What Is Being Said — Horn Listens to Neo-Aramaic

The recording lasts less than a minute. Horn has been listening for twenty.

It is late. Alone at the table, with a curl of board-shaping dust still caught in a sleeve, he presses replay. The speaker’s voice comes through the small speaker, pauses, continues. He tries to hold one syllable in mind while the next arrives. By the end he has lost the first.

In his notebook he writes: Which part of that sound has travelled all this way?

Aramaic has nearly three thousand years of recorded history, reaching back beyond the beginnings of most scripts still in use. But this is a modern voice, speaking one of its living descendants. Horn cannot pick an ancient syllable out by ear, however closely he listens. Familiarity after twenty repetitions is not knowledge. He puts a line beneath the question, not an answer.

When shaping a board, he can run a hand along the rail and find where a curve changes. There is no equivalent touch here. He keeps expecting time to have left a ridge he can feel.

He writes again: Western Neo-Aramaic is still spoken in Maaloula and nearby Syrian villages. Other branches include Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and Turoyo. Many varieties are endangered; communities and diaspora speakers keep them in use.

The facts occupy four lines. He leaves space below them.

On the next replay he stops hunting for the oldest sound. He listens to the pace instead, the pause he keeps mistaking for the end. There must be ordinary meaning here that he cannot reach. He has been so busy imagining the distance behind the words that he has barely considered where the sentence is going.

His last note is smaller:

I wanted to hear what survived. I need to learn what is being said.

He lets the recording finish before reaching for the button.