Day: December 9, 2025

The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling

to say, “Until you speak Arabic,

you will not understand pain.”

Something to do with the back of the head,

an Arab carries sorrow in the back of the head,

that only language cracks, the thrum of stones

weeping, grating hinge on an old metal gate.

“Once you know,” he whispered, “you can

     enter the room

whenever you need to. Music you heard

     from a distance,

the slapped drum of a stranger’s wedding,

well up inside your skin, inside rain, a thousand

pulsing tongues. You are changed.”

Outside, the snow has finally stopped.

In a land where snow rarely falls,

we had felt our days grow white and still.

I thought pain had no tongue. Or every tongue

at once, supreme translator, sieve. I admit my

shame. To live on the brink of Arabic, tugging

its rich threads without understanding

how to weave the rug…I have no gift.

The sound, but not the sense.

I kept looking over his shoulder for someone else

to talk to, recalling my dying friend

     who only scrawled

I can’t write. What good would any grammar

     have been

to her then? I touched his arm, held it hard,

which sometimes you don’t do in the Middle East,

and said, I’ll work on it, feeling sad

for his good strict heart, but later in the slick street

hailed a taxi by shouting Pain! and it stopped

in every language and opened its doors.

Naomi Shihab Nye, “Arabic” from Red Suitcase. Copyright © 1994 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of BOA Editions, Ltd.

🟠 Language as the Key to Pain (🔑)

“Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye stages language not as a decorative cultural accessory but as an ethical instrument that can unlock registers of suffering otherwise muffled or misheard. The poem begins with a disarming authority—“Until you speak Arabic, / you will not understand pain”—and that claim is not merely linguistic, because it binds comprehension to intimacy, and intimacy to responsibility. Pain here is located not only in nerves but “in the back of the head,” where memory, inheritance, and historical pressure reside, suggesting that certain griefs are carried as communal knowledge rather than private complaint. Arabic becomes the “crack” that opens what is sealed, the sound that translates stones “weeping” and a gate’s “grating hinge,” so that ordinary noises turn into intelligible testimony. Yet the speaker’s unease shows that knowing a language is never purely technical; it is a transformation of perception, a re-training of listening, and a willingness to let the world’s harsh textures speak inside the self.

🟣 Inherited Sorrow, History, and the Body (🧠)

“Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye frames suffering as embodied history, carried in a posture of the mind and a pressure under the skin, so that pain becomes both physiological and civilizational at once. The “Arab carries sorrow in the back of the head” suggests a burdensome archive stored where we cannot easily see it, which is why the poem repeatedly turns to sound—stones “weeping,” a gate’s hinge—because the body absorbs what the intellect avoids naming. When the man whispers that “Once you know…you can enter the room / whenever you need to,” he implies that language grants entry into an interior chamber of experience where grief is organized, not erased, and where one may return for strength as well as lament. The poem’s music imagery intensifies this: the distant wedding drum, once external, begins to “well up inside your skin,” implying that culture is not spectacle but incorporation. In this way, Arabic signifies not ethnicity alone but a bodily receptivity to histories that pulse through “a thousand / pulsing tongues,” remaking the speaker’s sense of self.

🟢 Shame, In-betweenness, and the Limits of Translation (🧵)

“Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye dramatizes the speaker’s uneasy position on the threshold—close enough to “tug” at Arabic’s “rich threads,” yet unable to “weave the rug”—and this in-betweenness becomes a moral discomfort as much as an intellectual lack. The confession “I admit my / shame” matters because it refuses the romantic excuse that admiration equals understanding; instead, it recognizes that partial access can become a kind of appropriation, where one enjoys the “sound, but not the sense.” The poem therefore critiques shallow multicultural listening, the kind that consumes texture while dodging responsibility, and it stages the speaker’s instinct to look “over his shoulder for someone else / to talk to” as a moment of avoidance that exposes how discomfort can produce social retreat. Even the notion that pain has “no tongue” or “every tongue / at once” wrestles with translation’s paradox: language can be a “supreme translator,” yet it is also a “sieve” that lets meanings slip. The poem insists that translation is not only a linguistic act; it is an ethical apprenticeship, slow and humbling, in which the listener must accept not-knowing without turning away.

🔵 Universality of Pain vs. Cultural Specificity (🚕)

“Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye ends by balancing a radical claim of cultural specificity—Arabic as the pathway into certain pains—with an equally radical reminder that suffering can summon recognition across borders, accents, and grammars. The speaker recalls a dying friend who “only scrawled / I can’t write,” and the question “What good would any grammar / have been / to her then?” punctures any elitist faith in linguistic mastery, because it shows that extreme pain can strip language to its barest plea. Yet the poem does not dissolve into easy universals; it keeps the tension alive by showing the speaker’s embodied attempt at connection—touching his arm “held it hard,” even while noting this gesture violates local custom—which implies that care sometimes risks cultural missteps, though it must still try. The final scene is brilliantly ironic: the speaker hails a taxi by shouting “Pain!” and it stops “in every language,” suggesting that while Arabic may deepen, sharpen, and particularize the understanding of sorrow, pain also travels with a terrible fluency, recognizable to strangers, opening doors anywhere, even on “slick” streets after snow.

🧠 1. How does the poem construct the relationship between linguistic fluency and the somatic experience of historical trauma?

In “Arabic”, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye establishes a complex, almost physiological link between the Arabic language and the endurance of suffering, suggesting that the language acts as a physical vessel for collective memory rather than a mere tool for communication. The poem opens with a stark epistemological claim from a native speaker who asserts that “Until you speak Arabic, / you will not understand pain,” which immediately positions the language as the exclusive domain of deep, ancestral sorrow that is carried in the “back of the head.”¹ Nye expands this connection by personifying the language itself through harsh, auditory imagery—describing it as a “grating hinge” and the “thrum of stones”—which implies that the phonetics of Arabic are infused with the weight of hard, physical labor and historical grief.² Consequently, the speaker is forced to confront the limitation of her own experience, realizing that without the “gift” of this specific tongue, she is merely an observer hearing the “sound, but not the sense,” permanently separated from the “thousand pulsing tongues” that keep the history of her heritage alive and vibrant within the skin of those who speak it.

---

🧶 2. What is the function of the extended metaphor of weaving and textiles in defining the speaker’s fragmented cultural identity?

Through the intricate imagery of rug making, Naomi Shihab Nye in “Arabic” vividly illustrates the speaker’s diasporic anxiety and the sensation of possessing the raw materials of a culture without the ability to synthesize them into a coherent whole. when the speaker admits to living “on the brink of Arabic” and “tugging / its rich threads without understanding / how to weave the rug,” she is acknowledging that while she has inherited the colorful, isolated elements of her identity—her genetics, memories, and emotions—she lacks the structural “grammar” required to bind them into a complete pattern.³ This metaphor effectively highlights the distinction between heritage and capability; the speaker can feel the texture of the “threads” and appreciate their value, but she remains an apprentice who cannot participate in the creation of the cultural tapestry. By positioning herself as someone who holds the threads but cannot work the loom, Nye emphasizes the melancholy of the second-generation experience, where the “gift” of belonging feels tantalizingly close, yet ultimately inaccessible because the skill of the language—the warp and weft of the rug—has been lost in the silence of assimilation.

---

💀 3. How does the anecdote of the dying friend serve to deconstruct the poem’s initial premise regarding the necessity of grammar?

The inclusion of the dying friend’s paradox serves as the philosophical turning point in “Arabic” by Naomi Shihab Nye, effectively challenging the opening argument that formal language is the only legitimate vehicle for understanding pain. By recalling a friend who, in her final moments, “scrawled / I can’t write,” Nye utilizes situational irony to demonstrate that in the face of ultimate mortality, the rules of syntax and “grammar” crumble, rendering the distinction between fluency and silence irrelevant. This tragic recollection acts as a rebuttal to the man with “laughing eyes,” for it suggests that while specific languages like Arabic may claim ownership over historical sorrow, the raw, immediate reality of death is a “supreme translator” that requires no dictionary. The rhetorical question, “What good would any / grammar / have been / to her then?” underscores the futility of structure when the human body fails, thereby validating the speaker’s own position; she may lack the intricate “sense” of Arabic, but she possesses the intuitive, universal understanding of loss that transcends the intellectual barriers of language, proving that the heart’s “strict” reality exists independently of the words used to describe it.

---

🚕 4. What does the surreal conclusion of hailing a taxi with the word “Pain” suggest about the universality of human emotion versus the specificity of language?

In the powerful resolution of “Arabic”, Naomi Shihab Nye moves beyond the binary of speaking versus not speaking to propose that shared vulnerability is the true universal language that supersedes all linguistic divides. When the speaker, standing in a “slick street,” hails a taxi not by shouting a destination but by shouting “Pain!” and finds that the vehicle “stopped / in every language,” the poem achieves a moment of transcendent clarity that resolves the speaker’s earlier feelings of shame and inadequacy. This surreal image transforms pain from a private, culturally gate-kept burden—as initially suggested by the man who claimed only Arabic speakers understand it—into a public, universally recognized signal that “opens doors” indiscriminately. By shifting from the specific “thrum of stones” associated with Arabic to the broad, accessible symbol of the taxi, Nye concludes that while she may not master the “rich threads” of her father’s tongue, her capacity to feel and project human suffering allows her to navigate the world, proving that empathy is the ultimate currency of connection in a world often divided by “snow” and silence.

• Books

• Nye, Naomi Shihab. Red Suitcase: Poems. BOA Editions, 1994. Google Books,
• Charara, Hayan, editor. Inclined to Speak: An Anthology of Contemporary Arab American Poetry. University of Arkansas Press, 2008. University of Arkansas Press, https://www.uapress.com/product/inclined-to-speak/. Accessed 8 Dec. 2025.
• Academic articles
• Corrigan, Paul T. “Kindness, Politics, and Religion: An Interview with Naomi Shihab Nye.” MELUS, vol. 44, no. 2, Summer 2019, pp. 173–188. Oxford Academic, https://doi.org/10.1093/melus/mlz009. Accessed 8 Dec. 2025.
• Gómez-Vega, Ibis. “The Art of Telling Stories in the Poetry of Naomi Shihab Nye.” MELUS, vol. 26, no. 4, Dec. 2001, pp. 245–252. Oxford Academic, https://doi.org/10.2307/3185549. Accessed 8 Dec. 2025.
• Poem websites
  5. Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Arabic.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, https://poets.org/poem/arabic. Accessed 8 Dec. 2025.
  6. “Naomi Shihab Nye.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye. Accessed 8 Dec. 2025.