Identity
Sometimes when I consider my journey with identity, it makes me cringe - so much of my time, stress, energy has been expended on my dwelling on it. I feel like this is a typical staple of the young diaspora community, most notably children of immigrants. No one before us (our parents and grandparents) had the time or the luxury of pondering that question of “Who am I?” They were more likely working themselves raw in the interest of creating a life for their children and grandchildren and descendants to come. Now, those of us who have had that done for us enjoy the comfort and languor that comes with being established, having roots in more than one place, no matter how distant they may be. Not to say that this goes for all children of immigrants or diaspora youth - it has been my own experience, and something I feel is prevalent in my own community.
My identity has been a struggle for many years now - I have been confused and ashamed and lost and hurt and proud. I am not entirely satisfied with it yet but at the least I have moved past the need to hide myself, to shrink away from the sun in the summer months lest my skin darken into a less ambiguous tone, and to insist that all my white friends know that I’M JUST LIKE YOU. I’M NORMAL!!! LIKE ME!!! ACCEPT ME!!! PLEASE. MY DAD SPEAKS WITH A FUNNY ACCENT BUT HE KNOWS ENGLISH I SWEAR HE’S BEEN IN CANADA LONGER THAN HE WAS IN PAKISTAN MY MOM GREW UP HERE PLEASE I’M NORMAL I’M - I’m done.
Conversely, I am also done doing the opposite. Trying to express my deep cultural and ancestral roots as loudly as possible, wanting everybody to look, and be beguiled by my different-ness. Wanting everybody to fully f--king see me. Weaving cultural regalia into my casual dress, including “diaspora bee-yotch” in my Instagram bio, searching up a Steve Mccurry image of an exploited village girl who fits my new aesthetic in her long black braid and bright dupatta and clunky naat to use as my profile picture. Scorning ignorant white people, refusing to acknowledge that annoying as they were, maybe they were just naive. Now, I’m at ease, I don't really care about what anyone wants to see. I am me. I don't need to justify it to anyone. If you can't say my name, I don't care, like don't choke on it, but don't be obnoxious either. If you have a question that’s genuine, don’t worry, ask me nicely and I'll answer it to the best of my knowledge. I don't need to suffer the whole “straddled by my two identities, miles apart yet eternally connected, like the relations between Pakistan and India'' gimmick - because honestly it sucks sometimes, but I’m not really suffering. I’m fine, I’m safe, I’m not toiling day and night to build a home and life from scratch to benefit those who will come after me more than it will likely benefit me. I’m just a little bit frustrated at times, that’s all.
The problem is, even though I’ve overcome this crisis of identity, I still hurt. I still remember every person who asked if my dad was a terrorist, I still remember all the careless and often cruel things my friends or peers said about me as a joke. I remember these things so clearly and I can still feel how I felt when they were said to me in the moment. I was watching a Youtube video essay on racism in the beauty community and the Youtuber, Salem Tovar, expressed something that I have felt all my life - the implicit awareness that somehow, I’m ugly because I didn’t have the features I saw on all my friends. And I was validated in thinking this because it is how I was made to feel by all those harsh comments, and how I was treated by boys and by the pretty girls. The reason it still hurts is because it meant something to me, it affected me. All the white people, classmates and bullies and friends, they don’t remember as clearly or with the same rage and hurt because it didn’t mean anything to them. It was just casually thrown into conversation at my expense. And trust me, I wasn’t silent. I spoke up. I said stop, it’s not funny. But that didn’t really work out - being the only brown girl around, I was quickly silenced, told not to overreact because it was just a joke, gaslit. When I was in the eighth grade I broke my silence and said to my closest school friends that they needed to stop, because it wasn't funny. I wasn’t going to fly a helicopter over the school and blow it up, ok? And the response? My friends completely iced me out. They stopped talking to me. For a bit over a month in the eighth grade, I was completely alone. I would hide in the bathroom at recess, or go find my older sister. No one talked to me. No one would acknowledge me. Eventually when we started talking again, I relented because I was so lonely and vulnerable, not because anyone said sorry. And it’s not like the comments stopped, either. I just had to make the best of the situation because it was me against everyone else. So even if i say I’m over it, I don’t need to prove myself to anyone anymore, I do mean it, but this visceral rage and pain isn’t going anywhere. It is a part of who I am. It is why I prefer to distance myself from groups dominated by white people, it is why I always speak my mind and people find me difficult. Maybe if I wasn’t treated that way in my youth, not only by the mean kids but my closest friends, I’d be softer, less confrontational. But I am a result of my experiences, and even though I don’t feel the need to fight back every single moment anymore, there are still times I boil over with anger and resentment for those moments in my life, and I lash out. That’s what happened to me, and this is my way of dealing with it.
Now I’m older, and I treat myself better. I spend time with people who don’t consider me a joke. I’m Aishah, Montreal-born to immigrant parents, raised in Ottawa. Not the girl tragically ripped from the motherland, veins surging with the raw juices of the pumping mango that is my heart. Not A-ee-sha, or Alisha or Eishia, or whatever else your brain lazily reads my very pronounceable name as. I’m not like you, my parents aren’t like yours, they’re like theirs and when I go home and my dad is squawking Urdu love ballads in the basement or watching Whatsapp videos sent from his third cousin 700 times removed on his uncles mothers side on full blast while I’m trying to watch the Vampire Diaries in the living room I’m annoyed, but no longer embarrassed, no longer wanting to shrink myself and stifle my father’s blatant brown-ness. My mom might be shut up in her room writing or she might be also in the living room, blasting some old rock song on her computer and watching fan made videos of Richard Armitage akin to those I used to watch made by Hermione-Ron romance shippers in 2007. She may be cooking up a delicious storm of “smelly curry” or as Desis call it, salaan or korma. They may be together, squabbling comfortably, quipping in Urdu or Punjabi to annoy the other. Whatever. It's normal whether or not my white peers think it is.
Arriving at this place of comfort and acceptance has been arduous and I know I still have a ways to go. And I’m excited! I love where I come from, and I try not to romanticize it, but am critical of it, just as I am of any other country on this Earth. But I’m not mad anymore. I’m not jealous. I’m not itching to crawl out of my skin and change my heritage. Because I’m more than where I come from! I’m more than where I grew up! I’m an imperfect amalgamation of those places, and I am lucky to be. The thing I’m most proud of is letting go of that need to prove myself to white people - that desperation to want them to understand I’m normal, the same, or even different and interesting. It no longer matters to me what they think. I don’t need to appeal to them, and the wonderful thing is that I no longer want to. I’m free! And I’m spoiled. I get to pick what elements of each culture I want to incorporate into my life. I have so much. I have something that is mine - my background, my identity - and it has nothing to do with anyone else, and now that I’ve come to understand that I can just live. I can just be Aishah.
