Arabs and identity (2)

The second in a series of interviews with young Arabs in the diaspora, talking about their sense of identity, their thoughts on life in the west and feelings towards their homeland. 

First interview 
Second interview 
Third interview 

Originally published in Sharq magazine, 

Ali Aneizi

Five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. It’s the warmest day of the year so far and for some the weekend has started early. The bars and cafés in London’s financial district have spread their tables out on the pavements and City folk are taking a break in the sun before the journey home.

Ali Aneizi isn’t among them, though. He’s still in the office, working. At 32, Libyan-born Ali is a high-flier with a rather grand title: Director of Corporate Finance, Mergers, Acquisitions and Private Equity at Baker Tilly, one of the leading firms of accountants and business advisers.

His smartly-dressed PA greets me and shows me to a meeting room where tea, coffee and biscuits are waiting. A few minutes later Ali arrives in suit and tie. He immediately takes off his jacket and slings it over the back of a chair.

Suits and the City somehow go together and this, as I discovered later, was the reason for the slight delay. Ali had been changing out of his jeans and Timberlands and dressing up to meet me (including the jacket that came off again as soon as we had shaken hands). 

Ali is a chartered accountant whose main job is selling businesses or helping management teams to buy them. This might sound a bit dull but he specialises in one of the more glamorous areas of the market - media and related businesses – which is how he came to get his photo in the Sunday Times for arranging a management buyout at Gymbox.

Gymbox once came seventh in a poll of “the world’s hippest hangouts” and Ali describes it as “a quirky gym” that tries to combine exercise with entertainment.

“It’s got these interesting classes,” he explained. “There’s Bitch Boxing taught by a world female ex-boxing champion. They’ve got another class called Boob Aerobics …”

Ahem, yes. Not sure we need to know the details of that but I think we get the general idea.

“The management team came to us,” Ali continued. “They wanted to buy the gym off the shareholders. It was owned by Fitness First. They needed some finance to back them, they needed someone to negotiate the deal for them. They came to see us and we took them on.

“We’ve actually done two deals for Gymbox now. We did their buyout from Fitness First and then we helped them raise some more money to fund a roll-out. They’re going to open two or three new sites in London.”

Great! Definitely looking forward to those and all the … er … entertaining aerobics.

Ali’s parents moved from Libya to Britain when he was five. They came from the Benghazi region and, in Ali’s words, were “a reasonably influential” family.

“My grandparents on both sides were involved politically,” he said. “On my father’s side, my grandfather was one of a delegation that lobbied the United Nations to get us our independence in the early 1950s. On my mother’s side, my grandfather headed up the equivalent of the British House of Lords.”

It was work rather than politics that brought the family to London. “My father was a reinsurance executive. He works in a business that’s half owned by the Libyan state and half owned by the Algerian state. He’s chairman of that business and he’s here sort of looking after the Libyan interests.”

Being Libyan in Britain has had its tricky moments, especially during the confrontation over Lockerbie.

“At the time I was reasonably young but I distinctly noticed a change in the way may family conducted themselves in the wider community,” Ali said. “For example, we’d be at a restaurant and someone would ask where we were from, and we wouldn’t say we were Libyan. It wasn’t because we were embarrassed to be Libyan, it was just a sort of unnecessary issue to raise at the time. My mother would sometimes say she’s Syrian and my father would say he’s Tunisian.”

Little of this registered with Ali at the time because he was too young but he did feel some effects from 9/11.

“It was more noticeable after 9/11,” he said. “People will look at an Arab or Muslim walking down the street and - you know - will invariably jump to conclusions. There have been occasions when I’ve been on the tube and people have looked and stared.”

As far as work is concerned, though, he feels that his ethnic background has not held him back. “I’ve never really experienced any sort of prejudice in a professional sense or in a business sense,” he said. 

“In my experience deliverability is everything, and if you deliver it doesn’t matter who you are or what colour you are or where you come from.”

Ali is Arab, Muslim, Libyan and British but he’s reluctant to list these identities in any sort of order.

“I don’t think I can,” he said. “I feel like I may suffer from a multiple personality disorder at times, because who I’m with will determine how I am, how I interact. For example, if I’m at work I will feel more British than I feel Libyan. If I’m in the mosque I will feel more Muslim than Arab. If I am with my immediate family I will feel more Libyan than Arab.

“Part of why I think I’ve got on reasonably well with work is being able to adapt to different types of people, from all types of backgrounds.

“If I’m in a business meeting and surrounded by westerners I will be very western and very modern in my approach. If I was in a meeting surrounded by Arabs my approach would be very different. I’d probably be louder, a little bit more assertive - there tends to be an element of warm-bloodedness and enthusiasm. In western circles things are more composed, more methodical.”

So does this mean he’s a bit of a chameleon?

“Chameleon is probably quite accurate.”

No question of nipping out of business meetings to pray, though?

“I could, but I wouldn’t last very long. If you want to sort of integrate and be successful I think it’s quite difficult to be a full practising Muslim. It can slow you down, so you have to make concessions. 

“I’m one of those people that have stuck to the fundamentals and core principles of belief and made concessions in other areas. I believe in the faith. I consider it to be important to me and I fast during Ramadan but it’s a challenge for practising Muslims to live in the west. It’s quite tough, and I’d like to think that I’m not going to be judged negatively because of that.”

In his work, Ali reckons that he spends half his time trying to originate transactions.

“That means speaking to corporates, speaking to investors - people with money, in the main - private equity houses who are looking to buy businesses, staying in touch with the banks and the lawyers.

“There’s an awful lot of networking to be done because it’s all about developing relationships with the right people, being in the right place at the right time to originate deals.”

I wondered if his Arab culture might be a useful asset when it comes to this kind of sociable wheeling and dealing.

“I don’t think it’s a negative,” he said. “Arabs tend to be quite gregarious by nature, quite good at meeting people, articulating themselves. So in that respect I think it’s helpful.”

Does it resemble the Arab system of wasta, I asked.

“That’s a term I haven’t heard for a while, actually. It’s nothing like that - that would be frowned upon in these sorts of circles - ‘I know someone who knows someone who might be able to do a bit of a favour’ - it doesn’t quite work that way.

On the surface, Ali seems very British but he says he also feels a sense of belonging to an Arab community.

“A lot of my friends are Arabs. I did my early schooling at King Fahd Academy, which is predominantly an Arab school that taught the English syllabus, so I’ve sort of grown up with Arabs and stayed in touch with a lot of my friends.”

Unlike many Arabs, though, he’s not preoccupied with politics.

“I’ve got views and opinions. I’m not particularly active in any way but I feel a part of it. I can sympathise with what is going on in the region but what takes up most of my thoughts and most of my energy is my life here and my work.”

Meeting him in the office, you might get the impression he’s a workaholic but friends say he plays hard too and loves a good party.

“This is a very difficult city to get bored in,” he said. “There is a lot to do, but it’s more than that. It just feels right. It fits.”

When he’s in the office and not meeting clients he prefers to dress casually – the chameleon again.

“I just work better when I’m in my casual clothes,” he said. “My firm couldn’t give a monkeys what I wear as long as I get the job done and I present myself in the right image when I’m in front of clients.”

He travels to work in jeans and a T-shirt, with a rucksack on his back. It was probably the rucksack that led to him being stopped and searched at St Paul’s underground station shortly after the July bombings last year.

“It was very polite, very civil and I was happy to help,” he said. “I’m sure I fit a certain sort of criteria. If I were in their shoes I’d stop me too. Why take the risk?

“I was comforted by it more than anything else. A lot of people would argue about civil liberties, but the people who blew themselves up didn’t think about civil liberties.”