Expatriate

Expatriate. It's an interesting word. In America, I do not hear it used very much. In fact, in the ten years I've now lived here I think I have only heard it once; when the white man who ran the trading team at work was telling me about his time living in Tokyo and the great expatriate community there.

Expatriate. Before I lived in America, which is in the times when I was still a child, I heard the word, it seemed, fairly often. On that small island in the Indian Ocean, whose coasts are covered with forts — a fort, it turns out, is a fortified military building generally used to protect the land. Since the forts were placed there by conquerors I suppose it is safe to say they're still there to protect what was conquered — expatriates were everywhere. Every major city, and a lot of smaller ones, had an expatriate population. They were easy to spot — these expatriates; they held their bodies the way a room with air conditioning feels on a hot Sri Lankan day; like luxurious ease. They ordered food like they weren't going to have to pay for it, or like the money they would use to pay was printed from a machine in their home. Theirs was the tribe that built the forts that dotted the coast, this land was theirs — conquered by their ancestors, part of a birthright that was earned many many years ago. They weren't from the island- no the people that served them, the ones that got their food and raised their children. The ones they had come to manage, or to teach, or to preach too, or to save — they were from the island, but the expatriate owned the island and all that was in it.

Expatriate. I recently looked it up. An expatriate is defined as a person living outside of their country for a short period of time, often for work reasons. That was surprising to me — I had thought I knew what the word meant in the same way I had never questioned the meaning of the word "person." Many of the expatriates I knew and observed in my childhood would fit the definition; they were in fact on the island for a short period of time, often for work reasons. But, many more of them — it seemed — were there indefinitely. In fact, there is a word for a person who moves to a foreign country permanently; immigrant. But these people, I assure you, were not immigrants. Or if they were they certainly did not know.

Expatriate. It is a running joke in my family that I have expensive taste. My mother loves telling stories of me walking into expensive stores at airport duty frees and, like some type of fashion week bloodhound, instinctively going to the most expensive item in the store. These stories are a playful scolding; the message being that I must avoid my inclination to live outside my means, whilst keeping my naturally more refined taste. She scolds while she's proud. It's true. I have  — and I do — gravitate to the luxurious. I do not think I'm being materialistic, however. I don't like stuff for stuff's sake, no — I like what stuff conveys. Luxury is confidence. The frivolousness — the unnecessary nature — of expensive things tells everyone around you that you are in complete control. The master of the universe, so sure of the future, and what awaits you that you need not be cautious. You can live fully in the moment. Things that other people struggle to do, you do with ease, with style. That's what luxury says; and since I've been insecure and afraid of the future for as long as I remember — the short reprise that expensive things allow from my anxieties is welcome.

Expatriate. Being insecure, I wanted that luxurious title when I was on the island. I wanted to walk like I too owned the land — like God must've walked with Adam and Eve; lovingly but with the unshakeable knowledge that they existed at his pleasure. I was in luck I thought, my mother was not from the island; in fact, she was from a strange and distant land. I myself had not been born on the island, my parents had me when they lived in my mother's home country. My father was from the island, but even he had roots in yet another distant land. My father could draw a straight line from the people that built the forts to his own mother and father. Not that it mattered. Many of the expatriate children, probably half of them, had one parent who was from the island; and those children still could claim the title and the powers that came with it. My father's own partial foreignness coupled with my mother's complete foreignness basically ensured my membership in the expatriate community. And so I excitedly claimed it for myself. And I walked like God amongst Adam and Eve — but Adam and Eve did not seem to know I was God. In fact, they seemed to think I was one of the animals God had left them in charge of — and Adam and Eve walked amongst the animals with the unshakeable knowledge that the animals existed at their pleasure.