozens of channels featuring various music groups, with folk and pop genres emerging from Quetta. You would realize that the culture and the music are neither frozen nor silent, but actively produced and innovated in different contexts and catered for a more transnational audience. Yes, Afghanistani music is deterritorialized, but in diaspora it is reterritorialized and claimed through digital spaces like YouTube, Spotify, and social media websites.

Yes, music in Afghanistan has completely fallen silent-- if we entirely disregard private homes of people who surreptitiously still play music and even Taliban members play music on their cellphones--but in the diaspora, it has been revived. Ignoring this issue means narrowing our perspective and seeing the world from a narrow space.

We have to remember to acknowledge the cultural resilience of diasporans in the face of violence, displacement, and ongoing threats of deportation. And we should also remember that culture is dynamic, not static; it can adapt, reinvent, hybridize, influence, and be influenced by other cultures.

Fieldwork revitalized my native language

For the first time in nearly a decade, this summer, I had a chance to speak in my native language Farsi more than I did before. It was during my fieldwork that forced me to speak Farsi, though it have been comfortable and beneficial had I been able to speak English for the most part. That is what I also preferred, but not all participants were fluent in English. At any rate, I'm content with what have happened.

In my four years of college, I almost forgot Farsi. In college, I barely spoke my native language because there was no other Farsi speakers around. There was a benign retired US diplomat who lived nearby and we hang out a lot. He often called me or I went over to his place, we chatted in Farsi while cooking and drinking.

I have to admit that for the last ten years, I have never read a book in Farsi though I read the news regularly. That is a shame! (I tell myself). I did not have access to Farsi resources either, and honestly, I had no interest. I am a little bit biased towards Farsi and for that reason, I don't read scientific books other than in English. Farsi is good enough for poetry, storytelling and perhaps, Sufism, but not a language that you can use for critical thinking, logical reasoning, especially in the field of philosophy, technology, and science. I know this statement has ideological values, but what can you say when you compare two things. Well, one might say, languages are not things, they are culture and history. I agree, but what could you do in a short blog post than doing a gross simplification.

But getting back to the main point, living in DC with a community of Hazara immigrants this summer was gracefully beneficial to me. I noticed yesterday that my speech has become more smooth and I have become more confident to control myself from code-switching.