I Didn’t Grow Up Speaking Arabic the Way People Expect Me To

At home in Riyadh, my world was a messy patchwork of languages. School was Najdi, but the teachers? Mostly Egyptian. Home was Madani when we did speak Arabic ... but most of the time, we didn’t. So I grew up with a cracked mirror of a tongue… a collage of borrowed cadences and half-formed confidence.

And I knew. I knew I sounded different.

Kids knew too. We were the “half-blood weirdos,” the ones with foreign moms and strange words and too much English in our jokes. The kind of kids people squint at, like we’re not fully real. That sticks with you. You learn to laugh it off. Or swallow it. Or both.

For most of my adult life, I thought I had moved on. I went to Japan, to America, to Hollywood. I took pride in being Saudi. Wore it like a badge. I was the guy in LA proudly saying I’m from Madina. The guy in Tokyo making oud jokes in English. I believed I had claimed my identity… until I had to speak it.

It wasn’t until 2022, back in Saudi, that someone invited me for an Arabic TV interview. National TV. And I thought, Sure. I can do this. I’m ready.

I wasn’t.

It wasn’t just bad ... it was painful. I couldn’t find the rhythm. Couldn’t find the jokes. Couldn’t even find the words. I went in as someone proud of his culture and left feeling like I had no right to represent it.

That interview haunted me.

It made me feel like a fraud. Not because I wasn’t Saudi enough ... but because I couldn’t express myself in the language that’s supposed to be my own. And if I couldn’t do that… was I really still me?

Comedy is my lifeblood. Wordplay, comebacks, timing ... they’re how I show up in the world. But all of that dies when I try to perform in Arabic. The spark fizzles. The whip becomes a whisper. And the silence? Loud.

Since then, I’ve tried. I speak more Arabic now, even if it’s clumsy. Even if it gets me odd looks. But of course, I work in an international school. So I’m accidentally picking up Lebanese slang more than Saudi dialect, which… yeah. Facepalm.

Still, I keep at it.

Not because I need to prove anything. But because I owe it to myself to close that gap ... not with shame, but with presence.

I don’t want to run from the brokenness anymore. There’s something beautiful in the effort. In showing up anyway. In trying to speak the words that were always meant to be mine, even if they come out twisted.

Maybe this is what it means to come home. Not perfectly, not fluently. Just… willingly.

And maybe, when my time comes ... when I meet my Creator ... I’ll get to say, finally, in Arabic:

لقد عشت الرحلة التي أعطيتها لي

I lived the journey You gave me.

And for once, my accent won’t matter at all.