My parents told me I was born within the accepted and established borders of China after the end of the Tibetan Kingdom. They may have told me eactly which provence but I was too agitated at that time to be able to remember that kind of detail now. With further practice I may remember later, or they may tell me again.
Very soon after we moved to Riyadh. They made an agreement on their part and on behalf of all they acknowledged children that they would never publicly discuss or tell anyone outside of the family any story inconsistant with the negotiated identity that they agreed we would assume. This agreement though was canceled when we all woke up in the wrong beds.
My mom is very stubborn. She never had to learn how to compromise with any other strong identities except my dad's. I had to be very obedient and accepting to stay with her as long as I did. Eventually no amount of pliancy would have preserved our ability to remain in such close contact, but the split would have been amicable and for my own good. It probably would have involved for me a sheltered or somewhat restricted environment where I could build up my autonomy and develop my personal character. My relationship with her was very rare. Tibetan ancestory children can get along with anyone for the first part of their lives. When it was realized that there was no way to prevent people from coming and taking our children for a million reasons we decided it was a good thing and people were offering us free labor, and that the children most like us would return to us, of an age where we could better get along with them and where they were able to generate and maintain personal space and territory that we could aproach on mutually benificial terms.
My family was very willing to allow me to adopt any number of nationalities, so long as certian intrinsic traits that were not contradictory to those nationalities were permitted to me. But it did not occur.
So when I was trying to figure out who I was I first said I was chinese, then arab, then vietnamese, then american, then japanese, but Im really Tibetan, and in reality borders never did define us or contain our nomadic nature.
