Where Are You From?

On borderless love and cities as the places and identities we choose.

London’s character changes dramatically in the sprawling stretch between Liverpool Street Station and Kingsland High Street. The route begins between the towering skyscrapers of the city’s inner core—an overdeveloped neighbourhood full of suits, expensive office buildings, and apartments only oligarchs can afford. Then, quite suddenly, the wide pavements give way to the hipster haven of Shoreditch High Street with its trendy coffee venues, graffiti-laden walls, and fusion food stands. Further on, it morphs into off-licenses, secondhand phone shops, and jerk chicken takeaways—Dalston.

It’s all of London in a two-album walk, which is convenient since new records from Daughter and The National just dropped. As I walk around, I see both albums advertised on billboards while I’m listening to them—pretty strong evidence for the idea we’re living in a simulation, if you ask me; a video game where the world generates based on the player’s behaviour. Or perhaps it’s just that the crumbling capital of a former Empire is a place where people go to try and make sense of things, and music helps with that.

It’s early May when I arrive, a couple of months after filing for the divorce. Here in London, I’ll stand still for a month, and celebrate my 31st birthday—the first one without him since I turned 21.

I dart past a hip Asian dressed like a Shanghai runway model, a banker taking a Very Important Phone Call, a woman in hijab scolding her children, a dude with dreadlocks lighting up like he’s in an Amsterdam park. London is an alpha city of the highest order—unabashedly global and globalised, with inhabitants drawn and with heritage from all across the world. Headphones on, I blast Stereo Mind Game and First Two Pages of Frankenstein on repeat.

In the unravelling of borderless love, the division of places is more important than the division of material possessions. I suppose that’s unsurprising for a relationship that played out over nine years and more than 50 countries.

I’ve taken Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, and London in the divorce. He got our UK hometown of Norwich, plus Australia, India, and most of Southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur remains a disputed territory, belonging to each of us in equal measure, and where new love stories have already unfolded on both sides. There was no conversation to decide any of this, but when you’re nomadic, where you go—and the new memories you make to replace the old ones—defines it for you.

My emotional state is bipolar these days. I swing from the euphoria of an adventurous, unconventional life, and work that is deeply meaningful, to the devastation brought by loss, instability, and radical change. Some days I wake up so overwhelmed by the gravity of things, I have to make to-do lists of the basics: “shower”, “get dressed”, “make coffee”. It’s soothing to tick them off; to kick myself into action.

This is how I stay sane and grounded in the process of unpicking and unpacking what’s his and what’s mine, what I’ll take forward and what I’ll leave behind. As I learn to speak as “I” when for so long I manoeuvred the world as “we”.

Small talk with bartenders

I find a cocktail bar called Map Maison and make it my local haunt, bringing a parade of colourful characters through its doors over the weeks that follow.

It’s a global space in all respects: name, vibe, menu, staff, clientele. That’s precisely what I love about it. Some places, like airport lounges, are liminal and global. Others, like this one, are vibrant and global—fit for the pages of Monocle magazine. I enjoy witnessing people’s reactions to it: Jen has been before (as always), Alex is impressed by the crispiness, Roman likes the hanging hams, Ali has the realisation that he’s never been to a real cocktail bar in the dim light of this one.

I’m befriended by two bartenders: MF, an Italian from Lake Como, and PD, whose roots are in Hungary and Romania. I like them instantly, sensing they are my kind of people; passionate about what they do and how they do it; what Logan Roy might call “serious people”; but also lovers of good fun and authentic human connection, like all the best folks in hospitality. There is an intensity of conversation with craftspeople, especially if you speak something of their language. To be dedicated to a craft—to have that passion in you—is what makes people interesting, at least to me.

Of course, it doesn’t take long for the inevitable question: “Where are you from?”

People always ask me that and I have many answers: full nomad, bespoke product of two cultures, UK-born, British passport holder, last homebase Amsterdam, next homebase unconfirmed. I slip on the narratives to see how they fit and to check whether I’m yet capable of mustering a simple and satisfactory explanation of my life.

The question of home, and of where I belong, is front-of-mind these days. I’m a local of many places, London included, but I’m not really from any of them. I remind myself that people are just being friendly—they don’t want the complexity and changeability of the truth through my eyes.

I used to tell people that he was my home. And he was. Now, I am cast out of the safe harbour—trying to pathfind, but more often losing my way, relying on others to catch me. And they do. People are kinder, wiser, more caring, more patient, more generous than I thought. It surprises me how quickly strangers become friends, even though that’s the only way any of us ever makes friends.

Cities are our choice

I tend to feel more British when I’m away than when I come back. I’m a third-culture kid with connections to the UK, the US, and Iran. I spent my childhood visiting family in a myriad of countries, each time occupying a small pocket of the Persian diaspora, whether in a Hamburg apartment or a backyard in suburban Connecticut.

I’ve never quite felt like I belong in the UK—or not any more than I do in other places, at least—and I notice my wiring is distinct from people based here. Settlers are hard for nomads to relate to. Our lens on what’s possible and what’s desirable is different. We see the broader spectrum of human progress—what’s happening on a global scale.

Most of my work is concerned with the dismantling of the nation-state, and that mission goes beyond borders and bureaucracy. During last year’s World Cup, there was a soundbite on the news: “Football is not a sport, it’s a feeling.” I often think of that line in conversations about national consciousness. What is it that makes people feel connected, like they’re part of something bigger? It’s perhaps the toughest question we have to address in building an internet country.

My time in London and my ongoing crisis of belonging teach me that we should be looking closely at cities for insights into how place and identity intersect. MF and PD are not Brits, but they’re definitely Londoners. In the same way as AL, a Sámi from Swedish Lapland, is undeniably an Amsterdammer—but he is not Dutch.

Nationality is not something most people choose; it’s a status or a barrier thrust on us by birthplace or heritage. Cities, though, are places—and identities—that we choose for ourselves. And when we feel enough of a connection to stay somewhere, perhaps cities can choose us too. But with the freedom to live and work from anywhere, how do you navigate choosing—or staying long enough for a place to choose you?

I’ll travel to a different city every week for the next two months, weaving my way across Europe, Central and Latin America, and the US. By the time I get back to London in July, maybe I’ll be a step closer to answering that question.