I reluctantly adapted and accepted what our children in exile had become: a duality of concepts, culture, language, and belonging. And I turned the curtain down, defeated, on the possibility of loss of identity. Still, I had no faint hope: that the grandchildren would one day call me a جدgrandfather’ in Arabic, albeit with a faltering accent and barely understood accents. I don't want any more. Really.
I have lived the struggle of identity with my children, as have all immigrants of my generation. I remember our beginnings very well: we used to talk and talk in our mother tongue, and then soon we would pity our children as they stumbled in pronunciation and understanding, so we would soften and keep up the ease of talking in a hybrid language; one word in Arabic and another in English. I watched as my children formed a new identity, a mixture of two cultures, a strange dialogue, a language half from the East and half from the West, but practiced at home and at the table in uncanny harmony.
At school, I saw them with a completely different face: they melt into the new society smoothly and joyfully, speak their language flawlessly, and act according to their customs without hesitation. There the mixture had no place, but their world seemed one pure, like their eternal destiny.
Ah, ah, ah...Brothers, if you know this pain! to love this world that has opened its doors to you and given you the opportunity of a decent life, and at the same time torn within you lest with your love you lose what remains of the identity, customs and traditions carried with you from the first homeland. When you come home to visit cousins and brothers, it's really harder and weirder.
