Nationality is an interesting concept. In a way, it can define who you are at an utmost basic level. In my family, as many other things, nationality and identity are, well… it’s complicated.
My husband is half Canadian, half British. He does not strongly identify with either, which has been a big factor for choosing a carreer that brings him abroad intrinsically. He identifies so little with his origins, that when I asked my oldest son where his Dad was from he replied with a teenage-angsty understoodness (he's not even eight years old yet):
“He’s from ‘Merica.”
“No, he’s not, he’s from Canada.”
To what he drily replied:
“What’s Canada?”
“Baby, don’t, I mean, DON’T say any of these things to your Dad, ok?”
Don’t want his sort of Canadian pride hurt. My Mom calls him a “falso gringo” or a fake ‘Merican, that is. He calls me sometimes a fake Mexican. We like to play on the bigger fame of our neighbouring countries.Through most of the time we’ve lived in Turkey I’ve had to face the reality that a felt 0,1% of the world’s population might have heard about Guatemala in their lifetime. A regular conversation with the border police to enter and exit Turkey would go as follows:
“So, you’re coming from Guantanamo, miss?”
“Uhm, no, I’m from Guatemala, sir.”
“Yes, Guantanamo. Why do you wish to enter Turkey, miss?”
“Sir, I’m not from Guantanamo. That’s not even a country and they don’t issue passports, and, well, I really don’t want to get into this, right now, but I’m from Gua-te-ma-la. Like here, it says on my passport, see?”
“Ok, miss, please step aside” - and then, making a phone call- “we have a woman with a passport from Guantanamo here and need support to check the authenticity of her passport.”
Like my children would say. “Jesus crisis.”
Our children are half Canadian, half Guatemalan. I’m a pure bred Guatemalan, whatever that may mean, although my great grandfather was a Spaniard who may or may not have grown up in Guatemala, who no one in the family seems to know much about. Other than the fact that he would move around the furniture in his bedroom from his deathbed, using ropes, to make the room layout more enjoyable. Or, that he once hit a man’s eye out of its socket using a slingshot for mocking him for being old. Or that he would love to go sit at one of the first roundabouts in the country to count how many cars of each colour would pass by it each day.
For all of our sons’ lives we’ve lived in the South of Turkey. That’s right, where the earthquakes just struck. Both our sons were born on Guatemalan soil, and both of them have a Guatemalan and a Canadian passport, although none of them recollects ever having been to Canada. They were very little, and really, most of their lives has been spent in Turkey, or in Guatemala on vacation for a couple of months every year.
Recently, while spending several months in Guatemala, my son has been asked where he comes from. He has a strange accent in Spanish, and people can’t really place him. He responds the same thing every single time. He’s Turkish. We’ve had this conversation before. Even in Turkey, other children would ask where he was from.
“Where are you from?”
“I’m from Turkey.”
“No, but where are you REALLY from?”
“Ah, from Gaziantep.” (Gaziantep is the city we live in.)
“I mean, where’s your famliy from? You’re clearly a foreigner.”
“...”
Later, back at home, the big question pops.
“Papa, what does “foreigner” mean?”
Oh, boy.
Although we’ve tried different ways of explaining this to him, the concept seems to be thick and hard to digest for his young trilingual mind.
“But, but… I AM Turkish. You and Mama aren’t. But I live here and speak Turkish and this is my home. My house and toys and clothes are here. THIS IS MY HOME.”
Makes us wonder. Where does identity really come from? Does living in a place for an extended period of time during your early childhood grow your roots into that soil? Does what you know best translate automatically into the place that feels like your home, for the rest of your life? Someone recently told me, your roots are where your mom lived while pregnant with you. The flavours, scents, sounds… everything permeates you as an unborn being and prepares you for that particular environment. But does it, really?
I start thinking about my own nationality, and what it means to who I feel I am. Things don’t start getting easier at this point. As an aspiring Hare Krishna (yes, the saffron robes and sarees and the happy chanting of the Holy Names pretty much everywhere) I have come to learn that this body, this identity, this gender and everything about me determined by this physical body (and yes, even this mind I get to use during this life) is not who I really am. Who I am sits on the inside. Cuddled at the core of these layers of illusion, lies my soul, my spiritual self that’s the real me. So, my nationality seems quite irrelevant at this point of reflection. And yet. I do feel part of me, part of the me that I am during this life, does feel some amount of identity defined by where I’m from. I was born and raised here, in Guatemala City. I have spent exactly half my life outside of this country. So, I can’t really say I feel I identify as fully Guatemalan cause I have spent most of my life, cause that’s just not the case. While growing up here, I always felt some things that most people here believe, or live by, didn’t resonate in me. I never felt fully from here.
In my early twenties I moved to Germany. First, to do an au-pair year, as I didn’t know what else to do with my life at that point, so, working abroad for food, lodgings and some pocket money sounded perfect. Then, to study fine arts and become a painter. Through all those years, missing my family and feeling different made me feel really Guatemalan for the very first time in my life. Was being away from what was most familiar for me what gave me an identity, the feeling of being in the unknown, out of my comfort zone? Or was it more realizing what I wasn’t and didn’t want to be? As the years have gone by I’ve learnt to differentiate between my love for a certain place or culture and my actual identification with it, and become a more spiritual person who tries to remind herself of the fleeting nature of all this madness, and that I will probably continue to redefine or, at least try to, my own identity for the rest of my days, until that spiritual reality becomes more concrete.
Being a Mom in an internationally living family, a real cocktail of all kinds, juggling different languages, beliefs and nationalities, and switching countries relatively often makes the matter even more relevant, or it seems to, at least. What will our children identify as and with as they get older? Will the constant change make them feel rootless? Will their roots grow more into the family than into actual land? They say, to be a better parent you need to better figure out yourself. But what if I’m in a constant process myself? Most of the world seems to equate identity with nationality. I have come to discover how different those two can be and how the concept of home, is closer to the affection and attachment I feel to a place or group of people, than to the actual passport I get to carry around with me. I don’t think I have any asnwers to offer to all these questions that arise, but it’sinteresting to share my thoughts and see if anyone out there is confronted with them as well. For the time being, I’ll continue to enjoy this journey next to my very Turkish sons.
