I just finished reading one of the posts from one of the blogs I follow, and it was all about how they get paranoid about when people asked about her heritage, and it made me think of why I've been getting angry lately.
So I'm Sudanese, and for a long time I had a problem actually admitting that to people because I thought they would make assumptions about me, but as soon as I did that’s exactly what happened. Living here out in Europe means that my Arabic isn't as good as it should be, and while I was in school that was never a problem because the majority of my friends were “white” and even the ones that weren’t I spoke English with. But here in university, there are a lot of Arabs who actually come from Arab countries directly, and to say I was embarrassed to speak to them in Arabic at first is an understatement .But what made it worse was the majority of Arabs here come from one particular Arab country (I'm not going to mention it by name) And these people are the most patriotic people I have ever met, not that I care but when the extent of patriotism is to the degree where they think that there country is better, and they are better than all the Arabs, and insist that they do not speak Arabic but instead but their own language ( Not Arabic with a different accent, but a different language, even when they clearly are speaking Arabic!)
It has gotten to the stage where I'm going against my own principle and hating most people from this country. The reason for it? I know that not all of them are like this, but the MAJORITY of them here are so arrogant, and when I first met them and they spoke to me in Arabic it took me a while to understand their accent, because at the time I only understood the Egyptian and my own accent. This resulted in them assuming that I couldn't speak Arabic, and then I felt like they were labelling me as the “wannabe Arab”, so I started making an effort only to have them make fun of my dialect . And even though they may have be joking, it resulted in me getting paranoid about my Arabic and now I only speaking with a few who I feel comfortable enough around.
My (unwilling) hatred of these particular Arab people grew because on a few occasions they would be surprised that I could actually even understand Arabic because they “didn't know Sudanese people spoke Arabic” That would just get me even more paranoid cause it made me wonder if other Arabs saw us as Arabs or Africans? Because when you think of Egyptians, most people would call them Arabs. It's not that I have an problem about being either Arab or African, it's that it added to my many questions I had about my own identity, heritage, background and lingering question of where my home really is. And always reminded me of one of my most hated questions “where are you from?”
I can't say I'm Saudi because even though it feels like home, Saudis would never consider me as one of them , I don't even have a Saudi passport. The two passports that I do have say that I'm both Sudanese and Irish, but there are times in Sudan when I feel like a foreigner because of my inability to express myself properly in Arabic or my lack of knowledge about my family history and culture, and yet I can't say I'm Irish because even if my accent can fool you I don't look like an Irish person.
So what is the answer to that question? I guess for now I can only say that I'm from planet earth, on the other hand the Lithuanian here seem to always think I'm Indian!
