Halves and Quarters

Below quote is a conversation between a 7 year old daughter and her mother, from Diana Evans’ ‘Ordinary People’, a delicious novel I’m currently reading:

“‘ I’m half English, a quarter Jamaican and a quarter Nigerian.’

‘No, you’re a quarter Nigerian, a quarter English and half Jamaican.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m half Nigerian and half English, and Daddy’s completely Jamaican.’

‘But I want to be completely Jamaican too,’ Ria said. ‘I want to be all of them.’

‘You can’t be all of them and only one of them at the same time. You can either be just one thing or a mixture of things. Anyway, you’re British as well.’

‘So I’m four things?’”

I’m reminded at how I did something similar in dissecting my identity, and how a core weekend tutor/ facilitator at the Gestalt Centre, said: ‘you are not a quarter this and a quarter that… you are not halves and quarters. You are everything that you are. You are all Kurdish. All Arab. All Iranian. All British. You are all of you.’ I was gripped, though I didn’t comprehend the depth of her message. Still, it stayed with me, and I come back to this image of wholeness whenever I find myself fragmenting with the differences within.

Ending with another quote from Lebanese Amin Maalouf’s book ‘In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong’:

“What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself?”