What’s In A Name ? An Essay On Belonging

The most popular question I’ve been asked in the last year or so is: Are you related to Zohran Mamdani?

It’s strange how a name can change its meaning over time. Mamdani was once one of my biggest frustrations. Growing up, almost no one could spell or say it; Madman (as per Microsoft), Mamdami, Mandami. Pronounced wrong at both my graduations, misspelt on healthcare journal articles. Forms came back wrong. I learned early how to correct people gently, then later how to stop correcting them at all. Now, that same name has become one of my greatest sources of pride through Zohran’s electoral win. But alongside it, the idea of belonging, took me much longer to understand.

Mamdani is an Indian surname originally belonging to Khoja Muslim families. I am a Khoja [caw-jah, خواجه] Shia Muslim. I was raised as a Shia Ithna-Ashari, a ‘Twelver’, in London, with half my family also being Ismaili. I grew up saying Salaam Alaikum and Ya Ali Madad, sometimes in the same breath, sometimes to the same people. We lived inside a mishmash of two faith expressions under the wider Shia sect, where belonging was shared rather than singular.

The word Khoja itself comes from the Persian Khwāja, meaning master, guide, teacher. Historically, it refers to an ethnic and cultural community originating from Hindu Lohanas who converted to Nizari Ismailism centuries ago. Over time, some Khojas branched off and became Twelvers, while others remained Ismaili. Both sects of Shia Islam draw on Ja‘fari jurisprudence, that is, teachings from Imam Ja’far Al-Sadiq, shared foundations, different expressions. I grew up learning about and appreciating both faiths through my family roots.

My family history, like many Khoja families, is inseparable from migration. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, thousands of South Asians (mainly Punjabi and Gujarati who then followed for trade purposes) were taken to East Africa under British colonial rule to build the Kenya-Uganda Railway, an infamous project that stitched Uganda and Kenya to the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa. Communities formed, languages blended, lives rooted themselves deeply into places that were never meant to be temporary.

My father is from Tanzania, my mother from Uganda. Between them, they grew up speaking Gujarati, Kutchi (a dialect of Sindhi), English, and Swahili. My dad arrived to the UK for university. My mum’s family arrived under very different circumstances; expelled from Uganda in 1972 under Idi Amin’s dictatorship, uprooted with days’ notice and forced to rebuild their lives in Britain, specifically in the Midlands.

At home, language has always been a collage. Gujarati, from my dad’s side, and Kutchi, from my mum’s side, were my mother tongue. My parents spoke Swahili to each other when they wanted to talk about me without me understanding, a language that floated around the house without ever fully landing on me. I started nursery not knowing a word of English (how I made it through that interview, I still don’t know!), and I had to learn English quickly.

Our Gujarati and Kutchi were never ‘pure’. Through the colonialism, migration and displacement, our East African Indian families had formed a hybrid language. Swahili wove itself into our Gujarati and Kutchi vocabulary so seamlessly that I didn’t realise certain words weren’t Indian at all: sufuryia for saucepan, mayai for egg, pasi for iron, all came from Swahili. Even now, I still discover words I assumed were Gujarati/Kutchi that turn out to be Swahili. Through our Muslim faith, Urdu and Farsi slipped in too, phrases like haltu-faltu, meaning useless, a word with Portuguese origins, or namaz, the Persian word for prayer, familiar to me and my Khoja family and friends, but not to my East African Hindu/Sikh friends.

By the age of five, I could understand five languages, all in broken fragments; English, Gujarati, Kutchi, Urdu, Hindi. Urdu from majlis at mosque. Hindi from Star Plus and Bollywood films. Arabic from Qur’an lessons I began at the age of three; though beyond the words I recite, I couldn’t tell you what most of it means. Language surrounded me constantly, and instead of confusing me, it fascinated me. I grew up loving dialects, the way cultures leak into one another, the way Arabic seeps into Swahili, Tagalog, Hindi, Gujarati, such as the word ‘tawba’ [توبة] in Arabic, meaning ‘repentance’.

Starting at school made it more difficult to be proud of who I was. Once, during an open day when I was around six or seven, I showed a girl around — smiling and polite, doing what I’d been taught to do. Later, she told the teachers she didn’t want to come to our school because there were “too many brown people”. I was still a child, but I remember the quiet recalibration that followed. The lesson wasn’t shouted; it was absorbed. At the time, Fatema was not a common name in the UK. People hesitated over it, tripped over the syllables. So my parents told their clients my name was Zara. Easier on the tongue, easier to pronounce, easier to place. Being different, I learnt early, was not something to celebrate.

I also grew up in a very English culture and became what we Asians like to call a coconut; brown on the outside, white on the inside. My world was soundtracked by the Jonas Brothers (my first love of my life was, and still is, Joe Jonas), Taylor Swift (OG fan since 2006), Linkin’ Park, S Club 7, Wheatus, Simple Plan, High School Musical, Hannah Montana. I loved it. I eventually abandoned Bollywood films and swapped them for any American rom-com movie under the sun. I loved that phase of my life. I rarely mentioned my background when people asked. “It’s a long story,” I’d say, and it usually was. It felt easier that way. I continued to practise my faith, though I often felt out of place within my own community, quietly marked by the fact that I didn’t wear the headscarf.

My school friends, none of whom shared my religion or culture, became my safest place and best friends. One of my best friends is East African Gujarati and Hindu, and the cultural overlap between us is so precise it’s almost comical; same food, same family dynamics, same unspoken rules, different prayers. We joke that at my wedding, she’ll move through the rituals with more ease than people of my own faith from different cultures.

University brought its own reckoning. I moved into a genuinely multicultural environment, full of people from everywhere, and the culture shock surprised me. I had assumed I’d feel at home immediately, but instead I felt exposed, like someone had turned the lights on and asked me to account for myself. Who was I, exactly, when everyone else seemed so sure? When everyone else seemed to know where they were from? How would I fit in, a coconut who couldn’t join Freshers’ events because I didn’t drink? I could mirror the culture easily enough; the playlists, the slang, the easy humour. But when belonging required a pint in hand, I found myself standing outside the doorway, watching connection happen around me rather than through me. I was terrified someone would see me at an event and assume I was drinking, terrified of being misread in every direction at once. I found myself at a crossroads here; too Eastern for the West and too Western for the East. Too religious for some spaces, not religious enough for others. To add, I was also working a part-time job, where one of my colleagues and her boyfriend were both Islamophobic, and I mean, her boyfriend used to yell profanities at Muslims on the street and post videos of him doing so on social media.

Eventually, I found my people at university, connected by something intangible; music, faith, language, shared degrees, shared humour. And eventually, I learned that being myself was not something I had to negotiate. I go to the events, I don’t drink, and I leave the judgement where it belongs, with God.

“I found myself at a crossroads here; too Eastern for the West and too Western for the East.”

After university, I went looking for myself in quieter ways, or some may say it was a form of soul-searching. I read. I read obsessively, almost urgently, as though books might give me a map where life hadn’t. A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza sat particularly close to my heart. It felt like someone had written the ache I didn’t yet have language for, the tension between family and freedom, faith and individuality, love and quiet disappointment. And yet, even then, I realised I didn’t slot neatly into one place. I couldn’t fold myself into a single culture and call it home. I was too shaped by too many worlds. So instead of choosing one identity, I began to sit with the discomfort of multiplicity. I learned that home is not always a fixed location or a clearly defined community. Sometimes it is a conversation with a friend. A book that understands you. A shared silence. A recognition that you are not alone in your complexity.

I’ve gathered friends of all races, cultures and religions, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. I love that I have such a diverse, multicultural group of friends from all areas of the world. I love having deep discussions about God and life with my Christian friends, I love that I can switch into Gujarati or Kutchi with my best friends when I need to say something important, I love that my school friends have seen me through every chapter of my life and still love me for it, I love that my Muslim friends of all sects and cultures and I are connected through Arabic and faith, my Khoja (both Ismaili and Ithna-Ashari family and friends) are connected through everything, my South Asian friends are connected through culture, language, similar roots and upbringing. I love how Arabic words surface unexpectedly in my friends’ languages, how histories bleed into one another without asking permission.

I used to hate when people asked me where I was from, where my name was from. It made me feel like I didn’t belong in the same way as my friends. Now, I love the questions. I love the conversation it opens. When people guess — Portuguese, Spanish, Pakistani, Indian, Mauritian, South American, Iranian — I smile. Fatema also carries its own questions; is it Moroccan? Catholic? From the place in Portugal? The answer is never just one thing. Fatema exists across continents and histories.

I studied Spanish and French to A-level, and only recently have I begun trying to understand Arabic more deeply. Spanish, I learned, has one of the largest Arabic-influenced vocabularies in Europe due to Arab rule in Al-Andalus from 711 to 1492. Portuguese, too, carries over nineteen thousand words with Arabic roots. Ojalá (Spanish) and oxalá (Portuguese), both meaning hopefully, come from inshAllah. How is it that I can walk through Andalusia or Lisbon and feel so unexpectedly at home? That familiarity, I’ve realised, isn’t coincidence. It’s history. It’s migration. It’s culture.

Alhambra, Granada

Now, in my thirties, I finally understand what younger me couldn’t articulate: it’s not that I didn’t belong anywhere. It’s that I belong everywhere. Belonging isn’t about choosing one identity and discarding the rest. It’s about allowing yourself to be shaped by all of them, and finally realising that multiplicity is not something to apologise for.

So allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Fatema Zara Mamdani. Proud Muslim, proud Khoja, proud London-born and raised UK citizen.

And this is my story.