Where is Home?

The other night I listened to an online panel held by the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival. Three authors were interviewed. The theme was: Where is Home? 

The writers were all people of colour, from Canadian immigrant families. 

EMWF Panel

They spoke eloquently and passionately of their fluid identities and multiple layers.

The host asked them to define home in three words. If I remember correctly, one said: Safe, Serene, Cozy. Another said: Comfort, Family, Peace. The third:  Family, Food, Friendship.

For me, home is one word: belonging.

I grew up in Bahrain, a small Middle Eastern island country in the Persian Gulf. I was born there, along with two of my siblings. My father was an expat, hired by a British telecommunications company and brought by them from Karachi to Bahrain on a work permit. He and my mother settled in Bahrain for over 30 years, raising their family there before sending the three older ones to Canada. My younger brother and I arrived in Canada with my parents over 40 years ago.

It took a few years for me to be able to call Canada ‘home’. Small difficulties seemed large:  navigating bus routes and subways, crowds of people in the big city, being asked the eternal question that every immigrant of colour is asked: Where are you from?  I wasn’t quite sure how to answer that. I only knew Bahrain, but my heritage was from places I had never lived in and could never call home.

Once I called Canada home, it stuck. Canada soon became home because the country of my birth never was. I had called Bahrain home, I felt like it was my home while I lived there (I knew nothing else), but while I called it home, it never accepted me as one of its own.

I didn’t belong. None of us expats did. My parents could not buy property (even if they had the money, which they did not), or claim citizenship for their children who were born there. As an expat, you were always an outsider.

I lived in an apartment building of six units. The father of every family in the building worked for the same telecommunications company who paid the rent. The Christian Indo-Pakistani community was my community. There were British and some American expats who also worked for the same company, but they lived in fancy houses in compounds. (Does this all sound a little familiar to you?). There were even separate pay grades: one for the white expats, another for the brown Indo-Pakistani ones like my father, and yet another for the local citizens. My father was one of those people who constantly fought for equality within his workplace, with little success.

There was a distinct class system and we all abided by it. As a child, it wasn’t something I questioned. It was just the way it was. But oh, how I envied those houses the white kids lived in, where each had their own room. I shared the second bedroom in our two-bedroom apartment with my siblings. 

The Italian nuns who ran the school I attended would organize Christmas carol outings to these compounds. We stood on the doorsteps outside, singing our hearts out, while I imagined what the inside of those houses looked like. Surely there were cozy nooks where I could curl up for hours with my Enid Blyton mystery books.

The different social circles did intersect. Occasionally the white expats frequented the brown expat social clubs and even visited our humble abodes. A few sent their kids to our school, run by the strict nuns. My father had many friends of every colour and background. But the circles intersected on the perimeters. You always knew where you belonged. My inner circle, my community was always the Christian Indo-Pakistani expats. We visited each other’s homes, had sleepovers, shared our food at picnics and house parties. My friends’ parents were my ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’, although not related by blood. 

My family. I'm the small one in the middle with the bows
 and polka dot dress

Canada accepted me, told me I belonged. This was somewhere I could hang my hat and put down roots. I have a deep and abiding love for this country that opens its arms to immigrants. Yes, there is much wrong with it, but there is also much that is right.

Where is home? This is home.