The language of migrants

As someone whose subjectivity derives extensively from her identity as a writer I frequently find myself speculating about the fictional possibilities of any immediate circumstance For instance in the last two days Ive spent almost 20 hours helping a farmer friend harvest his Gala applesI was called in to alleviate a state of emergency after he had realised he had only 10 days left until the cooperative would accept this particular variety He had consulted the weather forecast app for the region It wasnt looking good The weekend was all thunderstorms and heavy rainI was his Hail Mary the fourth person within his contingent of paid harvest helpers I was joining my partner with whom I was excited to work alongside and a Bulgarian couple who had travelled to Tramin explicitly to workMidway through harvesting yesterday I wondered what the script would be like if the four of us along with Florian our employer were characters in a Beckettlike play I could imagine the miseenscene Rows of apple trees growing much like vines a testimony to highintensity farming A Harvester machine which has several arms reaching out to carry the apples conveyorbeltlike to the 300kgcapacity carton at the back its humdrum motor sound punctuating the play offering rhythm and our 10 arms reaching out into either side of each row of trees moving from top to bottom plucking fruitThere would be the suggestion of Alpine weather mdash the sense of Summer quietly ending the air getting cooler fresher with leaves turning colour to herald in autumn And there would be the five of us the protagonists with no common tongue with which to speak to each otherI kept repeating to myself all of yesterday the first line of a poem by Cecilia Vicuntildea Language is migrant While my partner and Florian with whom he works regularly spoke Dialect it was harder for me to have a conversation with Florian Hes eager to improve his English Im eager to improve my German and were still learning to switch between the twoWe each have moments when we struggle to find a word that signifies the thought we want to articulate On Wednesday as he kept emphasising to me the readiness of the apple he relied on the adjective mature I told him that the word ripe is perhaps better also because it shares a close phonetic bond with the German word reif Later when I tried to make sense of this revelation with my partner he asked why mature wouldnt cut it I told him it could but mature has the sense of something continuing to age or the connotation of wisdom to of something still gestatingRipe suggested that the thing in question was more ready and willing to be consumed almost immediately Then later I thought perhaps this conceptual inflexion I was trying to articulate only existed in my head and was categorically untrueMeanwhile the only exchange I managed to have with the Bulgarian couple was to show off the one word I had learned in their language which was appreciated and when I was asked if Bastian and I had a family by which I assumed I was being asked if we had children to which I said no But it was frequently amusing to overhear Florian using Italian as a bridge and sometimes relying purely on gesturesBeckett would have had a blast writing this play about how our migrant bodies were relying on a certain economy of labour in order to profit from a capitalist market system The quality of ripeness was being determined by future customers in Asian and African markets who had exacting standards of what constituted a beautiful apple The general wellbeing of the region we were in meant it was profitable for the Bulgarians and me to do the hours because back home this money we would earn would have greater currency Its strange to conceive of the many economic convergences that have resulted in our productive togetherness Words move from language to language from culture to culture from mouth to mouth Our bodies are migrants cells Vicuntildea writes I wondered about how the unspoken could be performedEver since I began to spend time in Suumldtirol Ive learned the beauty of occasional wordlessness the grace in using gestures to communicate and sometimes even not being hung up on articulating ones subjectivity all the time rather sharing a silence or inhabiting a space within which one explores ones consciousness within the company of anotherIm also trying to learn German like an immigrant through participation rather than active instruction guided by the grammar lessons my partner offers me You have to give yourself time an illegal immigrant I spoke to two weeks ago told me He was from Nigeria and had initially entered via Libya on a boat We had an exchange in English and he told me a few tricks to communicating in German and to encourage me to learn ItalianIt was one of the most meaningful conversations Id had with a stranger since I got here I wonder already about what the next harvest will be like Whether Ill be more fluent in Dialect and German and hopefully Italian or whether Ill have got half the town to speak more English For now Im practising the little I know and Im hoping the warmth I radiate can fill the silencesDeliberating on the life and times of Everywoman Rosalyn DMello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover She tweets RosaParxSend your feedback tomailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperKeep scrolling to read more newsCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and a complete guide from food to things to do and events across Mumbai Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news