Chapter 1

Turkey Twizzlers and couscous on Sundays

English, Libyan, other

My mum called me down for dinner in that sing-song way she always did. But I was busy.

Nade-eine, dinner's rea-dy - she called again, as I illustrated the hundredth perfectly placed eyelash and traced the curve of a nose on the two faces peering up at me from the pages of my sketchbook.

Dinner's getting cold, sweetheart, she said, now in my room. A dab of blue eyeshadow here. A fringe there.

What are you drawing?

It's me, Mummy.

Which one?

Both.

.

Come on, sweetie, let's eat.

I know what you're thinking: this memory sounds made up. It's just almost too convenient to be real. It too perfectly conveys the fragmented and fractured innards of my identity to sound like something a kid would actually do. But that's why it's real - because I really did view myself as two separate but simultaneous beings. I simply didn't know how to be both.

One version of me had long flowing hair and bare shoulders, sometimes with a little star tattoo. This me had long lacquered lashes, cat eyeliner to rival Cleopatra's and a Barbie doll pout. The other me had my head covered in an eclectically patterned scarf with a spherical face in a permanently chirpy smile. One was the English me and one was the Libyan me. On the brink of adulthood, I would become one, but I was never quite sure which one that would be. Like a caterpillar awaiting the chrysalis, I didn't yet know what I'd emerge as.

Before becoming a visibly Muslim woman with an awareness of the heavy political implications of my existence, I was just a child with a foreign-sounding surname and skin that tanned easily. Growing up with an English, non-Muslim mother and a Libyan, Muslim father was like having two selves that lived parallel lives inside of me. These two sides of me barely met, and so they coexisted perfectly. Like flatmates who work opposite shifts, one sleeping whilst the other lives their life. Experiencing nothing of each other except some crumbs on the worktop and the scent of perfume lingering by the door. The eldest child in a mixed-race home has no blueprint for how to navigate life between two identities. I was making it up as I went along, and the way I dealt with it was to separate the fractions of my being along physical, geographical and temporal lines.

On weekdays, I was English. I wrote song lyrics up my arm and ate Turkey Twizzlers in front of The Simpsons (followed by The Weakest Link). I did my homework at the table and pretended I wasn't listening to Hollyoaks in the background and spoke to my friends on MSN about who said what about whom. I wrapped my hair in socks so it would be curly for school and begged my mum to let me walk to the shop on my own for sweets. I listened to my iPod at the dinner table by hiding the earphones behind my hair and thought slamming my bedroom door in anger was the most grown-up thing in the world. I stayed up past my bedtime reading Harry Potter under my duvet and painted my nails a different colour on every finger.

Then, I was Libyan when we'd hurtle up the M1 every weekend to meet my dad's old Libyan school friends in Coventry, Nottingham and Sheffield. I was Libyan when we'd eat stuffed peppers on kitchen floors, the lost cadence of Arabic washing over me as we listened to our dads rally against the dictatorship they had all fled - free in some terraced house in Earlsdon to say what would have got them killed at home - whilst our English mothers rolled their eyes and reminded them that they didn't need to shout, they weren't in Libya any more.

I was Libyan when we would eat couscous on Sundays, bejewelled with caramelised onions and chickpeas, tomatoey stewed meat and vegetables poured over the top. I was Libyan when my dad would lift us up and shake us whilst my mum hoovered up the small grains of couscous that fell beneath us, which we had inevitably got in between our toes and in our hair (couscous is a messy business when you're a child). I was Libyan when my dad would get a sudden pang of homesickness and grow quiet for the day, looking out the window at our morose English street and imagining he was in the bustle of his home city, where the houses packed tight together like overgrown teeth in a teenager's mouth and lines of washing ran between them like floss. I was Libyan when he'd take out his melancholy on the garage, randomly tidying up the leftovers of our lives into a semblance of order, watching our straight-lipped English neighbours avoid his eye as they slid into their houses and remembering how, at home, everyone knew everyone, how everyone's door was open for a neighbour's child to eat lunch or an old childhood friend to catch up over tea. I was Libyan when that sorrow would metamorphosise into a spontaneous desire to stuff sheep guts with spiced rice and meat, creating osbaan, a meal none of us were particularly keen on but that I ate anyway, eager to show him that home could be found here, too.

In the winters, I was English. I would pop a small square of chocolate in my mouth every day in the month of December and count down the days until Christmas. I'd eat roast turkey on the 25th and unwrap my presents in front of the twinkling tree. I was English when I was singing Christmas hymns in school assemblies, my shiny tinsel earrings swinging in time with 'Away in a Manger'. I was English as fireworks exploded in the air and as I made resolutions I'd break within a week. I was English in the rain and in the hail, in the grey din of a British January. I was English when we put on the local radio to listen out for our school listed amongst those closed for snow days. I was English in the spring, as everyone commented on how long the winter was and when warmer evenings suddenly felt full of hope. I was English writing Valentine's cards to my friends and making nests for Easter chicks. I was English as the days got longer and our school trousers turned to checked summer dresses, as we laced together daisy chains and watched aeroplanes trace lines across the sky.

Then, suddenly, I was Libyan again, usually around the end of July. I don't know exactly when it would happen, when and where the parts of me would do their silent exchange. She's yours for the summer. See you again in September. Perhaps it was the last day of school, when I'd go home to the house turned upside down as we packed our lives into suitcases for the next six weeks. Maybe it was the first day of the summer holidays, when my parents, my younger brother and I would head out on the two-hour drive to Heathrow Airport. Inevitably running late and having forgotten something, we would rush down the motorway at breakneck speed, my dad's driving getting increasingly erratic as the clock ticked closer to departure time, my mum berating him with her eyes. 'We're not in Libya yet!' she'd tease, transporting us all to the lawless roads of Benghazi and the incessant beeping that sounded in every corner of the city, as constant and pervasive as birdsong. Or maybe it was in Heathrow itself, as I'd puke my guts out due to travel anxiety in the toilets whilst my parents solemnly watched the clock. It could be when we were on the rickety Libyan Arab Airlines plane, halfway across the ocean with England behind me and Libya on the horizon. Or as we landed, when the plane erupted in applause or when the hot gush of desert air smacked us in the face as we climbed down the stairs to the tarmac.

Either way, for the next month and a half, there was no balancing act. I'd eat with my hands, stay up too late and drink more Pepsi (Bebzi) than I'd ever be allowed at home. I'd sleep at a different auntie's house every night, eat shawarmas and knock-off Nutella straight from the jar at 3 a.m. I watched horror movies on MBC and sang along to songs I didn't understand the lyrics to. Everyone fasted until sunset and we broke our fasts on dates and milk as the mosques around the city reverberated with the word of God. We sat on the kitchen floor peeling almonds, stuffing courgettes, squeezing the juice out of tomatoes and chopping onions. Picking grapes straight from the vine and olives straight from the tree, we'd deliver them to neighbours armed with stock phrases I memorised beforehand. We'd float weightless in the hot salt bath of the Mediterranean Sea as the sun roasted our skin. Listening to the sounds of faraway crickets and the whoosh of ceaseless traffic, I'd dip freshly made bread in saccharine mint tea as my aunties gossiped about somebody's son and somebody's daughter.

Then, again, as abrupt as it had arrived at the helm of summer, the exchange would occur again. A plane would land on the grey London tarmac, serenaded by the familiar pitter-patter of rain, and we'd dig out the hoodies we had packed in our backpacks that we hadn't needed for the best part of two months. The muted, brusque, clinical sound of the English language being spoken around me for the first time in six weeks would remind me that I was English again. At...