بلدين

Two weeks ago, I was sitting on a train to Casablanca when a woman sat down next to me. And a very matter-o-fact way she began telling me about her life, sharing pictures of her daughter and questioned me without inhibition my life. Like every other encounter I had this past semester, I had to carefully explain my identity to her. I was American, my ethnic identity was Indian and so forth. Hearing my explanation her facial expressions turned quickly from the confusion I was so used to, and instead lit up:

“Ah, baledeen.” she remarked.

“Baled” is the word for country, and in Arabic, an “een” suffix is added to nouns to express duality. What I had been trying to explain to locals in my own extensive, complicated manner she surmised into one word. The simplicity of her conclusion still stays with me. Baledeen.

I defined myself in my first post as an Indian-American. My time in Morocco has only reaffirmed my pride and assurance in this identity and taught me to appreciate my duality. I had always thought being an American and being an Indian were two very different things that I needed to compartmentalize to balance. But being in Morocco has taught me to see the universality of people, that makes us not so different no matter where we come from or how many places we come from.

Just watching TV with my host parents during dinner, I notice how the same Tide commercial at home that show a mother fixing her child’s stained dress and caring for her family is shown in the same context; but this time, in Arabic with an Arab family. The same emotions are appealed to: love, family, warmth. The only difference being that it is a family that does not necessarily appeal to our perceptions on convention.

At home, I used to look at the perfect family on TV and looking at my own would automatically make me feel different, an outsider. We forget that media often clouds our perceptions. However, being here has taught me to realize that wherever I am, whether in the US, Morocco, or India, what can keep me most rooted to my identity is identifying our commonalities through our differences.

I identify myself in the same way as I did in my first post, but this community has instilled deeper understanding of what my identity means and how to always retain it. When I leave my community in Morocco, I hope to always resonate with this lesson.