Born here, belonging nowhere: America's citizenship paradox

When I moved from Üsküdar to Hyde Park in 2018, I was bracing myself for the usual disorientation of living abroad for the first time. The anxiety of adaptation, the loneliness of starting over in a foreign city, the sense of being perpetually one step behind everyone else: I had prepared for all of it. What I had not prepared for was how quickly it dissolved. Hyde Park surprised me into belonging. The neighborhood that surrounds the University of Chicago is what Americans call "multicultural," a word that sometimes flattens the texture of what it actually describes. But in Hyde Park, the word earns its keep. Students and scholars from dozens of countries share sidewalks, seminar rooms and corner cafes. You hear English spoken in more accents than you knew existed, and you realize, with a small shock of relief, that your own accent, whatever it is, has always been welcome here. No one raises an eyebrow. No one asks where you are really from.