‘Where do I come from?’ or ‘Which country do I feel like I belong to?!’ or more weird, ‘Where do I feel at home?’ I want to grumpily reply, ‘In some planet where you do not exist now’ with a humble smile to whomever is asking. But usually I have to shut up during these questions if they are bureaucrats. It depends. A question that still faces me during my entire life born as one of the exiled. To be honest I really don’t remember the multi-billion little stories that I make up on the spot to answer according to the different situations. Stories depend on the general atmosphere, the time, the weather; whether it is a sunny day or not, if I’m having a good day or not, or if I might get in trouble because of my humor, anger or if I had offended anyone around me. Answers usually range between nice, intelligent and wise to stupid, offensive and even rude. Not that I aim for any of that. I just happen. Some simple answers are ‘I am a mix-identity of Levant’, of ‘Palestinian & Iraqi descent, born in Jordan’, a ‘made up English term called Middle Eastern’, an ‘Arab with a taste of Kurdish, Armenian, Circassian and Turk’. To go historically deeper; ‘a citizen of mixture, of Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian’. If religion is on the table, mostly I will mock all politely, ‘a Palestinian from Jerusalem born on Christmas day, declared a Muslim yet the Gods and I haven’t agreed of their existence, neither did my city agree to settle in peace.’
It seems to me that our existence is a coincidence and so will be our absence. It just seems like humans are accelerating the process to damage the planet before we leave. It feels like as if I was invited by force to a sold-out show of a black-comedy theatre for ‘Homo-sapiens versus the Rat Race’ hammering on in a round planet circling to an unknown end.