Who Do You Think You Are?

Whenever I meet someone new, it’s only a matter of time before I hear the following sentence, always intoned in exactly the same, polite, hesitant manner, as if they are telling me something I may not have realized, and they’re worried I might be offended.

“You know, you have a bit of an accent, sort of American...”

I always smile and quickly give them my well-practiced response; all in one go, if they let me.

“I’m half-Filipino, half-English, and grew up in Cambodia, where I went to international school.”

I usually add that American accents are so easy to pick up, like catching a cold (or a stomach bug, depending which country I’m having the conversation in), and we have a conspiratorial laugh about that.

And yet, I’m not sure that’s really the right answer, or if there is one. While my pat response  may be factually correct, none of the three countries I mention are really mine.

I rarely visit the Philippines, mainly because of the huge cost of getting suitable pasalubong (presents) for the ever-expanding family. When I am there, I feel very white and foreign, especially as my mother never taught me Tagalog, fearing it would spoil my English.

Shamefully, I enjoy being Filipino the most when I don’t have to be there, when it means karaoke and yummy food with fellow émigrés, rather than strange looks from relatives for extending my education without becoming a doctor or lawyer, or literally being taken for a ride by unscrupulous taxi drivers.

Despite what it says on my passport, and my undying love of fish & chips, bangers & mash, bubble & squeak and so on, no one ever considers me English – in middle school I was the “Chinky girl”, in high school, among slightly more politically correct peers, I was “Sara International”. In the country of my father – which he left more than 30 years ago – I am an eternal tourist, which  admittedly comes in very handy for asking directions and not having to join in World Cup madness.

I also get extra credit for my mastery of British ways. Darling old ladies tell me that I “speak English very well”, and less darling customers I waited upon in nice restaurants would say I had “done wonderfully” for myself, and tip generously, no doubt imagining it was going to help buy my family a well.

As for Cambodia, the caretaker of my happy childhood, it can no longer live up to the memories. I wander the streets of Phnom Penh, wondering if I’ll run into old friends or spy the ghost of (not-so) Lucky, my decapitated-by-a-gate cat. Instead there’s cheap booze, copious marijuana and sleazy men with girlfriends that are far too pretty for them. I have fun, but I am adrift, yearning pathetically for the lost innocence of the past. It’s just not home anymore.

And these days, “home” is a word I can't help but use promiscuously, possibly meaning my friend's house or holiday rental. For a long time, I envied people who definitely belonged somewhere, who had friends that stayed put, relatives no more than a train ride away, pets that were aged into the double-digits, and maybe even married their childhood sweethearts. They had home countries – they had hometowns.

In my teens, out of a fierce desire to put some roots down, I first refused to follow my parents to East Africa, and then, in their absence, my world reduced to the sleepy English towns of Winchester and Southampton, became obsessed with my Asian origins, crushing heavily on every half-Asian boy I met, devouring Amy Tan books that meditated on the divide between Asian mothers and Westernized daughters, and restraining myself from hugging every Filipino nurse I encountered.

Carrying on the ethnic kick, I went to a university famed for multiculturalism in melting pot London. It unexpectedly cured my self-orientalizing. Most of my classmates had even more convoluted backgrounds and upbringings than I did. Our parents were translators, diplomats, hippies, activists and even (grudgingly admitted) cigarette and oil executives. We were united in diversity.

It further helped that in a city like London, you can be someone different every day, especially in other people's eyes. When I pound the streets, a range of ethnicities seek to claim me: Brazilian, Pakistani, Iranian, typically in corner shops, where the owners would attempt to trick me into revealing my “true” ethnicity by talking to me in their mother tongues.

Further afield, the mistaken identity continues. Despite most describing my accent as American, in the US, it is considered rather English, and before I open my mouth, I am usually deemed to be Mexican. In Tanzania, I was labeled Japanese, as they were the most prominent Asians, apparently going around doing artsy good. In India, people thought I could be Indian, but obviously not a “good Indian girl”, with my unmarried cross-country freewheeling.

Similarly, when I moved to Indonesia, I was immediately accepted as an “us” instead of a “them”, despite my poor language skills. Even when I correct them, people graciously say “the Philippines is so close”.

Amid all this ethnic renegotiation, I gave up trying to fit in, and accepted that perhaps belonging nowhere meant I could belong everywhere, a little bit. Placelessness could be liberating rather than a lack.

After all it matters less where you’re from than where you are right now – and where you’re going.

+ Sara Veal

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