Belgian/Portuguese | Iranian
I am definitely an atheist although not the proselyte type. If I believe in one thing it’s facts, science, material proofs. It doesn’t mean I am not spiritual but I like to think we are the agents of this world and it’s in our power to do something. Religions are beautiful guides to living together but I find it hard to believe in anything. I think I am bisexual. And that’s not something I say often because the first girl I loved bashed me in front of my whole school so I’ve mostly stuck to men. But I know I love people regardless of their genders. I fall in love with their brains. Call it pansexual or sapiosexual, as you wish. As per my race, that’s a hard question. When moving to the UK, I suddenly had to fill in my mix all the time. the categories were always changing and I was really confused. I look very white now but as a kid with tanned skinned and long curly hair people mistook me for an ‘Arab’ so I have lived experiences that do not fit with my face now. I am Belgian, a bit Portuguese, and definitely Iranian. Does that make me a middle easterner, a Eurasian, a Caucasian, a mixed Asian? I don’t really know.
My Mum comes from Iran and my Dad is himself born of a Portuguese father and a Belgian mother (classic European mix from the 70’s). They met in Belgium at university. My Mum always liked doing drama and was putting up a play (she still does that on the side of her job) and my Dad was sort of the assigned technician of the school’s theatre room (that’s now his full-time job). So my Mum needed help, she reached out and there you go.
My parents used food to combine their cultures. My Mum cooks divinely and my Dad cannot cook at all (well he’s gotten better with time and necessity). I never realised how different our household was until I entered more ‘traditional’ European households and realised the culture of hosting and eating was so different. Entering culturally Muslim spaces or other Asian households also showed me how much we had in common. I had never realised how differently my Mum had shaped our living spaces and lifestyles. I think my Dad is very chill, curious, an avid reader, and generally against rules and hierarchy so none of this disturbed him except the occasional sweets eating before meals and burping afterwards. My parents also moved to Southeast Asia for ten years. I think blending into a completely different way of life also brought them closer together. There’s so much of Southeast Asia that stayed with us that sometimes I don’t know where the things we do come from. Being abroad allowed my parents to bond on what they liked there but also what they wanted to keep from their heritage.
I think being in an interracial relationship today is way easier because it’s all the more diluted. We’re all from somewhere somehow and everyone has an incredible life story. Obviously racism is still rampant and inter-faith unions are still really hard. I can only speak for my circles and the country I live in, but I feel grateful that anyone can do anything. And I am lucky enough to have never been a victim of some unhealthy exoticisation. My former partner was visiting his grandparents once and I told him it was maybe time to tell them I existed and he agreed but he was worried because his grandparents are farmers from French speaking Switzerland and fairly xenophobic so he thought best that I don’t come. When he came back from visiting them, he told me he couldn’t get around explaining my whole mix and had just said I am French (partly true, I feel French in a lot of ways and that’s the country I was living in at the time). His grandma had answered, “pffff, a foreigner”.
I don’t think my culture has had an effect on the way I choose partners, I think it’s about the way you relate to people. It’s not a conscious choice as a feminist with a mixed background and a complicated sexuality. There’s one thing for sure: I bond over food. I find it really hard to cope with people who just can’t handle spices and are not interested in tasting new things. The rest is natural selection I suppose. Being mixed-race allows me to blend in more easily. In India, I was mistaken for a North Indian. In Tunisia, I was mistaken for a Berber. In Malaysia, I caught on the Ramadan tradition really easily. At the Refugee centre where I volunteer, Iranians hang on to me as their own daughter. But in all these instances, I also have my little Belgian touch to add to the experience and it’s a great way to bond with people, “yes I know exactly how to cook your curry but let me also show you how to cook bread in France while you teach me how to cook yours”. Yes, I really am a foodie.
Obviously you get the occasional racism. As a kid I was bullied for being an ‘Arab’ (my Iranian family would die if they could hear that). It asked me to learn very early how to forgive and move on. I compartmentalise everything now. I put experiences in boxes and store them away with a label to remember why I moved on and why I shouldn’t stay stuck on this. It’s also challenging to feel like you’re never whole, never enough. I guess that’s very personal but I always feel guilty for not being Iranian enough or Portuguese enough. People ask that of me and I can’t change how much of the language or culture I know to satisfy their vision of what being a good Iranian or a good Portuguese is. I’ve had to come to peace with that. In terms of jobs, I just know I have to be careful with the way I dress as it can look more ethnic at times and then people put me in a box. Which is sometimes fine and sometimes infuriatingly frustrating.
I connect to all cultures mostly through food. I know I don’t dance badly and I do have a rather colourful fashion involving a lot of scarfs. I love oriental music and I’d love to speak a 100 languages. But truly it’s mostly the food, being able to replicate my Mum’s and learning new tricks. I live finding similarities between cultures through the food, the way linguists make you realise the same word exists in different languages. I haven’t visited Iran. My Mum isn't allowed to go back and the political situation doesn’t push me to go. I’ve visited Portugal to try and reconnect but it didn’t quite do the trick. I’ve been around Belgium a lot and that’s where I identify the most although that sometimes clashes with me feeling very French at core. Funnily enough, my Mum now lives in Morocco and I love it there. It feels very natural, maybe because there are a lot of Moroccan immigrants in France and I used to identify with that immigration population since they are the closest thing to being Iranian in France.
My outlook on my mixed-race identity has changed completely, the older I have gotten. When I show pictures of me as a kid to my friends, they say I look like the typical Moroccan kid in France. Except I was not. Now I’ve learned to play with my looks (mostly my hair) but my skin is also way lighter. Interestingly, I always considered myself hairy and started waxing/shaving early. I didn’t know it was considered early until I talked with friends now who’ve never waxed or started later than me. So at the same age, they’ve got a few years of waxing experience while I’ve got a good load. I’ve now decided to stop caring and realised I have so little hair, Including my eyebrows! My hair was such a big part of my identity. I felt a lot of shame because of my hair, learned how to joke about it, and when I’m finally ready to embrace it, there’s no more!
If I had the opportunity to be reborn I would come back exactly as I am now.