Finding My Way: Basma Khalifa On Diaspora, The ‘In-Between’, and The Joy of Finding Oneself By Crafting New Traditions
After emigrating from Saudi to the U.K. as a child, the writer and filmmaker grappled for years with reconciling her family’s strong Sudanese culture with her newfound home…
I’m British, and a first-generation immigrant born to Sudanese parents. As a family, we emigrated from Saudi Arabia to the United Kingdom when I was only three-years old, my brothers were then four and seven. My parents had never known anything other than Sudan, having spent their whole lives there. So, when we began our new lives in the UK, it was a culture shock for them more so than for us. The shock made my parents cling to our culture, creating a safe haven embedded in our home. It was as if Sudan itself had been uprooted and placed delicately inside our four walls.
Our parents created a cocoon to shelter us from our new foreign realities and to uphold the values and traditions of our Sudanese culture. Because of my mother, daily life often felt like being in Sudan. The sounds, tastes, and smells would transport us back to my grandmother’s living room. The scent and smoke of bakhoor would linger and create shapes in the air as it danced from room to room. Unknowingly these fragrances would cling to our hair, clothes, and furniture. Something I didn’t realise until my friends would say that I had a certain “smell”.
When my friends visited, the Adhan sounded from an electronic device in our living room, would startle them. I would cringe in embarrassment and rush to turn it down while disguising it as something my mum and dad liked, avoiding the real explanation. On the other hand, we enjoyed the Sudanese music that my mother would play from the kitchen stereo with her cassette tapes. Violin strings, strumming guitars and beating drums echoed throughout our home when my parents hosted visiting relatives and they would all joyfully talk about the Sudan they once knew.
At the weekends, while my friends played and had Sunday roasts, I’d have to go to a Muslim Sunday school in inner-city Belfast. It was my parents’ hope that it would give us some sort of community and maintain our knowledge of Islam. A conscious decision to make sure we never forgot who we were, or where we came from. As I got older, I became increasingly comfortable with explaining the differences in my culture to my friends. For example, why we didn’t celebrate Christmas, but we had two Eids every year. Or why I didn’t eat bacon, but they should try this falafel that my mum made instead.
When I moved to university, I revelled in the freedom of choice, and I began experimenting with what made sense to me. I desperately wanted to fit in and be one of the girls which at times, challenged the core beliefs I had been taught. In my first year of university, I joined the hockey team to make friends. The problem, however, was that the university hockey uniform consisted of very short skirts with matching blue pants, an outfit which my parents would deem haram. I panicked and eventually volunteered to be the goalkeeper. Then I knew I would have to wear as many layers and padding as possible to protect me from the hard plastic ball. No one knew my reasons for becoming the team goalkeeper, but it felt like a small victory to be included without obvious compromise.
Partying into the small hours of the morning was also a new concept as I wasn’t often allowed out late without my brother, but at university, I went out with just my friends, often not knowing where the night would take us. We would always get ready together, taking clothes from each other’s wardrobes. Singlet polyester tank tops and skinny jeans or tight body-con dresses were in fashion. I fondly remember wearing a body-con dress plucked from my friend’s wardrobe. I felt nervously liberated at showing my shoulders for the first time. It didn’t feel as shameful as I thought it would.
I enjoyed the anonymity of this newfound freedom, loosened from the shackles of my parents’ watchful eyes. When I visited home for a weekend, I would pine to return to the new life I’d created. But over time, once I had flexed my initially clipped wings, it dawned on me that I was conditioning myself to become more western to fit in. I was embarrassed. I wanted to honour my roots, but still fit in with my new lifestyle, to find my own path outside the confines of my Sudanese culture.
I began to amalgamate my two worlds. I enjoyed eating mulukhiyah but I wanted chips on the same plate. I wanted to wear my Jallabiya inside the house and wear it paired with Nikes outside. But I wasn’t raised to mix cultures; I was raised to only be Sudanese and Muslim. I admit that during those early years at university, I thought that distancing myself from my roots would give me the life I thought I wanted.
However, as I moved into my 20s, the longing for tradition grew within me. The benefits of having such a strong culture seemed to be clearer as I continuously searched to understand where I belonged. I began to see my culture as my mother’s warmth, as a safety net for whenever I was in need. My heritage connected me to my people wherever I was. Before, I struggled to combine my past with my present. I wondered if I’d be disappointing my mother by not living the way she was raised to live, the way she raised me to live. These cultural and religious rituals felt sacred. By watering them down, I worried I was doing them an injustice.
It took time and maturity to understand the benefits of combining both my identities to represent who I was. The misalignment I often complained about reconciled into a bridge that made sense to who I was becoming. After all, I wasn’t just Sudanese, and I wasn’t just British. I was both.
I realised this when sharing my Sudanese culture with friends and how excited they would be to learn. They weren’t judgemental, they were inquisitive. It was so new to them and in turn embracing my culture through their eyes felt new to me too. I once asked if my university friends would like to come to my family home for the weekend and they excitingly said yes. I spent hours on the phone with my mother prepping. Discussing what she should cook, to remember that they don’t speak Arabic and that they probably haven’t seen someone pray before.
My mother entertained my panic rather than dismissing it. It appeared that she understood my code-switching and tried her best to ease my worries. That weekend, though nerve wracking for me, was enjoyed by everyone. Until now my friends talk about when they visited my house, the food they ate and how my mum hugged them a lot. In that time alone, I realised the importance of both my worlds and in sharing the things that make me who I am. My reasons for keeping my worlds apart felt arbitrary.
Now, I call my mother asking for Sudanese recipes, often video calling while I am cooking to ask her if my food looked right. My bedroom has a continuous aroma of Oud that I long to linger on me as I walk out the front door. Now, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I learnt that creating new traditions can be a celebration of cultures colliding and how creating the unity between the two, speaks to who I am and to millions of the diaspora that live in the in-between too. Most importantly I learnt to let go of the guilt of not practising my culture in the way I was raised.
I realised that my upbringing was never meant to hold me back, it was part of the foundation upon which I would build the person I would eventually become. I now take pride in creating my own identity, though at times I still get worried that I am not doing enough. But instead of attempting to juggle the cultures separately, I have now incorporated the best of both to create a world that is uniquely mine as I start to craft my own traditions and customs – looking to a future that has the strongest foundation I could have ever hoped for.
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s March 2022 issue. Lead image by Oscar Yañez.