The Exiled Language

The author writes about his experience of exile through his experience of language. Ladino was the language of emotion spoken at home whereas Turk was construed as a foreign language heard in the street. He examines the effects of this schism on the psyche, which created an opposition between the language of reason and the sensorial dialect buried in the body resulting in dyslexia. The coexistence of these languages, which represent the Occident and the Orient, is not always peaceful. The foreigner who loses his native language suffers from a loss of sensation, a loss of taste for life; by reuniting himself with the savor of his mother tongue, he can reach other countries and go from the single to the multiple.