“I’m Maghrebi,” I reply to an old lady asking me where I’m from.

Sitting at the bus stop, my earphone dangling between my fingers, I smile back politely. Looking at her face, glowing with excitement and genuine interest, I don’t have the heart to tell her that this question makes me feel foreign in my own country. I never do.

And yet, I am oh so tired of having to justify my non-whiteness to strangers – of explaining that my mom is from Algeria, my dad is from Tunisia. 

No, I’ve never been to Djerba, Tunisia’s famous paradisiac island. No, I never go to Algeria either. Yes, I’ve heard it’s beautiful there.

Image note: Photographs sourced from very scarce collection of images from the writer’s family archives. Header image of writer with her brother and grandfather, likely taken in 2003 in their childhood flat in Vincennes, France.

I am so used to this interrogation that I know most of the questions by heart, replying like a stage actor spitting out lines on cue.

Sometimes I get creative with it, other times I lie. When I’m tired, I make them guess. People love to play the guessing game.

It’s not always just old ladies who genuinely think that it’s socially acceptable to ask strangers about their otherness.

Sometimes it’s creepy men at nightclubs, thinking scrutiny is a way to get into my pants. Other times it’s people from other countries who didn’t know that French people could look like me.

It’s hard to explain where I come from.

The only fragments of my family’s history I’ve been able to collect are the names of the cities my grandparents were born in, and some local dishes my mom taught me to cook during the chaos of the end of Ramadan celebrations.

I feel ashamed that I’ve never been to my parents’ countries. It’s not that I haven’t tried, but I’d been told so many times that we’d go “next year”, that eventually I just gave up.

The truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever go of my own will. I feel so detached from my roots that I don’t really see the point anymore.

Writer’s dad smoking a shisha, a traditional North African pipe. (Supplied)

I know more about my Islamic religious background than I’ll ever know about my cultural roots.

Almost every day, I feel a deep sadness knowing that my heritage and my history are getting nibbled away by time’s passing. No part of my family’s history was ever really recorded, be it through written words or photographs.

Now that my grandparents have left this world, all we have left is hazy oral history – my parent’s narration of their parents’ narration, who in turn narrated the stories of their own parents.

They are stories that get frayed the more they get passed on; unreliable narrators retelling tales from unreliable narrators. Whole chunks of our history are lost forever.

I’m left wondering how life was in Algeria, cohabiting with French invaders. What stories unfolded under the warmth of the sun in Biscra (a little town in Algeria where my grandma is from)? What made my grandmother suddenly decide to marry my grandfather instead of the man she was promised to?

All of these answers, gone with their memories.

Feeling unsure of where I am from made me drift away from my roots growing up.

I’m Maghrebi – the Arabic word for North African – but sometimes I think to myself that I’m maybe a bad Maghrebi.

I can barely remember the last time I did something that relates to North African culture. How could I, when I barely know what it is?

I sometimes yearn for the artefacts that would make me feel more attached to it, the traditional clothes or the intricate henna designs.

But I stop myself from embracing them, fearing that I’m only performing what I think my culture is.  

Writer’s grandma “looking badass” in Bizerte, Tunisia, where the writer’s dad was born. (Supplied)

I’ve never even been good at celebrating the parts of my roots that I carry in my DNA.

My skin is brown from my mom’s side of the family: a particular tint inherited from the region she is from. My hair is very curly and voluminous.

But growing up in French white suburbia surrounded by kids so different from me, which they never failed to remind me of, I didn’t want to be othered. It was really hard growing up with no representation of my identity whatsoever in the shows and movies I watched after school.

I dreamt of lighter skin and disciplined hair. I dreamt of looking like the kids in my class, and like those on TV.

Trying to relate to France has always felt like sleeping with the enemy.

I hate this country: its long history of built-up yet denied racism, its lingering colonialism where the history of fear stems from. France’s deep fear of political Islam isn’t new, it’s rooted in its colonial past in Maghreb.

Today, policies use horrific past events (terrorist attacks caused by extremist groups) to demonise our communities and fuel right-wing rethorics. France, with its anti-Islamic policies, leads Europe in this regard.

For instance, after banning exclusively Muslim clothes like the niqab, burqa and burkini, France also banned the abaya (a long dress) from schools. These policies unfairly target Muslims who are being peaceful.

With growing fear of Muslims came the escalation and trivialisation of harmful comments about my community.

In this context, one thing has been clear: we are not welcome here.

Writer with her grandfather, likely taken in 2003 in their childhood flat in Vincennes, France. (Supplied)

Here’s the thing: being Maghrebi and Muslim are different. But in France, conflation of these two fuels Islamophobia and xenophobia against Arabs.

People conflate Arabic and Maghrebi, Maghrebi and Muslim, Arabic and Muslim, and worse – Islam and terrorism.

To summarise a complex history in a blunt way, colonialism led the French to see Arabic people as lesser. When independence was reclaimed in North Africa from 1956 to 1962, it was a difficult transition that can still be felt to this day.

Today, 10 per cent of France’s population is immigrated, with 28 per cent being from Maghreb. Surely, this should be the sign of a rich culture, but instead Maghrebis are seen as a problem big enough to effectively fuel right-wing politics; each year brings more anti-Islam policies clumsily linked to anti-terrorism.

As one blogger put it, President Macron’s logical equation is: “Wearing the abaya = Islamist = potential terrorist.”

Researching this pains me.

Simply googling How many Maghrebi immigrants are in France? results in numerous xenophobic headlines popping up – even more so if you replace “Maghrebi” with “Muslim”.

At this point of my life, I’m not sure if I’ve given up on saying that I’m Muslim because I don’t mean it, or because the negative reception I get from others, and see on national television, has finally worn me down.

Women from the writer’s family dressed in traditional Maghrebi clothing. (Supplied)

Through it all, however, I still have kept some traditions alive.

I say a little prayer before bed – called a dua – and it helps me fall asleep soundly. I cannot plan anything without adding inchallah (if god wants) at the end of the sentence, whether it be in my head or out loud.

And above all, I cannot for the life of me eat pork. Usually, it is this last little detail that highlights my otherness. I once had a guy relentlessly pursue me throughout a dinner party, asking me every 10 minutes why I would not eat pork.

What feeling othered as a Maghrebi in France leads to is a rejection of French culture. I avoid anything French.

I purposefully keep myself away from French media, instead immersing myself entirely in English culture. I write in English and speak it on a daily basis, even with my girlfriend, who wishes I would teach her my native language.

If I don’t avoid everything French, it feels like I’m endorsing the country that causes my communities so much misery.

Writer’s grandma with her big brother in Nice, France. (Supplied)

Yet, even after a lifetime of feeling the crushing weight of racism, I still can’t bring myself to leave.

I’d like to say it’s because I have hope, but I think I’m just being passive.

Sometimes it’s easier to ignore the problems. Then a tragedy like the killing of Nahel, a young Algerian boy who was shot by the police after refusing to comply with an identity check in his car, reveals the culmination of years of built up hatred.

This hatred isn’t born out of nowhere, it is cultivated.

Growing up in a country where prejudice towards Muslims and North Africans is tolerated, I learned to internalise this hatred and mimic its sentiments, by straightening my hair and simplifying the spelling of my name.

I shrank the parts of myself I thought were a bother simply by existing. It seemed easier to make myself small, discreet, and to nod along.

But eventually I realised that my compliance was not much different than shame, and that it only fed the cycle of violence. It signalled to others that treating us as parasites was acceptable.

Now, I’m learning how to unlearn all that I have internalised.

I proudly correct people when they misspell my name, and I let my natural curls frame my face, free of all constraints.

Manèle is a Paris-based culture writer who explores media narratives, digital identities, the internet, and their intersection with the political and the personal. Writing under the pen name Mel Zog on her Substack, Face Value, she offers commentary through personal essays and cultural criticism.