We search for a sense of belonging. Though our beliefs as to what we should and do belong to are constantly changing. And so we are always lost. Lost not only in the sense of not knowing where we’re going or where we’ve come from but also of not knowing where we are now; of not knowing where we’re supposed to be or how we're supposed to be here (or indeed if there even is a ‘supposed’.) Fate-less. Direction-less. Is this relationship, this job, this way of being how I am supposed to be carrying out my life? Am I in the ‘right’ place for me, now? Am I being the best I can be? Is there a ‘right’? Is there a ‘best’? The problem of course is that we can never know the answers to these questions. Thus, we will always feel like we don’t quite belong, like we don’t (to varying extents) know what we are supposed to be doing.
And so the most common response is to ignore these questions and get drunk. Or drink tea and play backgammon. Or [insert culturally appropriate habit here].We find ways of distracting ourselves away from our feelings of being lost, towards anything that makes us feel part. Of a society, of a community, of anything that gives us a place we can call ‘ours’. Into which we can fit and be our ‘selves’, the sense of which is also in constant flux. For, the age-old question of ‘who am I?’ is more pertinently: ‘who am I in relation to others?’ Who I am is also who you think I am; how you treat me; how you see me; how I try to be seen in your eyes. We are constantly adjusting our behaviour and communication of selves to suit the place and company in which we are present. To ‘fit’ into some semblance of our idea of normalcy; to not stand out from the crowd, to be anonymous and yet to be appreciated as our individual, wonderful selves. And so while attempting to avoid the feeling of displacement, we simultaneously give it weight through actively trying to ‘fit’; to ‘belong’.
Ironically, many of us leave our home communities to find a place of belonging in a foreign land. Some will be running away, others to. Some try to find themselves, others lose - attempting to take control of their own destiny and persuade themselves that if they are lost its because they want to be. For those of us who have tried to find our place in Cairo, she has refused to give us answers or allow us to distract ourselves, but has rather forced us to face our misplacement and the knowledge that we do not really ‘fit’ anywhere. A non-Egyptian in Cairo will be forever foreign, our place here is constantly questioned, our foreign-ness constantly re-asserted. But rather than denouncing Cairenes for this reminder, we perhaps should use it to question our place anywhere and to ask ourselves what it really means to ‘belong’.
And so the most common response is to ignore these questions and get drunk. Or drink tea and play backgammon. Or [insert culturally appropriate habit here].We find ways of distracting ourselves away from our feelings of being lost, towards anything that makes us feel part. Of a society, of a community, of anything that gives us a place we can call ‘ours’. Into which we can fit and be our ‘selves’, the sense of which is also in constant flux. For, the age-old question of ‘who am I?’ is more pertinently: ‘who am I in relation to others?’ Who I am is also who you think I am; how you treat me; how you see me; how I try to be seen in your eyes. We are constantly adjusting our behaviour and communication of selves to suit the place and company in which we are present. To ‘fit’ into some semblance of our idea of normalcy; to not stand out from the crowd, to be anonymous and yet to be appreciated as our individual, wonderful selves. And so while attempting to avoid the feeling of displacement, we simultaneously give it weight through actively trying to ‘fit’; to ‘belong’.
Ironically, many of us leave our home communities to find a place of belonging in a foreign land. Some will be running away, others to. Some try to find themselves, others lose - attempting to take control of their own destiny and persuade themselves that if they are lost its because they want to be. For those of us who have tried to find our place in Cairo, she has refused to give us answers or allow us to distract ourselves, but has rather forced us to face our misplacement and the knowledge that we do not really ‘fit’ anywhere. A non-Egyptian in Cairo will be forever foreign, our place here is constantly questioned, our foreign-ness constantly re-asserted. But rather than denouncing Cairenes for this reminder, we perhaps should use it to question our place anywhere and to ask ourselves what it really means to ‘belong’.
