My name is Steve because my parents thought that it would make personal introductions easier in any country. Neither of my parents is a native English speaker though, which is why they weren't aware of the fact that it's slightly odd to have a hypocorism in your passport.
My father is as German as a German can german and my mother is Arabic. In my introductory post, I mention that I was born into a diplomatic family, that means one which serves in embassies 'abroad' for the foreign office of it's government, in my case the German one. Pretty good life as you can imagine, but that's besides the point of this story.
I was born in Jordan and swiftly moved to Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, where my father was serving. My earliest memories are from New York, where my parents and I moved after Afghanistan, and I enjoyed life until the age of about 5. I was told we're leaving; moving to Germany. I don't remember much else, apart from crying on the floor of what used to be our livingroom. Children forgive and forget, so I quickly shifted from American to German, and recordings of the three years we spent there show somewhat of a German accent lingering in my English. Fast forward three years, and I am told we're leaving again, but this time it will be a little bit different son; we're going to Iran.
This post is not about my experiences however, rather a story to challenge the notion of identity based on nationality, aka 'where are you from'. If you're curious, Iran was my favorite country actually, and we continued to move every three years after that as well and after university-ing in the UK, I continued to travel for a few years and currently find myself in the Balkans, adapting to the Albanian lifestyle and learning the language too.
I notice that when two individuals share a cultural background, they often reference common childhood memories, such as TV-shows or popular historical figures and so on. Most people grow up in one country for the majority of their childhood therefore absorb it's culture. This was the standard for my parent's generation, yet less so for mine. I knew other German diplo-kids who picked up some Thai or Japanese habits, others were more 'western'. Perhaps their parents 'nationalized' them (this is the FO's term not mine!) and therefore saved their 'German-ness'. A friend of mine with a Thai mother was not exposed to it so much. Different strokes. What I do know, is that when I was applying to Diplomat school, each 3 year post abroad was to be followed by three years in 'your own' country to avoid 'denationalization'.
I can attest to the fact that its frightening to wonder where you're from. It definitely induces anxiety, which I tried to cure with anything I could get my hands on. Growing up I learned resistance causes pain, and embraced the uncertainty. I'm from exactly where your from but you might not see that. Let me digress quickly and tell you that it's funny to watch two people from the same country, but from opposing sides (say northern and southern), meet in a foreign land and suddenly become pals. Do you think they'll hang out once they're back home? Doubt it.. the most interesting part is that such a scenario proves to me we have more in common than we don't, but are trained to see the opposite, perpetuating pointless wars to generate profit for a few greedy individuals. How's that bomb. Definitely something worth having anxiety over..