Like my earlier drafts, this recounts my experience feeling like an outsider in Sudan and explores how language shaped my sense of belonging. I focused on clarifying the narrative, enhancing emotional impact, and emphasizing my reflections on identity and language.

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Nothing really prepares you for the moment you feel like a foreigner in the place you’re supposed to call home. You can tell yourself that you belong — that this is home — but deep down, you start to question what that even means.

Both of my parents migrated from Sudan to the United States before I was born. I grew up in New York hearing stories about Sudanese culture, the food, the people — all of it. My parent’s direct connection to Sudan shaped how I thought of myself in relation to it. It gave me a sense of belonging to a place I had barely known. I had never been there, had barely spoken the language, and only loosely followed the culture, but somehow it still felt like part of me.

I recall that when I had visited Sudan for the second time, when I was around 5, I held onto that fragile idea of belonging — but it didn’t hold onto me. From the moment I arrived, I was surrounded by a language that was familiar but unreachable to me. Arabic was what I’d always heard my parents speak at home, but I never really spoke it myself. My siblings and I mostly used English, and the Arabic I did know felt scattered and shallow – too shallow for any meaningful conversation. To me, the Arabic character looked like floating shapes — recognizable yet meaningless. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like an outsider off of that alone.

One memory from that trip has always stuck with me. The details are a little blurry — I was young — but I remember how it felt. My sister and I were allowed to bring a few of our things from home, and I brought one of my favorites: an Avengers-themed coloring book. And at some point during the trip, it went missing. The house was full of people, yet my mind was full of conviction. I knew who had taken it: my oldest cousin.

It’s been so long now that I don’t remember his voice or even his face clearly. But I’ll never forget how mad I was. I had never felt so angry at someone before up until that point. I wanted to lash out and use all the bad words I knew, to ask him why he stuffed my coloring book in the back of his closet, to talk to his mom and tell her of his crimes, to say this and that. But then I realized … I couldn’t. He would barely understand what I said, and I barely understood him. 

And that was the part that stuck with me: not just losing something that mattered to me, but realizing I didn’t have the language to do anything about it. I knew exactly what I wanted to say in English — it was all right there in my head — but it didn’t matter. It was like having the wrong tool for the job.

Not only was I missing my coloring book, I was missing the tools and capacities to express my thoughts, emotions, and desire. In my head, I knew exactly what I wanted to say in plain English — but what good is a Phillips screwdriver when you’re faced with a flathead screw? My limited Arabic wasn’t just a gap in vocabulary; it was a barrier to belonging –or confrontation in this scenario– to being fully understood and to understanding others. In Sudan, I was expected to be “from there,” but my language skills told a different story.

I’m not going to say I had some profound realization about identity or language or culture at that moment. I just wanted my coloring book back. But what stayed with me was that feeling — the frustration of being cut off from people who are supposed to be yours. That experience followed me back to New York. It made me think more deeply about what it means to belong, and how even if your roots come from a certain place, it doesn’t always mean you’ll feel at home there.

And yes, I got my coloring book back.