Every so often, I come across a book that I love so much, I want to buy a copy and give it to everyone I know and love. This is most certainly the case with "The Girl from Foreign" by Sadia Shepard. This memoir is going to be my go-to gift for people I care about. From my mother to my closest friends to my daughter, I hope to share this journey with with all. Author Sadia Shepard grew up, as many people I know did, in the Boston suburbs. However, her mother grew up Muslim in Pakistan, having emigrated there from India during the Partition, when India and Pakistan divided into two countries. Shepard's father is Episcopalian and from Colorado. Her most treasured relative is her grandmother, Rahat Siddiq...who was born Rachel Jacobs into Bombay's Bene Israel community. Unknown to me, as well as to many other people, India has had a strong Jewish history, its Bene Israel members believe themselves to be one of the lost tribes of Israel. They trace their history back to a shipwreck on the Konkan coast more than 2000 years ago. Shepard grows with three traditions: Christian, Muslim and Jewish. Her promise to her grandmother, funded by a Fulbright scholarship, takes her to India to discover her Jewish roots. What she finds both surprises and confuses her; that of a people she has known very little about. In them, she finds a missing part of herself.
Like many of us, Sadia Shepard feels torn between several traditions. During her time in India and Pakistan, Shepard experiences the characterization of people who know their own boundaries. As a woman with multiple points of heritage, she attempts to discover her own boundaries...where she begins and where she ends. She is continually encouraged to pick one tradition and to find the niche in which she fits. As an American, the Indians she meets automatically assume she is in their country to visit an Ashram or to go on a yoga retreat. As a woman making contact with the Jewish community, she's assumed to be a practicing Jew. Shepard's Muslim relatives always believe she is looking for a Pakistani husband. Others assume she must be Christian because of her last name. Shepard's seeking voyage takes her not only to places all over southern Asia to discover her own roots, as well as the roots of the Bene Israel community, but it also becomes a journey within...as she tries to find out who she truly is. As she writes, "I never really felt at home in one place or the other, and yet I'm both American and Pakistani; Muslim and other." Shepard finds herself to be welcomed by all of these communities of which she is a part, and yet, feels unbearably different from each of them.
How often do we all feel this way? How many times have we felt both at home, in our own skins, and yet separate and different from those around us? What makes us feel at home in one
community, and what makes us feel contradictory? These feelings may not even have to do with religion or the cultural backgrounds of our ancestors. We may feel complex and conflicting emotions surrounding our political leanings, our life choices or the decisions we had made. We may see our lives as separate and "other" from those around us, leaving us with a sense of not really 'belonging'. What do we need to do to find that recognition and conscious awareness of fitting in?
As human beings, we all want to find a way to fit in. In middle school, many of us insisted on wearing our hair a certain way, wearing specific clothes or wanting particular, desirable after-school activities. We wanted to be indistinguishable from those around us. As we grow up, we continue to search for meaningful connections with our peers, but we may be less likely to change who we are to find do so. We hope to find our special avocation, by reaching out to those with common interests, common beliefs and common goals. We join book groups, churches, clubs and political parties. We volunteer for worthwhile organizations. We attempt to make sense of our own presence in the world by connecting with others. This might well bring us full circle to lead us back to the roots of our childhood. Or, it may well take us in a completely new direction...to find meaningful bonds outside of a life may find lacking. Like Sadia Shepard, this search may lead us on a physical journey, to visit the native places of our ancestors. Or, these travels might spur us on to discover like minded people in other parts of the country. We feel a dramatic pull towards being with people who resemble us or may believe in similar ideals. Instead of changing who we are in order to fit in, we may try to discern where we can go, to find people with whom we find harmonious traits.
What if we haven't a clue about to who we are, before we begin the search? We begin by trying new things, by rediscovering the traditions of our childhood and by investigating the world around us. We can start reading books written by people who come from backgrounds similar
to our own, as well as those who come from vastly different traditions. We can take classes involving new experiences, as well as talking to family members about the activities we did in the past. We can blend the excitement of learning a new skill, folded in with recipes from our youth. We can look through photo albums, remembering the places we went and things we liked to do when we were young. We can share those very spots and traditions with our children, with our friends and with our spouses. We can cook them the foods we loved when we were younger, and share the memories we have with them. In sharing what we already know about ourselves, we may find that we discover hidden truths, hidden meanings and hidden experiences we can only recapture by experiencing them with others...especially those who care about us. In the process, new insights will find us. When these shared experiences lead to questions and conversations, we will be discover entire parts within us that have laid dormant and buried.
C.S Lewis wrote,"Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another: 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one!". As we find ourselves on the journey of self-discovery, we may just find kindred spirits....people with whom we share a great deal of ourselves. What we may also uncover are the keys to unlocking our sense of belonging...but we will all find that, until we are truly comfortable with who we are now, with where we have been and with where we are going, those keys will be harder to discover. When we reach the point of comfort within ourselves, we may just find that we do belong in many different places...and we can feel equally comfortable in each one.
And, we may also discover, that the journey is a lot more fun when we include others.
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