As a computer scientist, he also needed an advanced level of English for his degree and, later, for work. Switching between different computer programming languages and human languages, he finished his degree, worked in Ukraine for a few years and was later offered a job in Paris, which brought him back to France. In a conversation entirely in French after one of the Friday debates at SAT-Amikaro's headquarters, I asked him about his reasons to speak Esperanto. He immediately recalled his early days in Ukraine and his everyday struggle to juggle between Ukrainian and Russian:
Moving to Ukraine made me aware of the very concept of 'language.' At that time, I was reflecting on how language learning is difficult and on how people sometimes refuse to speak other peoples' languages for polit- ical reasons. Then, a few years ago, when I already lived in Paris, these thoughts came back to my mind. I simply typed 'language simple to learn' on the Internet and came across Esperanto. That was in 2011. I imme- diately became interested in it because of its regularity. After studying Esperanto online for one year, I had the impression that I could speak it fluently, but I had never spoken it because I was studying it by myself. I decided to look for places where I could practice it with someone, but I thought I might be the only person in the world to speak it. Then, I found the website of SAT-Amikaro. When I realised there were even Esperanto associations in Paris, I said to myself: 'This is the fina venko [final victory] coming true!' I realised I could meet people and speak Esperanto with them for real.
After narrating in detail the day he became a member of SAT-Amikaro, Idris emphasised that the possibility of choosing to learn Esperanto was what motivated him the most about it:
I like French because I have always spoken it. I learned Arabic because I moved to Tunisia and my family came from there. I have good memories related to Russian and Ukrainian because I made a lot of great friends there and still keep in touch with some of them. It was very difficult in the beginning because I moved to Ukraine without being able to understand the language, and I couldn't even read signs in bus stops and subway stations because of the different alphabet. But Esperanto is the only language I have chosen to learn. I had to learn those other languages because I needed them to study and work. It's not that these languages were imposed on me, but I had to learn them if I wanted to live in these places. And since I work with computers and everything related to infor- matics is in English, I learned English as well. I like English very much. Maybe it's because English helped me get a job and gave me a lot of opportunities... But I chose to learn Esperanto, so it's a different feeling. I'm not saying necessarily that Esperanto is my favourite language, but I have an affective relationship with it because of this issue of choice.
Just as Vincent Crapanzano tries to explain an ambivalent personal rela- tion with demons in his Portrait of a Moroccan (1980), the portrait of this Tunisian depicts a non-compulsory and non-instrumental, but still useful, personal relation with a language. Idris was not used to travelling and never used Esperanto abroad. Yet, as an association member who always attended activities at both Esperanto-France and SAT-Amikaro, he managed to meet several foreign Esperantists visiting Paris. As he repeatedly said, he liked Esperanto no matter who spoke it, which was why he did not see a significant difference between the political orien- tations of these two associations that had displayed an open rivalry in the past. Apart from regularly attending both associations' activities, he often used digital media and Amikumu, and joined informal face-to-face Esperanto gatherings arranged online whenever he could find time free from work and family commitments.
Like Martine and Daniel, Idris started learning Esperanto as part of a pursuit of alternatives, without having a clear expectation of effectively using the language. However, Idris' search was, since the beginning, for linguistic alternatives that could address the social exclusion and miscom- munication he faced in his initial months living in Ukraine. After having mastered three writing systems and five languages, he decided to plunge into Esperanto as a further linguistic challenge.
Idris summarised his passion for Esperanto with the terms 'choice' and 'different feeling', opposing them to 'need'. He contrasted this with the instrumental learning of the languages he had to use to study, work and live in different countries, emphasising that Esperanto was never neces- sary for him to achieve his most pressing and tangible life goals. Instead, what first attracted him to Esperanto was its regularity, its apparent non-instrumentality and a certain degree of pointlessness.
His continuous use of the language and membership in associa- tions were confirmations of his choice, which eventually enticed him to make another language-related decision. Four years after coming across Esperanto, he started studying Mandarin online. Studying Esperanto caused him to rediscover the pleasure of learning languages for the sake of it, as he neither planned to travel to China nor looked for Chinese personal or professional contacts.
The influence of Esperanto on his life went beyond a rekindled passion for language learning. His process of becoming an Esperantist, which included learning more about linguistic diversity and discrimination, made him aware of the importance of language in building inclusive and empathetic social relations. As a consequence of him having reconceptu- alised his experiences with language and communication, he had lately been incorporating techniques of nonviolent communication (Rosen- berg 2005) into his daily life, making conscious attempts to express his feelings and needs in ways that evinced his empathy towards his inter- locutors. Meanwhile, even though his partner did not share his passion for languages, she was convinced by his speeches about how a deeper understanding of the world's linguistic and cultural diversity can enhance one's sympathy towards others.
If, for Idris, using Esperanto is non-compulsory, non-instrumental and viewed as a pastime occupation—as something he does in his free time, outside his working hours—we could read it, at first glance, as a hobby. Nonetheless, if perhaps it was so at first, it later grew in importance for him.
In early December 2016, during one of the regular debates at SAT- Amikaro, he explained one of the ways in which he used Esperanto for practical purposes. Amidst a discussion on labour, salaries and work conditions across the world, Frederic, a retired railway worker, narrated how he met his wife-to-be through a discussion in Esperanto about such topics. As he read an article on SAT's periodical Sennaciulo about work conditions in China, Frederic became curious about the situa- tion of railway workers there. Through Esperantist friends, he reached a Chinese Esperantist who had recently retired as a railway worker. By e-mail, Frederic asked her a number of questions about railways in the country. Laughing, he added: 'at first she suspected I could be a spy or something because I was asking too many questions. But then I told her that we were both Esperantists, both railway workers, and I just wanted to use the language to learn more about railway workers in China'. Even- tually, they realised they had a lot in common besides their occupation and, two years after his first e-mail, Frederic moved to China and they got married.