A week ago I was approached with a request to translate one of my recent essays into Bosnian. Easy enough, I thought. I would be writing about a familiar topic, in my native language. How difficult could that be? I was looking forward to reconnecting with the language which I have been using sporadically over the past fourteen years. I read books written in Bosnian without any difficulty and I do talk with my friends and family without any misunderstandings. Fluency in the language of my “motherland” has never been a questionable concept for me, or so I believed.

Early in the week I sat down in front of my computer, excited to begin the translation of a piece that exposed my soul, leaving it uncovered and vulnerable to painful memories of war. As I opened the file, there was an odd mixture of apprehension, and not a small amount of fear. I had written this piece in English several weeks earlier, and I still felt the emotional scars it left. I wondered how destructive it would be to write that same essay, this time in the language of my actual experience.

Despite the fear, I felt giddy with the promise of self-discovery and the sense of comfort and joy that literary play with my primary language brought me in the past. This would be the first time since the war that I would be verbalizing my war experiences, and the myriad of emotions that they bring, in the language of my soul. Uncharted territory loomed over me.

So I opened the file with trepidation, and joined in a reunion with my culture, my past, my pain. The first sentence was challenging, but I was able to translate the main point of the essay. The rest of the piece proved to be terribly frustrating and nearly impossible to translate into Bosnian. I became obsessed with the technical execution of the literary word. Does this comma look good here; does the word order make sense, what is the translation of martyr in Bosnian? All I could think is how none of the process made sense to me, and the life of the essay, its emotion, its pain, its soul was not there.

Bosnian is an emotional language, and in its full literary strength offers a soul gutting punch that can bring readers to their knees. Its strength is in the possibility of inference, its malleability and ambiguity offering an intimate glimpse into that which we often cannot verbalize. When used by the most skilled, it sears the core of one’s soul, elevating and grounding at the same time. Growing up I lived for those moments of personal glory when my writing offered something more than just a well written piece. I played with the words for hours, sometimes days, reworking my school assignments, always amazed by the variety of possible expressions that I was able to produce. I lived this language, and our relationship was the core of my identity. Now, that special bond seemed to be lost, and I was almost ready to accept the emptiness and mourn its loss.

Have I truly lost my ability to create meaningful connections in my primary language? Have I lost myself in the process of perfecting knowledge of my secondary language? Or have I managed to maintain the fundamental part of my sense of self by still engaging in play with language, be it English or Bosnian? Is it possible that I consciously neglected my Bosnian self in order to escape that which has past? Do I dare attempt to immerse myself again in the language of my ancestry, since the possibility of disappointment and unreturned love is real? I guess the true fear is that perhaps, once rediscovered, my Bosnian self might shatter my newly acquired, still fragile American identity, which I painstakingly crafted from avoidance of all that I left behind. Can I afford not to embark on this journey and see where it leads?