The two pairs of glasses that taught me how to see the world

The two pairs of glasses that taught me how to see the world

My great-grandmother barely spoke Spanish. I barely understood Amazigh. And yet, I never felt we needed words to understand each other.

I remember watching her smile as she opened a small box where she kept some sweets. She had saved them for months, waiting for her great-grandchildren to arrive. Later, patiently and only through gestures, she taught me how to use the old water tank by the entrance of the house. That was where they stored the water they needed for everyday life. There was no running water or electricity in that village.

I was fourteen years old, and it was the first time I had visited Yassine as a teenager — a small village in the Gurugú mountains, in the province of Nador. That was where my maternal grandparents and my paternal grandfather came from.

That place made a deep impression on me.

I had grown up in Melilla until I was 7, and the rest of the time in Gran Canaria, used to television, electricity and a completely different way of life. I remember feeling bored, overwhelmed and out of place. Night fell early. Families gathered in a covered courtyard to share food and talk. The women spoke to each other in Amazigh. I stayed silent, trying to recognise the odd word, watching their faces, their gestures, their smiles.

I didn't understand their language. They didn't fully understand mine either. But there was always someone smiling at me. And I smiled back.

Many years later I understood that, without realising it, that was where my interest in understanding people who lived between two worlds began.

I was born in Melilla, though I was registered in Nador. My mother had been born and had always lived in Melilla, but when I was born she still didn't have Spanish nationality. She got it years later. My father did have it, and thanks to him I got it too, when I was 14. So I was an immigrant in a country my two grandfathers had emigrated to many, many years before.

From the very beginning of my life, two realities coexisted that I never saw as opposites, even though other people did.

My father's and mother's families shared the same Amazigh roots in that village in the Rif. In time I also learned the story of some of my ancestors: a family of Andalusi origin whose memory had travelled down through generations to reach us. That story sparked in me a deep interest in understanding where we come from, and how migrations leave traces that last for centuries.

But as a child, I wasn't thinking about history. I was thinking about belonging.

For many years I felt I never quite fit in. When I went to Morocco, some children called me "the Spanish girl" and told me to go back to my country. In Gran Canaria, some school friends told me their parents wouldn't let them come to my birthday because they were afraid, because we were "moros."

Those words made me sad. I couldn't understand how I could be a foreigner in both places that I also felt were mine.

For a long time I thought living between two cultures meant always being stuck in the middle. As if you had to choose one.

When I was fourteen, a friend of my mother's said something I never forgot: "Soraya, you're lucky. You have two pairs of glasses to see life through. Very few people have that."

I didn't understand what he meant at the time. It took me many years to.

Over time I began a deep process of self-discovery. It didn't happen overnight. It was a long road, full of questions, of reading, of experiences, and of moments when I had to rethink many ideas I had taken for granted.

It was around the age of forty when something changed. I understood that for too long I had looked at my own story as a division. And I discovered that, in reality, it was a richness.

I didn't have to choose between one part of me and the other. I could be both. I could understand different cultural codes, listen to different perspectives, and find common ground where other people only saw distance. Those two pairs of glasses I had been told about so many years before finally started to make sense.

Today, when I remember that teenager sitting in silence among women speaking a language she didn't understand, I no longer feel the discomfort I felt back then. I feel gratitude. I understand that I was living a moment that would never come again.

If I could meet her again, I would only tell her one thing: "You are living a moment and an opportunity that are unique and will never happen again. Embrace them and hold them close."

Over the years I've reached a conclusion that stays with me always. People who live between two cultures often hear that they must choose one identity, one language, or one way of understanding the world. My experience has been different. I've learned that living between two cultures can become a privilege once we stop seeing it as a contradiction.

Not because one culture is better than the other. But because looking from both shores lets you understand nuances that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Bridges exist precisely because there are two shores. And those of us who have grown up walking between them have the opportunity — and also the responsibility — to help other people find their way to the centre.

That, to me, is the true meaning of living between two cultures. Not living divided. But learning to build bridges.