“Where You From?”

Riz Ahmed, The Long Goodbye

Kinzah Khan reflects on Riz Ahmed’s new short film The Long Goodbye, and its portrayal of dual identity.

Riz Ahmed’s The Long Goodbye is a short film starring a British-Pakistani family. The film starts off innocent and relatable, with Ahmed being taught some choreography from one of the kids in his family. Probably a nephew or a younger cousin. The family are getting ready to host a Dholki — a wedding event — which the girls are getting ready for upstairs. The background noises of organised chaos are comforting and familiar as I recall the countless times I myself have been in that setting: cleaning the house, changing the pillow covers, smelling biryani on the stove, debating how many chairs need to be put out, figuring out which room the uncles will sit in, whether my clothes have been ironed, and missing the opportunity to go to the bathroom again because someone else got there before you. It's familiar and relatable for any Asian family. 

There are a few moments in the film where the British-Pakistani identity conflict is subtly but powerfully highlighted; for example, when the girls gossip about James, a boy from the bride’s place of work. Upon learning James has been invited to the wedding, the girls tease her, saying the wedding is going to turn into a runaway bride scenario, where she leaves her (assumedly) Pakistani fiance for the British-born James. While there is of course nothing wrong with mixed race or cross-culture relationships, the girls fawning over James, while surrounded by cultural symbols, makes this whole scenario unsettling, suggestive of how the appeal of “Britishness” is slowly taking over their Pakistani roots. 

Ahmed is asked to move a chair out of the main room to make more space, complicated by various family members interrogating him. Ahmed’s frustration mounts, but he eventually finds a place for the chair in one of the upstairs rooms with the help of his little cousin. While in the room, Ahmed looks out the window and shockingly sees state forces, wearing St George’s Crosses, rounding up Asian families on his street. Panicked, Ahmed runs to the rest of his family, shouting at them to pack up and get out the house. He shouts “it's happening! It’s happening now!” implying this attack was expected, reminiscent of how Jewish people were tracked during World War Two. The whole house is suddenly in panic, and the familiarity of the setting dissipates. 

The forces break into the house moments after the alert is sounded. They drag the family onto the street, lining the men up in a row on their knees. We see the white neighbours in their homes, looking down from their upstairs window with blank, pitiless expressions. One of the men, now with a broken nose, shouts at the neighbours to help them, but their lack of action signals the residential “community” is not enough to see past race. Despite living on the same street, perhaps for many years, the Pakistani family are still “othered.” We see the forces talking to local police, who nonchalantly nod their heads, symbolising that not only is this treatment permitted, but it is approved by law enforcement. 

In the final three minutes, we see Ahmed in the aftermath of the chaos, which only lasted a short while. His family are dead and the forces have driven away, effortlessly. Heartlessly. Ahmed performs the track “Where You From” from his latest album, pacing around the street with his hands still in handcuffs, spitting his words and clearly in pain from the bullet wound in his shoulder. The final shot is Ahmed staring at the camera, directly at the viewer. While he is clearly pained, more than anything we can see the anger in his eyes. But this anger is not at the events that have just happened, but at the whole situation. Britain has broken up with him. He has been extradited, othered, alienated from the country he and his ancestors lived in, built up, fought for and died for. The screen abruptly switches to black. 

Where You From is one of the first questions you ask anyone, second only to “what’s your name?” But this question is deeply complex for some. The question “where you from” isn’t even about the outward expression of where you are from, but the internal conflict of answering that question. You say you’re British, but it feels like a betrayal to your heritage. Plus, you eat daal chawal and drink Rubicon mango juice. You’re not really British, are you? You say you’re Pakistani and, while there is deep national pride in that identity, it still feels fraudulent because you’ve never lived there. You wear salwar kameez twice a year and will change into jeans to go to the pub on a Friday evening. You’re not really Pakistani, are you? And you’re not allowed to forget it. Even within Britain, movement and regular change can make it hard to attach yourself to one segment of the British-Asian population: you’re not a Manchester-Pakistani, a Bradford-Pakistani, a London-Pakistani, or a Birmingham-Pakistani. You’re left floating, not quite being from anywhere. 

I question if there are rights of passage to be a “British-Asian.” You haven’t experienced racism or overt violence due to your ethnicity (thank God), but this absence seems to add the additional level of hypocrisy to the feeling. Do you even have the right to relate? Are you using the struggles of others to feel sorry for yourself? There’s a question of whether you even belong to the community that has been extradited from the British community; and even if you have, do you have the right to feel bad about it because it is a life of relative privilege? You haven’t struggled in that way, so does that further remove you from the only people you can call your people? You’re left defending yourself and your right to be Asian? British? British-Asian?, driving your stake down into…what? You realise you don’t even understand what you’re fighting for, so how can you say anything? 

Ahmed’s new album The Long Goodbye is about his breakup from Britain and how the country has given up on him. With regard to the film in itself, Ahmed asks whether this scenario, of state forces rounding up Pakistanis — or “foreigners” in general — is really as far away as we think. While the latter half of the film is clearly not from a current Britain, there is something ominous about saying it could never happen. The current political tension around immigration, where not just against Pakistanis, but anyone who is considered not to be British, faces some kind of shunning from the country they do, in fact, belong to, whatever those terms mean. 

My mother once asked me, if you made it to the moon, what flag would you plant? I ended up saying I would plant a flag with my face on it, to which she rolled her eyes and said I had missed the point of the question. She asked which country’s flag would I plant. After pondering for some time, I said I would plant a hybrid of the British and Pakistani flags, to which she said I had to choose just one, existing flag. But I came to realise I couldn’t just choose one flag, without feeling like a fraud or an imposter. 

Don’t get me wrong: I do love having a dual identity, and I wouldn’t have it any other way, despite the existential tone of this piece. The community of second generation immigrants is strong, as we are able to understand this conflict of culture like no one else really does. Further, I don’t claim to speak for everyone. Certainly, there are some British-Pakistanis who feel very close to their origins and will abandon the British label entirely, and vice versa. But there is something deeply relatable about this film and the album itself, that plays into the unique feeling of innate national pride yet intrinsic alienation felt by the generation of dual-identities. The track “Where You From” alone has enough in there to inspire a whole essay, as Ahmed both claims Britain as his, but looks for his place of belonging. It’s an urgent, gut-wrenching tribute to his exile from the country he built and the complexity of explaining where you’re from when no one wants to claim you. It puts into lyrics what so many of us struggle to say. The conflict of identity unifies and ignites something in British-Pakistanis, British-Asians, British-anything, that we can relate to in a deeply personal way.