Lost Identity

I think I’m under the weather. A sudden bout of melancholy and unspecified malaise has wrapped itself around my leg and I can’t seem to shake it off. It is paralysing me, preventing me from playing my part in the world.

This is a strange place for a Brazilian person to set up home; the banana tree doesn’t take hold in this kind of climate. I have taken disguise amongst the indigenous population of this island, cloaking myself with the recognisable characteristics of a local, translating my ‘Brazilianness’ into someone identifiably British.

This may have caused me to lose my identity but keeping my Brazilian outlook was never an option; remaining a permanent figure of fun, an exotic oddity, a madman who could never be taken seriously. There is no cultural cross-reference. Apart from Guyana, South America is largely untouched by the globetrotting and colonising hand of Britannia. As a consequence, Brazil is an alien culture for your average British person. We don’t play cricket, and to understand the difference between a googly and a no-ball, now that really is to have something in common.

This is a land that doesn’t readily embrace foreigners or diversity, despite tolerating it. This attitude is carried in the genes, from word of mouth, in the air, in the exchanged looks. And it is easy to understand why; its history is littered with illustrations of how foreigners mean trouble: invasions, wars, changes in the law, religion and land ownership. It is an island, after all.

Despite my olive skin, they pick me out as one of their own, in Britain or abroad. I even sound like they do and I behave following the same unspoken code of rules. People automatically assume I am British. Yet I never felt like I belong, that I have ever fitted in. I am permanently suspended, hovering detachedly, like a ghost, a mere observer. Lack of daily contact with other Brazilians has made me lose that jiggle in the hips, the instant quip.

But I never fitted in in Brazil either. Fellow Brazilians are puzzled, where is my patriotism, my pride in the flag? Sorry, I don’t feel it, never did. The line in the national anthem that declares I would gladly die for my country, should the need arise, always felt like a bone stuck sideways in my throat. But treachery isn’t acceptable, even from a seven-year old child. In a recent conversation with an ex-girlfriend from my teenage years, she said passionately ‘I am proud to be Brazilian. I love my country’, but it’s fallen on deaf ears, this chest beating. Proud of what? It is hard to feel pride in a nation whose idea of social justice is for 5% of the population to hold 95% of the wealth; a nation that murders its children lest they develop into violent criminals, and where political corruption rules supreme. How could anyone take it seriously?

The other unpalatable side of Brazilian culture is its unmitigated and overt racism towards black people, the people who built the country. Up to the point when I left Brazil, there were no black politicians, no black newsreaders or indeed any other relevant role models. On television, black people only ever appeared on soaps as servants, and what do you expect from the country that abolished slavery later than any other? They are keen to dissociate themselves from their African roots, preferring instead to cite their European ones. But have a look at all the cultural elements which give us our identity and they are mostly based on African culture: national dish (feijoada, food derived from the slaves), music and dance (samba), martial arts (capoeira), carnival. She can keep her patriotism.

Britain is my home. It accepts me for who I am. It doesn’t always agree with me, but it allows me to say what I want and to be who I am, even if I still don’t know it myself. It is not perfect but then show me a country that is. No, I’ll carry on hovering above the ground, ghost-like, with my green passport, a citizen of the world, if you will.