Just like now, a certain melancholy incapacitates me every March. A longing for home, not like any other. Not the one you wish for in the cold winter months, when the stress of school, further exacerbated by malfunctioning heating, creeps into your body, or the one in the heated summer months, filled with the excitement of exams passed. A bit sad, heaving on the chest, that slowly dissolves as spring finally blooms. Yet revisits every single year.
Right about now, I would’ve been celebrating Nauryz—a Turkic new year, spring equinox. Back when I was a child, it would be five days of bliss, not only the start of spring break but a home filled with festivities. Baursaks baked, guests visited, tea drank, and kozhe (which I actually hate—sorry Kazakh people) freshly cooked. The memories are still warm. I have not celebrated Nauryz with my family in six years. Not since I left home those seven years ago.
March blues remind me over and over, that no matter how often I miss my home, I would never go back. What is home? As time passes, I am losing all sense of that world and the whole idea of belonging to it. I would describe it as a place of comfort, where the heart rests, where for a short time you can close your eyes and breathe with a full chest. But Kazakhstan doesn’t seem to match this definition. A home only in a sense, more of an idea, a feeling called home, built of nostalgia. In fact, Kazakhstan hurts me more than any place. I reluctantly call it home.
The relationship with Kazakhstan is like one with a toxic mother. Through screams, yours and hers, she welcomes you on this earth. Too young to be a mother, still not strong enough on her feet. And so she devotes her best effort to giving you everything. A beauty to be admired. You grow and your needs grow too. She can’t keep up. She disagrees. Yells. Blames. Bares her teeth. Carrots and sticks. Her body no longer holds the same softness—all sharp angles. Vicious words sting worse than brutal slaps. You leave. There, detached, you understand her better. Guilt blossoms. A savior complex develops.
You visit her sometimes. She welcomes you with passionate kisses and hugs, her body radiating familiar warmth. She braids your hair and tells you that she is doing great. Her face hidden, making it impossible to make a judgment on the honesty of her words. You wash her back, dimissingly indulging her curiosity about the other world. As the days pass you notice a new web of wrinkles, her frame smaller, eyes more hollow, veins clearly popping on the hands with new calluses on once gentle palms. Guilt bubbles in your throat. And then the stabs come back. They blame you. Blame themselves. Hysteria. Screaming matches. After the fire goes down, you both weep. In each other's presence, but never making an attempt to embrace. You leave the other in their own sorrow. Late at night, sharing a bed with backs turned, through quiet sobs, you wish for a better one, yet you only have one. You will never have another. In the morning you drink tea as usual. And then you leave again. No matter the resentment you still love her. Could amity be reached only when distance separates you?
From a young age, I was told that I would leave. Accordingly, an effort was made on my part. I taught myself to think in English, another colonizer's language. I adopted yet another foreign tongue to express my emotions better. Pop culture, literature, music—all these things shape my brain like those of Westerners. Understand references, don’t feel awkward. Pop tarts, Jimmy Kimmels, Kool Aids, or whatever. See, I belong, right?
In a lovely short story “Third and Final Continent” by Jhumpa Lahiri (I seriously implore you to read the full collection “Interpreter of Maladies”), she makes a small remark, all too familiar to me:
“... sorting through the coins with which I was still unfamiliar, smaller and lighter than shillings, heavier and brighter than paisas.”
I remember when the glistening 100 tenge turned into a chewed, green dollar, which later formed into 1 euro, with a golden rim and silver center, heavy in my hands. My friends often make remarks such as, “Ugh, this cost almost xxx tenge. So expensive.” I long stopped exchanging money in my head. I should not attach myself to a currency I will never earn money in. In fact, I’ve been doing it for so long that I do the exact opposite. “Oh, it cost this much in euros.” or “It will be this many dollars”, I would think. Even my currency is no longer mine.
Yet, now I desperately cling to anything that is Kazakh. Ravenous actually. The sound of my language, the air in the Almaty mountain tops, the salty qurt on my tongue. Is this an attempt to decolonize myself?
Is my culture my home? Will the home erode if I let my culture slip away?
I often feel that I would lose myself in this wondering. Never settling anywhere concrete, heart always worried, not here nor there.
In the book “Three Brothers”, Yan Lianke writes about his fourth uncle, who spent 40 years of his life split between the countryside where his family lived and the city where he worked in a factory. They colloquially called them “bowed-head” at that time. Admired by countryside people and called “those who work outside,” and looked down on by the city natives regarded as “from the countryside.” After retirement, the fourth uncle moved back home, to find a sense of loss and loneliness, even in the presence of his wife and children. Lianke describes the life of “bowed-heads” as:
“They were a group of people who had left their land and, in order to seek riches in the city, had resigned themselves to a life of material hardship, spiritual turmoil, and endless deprivation. They were homesick on account of having left the countryside to go to the city, like so many generations before them, but they were also sojourners who, because of their homesickness, were unable to fully integrate into city life. Among the Chinese people, those who do not suffer from homesickness can be counted as fortunate. Those who do, may find it of value for writing, but it is a burden for life. If you suffer from homesickness but do not write, it is like having a chunk of unrefined gold but not one beautifully crafted piece of jewelry.”
Continuing on the unfortunate split faith:
“Fourth Uncle had spent his entire life as a wanderer. He resided in the gap between the city and the countryside. If the city, in the eyes of those from the countryside, was a lofty heaven, while the countryside was a form of hell on earth, his life for more than forty years had been suspended in midair. This state of being unable to reach heaven while also being unable to return to earth had become a familiar and unalterable reality for him. He was like a bird that has spent half its life in a bird cage hanging from a tree branch--if you release it, it won't be able to adjust either to flying through the sky or to walking on the ground and instead will be comfortable only suspended in between, sitting in a tree that sways in the breeze. Fourth Uncle was the same way. He belonged neither to the city nor to the countryside, and in the end he possessed a life that belonged only to him and others with his circumstances.”
In this world, I am too split between the so-called home and “better life.” This bowed-head experience can be applied to immigrants from developing economies (or third world) who move to developed “Western” countries. I am not diminishing the sacrifice of Westerners in settling in a new country, but a far warmer welcome is extended based on just your being—and color of your passport. I have noticed that these people usually refer to themselves as expats. I am no expat (I am pretty sure it’s a word that white people use to not call themselves immigrants/emigrants (whichever they are)). If you look at Merriam-Webster’s definition of an expat, it is “a person who withdraws (oneself) from residence in or allegiance to one's native country”. Maybe that is what sets them apart. Immigrants always long for what is left behind, yet will never have a chance to come back. For them, it is not an option, just a thought to be eradicated. Expats don’t long, an emergency return ticket hidden in the last drawer.
I would also have to note that I am writing this from a place of privilege too. I am a first-generation immigrant in a quest for a “better” life. However, I will not have a tear-jerking sob story of sailing through the seas to find a better future for my family. No, I am a product of globalization. My parents paid for emigration. I got a scholarship. I live in a nice apartment. I have food on my table. I eat brioches and drink capuccios almost every day. I also started my path to the top and a higher floor. Though I am not sure if I’ll ever reach it. I am not the right foreigner for it. The slits of my eyes are the wrong shape. However, in an effort to Americanize myself, I can equivalently Europeanize myself. Let go of all that makes me Aini. Create a new identity, call things “exotic”, and give my children suitable names so teachers won't stumble when they are called. Must one also give up their own culture mentally to finally assimilate?
At the end of the day, it all culminates in the guilt of leaving. A journey that is both voluntary and obligatory. Required parting from one's family, trading loud dinners for occasional phone calls. I left so early that my brother was a whining high-pitched boy, collecting dinosaurs, to return and meet a teen taller than me, almost a stranger. So what is the reasonable reward to make up for the lost time? Success. Only success could satisfy this guilt, make the disappearance meaningful, the home worth sacrificing.
“Of course, among these homesick city dwellers, the happiest are those who have succeeded in their struggle to become officials and businesspeople. Because they were originally born in the countryside, however, their hometown becomes an endless source of bittersweet memories. If a rural resident manages to leave the countryside and achieve success, such that he acquires a retinue following his golden sedan, then when he returns to his hometown to visit his family and friends, this will almost inevitably constitute a moment of redemption.” - Yan Lianke
As uni comes to an end, I am actually considering going back to Kazakhstan. I am going home (I think?). I always say, “I think,” as if an affirmative statement would change it into a proclamation of failure. I failed to adapt. I failed to make something of myself. I failed to settle there. I failed to establish a new home. Failed to belong. Usually, I settle on the thought that going back will serve as a big sobering punch to the face. To solidify once again: I let go of this place. The idea that I might enjoy my life there is terrifying. I constantly avoid it. I must never let my mind find comfort in this. How obscene is it to be fearful of enjoying a place you are supposed to call home?
It is the exhaustion of starting all over again. An already mundane adulthood weighted down by another attempt to integrate. Maybe the third time's the charm?
Jhumpa Lahiri ends “Third and Final Continent” with this paragraph, a gentle and soothing remark:
“While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly, I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, and each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”
I am Kazakh. Kazakh means “nomad”. Then maybe it is in my blood to roam around to never settle?
