Mood Swings: On being one of 'us' By Yasmine El-Rashidi Moving out is not an easy thing in this country, certainly not if you are unmarried and anything other than male. "It's not done," is the uttered favouritism. "What will people say?" Well, people will say lots of things about lots of things. From clothes to food, to lifestyles and looks. Most people care, and culture dictates that they should. "You're part of a community," my father used to tell me. "You can't just do anything you want. You have to think of people around you." My brother and I were certainly raised to think in that way -- respecting people's feelings and beliefs. Nevertheless, we were encouraged to strike out boldly on our own. And we did -- verbalising our viewpoints and values with clarity and confidence, no matter how extreme. "I don't care what you do as long as you don't harm anyone," my father would insist. He was not entirely honest in what he said, but it wasn't quite his fault. I didn't really come to terms with that, or with the culture, however, until four years ago -- when I was in graduate school in New York. Sitting in one of the smaller rooms at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, an even smaller group of us sat and explored the wonders of literary journalism, which is basically the use of the narrative techniques of fiction in non-fiction work. "You have to get inside your character's heads," my professor urged in her soft voice and very British English. "Try to understand what it is to be in their shoes. You need to try to live their lives. Forget about what everyone else is telling you about journalism. Be subjective. Use 'I'." The semester progressed and we were faced with our "long piece"; where we would spend a couple of months engrossing ourselves in a community, or subculture, or simply someone else's life. We all went off and came back with our topics of choice. One guy announced he would write about dogs, another about crossword-solving fanatics, a third about beauty pageants, a few other odd topics, and one about TCK's. "What?" most of the class questioned, in silence, through their patterned faces. "What the hell are TCK's?" I was probably the one with the most incredulous expression, and I almost smirked when I heard her explain the acronym, "Third Culture Kids." My colleague's venue of exploration was the United Nations School in lower Manhattan -- a place where the children of 'travellers' went. "These kids have no real culture. They can't identify with their own," she explained with utter awe. "Or anyone else's," she continued. "They've grown up in cultures other than their own." Wow, I thought to myself. Not because I found it particularly interesting, but because I wondered what it made us. 'Us' in my head was a pool of people I had grown up with, socialised with, or come across over the years that made my life. 'Us' was a very peculiar group of youngsters who had spent an average 99 per cent of their lives in Egypt -- Cairo to be precise -- but still didn't quite fit in. In my school class of 13, 14 at the most, about 50 per cent of the Egyptian students attempted some post-school flee to the West. We were convinced, I must admit, that it would be our saving grace. We turned out to be absolutely wrong. With one exception, we all returned. And 'he' only managed to adapt to 'abroad' on his second try. My brother laughed when I came back. Everyone did, really. I had sworn I would never return. "I thought you were born to be an American!" he scoffed and smirked and snickered -- with the love of an elder brother, of course. I had thought so too, but something there was not quite right. But neither was it here. It took me a while, but one day it clicked: It was not a matter of being too Westernised to fit in, but rather, a case of being firmly rooted in one culture, but raised, for the most part, with the principles of another. The extent of the conflict struck in recent months. "I want to move out," I announced to my mother one day. "I need space. I need to take care of myself. I want to get my own flat." My little statement was not taken well. "I would rather you move back to Manhattan than move to Maadi," was her answer. "I don't see why you want to move," she said, shaking her head in her trademark way. "It's just not done, Yasmine." I suppose she was right, but I was mortified. And I began to sob. I had done that on several occasions in the past -- usually when I was not getting my own way. This time it was different. I was sobbing because I was torn. Torn between believing moving out was a good thing, that there was nothing wrong with it and that it was a natural part of growing up, but being a firm believer (for the most part), in what my mother had to say -- and an avid fan of her smile. I was Westernised, I had always thought, and I would do what I needed to do no matter what anyone said. And I had always thought that both my parents would stand by my side. They had, after all, raised me quite different to the norm. I decided to seek my father's blessings instead; he had always been the more liberal of the two. "Yasmine," he e-mailed me from Jordan, "I think you are making a big mistake. There's no reason why you should move, and you shouldn't be leaving your mother alone." I was dumbfounded that he did not approve. It really made me think. Think about whether it was really such a terrible thing; if it was our duty to give precedence to the role of parents over ours; if wanting to be financially, physically, mentally independent was such a terrible thing. And it made me think, once again, about one's role, and place, and say, in society. And it made me wonder -- not for the first time -- if it would have been easier to be a part of the norm; one of the masses raised, and fed, and surrounded by a solid, angular culture, and drilled with principles, values, and beliefs that are founded on what is right and what is wrong. I realised how unfortunately lucky 'us' are, and I recognised, for the first time in my 25-years of battling with an odd existence, that no matter what I did or where I went, in some shape or form I would be torn. New York taught me a lot of that, Cairo is teaching a little bit more. The process of planning, and wanting, and trying to move out, however, is teaching me a hell of a lot more; about being one of 'us'. We will just have to accept that we will never quite know exactly who we are, and we will have to dibble and dabble until we find the different pieces of the multicultural puzzle that have somehow, over the years, come together to make some of us who or what we are.
