“Je ne te quitte pas
Je ne reviendrai jamais
Je ne te quitte pas
Je ne reviendrai jamais
Je ne te quitte pas
Je ne reviendrai jamais
Je ne te quitte pas.”
We’ve all seen the posts about words that can’t be translated into English that inevitably include “saudade” in the list – saudade, that Portuguese feeling of “profound nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone.” This longing is “often associated with a repressed understanding that one might never encounter the recipient of longing ever again.”
But what’s a word for the melancholy that comes with irrepressible presence? Does anyone else ever feel that? That crippling knowing that someone is only one phone call away. That contradictory orbit on loop, like magnets violently spinning – is there any language to translate that?
Today is Mother’s Day in the Middle East and that now familiar but nameless feeling has me in its grip. My mother is only one WhatsApp message away, but that message just won’t come out of me. The very thought of tapping it out on this grimy glass fills me with a dread that I’ll do anything to disavow- I’ll even write these words to nameless strangers instead of having to sit with that.
This dread has no name in any language that I know, but it’s one I’ve been feeling a lot lately; I feel it every time I think about home.
I will have left five years ago in July; I miss it and I don’t want to go back, but I know that I will regret every chance I don’t take to return and can imagine how good it’ll feel to be there once I do, but I dread it still.
What is this feeling?
Saudade?
Ennui?
Mono no aware?
Sehnsucht?
Akel hawa?
Je ne te quitte pas
Je ne reviendrai jamais
Je ne te quitte pas
Je ne reviendrai jamais
Je ne te quitte pas
Je ne reviendrai jamais.