PART ONE
Migrating,
travelling, changing people and countries - hence being "different"
than what it is thought to be the mainstream - as much as it can look appealing
from the outside, might come with some side effects for those who experience
it. For Seaman, it resulted in "feeling like a refugee in my own
country" (in Ahmed). From the same token Elif Shafak, at the very end
of her "The Saint of Incipient Insanities" (Araf, in Turkish), wonders: "Who is the real stranger -- the one who lives in a
foreign land and knows he belongs elsewhere or the one who lives the life of a
foreigner in her native land and has no place else to belong?" But there are others
equally deprived of their homelands who, as a result, have a strong awareness
of the place(s) to call home.
Home. Home is a tricky
word. I assume that for the majority of people, ''home'' equates with the
place where they were born, grew up and where they live. A place which, together
with a history and a language - and names, smells, memories - brings along a
sense of stability and belonging. Home is where you, your family and
everyone you know live. Home is where your school and high school are situated.
Home has at least a park where, as a child, you and your grandmother used to
spend your afternoons hiding behind some trees or running after a ball. What
else could possibly be home? What people, except from those who devoted their
lives to you, can ever make you feel at home?
Nothing,
and nobody, would be my answers were I a person who never left her
hometown.
But since I did, when I am asked Where are you
from? and I say Italy, it is for grammar's
sake -- I literally have come from Italy on a plane to Sabiha Gokcen. But if you
ask me Where is home for
you?, my answer would be different.
I have been wondering where is home for someone who spends some time "far
from it". Does it have some historical / geographical
coordinates or is it somewhere inside of us, perhaps in our memories, perhaps
in our dreams, perhaps in both of them? How does it shape our identities?
In "Home and away" Sara Ahmed analyzes the relationship between
migration and identity through the voices of different migrants. Throughout
her essay she argues that migration "Produces too many homes and hence
no Home". What she means is that at some point,
home ceases to be the place where migrants come from and becomes instead the
place where they feel at ease, where "there is being but not longing" (Persram, in
Ahmed), being it an airport (Dhingra), or a community of strangers of the like
(Seaman).
Following, there are
some quotes that I found inspiring at this regard. The reason why I find them
interesting is to see (contrarily to what normal people think) how the
concept of home becomes "nebulous" for those who experience migration. First, Dhingra and Syal,
who experience the "failure of memory":
1) "There
was always something comforting, familiar about airports and air
terminals (guys, keep this in mind for later). They give me a sense of
purpose and security. I was there with adefinite destination – usually home,
somewhere. In London, I came ‘home’ at the end of the day. During the holidays,
I came ‘home’ to Paris and family. And once every two years, we went ‘home’ to
India on ‘Home leave’. India was ‘real’ home, and yet, paradoxically, it was
the one place we didn’t have a home of our own any more. We always stayed as
guests. Of course we’d had a home once, but, when India was divided, it was all
lost – the house, the city, everything. I couldn’t remember anything."
2) Meera Syal (from the novel Anita and Me):
"I've always been a sucker for a
good double entendre; the gap between what is said and what is thought, what is
stated and what is implied, is a place in which I have always found
myself. I am really not a liar, I just learned very early on that those
of us deprived of history sometimes need to turn to mythology to feel complete,
to belong."
In the part that I
underlined, she refers to her habit to invent some details of her childhood to
"fill the gaps" of a past she has no recollection of. For example, in
the first chapter of the novel, she describes the day of her arrival in England
with her parents -- a very detailed account whose authenticity is doubtful.
Differently and similarly at the same time, Dhingra too is "deprived of
history", for she does not remember parts of her past. Memories have an
impact on our sense of belonging, I believe. None of us remember clearly our
very first years on the world. What make us different than Dhingra and Syal is
that we have pictures, toys and proud mothers always ready to tell us many
stories about our childhood. Stories that, in time, became so real and so
familiar that we believe we remember them happening, but in fact they are just
what we know has happened. Nevertheless, these recounts make us feel
that we belong somewhere; we feel that our personal history is locaded in that
certain place, with those certain people.
3) Hanif Kureish (from the novel The Buddha of Suburbia) -- Karim is the son of an Englishwoman and an Indian man, and
he struggles to find his place in the world:
"My name is Karim Amir, and I am
Englishman born and bred, almost. I am often considered to be a funny kind of
Englishman, a new breed as it were, having emerged from two old histories. But
I don't care - Englishman I am (though not proud of it), from the South London
suburbs and going somewhere. Perhaps it is the odd mixture of continents and
blood, of here and there, of belonging and not, that makes me restless and
easily bored."
"After that (after her
parents got separated), I went to live with my mother in Spain. I was
eleven when I left Turkey. In Spain, I was the only Turkish child in an
international school.(...)I was a foreigner in Madrid and when I came back to
Turkey, I realized I was an outsider in my homeland too. My feeling of
"being a stranger in a strangeland" never totally
disappeared. During the following years, I moved from Amman in Jordan to
Koln in Germany. Family, home, nation, nationality . . . the ways in which we
define and categorize these terms are deeply interrelated. I myself have never
been raised in a family structure, never had a solid notion of home and was
never happy with the national identity or religious labels attached to me.
"I do not feel connected to any national identity or to any religious
label. There are seas and rivers that are familiar to me, waters in which
I swam but have never been anchored. This sense of
"deterritorialization" is a constant element in my personal history
and in the way I relate, or fail to relate, to the world around me."
"How many times, since I left
Lebanon in 1976 to live in France, have people asked me, with the best
intentions in the world, whether I felt “more French” or “more Lebanese”? And I
always give the same answer: “Both!” I say that not in the interests of
fairness or balance, but because any other answer would be a lie. What
makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised
between two countries, two or three languages and several cultural traditions.
It is precisely this that defines my identity.”
6) Seaman, in Ahmed, the one that captured me the most:
"Feeling of being at home in several
countries, or cultures but not completely at home in any of them" –
leads to the discovery of a new community: "Our community of
strangers – our experience of family with our global nomads – is one of
the large and often recognised paradoxes of this heritage"
At this regard, Ahmed argues that "the very experience of leaving home and ‘becoming a stranger’ leads
to the creation of a new ‘community of strangers’, a common bond with
those others who have ‘shared’ the experience of living overseas". In fact, "we need
to recognize the link between the suspension of a sense of having a home
with the formation of new communities. The forming of a new community provides
a sense of fixity through the language of heritage – a sense of inheriting
a collective past by sharing the lack of a home rather than sharing a home".
Seaman's quote shares some similarities with yet another dimension that I find interesting: the phenomenon of TCK, or Third Culture Kids. According to D. Pollock (in Wikipedia), "a Third Culture Kid
is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her
developmental years (0-18) outside the parents' culture. The TCK frequently builds
relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any.
Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK's life
experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar
background."
Just to give you an idea, Here you will find an article about identity written by the TCK Steph Yiu. I think the article is funny and interesting at the same time, and also the comments to it.
*Excerpt* "Goddamn my American accent. “You’re from Singapore?” the girl sneered in her all-too-real Singaporean accent. “Born and bred?”
I was out with my new Boston roommates, who were introducing me as their “friend from Singapore.” I had no problem with it until I realized one of their friends was Singaporean.
“Hi, I’m Steph” was all it took for my undeniable American twang to tip her off. She scrutinized me like I was a 12-year-old handing her a fake ID, trying to get into some exclusive club."
Also, in this VIDEO titled So Where Is Home? Adrian
Bautista interviews some TCK. He ask them where is home for them and how would they label themselves, in an attempt to find out
how migrating affected their identities. As you will see, their answers are quite diverse.
Third dimension, in-betweenness, global nomadism, Third Culture Kids... I've come to think that the word "migrant" really says so little about someone.
I would like to ask
all of you if you know a "migrant", and, if yes, if you could ask them where is home for them. It can be very interesting to
discuss it in class maybe next week if there's time. And I would like to ask all of you: where is home for you?
I was not sure whether include this part in a comment or in the post. I am going to answer
to my own question too, and even if my story is not as interesting as the one
of a TCK, I first need to make a short recap of my last years in order to
explain you where to me is my home and why. So, for whoever who is not
interested in this, you can just stop at the video and considered my post to
end at that point :)
I left home for the
first time when I was 21 and I have been more or less abroad the whole time
until now. I spent a year in England as an erasmus student. England was the
fırst place where I bought a simcard for my phone, where I had to learn how to
express myself in a foreign language, and where I came across different people
and cultures. As much as I missed and loved my social calendar back home, I
realized that I could live happily without it: it was just so easy to make
friends abroad, and my days had become much richer and meaningful. I left
England as a different person. As much as I was happy and excited to take my
old life back, I soon found out that everything, even freedom comes at a price.
I was missing my brand new international friends, who now were scattered
somewhere in the world and I felt awkward with my old ones. Also, it
became complicated to accept my parents "suggesting" me what things
to do or how to do them. I was alienated, and those close to me were alienated too.
My face, my voice were familiar, but I was not anymore. They could no longer
describe me precisely, I had become this sort of hybrid who defied any precise
definition, who spoke a funny Italian and sometimes mixed it with English, who
preferred Chicken Tikka Masala over Pizza and who came to consider a session at
the hairdresser a mere waste of time. In other words, as an Italian, I
was a failure.
After England there
was Russia, where I went as an exchange student. Do not ever let anyone fool
you and say that Moscow is worth a visit. If you ask me, I'd go for Mexico. I
did not love it because: a) Moscow is in general freezıng cold, the language is
over-complicated and people do not exactly love foreigners; B) For seven, long
months I shared a room with a NorthKorean woman who smelled like the kıtchen of
a Chinese restaurant on a Saturday night; c) some months after my arrival, two
Cecene women wrapped themself in explosive and exploded in the metro station
next to my building, killing 37 people. For days every channel on tv showed the
same image: bodies spread in pieces on the ground, covered by blood and
flowers, and people crying next to them; d) One night that I decided to ditch
the metro (for some reasons) and take a cab instead, the (I assume) Pakıstani
driver stopped the car some minutes after we left in order to rob me. Since I
was paralyzed, he showed me that he had a gun, just to make sure that he was
not kidding. I never knew it it was a toy or a real one. Little did all the
stories I had always depicted in my mind of being a hero in such situatıons and
knock the bastard off. I just gave him the money I had, and he let me go. End
of the story.
For the records, it
wasn't always that bad, sometimes it was nice too. But for some reasons I do
not have many memories of it, I think I just deleted them unconsciously.
Then there was a year
in Antalya, where I finally had a flat and a job all for myself, then Istanbul.
No chances of getting bored. Chronic refreshing of places and faces and moods.
Chronic longing for the ones you meet and then leave.
What is my identity
and what is home for me now? After being a foreigner for a while, true I’m
different from the other Italians, and true I am not a Turk. After some awkward
years, I don't feel that much alienated now. It’s
people who perceive me as a foreigner because I have an accent. If you ask me, I don't really feel like one. I have
a language to use in Italy and I have English to use anywhere else in the
world. I don’t suffer the foreigner trauma, and despite I love them, I don’t
miss my country, my food, my family. I learned that if you are nice and
respectful to people, they are prone to be the same to you. Italy is one home
because it's the only one place I am sure
I can go back to anytime. And it is where my relatives are, which is a strong “home-builder”.
But if you're prone to spend long periods of time abroad, I believe the sooner
you accept that home is where your bed is, the better. Do I have
more than one bed? Then I have more than one home. And if you are lucky enough,
you even have friends to rely on.
Migrating does not necessarily
"take" from you (your beloved ones, your language, your habits, etc),
it can also give (new beloved ones, new languages, new habits, new
memories). And so, if you take all of this into account and you incorporate it in Persram ("being but no longing"), Shafak ("My feeling of "being a stranger in a strangeland" never totally disappeared) , Maalouf ("Both!"), C-it ("So if here is not home and neither is Turkey, where should I go, Mars?"), Aziza ("I sit on a third chair"), and then if you ask me: Do you consider yourself at
home in Istanbul?
I can say, honestly, of course not.
Or I can say, honestly, yes...
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