Are You There God, It’s Me Nesima

Growing up with Awkward Identity Crises

As a young Eritrean American Muslim born and raised in the US, I didn’t have a major identity crisis as a kid. What I had instead was a gradual set of crises over time, in small waves, that were interwoven into the natural, awkward process of growing up and trying to fit in.

“Good morning, class, I’m your substitute teacher. I’m going to start off with the attendance so I need you all to be quiet so you can all hear me…. And if I mispronounce I do apologize and hope you’ll correct me!”

They always did when they see the first name on the list, because it’s mine. Nesima Aberra. It’s not that hard is it? I was called Nes-ima, Nemisma, Nezima… I like my name but not when they say it. My dad said my name used to be even more complicated with two S’, two A’s and an H. but I didn’t believe him.

“NEIS-SIMA?” she said.

“It’s…Nesima.”

“NUH-SEE-MAH, well that’s pretty, now does it mean something?”

Why did people think because they haven’t heard it that it doesn’t mean anything? Why would my parents just make it up?

I couldn’t even make up a decent nickname for myself. I told my soccer coach last season to call me Mia, like the soccer player Mia Hamm, but then during practice, he would yell,” MIAAA, MIAAA” and I never responded because I forgot who he was talking to and was thinking about who this new Mia girl was on our team…so I was just Nesima again.

(Little did I know, one day there would be someone else to rival substitute teachers’ mispronunciation and spelling of my name: the Starbucks barista!)

But names are just vessels for the essence of a person. Acknowledging a name is like acknowledging a person, their story, their culture. Questioning the name and it’s easy for a person to get away with questioning the rest. For a good two years, I was somehow able to convince my friends that I was Jamaican. That’s right. I become the foremost authority on Jamaica after watching the classic film, Cool Runnings, wearing my hair in braids, learning patois, buying any piece of clothing that remotely had to do with islands, being happy and rasta colors. I insisted upon going first when we were presenting country reports, because one of my friends had also chosen Jamaica as her topic.

At recess, kids would literally fight over getting to be in my bobsled team and I’d give each kid a “Jamaican” name and we’d all talk in a “Jamaican accent”. I know, I know I’m a horrible person. Basically I was a cultural appropriator before it became cool. My name was Sanka, in case you were wondering.

Since no one knew where Eritrea was, sharing my heritage wasn’t going to resonate with anyone or get me any attention. As Americans, we exotify and appreciate certain stereotypes of foreign places and faces but not the truth. Being one of the only black kids who also didn’t “look,” “act” or “talk” black meant I could pretty much do whatever I wanted and people would believe me. If I wanted to tell the truth of my ethnicity, I had to always introduce Eritrea in context by saying it was next to Ethiopia, kinda like Ethiopia , okay basically Ethiopia!

It’s not my fault we didn’t take world geography until high school, so I couldn’t have a modicum of intelligent conversation about culture and African affairs with my peers. It didn’t mean I wasn’t proud of where I came from, it’s just that I wanted to be different, but not too different. Plus, Rastafarians use the colors of the Ethiopian flag, which was close to the colors of the Eritrean flag, so…I wasn’t totally lying.

When it came to religion, I saw it as something kids did with their families when they went home and that was it. I knew my friends weren’t Muslim, but it didn’t affect our day-to-day interactions, conversations or experiences. We all liked Tamagotchis, Digimon and Furbies. We all listened to Mandy Moore, M2M and Britney Spears.

It was only apparent during holiday season, when the teacher led our class in customary holiday activities like make ornaments, carve pumpkins or sing traditional songs. That’s when I really noticed that I didn’t do any of these things at my house. Our teacher once asked us to share our favorite holiday and create an arts and craft project about it, I talked not about Eid, but Thanksgiving. A holiday my family didn’t even celebrate unless someone remembered and was in the mood for turkey.

Nevertheless, I decorated a bag with a colorful hand turkey and put it next to the other projects dedicated to Christmas, Hannukah, Easter and one kid’s birthday. I asked my family about celebrating Kwanzaa since we were African but my mom just laughed. I never met a single person who celebrated Kwanzaa, so I always wondered why they elevated that holiday into national recognition. Why didn’t we do the same for Eid? I could see the holiday commercials now: “Merry Chrismahanukwanzaheid!”

But Eid had a lot going against it: It was hard to say, it celebrated two really intense topics for kids: sacrifice and hunger and there were no fun traditions to go with it. As much as I knew we didn’t celebrate Christmas, I still tried to engage in the Santa Claus myth just in case. I would leave a letter for him on Christmas Eve to see if maybe the miracles of Christmas was real. A part of me wondered if he was just upset that in my letter, I wrote that it didn’t make any sense to me why he spent his time giving away toys all over the world to only people who believe in him. If he gave stuff to everyone, then maybe everyone would be Christian one day. I woke up to find my letter untouched, unanswered. I was genuinely disappointed that I was right and my friends were being duped. But what could I say? They were the ones with all the cool toys and I was simply the sore loser.

Another part of life I was at a loss for: love. Love may be too strong a word for that age, despite how precocious I was. Despite the only kid not allowed to have a boyfriend because of both my parents’ personal and religious beliefs, I was somehow given the role of matchmaker, mediator and relationship counselor. My fascination began when I came across the concept of having a “crush” from a Bernstein Bears chapter book I read, in which I struggled to understand why Sister Bear and her friends were so nervous around the popular boy in school and wanted to crush him. I guess I deserved to be left out for being so nerdy. My job soon became helping link up my friends with the boy they would go on a date with at recess, share notes, exchange gifts and then not have the energy to communicate with after the span of four days.

I never thought one day I would ever be the object of someone’s crush. It was comfortable but lonely being the benchwarmer in the game of love, never to be chosen to play for the rest of my life. Things changed one Valentine’s Day in 5th grade, when a boy in my class met me after school was over and sheepishly handed me a pink bear hugging a heart.

“Here you go, for you…” he said awkwardly before scurrying away.

“Uhhhh” I responded intelligently.

I held that bear in my hand like it was contraband. I couldn’t be seen with it. But it was so cute and furry but BAD, SO BAD. I was not supposed to get a gift from a boy, not supposed to have a guy like me, and I had no idea how to undo anything of this.

When I went home, I was bursting at the seams with this guilty secret inside of me. Being the obedient first child, by the end of the night, I eventually confessed to my mother what had happened.

“I got this bear from a boy in my class today. He gave it to me for Valentine’s day. Isn’t it cute?”

My mother shook her head.

“Tomorrow, you go back to school and you go to the boy and tell him, ‘Thank you very much’ and give the bear back to him.”

WHAT?

I didn’t know much about boys or relationships, but I knew that was definitely the worst thing I could do in this situation. The poor guy! My non-confrontational, people-pleasing self could never go through with rejecting him like that nor would I risk the awkward encounters we’d have afterwards in the classroom for the rest of the year.

I had no one to turn to, no one who would understand my plight. And then I realized there was someone who would listen. So I went to my bedroom and began to pray. There I was… just a girl… standing in front of God…asking him if it was okay for a boy to like her.

Because that’s what we all want in the end—to be liked, right?

And not by God or our mothers, because we’re taught they will always love and support us. If there’s one thing I wish I had learned at a younger age, it would be the understanding that to be liked you have to be honest, to open yourself up and be vulnerable. As a minority, that can be hard to do when society teaches us daily that we are all the same and we should not highlight our differences. We are also taught to explain ourselves over and over again that we become so tired of justifying our existence. I was so fearful of the parts of me that didn’t belong and hiding them became such a burden for me to carry around.

Becoming a writer gave me the ability to find my voice and learn the power of sharing my lived experiences with the world. It taught me that having challenges and complexities to sort out only made for more compelling stories and that it’s perfectly okay to not have yourself all figured out at once. We are continuously becoming ourselves for the rest of our lives.

I still find myself talking to God often out of despair and confusion, though I try to do it during the good, happy times as well. And if I don’t hear from him for awhile, I’ve got a circle of readers and listeners who make me feel visible and alive.