The Pain of Being Judged on the Basis of Your Roots

I was thinking about something the other day and it confounded and amused me in equal measure. The question that I am asked more than any other one is the all-important, “Where are you from?” Indeed, I have come to the conclusion that in Saudi Arabia, my nationality is an issue regarded as being more representative of me than my own name. I have had innumerable conversations with people who have not even condescended to ask my name, but have deemed it of the utmost importance to ascertain my genetic origins. This is something that I never encountered or experienced when I lived for years in the West.

On the surface, maybe I am too sensitive. After all, there is no crime in trying to find out where somebody comes from. What irks me, however, is that such a seemingly superficial inquiry reflects some basic assumptions about one’s intrinsic value. Let me give you an example of a typical conversation that illustrates my point.

“What are you?”

“Saudi.”

“No. I mean where are you from?”

“Riyadh.”

“But, where are you from? Where were you born?”

“Oh! London.”

“No! I mean where are you from originally? Where are your parents from?”

“Ah! Taipei. I am a made-in-Taiwan Saudi.”

That’s really what people evidently want to hear and gloat about. This lack of authenticity somehow makes them experience a transitory sensation of superiority. It’s almost as if as long as they know that you know you’re not real and you can’t be bothered to pretend to be by exuding the guttural sounds that only the real McCoy can produce, you are forgiven for having the green passport. This can only be understood by people who have experienced first-hand how one can be harassed for having been included in a society that prides itself on this sort of exclusion. The underlying pretext is that if your father and your father’s father and your father’s father’s father were not “originals”, then you cannot really be a valued member of this state. What is perhaps even more astounding is the intra-racial discrimination that exists within the very moral fabric of the country itself. I have been witness to the patronizing tones in which people of the central region address others — supposedly because the formerly pure “Arab” blood has been contaminated by foreign impurities. A far cry indeed from the Islamic teaching that all men were created equal in the sight of God.

The whole concept of not only being asked but actually being judged on the basis of your roots is what appalls me. Here especially, or rather unfortunately, racial origins equate to a stereotype that is repeatedly reinforced. The sort of pathetic small-minded generalization that the West is hastily trying to distance itself from. Yet within our society it is de rigeur to categorize people on the basis of what is a discriminatory principle. When I tell people that I am of Indian extraction, I am subjected to an entirely different brand of treatment that varies from polite indifference to blatant racism. People have even apologized for me — apparently suffering from the delusion that being from India is somehow beneath human dignity. I have been told, “But you don’t look Indian,” or “You could really pass for a Saudi if you kept your mouth shut.” As if I were being showered with compliments.

The flipside is when I have had phone conversations about work I have been contracted to do and because of my voice, the other person thinks I am British. When I turn up at the agency looking as impossibly Caucasian as ever, jaws drop and I am viewed as a willful fraud. How on earth can someone like me, of unknown origin and confused nationality, with no obvious herding skills and an obviously put on British accent have the audacity to exist or to work? There is one job in particular that I did in which the brief was rejected due to the client’s conviction that “the Indian” wouldn’t be able to write coherent or grammatically correct English.

The firm actually had to pretend to fire me and hire someone else in order for me to do the job. This was orchestrated at great expense to the client who subsequently lauded and praised my work, insisting that “the Indian” would never have been able to write with the same ability. He insisted from that point on to foot all the expenses of flying the phantom copywriter out to do the job the Indian-British-Saudi was not competent to do.