Tuck Away Your Diversities

 

My brother and his family are in the Gulf, visiting Bahrain (where I grew up), Qatar, Dubai and Oman. He has been sending pictures of old, familiar places in Bahrain which have triggered many memories.

How do the places where we grow up shape who we become? What do we take with us when we immigrate to a new home and what do we leave behind?

Undoubtedly, growing up as an expat in an Arab country, where we were the outsiders, created a sense of ‘unbelonging’ that ran deep. Yet I had a fairly uncomplicated, happy and sheltered childhood. We were not exposed to the vast array of choices and activities that children in the Western world had, nor were we exposed to the extreme poverty that existed in our parents’ home countries of Pakistan and India. We had everything we needed, unaware that we weren’t really living a middle-class life (well below that), but no less content for it.

We had friends and community, church and school, social clubs and picnics, parties and sleepovers. I got my driving license as soon as I turned 16 and bought a beat-up old Toyota, my father proud that I was the first one in the family to own a car. He could never pass his driving test, always failing on reversing into a parking spot, a failure which he blamed on his thick neck.

My old apartment building, now with stores in front. I lived on the second floor on the left, now hidden by store front

My brother sent a picture of our old apartment building, now changed, with stores on the ground floor where we used to have a paved-over yard where no grass or plants grew except for one big old tree that the kids climbed.  A big trash bin sat in the far corner of the yard, but that did not deter us from endless joyful hours of playing hopscotch, catch, hide-and-go-seek, and kick-the-can. There were six apartments in the building, and we were in and out of each other’s houses with ease and regularity. We never doubted that our friends’ parents would have no objections to us knocking on their door at any time. Our parents napped many afternoons while the kids played in the front and back yards. The back yard had sand which meant making mud pies. We climbed the walls surrounding the building and dared each other to walk along the ledges. No one got hurt. We had the freedom of unsupervised play that today’s kids do not have.

The church and school, spruced up now

And here’s one thing that today’s kids would find incredulous. We had ONE phone that the building shared. Yes, one rotary-dial phone for six families.  It sat on the small landing between the ground and second floor. When the phone rang (5337, I still remember that number!), the kids raced from their apartments and up or down the stairs to answer it. Then, depending on who the call was for, we went to knock on the apartment door to say, “There’s a phone call for you.” In later years, each apartment got their own phone.

We didn’t know that we lacked for anything, and so we did not.

Bab-al-Bahrain, gateway in the souk

But that sense of ‘unbelonging’ runs deep. And although memories may fade, to be rekindled by pictures and conversations, it is not just memories of events and places you take with you when you leave. The emotions that you felt go with you as well. Most, if not all, immigrants arrive in their new countries with that sense of being displaced, of not belonging. It can take many years to fit in, to feel that your new home has embraced you as one of its own. Much longer for some than for others. You may have to give up parts of yourself and your identity to fit in, or tuck it away discreetly, and only unwrap it in the presence of those who will understand.  You have to assimilate to become part of the mainstream. And one day you may wake up and find that you ARE the mainstream, your diversities have been so deeply buried that they rarely make an appearance now.

And then pictures arrive of where you were raised, and you remember where you came from.