Border & Identity: A Trajectory Leila Ahmed’s A Border Passage
Abstract
In her memoir A Border Passage, Leila Ahmed attempts to uncover and re-examine her identity by delving into historical, political, social and cultural aspects of her life, and re-viewing them from a distance through the processes of migration, travel, displacement and exile, while crossing different kinds of borders. The study of geographical borders and identity in different fields of knowledge have acquired academic acknowledgement in contemporary scholarship due to a notable increase in trans-national movements. Ahmed grew up in an interstitial space questioning where she belongs and who she is. She grew up crossing borders with a confused sense of identity as a result of her brush with colonialism and the contradictions she faced trying to figure out her identity. Thus, and while crossing borders from Cairo to England, to Abu Dhabi, and then to America, Ahmed looks towards the constructedness of an identity that for a long time she is unable to build and understand. Ahmed deftly weaves history within her personal narrative, and shows how events on the macro-scale trickle down and affect her, and influencing her understanding of the world around and of herself. Ahmed finally attempts to harmonize, instead of battle with, the distinct differences of her culture and other cultures in relation to her own, reaching a point where her identity ceases to be a single, clearly definable being, but instead, a wealth of diverse cultures, traditions, values and experiences that make her as complex as the country which she comes from.