German | Afghan
My Mum is from Afghanistan and my Dad is German. My Mum moved to Germany to attend university right after high school, my Dad offered to tutor her in German, and the rest is history. I am the youngest of three children and me and my brothers grew up within German and European culture. My Mum didn’t speak Persian with us growing up, partly because she wanted to improve her own German as a young Mother and partly because there was just a lot of German influence around, being surrounded with my Dad’s side of the family. So, it’s very understandable, but she regrets it a lot now that we’re grown up, and so do we. I have tried to learn some Persian at university, but language learning as an adult is so much more difficult! My parents both love traveling and exploring different cultures, and they both speak multiple languages. In fact my Dad probably knows more Persian than me. I was really fortunate to travel around the world with them as a child and teenager and they have passed on their love for exploring the world to me.
The view on interracial/multi-cultural relationships is definitely a lot more open nowadays than when my parents first met. When my Mum married a German, it was a big shock to her family. And it took a lot of convincing and pressure to procure the necessary documents from the Afghan embassy at the time. That being said, you would be surprised how even nowadays second-generation Afghans in Germany or the US prefer to marry other Afghans!
My partner is also German and while I don’t think it’s an exclusively German thing, we are quite open and direct with one another; there’s no beating around the bush. This is actually something that took me a while to adjust to in the UK. Reading between the lines is not really a natural German strength.
Generally, the people I am surrounded by at work and my friends are intrigued and really interested in my background. My family also has an Italian last name, a relic from so many generations back that there is no record of how it arrived in Germany. But the fact that I spent some time living in Italy and speak Italian tends to confuse everyone. People find it hard to guess where I’m from and will most often guess along the Mediterranean, anywhere from Spain to Turkey. I have grown to like my chameleon appearance.
I feel positive about my heritage and happy to share it with people who are interested. This is in stark contrast to my Mum, who is always extremely uncomfortable when people ask her where she is from. I know that she has faced many challenges living in Germany and situations in which she isn’t taken fully seriously, because she is a woman of a different ethnicity, whose first language isn’t German. This makes me sad and frustrated.
Unfortunately, I don’t find it easy to frequently connect to the Afghan side of my heritage. Beyond the occasional Afghan wedding I'm invited to, I have tried to learn some Persian during my undergraduate degree but after a year the course was cancelled, because there were too few attendees and ever since my Persian book has been collecting dust on my shelf. I have never been to Afghanistan and it is obviously hard to judge when it will be safe to visit in the future. Sadly, my Mum also hasn’t been back in nearly fifty years and all of her family are now spread out across the US, Germany, France and Denmark. She came to Germany when she was only 18, so I imagine it wouldn’t be easy going back these days. Her older sister, who is a medical doctor, spends half the year working in a hospital in Kabul these days and seems to have a stronger connection to her native country.
I never really considered my ethnicity much as a child. I was just me, like anyone else around, wherever they were from. Maybe partly also, because I look reasonably European? It seems to me that there is much more awareness of ethnicity and diversity in English-speaking countries. Probably because Germany has historically been less diverse. In the UK and the US, you are always asked to fill out your ethnicity in questionnaires; as a student, new employee, or when taking some standardised test. I often feel unsure what exactly to answer – ‘White – other’ or ‘mixed – other’? Or am I too White to qualify as ‘mixed – other’?
I am very happy with who I am and where I am. I really enjoy my job, love living in London and being surrounded by people from all over the world, while still being close to my family. So, I’d happily be born again as the same person; but then, it might be eye-opening to be someone else!