gave up their citizenships and they gave up their ancestral homes, all for the promise of a better and safer future. Each time they sat and reminisced about their previous lives, there was pain, nostalgia, and longing mixed in with their tales of sacrifice and adventures into the unknown. For the longest time, I only saw India through their eyes: a mythical land full of mango trees, huge havelis (private mansions), joint family systems, village bazaars, and a rural life full of delectable Mughal food, religious festivals, and ancestral fields. Perhaps because they had chosen their own destinies, they never stopped me from choosing mine. I will never forget the words my paternal grandmother, Ammi, said to me the day I left Pakistan as a 19-year-old teenager to pursue my dreams in the United States. “We came to this country to build a better future for our children and grandchildren. Now you’re leaving to create your own destiny. I hope you will be more successful than we were.” I often recall her words to this day. Her death in 2005 was one of the most painful moments of my life. I was stuck in Houston, Texas working a 70-hour week at an investment bank and could not get the approved time off to fly back to Pakistan for her funeral. The next few years saw the death of my maternal grandmother and maternal grandfather and each time I was living in a foreign country and not able to say that final goodbye. It was expat life truly at its worst and most cruel. I often wonder if my grandparents would have understood the life that I lead today—the one of a global nomad. The difference between them and me is that I am always able to go back to my previous homes in various cities and countries around the world. A recent trip to the Kingdom of Bahrain where I spent my initial childhood was one of my favorite travel experiences, because it felt meaningful to connect to a place that had been a part of my story. A trip back to Copenhagen or Berlin feels emotional and like a nostalgic trip down memory lane, but it also helps me to appreciate my journey and how far I’ve come. Expat, Migrant, Refugee: Tales of Displacement Any expat will tell you that it’s always a strange sensation to go back to a country in which you once lived, but just the mere act of going back releases a catharsis that those of us living a globally mobile lifestyle desperately need. Going back to a city in which we once lived is like revisiting a previous part of our own identity and who we were back then. It helps us appreciate our current journey. Going back often provides closure. Sometimes going back for a visit opens old wounds, too, and sometimes we view our previous experience through rose-tinted glasses, the privilege that hindsight affords us. And sometimes we yearn to go back in time, knowing fully well that returning to the same place again will be too complicated. This is the reason I recently said no to a second expat
assignment to Denmark. I loved living there, but if I go back, I know it won’t be the same, and somehow I just want to preserve my memories of the place as they are. So, What Happens When Moving Means No Going Back? Moving as a refugee, moving as an economic migrant or moving, for political asylum are very different experiences than moving as an expat, a diplomat, or a missionary. These journeys are full of danger and fear. These international experiences do not come with a paid airline ticket and four seats in economy class. These relocations are not helped by a relocation agency ready to provide support on the ground. There is no promised job waiting for you on the other side. No one is there to help you fill out applications for schools or residence permits. One of my closest friends in Denmark was the daughter of Afghan refugees who sought asylum in Copenhagen. When I mentioned I was from Pakistan, she commented, “Oh I lived for some time in Pakistan too—in a refugee camp.” I was stunned into silence. Her experience of my country was so different to the lavish style in which I had grown up surrounded by family, food, and countless luxuries. She fled her Afghani hometown of Jalalabad on a donkey across the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, Pakistan, and spent many years living in a makeshift refugee camp. She told me there was barely any clean drinking water there for days on end. I found I had suddenly no words to compare her experience of moving to mine. But the desire to understand her experience has only gotten stronger over the years. It is this desire that has led me to both write my own story, and also document the stories of others through writing and filming. Moving as refugees, asylum seekers, and economic migrants is the kind of moving that often does not get discussed in expat or third culture kid circles. Because how can anyone compare the two? How can the difficulties of making new friends or learning a new language compare to risking your life to flee in the search for safety and a better future? And yet, if we stop and listen for a while, the gaps can be bridged, and, just as with my friend in Denmark, friendships can be forged.
Mariam Ottimofiore is an ATCK who has lived in Denmark, Germany, Ghana, Pakistan, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
JUNE 2019
27
