Driving north on the 101 freeway on a foggy December day in 1981, we exit to fill the car with fuel. My father sees a coffee shop, and in an unusual move, decides to stop—we never stopped for drinks; we didn’t buy on the road; we always brought our own. Our thermoses full of tea and hot water, our coolers filled with Iraqi food that shamed me in public. We never stopped for drinks on excursions; we had no such custom, not only because we were poor, but we had not yet absorbed American travel habits. 

Living in Orange County in the ‘80s, my father had the idea to take us on a fishing expedition from one lake to another around Santa Barbara. We went fishing because my dad loved fishing, we went camping because my dad loved camping, we went adventuring all around California because my dad loved adventuring around California. As poor immigrants we had two choices: motels or camping. I hated both. Once my parents discovered camping was cheaper, we began to slowly accumulate camping gear: tent, Coleman camping cooker, coolers, lamps, folding chairs, futons. Yet, horribly, we couldn’t even camp like normal Americans with their sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, steaks. No, we had to draw attention to ourselves by bringing a big old pot of dolma, a dish of stuffed vegetables and grape leaves, that my mom would heat over the camp gas cooker, and the box of water kettles, teapots, tea, sugar, and powdered Coffee-mate that had to be lugged from the station wagon to the campsite. 

But these inconveniences were little compared to what I hated most: the feeling of not belonging in America.

In 1986, we went to El Capitan campground across the freeway from El Capitan State Beach in Santa Barbara. It was the usual embarrassing ritual with the pots, pans, tea kettles; while Americans used the charcoal grills at the campground, my mom and her Iraqi friends were cooking big pots of dolma and makloubeh over the camping gas stove; in the morning while the Americans made their coffee in a camping percolator coffee pot, my mom was making tea in stainless steel kettles she had bought at the Arab market; at night while the Americans drank beer, my parents and their friends pulled out the arak (an anise spirit that tasted like black licorice, similar to the Greek ouzo); and while the Americans strummed their guitars and sang American songs around the campfire, my dad’s friend pulled out his oud (a Middle Eastern lute-like instrument) and sang Iraqi and Egyptian songs.

Sitting around the camp fire listening to the oud, my Iraqi self clapped her hands, snapped her fingers, and couldn’t help but sing along to our favorite Middle Eastern artists. To my surprise, one of the American men from a nearby campsite came over with his guitar and asked what instrument we were playing and what language we were speaking. My dad and the men in our group asked the man to join us. They poured him arak; he was fascinated. Then, at our request, he began to play.

He strummed his guitar and sang Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and John Denver.

The music was familiar because, from our first day in America, I had sought to assimilate; I needed to understand it and internalize it—to enter its peoplehood. I was a fragmented little girl who yearned to be whole. I was sixteen on that particular camping trip; accustomed to being “American” at school and “Iraqi” at home. I knew all the popular American music songs from the radio but had not experienced an American bringing his authentic American identity into our Iraqi Christian subculture.

The Santa Barbara sky darkened and the stars competed with the campfire. Meanwhile, the American man progressed from one song to another, and the music reverberated through me and the lump in my throat expanded; by the time he got to John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” I had to fight hard against the tears—I would have been ashamed to cry in front of my parents and their friends.

And then he began to sing another song by John Denver, one that electrified me:

He was born in the summer of his twenty-seventh year
Coming home to a place he’d never been before
Left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
Might say he found a key for ev’ry door

When he first came to the mountains his life was far away
On the road and hangin’ by a song
But the string’s already broken and he doesn’t really care
Keeps changin’ fast, it don’t last for long

Colorado Rocky Mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
The shadow from the starlight
Is softer than a lullaby
Rocky Mountain high
Rocky Mountain high

The resonance was palpable. He hit the notes, I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky, and I was split by the sonic intonation of his words; they played on my soul and I could sense the existence of two mes; the Iraqi Luma and the American Luma, each moved by the respective music. In that moment, I knew I would never be whole again—my identity permanently bifurcated, my string was broken.

In Willa Cather’s 1918 novel, My Ántonia, Ántonia tells Jim about her father, Mr. Shimerda,

My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make music any more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and for dance. Here never.

Homesickness killed Mr. Shimerda. I was never homesick for Iraq, but I was homesick for my family still living there, and I was homesick for that sense of wholeness and belonging, of being one person with an intact understanding of reality. That intense sense of dislocation and uprootedness has never left me.

Today is the 250^th anniversary of our country—America. Tonight we will look up, and see fire in the sky. It was God’s will that there should be an American Luma, one who will not squander the opportunity given to her to live in a free land, to bring honor to her parents who sacrificed so much to bring her here, and honor to her adoptive country—by calling her back to herself, because although I may never feel whole in this life, America can, and I can and will contribute to her wholeness, for all her citizens.