Nowhere / Everywhere: narratives of the diaspora

Migration today defies a straight line. It is no longer just East to West or West to East, or about survival and opportunity. It is about reinvention, adaptability, and, at times, rebellion. Movement is multidirectional and deeply personal. The idea of home is shifting. Some feel like they belong nowhere. Others, everywhere.

Hameem Khan set out to speak with creatives across the globe: artists, entrepreneurs, musicians, curators, each navigating different stages of life, culture, and platform. Each reshaping what home means on their own terms. She asked them directly: What is home? What is identity? What does it mean to belong?

Here is what they told her:

When asked about home, few offered a fixed answer. Rami Helali, who has spent much of his life between Cairo and Toronto, sees home as fluid. “Different parts of that feeling exist in different parts of the world. My parents are in Egypt. My brother’s in Canada. I don’t think that concept [of one place] exists for me anymore.”

For Neena Roe, a musician raised in the US with roots in Iran, home follows the people who anchor her. “When you’re the child of immigrants, when you’re part of the diaspora, roots are hard,” she said. “My tether to culture and homeland is my parents, so home is wherever they are.”

Rinesa Qeriqi, a Kosovo-born artist now based in Toronto, has not returned since she left.

“The first thing I’d do is go straight to the village. To where my grandma used to cook a traditional pie outside, on the mountain. That is what home is for me.”

Zeinah Kalati, a Guelph-based curator and programmer, puts it in elemental terms. “Nothing comes close to the sea. That is my place. My favourite place to be gay is the sea. It holds all the paradoxes, all the truths.”

For many, movement is not just geographical. It is internal, emotional, cultural. “I was born in Cairo, came to Canada as a baby, moved back to Cairo for school, then back to Toronto,” Helali said. “I’ve always felt like I could be fully Egyptian in Egypt and fully Western in the West. But I don’t think about identity every day. I just am.”

Roe does not see her sense of self as fixed. It shifts with the room and the kind of love it demands. “All the versions of me are authentically me. But different parts shine in different spaces. With my family, there is a tenderness. In Detroit, I’m playful. In music spaces, I’m sharper.”

Qeriqi spoke about the mental gymnastics of switching between languages and modes of thought.

“I write to cope,” she said. “I write in Albanian, I write in English. I’m trying to hold on to all the parts of myself.” Kalati added the weight of translation—of more than just words, but of culture, humour, context.

Themes of translation, preservation, and memory came up again and again. Roe recalled how her mother left Iran with jewellery sewn into a hidden pouch.

“That necklace never comes off,” she said. “That is what I carry. That, and scanned family photos.”

Kalati reflected on early memories of believing no one could love her without first understanding the things that shaped her. “Translation was always something I thought about,” she said. “That is still with me.”

These are not stories of displacement. They are stories of reclamation. Stories of self-definition and creative control.

“The whole reason I started Kotn was to bridge the two sides of me,” Helali said. “To show a version of the Middle East that is real, that is beautiful, that is not framed through fear. Arabic used to scare people. Now I see people walking around with our tote bags, and it makes me proud.”

Roe, too, is leaning in. “I used to keep my ethnic identity out of my music. Now I sample voice notes from my family. My next project has pieces of conversations with my parents, my grandparents; it is all there.”

Here, identity is not just something to carry—it is something to protect, express, and pass on. There is a collective sense of responsibility to create visibility and space, not just for themselves, but for others.

“I kept asking myself: What is my role? What can I do? And then I realised: my function is film. I can make our stories accessible. I can make a space for Arabs where we don’t have to translate ourselves to be understood,” said Zeinah.

So what do they tell someone on the verge of making a similar leap? Someone preparing to move across the world without a clear path?

“Be prepared to feel alienated,” said Rinesa. “And build coping mechanisms. The alienation is real, but you can survive it.” Zeinah added, “Don’t run thinking you can reinvent yourself. You’re still you, wherever you go. If you’re going somewhere new, create a space. You don’t have to wait for someone else to build it.”