The Lure and the Dilemma of Being an Expatriate
I’m reading Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, a post-war American novel reminiscent of Hemingway, about three European expatriates living in Morocco and the triangular love affair in which they unwittingly, and inevitably, become involved. It provides a temporary escape, a momentary departure from my otherwise static, and stagnant, routine. It is the only means by which I re-experience that indulgent, aimless, sponge-like existence of the expatriate, when all of life is concentrated on the finest of details – “picking the ripest mango in the morning,” a friend writes from Cambodia. There is significant mention of food and drink in Bowles’ novel—as well as recurring references to midday naps and afternoon outings—but there is little mention of anything that remotely resembles labor, or the source of income the threesome seems to have at infinite disposal. Isn’t this what is so fantastically appealing about expatriate life as imagined by Hemingway or Bowles—freedom from the reigns of gainful employment? And placed at this inferior social rung where a capitalist society deems the unemployed, it becomes freedom from other obligations as well. Certain social tenets no longer apply. Monogamy, for one…which is how Bowles’ characters – Port, Kit and Tunner – find themselves in the precarious circumstances they do…
But the problem of the expatriate, like any outlaw, is that
we are drawn back to the nucleus of society, the very thing rejected in the
first place. Society demands that we contribute—but expatriates don’t
contribute, they observe. Society demands linear progression, a trajectory, a
purpose and an aim—but expatriates wander, discover, explore. At a certain
point, they inevitably become alienated. Was I immune to this alienation, lolling about on some
Of course I wasn’t. I often felt useless, dejected, and vain. It’s just as Port declares to Kit: “I think we’re both afraid of the same thing. And for the same reason. We’ve never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We’re hanging on to the outside for all we’re worth, convinced we’re going to fall off at the next bump…”
And as she wisely discerns: “But if we’re not in it, then we are more likely to fall off.”
Expatriates are a self-exiled breed, marginalized by choice. We are a societal mutation. More often than not, we are born into a higher, not a lower, socio-ecomomic class. We are an unforeseen consequence of a good education, the kind that encourages exploration, and a propensity for adaptation to the new and different. But there’s something very old, timeless, and universal about the need for belonging. Expatriates, having strayed from nuclear society, feel this need more than most.
Last night I found myself gushing to a stranger about my brief sejour in Paris, when I lived out of a suitcase and slept on a friend’s sofa, as if those four months were more meaningful, more representative of who I am than the two years I’ve spent since living in New York. The truth is I do not feel I’ve begun a life here in the way I began a life in Paris, if I am in fact right in thinking that life should never be something into which we are born, but rather something we choose.
I still wear the cloak, or rather the undergarments, of an expatriate having returned to my native city. It’s something very few get a glimpse of – my divided, irreparably conflicted sense of self. How can you feel like yourself when crucial parts of you, organs even, are scattered all over the globe? A good friend begs the question: “If we know we left much of our hearts in Paris, how can we ever begin anew here in New York?” How is nostalgia wrapped in a box, framed, or coveted under a bed?
When I lived in France, my days began with a small but significant decision: un express [espresso], un café au lait [café latte], or un grand bol du thé [a large cup of tea]. Now I think pragmatically, not poetically, and order a large coffee on the go, whatever it is that will get me through the day. I read fiercely on the bus to my midtown office about strangers traveling through Africa, the anticipation, adventure and lacking of agenda I once knew so intimately. Have I merely grown up? Not unless one defines progress and maturity as abandoning resistance. Would I want to be back where I was, as a student and new graduate in France, in that interstitial space, far removed from the nucleus?
Am I not there now, “in it,” yes, but still “falling off?”
Copyright © Lucinda Blumenfeld
