A Chai with Priya - ‘No, but where are you really from?’
On a recent trip to England, I was told that I was “more patriotic” about being from Gibraltar than I was in the past.
I recognised why the comment was made.
This was someone who knew me as a teenager, knew how I yearned to get away from the Rock, saw how I loved and embraced living in London, and watched me move back to Gibraltar quicker than the blink of an eye.
And while the comment was made in jest, it stung a little bit.
Not because I don’t love Gibraltar, it is my home, but because a passing comment like this reminded me of those days when I first started university and people of all colours and all backgrounds would ask me, “No, but where are you really from?”
It transpired that saying I was from Gibraltar was not good enough. It did not provide enough information to the person asking the question.
Neither did telling other people from the South Asian diaspora that I am Sindhi.
I found that, unless the other person were Sindhi themselves, be it from Spain, London, Hong Kong, India, I had to give a brief explanation on the Sindhi community.
An integral part of my identity, being Sindhi means so much to me.
It means having to leave our homeland; it means our family finding their way to other parts of the world and making it their new home; it means identifying with other Sindhis and connecting with them within seconds; it means trying to find a connection or a network of relatives who live around the world; it means having the most fun at weddings and celebrations; it means creating a community not just based on shared surnames which end in -ani and -mal, but also shared experiences.
As we recover from the National Day festivities, it made me wonder what it meant to be Gibraltarian as well.
Unlike many of my peers, my grandparents did not get evacuated out of Gibraltar during World War Two, we did not grow up speaking llanito in the home, and admittedly I didn’t know what calentita was until I was a teenager.
But going to school and maintaining life-long friendships feels like being Gibraltarian. So does walking to work in the morning and saying hello to familiar faces. So do the nights out and days at the beach.
It’s knowing when it is levante and when it is poniente as soon as you open the curtains.
It is celebrating Christmas with friends and Christmas parties held at work. It is going to the Hindu temple for festivities, but also going into the Cathedral.
It is mithai for Diwali, polvorones and mince pies for Christmas and bollo hornazo and hot cross buns in the run up to easter.
It’s also hearing conversations held in llanito, so familiar to my ears and imprinted on me as it is to hear conversations held in Sindhi. It’s also the ability to codeswitch which we all do subconsciously.
I reached out to friends from the Sindhi community, who similarly to me, were born and lived in Gibraltar all their lives, to ask what it meant to them to be Gibraltarian.
Many echoed the same sentiments as me, that being Gibraltarian was in its familiarity.
For some, it was seeing their children attend the same schools that they went to, living in the same home since they were born, having the same friends they’ve had since school days and built years of memories with.
For another, it was part of being part of a community within a community, adding it felt like “being part of an exclusive club”.
“I didn’t realise how important being able to see the sea from my house was for me until I went to university to study,” another friend said, whose house overlooks the Bay of Gibraltar.
“It only dawned on me after I came back to Gibraltar for good and I was looking to purchase my first house that I felt the need to be able to see the sea every single day.”
There have been conversations online about Gibraltar’s Britishness being eroded now that the border with Spain has been lifted.
But being from Gibraltar means so much more than just a physical land frontier where Spain stops and Gibraltar begins.
And that is something that we should all be proud of.
