Identity, Belonging, and Citizenship
Wednesday, October 15, 2025
I was delighted by the news that scientist Omar Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. I noticed that Saudi news sources celebrated him as the first Saudi to win a Nobel Prize — something that made me happy too. Yet when I looked deeper into other sources, I found that he is originally Palestinian-American and also holds Saudi citizenship.
This made me think of several people I know who are in a similar situation — both in our time and throughout history — individuals who, despite their origins, hold other nationalities and have significant presences on the international stage.
I thought of Dr. Magdi Yacoub, Dr. Farouk El-Baz, Amr Adib, and Dr. Osama Hamdy, among many others. If any of them were to win a major international prize — in medicine, physics, media, or culture — which country would take pride in them? Egypt? Saudi Arabia? England? America? Their country of origin or their country of citizenship? And how would they themselves feel — to whom would they declare their belonging?
A person is born on land they did not choose, given an identity in a language they did not create, and bears a legal name that may not reflect their inner self.
With time, one may migrate — or be forced to — or choose a new homeland that grants them legal papers called “citizenship,” whether to gain advantages, pursue knowledge, escape persecution, or as a conscious decision to start a new life and family.
But does that make one a true child of the new homeland? Or does an older homeland continue to live inside — ageless, unerasable?
Identity is not residency; it is a journey.
It is the accumulation of experiences — the memory of childhood, a mother’s voice, the warmth of family and community in a neighborhood and school, in pain and joy, in success and failure.
No one migrates alone — one carries the shadows of childhood, the names of early streets. So when asked, “Where are you from?” one doesn’t answer only with the country printed on a passport, but with the land that most resembles their inner voice.
Belonging is of two kinds:
The first is inherited, like lineage — residing in genes, language, habits, and memory.
The second is acquired, formed through participation, work, contribution, and a sense of responsibility toward the nation that embraces you.
But can one truly choose between the two? Probably not.
A person may carry within them more than one homeland, more than one belonging — living a noble duality between the origin from which they came and the future in which they live. Even after gaining new citizenship, they may need time to become truly belonging, not just a name on a card or passport. How many generations does it take to truly “belong”?
Sociologists say three generations are enough for the first roots to fade and for identity to be reshaped:
one generation migrates,
one adapts,
one integrates.
But philosophers whisper that time alone is not enough — for identity is not measured in years but in the depth of meaning.
A person may live fifty years in a new homeland and never feel “of it,” while another, born abroad, may carry in their voice and heartbeat the spirit of distant ancestors. Belonging is not measured by residence but by resonance — by the ability to see yourself in the faces of those around you.
A passport is a document of passage, not a certificate of belonging. It grants you the right to cross borders, not the right to memory. It’s a temporary license to move between nations — but it does not define your inner frontiers.
How many people hold foreign passports yet still feel estranged, speaking a tongue they never mastered, living in a culture that doesn’t reflect their soul?
And how many, without any citizenship, are rooted in their land like ancient trees?
Culture is the collective memory that binds the inherited with the acquired. It is what we carry when we leave — what never falls from the suitcase of the soul.
Language, music, food, proverbs, laughter — they are all remnants of a homeland that lives within us.
And when we live in a new homeland, we do not necessarily lose our first belonging. We may instead redefine it through a wider experience that deepens our understanding of humanity itself.
So I share with the reader this reflection on inherited belonging and acquired belonging.
Life is layered: a person carries an indelible origin and gains a new identity that enriches them. The problem arises only when one of these is denied.
For whoever loses their origin becomes lost; whoever rejects the new becomes unable to integrate.
Mature awareness recognizes that identity is not a “replacement” but an “overlap,” and that belonging is not measured by birthplace, but by the depth of one’s sense of responsibility.
In the end, a person possesses only themselves as a permanent homeland.
If one is true to oneself, open to the world, and loving toward others, one becomes a citizen of the greater homeland — the homeland of humanity.
The true homeland is not on a map but in the conscience that binds you to goodness, in the language through which you express love, in the hand that gives without asking about origin or citizenship.
Closing Thought: Toward a Universal Identity
At the deepest level of awareness, a person realizes that their true belonging is not limited by maps or constrained by borders.
Every land where the sun rises is a home for the soul, and every person who smiles at you is part of your greater family.
That is what philosophers say — though an ordinary person moving from one place to another may not perceive it so easily.
Awareness can lift us beyond rigid attachment to one faith or ritual, beyond fighting over its forms or condemning others who differ, toward understanding its essence: that the Creator is one, calling us to love, justice, compassion, and goodness.
Awareness helps us see that the homeland is an emotional bond — shared history, culture, loved ones, friends, and family. If a naturalized citizen succeeds in creating that shared feeling, they truly belong.
When a person’s consciousness rises from “I am a citizen” to “I am a human being,” a new horizon opens — one in which all people are seen as members of a single body, with different tongues and accents, yet hearts beating with the same sense of goodness, justice, and freedom.
That is the awareness that does not erase origin but transcends it — that does not forget the roots but lets them stretch outward to embrace the entire universe.
For when a person knows themselves, they know their true homeland.
And when they know their homeland, they discover that all the earth is one home, and all people — regardless of nationality — are members of one household in the expanse of existence.
