When someone asks me where I'm from, my mind goes blank. I was born in Canada (1968-1970), grew up in the United States (1970-1988), traveled and moved much (always on my own and not for "fun"), essentially without a proper home or a normal life, between 1988 and 1998, lived as a citizen or immigrant in 4 different countries, currently Finland, and have felt to different degrees as a social outcast in all.

I don't want to say I'm from any country. I don't feel like I am from any country. I feel I have been rejected by the societies, the people, in several countries. I want to say I am a citizen of the world, because, as I am, it is hard for me to embrace any country as mine. I would like to embrace Canada as my country, but if someone asks me where in Canada I am from, what city or province I grew up in, where my family members live, I can't answer them honestly and still have them accept me as a fellow Canadian. I have had just a few brief interactions years ago with Canadians where I told them initially that I was Canadian, but when they found out my background, they left me alone, and one of them insulted me and told me to go back to the U.S. I feel I am a lying fraud if I say I am from any country, because I know their people do not accept me as one of them.

The countries which have left me with the worst life scars and the most profound sense of rejection are the U.S. and Finland. I loved Finland when I came here, and for 7 years after that, but despite my affection for the country, that affection was not reciprocated by the people. My affection blinded me to the unjust and/or rude ways people were treating me here. I chalked it up to the individuals who were treating me that way and I continued to love this country and the people.

I recall the day in February, 2003, when I went to the police station here to pick up the paper with the decision concerning my Finnish citizenship. When I looked at the paper, I saw I had been granted Finnish citizenship and I felt so good inside. I felt happy and I felt somehow that this country accepted me and found me good enough and useful enough to be "one of them." I felt like celebrating, telling friends, people who would be happy for me. As I was leaving the police station, I tried to think who would be happy for me, who did I know who cared about me…Well, I thought I would stop by my office and tell my employer, because he was the only one I could think of, and so I did. My employer was less than interested in my status in the country and essentially responded with "uh-huh" and continued about his business after the brief interruption.

Perhaps it was at this point that a process began in me which gradually removed the blinders of my affection for the Finnish people and led me to realize that it was not the exception that a person here was treating me carelessly and coldly, with indifference at best, but the norm – a friendly, kind person was actually the exception. On occasion, however, my loneliness has prompted me to attempt to try to find some kind of friendly acquaintanceship with a Finnish person and in my most memorable and recent attempts to do that here, via the Internet (as real life experiences have become too harsh and "emotionally unsafe" for me), I was first verbally attacked for not knowing some Finnish composer (not Sibelius) and as a result I was accused of being a Swede, a people who are apparently "proud to know nothing of Finland," and so, this person was angry at me for being Swedish.

I have had to be the recipient of hatred and/or hostility for being Swedish, Tunisian, Arab, American, Canadian… while all the while I have always been aware that I am not even of the countries where I hold citizenships, even if I might have wanted to be. What I am does not matter, because someone will hate me for it – if I am attacked for being American, an American will defend me, but that same American may be the first to berate me for being Canadian or Finnish (or Italian, or Arab, truth is not applicable…), and I believe from my experience that this behavior is the same for people of all world nations, races, etc. So, I side with no nation. I am either all nationalities or I am none. Meanwhile, in my heart, I know I am merely a foreigner in a foreign world.

I am only who I am, alone and independent of the societies and groups, familial, national, cultural, religious, racial, gender, etc., to which people bind their self-identities, self-esteem and their pride. I let people make up their subjective truths and hate me as they will, for I do not want to be liked for a citizenship, a language, a race, a religion, a culture, a nation… I hold my loyalties only with God and with the Truth, as best I can.

Sunday night, in my usual solitude at home, I became engaged in what was a fairly pleasant online chat conversation with a Swedish guy. It is truly rare that I find the kind of person with whom I can even have a substantial (time-wise) chat.

We began, as usual, by learning the basics about one another, what country we are from, age, marital status, where we are living and how we came to live there etc., etc., mixing up languages and being very casual. In accordance with the natural flow of chat conversations, the subject matter became more personal, as he confided some sad and upsetting things to me regarding his upbringing.

I did make note of one comment he made early on, however; when I found out that he lives in a Swedish city that I used to live in, I told him the part of the city I had been living in, which happened to be a part of the city where many refugees/immigrants (apparently Arabs) live. His response was "ugh…Arabland…I'm not a racist, but there is where the Arabs live." I ignored the tone of the statement, gave him the benefit of my doubt and hoped for the best.

The nice chat continued, but came to an abrupt halt roughly 1½ hours after it began when he began to inquire about my fiancé, still in the same casual and friendly tone as before. After all the time we had been talking and all he had shared about himself, despite the hint of negativity towards Arabs, I guess I was hoping that he was more mature and emotionally stable than he turned out to be. When I told him my fiancé was Arab, he changed, as if into a different person. The chat proceeded roughly as follows:

him: Ok, so you gonna be a Muslim?
me: no
him: No?
him: How many Arabs do you know?
me: I know quite many.
him: Ok, and if ya not gonna be a Muslim he's gonna make you one…no offence…
me: He is not.
me: Don't you think we have already discussed these matters? Marriage is not a casual issue.
him: A Muslim can only marry a Muslim…and that's for life…
me: No, only a Muslim woman has to marry a Muslim.
him: Ok, if you say so…
me: A Muslim man can marry a Christian, but the children have to be raised Muslim.
him: The children can't choose what they wanna be :)*[*see note below] … Well good luck with you and your Muslim, heard enough, good luck…Take care…
me: wow, glad you're not a racist…
him: I can't be…
him: ;)
me: but you stop writing to me because he is…
him: He will make a few children with ya and move with them back to where he came from and you will shrug and wonder what happened…:P That's how the story goes…sorry, but true…
me: ok…
me: I believe that was a movie.
him: Do you ever read the news…?
me: of course
him: from Sweden?
me: No.
him: Try the Swedish news next time then…;)
him: A recent thing in December was what I just told you…
him: He came back with the kids after 2-3 years or something and got jail here, poor that mother and those kids…
him: And if you say YOUR guy is not like that, it's your choice :)
me: Why are you concerned?
him: I feel sorry for the truth is all, but it's your choice…:)
me: thank you
me: I wish I hadn't told you.
him: Why?
him: You read it every day here, no news here, but Finland don't have many Arabs so it's not that common there, I'm sure…
me: I see quite many Arabs, for the proportion of foreigners there are in this country.
me: The reason why I wish I had not told you…it is because the response was worse than I had hoped and made me feel bad.

*[This statement is inane 1) - coming from a guy whose parents were drunks, and, according to his own words, he was "9 alone in a city" and left more or less alone to take care of himself since the age of 6-7, and 2) - since children never get to choose anything when they are born, much less their religion. I saw how his antagonistic emotional reaction caused his brain to shut down, giving way to illogic and allowing him to distort and indiscriminately pluck specific bits of information or facts out of their reality and apply them out of context in order to justify his hostility and conform his information to his condemning ideas about Arabs/Muslims/my fiancé, and it is this warped version of reality that he embraces as truth. Perhaps what I find most offensive and despicable about such behavior, is that these people use the misfortunes and suffering of others to promote their anger and hatred – feigned concern about a woman whose Arab husband ran off with their kids, about poor children who can't choose their own religion, etc., is used as a prop to try to convince others to join them in their hatred. It is diabolical behavior.]

That is the essence of the conversation I had with a non-racist Swede.

Why do I need to write about this? I felt so awful by his reaction, just so awful. I could see myself, my fiancé, all Arabs, through his eyes. In his eyes, I, my fiancé, Arabs, are all sub-human, I could feel it in him.

I am not so short on intelligence and heart that anything he implied about Arabs in general or about my fiancé has even the slightest impact on my own understanding of the individual Arabs that I know. It is about him, his heart, his thinking, his twisted version of "truth" and the groundless hostility I felt directed from him at me and my fiancé, as an Arab. I kept asking myself, what did I do to him?? Where is his heart?? Where is his logic?? I can't fathom the hardness, the injustice of his behavior, how can he…how can this person, who himself has suffered from such a bad life, with alcoholic (Finnish) parents who neglected him so, who left him on his own, be so heartless and hostile, hypocritical, and pass such unforgiving and fallible judgment on me and my future husband, on all Arabs alike? Even for him to have a grudge against Arabs at all is just wrong, to say the least, because the offenses he cites for his reaction were not even done to him or to anyone he knows; it was as if he was just searching for reasons to hate…

It is the fact that he can and does behave like this that hurts me, not for myself, not for Arabs per se, but for him, or for the concept of humanity.

The ultimate irony of people who react like he does, is that they are too blinded by their own emotion to see that with the venting of their anger, they tell me absolutely nothing about the object of their hatred, but they show me more about themselves than I ever wanted to see, what is inside them. Sometimes I see inside the people around me, like him, and I look inside myself and I ask "Are he and I the same species?" and it scares me a little, until I remember God and that He is with me and that He loves me and He loves my fiancé.