Emigration and being in limbo

Being an emigrant means always being in a state of limbo. When you’re planning to emigrate, you’re not really here. You put off purchasing a house; the car you buy must be something you can get rid of quickly. Everything is a matter of “when the visa comes through” or “when we move to xyz”. Physically, you may go through the motions of daily life, but psychologically, you’re somewhere else.

Since I moved back from Sydney earlier this year, I have come to realise that even if you return to the home you left from a country where you never quite belonged, you’ll find that you won’t quite belong in South Africa either. Because my reasons for moving back were complicated (are the reasons ever not complicated?), my feelings about being here are ambivalent. Shades of grey, a sense of being everywhere, and nowhere: these are the feelings that have characterised my existence for the past eight months, and they show no sign of abating.

This is the truth of emigration: that it is not simply a process, it is a state of being. To be an emigrant (or, indeed, an immigrant) is an identity that is always present. Over there, there is always the subtle otherness of life in a state in which one is not entirely welcome, where bureaucratic interventions can quickly render your presence illegal. Over here, there is the knowledge that you have attempted another life, and failed.

My passport has expired, but once I renew it, I can, theoretically at least, jump on the next Q63 if the masses start sacking Dainfern. So I actively avoid thinking about Australia; to do so would be to indulge in a form of mild masochism. When I do choose to think about Sydney, I imagine the thump-thump of the ferry engines, the regular, familiar channel from Musgrave Road to Cremorne Point. The brilliance of the sky, caress of the breeze, the yachts on Friday afternoons, small bright triangles of white on blue.

Then I think of being made redundant (the shame of it!), the days and days spent locked up in that little apartment, where a trip to the local supermarket was the highlight of my week, a stroll to the local bottle store the highlight of my afternoons. The memory of those months clenches around my solar plexus. If I must go back to that, I cannot go back.

So I remain in limbo, having no impetus to take any particular path, both here and not here, being and not being, but always, always an emigrant.