Reflections of a Third Culture Kid: There’s No Place like Home
A common saying I often hear, whether in the movies or from people I know, is ‘There’s no place like home!’ Under normal circumstances, I think I would generally tend to agree. But in the state I am living in now, all I can say is, “yes, that’s true, but only if you know where home is!”
I have lived with the feelings of not knowing where I belong for pretty much my whole life. And I say this without any exaggeration whatsoever.
On a large scale, I am currently unable to determine which of the two countries I have lived in, Bahrain and Egypt, can honestly and truly be called home, as I never feel I belong in either of them. I was born and bred on the Island of Bahrain, under the pretense that I was of Egyptian blood, and therefore, always knew for the first sixteen years of my life that Bahrain was not ‘my country.’ However, on moving ‘back’ to Alexandria, Egypt, I realized just how ‘un-Egyptian’ I really am, after a lot of reflecting of course. Where I REALLY belong still remains a mystery to me, and I often find it difficult to find an honest reply when people ask me where I am ‘from.’
So let me tell you the tale from the very beginning.
I was born on the sunny Island of Bahrain; an Island most people don’t even realize exists, twenty-two years ago, to ‘Egyptian’ parents. My father had, by this time, lived in Bahrain for almost ten years. He had originally come from Alexandria, a Mediterranean city on the north coast of Egypt, and a Parisian beauty, as they say, during the time of his childhood. My father does not often refer to his childhood, but all I know about his young life is that he was a quiet little boy who loved to read. When the time came for him to choose his career path, he decided to join the Faculty of Arts at Alexandria University, to study English Language and Literature. The reason he chose to pursue this path is beyond me as, at that time, he did not know much more than his ‘A B Cs’ and perhaps his ‘One, Two, Threes,’ but he proved himself to be a bright young man who, after initial troubles, did finally succeed.
His knowledge of both his native Arabic mother tongue and his acquired English one soon opened many doors in life to this ambitious young man. He worked for a while in Cairo as a literary critic before he started to travel round the world, in search of his dreams. After spending about a year in Europe, he finally moved to Bahrain, where he settled down and started a business of a translating company, with just a pen and paper in his hand. At that time, a wave of migration had begun as more and more aspiring Egyptian young men began to move to the oil-rich countries of the Gulf, with a hope for greater opportunities and an easier lifestyle. Little did this young bachelor know about the confusion he would cause himself, the wife that he would soon meet and his daughter- to- be many years later. But then, that WAS in the 1970s.
My mother, on the other hand, was born and brought up in the town of Suez, on the Red Sea. Little did this bright and beautiful young girl know that, ten or eleven years later, she would fall in love and get married to this Ahmed Al Saadani, a demure, courteous man who chose his words with utmost care. At the age of eighteen, my mother moved to Alexandria to join the Faculty of Commerce. She moved alone and lived in an all-girls-dormitory, an experience that she found so suffocating due to the tight rules and regulations imposed on her by the administration that, about thirty or so years later when I suggested moving away to university, she absolutely and downright refused.
However, a member of this administration, who also happened to be my father’s sister, had befriended my mother. A ‘chance’ meeting, in which my mother and father ‘accidentally bumped’ into each other at a coffee shop in Chatby, where my mother and her friend and sister-in-law-to-be was to be the turning point in my mother’s life. My father was on a short holiday to visit his family, and his sister had decided that my mother, young and outgoing Mona Al Tanbooli would be the perfect bride for her brother. Ahmed took an immediate liking to Mona and soon enough, they got on a plane to Bahrain, where they would start their new lives together as husband and wife.
After several years of marriage, Sarah was born. In 1984, the year of my birth, Bahrain was still mostly stark desert, with few facilities and recreational services. My mother missed Egypt deeply. She missed her family and friends, and the life she used to live. At that time, she was still unchanged.
I grew up, a happy baby, in an apartment with long windows where, as a two-year old toddler, I would waddle and wave to passers-by. My mother by that time was finding it difficult balancing a baby, home, husband and by then a full-time job. I was sent off to preschool to relieve her. And from my very first day of ‘school’ I was thrown in the midst of the ‘international community,’ as I often like to call it, in which I would continue to live my life, and which would shape and enrich my personality as I grew up.
Habara School, the name of my first kindergarten, was where many parents of many nationalities sent their children. I think my first ‘best friend’ was a Korean girl, who I would often ‘socialize’ with. How we managed to communicate is absolutely beyond me. At that time, the ‘language’ I knew consisted of a few broken, mixed up and very incomprehensible form of English. ‘Ga ga goo goo,’ the language of babies was probably the language used between us, and we must have been very happy as toddlers. However, I do know as a fact that my first language, my ‘mother tongue,’ came in the form of the word ‘bird!’ This leads me to an important realization. It is inevitable amongst all that my mother tongue, or native language should be Arabic, as I am from Egyptian origin. But to be truthful, the first language I learnt at the beginning of my life was English, and I became fluent in it and used it to communicate amongst my parents and peers up until the time I was about six or seven years old, when my mother decided to employ a private tutor to teach me Arabic. It annoyed her very much that I was obviously growing up without speaking a word of the language that was essentially meant to belong to me.
By the time I was about four years old, my father’s business had really begun to flourish. He no longer translated using a pen and paper, but new modern computers, under DOS, of course. He had moved to a prestigious office block and was feeling satisfied with his professional career. So, when the time finally came that I should be enrolled in school, my parents decided to send me to the prestigious St. Christopher’s School, as they could now afford to pay the tuition fees.
St. Christopher’s School had originally begun as a small room in St. Christopher’s Cathedral in the 1970s, but quickly developed to become a British Curriculum School. In fact, not only was it a school, it was like cutting out a piece of Britain and planted it in the Gulf. The teachers were all from the UK, as were most of the students, while a few, like me, where international students from different parts of the world, be it India, Argentina, brazil, Switzerland, Lebanon, Korea, you name it. Naturally, the language we spoke together was English, as we would not understand each other if we tried using any language.
I grew up with the general perception that I was British by origin. My parents, due to their business-dealings at that time, both led very westernized lifestyles, especially my father, whose acquaintances were mainly British. This comes as no surprise as Bahrain was often named ‘Little England.’ The population of the British community was so high, as many British nationals seized the opportunity to move to Bahrain where the sun shines all year round and where taxes are non-existent.
When I was about five, in such belief and conviction that I was an English girl, especially with my very un-Arabic looks and by then posh Queen’s English accent, I often got depressed over the fact that my parents had not named me Christina or Mary. In fact, I think Joanne was my favorite name and, in a sort of revenge, these were the names I would give the Barbie dolls I played with!
Cultural confusion never really dawned to me until I think I was about eight or nine years old. My mother had decided to leave her job and, instead become a full-time wife and mother. She was also starting to feel sick and tired of the westernized lifestyle she lived, with constant cocktail parties and receptions. She desperately wanted to return to her Eastern and Muslim roots. As a step, she decided to adopt the veil, the customary hijab worn by Muslim women, who believe it is a duty they must perform. I don’t exactly remember my initial reaction to her wearing the veil, but she once told me the following story:
She had left me at a birthday party of one of my classmates. I had played happily for the whole afternoon, until she came to pick me up. She had just veiled, and must have ‘revealed’ the Eastern and Muslim origins I so adamantly refused to admit I belonged too. So when she showed up that afternoon to take me home, I pretended that she was not my mother! From an adult perspective now, I am sure this incident must have hurt her greatly, and for that I sincerely apologize. However, I am sure she is fully aware of the conflict I was going through in the back of my troubled mind.
Life continued in more or less the same way for years and years to come. To me, school days were blissful heaven. However, it was my summer holidays that were, to me, an absolute nightmare, ongoing for a minimum of two months.
Every summer, during July and August, we would come ‘back’ to Alexandria, Egypt, my meant-to-be ‘home town.’ In my diary, I would literally keep a count of the days left when I would go back ‘home’ to Bahrain, to my friends and my school. In Egypt I had no friends. My cousins were mere acquaintances who I did not mingle with mainly due to the language barrier between us. Furthermore, by that time my parents had started to change, and become less ‘Egyptian’ people and more and more members of the ‘international community,’ or ‘third culture adults.’ They had been exposed to so many different nationalities and cultures as part of their daily lives, unlike their siblings, who had lived in Egypt their whole lives. Although my mother and father deeply cherished their Egyptian roots, they began to drift away and would find it more and more difficult to befriend their own brothers and sisters. An unseen barrier formed between them and their relationships became stiffer and more and more formal. As a result, none of my cousins grew up and became friends with me. It is rather unfortunate that, until today, we find it very difficult to communicate. But we feel that we come from two very different and distant worlds.
Needless to say, when the time came when I eventually had to move back to Egypt, I was devastated. My life had been pretty much the same, until I was about sixteen years old. Naturally I went through the ups and downs any young adolescent experiences in her life, but they were more or less dealt with efficiently. The year I turned sixteen, however, was a determining year, and turning point in my life. It was months before I was due to sit for my public exams, my GCSEs. Most, if not all my classmates, were intending to spend another two years at St. Christopher’s to sit for their A-levels, as was the system. It was only then that they would determine which career path they would pursue for the rest of their lives and thus, which University they would enroll in and where they would move to the world.
My parents would not have any of it. They firmly believed that, in accordance with Muslim tradition, a girl could not leave the home of her parents to live alone unless she were to move to the home of her husband. I dreamed of prolonging my school-life for as long as possible, as my school-life generally had a sort of dream-like quality around it, sort of like a picturesque fairy tale, and I never wanted to wake up to reality and see it end. However, my parents were in firm belief that I had to move back to Egypt as soon as I had finished my GCSEs. I could continue my University education in Egypt without A-levels and so they believed that spending an extra two years in Bahrain would be a ‘waste’ of two years of my life. On the other hand, I had been expecting my parents to send me off to an expensive British university, where I would live in the dorms on my own and continue my ‘dreams.’
When it was finally, and after a great deal of pondering, decided that I would be moving to Alexandria, along with my mother, who would accompany, I felt it was ‘the end of the world.’ I would cry myself to sleep and not talk to my parents. It was unfair that they should decide my fate and shape some of the most important decisions of my life! It was unfair that I was the only one who was not allowed to make this decision all by myself! In retrospect, I do believe that my parents made the right decision for my life, as I WAS too naïve and inexperienced at sixteen to live alone. This bit about ‘wasting two years of my life,’ however; I am not so sure.
It was with surprise that I realized that life does go on, even when you are far away from home. I enrolled at a school of architecture and soon got to know some other ‘international Egyptians,’ who also spoke a confused jumble of Arabic and fluent English. It really frustrated me, though, when I was asked where I was from, which was quite often during that first year. “Egypt!” I would respond. “But I used to live abroad.” It has taken me quite a long time to be able to stop at just “Egypt.”
I forced myself to live on from day and to day and, in response to my depression, I drowned myself in studies I did not particularly enjoy. Days went by and, sooner rather than later, I was on a plane back ‘home’ for my mid-year holidays, which I would spend with my father and friends. However, it was during that holiday that I realized that Bahrain was no longer ‘home.’
The first thing that made me feel that the life I was leading was no longer the life that I had lead before was the timing of the holiday. At St. Christopher’s, holidays were in December and ended a few days after the beginning of January, as holidays were taken to celebrate Christmas and the New Year. In Egypt, however, the mid-year break is a custom that takes place around mid- January until about mid-February. I therefore found it quite annoying that I could only see my school friends during weekends, as they were busy attending classes and doing homework during the week.
Another thing that really made me ponder was the kind of conversation we had together. It suddenly seemed to me that the only thing we had in common was our past. We found it difficult to discuss the present or the future, as we had done previously, because we led lives that were now far too separate. All of a sudden, they seemed to have new friends, new activities, even new teachers that I could no longer gossip about them with! I had started pursuing my long-term career education, and they were still dressed in uniforms and were applying to universities. I suddenly felt that the only bond that held us together was the bond of the past, but I suddenly did not belong in their conversations, or their lives. It was nothing they could help, nor could I. But sometimes life dictates us with things we really don’t want.
After a week or so I really started to get bored. For the past sixteen years I had led my daily life in Bahrain. There was always something to do, people to see and places to go. Homework, extra-curricular activities and going to the cinema on Thursday mornings were all aspects of the life I had previously led. All of a sudden, I found that I had absolutely nothing to do. During that four-week long holiday I would walk round the house, desperately trying to find something to do until the weekend would come, when I would, once more, meet my friends. Soon enough, Bahrain became the place where I traveled to to go shopping. During that holiday, and later ones, I would spend days and days walking around the shops, examining the products available and carefully deciding what to buy. Essentially, I never had anything else to do. It is with great regret that, since that holiday, Bahrain really has become nothing more than a place to go shopping, as all my friends have gone off to their respective universities all over the world, and I no longer have these weekend opportunities to see them.
As you can see, reader, I soon reached the realization that Bahrain was no longer ‘home.’ It was only a place where I could go for a holiday. With that realization, I further decided that I had no choice than to turn Egypt into a new home. I was here now and that was a fact of reality. There was no point living in a dream anymore. I had to seize the day and try, as much as I could, to transform my life into one that I could enjoy. The fact that I had moved ‘house’ did not mean that Sarah, herself, had changed. I believed that my essence was still the same and changing places did not mean a change in me. However, I felt that the only way to ensure my happiness in this new ‘home’ was to try to blend in with society as much as possible. I felt it was important to expand my group of friends and colleagues and to enroll myself in as many activities as possible. I was also determined to demolish the language barrier that was between my peers and me. Up until that point in time, I had not made much effort to improve my Arabic. On the contrary, the few friends I had made all had similar backgrounds to mine. They had all spent most of their lives abroad and had moved to Egypt for university. English was therefore the main language of communication between us and, in a way, this had helped me preserve the links I had, until that point, used to keep me in touch with that Sarah of St. Christopher’s.
So I spent time mingling with some newly-found friends in between classes and on weekends. On the surface, it must have looked like I was really having fun. They had made up new nicknames for me and had celebrated my birthday. They all gave me a lot of attention. But, deep inside me, I could not genuinely and truthfully say I was happy. It will just take some time, I told myself. I had to wait and be patient, while trying harder and harder to go with the flow. Sooner enough, Alexandria and its people will begin to grow on me, I persisted. Meanwhile, I pushed thoughts of Bahrain and the dream of returning to the life I had once lived further and further away from my head. I blocked out this idea so strongly that I often verbalized the idea that ‘Egypt was much better than Bahrain.’ I often told my friends that ‘Bahrain is a place where one can lead a perfect, fairy-tale childhood, but it is not REAL LIFE, with REAL PEOPLE, not a REAL COUNTRY. What my interpretation of ‘real life’ was is beyond me. But I tried to convince myself by all means possible that Egypt was the place to be, and moving back to Bahrain did not once occur to me again until several years later.
I was slowly starting to settle down when another event took place and turned my thoughts upside down once again. My father continued to live in Bahrain, while we would commute there during my summer and mid-year holidays. By that time my father had been living in Bahrain for over thirty years and we had all been granted with Bahraini citizenship. We felt that this nationality would give us more opportunities in life, and an easier ability to travel between countries. My mother was ecstatic, because this newly acquired nationality would allow her to perform pilgrimages to Mecca in Saudi Arabia without a visa or other complicated travel regulations. My father was also very happy because he had wanted to settle down in Bahrain even after retirement, and with this new status he would not have to move back to Egypt once he left work once and for all. As for me, well it just further added to my complication.
This was the new ‘me.’ I was born in Awali, Bahrain. I had very un-Arabic or Eastern features, with fair skin, blond hair and blue-green eyes. My ‘mother tongue’ was English but I knew that it should be Arabic, and so I spoke English with my father and Arabic with my mother. I had always imagined that my roots were mixed between east and west, that my father was eastern and my mother was western, as I had grown up under the unspoken impression that the west was far more superior to the east. Then I had been carried by the wind to the land of my ancestors, a land I had never known, where it was suddenly required of me to blend in. Just as I was starting to familiarize myself with the place and its people, I was suddenly granted a new identity and new papers that dictated to me that I was no longer Egyptian but, instead, I had become Bahraini by law. All of this was causing a great deal of mayhem in my mind for, inside me, well I didn’t really know where I truly belonged.
As I mentioned when I first started discussing this issue, I have always lived with a feeling that I don’t really know where I truly belong. Until a very recent time ago, my choices were generally limited to either Egypt or Bahrain; I had always imagined that after graduation, I would either continue my career and life in Egypt, or I would move back to Bahrain. But the career I have chosen to pursue will yet again change all of this.
Almost a year ago, I was given what I believe to be a golden opportunity to join the staff who had taught me over the previous five years, and was employed as a teaching assistant at the architecture school I graduated from. Of course I was ecstatic, partly because it was my mother’s dream that her little girl follow an academic, university career, and partly because I had always believed that delivering a message, which is the true essence of being an educator, is a very noble cause. While this career has turned me into an even more ambitious person, it has also added to my already increasing confusion.
Many of my professors, who also now happen to be my colleagues and friends, are encouraging me to apply for a PhD at a ‘good’ university, hopefully somewhere in the United Kingdom, where several of them indeed studied themselves. For the first time in my life, my parents seem to have become more lenient as they see that I have grown up and become a young woman rather than a silly little girl; they now believe that I will be able to go off on my own to live, work and study.
My future is an undeveloped mystery. The little girl inside me often wishes that she could predict her future. But life would lose its adventurous essence if I could. A part of me would love to move away, to try a new lifestyle, far away from ‘home.’ But the other part of me truly wishes to satisfy that little girl’s dream of living in the UK, the ‘dream home’ of my childhood.
When I sit down alone as I let my dreams carry me away, it sometimes happens that reality hits me on the face with a cold, awakening slap. I realize that life isn’t just a dream. Just as I encounter difficulties in my life here, I WILL definitely encounter difficulties wherever I go in the world. I have so many different blood types inside of me, that I can never say I am truly Bahraini, Egyptian, and I am surely not British, despite the childhood fantasies that grew up with me, despite the language I speak so fluently and despite the state of my mind and way of thinking that I have acquired as a result of my friends, classmates, teachers and the general environment I lived in at St. Christopher’s.
What I often become conscious of as I ponder on my life is that, even if I view myself as a person who grew up in a melting pot of cultures and, as a result, is a fusion of these diverse ingredients, the outside world does not know who this person is. No one but me knows my past, present; no one else can predict my future. No one is aware of the ups and downs, the dreams, ambitions, pursuits and lifestyle that, over twenty-two years have shaped who I am and who I will be in the imminent future. To anyone and everyone, I probably seem to be a pretty typical Arab, Eastern and Muslim girl, perhaps, to some people, engulfed in an air of mystery as they hear me speak. I worry that, if I do move away, I will have the same concern that I have lived with over here in Egypt, that I will be unable to blend in. Even when I tell myself that it is not important what people may think, that I have to live confidently and see the world from my own perspective, I also realize that I do not live alone in the world. But a realization I have made at what I think is probably an early point in my life that this cultural exposure, although it has definitely enriched me, I will never be able to fully blend in with a single, individual culture. I still can’t help wondering where ‘home’ REALLY is!