You’re fluent in both languages — but still not fully understood.
In the West, you’re “exotic,” or “intense,” or “too traditional.”
In the Arab world, you’re “too free,” “too American,” “too changed.”
Your accent shifts depending on who’s listening.
You know when to quiet your story, and when to decorate it for acceptance.
You laugh differently depending on who you’re with.
You soften your opinions in Arabic.
You translate your emotions in English.
You censor different parts of yourself depending on the room — always measuring, always adapting.
No matter where you are, you’re editing yourself.
Too loud, too soft.
Too proud, too apologetic.
Too much, not enough.
You are a mosaic of your upbringing and your undoing —
Raised in one world, shaped by another.
Grateful for both, fully claimed by neither.
In the Arab world, you’re told you’ve forgotten where you came from.
That you’ve “lost your roots,”
That you speak Arabic “like a foreigner now,”
That your ideas are “Westernized” — which is often code for corrupted.
In the West, you’re praised for how well you’ve adapted —
Until you say something that makes people uncomfortable.
Until your name is “hard to pronounce.”
Until you bring up Palestine. Or hijab. Or your mother’s grief.
Then, suddenly, you’re reminded that you’re a guest — and your welcome has limits.
Sometimes, you wonder if this in-between identity is a gift.
A bridge.
A unique way of seeing the world from both sides.
But most days, it’s a quiet exhaustion.
It’s identity fatigue.
It’s grieving a version of home that may not exist —
And a version of self that doesn’t need to translate.
You dream of a space where you don’t have to choose.
Where you don’t have to explain your contradictions.
Where your prayers and your politics can coexist.
Where the scent of cardamom doesn’t feel out of place next to your bookshelf.
Where your grief isn’t too loud,
And your joy isn’t too strange.
You want to just be.
Without apology.
Without performing.
Without always being the bridge.
But for now, you live here — in the tension.
Too Arab for here.
Too Western for there.
And entirely human somewhere in the messy middle.
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