In my job I teach English, but mostly I learn how much can be communicated with minimal English.

“Where were you yesterday, Ahmed?”
“Baby sick, hospital.”

“What’s wrong, Suleka?”
No words, just downcast eyes, one hand on her forehead, the other slowly opening and closing like a flower or a starburst, showing the throbbing pain in her head. Refugees bring old wounds to class, and they tell me with a grimace and a hand to the afflicted area.

They joke, too. Every day someone capitalizes on a classmate’s inattention and answers for them, “Not here.” They bash each other’s cultures playfully. “Somali good. Nepali bad!” “No, Somali bad. Nepali good!”

I am not only “Teacher,” the title applied liberally to any employee, intern, or volunteer in the class. I am also the on-hand translator and secretary. Mid-class, students come to press a phone to my ear. “English, teacher,” they tell me, made nervous by the flood of foreign words.

Today, a student got a call from her husband’s new place of employment. They needed copies of his IDs by tomorrow night. I jotted everything down since no Somali translator was around and took a breath to gather my thoughts.

“Husband?”
She nodded.
“Work, tomorrow night?” I gesture forward.
Another nod.
“ID? Copy?” I pointed to the copy room and mimed laying a paper down to copy.
“Tomorrow, ID, copy, work. Husband,” I reiterated.

Giving her the paper, I gestured to it and said, “Same.” She seemed to understand and returned to class.

In my job, I pare English down to its bones.