Heritage
As I was rewriting my about page, I was contemplating if I should include where I come from and the kind of culture I grew up with. Then I remembered that I’m half of two worlds, neither considered fully one by either. I was born and raised in Syria until age ten, then we had to flee to Austria. I am now 20 years old, so half my life was spent in one place that profoundly shapes me to this day and the other and more formative half was spent in a place that didn’t want me to be anything but what they envisioned I should be, and that fucked me up pretty intensely.
The reason it could do that at all is probably because my foundation was already weakened by war, terror, and intense trauma. I didn’t know the full extent of how traumatized I was by my childhood experiences until very recently because my area was less affected by the war in Syria as other parts so I assumed I came away fine, relatively speaking. We were besieged but not for long, although we lived under constant threat of ISIS raids and Russian-sponsored necktie-fascist bombardment. It rained bombs every now and then anyway, so it wasn’t as much a fear of the threat becoming a reality as the constant apprehension that we felt that wore us down.
Kidnappings and asking ransoms were normal. It happened all the time and there was no one who didn’t personally know at least someone who was kidnapped and disappeared. I don’t know who did what; all I remember is being terrified. Every time I hear a loud bang, my fight-or-flight kicks in and I duck under anything. Probably the reason I’m very audio-sensitive and suffer from tinnitus.
Despite all of these horrible experiences that I share with so many who fled with their parents like me as well as others still living there on the ground, I’m different enough to not be considered fully Syrian. I don’t consider myself Austrian either because that’s not where I was born and I still knew a different way of life. So I’m both, I suppose, even though I hold the citizenship of the former as of yet.