I was born here. I speak the language without an accent that raises eyebrows. I know the jokes, the gestures, the unspoken rules. On paper, I belong. And yet, there’s a quiet distance that follows me everywhere—a sense that I am slightly out of place in the very country that I was raised in.
I feel it in small moments. In the pause before someone asks, “But where are you really from?” In the way my name is mispronounced even after correction. In the assumptions made about my habits, my values, my loyalties. I am reminded, again and again, that being born somewhere does not always grant full acceptance. Citizenship can be stamped on a document; belonging is far more elusive.
What complicates this feeling is that I am also a stranger in the country my parents come from—the place that is supposed to be my “roots.” When I go there, people hear it immediately: the way I speak, the words I choose, the cultural references that slip past me. I am told I’m “not really from here,” that I’m too foreign, too influenced by the country where I was raised. I am seen as an outsider who carries the wrong rhythm, the wrong expectations, the wrong ease.
So I exist in between. In one country, I am never fully seen as native. In the other, I am never fully seen as one of them. I am associated with the place I was born and raised when I visit my parents’ homeland, and associated with my parents’ origins when I am at my country of birth. Each place points to the other and quietly says: you belong there, not here.
This in-between space is lonely. It means constantly explaining yourself. It means feeling like you have to prove your legitimacy in rooms where others are allowed to simply exist. It means carrying a subtle grief for a sense of home that never quite settles. You learn to laugh off comments that sting. You learn to shrink parts of yourself to make others comfortable. You learn how to translate not just language, but identity.
Yet this experience also sharpens your awareness. You notice how fragile the idea of “belonging” really is—how often it is built on appearance, accent, or ancestry rather than shared humanity. You become fluent in contradiction. You learn to navigate multiple cultural codes, to read a room quickly, to adapt without even realizing you’re doing it. You carry more than one history inside you, even if neither is willing to fully claim you.
There is a quiet strength in that, even if it takes time to see it. When you are a stranger in both places, you begin to understand that home might not be a country at all. It might be people who don’t question your presence. It might be moments where you don’t have to explain yourself. It might be the ability to stand firmly in who you are, even when others try to categorize you into something simpler.
Still, the stranger remains. The desire to be seen as whole, without qualifiers. To not be asked to choose between identities that coexist naturally within you. To walk into a space and feel, without hesitation, I am allowed to be here.
Living between cultures teaches you that identity is not fixed by borders. It is layered, evolving, and deeply personal. And while being a stranger in two countries can feel like a loss, it can also become a quiet act of resistance: refusing to be reduced, refusing to belong only on someone else’s terms.
I may be seen as a stranger wherever I go, but I am not lost. I carry my story with me—a story shaped by more than one place, more than one language, more than one way of being. And perhaps, in learning to live with this in-betweenness, I am slowly building a home that cannot be taken away.
Ibn Umar (Radhiallahu ‘Anhum) said: Allaah’s Messenger (Sallallahu ‘Alaihi Wa Sallam) took me by my shoulder and said:
“Be in this life as if you were a stranger or a traveller on a path.”
Ibn Umar used to say,
“If you reach the evening then do not expect to reach the morning, and if you reach the morning then do not expect to reach the evening. Take from your health before your sickness, and from your life before your death.” – [Reported by al-Bukhari]
Translated Hadith from Arabic to English
سبحانك اللهم وبحمدك أشهد ان لا اله الا انت استغفرك وأتوب اليك