Mood Swings:
Claiming my birthright
By
Gamal Nkrumah
My whole body gave a slight quiver. My very identity about to be redefined. At last, I can claim Egyptian nationality -- my birthright.
Acrimony over the injustice of being denied Egyptian citizenship rights quickly dissipated with the announcement that new laws will soon be promulgated to permit the offspring of Egyptian women married to foreign men, myself included, to apply for Egyptian citizenship. The joy was tempered somewhat by the realisation that a great deal of red tape still stood in the way of our acquiring Egyptian citizenship.
Hurdles remain. Much paperwork, a daunting task in itself, remains to be completed. And the all-too-familiar bureaucratic procedures must be braved, endured and overcome by the almost one million sons and daughters who only now are eligible to call themselves Egyptians. Many of us resent the fact that the struggle for the right to belong to the country we love so dearly proved to be such an arduous affair.
I have been living on and off in Egypt since 1966: I left the country in 1976 to complete my education in Ghana and England. I returned to live permanently in Egypt in 1991. I chose to return to the country I was raised in -- the country of my choice -- only to discover that I was not permitted to belong. Initially shocked, I resolved to persevere -- I stayed on. Frustration and resentment were gradually replaced with hope -- albeit faint at first.
Everybody knows that there are millions of Americans of Polish, Irish and Italian descent. Australians of Lebanese or Serbian descent are not a rare species either. But Egyptians of Ghanaian descent? Improbable.
I actually know of several such families of mixed Ghanaian-Egyptian heritage. The new citizenship laws will positively impact the lives of those of them who persevered and chose to make Egypt their home in spite of all the indignities suffered over the years.
Naturalising people whose mothers are Egyptian is a concept that does not wash easily with many Egyptians. The main reason, I believe, is that citizenship rights and nationality were often confused with the notion of nasab, or genealogical relationships.
Citizenship rights, and questions of nationality, are an important component of human rights in the world today. And they are entirely different from the idea of nasab which relates to ethnicity and kinship. Citizenship confers rights, so vitally advantageous in any modern society. Nasab on the other hand, is of little practical value in the modern world except when it becomes something of a legal nuisance.
Nasab, lineage or kinship, is a difficult concept to grasp at the best of times. In the Arab world nasab is unquestionably patrilineal. It doesn't matter what your mother is, if your father is an Arab then you are one as well.
Among my father's people, the Akan of West Africa, descent is matrilineal. When a king or chief dies, his nephew -- his sister's son -- and not his own son ascends the throne, or stool as it is called in Ghana. The deceased king's son belongs to his mother's clan, or family, and therefore he cannot succeed his father.
I am not, therefore, exactly Akan by extraction. Technically speaking my siblings and I are in the peculiar position of having no kinsmen. We have relatives, both maternal and paternal, but we do not belong to any particular ethnic or kinship group.
I therefore grew up without an ethnicity. Which is not such a terrible predicament in contemporary Africa. It is better not to belong to any particular ethnic group. I could not be counted among my father's people and neither could I belong to my mother's people. My mother's relations saw me as belonging to my father's people and my father's people as belonging to my mother's people.
Still, the family genealogy of people like myself, who have Egyptian mothers, will always mark them out as being of Egyptian extraction.
We, therefore, celebrated the new change in the laws giving us the right to Egyptian citizenship -- mostly in private. Most of us still do not have tangible evidence of our newfound identity. There will be no rest, no proper celebrations, until the Egyptian passports we seek are actually in our hands. Then, and only then, can we breathe the great sigh with relief.
The Egyptian Nationality Law No. 26 of 1975 which forbade Egyptian women married to foreign men from passing on their nationality to their children unfairly alienated a large segment of the population, many of whom were born in Egypt, schooled in Egypt and knew no other country but their beloved Egypt. Some 280,000 Egyptian women suffered the consequences. And over 900,000 children of these women were denied a chance to belong to, and pay allegiance to, their mother's country.
These children were unable to enroll in state schools. They paid exorbitant fees as foreign students to enroll in Egyptian universities and upon graduation were forced out of the job market when systematically denied work permits. They also often had problems acquiring and renewing residence permits.
To add insult to injury, many of us were asked why we were so keen on Egyptian nationality anyway.
There are going to be a large number now of Egyptians with foreign-sounding surnames. It is a fact that might present problems for the Egyptian bureaucracy.
It is a sign of changing times.
