When 'where are you from?' becomes 'Who are you?'

In the morning, from my bedroom window in Oman, I can see the mountains. Their familiar outline has become part of the beginning of my day.

I look across at them and feel that I belong here. This is where my life unfolds and where my Omani wife and her family are the people I spend most time with.

Occasionally someone in Oman asks, “Where are you from?” It sounds like a simple question, but I find I cannot give a simple answer. Do they mean where was I born, where I spent much of my earlier life, or where I live now? Britain is part of my history, but Oman is part of my everyday life.

I am no longer sure which answer best describes me. Perhaps that uncertainty is not unusual for people who settle overseas.

We may feel happier in the country where we live while still remaining attached to the place we left. That attachment may have little to do with approval of a government.

I can feel little allegiance to the British government and still feel connected to Britain. A government is not a country’s whole story, just as a passport cannot explain the whole of a person’s belonging.

A passport gives us a legal relationship with a country. It may also stand for identity, security and inheritance. But attachment can reach further back and deeper in: to family, language, childhood memories, familiar streets and the habits we acquired without noticing. We may carry these things with us even when our lives have moved elsewhere.

At the same time, a new country can become much more than the place where we happen to live. We learn its rhythms, build routines and form relationships. We share meals, celebrations and ordinary days.

Over time, what once felt unfamiliar can become intimate. When I spend time with my Omani wife and her family, I feel that they are my family too. Looking at the mountains, I do not feel like a visitor passing through. I feel at home. Why, then, can the question of where I am from still unsettle me? Perhaps because it asks for a single origin, while a life lived across two countries does not always have one clear answer. “Where are you from?” can mean where were you born, where did you grow up, what nationality are you, or where do you consider home? Each question invites a different answer.

Our homeland may be several things at once: the country of our memories, the place where our closest relationships were, the landscape that feels familiar or the community in which we took part.

When we live far away from our birthplace, we may miss the customs and culture we once took for granted. Memory can also soften the past, making us recall its familiar comforts more readily than its frustrations

We can miss a place without wishing to live there again. Feeling at home in Oman doesn’t stop me feeling connected to England. The two attachments are different, but neither has to cancel the other.

I am rooted in the life I am living now while connected to the life that helped shape me. My political allegiance is to the Omani government, but that is a separate matter from my feelings for England and its people. The difficulty in answering is not evidence that I have failed to settle or that I have forgotten where I came from.

It may mean that the question assumes a simplicity my life no longer has. I am English by birth and history, while simultaneously feeling that Oman is home. I can belong here without erasing what came before.

So when someone asks where I am from, perhaps the honest answer is not a country name. It is that I have roots in England and a life in Oman and I am often unsure which country they want me to name.