Shall I -Finally- Belong?

So I have been BORN with this struggle. Who am I and where do I belong?

For the .... Twenty eleventh time :-) I am a Circassian born in Jordan. So although I was born and raised in Jordan.

And until I was 24 years of age, I never left Jordan. What would I say about Jordan? I love it, for sure. And when I went in an 8 days trip to London, I missed it ALOT, although my heart was pounding with happiness all the time in the UK (I have a history of loving the UK, thanks to the Bronte sisters! :-) ). In my way back, my eyes had tears when I laid my eyes on the first sight of a Jordanian village, and at that moment I knew that I will always love and cherish Jordan.

But is it my home? Did I ever feel that I was living in my own homeland? NEVER!

May be it is the people. Or the nature. Or the infra structure. I am not sure. But every thing around me seems different that what I am. The mentality of the people. The way we (as Circassians) pronounce Arabic language in our own way. How different are our houses from the inside. How simple our thinking is. How alot of things that we consider vital are not important to others, and how alot of things that others make sure to highlight are just nothing to us.

So as a result, I NEVER felt that I am home. Until this day, I live my life while containing myself inside myself (this is how I feel, is it clear?). I never felt that I have the right to 'extend' my existence here and feel assured like any normal son of this land.

So may be my ancestral homeland would be the answer?

My ethnicity and roots go back to somewhere else. To the mountains of Caucasus, between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. That is my ancestral homeland.

So when I speak of my roots, that is where I long to be. That is the land from which I descend. These are the people whom I should belong to, today.

The problem is that I do not feel that I belong there. I have never been to that land. Neither did any of my family. Or my grandparents. No one tells me stories of childhood back there.I am really not aware of the mentality of the people who live there. I do not know how they live or what their traditions are! I only know that, although we are Circassians and they are Circassians, too, we are very different from them. We grew up among Arabs and have absorbed alot of the Arab culture that became part of our consciousness. They grew up among Russians (which are the majority there, by the way!) and absorbed alot of their culture as well. The Islamic awareness there is sooooo weak. They have been living in years of religious ignorance, and are opening up slowly to their religion. But they atill have a long way to go.

So as a result, in spite of the sweet nostalgia I feel towards my ancestral homeland, I do not feel that going back to the Caucasus is the solution to my belonging problem!

During the time of the "Arab Spring", things got pretty ugly. REAAAAALLY ugly. You were always supposed to tell your opinion about every revolution: the Syrian free army, the Syrian jabhat-alnusra, the Syrian regime, the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt, Mohammad Moursi, Bassim yousif, the Salafist movement in Egypt, Opposition in Jordan... The regime in Jordan... and every single word you would say would be judged by sympathizers of different parties as an indication of how Muslim you are! I got to feel that we are living in an EVERY DAY FITNA! Putting aside that out of a sudden every one became a thinker, and social media was flooded with opinions and propaganda...

The whole Arab land became so narrow. It became unbearable. And the decision was made: Immigration is the answer!

And the destination was chosen: New Zealand...

And the research period began... we would wait eagerly to finish our work and head home in order to open the New Zealand immigration website and study it... we literally became EXPERTS in the government immigration website.

We started preparing our paper work. All of us. I and my husband, my sisters and their husbands, and my little sister with my mom and dad. The first step was English language proficiency. I and my sisters skipped the IELTS exam step because we had academic degrees of courses taught completely in English. Our husbands did not, so they had to do the exam. All of them got an average band score of 5! :-D

Since the minimum score for a principal applicant was 6.5. So we decided that we, the sisters, would apply and our husbands would be partners. For me, New Zealand was the promised homeland. I read about it daily. I visited places on Google maps and used the street view to take tours in the actual streets. I looked for houses there and started to learn about the system for house rentals and so on. There are some neighborhoods in Auckland that I became so familiar with, to the extent that I expected that if I went their I will easily find my way through simple directions! :-)

I and my husband were the brave couple who really applied. We prepared all of the paper work, and submitted and paid for an Expression of Interest. The system is based on points score. Each of your qualifications and work experience years would give you points. And when we calculated our score, it was relatively high. So we SUBMITTED our application, and we were so optimistic....... until we discovered that our score was not that high! What was the surprise?

Since my husband did not have an IELTS score of a principal applicant, we did not take ANY POINTS for his qualification and experience! So the six months passed, and our application was not selected, and was taken out of the pool... and the whole eagerness we felt went for nothing!

It was a disappointment, but we accepted it. It just was not meant to be. New Zealand was not good for us. May be it was not its time, I do not know. May be it is not good at all. May be we are not ready to live in a nature of that variety. Or in a land that far. Only Allah knows the wisdom!

But this is not the end...

Another door was open...

Stay tuned so that you know :-)