Leaving the US after a long 8-year streak of calling it home with a vengeance, has revved up my thinking engine again. The concept of “identity” has been brought back to the forefront of my consciousness. "Who am I?” I pose. How do I explain to others, or even myself, who I am? Does my history need to be a part of the story? Do I just talk about the present? Do I need any labels to categorize myself? Will that help me understand myself better? Will that allow others to have more empathy towards me?
If we’ve ever interacted, you probably know I identify as Arab. I have taken my birthplace, my upbringing, and my family roots as an attachment to a Middle Eastern identity. But as I contemplate the concept of identity further, I can’t help but wonder: what does it mean to be Arab or Middle Eastern? More specifically, what does it really mean to be an "Arab Woman?"
The boundaries for what women can and cannot do, be and cannot be have been drawn for centuries. I was introduced to these boundaries from a young age, well before I made a trip to the mall to purchase my first bra. But it is was then and there that I had a choice to make: either to accept those boundaries as the confines of my being or challenge the status quo and embark on a quest to find answers for myself. I chose the latter, with all the blessings and curses that came with it, and left to the US seeking a wider aerial perspective. The melting pot that I stumbled upon, and more overwhelmingly, the feeling of starting over in unfamiliar territory along with the sense of limitless possibilities that created, left me even more confused by the plethora of options I could take on as my identity. With time and with a lot, a lot, of trial and error, I grew closer to understanding my essence, but also, found myself increasingly feeling at a loss for something. This state of confusion left me resorting to my thoughts to help me dissect the complexity of identity resolution, an effort that proved to be futile and even at times, destructive. My narratives became how I defined myself, and that threw me in a state of chaos, where I left behind all the order I once knew, especially as I started to uncover some of the dark sides of being human.
In this vein, I thought this meant I would find the missing pieces of the puzzle where I left them, in Jordan, my homecountry. Upon returning, even if for short periods of time, I keenly searched for the those pieces, both subconsciously and consciously, and to my satisfaction, I found many of them in various corners. In the thrill of eating fresh Khobz Taboon out of the oven, in the congeniality of my grandma’s Friday gatherings that came with the best home-cooked meals, and in the endless love and comfort my family provided. During this same search, I lost other pieces of the same puzzle, which led to more and more searching, which ultimately led to endless searching. It was somewhere along the way that it occurred to me that my quest to untangle identity was way more complex than I had initially anticipated. I came to reckon that perhaps my personal identity need not be tied to a geography, a thought, a person, or a thing.
Alas, I am Aya Darwazeh, and I guess my name too is just another label. I have not quite fully figured out who I am, and frankly, may never really fully figure it out. What I do I know is that I exist somewhere, somewhere that knows no boundaries of geography or metaphysical space. Isn’t that the story of every nomad anyway?