The Museum of Non Participation: La taa'luqi ka aajaib ghar

Larne Abse Gogarty, 2009

Through the window at Yaseen's

By chance, term two of the Urdu/English language exchange came to be held behind Yaseen Hairdressers, a Bethnal Green barber’s shop. During a location-scouting walk after the classes ceased at Oxford House, we paused and peered inside a window decorated with pillarbox red stickers of scissors and combs. Mohammad, a participant in the first round of Urdu/English classes also happened to be a barber, and worked at Yaseen between trips home to Lahore. He stepped out to greet us, inviting us in for chai. We sat at the back while several customers chatted in Urdu and English accompanied by the buzz of hair clippers. Our chai appeared after an alchemical process involving water from the shower being heated in a microwave until blisteringly hot and infused with copious amounts of sugar. We discussed the problems we’d had in locating a space for the new term and Mohammad mentioned that the room behind the barbers was empty. We didn’t hesitate in chasing up the landlord.
Once firmly installed on Monday evenings behind Yaseen, Josh, a participant in the classes noted that, "the thrill of having a door held open to what is normally quite an exclusive world was great". Every week was peppered by giving a nod and a ‘salaam’ to whoever was brandishing the clippers at the time you crossed the threshold into the barbers and over to the language class. As the weeks progressed, the walls became increasingly plastered in our teacher Hasan’s translations.

How are you? - Aap kessi hain?
Goodbye - Ghuda-hafez
Thank you - Shukria

Different people came, bringing their own experiences and languages; Nepali, Hindi, Arabic, Polish, German, Punjabi, Japanese, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish. As Hasan said, “It was amazing to see the outcomes and feedback to the classes when you have a mixture of people from different ethnicities, age groups, education levels, and work backgrounds. For example, we had artists, charity workers, dry cleaners, a yoga teacher and barbers all together. This led to interesting conversations and experiences, as everyone’s way of thinking was different”. For two hours each Monday we learnt vocabulary and grammar and strayed into discussions on gender, terrorism, religion, politics language, football and food; topics that rose out of translations, tangential to the language. The space given over to these subjects was unusual for a language class, and helped to build interesting group dynamics and friendships. We all got to know each other a little and enjoyed a meal at Tayyabs together at the end of the course, practising our Urdu over mango lassis and lamb chops.

Issues of translation were central to the class, and The Museum of Non Participation as a whole. We discussed the shifts in meaning that occur to words once ensconced in another language. Talib variously translates as ‘seeker’ ‘one who is in need’ and ‘student’ in Urdu, Arabic and Pashtun. Taliban pluralizes talib in Urdu and linguistically has no overt religious connotations. Yet outside the Arabic/Urdu/Pashto speaking world, Taliban does not translate, instead stands alone to signify Islamic fundamentalism, terrorism, Afghanistan and all the problems we associate our relationship with these sites and categories to be. We discussed this problem with Hasan, and how difficult it will be to reclaim the linguistic truth of this word.

"Shared language can facilitate participation," commented another attendee of the class. Through our shared language of English, we could all participate in these discussions that organically surfaced each week, and it was the desire to communicate in another language that brought us together. People attended the class for different reasons. For Karen and Brad it was a practical impulse to learn the language of a country they work in, a desire to build skills in communication. For others, it was simply the rare opportunity for free learning with a community emphasis. As Hasan, our teacher said, “some of the English speakers have parents or grandparents who speak Urdu but were not taught the language as children. They now feel excited to visit their families back in Pakistan and speak to them in Urdu”. Participants also attended because they were interested in The Museum of Non Participation project as a whole.

There is a growing focus on learning ‘community languages’ as they have been dubbed by the education system, but a struggle to rate that learning on the same level as languages traditionally taught in British schools. In a study published in 2008 by the University of Stirling and the School of Oriental and African studies Joanna McPake commented that "we need a diversity of language speakers if we are to deal with the diplomatic, economic, technological and cultural situations that occur across the world... a blanket application of French as a second language is no longer helpful". Lister Community College in Plaistow has seen a huge rise in the number of pupils taking a GCSE in Urdu - it has now overtaken French as a language option. Languages are not a skill the British exceed in traditionally, yet these small steps indicate the way forward. The diversity of intention in coming to our classes behind the barbers shop allowed for a temporary community to surface throughout the weeks, resulting in a valuable experiment with fruitful results. We can only hope that our ventures be mirrored in mainstream education with greater attention given over to the learning of Urdu and other community languages.