It has taken me 20 years to realize that I am proud to be an American. For most of my life, when people would question the origin of my name I would proudly say “It’s Egyptian” in a tone that implied “please ask me more about where I come from.” I clung to the idea of my parents’ Egypt as my own homeland, sticking the flag of my ethnicity into its infinite desert sands. America was a secondary, subordinate world. My roots were planted elsewhere.
In the two-week visits my family and I would take to Egypt, I wanted nothing more than to remove my accent, renounce my place of birth, take up the brown colored skin of an Arab and say in perfect Arabic “I’m Egyptian.” I wanted to peel away the shame I felt at being termed the little American by my foreign family members. Why couldn’t the romantic dream of a golden city rising from the banks of a tireless, pressing Nile be mine?
Growing up, my ears absorbed my parents’ multi-lingual sentences – French, Arabic and English were used to punish me and praise me, ask me to slow down or to hurry up, to complete a chore or come indoors. As a result, my sense of ethnicity became as broken and disjointed as my parents’ patchwork sentences. What the hell was I?
“American, and don’t you forget it,” my mother would respond to my tiring question. “Do you know how many people would kill to come to this country? Don’t take it for granted.” At the time, her words seemed cliched and annoyed me. I was striving for uniqueness in a country that seemed to be suffering from a lack of culture. But I always admired my mother, who was born and raised in Cairo, for her love of the United States. She called it home, found comfort in its McDonald’s and strip malls, relished in its freedom. It has taken me 20 years to find that same pride, and I was born here. I should definitely feel shame, not for my nationality, but for my blatant disregard of my true home.
As my sophomore year nears its final month, I look to a year abroad in Cairo. I want to return fluent in the language that for most of life has fallen on my lips in broken phrases; I want to immerse myself completely in the culture and the people; I want my roots to rise up from underneath a buried existence of an American life. But now I know I am doing it to better understand where my parents come from instead of running from America as if it were a scar, permanently etched in slivers in my skin. I have been coasting through life on the memories of Egypt created from my parents’ stories, puffing up my chest in pride for a country that has become shaded by a cloud of my own romantic imaginings. My memories of the camels in the streets, the marketplaces, Cairo enveloped in a permanent layer of dust and sand are little more than photographs a tourist would take – a cherished testimony of an exotic trip to the orient. It’s time I grew up and learned something of substance.
For 20 years I have struggled with an identity that should have been clear to me from the very beginning. Like any nation, America has its faults, maybe today more so than in the past. But I find myself planting my feet further and further into its soil in an attempt to reacquaint myself with a country I have abandoned. I look to Egypt and my future experience there with excitement. But, while I may carry with me a few souvenirs proving my travels, I intend to return, a little more knowledgeable, and a lot more American. After all, there’s nothing like Egyptian dust to clear your head.
Yasmine Noujaim is a sophomore in the College. She is the Editorial Page Editor and a member of The Hoya editorial board.
