Two Halves: A Fractured Identity

"Still I feel like an immigrant, Englishman amongst Arabs, and an Arab amongst Englishmen." Lowkey, 2011, Cradle of Civilisation.

Your ability to speak Arabic is impressive to British people, but lacklustre to your cousins back home. The headscarf you wear brings pride and joy to your family, but is an eyesore to the British. And your name is an ordinary, beautiful word to your fellow Arabs, but a mouthful to English speakers.

What do you make of your identity having grown up in the UK, but belonging to a different country altogether?

The result is a fracture of identity—feeling like you’re British, but perhaps only because you have the burgundy red, now sapphire blue, passport. Feeling like you’re Arab, but perhaps only because you follow certain traditions, or because it’s in your blood.

And although you speak English perfectly well, almost as if it’s your mother tongue—you know it’s still not enough. Because you don’t speak Arabic perfectly, not the way a native speaker would, and so, what good has that served us?

For those of us who have grown up this way, our identities have split in half in a way that can only be deemed unnatural, leaving us, at times, questioning who we are and where we truly belong.

Because where do we belong?

Maybe we’re floating around somewhere in a pocket universe, drifting amongst other souls of fractured identities. And when they ask, “Where is your home?”, your only response is “I don’t know”.

The reality is that most of us have settled in the same city where our parents travelled to long ago.

And maybe—home is what we make of it.

Looking at it from a glass-half-full perspective, perhaps we should consider it a privilege to have two homes—the one where we grew up, and the one where we came from.

We’ve learnt from two worlds, two countries, two (or more) languages. We’ve picked up skills and lessons and stories from both cultures which have moulded us into who we are.

And the truth is: a fractured identity doesn’t make us any less whole. Because a fracture leads to recovery, and recovery leads to strength and resilience. 

And it’s time we truly believed it.

 

Quiet Words

23 July 2025 15:32 BST