Discussing places I have traveled with friends always starts
out with discussions on our home countries. The question ‘where are you from?’ usually
makes me slink back from the discussion, giving myself time to think of how to
answer once people ask me where Sudan
is. ‘That country in Africa’ is generally too vague, ‘that one under Egypt’/’atop
Ethiopia’/ ‘beside Libya’ either sounds too demeaning (I don’t want them to
know my country because it’s next to another!) or confusing. So I settle for
referencing ‘that one country in Africa that divided a few years ago?’ and hope
that they were keeping up with news in 2011 AKA when everything fell apart in
Africa and the Middle East.Not having a permanent childhood home is a bit bizarre to explain. From what I've seen, everyone who says they moved around a lot is addressed with a single word, ‘military?”, more a statement than an actual question. In my case, my family was simply not satisfied with where we were living, so I moved from place to place until I settled down in the US in 2007.
Moving from UAE to Sudan, London, Wales, and Egypt makes it
sort of hard to relate to other people my age when they talk about their
childhood. I find that what I lament the most is feeling sort of out of the
conversation when someone mentions a cartoon and says something like, “If you
don’t know this you had no childhood!”,and it feels silly, but I'm still a bit jealous. Strangely enough, since most of the countries I lived in were
Arab, I’m still figuring out the English names of some cartoons I was into
(forget Nick, my go-to channel was Spacetoon. I actually
have a coat hanger with the logo on my room door, but I digress).
I feel like going to different places is always meant to
leave you with life lessons and different points of views on morals but
honestly, I was way too young to do anything but play around and adamantly
refuse to learn English (“It’s too hard! Why do they write their sentences
backward?”), so those lessons were a bit lost on me. My experiences
overseas have me thinking that while a lot of people have wanted to travel when
they were younger, there isn’t anything quite like living in the same
neighborhood since childhood and knowing every last crook of your street. But I
guess I’m just feeling faux nostalgia!
Have you ever experienced feeling out of place where you
live? Share your story with me at jumanadali@gmail.com.
I have lived in pretty much one spot for most of my life, but I relate to not being able to relate with some people. In my groups of friends or even just at school, I won't get references to movies or be up to date about news or other things, making me feel like I live under a rock.
ReplyDeleteI guess my situation is not similar to yours in that I have only had to move about 2 times in my whole life. But I do understand the feeling of being out of place or missing home. When I first came the US, I felt out of place not understanding a lot of the references being made but overtime I have gotten used to things and made a lot of good friends like you. :)
ReplyDeleteI actually think it's cool that you got to go to so many different countries as a child! I never visited other countries besides South Korea so I always fantasize of travelling the world. I also understand how you feel about "if you don't know this, you had no childhood". I never played pokemon or yu-gi-oh or any of those 90s and 00s games that people in our generation played. So when people talk about those things, I feel left out.
ReplyDeleteJumana, I really appreciate your honesty in this (and the humor about how people in this area just assume "military" if you didn't grow up around here)
ReplyDelete