StoatAubergine

Tag: Expats

  • Busy today, isn’t it!

    Busy today, isn’t it!

    In the city we currently call home, the main language appears to be Russian. The ‘second’ language is Uzbek – but only with the confines of its capital, Tashkent. I am reliably informed that the more we explore Uzbekistan, the more we will hear its own language. This is the fourth foreign country I have lived in and my first since France (over 25 years ago) where English is not the main international language. We were given fair warning that this would be the case and decided as a family to embrace this challenge and put various language apps and some good old-fashioned confidence and bravado to good use. 

    Five months in and we have a good grasp of some basic phrases, numbers and can read the letters phonetically. It’s not bad given the overstuffed confection box of new experiences we’ve had to sample and familiarize ourselves with, including navigating the weekly grocery shop. We have started using the local markets to buy the bulk of our groceries – if for not for any other reason than it is certainly cheaper. But we have found it has, to some degree, accelerated our learning of the Russian language. There are a couple of stalls where I am now recognized with a degree of familiarity: 

    “As-salamu alaykum” shouts the dairy guy as he sees me coming to buy our weekly 8 liters of milk ( we really should simply invest in a cow) – his hand warmly outstretched. 

    Walaykum-asalma” I reply.  

    Uzbekistan being 90% Muslim means you mostly hear the Arabic greeting – and the locals are always surprised to hear me giving the correct Arabic response!  

    I got round to learning the Russian numbers and alphabet and, along with some stock phrases and most often used nouns, he and I can converse very simply on what is required on that day. 

    Most folks we interact with have as little working English as we do Russian. However, there’s a cashier in our local supermarket ‘Korzinka’ who is always pleased to see me so she can use some of her English (and I my Russian). I popped in yesterday and store was uncharacteristically busy. I searched on my Google Translator for the phrase ‘it is busy today’ but then remembered that I am some ways off a reciprocal conversation – and even if I managed to say the sentence correctly – there could be no back and forth. And that’s when I realized how much I miss the simple exchange between strangers.

    All my life I have taken for granted, as an English speaker, the ability to converse with those around me – but not just converse but convey light and shade – depth and width depending on the nature of the interaction. This ability, this often-daily connection has been temporarily suspended…and I miss it. 

    There are many situations where we find ourselves conversing with someone new. Maybe it is purposeful, with utility at its core; there’s something I need from this new person and likewise, a service they may be paid to give. Then there’s situations where a shared experience is heightened by turning to a fellow patron and exchanging views, emotions, reactions, and insights. When you think about it – communicating with strangers is something that happens so frequently, fluidly, fleetingly and, at times, fruitfully – that its position within the framework of our human experience is less functional and more proprietorial.  

    A stranger is another person with whom we are not familiar. And there are no guarantees that the time of interaction with a stranger will necessarily inform greater familiarity. As I have stated, interactions with strangers vary from the purposeful to the accidental – from the obligatory to the exploratory. What I miss, funnily enough, is the obligatory. Maybe it’s my Englishness…that’s not a rabbit hole I plan to explore here! I think that for the most part, we all recognize and agree with Aristotle that we should pursue a ‘good’ life and part of that goal is an obligation to a degree of civility and adherence to a ‘moral code’. Therefore, what troubled me most, given my newfound challenging situation? Is it that I could be perceived as rude? I mean, there aren’t a great many Caucasian men here in Tashkent, so I would assume most folks would initially surmise my foreign status – and I certainly know the greetings.  

    No, my melancholic reflection was not ushered in by some worry of being rude.  

    More plausibly it could be that I always have something to say! Now, there’s some truth to that! I am not going to sit here typing away and pretend that my personality is not underpinned by a social confidence that enjoys watching myself navigate conversations. But again, that’s not what is at the core of the malaise. It is simply because I am not fulfilling that obligation to converse and connect. Every interaction is like a simple melody – it has a beginning, a middle and an end. I have the beginning, it’s typed into my Google Translate and I often practice how to say it so that it’s not too ‘Franglaise’ (or should I say…Englussian…?), but there is the middle part that will come…the listener ready for the a reciprocal comment in Russian…and it will not come. I am in the current sticking point in this stage of my learning where I feel the scald of inability to completely fulfill my obligation.   

    I am confident, as with my French, that I will reach a degree of simple conversational Russian if we stay in Tashkent long enough. What I will remember, however, is that some obligations should not be seen as being needfully and dutifully filled with dispassionate execution – maybe, more than I realize, some obligations should be coupled with warmth. Why? Because some obligations pin my humanity, badge my morality and can simply make my day.  

  • Belonging: A sense of affiliation or a concrete commitment?

    When we say we ‘belong’ somewhere – we may be thinking in ‘concrete’ terms. This means that we can belong somewhere ‘legally’ through our passport or other documents which properly affiliate us with a place or person. For example, because I have a British passport I am British and therefore belong in Britain. Clearly, this sounds problematic – especially for persons who live a global life.

    ‘Belonging’ is a powerful and deeply felt sensation – but what does it mean to ‘belong’ somewhere?

    This week, from our home in Doha, we sent off for our daughters first passport. She’s 10 weeks old at the time of writing and was born right here in Qatar at Al Wakra hospital. Therefore, she is currently without a nation. She cannot be Qatari by law (unlike if she were born in the USA for example – where she’d have dual citizenship) and until her British passport arrives then technically, she is simply a child of the planet. Ironically, she cannot be a child of the planet as that would disturb whichever border agent who, as they quizzically eye our smiling faces, sternly asks us again why she doesn’t have a passport and what do we mean ‘child of the planet’?

    What our daughter doesn’t know which her older brothers do, is that she will be a true ‘Third Culture Kid’ (TCK). TCK’s are normally children of military or diplomatic families or families, like us, who have chosen to live and work in different countries and raise a family within different cultures. The term captures the experience of these children whereby they live with one culture at home (though not always) their ‘second culture’ which is usually the culture of the host country which leads them to creating their own ‘third culture’. 

    It always gives us such a thrill when we hear how our boys begin to assimilate, adapt and adopt the cultural nuances and norms of where we live. In Texas it was hearing our then three-year-old asking me ‘What ya’ll makin’ for dinner’ where the Texan drool of ‘y’all’ was interspersed with the dying embers of his Yorkshire twang. As I write this today my eldest is playing Fortnite online with his friends and every so often he will shout “I didn’t shoot you! Wallah! I didn’t shoot you!”. In Arabic ‘Wallah’ is one’s promise to God and it is an oft shouted demand or protestation of innocence from the Qatari children heard numerous times within my classroom! But hearing my son dropping this and several other Arabic words into his conversations reminds us what an incredible life he is leading right now.

    This post is not exclusively about Third Culture Kids – though if this theme speaks to you then I highly recommend David.C.Pollock and Ruth E.Van Reken’s book “Third Culture Kids”.

    The experience of expatriate families, though full of opportunity and undeniably some privilege, comes at a cost – and that can be a sense of belonging. By living lives that are highly mobile, multi-lingual and cross cultured there are no roots put down. Arguably, in the 21st century and certainly through Covid-related necessity – technology and video calls do well to ameliorate the disconnect across thousands of miles between loved ones in ‘home cultures’ but I sometimes wonder where my children will say they ‘belong’? So, when we say we ‘belong’ somewhere, what do we mean?

    For Merriem Webster ‘belong’ is to be: 

    “attached or bound by birth, allegiance, or dependency; to be properly classified; to be in a proper situation; to be the property of a person or thing”

    Merriam Webster

    For me, I can say I have a sense of belonging to my home country of England (lived experiences) and a concrete sense of belonging (British Passport). It is the country of my birth and home for the first three decades of my life. I can also unequivocally say that I belong to my wife. Along with our marriage certificate, our shared experiences, shared stuff and shared parenting certainly confer a concrete sense of belonging both in the possessive sense ‘I belong to her’ and the abstract ‘sense of belonging’. But for our daughter – ‘belonging’ within the definition of: ‘attached to allegiance to birth country’ does not strictly apply. She will have a concrete sense of belonging to us (legal duty) to the UK (legally) and feel a sense of belonging to all of us as a family but where, as an adult TCK, will she feel she belongs geographically?

    We can belong to groups (families, communities) and places (birth places, places we live) and people (our children belong to us – legally in the same sense spouses can belong to each other) so is it enough for our little girl that she gets to belong to a community and persons but that she may miss out on the wide, thick root of ‘sense of belonging’ in terms of a connection to a country that not only bore you – but the generations before you? Our children don’t have the past ‘present’ in their lives. Thinking culturally – catchphrases of any given golden age of television are not heard by them. I sat down and watched ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ with my two boys and they really enjoyed it – but it occurred to me then, as it does now, that because we are not physically in England these  societal cultural narratives and norms are not omnipresent in their lives. For them, they are British by birth and passport and so can live their lives with that legal ‘concrete belonging’ (as will our daughter) but that ‘sense of belonging’ are those deep fibrous connections that define us, give us our identity through shared family experiences and daily life within our born culture which are dense and provide greater ‘kinship’ that a document simply stating a nationality. For our daughter her passport will confer British nationality – but her place of birth will forever be Al Wakra.

    I do believe that for our two sons, an abrupt return to a UK school during these formative schooling years will not be such a shock. They were both born in the UK and whilst our middle son left when he was two years old – he does have some memory of his time there. For our daughter, it is her constructed ‘third reality’ built around us as a family unit – an international school setting and a host country culture fully experienced which gives her that sense of belonging. Should she find herself in a small village school somewhere in West Yorkshire that process of deconstruction could be difficult for her– particularly if it comes during those upper Primary early Secondary years. 

    I would argue then that thinking about concrete belonging in a legal sense is not the be all and end all. Belonging doesn’t come with such narrowly strict parameters and isn’t monolithic in nature (I belong here and here only). Instead it is like a matrix of neural pathways in a growing brain. As familiarity and affiliation grows with a connection to a place or persons – so that connection strengthens; its once thin fibrous tendrils become like strong branches. Also, conversely, as we drift away from places and persons what once felt like a solid link loosens and itself becomes weaker and less substantial. Surely, this is the nature of our lives – especially in the 21st century. To be committed to one place and one community may provide a dense and almost concrete sense of belonging – but change is inevitable and to think of belonging in such a narrow view (a time, a place, a document) could bring ambiguity and distress when change or upheaval inevitably occurs.  

    In Conclusion…

    I will close by also suggesting that there is something melancholic to ‘belonging’. It contains that word ‘longing’ which suggests a desire for something just out of our reach, over the horizon. Maybe the issue with searching for or reflecting too deeply on ‘belonging’ is that it is illusory in the sense that such a firm concrete feeling of belonging is not something any of us could ever have, despite documents to the contrary; people divorce, change citizenships, alter names…there is too much change for such a thing to be real. But by promoting a ‘sense of belonging’ as something that is fluid which doesn’t commit us to an unchanging ‘state of affairs’ and doesn’t have to be about an attachment to a single thing – we can ourselves construct healthy affiliations to persons, places and things which promote our own growth and senses of belonging without committing to ideologies or ways of being and thinking. For our own children, their experience of belonging may will be with people over places and who knows, maybe our daughter will return to the Middle East one day – to somewhere she truly belongs.