The position of speech

Author's name: Basma Abdel Aziz

It's strange that circumstances dictated that I write about language, which had never been on my regular writing agenda. I maintained a consistent weekly column for several years, driven by a passion for exploring the words we often throw around without much thought, tracing their uses in various spheres, including politics, society, and art. I was concerned with finding the underlying relationships between them and the details of daily life, exploring ways to reproduce them in our ordinary conversations. I was careful not to let the articles I enjoyed writing turn into boring theoretical texts or speeches that found no audience.
There is no escaping the admission that the Arabic language faces repeated accusations of difficulty and complexity, and that its richness has become a source of protest rather than acceptance, of mockery rather than pride. Hence, this book comes in a humble attempt to change this bleak picture, bringing together between its two banks numerous chapters written over the past years, revised and expanded, each titled with a single, significant word: from anger to concealment, from frivolity to permanence, from humiliation to resistance, discontent and virtue. Through these pages, I have sought to bring meanings closer together and to share with those who have found within themselves a passion and a passion for the language a space for calm contemplation; its lines are not without riot and skirmish.