Becoming British: An Essay by Sara Henkin

After nearly five years in London, one wedding, three different types of visas, and a pact that my husband and I would not give in and pay an immigration lawyer, I found myself registering to take the United Kingdom’s citizenship test. And, oh, did I grumble about taking it. I’d had enough interaction with the Home Office and their various counterparts to last a lifetime.

But, to be honest, I also had a bad track record of test taking in England. Specifically: the driving test. It was clear from my first lesson, which resulted in scraped doors both for my car and an innocent VW parked on a narrow Hampstead street, that twelve years of claim-free driving in suburban America weren’t going to help me. After many months of excruciating lessons, I still slowed to a crawl as soon as I glimpsed an oncoming vehicle. The ensuing cacophony of horns that greeted this reflex, would, of course, cause me to slow down even more. Neither demonstrated the appropriate level of confidence (read: aggressive disregard for safety) that the examiners wanted me to demonstrate.

Plus, there was a bizarre requirement about being able to reverse around a corner, ending up in a straight line no more than six inches from the curb. This was not a maneuver I would ever consider undertaking in America.  “In fact,” I would say to myself as each dismal attempt ended in some variation of the car being parked vertically to or diagonally from the curb, “You could probably get arrested for doing this in the United States.”

So as the day of my citizenship exam approached I could only hope that the driving test debacle – which I eventually overcame with the aid of Natalie, a jolly chain-smoker who filled our lessons with tales of her domestic dramas – wouldn’t haunt me. If I could pass the driving test, albeit on the fourth try, then surely I could pass a test of 24 multiple-choice questions about life in the UK. After all, no one was going to ask me to reverse around a corner were they?

No, but I did flounder on the meaning of the U film rating – in the end convincing myself that it stood for “unrated”, a classification I craftily invented on the spot – and therefore was suitable only for adults. Had I read the Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship study guide a bit more carefully, however, I would have known that a U-rated film is  “universal”. You only have to be four years old to be admitted.

But I passed, and thus fared better than the other two immigrants taking the exam alongside me that day.  As we were handed our results I could feel despondency set in on the young man I had chatted with in the waiting room. It turned out that he had family living in my hometown of Washington, DC. He was so relieved that they were somewhere safe – somewhere that was not Afghanistan. And unlike me, he had been making a new life in London because he had to. I had merely followed a British beau.

Kicking myself over the U rating question as I left the test center, my certificate clutched in my hands, I kept thinking about a film I had seen a few days before. An art house flick titled Nuovomondo, it follows a family of Sicilians and a mysterious English woman (played by the enviably beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg), who joins them as they make their way to America in the early 1900s. They finally reach Ellis Island, where they are scrubbed, scoured, and then given a wooden block puzzle to test their intelligence. If they passed, the doors would open. If they failed, they would be sent back. I had rooted for the father, Salvatore, as he began the puzzle with gusto, and sadly applauded the stubborn grandmother who refused to do it at all. They only had one chance…perhaps some things have become kinder with time.

So do I understand more about the UK and what it means to live here as a result of the citizenship test?  Do I feel more British for having passed? Not so much. But as all immigrants discover, it’s the day-to-day aspects of living in your adopted country – whether it’s learning to name the teams in the Premier League or to spell words with an “s” rather than a “z” – that lets you gradually feel at home. And to tell the truth, these days, the times when I feel the most British are when I’m behind the wheel. Who would have thought?

Sara Henkin lives in London where she writes non-fiction and blogs about cities.

—

Submit to London Calling, a special issue of British and Irish writing, here.