By HILDA SAFFARI
I’ve qualified as a cultural mutt starting at the age of one-and-a-half, when I became an expatriate. “Iranian by birth, French by citizenship and American by residence” is how my grandfather encapsulated 10-year old me the year we moved to the United States.
Crossroads by H. Saffari
I’ve always fit in everywhere and, by definition, nowhere.
Defending the American “pursuit of wealth and status” to my childhood friends who treated me as if I’d betrayed my French nationality by moving to the United States became a chronic occupation. Meanwhile my American friends were often unable to see anything beyond a terrorist or movie villain in anyone coming from the Middle East.
I moved fluidly between my personas. Being Middle Eastern as I listened to my parents speak Farsi and happily ate my mother’s rice and stews. Gallic in my longing for Le Goûter and refusal at 14 to say the Pledge of Allegiance because I wasn’t an American citizen. Anglo-Saxon in defending the indomitable and entrepreneurial American attitude that anything is possible by working hard enough.
Always pulled in various directions by old traditions or new expectations, I now live in the United Kingdom, married to a Pakistani by birth, Brit by education and Saudi by childhood residence. My stepson is Pakistani-Kuwaiti-Swedish, my stepdaughter Pakistani-American.
So where does this leave my 10-month old daughter? How do I raise her to benefit from the cultural smorgasbord into which she was born as well as instill a specific sense of belonging so she doesn’t have to constantly shift her persona?
How do I teach her to embrace all her roots and yet avoid transmitting my fragmented identity and cultural jet lag to her?
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Hilda Saffari is a film editor/mother/blogger/photographer/dreamer juggling her multiple cultural personalities and life in London, England.
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