Ojalá

An autoethnographic story by Karla Scarff

Those of us who have the misfortune of being transplanted from one country to another as children soon fight an internal war. Our minds become contested ground, and we retreat behind our eyes until the dust settles. We grow silent as we watch our sacred sites crumble. We hide in the shadows as the haven of our minds is torn down and rebuilt. We have no language that will communicate the desecration of our very selves, for the language we speak is no longer understood; and we do not understand the language that others speak.

To learn a new culture, one must deconstruct her own home. It is a process of violence and confusion. The familiar becomes useless, and so we learn to let the old ways go. We let go because we perceive that the old ways no longer serve us. The old places we knew become useless relics, and our old songs do not soothe us anymore. And so, we bury ourselves underground to find safety.

We emerge to witness the territory of our minds rearranged. We walk these unfamiliar new lands with trepidation. But the greatest surprise is that this new landscape is not new at all. We discover that what once was a part of us always remains. Though the great places of our identity may seem destroyed, we come to realize that the new structures within us are made with those same old bricks. Yes, there are new sites of identity to explore, but our old foundations remain.

We become temples repurposed.

When I was young, I once visited a great Cathedral in Córdoba, Spain. Inside that great cathedral were the clear signs of a great mosque with its striped pillars and half-point arches. Inside that selfsame mosque now hangs a crucified Jesus.

When cultures clash, one often subjugates the other, but often, cultures intertwine. Tourists can now gape at that curiosity of a Mosque-Cathedral where both Muslims and Catholics once worshipped alike, where myrrh and frankincense linger in the air. Spanish itself is a mingled incense of two cultures that wrestled over dominion of a single land, of a single temple. In Spanish, when we hope, we say "Ojalá," a small prayer, "Oh, Allah" that continues to echo within those contested walls.

My body is both conqueror and conquered—Spanish blood mixed with indigenous. My mind is the disputed land of my identity, Mexican and American. I am a temple repurposed.

I am not what I was born to be. I am not what I tried to become. Instead, I am this moment, this contested place that is neither and both. There are cultures within cultures living and fighting within me still. I am what I am.

What I have become is not what anyone predicted or wanted.

Ojalá, someday I will walk within the temples inside of me to worship all that I am and all that have become, my white flag held high.

Ojalá, I hope.