Home(s) away from home A reflection on the first-generation identity crisis

SARA QADOUMI CONTRIBUTOR

Every year since I was around five years old, I’ve spent my summers surrounded by my immediate family in Lebanon and Jordan. I’ve always been grateful for the fact that I have a second home across the ocean in one of the most beautiful and culturally rich areas in the world. My exposure to Arab cuisine, language, humour, and community has broadened my worldview and introduced me to a society and lifestyle that is quite different from here in Canada. In Jordan, I could visit a family friend that I haven’t seen in years and be welcomed with three different courses in one sitting and comments about how much I’d grown since our last encounter. Or in Lebanon, I could sit in my grandparent’s kitchen and hear the Adhan through the window, comforted by the fact that everyone in the city was unified in those moments, listening together. Both countries radiate a welcoming warmth, where everyone’s schedules and daily routines run a little slower to to show appreciation for the people around them.

The greatest attachment I have to these travels is the opportunity to see my family. Whether my grandmothers are sharing their techniques for creating the perfect breakfast spread, or one of my five aunts is offering me a piece of their abounding wisdom, or a distant family member is sharing stories about their college experience abroad—I am never short of a memorable conversation. My cousins and I also share the ‘identity crisis’ that comes with being the children of first-generation immigrants. We often collectively discuss the feeling of being caught between two worlds, merging two different personalities, and not quite knowing where we feel truly ‘at home.’

This identity crisis was always most prevalent when it came to sharing my heritage with people outside of my family. In the Middle East, while I was browsing stores at the mall or ordering a meal at a restaurant, I always failed to muster up the courage to speak in Arabic—in fear of outing myself as an imposter. In Canada, I avoided sharing my ethnicity out of fear that I am the wrong person to speak on behalf of a cultural identity I can't tell whether I truly belong to. My biggest concern when sharing my ethnicity was that I would somehow frame the Middle East in my idealised, picture-perfect manner. That I would fail to bring attention to the fullness of the cultural experience, only focusing on my short-lived, blissful summer trips, rather than depicting the realities of the average person’s everyday life.

I mention this because while my grandmother was preparing the perfect breakfast spread, she was also spending nine hours of the day without basic electricity services in the sticky, humid Beirut heat. And while my extended family members were sharing their stories about colleges, they never failed to remind me how lucky I was to be born in Canada, with boundless, more affordable opportunities available at my disposal. For these reasons, I always returned to Canada feeling a sense of shame for romanticising life back home. I realised I had truly received the best of both worlds—an exposure to my culture and heritage in the Middle East and a stable, predictable upbringing in Canada. Could I even call the ‘identity crisis’ I was experiencing a crisis? Was I not incredibly lucky?

In any case, I relied on my cousins to soothe my uncertainties. With each trip back, we returned with another year of experience, another year of stories to share, and another year of self-reflection.

In 2019, we made our way across the Mediterranean in Lebanon, visiting most of the major cities along the coast. Having left the smaller boundaries of the city of Beirut, I wondered whether people living in different areas within Lebanon itself experienced the culture differently. Maybe my mix of identities was unique in the way that every other individual’s was. Maybe my cultural experience was just as profound as others, in that it was something I valued deeply and carried with me in my everyday actions, habits, likes, and dislikes.

This year, returning back after the pandemic, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of familiarity when I landed in the crowded Amman airport. This familiarity was also accompanied by relief. Relief that nothing felt different, that I felt at home, and that my time away during the pandemic hadn’t made me feel disconnected from this ‘other part’ of me. In fact, returning two years older had only made me realise how dependent these separate aspects of my background were on each other. I didn’t need to feel one complete identity at once, and the fact that mine was a more complicated amalgamation did not make it any less whole—it was simply organised differently.

All in all, my short trips back are always very eye-opening and encourage me to share more about my ethnicity and heritage upon returning to Canada. They have made me realise the ‘identity crisis’ I have is a blessing in disguise. One that has challenged me to merge different cultural values and intertwine two independently rich and nuanced worlds into one—and I am forever grateful for that.