Six languages, one bedside

Kurdish at home, Arabic with the patients, English with the world. French and Aramaic and Urdu when the conversation finds its way there. I didn’t plan to be the person who could meet most rooms in the language they grew up in — it happened the way good things happen, slowly, then suddenly.

There’s a particular tenderness in asking someone how they feel in the language they pray in. A patient relaxes a little. A grandmother smiles. The diagnosis hasn’t changed, but the distance has. Medicine is full of things you can measure; this isn’t one of them, and yet it might be one of the most important.

Six languages is a lot of vocabulary to keep alive. I forget words. I look up phrases the night before clinic. I’m not fluent in every register of every tongue. But I can ask. I can listen. And in the end, that’s what most people need: someone who can ask, and mean it.