Mixed Up Messed Up?

Researcher for women's affairs in the MENA region with the Euro-Med Women Network . Educator at heart, formerly with Campus in Camps, in Dheisheh, Bethlehem, in the oPt.

 

My father is German, and comes from a small village outside Frankfurt am Main, and my mother is from the capital city of Maldives, Malé. I was born in Malé and moved to Oxford when I was 9. Each of my sisters were born elsewhere, one in Offenbach, Germany, and the other in Oxford, England. My father spoke to us in German, and my mother in English when we lived in Maldives, at first, and when we moved to Oxford she spoke to us in Dhivehi. Eventually, it became normal to speak all three, not equally, all the time, any time, depending on mood, need and entertainement.

In Maldives, my childhood consisted of Märchen, Maldivian Eid celebrations, watching chicken get slaughtered, Lebkuchen, imported Lego, Postman Pat, Katie Morag,  Qur’an classes, Iftah Ya Simsim (Sesame Street in Arabic), and a healthy dose of Barbapapa. I could recite with beautiful tajweed and write Arabic by the time I was 9 but didn't understand anything until I was doing Arabic in SOAS ten years later. Once we started living in Oxford, mornings of ‘Our Father who art in heaven’ and hockey, Shakespeare, French and art took over. Where did Bismillah fit in here? I was about to discover.

I know that for many of us, coming from a mixed background is often seen as an asset, a gold coin in your personal baggage, but for many others it is a burden they carry, as they face being categorized and marginalised. I want to explore prejudice, racism, nationalism and the bubbles we create due to our personalities and identities. Who includes us or excludes us? And do we think we escape making our own prejudice about others? Do we feel exclusive? I am so excited to be on board with Nora on this fantastic project that she has been raving and bullying me into doing with her for years. We drank gallons of PG tips and dunked insane stacks of choc' digestives late into the night, after a long hard day of running back and forth from SOAS and UCL (obviously had to have split identities when it came to our degrees even). We ranted about being boxed up as this or that, but we also reflected with passion on how having multiple identities, whether it's one, two or twenty cultures, languages, histories can truly change the way you relate to the world. Bring on your stories, share your experiences. We are itching to hear about them.