This kind of friendship resembles what I have called elsewhere a “diasporic intimacy,” especially since we are speaking of friendship between an immigrant and an expatriate. Intimate means “innermost,” “pertaining to a deep nature,” “very personal,” “sexual.” Yet, “to intimate” also means “to communicate with a hint or other indirect sign; to imply subtly.” In contemporary American pop psychology, one is encouraged “not to be afraid of intimacy,” which presumes that intimate communication can and should be made in plain language, that you can say “what you mean” without irony and double-speak. Diasporic intimacy, on the other hand, can be approached only through indirection and intimation, through stories and secrets. Spoken of in a foreign language that reveals the inadequacies of translation, diasporic intimacy is not opposed to uprootedness and defamiliarization but is constituted by it. In contrast to the utopian image of intimacy as transparency, authenticity, and ultimate belonging, diasporic intimacy is dystopic by definition; it is rooted in the suspicion of a single home, in shared longing without belonging. It thrives on the hope that human understanding and survival are possible, but this hope is not utopian.
Diasporic intimacy is not possessive but tender. Tenderness is not about complete disclosure, saying what one really means, and getting closer and closer. It excludes absolute possession and fusion. Not goal-oriented, it defies symbols of fulfillment. In the words of Roland Barthes, “tenderness ... is nothing but an infinite, insatiable metonymy” and a “miraculous crystallization of presence.” In tenderness, need and desire are joined. Tenderness is always polygamous, non-exclusive. “Where you are tender, you speak your plural.”
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