After many years, many seasons, many divorces of relations, many smiles, many tears, I pick up my pen to write a few lines. This might be a good idea; or a dangerous idea. But why think so much? This is one of the many aspects of life I have been unable to understand in my thirty one years of living: think. I shall keep that precious word for another time.
Today I’d like to talk about “origin”. I don’t remember when I read this word for the first time but I noticed its presence in my life once I started living outside Pakistan. I found this term very intriguing at first. I started doing some research on it and found quite soon how much our world revolved around this word, especially the academia world. I ended up doing a PhD in literature and incorporated this term in my research. After studying for quite a bit, I realized how unimportant and irrelevant “origin” is when it comes to mankind. Ironically, so many atrocities have and are still taking place in the world because of the purity of origin that intellectuals are apparently striving to establish. From the top of my head, I can think of what the ex president of France – Nicolas Sarkozy – did in the name of purity. We know what is going in Quebec these days – charter of values. All for being able to label the origin of a person and categorize it as pure or mixed; in other words: good or bad. My questions are: do origins of a person define that individual as good or bad? Why do we have this constant need to be associated with a geographical location? Does it prove anything? To me, so far, I haven’t been able to find a rational approach behind this act.
I found out that this word has played havoc in a lot of countries especially what were once the colonized countries: North African countries (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, etc), sub continent of India and where I am now living – Canada. The colonizers came, liked, conquered and tried to make the new land their new home. After some considerable years and, centuries in some cases, they were kicked out. But the repercussions of their settlements can still be felt if not seen. People who were left behind or who chose to stay back and their generations to come were all affected by this era. The mixed feelings about the colonizers – some liked or some hated them – lead them to an identity crisis. Today, we have Anglophone, English, francophone (and many other backgrounds) writers who write about identity crisis from east to west like Malika Mokeddem, Assia Djebar, Fatima Mernissi and so many, many more. The nucleus of most of these writers is the postcolonial literature. From the sub continent of India we have writers like Homi Bhaba, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and so many more who have explained over and over the concept of identity from different angles and perspectives.
As a Pakistani, I have seen this need to be associated with Britain, for some odd reason, in Pakistan. For instance, one gets away with a lot if he/she speaks English fluently in our country. For some very strange reason, people would assume that you are a highly educated and even a rich person if you speak fluent English. Why does this concept exist in the first place? Since when speaking our own maternal language Urdu define us as a non educated person? I say it’s the complex… Why do we feel inferior? I wish I had studied Psychology more in detail, maybe I would have found an answer.
Coming back to identity: whatever is strange to a person, he/she would wonder – if not question – the next person’s origins, because in his mind, that is what makes them both different from each other. It’s different not only at the physical level – color of skin, hair, eye, etc – but it’s different like a different species! It does make one wonder, eh?! In this part of the world, I have been associated several times with the exotic, and in a way I am a representative of the exotic, rich land. Proud of my olive skin color, dark hair and eyes, I sometime correct people by telling them I am the exotic beauty! What I have concluded after all my personal experiences, my studies and my research is that whatever is different from a person’s personal perspective, whether it is another human being, a situation, an object, a location, it is somehow labeled as the exotic; for the only reason because that element is not found commonly in the “teller’s” mind or life. This is an act that is not only associated with the “white” people but we as Pakistanis also tend to do that. For instance, the question of origin rises when it comes to a marriage settlement between two families. Getting married into a Syed family signifies the ultimate purity. Let’s not even go what the society thinks of the Malik or Sheikh or Butt. It is a pity pre-deciding and judging an individual based on his “origin” a term which has totally been taken out of context.
Origin is a beautiful word; it is associated with the richness that an individual brings with him into a society. How he invests himself, and how he is a source of knowledge to others. Being positive is the key, digging positivity is THE thing. 

The writer is a PhD french literature. She's now a professor of French settled in canada.

Email:sparvaiz@gmail.com