We educated Tunisians speak three languages. We think this makes us rich. It makes us homeless.

A language is not a tool. It is a territory. To speak three languages is not to own three territories. It is to be a refugee in all of them. We switch. We adapt. We never arrive.

The monolingual possesses something we have forgotten how to want: a home. He is condemned to depth. When his language fails him, he cannot flee. He must dig. This constraint is his freedom. Our freedom is our prison.

We call ourselves “open.” Open like a wound.

The French came with rifles. They stayed with vocabulary. This is the mechanism of colonization perfected. No need for soldiers when the conquered will garrison themselves.

When we encounter a new reality, we do not struggle. Struggle is for those with no exit. We have exits. We import the French word. The debate arrives pre-packaged. The assumptions arrive pre-installed. We call this efficiency. It is amputation.

A people that borrows its concepts will soon borrow its desires. Then its values. Then its self-esteem. The hierarchy is already established: their words are for thinking, ours are for feeling. They produce. We consume. This is not exchange. It is digestion. And we are not the stomach.

We read everything. We understand nothing. Understanding requires resistance. We have abolished resistance. Every idea slides through us, frictionless, leaving no mark.

The polyglot congratulates himself on his masks. He collects them. He has one for every occasion. But remove them and what remains? Not a face. A mirror.

We consider ourselves citizens of the world. But true thought is not cosmopolitan. It is provincial first. It pushes against its own walls until those walls become a style. We have no walls. Therefore no style. Therefore no thought. Only excuses.

This is the curse of the polyglot.