Metamorphosis - Mohamed Khelifi

 Text translated from Arabic to English by Bess Martin.

When you emigrate, you commit suicide. I’m not lying to you. You read the words correctly—you

commit suicide.

When you leave the airport gate, departing your homeland, bound for another country—not for a visit, but

to emigrate—a part of you dies. Your soul slips away at the threshold and does not rejoin you.

When the plane takes off, it carries your soul with it, rising into the sky like the ascent of a spirit, a

journey just like death, a crossing into another world. And when the plane lands at its destination, you

find yourself in another country, where you’re no longer you— not now, not ever again.

Why do I say this? Because you lose everything, quite literally. The friends you once went everywhere

with—they are no longer with you.

The bars you frequented and loved, and the small cafes with white plastic chairs in the neighborhood,

where you’d sit for hours—during your teenage years and those first years of youth—are no longer just a

stone’s throw away. The warm mornings in your family home, your mother’s smile at seven-thirty as she

serves you coffee with milk and a quince jam and butter sandwich—forget that entirely.

Do you remember your first toy as a child, the way you knew the streets so well, the people, the language,

the memories, even the weather, the quarrels, the heated debates? All of that is lost to you now. Every

word that reaches your ears becomes a mumble, a murmur—meaningless, signifying nothing to you

except as an exercise in new vocabulary.

The glances will no longer send the same messages, the scents—no longer the same, and the smiles

become grand lies, hanging like traffic signals with no explanation. The food you once found repulsive

becomes a distant dream, and even your poor stomach won’t recognize it. Is this even possible?

You emigrated, and in doing so, you committed a deliberate suicide. After this act, you won’t realize it

right away. But over time—perhaps quickly, perhaps slowly—you’ll discover that you are no longer the

same person. You’ve become something new, a different self, technically a newborn, an infant without a

breast to await. You’ll learn a new language, even if, for a moment, you think you’ve mastered it.

Desperately, you’ll try to build new relationships with people who feel entirely foreign to you. Your home

will change, your thoughts will shift, and you’ll reach a terrifying stage where every expectation, every

dream, and every part of your life transforms as your language and expressions alter. Your very self will

become a stranger to you.

When you emigrate, you are no longer yourself; you become someone else. The person you left behind at

the departure gate committed suicide, ending their life with full intent.