My struggle to answer a simple question

Where are you from? 

That question always gave me a hard time. I grew up in Brussels but my relationship with Belgium was tenuous at best. My parents moved there for work, they were expats. I didn’t even qualify as one. 

I was a third culture kid. 

I have both an Italian and a French passport so my best answer used to be “I’m half French, half Italian but I grew up in Brussels”. Every single time I’ve said that, I’ve felt my stomach tighten. That feeling you have when you know you’re lying to yourself. Troubles wouldn’t end there. People would usually follow up by asking whether I felt “more French” or “more Italian”, inviting me to choose a camp. Fair question during the World Cup but in any other circumstance, I’d have to make up something on the spot. 

Why was it so awkward for me to answer such a seemingly simple question? 

If you ask me where I’m from today, most of the time I cut it short by rotating between different versions: I’m French, I’m Italian, I’m European, I’m not sure, it’s complicated. But if I’m in good company, I might offer a slightly longer answer. 

If you think about it, “where are you from” might sound like a trivial question but if you dig a little, it’s far from a neutral one. It is based on the assumption that one of the most fundamental parts of our identity is fixed, that it is encoded in us at birth. It’s perhaps unsurprising that one of the most common frameworks to make sense of people’s identity is their nationality. After all, our rights and freedoms as humans are inextricably tied to their nationality. 

When I was in college in London, I had a Moldovan girlfriend. Moldova belongs to that category of countries whose unfortunate citizens have to get a visa to cross pretty much every border on the planet. We decided that we’d spend the weekend in Paris. She had never been and I was excited to show it to her. It took three weeks and a mountain of red tape to get the stamp that would allow her to get to the other side of the channel. When I think about it, I can still feel the rage in my belly, the feeling of utter injustice that someone’s rights might be determined by “where they are from”, the place they didn’t choose to be born in. 

If by this point in the conversation my interlocutors don’t look like they regretted they asked in the first place, I might venture to add that countries as we know them are relatively recent inventions, a mere 400 years old, not some inescapable law of the universe. Granted, old habits die hard, especially the bad ones, but how long are we going to continue ignoring the absurdity of assigning rights to humans based on pure luck? 

Ask me where I’m from and I might try to recruit you in my struggle to challenge the legitimacy of nation-states as a way of organizing humanity.

Recently a friend I was having this conversation with shared a talk by writer Taiye Selasi. As I listened to her speak, I felt like she was putting words on an idea that lived deep inside of me. Instead of asking “where are you from”, she offered “where are you a local”. In her own words: 

“Replacing the language of nationality with the language of locality asks us to shift our focus to where real life occurs. The myth of national identity and the vocabulary of coming from confuses us into placing ourselves into mutually exclusive categories. In fact, all of us are multi, multi-local, multi-layered. To begin our conversations with an acknowledgement of this complexity brings us closer together, not further apart.”

Finally a question I could answer. I’m a local of Downtown Brooklyn where my son was born, I’m a local of Paris’ 9th arrondissement where I discovered the joys of picking up fresh cheese on the way back from work, I’m a local of the London borough of Islington where I got married and where my brother is about to become a father for the first time, I’m a local of the sleepy streets of Uccle in Brussels which still resonate with the never-ending conversations I had with my childhood friend. Each of those places, their texture, their smell, their heroes, are a part of my identity.

This is where I’m from.