Like the 2 out of 3 statistic above, it's consoling to note that Pete's conflict would be non-existant in lots of other places in the world, like Bamako, where Pete's situation would be celebrated by his Malian contemporary Mustafa. What's true for some is false for another. And this, relates directly to the expat experience. So, here we are, expatriates in Paris at the dawn of a new century, a new dash of numbers. Personally, I think of my very own Hyman Applefield holding up with his frightened and tattered fammily in the belly of the US Nebraska chugging across the North Atlantic via Glasgow and Odessa on the Black Sea on his way to becoming American.
Expats belong to the tide and no longer to either shore.
Massive and violent shifts of perception for most land gently to expatriates. And, in fact, the scrutinizing act of comparing cultures and deciding which and what is better evinces in the end greater confusion than harmony. You live where you are. Life back home, surely, is not life here, not only because it is different, but because home is no longer what it was. The expat lives in the constancy of two realities which tips and tosses, surges and dives, like a metal Slinky snaking between two giant hands.