a citizen of worlds

A friend posted the following video a few months ago and this was my first reaction to the post, before I even watched the video: Oh please.  Stop telling me what to think and how to say it. When I ask where are you from I want to know where you feel at home. In fact, the question I’ve acquired here in Doha is “what is your country?” which is often the limit of what our language barrier will permit, but still the beginning of connection and exchange.

That is what I thought and then I watched the video. I loved it.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. And now it’s International Week at the kids’ school again. My youngest came home with this sheet and a paper doll figure to cut out and decorate. The questions on the back of the sheet asked what language people speak in our home country, what kinds of food we like to eat there, and what special holidays we celebrate.

Forget about "Where are you from" -"What is your home country is even more difficult to be honest about. 

“We would like to help the children develop their awareness and appreciation of the diversity of the classmates with whom they work and play each day. One way of doing this is by discovering the many different countries that the children call home.”

Funny that the American school, of all schools, would try to simplify this so much- the United States is one of the hardest places to choose a national costume and one single language that people speak. The first food my daughter chose to draw in the box provided was sushi. For languages we ended up answering “English plus more than 300 others,” as we learned from a quick google search. We also learned that 14 million American households have a first language other than English. What would be our national costume? Sure we're American but we’ve lived in Vermont, Georgia, and California… Snowsuit? Jeans and a t-shirt? Gun?

“We would like to suggest that you focus on one country only. Perhaps next time your child has a homeland project to do, they can focus on the country of the parent whose culture was not explored this time.”

As if all the parents here had one homeland! As if each country had one single culture of its own. One woman I know resists the “where are you from?” question because her parents are from two different countries, she grew up away from both of those, her husband is from yet another country and they are raising their children in Doha. What is their country? Or parents could be from the same country but from different ethnic groups or within that country.  Or like Taiye Selasi, they are from countries that didn’t even exist when they were born. So many possibilities.

What if the school talked more to the kids about culture in terms of rituals and relationships? What if the worksheet said “think about where you feel like you’re from- talk to your parents about where they feel like they’re from. Where is home? What would you like to share about that place? What are you most proud of there? What are you most looking forward to doing the next time you are there? What cultural practices (foods, clothes, music, values, family traditions) have you added as you’ve lived in different places and/or met people from other cultures?”

I think we can do better. Let’s celebrate the school as an intersection of people with a vast diversity of cultural experiences and not limit that to “what country are you from?”

“She is not a citizen of the world, she is a citizen of worlds.” –Taiye Selasi

leaping into the void

Or at least that’s the way it feels, five and a half months from the leap. We’re intending to return to my home state, our home country, at the end of this latest bout of expat-ing.

This choice, more emotional than logical, was based in part on how I was feeling two summers ago, after our first year in Doha- so enormously relieved to be back in a place with mountains and green and people who drive slowly. Back then I decided we should make moving back there the goal for when my husband’s contract finishes in Qatar. Since then I can’t say I’ve grown to love Doha but I have grown to tolerate it, with great affection for certain people and certain corners. The whole process has reminded me that anywhere can become home eventually and has weakened my resolve that there is one most perfect place for us to move.

Another factor is that in all our moves, none have landed us in places where we knew more than a handful of people. My home state has a web of connection with family and friends and the idea of that is very appealing.

  

I have fears and misgivings. Having never, as an adult, lived in one place for more than three years, I’m not even sure that I can, even while we talk about this next move being to the place where we will see all the kids grow up and graduate from high school.  As if we can possibly know enough to make the right choice, especially as the stakes seem to get higher with each successive move. The part that doesn’t let me go back to sleep when I wake up at 3am is the part about how there is no long-term anything without an income, and the planning so far has not included jobs.

And then recently, just when my trust in my own decision-making was at a very low point, one of my favorite people suggested moving to her hometown, and except for the fact that it’s thousands of miles from my home state, it has everything- mountains, friendly people, indoor and outdoor climbing for one kid, horses for another, great schools for all three. I couldn’t not put it on the list of possibilities.

I know that it’s better to talk about this in terms of “intentions” rather than “plans,” as I'm aware from abundant experience what can happen to plans, and very quickly too. I also know how hard it is to “re-pat”: to re-orient and re-calibrate to the culture and pace of one’s home country after living abroad. We surely have plenty of work ahead of us, no matter where we end up.

P.S. also going to keep in mind this one, about how it isn't really a void at all.

beyond belonging

This bird in the cafeteria at the kids’ school made me start thinking about belonging:

My first thought was oh no she must be miserable inside a man-made space without any other birds, she is so out of her element! Then... maybe she likes it- she’s out of the heat, has access to food and safe places to perch, maybe there are more birds living in there than I thought- who are we to say she doesn’t belong?   

The next day I went for a walk (early before the streets got too hot) and saw this: 

It was about a week after I’d returned to Doha after the summer break and it made a lot of sense. Of course I don’t belong there, obviously I belong in a place with green and hills and rain. Humans only survive in Doha thanks to air conditioning, desalinization plants, imported workers and imported food, though I’m pretty sure that’s not what they meant.

I never expected to belong in Qatar, and ultimately Qatar decides whether you belong or not anyway. There was an article this summer in the Doha News about a man who put together a film of Doha, where he was born and raised, and it described him as an expat (Qatar expat produces 'mega' time-lapse marking nations development), which was shocking to my American self. Several days later there was another article about the performance of a Qatari athlete, who will almost surely be stripped of his Qatari citizenship and sent back home to Sudan when his contract is over (Qatari athlete becomes first national to reach IAAF World Athletics Finals).

The news is full of people deciding for others whether or not they belong, for example this story about a boy with Down Syndrome who was asked to leave his school, and this story about a boy in Texas whose teacher decided he was a threat because of a science project he brought in. 

And clearly any concern I have about belonging is completely insignificant alongside the apparently never-ending crisis of refugees fleeing impossible situations around the world to seek haven in places they cannot be sure of welcome (here's an article about mixed receptions in a town in Germany). They are trading belonging for safety.  It’s completely different to be my kind of expat, because we chose this, have the resources to work with it, and know we’re welcome.

It would be such a relief to stop thinking about belonging, which implies requirements and approval by a group, and replace that with working on welcoming and including. I’d like to think we’ve moved beyond the primary and secondary school social scenes, where the popular kids decide who’s in or out, but replace "popular kids" with "rich countries" and it just keeps continuing (read Who Qualifies for Asylum, from the New York Times)  On a personal level, it’s taken longer to stop caring whether people will accept me or not than I thought it would, especially with this moving every few years and having to start new in a neighborhood, at school, and in jobs over and over again.  Here especially the heat and traffic can be so isolating. We “non-working” expat spouses in Doha have to be deliberate about connecting with other people and so it feels like there’s much more at stake in making a positive first impression.  I don’t want to worry about how people are going to react to me as long as I'm interested and respectful, and I don’t want my kids to worry either.  I want them to care about making connections with people but not if they feel that would require presenting a fake version of themselves.  I want us all to think about how to work to make everyone feel welcome.

between worlds: remembering and forgetting

At the beginning of the summer, not long after I arrived in VT, I wrote this:

I’d forgotten what it’s like to be cold, how green the plants are, how soft grass can be on my bare feet, the beauty of sun streaming across the green hills and fields and lighting up a dark thunderhead. So much color.

I’m remembering what it feels like to walk on the street in shorts and tank top, skin exposed to sun and breeze. Seeing my arms from shoulder to fingertip, my legs from mid-thigh down to my toes reminds me how strong they are, how much they can lift and how far they can carry me.

I’m feeling between worlds: the joy of being in the US when they make marriage legal for everyone, the horror that someone would go blow people up while they are praying in Kuwait, shoot people while they’re on vacation in Tunisia, while here I am taking advantage of a few hours of childcare to organize shelves of food and get stuff done. In Doha I can stop, read the news, have time to think about it and I have a very international community- Tunisian neighbors, friends who have lived in Kuwait. Here I am in my happiest place surrounded by green and hills but I miss my people of Doha. I just admitted for the first time that I would be sad if I heard that we weren’t returning after the summer, no matter how much I hate the traffic and the construction and the social system there, no matter that the sadness would come with relief.

And at the same time I wrote this, which I now realize applies to both Vermont home and Doha home,  especially these first days after returning:

It is so strange every time to be somewhere utterly familiar and totally foreign at the same time. These first days back in a previous home are so hard and so illuminating.

And then today, a week after arriving back in Doha to start our third and final year here, I wrote this:

I’m remembering again how it feels to be shut up inside on our life support of AC because outside the sun is trying to kill us. I’m remembering how covering up isn’t simply out of respect for my hosts, it’s also just good sense in this climate. I’m remembering that there are other colors for the sky than blue- dimmer, dustier colors.  Soon enough I’ll forget that clouds and hills can be normal too and how you have to think ahead about dew if you don’t want your shoes and cuffs all soggy for the rest of the morning. I’m already forgetting about what it feels like to have a constant stream of company in my kitchen, people who thank me for my work and offer to wash dishes. I’m remembering the peace and quiet of my house, cooking for five instead of forty, with the view out the window of my daughter in capris and a t-shirt sitting on the curb with girls in abaya and hijab.

I've realized that there is more about Doha that I liked than I realized.  I worked so hard at Doha this year. The summer before this one I went to Vermont with such relief to be away for a couple of months- I needed a full-on Doha-detox and I got it, so much so that I had a very difficult time returning. This past summer I missed it. The places that are the most challenging become important to us in their own way. Two years ago, after I’d only been there a month or so I posted this on Facebook: 

I still hate malls, traffic,  and indoor life in Qatar but there are also, surprisingly, plenty of things that I like, projects I’ve started and to which I looked forward to returning.

They’re impossible to compare, my Doha life and my Vermont life, but each one makes me appreciate aspects of the other, especially at these points when I haven't quite shed the one I was just in or fully rejoined the one to which I've returned.  

Is this my career?

My son called to say he had to stay after school to complete an interview, then stayed up late transcribing the info in order to make a poster. Turned out the interview was about geology and it was for his careers class.  I asked if he had an interest in geology but he said no, there had just been a limited availability of interviewees.  I said what about my career and he just rolled his eyes.

Wait a minute.

I never thought about this, though I’m sure lots of other people have.  There’s plenty of writing around about the worthiness of being a full-time parent in lieu of a paid work, if we’re so lucky to have a co-parent whose job can pay the bills, but we are never ever invited to talk to the class about our career.  What would the kid wear if they wanted to dress up as a trailing spouse for career day?

I never intended to check the “housewife” box –to be the primary caregiver for the kids and to cook most of our meals. I didn’t ever consider it when I was growing up and people asked me what I wanted to be when I was an adult. It’s not the actual work of parenting and home-making that I don’t like. What bugs me is my own expectation, supported by my education, media, and peers, that I ought to be doing something else. 

I’ve been talking with a friend lately about her impending return to full-time work and her concerns that she will not be spending enough time anymore with her three young children. I have encouraged her, saying that it’s fine for kids to see her working. There are a lot of ways to raise kids and a lot of ways that they will turn out fine. I think it’s most detrimental to them for their parent to be dissatisfied with how their life is turning out. I’ve spent years being dissatisfied, just perpetuating the message that not having a career outside my home leads to frustration and resentment. It’s not the example that I want to be.

Do I need to package it up to make it worthy in my eyes? My kids eyes? It’s hard to say how I’d want to promote this lifestyle as a career anyway, since it seems like it is a very dependent and vulnerable position. I tried putting all the pieces together of everything that I do and turning it into a positive spin description: joining forces with someone who you enjoy and explore the world together, open to possibilities, home-making in the most creative and challenging sense, as home changes every few years, exploring new cultures and cities, forming friendships around the world until it’s impossible to go to a place where you know no one. Learning to drive in all kinds of circumstances- how to dodge rickshaws and drive on the left (Dhaka), avoid hitting cyclists and spaced out pedestrians and to parallel park a minivan into a tiny space on a near-vertical street (San Francisco), and I will spare you another rant about Doha traffic. It sounds good for a minute, but I didn't try it out on the kids. 

Message is, you are going to school in order to be a person who gets paid money for the work you do. Staying home is a fall back. None of this is good for a trailing spouse’s self-esteem, no matter how hard he or she works at helping kids adjust to a new country and culture, learning his or her way around town and dealing with medical care, maintenance, procurement of everything from groceries to gas bottles to smoke detectors. There are even a lot of perks, including being able to be available to my kids during our major moves, take art classes, walk around Doha, all the way to the most mundane, like being able to grocery shop on weekday mornings.

There are a lot of memes out there saying live your dream, follow your passion but that’s not realistic for all of us, or at least it can’t be an instant fix. Qatar is a prime example of this- the millions of migrant workers here are not living their dreams, in fact some of them would likely describe it as more nightmare, though I have met people who have made it work- earning money here has enabled them to build houses, educate children, and start businesses in their home countries.  Others are lucky to make it home alive.

I went to college and then grad school and then started having kids. When the first two were big enough to be in school full time I got jobs at a couple of international kindergartens in Hanoi but then the third one came along and I stopped working again. here.

Last summer I worked full-time at a camp and I think I was a better parent than I had been in a long time. I still was primary parent for them because my husband had stayed in Doha. I loved it and I wrote about it

This story doesn’t have an end. I’m not done thinking about it, not done working on it. I love it when I have a job that challenges me and lets me use my skills and work with interesting people. I also love having the freedom to design my whole day, explore, make art, cook, and spend time with kids. I know I’m very lucky to have the time and resources to sit around thinking and writing about the subject.