"For those who have left it," Nobel Prize-winning author Elias Canetti once wrote, "the city of childhood and adolescence becomes a mythical place." I whole-heartedly agree with his statement, as melancholy as it may seem, for Beirut, my Beirut, sometimes feels shrouded in myth; and Lebanon, my Lebanon, has become the subject of my desire, though I've returned on many occasions.

Indeed, nothing can keep me away. More than once, Lebanon has been left for dead, with many of its cities left unrecognizable by bombs, bullets, and missiles. At times, giant heaps of trash, no longer collected by trucks, created unbearable odors throughout the towns. Even frequent assassinations haven't sufficed to turn me away. To me, this land is the same magical place where loud car horns, clanging church bells, and singing muezzins would wake me up early every morning. The place where my grandmother spent hours in the kitchen each day preparing a grand lunch for her family, chopping up fresh parsley, mint, cucumbers, and tomatoes, or collecting fresh lemons and olives from our lush garden. The very same place I spent endless hours playing the piano and singing songs with my cousins and uncles. The sights, sounds, and smells of a homeland combine to create powerful memories and the foundations of the human soul. I could never forget Lebanon, my first love.

My mother was from the cosmopolitan capital Beirut and my father from the charming mountain village of Broummana. I was born in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1986. In Lebanon a crude and savage war was raging on in its eleventh year and would never truly terminate. It would only switch in nature from a hot war to a cold war a few years later. Perhaps this is why I have always been extremely and passionately attached to Lebanon: the beloved ancient land that turned into a war zone. I always felt that Lebanon was fragile, delicate, and precious. It had survived countless invasions and occupations; there always existed the possibility that Lebanon could vanish at any second and never return.

A significant period of my childhood was spent residing in Lebanon. My parents, my brother, and I permanently settled in California when I was 9 years old. On the way to Beirut airport in 1995 to begin our emigration, I protested by kicking, screaming, weeping, and cursing. The heartbreak and anguish of leaving my family, friends, school, and my Lebanon were unbearable. What exacerbated the situation even more was that we were heading to the seemingly farthest location from Lebanon. Eventually we landed on the other side of the world, and it is in this precise moment when my current unending identity crisis was born.

Adjusting to a new life in the San Francisco bay area turned out to be relatively simple. Many occasions transpired for me to be reminded of my Lebaneseness. The other children at school made endless fun of my thick, dark unibrow. They also ridiculed my sideburns and mustache. What was a hairy Lebanese child to do in this surrounding of hairless people who did not have the misfortune of being mistaken for orangutans? Back in Lebanon no one would be taunted for being hairy. We are hairy people. A hairy and war-torn people with the world's most delicious cuisine. "That yellow stuff you are eating looks gross." "Are you eating dirt?" The hummus and zaatar that frequently materialized in the lunches my mother lovingly packed for me were always targets for harassment from students sitting at my lunch table. "What is that funky language you and your mom were speaking?" My peculiar accent that occurred when I spoke English did not take long until it morphed into the standard California accent.

Typically, a person's differences are what make them noticeable in any given group setting. Perhaps this is why I feel Lebanese in America and American in Lebanon. I cannot deny that both cultures play a strong role in my personality characteristics and self-awareness. But do I feel like a Lebanese in America and an American in Lebanon because of the way that I act or because of the way that others act towards me?

Growing up in America sometimes put me in situations where I felt most confident that I did not belong. In elementary school, I learned about the history of slavery in the United States. The teacher informed my class that if slavery had never ended, the black students in the room would still be inferior to the white students according to American law. The students stared at each other and contemplated the implications of this statement. Being neither white nor black, I was perplexed and did not know which of these two groups I was supposed to fit in to. But this incident was soon forgotten and as the years passed by I found myself feeling more and more American. Until September 11th, 2001. Upon hearing about the attacks early that morning, I was shocked, terrified, and saddened along with the rest of the nation and world. When I arrived at my high school and took my seat in English class, the television screen showed images of select people in the Middle East burning American flags and celebrating the attacks. All at once I felt like a complete pariah and was acutely reminded of my Arabness. Suddenly, ridiculous paranoid images of my fellow peers lynching me appeared in my mind as the students around me started commenting on the backwardness of Middle Eastern people. I hoped with all my heart that they were not aware of my background; best-case scenario they would believe me to be Greek or Italian.

Long summer vacations in Lebanon did not allay my clashing identities and constant discomfort. Returning to the land where my family lived, the land of my origins, should not have been a complicated affair. Yet the Lebanese referred to me as their American cousin, American niece, American granddaughter, or American friend no matter how much fluent Arabic I spoke or how up to date I was on current Lebanese affairs and trends. If I asked for clarification on specific issues or did not know the meaning of new slang words, they cackled with arrogance and apprised me that I could never understand because I was too American. I longed to belong with them and be part of them, but they persistently rejected me. Why didn't they want me? After all my life outside of Lebanon was usually spent dreaming of Lebanon, reading about Lebanon, listening to Lebanese music, counting down the days till I could return to Lebanon, and pondering the notions of migration, sacrifice, loss, roots, generations, journeys, and cultural transplantation. Each time I returned to the land of my dreams I only found disappointment.

Eventually I realized that my identity is actually defined by others and depends on what country I am in. Years later, during my senior year at UC Santa Barbara, I would study abroad in Japan for a semester. I had decided it was high time for me to go live in a country I knew nothing about and that knew nothing about me. Ironically, my brief stint in Japan was the first and only time I felt entirely comfortable living in a nation-state. I never once had to question whether or not I belonged; I knew very well as did the Japanese that I most certainly did not belong in Japan. I had no Japanese heritage or any other possible connections to the island. Nobody had any behavioral or cultural expectations of me. The mere fact that I was aware, as were all the people around me that I was an outsider who did not belong in Japan, left me feeling relaxed and content. This dichotomy was strangely soothing; I knew I could easily live in Japan forever.

Unfortunately I could not stay in Japan forever for my student visa had an expiration date. Plus, I was due to study abroad in Paris for the second semester. It was in the city of love where my identity was more confounded than it has ever been in my entire life. The United States is a nation of immigrants. People can be Chinese and American, or African and American, or Argentinean and American. All Americans are equal by law and our country provides opportunity for immigrants looking to commence a new life and become American. This is not the case in France; this concept was akin to rocket science for the French and other non-American internationals that I met in Paris. To them, only ethnic and native French can be French and everyone else is a foreigner. The people I met were simply unable to comprehend that I was an American. If they asked me where I was from and I answered California, they would say "No no, I mean where are you really truly from?" I'd answer Lebanon, and the dissonance of my American accent mixed with Middle Eastern physical features made even less sense to them; it conflicted too much with their prototype of an American girl having blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. In fact, one of my French friends would constantly introduce me to others by announcing that this is her friend Catherine from Lebanon and neglect to mention anything about America. I would point out that I have lived most of my life in California and in recent times had not been to Lebanon very much. Regardless of this critical fact, I was purely Lebanese to them and attempts to explain that I was also American were rather futile and frustrating. Several months after I left Paris and returned to the U.S., a French friend was surprised to discover that I had voted in the 2008 American presidential elections and demanded to know how I earned this right. And so to the Americans I was Lebanese, to the Lebanese I was American, to the Japanese it was irrelevant, and to the French no answer was plausible.

My explorations of memory and self have been ongoing since my childhood. Had I lived my entire life in Lebanon my identity would have been absolute and these thoughts would have never crossed my mind. I may have left Lebanon many times, but Lebanon has never left me. It knows the chronology of my life and how I came to be. The meaning, memories, and realities of a homeland are potent for the children of first-generation immigrants. The homeland has its own memory; it saw countless generations come and go. It is the mysteries of the land and their relationship to my inner knowing that leave me continually ruminating on identity, boundaries, diasporas, and resettling. To this day I am still struggling to reconcile the contradictions of my fragmented identity hoping to find equanimity. That is, if finding equanimity in displacement is even possible.

Catherine Batruni is a writer and reseracher in Los Angeles, and associate editor of Levantine Review.