Sharing her story on how to shape your identity across multiple expat experiences, Mariam shows the beauty of a truly multicultural life.
Photographs: Pic Tours Lisbon / Mariam Navaid Ottimofiore
Text: Michaela Medveďová
Relocating abroad can shape one’s identity like not much in life. Mariam Navaid Ottimofiore has tried and tested this in 10 different countries.
With each move adding new layers to her messy, beautiful mobile life, she’s sharing her experiences in books aimed at helping expats and multicultural families like hers.
A mobile childhood
Born to expatriate parents, Mariam became a globetrotter very early on, growing up in 3 countries before the age of 10. Her parents are Pakistani, but at the time of her birth, they were living and working in Bahrain. “My mom did fly back when I was supposed to be born, so I was born in Pakistan, which I’m very happy about. But when I was two weeks old, I joined my parents in their life in Bahrain. I joked I’ve been an expat since birth - I was born into this kind of life and didn’t know any different.”
Eventually, her parents decided to repatriate after a decade of living abroad - in both Bahrain and the US. Her global childhood helped her embrace new cultures and new people and taught her to be open to everything that would ultimately prepare her for her life on the move. “Just being bilingual - from birth, I took a lot of it for granted. I didn’t realise not everyone grew up this way, not everyone is exposed to new cultures and languages and switches schools and meets new people by the time they’re 10.”
Even when you’re moving as a young child, it can come with culture shocks - especially if you move from the Arabian desert to New York in the middle of the winter. “I’ve never seen snow before. There are photos of me too hesitant to step on it as a toddler,” laughs Mariam. “There were downsides for me as well. When I moved back to Pakistan, I could speak Urdu, but I spoke it with an American accent, and other kids made fun of me for that, so I had to work really hard to get rid of it. But when you’re marked as the other, it’s also the identity you embrace. As a result of these experiences, I am very comfortable with being an outsider. It’s my strength and not a weakness. Being an insider can be quite boring. My goal has always been to have a little bit of both, to have one foot on each side.”
Starting her adventure
It can come as no surprise when you learn Mariam decided to spread her wings on her own when she was 19 and move to Boston to start her university education. What prompted her? Finally being in charge. “It was my own adventure. I wanted to set off and explore the world - and do it on my own terms, not following my parents.” Mariam does not believe her thirst for adventure is something that was decided by her globally mobile childhood. After all, she has a sister who decided to live in Pakistan for most of her life. On the other hand, Mariam knew she’d live abroad already as a teenager. “The only question was where.”
So, she’d been applying for colleges in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and many other countries. And she ended up in Massachusetts. However, her uni experience was shaped by forces completely out of her control. “I arrived in the US shortly after 9/11 happened. It was a crazy time, but it was especially crazy for someone like me who is brown, Muslim, female Pakistani, a teenager moving to the other corner of the world on her own. When I arrived on campus, I was pulled into a meeting for brown students, and we were given guidelines and help on what to do if we experience racism or Islamophobic comments.” The politically charged atmosphere of the post-9/11 United States was a challenging environment to step into. On the other hand, it forced Mariam to grow up quickly. “It forced me to take charge of my own identity and be very proud of who I was, and to express it in a way that helped to bridge cultures.” During her junior year, US college students can go study abroad for a year. While technically, Mariam was already abroad, she took that opportunity anyway. She got into a few universities in the UK. “I specifically didn’t want to go to London, so I chose the University of Sussex in Brighton. I was in love with the whole idea of the English countryside and seaside. And the plot thickens - that’s where I met my half-German, half-Italian husband, an exchange student from his university in Berlin.”
While Mariam’s husband did not have the same mobile childhood as his cultural background may suggest, he and Mariam shared the experience of being exposed to different cultures from an early age. “He grew up with two languages, two cultures, having a bicultural identity from birth. Being well-versed in crossing different cultures definitely helped us connect.”
However, they were only together in England for a year - after that, it was time for Boston and Berlin again. That meant dating long-distance. “We called it our transatlantic love, always flying over the ocean to see each other. We were trying to get our lives together - him finishing up his Master’s, me working my first job in Houston. Eventually, we said: Preferably, we should live on the same continent. So after three years of dating, we got married and had a big, multicultural, two-part wedding, first in Germany and then in Pakistan.”
Thus, Mariam left Houston one day in 2006 and never looked back. “It’s a big thing. People, especially in Texas, will say: You’re leaving the US, like, forever? How can you do that? This is the best country in the world. And you honestly don’t know what to say to that person, in this case, the bank manager, because you’re just there to close your bank account. But I knew this was going to be our life. So I closed my bank account and life there and moved to Berlin for love.”
"When you move to a new country, often it’s not really about the new country - it’s how you feel about the old one that can really influence your move. I wasn’t done living in Berlin and felt indifferent towards Copenhagen. I didn’t have any connection to it; we were moving only for work. On the flip side, I struggled so much in Berlin that arriving in Copenhagen almost felt like a fresh breath of air."
Breadcrumbs crisis
What came next was very hard for Mariam. She’s never relocated for anyone else, and suddenly, being in Germany required a lot of soul searching. “Being in a country where you don’t speak the language is a big reorientation of who you are. I found that I really struggled with it. And it was years before iPhones and Google Translate.” Mariam started learning German immediately through an integration course which also covered the culture, history, and societal norms. It was important for her to learn the language as she knew that one day, her husband would be using German with their kids. Within six months, she was fluent in it. “But I was struggling with my sense of self-worth. My friends and colleagues back in the US or UK were going for those corner office jobs, and I was having a meltdown in the German supermarket because I couldn’t figure out what breadcrumbs are called in German. I just felt so far detached from my old life.”
But as fate would have it, Mariam’s husband found a job in Denmark, so it was goodbye Berlin; hello Copenhagen.
As anyone who’s lived in Denmark can imagine, moving to the country in the middle of winter is not the best time. But the harsh January weather wasn’t the problem. “When you move to a new country, often it’s not really about the new country - it’s how you feel about the old one that can really influence your move. I wasn’t done living in Berlin and felt indifferent towards Copenhagen. I didn’t have any connection to it; we were moving only for work. On the flip side, I struggled so much in Berlin that arriving in Copenhagen almost felt like a fresh breath of air.”
Tom Hanks and Janteloven
As it turned out, Denmark did have some advantages - even the small joys of finding out that, unlike Germans, Danes do not dub their movies and TV shows, so suddenly, Tom Hanks sounded like himself again. “Context is so important. Had I been moving from another corner of the world, maybe my experience would be different. But after struggling with my identity in Berlin, facing unemployment, and trying to learn a new language - I found that Denmark gave me a lot more opportunities. Right at the beginning of 2008, the unemployment rate was really low, and they were looking for skilled professionals to join the Danish labour force. I went from being unemployed in Berlin to finding a job within three months in Copenhagen based on an unsolicited application. So, in my experience, what Denmark gets right is that if you are skilled, if you are a professional, you have opportunities to work - and work in your field.”
Mariam also enjoyed the famed Danish work culture, so diametrically different from the very hierarchical one she was coming from in the US. She really had to understand the Janteloven and all the other aspects of the culture to know what she had just stepped into. “What really stood out to me was the non-hierarchical nature of Danish society and the focus on egalitarianism. I could confidently walk into my boss’s boss’s office and say: I have this idea! I love that everyone was so down-to-earth and approachable. I love that our CEO biked into work every morning.” Denmark also introduced her to a new concept- work-life harmony. “It was such a change in perspective for me that both of these aspects of my life shouldn’t compete; they should complement each other in order to be thriving.”
Of course, she did not enjoy all aspects of the Danish culture - especially not the emphasis on conformity as it, in her view, stifled creativity. Mariam found that people were less likely to think outside of the box and present a radically new idea. “The thing I struggled with the most was how conformity was expressed through people’s clothes. Everyone around would be wearing black, and they would look at me in bright yellow or turquoise and think: What are you doing sticking out? Colour is how I express my identity, but I found myself toning down who I was at times and had to consciously fight against this conformity culture.”
But you can’t live somewhere for four years without adopting a lot of the characteristics and habits of the people there. “There are certain aspects of Danishness, as we call it, that we adapted and continue to embrace - Danish design, the Danish flag still sitting on our bookshelves and coming out for birthdays. The concept of hygge, which we were introduced to and happily continue to practice. And the language. I started learning Danish, and still understand so much of it I continually happen to shock Danes abroad. The language, as foreign as it sounded to me back then, now sounds like home. For me, languages become home.”
Pastries and change
But after four years of living Danishly, Mariam’s husband came home one day with a box of Danish pastries, her weakness, and said: I’ve been offered the opportunity to move to Singapore. “I’ve moved a lot. But whenever I am presented with a move, I’m not jumping at the opportunity because relocating is a big thing. Moving is not something that comes naturally to us.” But the reason Mariam did not want to move at this point was that after a long battle with infertility and hospital appointments, she was finally pregnant with their first child. “It was a high-risk pregnancy, and the first few months were tough. Thankfully, the pregnancy got more stable in the second trimester.
I’ll never forget the words of my midwife: Now it is time for you to really settle down and not plan too much for the next three months. And that night, my husband came home and proposed a move halfway around the world.”
Her initial gut feeling was no - she wanted to raise their daughter in Denmark and take advantage of the one-year paid maternity leave. But eventually, the couple decided it was in their best interest to take this opportunity up and move their life to Singapore. For Mariam, it once again felt like a sense of loss of identity. “I had grown fond of Denmark. Now, I was unemployed again, five months pregnant. Initially, I really struggled, especially when my husband left for his first day at work. I had nowhere to be.”
But in Mariam’s memory, Singapore will forever be the country where she became a mom for the first time - and soon, she grew to love it for other reasons, like how the country embraces and practices multiculturalism. “It taught me that this should be the natural way each country operates. I’d never lived in a place where there were four official national languages and such an emphasis on cultural cohesion. We celebrated everything - Christmas, Diwali, Eid, and Chinese New Year. And we were not just off - members of that community actually invited us to come and celebrate with them.”
After three years of living in multicultural Singapore, Mariam was pregnant with baby number two - and that’s when her husband got the opportunity to move to the United Arab Emirates. So after Singapore, the family then moved to Dubai, afterwards to Ghana, and then to Portugal, where they currently live. “I have always moved at the time when I’m at my most vulnerable. Well, when we then moved from Dubai to Ghana, I was not pregnant, but joked that I sort of was because I was working on my first book which was published while I lived in Ghana,” laughed Mariam.
With her third pregnancy, however, came another relocation - and Mariam went into labour on day four of moving to Portugal. She was only 26 weeks pregnant. “Because of the pandemic restrictions at the time, I had to be hospitalised alone, give birth alone, and do the NICU part by myself. I kept telling myself: At least you’re in the right place when things go wrong. Ghana wouldn’t have the medical facilities needed, and Portugal did. That saved our baby’s life, and now we have a happy and healthy four-year-old.”
Stitching your mola
With three children, each born in a different country, Mariam’s family is the definition of multicultural. That’s why she wrote her book - This Messy Mobile Life, about how to blend and fuse different cultures, languages, and senses of identity into one family unit.
For every globally mobile family like theirs that needs to figure out its own dynamic, Mariam came up with a framework and toolbox called mola, which takes its name from a South American style of shirt made from several layers of brightly coloured cloth. “I realised what we were doing through our expat life was stitching our own mola. In my book, it’s also an acronym: mixing your cultures, bringing order to the languages you speak, layering your different identities - and having your sense of adventure because I believe that without it, nothing is complete.”
Mariam made a conscious decision to step away from her corporate career in the economics field when living in Singapore. She started writing for different travel magazines, but she realised that it did not really represent who she was. After all, moving abroad and travelling abroad are two very different things. “I find that in each country, I am a different version of myself. Dubai Mariam is very different from Portugal or Danish Mariam. It’s not just a different place, it’s a different stage in your life. I often don’t know where the place ends and the person begins, because I have meshed them like colourful Play-Doh, and you can’t unmesh the giant blob. After living in 10 countries, I am a giant blob. But writing my first book helped me pull out the messy threads and examine their impact on me.”
The story of her own life might not have an ending or even the next chapter yet - but that shouldn’t be the point, anyway. “The challenge for internationals like us is to live fully in the moment, not knowing how long the moment is going to last. To invest fully into relationships, knowing that one day, you might have to say goodbye. Taking the time to learn Portuguese, knowing that one day you won’t need it. It’s a paradox of nostalgia and pragmatism.”
They’ve now been living in Portugal for four years, and Mariam’s second book is an unofficial love letter to the country. “Every time I leave a country, I write a goodbye letter to it to sort of acknowledge the breakup, to acknowledge what the place has meant for me, what it has taught me, how it has shaped me. This time, I thought: why wait till I might leave Portugal one day to write about it? Why not start writing about it now while I’m still here?” Mariam’s second book ‘The Guilty Can’t Say Goodbye’ shows no matter the country, culture or language, when you touch down on foreign soil, the yearning for identity and belonging is the same the world over.
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