My ancestors’ wildest nightmares
The drip coffee is overpriced here. That’s the first thing Ali says when he shows up. I didn’t even notice. This place is cozy, warm, and spacious, and the hot chocolate is delicious. That's all that matters to me.
I am still living like an expat. He never fails to remind me: “live the simple life, Reemoh, like us, the immigrants.”
This is not a date. This is me embracing the friend zone, keeping in touch with someone who rejected me. I need to stop telling men how I feel about them.
This time, Ali doesn’t say anything about my lifestyle, but I can still feel his judgment. Leaning back on his chair, he looks around with disdain, then holds his cup as if he is weighing it all while making a face.
He was in his last year of university about to become an engineer when he fled his war-torn country with his Canadian wife. Now he is a divorced landscaper. After many attempts, he gave up trying to complete his degree in Canada. One Canadian university even required him to take high school classes to be considered.
At first, I didn’t want to let Ali’s experience affect my perception of life here, but now I am starting to understand what he means. Earlier today at the employment office, a mock interviewer explained to me that “what the job description doesn’t say is that it requires five years of experience IN CA-NA-DA”. He articulated slowly, emphasizing each syllable like they all do when they presume you can’t understand because you’re new to the country.
As he said it, he highlighted with his fingers the empty space after the sentence as if those two words were written there in a language only I was unable to decipher. This was my first introduction to Unspoken Canadian.
I came here with a PR and a plan. I want to use my journalism experience to get a job in a newsroom, then work my way up to my first passion: filmmaking. I wouldn’t mind an entry-level job for a year or so. My last job back home was so demanding that I could use a break while I figure out my new life here.
As a Permanent Resident, I am as hirable as any Canadian. I had my alma mater mail my graduate transcript from Sweden to Canada to get my credentials assessed. My writing and video portfolios are in English and French. My resume is as Canadian as a poutine.
I completed pre-arrival settlement programs from my parents’ living room in Casablanca. I know everything the government wants me to know about the Canadian workplace and communication styles. I know how to sandwich negative feedback. I’ve perfected my firm and confident handshake.
Ever since I came here three months ago, I have been spending an average of 10 hours a day applying for jobs, volunteering, networking, and completing more workshops. I started volunteering at a movie theatre a week after I arrived. That got me a job at the box office for a film festival, which got me referrals for other service jobs. I remember how I felt after my first six-hour shift at the box office: Are they really paying me to do work this simple?
I’m confident it’ll only be a matter of time before I get a real job, and by the spring I'll have enough savings to furnish a one-bedroom apartment on Oak and 14th. Then my parents will visit. And in three years, I’ll have enough savings to apply for a mortgage, just in time for my Canadian citizenship application.
What could go wrong? I completed a four-year degree in three years. I can do this.
I am holding on to this plan, but the reality is that my honeymoon period with Canada is coming to an end. My money is running out, and I still haven’t gotten any job interviews in my field.
I tell Ali: You know those American TV characters, the frustrated immigrant parents who project their desires on their children? I don’t want to become like that. This is not why I came here.
But I am starting to feel it’s the only option I have.
“Where are you from?” is probably the most loaded question you could ask someone in Canada. But I don’t mind being asked this question. After all, I am not from here, I chose to be here.
The question I hate being asked though is: “So why Canada?”
It often comes as a silence filler in conversations. The person in front of me doesn’t really care about my reasons for uprooting my life. They just need a quick, small talk-friendly, politically correct response.
My answer depends on my mood and my willingness to engage in stereotypical small talk about each country.
Because how can you summarize a decision that took years, family conversations, arguments, savings, planning, doubts, into a bite-sized piece to fill the silence?
During my first year, I may have said: for better career opportunities. But isn’t that ironic?
I had to remove experiences and degrees from my resume to finally be called for interviews.
I was once asked during an interview for a barista job: “Why would you want to work with us if you have a Master’s degree?”
Because I need a job to survive?
Many times, I’ve been told that my experience is impressive yet irrelevant because it isn’t in Canada. I can’t get the jobs I am qualified for because my professional experience is “not Canadian”, and I can’t get the jobs I am overqualified for because managers are afraid I might leave as soon as I find a better opportunity.
I learned to reframe stories to get accepted, to appease recruiters’ fears and flawed assumptions about immigrants. I learned to be less of myself to earn a seat at the table.
Eventually, I got an entry-level job and my own place. I remember lying on the hardwood floor in my empty apartment the day I got the keys.
I felt proud. I could have died happily at that moment.
There’s a saying in Morocco: a girl only leaves her father’s home to go to her husband’s… or to the grave.
Maybe this is why I am here. Not that single Moroccan women don’t move out of their parents' home nowadays. I am just a coward who wanted to avoid a tough conversation.
So why Canada? I don’t know. Maybe I needed to go somewhere I’ve never been, to discover who I am outside of the mold and the society I grew up in. Maybe I needed to prove that I can take care of myself, on my own.
A single woman in her thirties, living alone overseas. I am my ancestors’ wildest nightmares.
In late 2019, I had a series of panic attacks. The social worker asked me the usual questions about suicide. I told her I didn’t have any suicidal thoughts but what seems to me as giving up is going back to my parents’ home, lying in my bed, and hiding under the covers for the rest of my life. She looked both confused and relieved by my answer.
It took more panic attacks for me to accept that there was nothing wrong with asking and getting help, that it didn’t mean that I had failed. So I went back home for a month, slept 14 hours a day, was fed, and taken care of.
Then I came back at the end of February 2020, and the rest of that year was a blur made of nightmares, job searching, insomnia, long walks, and more panic attacks.
So as soon as the Moroccan borders reopened, I went home again. What was meant to be a three-month break turned into a year.
I came back in August 2021, having saved money from working remotely. During that year, I was able to accept part-time jobs and freelance gigs because I didn’t have to worry about how a NET30 payment policy would affect my ability to pay rent.
Coming back here after a year away felt like a reverse reverse culture shock. Is that even a thing? Everything that was once unfamiliar felt familiar but I had been away long enough for it to feel weird to buy tights, Tylenol, and tomatoes from the pharmacy.
Today marks my 1095th day in Canada. Tomorrow, I can apply for citizenship. It took me four years to complete the three-year requirement.
Four years, twenty jobs, fourteen moves, and a hundred eighty-seven panic attacks.
I am thinking of something fun to do this evening to celebrate, but I am distracted by the tension in my body. I try to breathe slowly, to take in this moment. But all I seem to do lately is plan, make lists, and think of the future. Overthink the future.
I take a slow, deep breath. I have worked so hard to be here, for this stability, but how come I no longer know how to enjoy these small moments?
I completed the number of days, but what about their quality? I came here for more but I am only allotted a sandbox for my dreams.
Things have gotten better, but the damage is done now. There have been too many times I’ve had to downplay my experience and my skills. Too many times I’ve made myself smaller than what I know myself to be. I’ve now internalized the fact that everything I was before moving here is irrelevant.
It will take a while before I can take the citizenship test, but I am already thinking about what it means: who will I become? Who am I becoming?
This place is becoming familiar, yet not home. Home is familiar, but it is also changing. And I am changing.
If you weren’t the one making the decision to expatriate, you can always blame someone else for your existential crises. But when you made the decision yourself, and it’s not made out of fear, and home still exists, who do you blame?
(How) do you grieve when you didn’t run away from something, but towards something?
There is no one to blame, no one to make responsible for my feelings.
Just because it is not a result of trauma or someone else’s decision, my process of immigrating is still worthy of reflections and existential questions.
In the recent conversations around inclusion and equity, I feel like there is a lack of focus on the varied and nuanced experiences of newcomers. The narrative often centres exclusively around struggle. It is so normalized that nobody even questions it. It is expected that dreams and ambitions would skip a generation.
I didn’t come here for anyone but me. And even if I have children, I don’t want them to speak about me using the word “sacrifice”. No one ever talks about sacrifice without feeling burdened by it.
If I ever have children, I want them to feel inspired. I want them to say: “My mom did what she set her mind to, so I can do anything!
“Discovering Delight”. What a foreign concept. I signed up for a writing workshop this Sunday. It is free, which makes it even more interesting. The words ‘delight’ and ‘free’ haven’t been in my mind for a while now.
On my way to the workshop, I remember this prompt I used to journal, in early 2019: “Self care is…”.
I remember writing: something I can only allow myself to do AFTER I figure out everything else in my life.
I learned that it’s not true. It’s hard to find time and resources for self-care when you’re in survival mode, but I promise myself to prioritize my joy and pleasure.
So I write. For delight. So that dreams don’t skip a generation.
