I Spent 36 Years Hiding From My Past. Then A New Year's Eve Email Turned Everything Upside Down

"The night that email I arrived, I held back tears as I clicked reply."

The first thing I did after immigrating to the United States in 1988 at 16 was hide my identity. Being from Lebanon felt shameful, partly due to the ongoing civil war there at the time and the negative stereotypes influenced by political tensions in the region.

Cognisant of these issues, my dad, who had abandoned my mum and me in Lebanon when I was three years old to start a new life in Detroit, insisted I assimilate as quickly as possible once I joined him.

His motives seemed valid. He wanted to protect me from being bullied or discriminated against in high school. He also did not believe in living with a hyphenated identity.

Eager to please him and tired of hearing him ask why it was taking me so long to learn English, I began to transform into an all-American teenager. In the process, I didn’t just assimilate; I erased myself.

It took three decades and a midnight call from thousands of miles away to change all of that.

I was speaking English just six months after arriving in Detroit – albeit with a thick accent. Anxious to fit in, I swapped most of the patterned skirts and dresses I’d brought with me to the U.S. with a more appropriate wardrobe of plain jeans, sweatshirts and tennis shoes.

When my mum joined me four years later, the cycle of shame repeated, and I was the one who insisted she assimilate as quickly as possible. I cringed every time she spoke French or Arabic in front of my American friends or co-workers and made sure she used her Americanised name, Tina, instead of her Lebanese name, Hayat.

After graduating high school, I took accent reduction classes and became a journalist and English teacher. The only visible trace of my Lebanese heritage was my olive-toned skin and a few lingering mispronounced words, such as “pee-zah” instead of “pizza”.

I protected my new identity like I did my citizenship papers, keenly aware that the key to my success – especially in my chosen career – was to distance myself from everything that even slightly hinted at my culture and where I came from.

However, my obsession with being all-American changed on New Year’s Eve 2023 – almost 36 years after I’d left Lebanon – when I received an email in broken English.

It read: I am bchara the son of Aida and Jamil.........

© HuffPost