Fiction. The town and the word are real: Ulqin is the Albanian name of Ulcinj, a town in Montenegro (see Chapter 2, F7). The school, the professor, Pedro and the narrator are invented. This is not one of the book’s anonymized real stories, which are a separate planned chapter. The story does not say what a search engine returns for the word, and it makes no claim about any real person.
I hired teachers for a night school whose students had come to learn the basics. Some were university professors. One had gone to Asia to learn all about Tartary.
Contratei professores para uma escola noturna cujos alunos vinham aprender o básico. Alguns eram professores universitários. Um deles tinha ido à Ásia para aprender tudo sobre a Tartária.
His lectures ran for hours. He began without a greeting and without the alphabet. He spoke of a map, of the people on its edges, of rivers that changed their names three times between one empire and the next, and of a trade that had ended before anyone in the room was born. The students, adults with jobs at six in the morning, copied what they could. Some copied only the dates.
At the end of every fact dump, he stopped, raised one finger, and said: “Repeat after me. Ulqin.” The students repeated it. He corrected the vowel. They repeated it again. He corrected the stress. It was the only pronunciation correction in the course, and the word was not English.
Suas aulas duravam horas. Começava sem cumprimento e sem o alfabeto. Falava de um mapa, dos povos nas suas bordas, de rios que mudavam de nome três vezes entre um império e outro, e de um comércio que acabara antes de qualquer pessoa na sala ter nascido. Os alunos, adultos que acordavam às seis da manhã para trabalhar, copiavam o que podiam. Alguns copiavam só as datas.
No fim de cada despejo de fatos, ele parava, erguia um dedo e dizia: “Repitam comigo. Ulqin.” Os alunos repetiam. Ele corrigia a vogal. Repetiam de novo. Ele corrigia a sílaba tônica. Foi a única correção de pronúncia do curso, e a palavra não era inglesa.
Pedro raised his hand the third night. “What does it mean?”
“That is not the point,” said the professor.
When the students were displeased with his performance, he did not appreciate it. He took the silence for a lesson in respect.
Pedro levantou a mão na terceira noite. “O que significa?”
“Esse não é o ponto”, disse o professor.
Quando os alunos ficavam insatisfeitos com a atuação dele, ele não gostava. Tomava o silêncio por uma lição de respeito.
Some students looked it up on their phones. Ulqin is the Albanian name of Ulcinj, a town on the coast of Montenegro, where Albanian is the largest spoken language. By the next night they had connected two and two. “You are the Albanian teacher,” one of them told him, pleased to have solved it.
The professor had gone to Asia to learn about Tartary. No one in that room was learning Albanian.
Alguns alunos procuraram no celular. Ulqin é o nome albanês de Ulcinj, cidade na costa de Montenegro, onde o albanês é a língua mais falada. Na noite seguinte já tinham ligado os pontos. “O senhor é o professor albanês”, disse um deles, contente por ter resolvido.
O professor tinha ido à Ásia aprender sobre a Tartária. Ninguém naquela sala estudava albanês.
The director found it artful and impromptu, “almost like fusion jazz,” and was sure that whatever the professor was doing would yield great results. Pedro, an adult student asking for help with the basics, would write a great novel too, he said.
O diretor achava aquilo artístico e improvisado, “quase como jazz fusion”, e tinha certeza de que o que o professor fazia daria ótimos resultados. Pedro, aluno adulto que pedia ajuda com o básico, também escreveria um ótimo romance, dizia.
At the end of the session, Pedro said the teacher was no good. He never came back.
No fim da sessão, Pedro disse que o professor não prestava. Nunca mais voltou.
I learned later that the professor had fallen for the lore of a hidden Tartarian empire. He also loved the flat-earth idea, and would investigate the possibility that the round planet was a sham.
Soube depois que o professor tinha caído no folclore de um império tartário oculto. Também adorava a ideia da Terra plana e investigaria a possibilidade de que o planeta redondo fosse uma farsa.