According to my National Geographic DNA testing, my direct line male ancestors left Africa and wound up in Central Asia. There the trail goes cold.

Family history splits, some saying my immediate ancestry is from the Canary Islands, then to Cuba, but on my mother's side is physiognomy that could either be Amerind (from Mexico) or either Arab or Jew from North Africa or Southern Spain. Then again, some of my genes could have entered Spain through the slave markets of Byzantium, or Constantinople, or Istanbul, depending on the time we passed through . Eventually, sometime in the 19th century all these threads came together in Cuba, and early in the 20th all four grandparents came to North America.

It really doesn't matter and I don't really care. I had nothing to do with my ancestry, I can take neither credit nor blame for it, and other than appearance, it had no affect on me. Most people think I'm Italian.

I do take great pride in my culture, because I have two, and being bi-cultural is an incredible gift and a blessing. It's like having another brain in your head, constantly advising and commenting on the world around you, giving you advice and comparison and insight. It's the difference between color and black and white. I cannot imagine life without it, or how anyone else can survive without it.