Category Archives: Rockstar and Crescent

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness

Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Rockstar and Crescent

In characteristic Yasmine-is-a-Lazy-Bum fashion, I’m a few days late in posting this update. Here’s wishing you much ease and discipline in your fasting, whether it’s for Ramadan, Navratri, or the ten days from Rosh Hashana until Yom Kippur for the Jewish New Year. Abhi has a lovely post over at Sepia Mutiny entitled My first Ramadan, and Monologist’s post, My Navaratri, reflects many of my own goals and longings for this Ramadan.

The first night of Taraweeh – the nightly congregational prayers offered during Ramadan – the imam announced that the masjid would be holding a food drive during this upcoming month and everyone should donate as much canned food as possible so the masjid could pass it along to the local food bank. He added that when he contacted the head of the food bank, the man there said in relief, “Thank you, I don’t know what we would have done otherwise; our shelves are almost empty.” The imam paused while the congregation mulled this over, then pointed out, “Most of us, on the other hand, don’t even know anything about that sort of hunger. We may be fasting during Ramadan, but we still spend twelve hours everyday thinking about what types of food we will prepare for iftar [the breaking of the fast at sunset].” We all laughed self-consciously, because we knew how correct he was.

Sure, we who have bewildering arrays of food to choose from at sunset are privileged; but maybe, in the long run, we’re also the ones that God rolls His eyes and shakes His head at. You know? All I know is, in our relative wealth, we often forget to be thankful for what we have, and to show active compassion towards those who lack the same.

Here’s Rumi on food, fasting, and faith:

BREAD – Rumi

A sheikh and a disciple are walking quickly toward a town
where it’s known there is very little to eat. The disciple
says nothing, but he is constantly afraid of going hungry.

The sheikh knows what the disciple thinks. How long
will you be frightened of the future
because you love food? You have closed the eye
of self-denial and forgotten who provides.

Don’t worry. You’ll have your walnuts and raisins and special desserts.
Only the true favorites get hunger for their daily bread.
You’re not one of those. Whoever loves the belly
is brought bowl after bowl from the kitchen.

When such a person dies, bread itself comes to the funeral
and makes a speech: “O corpse, you almost killed yourself
with worrying about food. Now you’re gone and food
is still here, more than enough. Have some free bread.”

Bread is more in love with you than you with it.
It sits and waits for days. It knows you have no will.
If you could fast, bread would jump into your lap
as lovers do with each other.

Be full with trusting,
not with these childish fears of famine.

Heedlessly disregarding warnings at muslimunityday

Rockstar and Crescent

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Well, eff you too, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Ramadan is any day now and I’ll need to get started on Project Personal Betterment v.3957975, so now would be a good time to admit that my first reaction upon seeing this sign was to mutter, “Well, eff you too, buddy.” The second was to smirk and take a photograph. The third was to defiantly go on the ride even though my sister looked questioningly, concernedly at me after seeing the sign herself.

Okay, so I did turn off my hearing aids though, so maybe that undermines the rebellious factor a bit. These digital babies cost thousands of dollars, buddy.

You can see other (non-profane, don’t worry) Muslim Unity Day photos here.

All credits for this Flickr endeavor and reviving the account I’ve had since June go to Elysium, whose every conversation contains lines like, “You need to get Flickr!” and “Why are you discriminating against Flickr?” and “Flickr is the best!” Just kidding, he is good people. And he takes amazing photographs.

Shiny smooth automotive goodness, and goodness of another nature

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Rockstar and Crescent, Salaam Namaste

Let me tell you about my friend S. My friend S is one of the most selfless people I know, the kind of person who, I’ve realized recently, is always putting everyone else before himself. Somayya is another one of those kind of people. They know it and I know it and everyone else knows it and they keep doing it, sometimes to their own detriment, but that’s what makes them so tight, dintcha know. It’s a vicious cycle sometimes, but we need more people like that in the world.

S is tight. Actually, he’s the self-proclaimed tightest person in the whole wide world. He used to send out emails to the listserve, signing off as, “S____ a.k.a. Tight One.” Most of the time, though, he’d email us one-liners stating simply, “I am so tight” or “I am hecka tight,” prompting me to fire back responses along the lines of, “Umm, no, the world does not revolve around you, buddy.”

I have to be careful about how I respond to S’s comments half the time though. Most of my conversations with friends and acquaintances revolve around sarcasm and wry remarks that may come off as disconcertingly harsh and are thus somewhat misconstrued by overly sensitive people like S. Recently, for example, in response to something he had said, I told S he was “hella rude and obnoxious.”

He reminded me that he is a fob, chiding me for using “big complicated words he can’t spell or say.” I didn’t realize until the next day that he was dismayed by my comment because he thought he had genuinely hurt my feelings or offended me. So he apologized profusely. Taken aback, I burst out laughing, until I realized he was serious, so I apologized in turn. And then I had to do a step-by-step explanation of the role of sarcasm in my daily conversations. What drama.

“Besides,” I explained later, “it’s not about me. You know I can take it. But you made that comment to someone you don’t know, and who doesn’t know you, and I think it comes off as a hella rude first impression.”

Then I told him how tight he was, to soften the criticism.
“I know,” he said, as if that were obvious. “People tell me all the time, ‘S___, you are so tight.’ I’m like, ‘I know I’m tight. Watch out, people, tight stuff walkin’ through.’ “
I rolled my eyes, as he continued muttering, “Man, I can’t believe I’m so tight.”

I’ve come to realize though that, like many of us, S uses his seeming arrogance, sarcasm, and blunt commentary as a front for masking deeper insecurities and somber life experiences. Once in a while, he’ll remain serious long enough to share unexpected, heartbreaking stories, like the one about the girl in high school who used to treat him like crap for wearing the same jeans every single day, because he could only afford one pair. Last summer, he told me I was wise, and I said, No, I’m just complacent, because life’s always been too good to me. How could I be wise, when I can’t even begin to fathom experiences such as his: “I’ve slept in the airport, on park benches and streets, collected cans at night… I have done all that, and I don’t take it for granted.”

“I remember where I come from,” he always tells me, “and I’m proud of it. Whatever I have now can be gone in a heartbeat, and I’ll give up everything I have, cuz I ain’t taking it to heaven.”

Two Fridays ago, I checked my phone and found the following text message from S, whose house I had left my car parked in front of that morning before hanging out with Somayya the rest of the day: I washed ur car n took most of da scratches 4rm da right door. I couldnt clean da rims.

I called him straightaway to convey my massive gratitude. “No problem,” he kept saying, with a note of genuine surprise in his voice, as if he couldn’t understand why I would be calling to thank him. “I was washing my car, so I thought I’d go ahead and wash yours, too.”

Last Monday, he called to ask, “Hey, are we still on for lunch tomorrow?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Okay, cool.” He reminded me that he was heading out of town in two days, and that he would be back in Sacramento in a couple of weeks. “So hey, just drop your car off tomorrow when we go to lunch, and I’ll clean the inside of it, too.”
“Are you serious?!”
“Sure. For free. I love cleaning cars.”
“Will do, then. Awesome, dude. Thanks so much!”
“No problem. It’ll be ready by the time you get off work. Oh, hey, when’s the last time you got your oil changed?”
“I dunno. It’s been a while, I think.”
“How long a while?”
“A few months?”
“How many months?”
“I dunno, man,” I said absently, sitting down on the floor of my room and warming up my hands at the heater. “Maybe, like…last summer or something?”
“Ohhh my God… Do you know, you’re supposed to change your oil every three thousand miles? Okay, I’ll have to change your oil, too. The hell is wrong with you?”

He was supposed to tell me the lengthy, convoluted story about how he made it to the United States, a story he said would take him anywhere from two to five hours to relate. Instead, he spent our entire lunch berating me for not remembering the last time I got the oil changed in my car.
“I don’t remember, okay?” I said, throwing up my hands in impatience. “So get over it. I just take it to Jiffy Lube every few months, and they take care of all that drama.”
“Every few months? You said last summer. Your car doesn’t deserve you. By the time I’m done with it, it won’t even want to go home with you at the end of the day.”
“Well, I check my oil regularly, even if I don’t know how to change it. And the coolant, too. Doesn’t that count for something?”
He was not impressed.

We finished lunch, complete with much eye-rolling on my part, and then S dropped me off at work. He then called me twice that afternoon. The first time: “Hey, do you want Armor All on your car?”
I squinted. “Almond oil?”
“Armor All.”
“What’s that?”
“Say ‘yes,’ ” mouthed Somayya. “It makes your car all shiny.”
“Oh, yeah, definitely then.”

The second call: “When’s the last time you got your transmission fluid changed?”
“Umm…”
“Okay, I’ll change that, too.”
“Thanks, buddy.”

Preoccupied with work and pseudo-studying, I didn’t make it back to S’s house to pick up my car until almost 9pm that evening, but even in the darkness I could see how clean and shiny my car looked. S and I spent fifteen minutes walking around his driveway, checking out my car from every angle as he relayed everything he had done: washed/polished/waxed the outside, scrubbed the rims, vacuumed and cleaned every inch of the inside, changed my oil and transmission fluid… Thorough detail.

“Oh, and I replaced your air filter, too. Took out your old one and put a new one in.” He fished my old air filter out of the garbage can and held it under the garage door light. “See this?”

I peered at it.
“See how black this is?” he said, pointing out the obvious. “It’s supposed to be all white.”

“Dang.” I skipped around my car again, repeatedly rubbing my index finger against the surface, feeling like a gleeful little kid. “It feels so slick. You musta used hella wax and polish on this.” I laughed. “Dude, it looks so freakin’ clean, I can’t believe it!”

“It wasn’t that dirty,” he shrugged.

I looked at him in disbelief. “Man, are you kidding me? Did you somehow miss the black rims and the inch-thick layers of dust on the dashboard?”

“I’ve seen dirtier cars than that, okay. Make sure you get your oil changed every three thousand miles,” he reminded me. “With all your driving, you have to do this regularly. Wait, how many miles do you drive a week?”

“Umm. Six hundred a week between home and school. Oh, and I work three days a week in Sacramento, too.”

“Dayamm. So that makes how many?”

“Another ninety or so. So let’s make it an even seven hundred.”

“Seven hundred miles a week?!” he yelped. “For the love of God! What are you, insane?”

He handed me a plastic grocery bag. “What’s this?” I asked, peering inside.

“An extra bottle of oil, and one of transmission fluid, left over from what I put in your car.”

“Dude, just keep them for your own car,” I insisted, but he refused to take them. “Okay, just tell me how much all this stuff cost, so I can pay you back.”

“No,” he said obstinately, opening my car door. “Go home.”

“Fine then. I owe you a couple of lunches and ice cream, whenever you get back.”

“Okay, okay. Oh, and wear sunglasses in the morning,” he warned. “The car might blind you.”

I laughed, eyeing the car in the dark. “Buddy, I’m loving the shininess, whatever I can see of it. There’s no way it’s going to blind me.”

The next morning, however, I had to concede he was right, as the sunshine bounced off the interior of my car – especially the shiny dashboard and steering wheel – and attacked my eyes, which were already strained after a late-night study session. Yellow-orange-tinted sunglasses to the rescue!

I called S when I got to campus. “The car looks awesome, dude. Thanks so much!”
“If you thank me one more time,” he snapped, “I’m going to throw up.”
“Please restrain yourself. And get over it.”

In the afternoon, he left me a voicemessage: “Hey, what’s crackin’? I just listened to your message from last night, too. Stop thanking me. I just washed your car, it’s not like I saved your life or something. Have a beautiful day with your 10am to 9pm back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back classes. Oh, and make sure you don’t get stepped on, okay?”

I’ve been more in touch with S over the past week than I have over the past six months before that. This is mainly because I stalk him everyday by calling to tell him how shiny clean my car is, and how much I love it, and so he feels obligated to return all my rambling phone calls. Now that he’s got me all mushy about my car, S is working on two things:

1) Constantly reminding me about how short I am [I’m 5’1″, and, yes, I’m perfectly okay with this]
(Sample voicemessages: “Did I ever tell you that you’re so short? I noticed it today and was like, ‘Dang, Yasmine is hella short! I didn’t want to step on you.’ ” and
“To me, you will always be thirteen years old. Be careful and make sure you don’t get stepped on, okay?” and
“Why are you so short? And your brother is a giant. Why? Genetics can’t explain that.” and
“I’m taller than you. Taller means everything.”); and

2) Harassing me about my lack of study habits
(He called me a couple of evenings ago to check up on how my studying was going.
“Um, actually, I just finished dinner.”
“Dinner?” he said incredulously. “You got home at 7:30. That was three hours ago. It took you three hours to eat dinner?”
“Well, no, but there’s nothing wrong with prolonging a good thing.”
“Unless you’re taking 24 units,” he pointed out. “And your problem is, half the time, you’re driving. And the other half, you’re napping. What’s wrong with you? You’re always taking naps everywhere. You need to stop sleeping so damn much.”
And last night:
“Are you studying?”
“No! It’s Friday!”
“Every day is a Friday for you, isn’t it? How are you planning on passing those 24 units?”
“Shut up.”)

I’m easily amused and impressed by simple things, and so the ways to my heart are many. But because I am also the Commuter Child Extraordinaire, two things will earn you my massive, never-ending gratitude: Washing my car for me (which no one has ever willingly volunteered to do before S tackled the job), and filling up my gas tank to the max (which my dad always does on the rare occasions he borrows my car).

S called me late Thursday night to share a “pretty tight” verse from the Quran. Why do people always assume I’ll be awake at 12:30am?

Oh, wait, because I usually am.

To continue… I was actually asleep for once in my life, so he left a voicemessage with the verse, and the related footnote/commentary. I listened to it early yesterday morning, on my way to school, grateful for the timely reminder in these weeks of ungodly, uncharitable thoughts on my part:

And call not, besides God, on another god. There is no god but He. Everything (that exists) will perish except His own Face. To Him belongs the Command, and to Him will ye (all) be brought back. (Quran, 28:88)

Later in the day, while I was at work, he IMed me with, “Hey, I found another pretty tight verse.”
“What is it?”
“2:255. But I don’t know how to say it in Arabic.”
“Oh!” I said. “That’s called Ayat al-Kursi. It’s one of my favorites. I can recite the Arabic for you, if you want to hear it. Lemme call you when I get off work, okay?”

I finally got around to calling him that evening, while I was on the road, about ten minutes from home.
“For the love of God!” he exclaimed. “What took you so damn long? I’ve had the crappiest day ever, and I was looking forward to the Arabic version of that verse all day long.”
“Sorry. Alright, buddy, here goes…” So I recited Ayat al-Kursi and the two verses that follow it.
There was empty silence for a few moments after I finished. Then he said, “Wow.”
“Yeah, it’s good stuff, huh?”
“That just made you the tightest person in my book.”
“I already knew that, but thanks anyway.”

How can you not love being friends with a kid who sends text messages like the following, a la Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech:
i had a dream and i woke up and wrote about it, that one day we will find a place to eat, i have a dream today that we will eat good food and chill, i have a dream today that my stomach will be full of good food, i have a dream today.

Today’s text message states:
u are tight cause u have a friend like me who is the #1 TIGHTEST. ME. i’m Tight. thus making u guys tight cause u guys are my friends.

Indeed.

Borders, boundaries, blockades

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Conversations and Encounters, Rockstar and Crescent, Salaam Namaste

and it’s the way that we will forgive ourselves
and it’s the way that we will for no one else
– Josh Kelly, Amen

I call my friend Z one morning to tell her that I am skipping all my classes and instead studying at the cafe of her favorite Borders bookstore here in the East Bay, and that she is more than welcome to join me any time during the day. She shows up half an hour later with some apples and carrot sticks for us to munch on – I peer ambivalently at her choice of food, having already started on a candy bar – and greetings of, “Heyy, beautiful lady!”

“Okay, stop,” I mutter, and hug her tightly. Z graduated from our university in June, and I’ve barely seen her since. When I last saw her at the end of Ramadan, she urged me to call her up to hang out sometime. “I’m in the Bay all the time now!” she said excitedly. “Alright, will do,” I replied, but, later, thinking about the conversation, I realized, Wait, but I’m never there. Even though I live in the Bay, yes I know. But I’ve known Z since our second year of college, and there are very few people I make an active effort to stay in touch with. Z is one of those rare friends, and I had immediately thought of her when I planned my stakeout at Borders the evening before.

She has her laptop, envelopes and manila folders, and paperwork related to her ongoing graduate school admissions process. I’ve got my pile of books, lecture notes, and the only CD I ever listen to whenever I’m studying, Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me, because that’s really the only non-distracting, background-sort-of-music I own.

An hour or so into our study session, as we shift around in our chairs and start becoming distracted by book posters and the cafe menu, Z looks across the table at me and says with practiced casualness, “So Yasmine, I have a question for you. We never have this conversation, you know, so I figured I should ask today.” I squint suspiciously. “What conversation?”

She smiles knowingly, and I suddenly occupy myself with flipping through the pages of my book in exaggerated concentration. “Okay. So I have reading to do. Thomas More and the Utopians and their attitude towards boundless human happiness. And religion. Dude, this book is hella cool. I wonder if More was an undercover Muslim, you think?”

She is undeterred by my attempts at intellectual distraction. “Fine, here, I’ll write it down for you,” she says, smirking while I shake my head and go back to my notes. She hastily scribbles down a few lines and shoves the slip of paper across the table. I glance at it and roll my eyes. “God, why are you so predictable? Why do we need to talk about boys? Do you know how gorgeously simple and drama-free my life is just because I can’t be bothered to have conversations like this?”

“Come on,” she presses. “Let’s talk. Not like any of them are worthy of you anyway, but what are you looking for in a guy?”

“Um,” I say. “The guy version of me?” We both burst out laughing, and I explain, “No, wait, I have to tell you this story—” So I tell her about the morning Somayya and I were driving somewhere, having a conversation slightly similar to this one, and Somayya looked across at me and said, “You know what, Yazzo, I’ve decided what I need is a boy version of you.” “Me, too!” I exclaimed, but she corrected me: “No, what you need is a boy version of me,” whereupon we giggled hysterically the rest of the way to our destination.

Z laughs at our collective epiphany, but I can tell I won’t get away with any more delaying tactics. I sigh. “Okay. Someone who’s Muslim, obviously, because that’s very important to me. And I guess, basically, someone who’s a student of knowledge.” I laugh at the expression on her face, knowing instinctively that she’s thinking of mullahs and madrassahs. “No, nothing hardcore, don’t worry. I mean… Okay, it’s kinda like this: Someone who’s constantly trying to figure out who he is and how to improve himself and what the hell he’s supposed to be doing with his life, and how God fits into all that. That’s all part of the process of seeking knowledge too, right there. Just a certain, active way of looking at the world. Oh, and of course he has to be insanely weird and crackheaded like me, otherwise it’s never gonna work out. Does that all kinda make sense?”

“Of course it does. See, that wasn’t very painful, was it?” She pauses for a moment, ignoring me as I belligerently retort, “Yes, it was!”

“It’s funny,” she says. “You’re looking for someone who very much identifies as Muslim, and I’m looking for someone who’s not practicing at all. Maybe not even Muslim at all.”

“Why’s that?” I ask, somewhat stunned.

We sit there at Borders while she tells me her stories, much of which I knew already, but not the painful depth of it. Her hands are cold, so very cold, so I cover them with my own, and we sit there across from one another with our hands bent together and piled in the middle of the table. Her voice is casual and straightforward – deliberately so, I know – but her eyes are overly bright with pain and unshed tears.

She tells me what it has been like for her, growing up as the only child of a Bengali Christian mother and a Pakistani Muslim father. A mother who swallowed her own pain and taught her daughter the steps of making ablution, explained the intricacies of Muslim prayer, guided her through fasting during Ramadan, and drove her to and from Arabic lessons so Z could read the Quran on her own. And a father who, when Z asked, “Don’t we as Muslims have a responsibility and obligation to learn about other religious traditions so we can better understand and explain our own?” sternly, expressly forbade her to do so, yet neither practiced himself nor made any basic effort to teach her about Islam either.

Knowing that her culture is important to her, I ask whether she feels more of a connection to South Asian Christians rather than to South Asian Muslims. She shrugs slightly. “Maybe a little bit, but it’s always the same thing: the Christians don’t understand the Muslim side of me, and the Muslims don’t understand the Christian influence in my life.”

“Look at it this way,” she says. “Look at yourself, for example. You come across as very confident. You walk into a room knowing exactly who you are. You’re Yasmine, and you’re Muslim and Pakistani and American. I, on the other hand, can’t say any of that so easily. All I know is, I’m Z, and…and that’s all.”

“You know my car, right?” she asks. I nod. “That car used to be my mother’s, and she gave it to me when I started college. She had a bumper sticker on the back that said, in big letters, FEAR GOD, and a short, relevant verse from the Bible underneath. That’s all, nothing more.” She tells me about the time she rounded the corner into a university parking lot one day, only to find a group of Muslim male acquaintances gathered around her car, examining the bumper sticker and asking one another, “Hey, whose car is that?” “Wait, that belongs to Z, right?” “Oh yeah, her mom’s a kaffir, isn’t she?”

I flinch.

Z, to give her inner strength due credit, choked back her hurt, smiled coldly at the students and made the requisite small talk while pretending she hadn’t heard any of the previous comments. “But, Yasmine,” she says now, her hands still cold under mine, “I wanted to fit in so badly that as soon as they turned and left, I ripped off that bumper sticker and I broke my mother’s heart that day.”

There were raised eyebrows and whispers within their Muslim community when Z’s mother recently gathered up her faith and courage and once more began attending church regularly, after so many years of not doing so. At social gatherings, the Muslim women politely ask one another, “Where is Z’s mother?” and the answers will range from “Oh, she had a prior commitment,” to “Oh, she wasn’t feeling very well today,” but what no one will admit is that she was not invited in the first place.

And then, as Z reminds me, there was the Muslim graduation picnic held this past June, co-sponsored by the Muslim Students Association from the university and the Muslim community members within the city itself. It was an event well attended not only by Muslims, but also by many non-Muslim university officials and administrators, community leaders including those involved in city council and interfaith activities, and community members including passersby who randomly decided to stop by on the spur of the moment. I was humbled and honored to see such amazing, supportive presence from the non-Muslim community, especially when several of them stood up to warmly proclaim that they were there to show solidarity with us Muslims.

I thought everything was going well, until a former MSA president reached the part in his speech where he began firmly cautioning the Muslim students present against “emulating the kuffar.”

I learned later that evening that Z left the picnic soon afterward, in tears, hurt beyond words to hear such harsh condemnation of the so-called “kuffar,” a category which obviously includes her own mother, the woman who, while admittedly non-Muslim, had raised Z to be far more aware of Islam and its religious traditions than her Muslim father ever had. Sick and disheartened, Somayya and I repeatedly asked each other, “What the hell was he thinking?” for days afterward as well. It was painful and disappointing to hear such rhetoric from someone I had held in such high esteem as an exemplary brother in Islam, and I lost a massive amount of respect that day for, ironically, someone whose work on interfaith councils I had always very much admired.

“It comes back to the conversation we started with,” Z says. “I refuse to marry anyone who disrespects my mother simply because she’s not Muslim. Who’s to say that non-Muslim men aren’t more tolerant and open-hearted than any of the narrow-minded Muslim men I’ve met so far? Why wouldn’t I want to emulate my mother? How would you feel, Yasmine, if you were married to a non-Muslim man and you had to teach your children about his religion at the expense of your own?”

“I think it would break my heart everyday,” I say in a small voice.

Sitting as we are with our piled hands and miserable faces in the middle of the Borders cafe, we probably incite some curious glances from fellow cafe patrons, but I don’t know, because all I can see is through the tears in my eyes is the sadness on her face. “I can’t even begin to imagine,” I say, “what a huge heart your mother must have.”

And there is more, but I think this is already more than enough. I hesitate to post even this, mainly because Z doesn’t know about my weblog, and her stories are not mine to tell and share. And also because I feel I may just be preaching to the choir, so to speak, because as bloggers most of us are already in the habit of choosing our words carefully, painstakingly.

But I write this because I hate the word “kaffir,” and I hate how it comes so easily to some Muslims even as it makes me flinch, and I hate that we contemptuously turn away the very same people we accuse of not understanding us, without giving them a fair chance to know who we are, without granting them credit for making the beautiful effort of shared human spirit and outreach that we ourselves as Muslims rarely make a point of with other communities. Who the hell are we to be critical then, when we accuse others of stereotyping us and disliking us and being ignorant of who we are, of the vastness of our humanity and traditions, and of what Islam in its pure beauty truly stands for? And I guess what I’m really just trying to figure out is –

When did we ourselves become so damn self-righteous and judgmental?

Sanctuary speak-outs

Rockstar and Crescent, Salaam Namaste, Suckool

One of the courses I’m enrolled in this quarter is a Community & Regional Development class entitled “Ethnicity and American Communities.” If I had to pick one single class I were absolutely in love with during my entire university experience, this would most likely be it. Interestingly enough, the other likely contenders fall into the category of classes related to social and ethnic relations as well. This is the stuff I love.

In a lecture hall that holds nearly 150 seats and a sea of diverse faces among which it would otherwise be quite easy to become just another anonymous figure, our professor – a woman with a sharp, elfin face and purple streaks in her white hair, whose wide, gleeful grin for some reason reminds me of my grandmother’s – has successfully managed to help us not only get to know one another, but also to put our heart and soul into speaking honestly and sharing our thoughts, opinions, and experiences as applicable to the course. CRD 2 is a safe space, and, judging by the discussion, directness, and dialogue we’ve achieved just over the past few weeks, I don’t use that term lightly. I am constantly humbled by the stories my classmates share with us, and entrust us with.

During the latest lecture, our professor mentioned she was concerned about the fact that many students had made references to “colored people” while writing their weekly reaction papers for the class. I would find that laughable – who in their right mind still uses the term “colored people”?! – except I know what a painful, shameful history those words have had in the United States, and how emotive the phrase still is for many people. Looking around at the sea of faces in the lecture hall, I saw a variety of expressions: amused, shocked, embarrassed, cringing.

“We don’t say ‘colored people’ anymore,” said the professor gently. “Who knows what the correct term is – today, at least?”

There was a smattering of laughter as someone called out, “People of color!” Some white people looked slightly confused; the “colored people” smiled knowingly in amusement.

The professor scrawled both phrases on the chalkboard and turned back to the class. “I know, it sounds like the same thing, doesn’t it? Who knows what the difference is, between ‘colored people’ and ‘people of color?'”

I don’t know how common the usage of “people of color” is outside the United States, but even I myself had never heard of the term until I started college, and only thought about it closely for the first time when I was designing workshops for the Women of Color Conference last spring. Perhaps it’s all semantics, but I think the modifier makes all the difference: “colored people” is passive; “people of color” denotes ownership and active choice. What’s wrong with referring to “colored people”? It implies that there are two standards for people (those who are colored, and those who are…not), that one group is the norm (clean, untainted, and wholesome) and the other is…not. Guess which is which.

Last week I read my “What Did You Think?” poem aloud in class. Later, a white classmate who walked out with me remarked in response to the poem, “You know, maybe I’m just not judgmental enough, but I wouldn’t even look at you and think you don’t know how to speak English.” I smiled in amusement. “You’d be surprised,” I answered. Here’s something that’s true: The reactions I get from strangers when I’m wearing jeans and what my father calls my “retro hippie dress with the strings” (also labeled the “river rat gypsy dress” by my brother) are different from those I get when I’m wearing more ethnic clothing such as pants and a Pakistani top. It’s human nature to assume, to jump to conclusions, to judge without context, and I suppose I’m fortunate that my experiences with people in that regard have more to do with what I’m wearing, the way I speak, and how I carry myself rather than specifically with the color of my skin.

A few days ago, during one of my perpetual phases of non-thinking, I turned on the oven and placed the top of my index finger right up against the broiler to check whether it was hot enough. Who in their right mind does things like that, really? So now I sport a small, circular burn on my finger. It’s going through a healing stage, darkening with each day that passes. I find myself glancing at it during odd moments of the day, regarding it not as a blemish but just something interesting and out of the ordinary. (After all, it means at least some tiny bit of my skin tone now matches my mother’s, and we all know my mother is the best.) And while my little brown burn mark is such a trivial thing, it’s made me realize that darker skin catches the eye more often when it’s something unusual or uncommon. I may find it intriguing, but the sad fact is that a seemingly inconsequential thing like the color of one’s skin has, both historically and currently, been grounds for prejudice, disrespect, hate, and raging atrocities.

It breaks my heart on a daily basis – through workshops, forums, film screenings, discussion panels, and in-depth conversations with strangers and people I know – to realize the extent of discrimination and racism and intolerance that still exist in our world today. And it’s not all just about race and ethnicity. There’s also gender, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, religion, and a multitude of other assumptions and characteristics by which we define ourselves and each another.

A few evenings ago, listening to the Chicano/Latino panel talk about their lives and experiences and frantically jotting down scribbled notes whenever their stories reminded me of incidents and conversations from my own past, I was struck again by a thought that has crossed my mind often during the last couple of years that I’ve been involved with issues of race/ethnicity and diversity: that the colors may vary and our experiences differ across the board, but ultimately, at the core of our humanity, our stories somehow reflect one another’s.

The point was driven home even more effectively by a couple of activities we carried out during class. The first one was an outdoor activity for which we trudged out to the edge of the wide lawn next to the building, all 150 of us standing in a huge group, shivering in the cold late afternoon wind.

The professor called out instructions, reading through a long list: “Step to the side if you are _____. *pause* Pay attention to who is standing with you. *pause* Pay attention to who is not standing with you.” We found there were three Arabs in the class, including the teaching assistant. Later, there were three Muslims up there, including me and not including the Persian guy with the Turkish name who’d introduced himself to me the week before. He met my gaze levelly, nonchalantly as the professor instructed us to “pay attention to who is not standing with you.” There were about a dozen people up there at the middle of the lawn when she called for those with disabilities, whether they were physical or learning or God knows what else. And even though, as I’ve mentioned before, hearing loss is a part of my life but doesn’t define who I am, I thought, What the hell, and walked up to join them. When she called for those who had grown up in working-class households, I stayed back and marveled at the sea of people that pushed forward.

When she called for those who had ever been arrested or been in jail, we all held our collective breath. Eight students walked up – two were African American, most were white and there were surprisingly more women up there than any of us had expected. When she called for the Asian American/API group, we walked to the middle, then turned back to see who remained beind, letting out a round of laughter because the majority of the class was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with us. A non-Asian student later referred to us as “the mass of the class.”

It was an extraordinary way to get a visual sample of the class demographics. There were people walking up for categories I never would have expected by looking at them – a simple reminder not to judge one another.

The second activity was back indoors. We had two minutes to individually complete the following exercise:

1. As a _____, what I want you to know about me is _____.

2. As a _____, what I never want to see, hear, or to have happen again is _____.

3. As a _____, what I expect from you as an ally is _____.

My quick answers:

1. As a Pakistani Muslim woman, what I want you to know about me is I choose to cover my hair, I am not oppressed, my ethnic clothing is not called “pajamas,” I am not a terrorist, my nationality is American, and I’m versatile not confused [thank you, Fathima!]

2. As a Pakistani Muslim woman, what I never want to see, hear, or to have happen again is laws passed to limit my personal right to wear my headscarf, the Gujarat riots, terrorist attacks including those of September 11th, people being victimized or labeled because of outer appearances

3. As a Pakistani Muslim woman, what I expect from you as an ally is tolerance, acceptance, asking for explanations up-front instead of assuming, and respect for my individual right to practice my religion

The fun part was when we got segregated into groups based on our racial/ethnic identity, to share our answers. The other students in my South Asian group were all non-Muslim Indians, and it was interesting to note that my response was the only one dealing mainly with religion. Not to say that non-Muslim Indians aren’t religious, but that was an observation nonetheless. And then we had to choose someone from the group as a spokesperson, to combine a few of our answers and read them to the class. “I nominate her,” said one of the guys, pointing at me. “Hers sounds complicated.”
“Thanks a lot,” I laughed.

The professor called this process of sharing with the class “sanctuary speak-outs.” It was a powerful experience, not only reading my group’s answers but also listening to the statements recited by other groups. What made it even more meaningful is that, at the end of each group’s list, the entire class was asked to repeat back whatever they had heard, thus effectively validating the group’s experiences and declarations. A Filipino student simply announced, “What I expect from you as an ally is to open my fridge.” When pressed for an explanation, he said his measure of a really good friend is that the first thing the person does when he walks into his house is open the refrigerator and help himself to food. This level of comfort, disregard for useless social niceties, ease in one another’s presence, and “feeling right at home-ness” is something he wishes more people would aspire to in relationships with one another.

You’re all welcome to open my fridge any day. There’s a lot of cheese and fruit juice in there. And the kitchen cupboard has two boxes of chocolate truffles, too, if you’re interested.

Use the comment box to fill in your own blanks for #1-3. What do you have to say for yourself?

ramaban mubarak Whatever your personal goals ar…

Rockstar and Crescent

ramaban mubarak

Whatever your personal goals are for this year’s Ramadan, I hope you find within you the strength and dedication and drive to fulfill your goals, and to maintain and implement those changes following Ramadan, too. May your fasting become a manifestation of worship and patience. May He accept your repentance and make it sound and permanent, and grant you guidance and success in following the straight path. May He purify your intentions, accept your fasting and tears, forgive your sins, and bless you with mercy and peace during this month and throughout the year.

Ameen.

brought to you by the color orange This…

Rockstar and Crescent

brought to you by the color orange

This is where I’ll be at tomorrow. Wish you all could be, too. I’ll be making a special mental note to stalk the UC San Diego MSA table throughout the day, where everyone’s favorite blurker (“blog+lurker”; thanks, Baji!) 2Scoops’ good friends will be selling t-shirts. Isn’t it amazing what a crazy small world it is? I love it.

Lord, please don’t let it rain.

Make it sunny. You know how I like all that yellow sunshine.

Lord, grant us all much strength, patience, and steady iman.

Make the event one that is successful and smooth.

And as beautiful and memorable as last year’s.

Lord, help us bring a positive change to the youth and the Ummah.

Grant us patience and shower Your blessings on this event as well as all other events going on this weekend.

Open the hearts of all those who attend and make everyone leave in a better state than that which they entered with.

Remind us to breathe. And pray for guidance. And give thanks for all You have blessed us with.

Bless those who, with endless kindness and generosity, helped make this event possible.

And those who had the passion, vision, and drive to start this movement and the dedication to ensure it continued.

Lord, guide our hearts and purify our intentions and make the event one at which we feel Your presence with clarity.

Ameen.

oh, the scrolling, so much scrolling

Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Rockstar and Crescent

[Background: A friend asked me a while back to write up a few sentences summarizing why I choose to be Muslim, so she could then publish it in the Muslim campus paper, along with several other students’ responses. I kept assuring her that I would submit something, but was frustrated at my inability to articulate exactly what she needed and what I wanted to say. The poem I ended up writing while I was supposed to be studying for a psychology final submitting instead illustrates some of that dilemma, I hope. This one is called Elusion. If it sounds choppy, it’s because I’m not used to writing poetry, so it’s more like a prose piece chopped up into short lines. Besides, this is only the second real poem I’ve ever written. The other one involves even more scrolling, so you’ll have to let me know if you can handle it. Real post coming tomorrow, peoples.]

She holds out a hand to stop me
As I exit the building.
“Tell me,” she says.
“A few words, nothing more, just
The gist of an explanation.
It won’t take too much of
Your time.”

But I slant my gaze
And turn my head and
Answer in a voice muffled
By years of confusion and regrets:
“I have no words.”

“How can you not?” she queries,
Or perhaps what I hear is just
The reproachful voice
Of my own heart.
“No words for that which
Is so defining, so innate,
So all-encompassing and guiding
For you?”

But I turn away
And close my eyes
As images of the past
And present and what could be
Float through my conscience.
And I, too, wonder at
My lack of words,
Usually so steadfast,
Sentinel guards standing at attention,
Eyes sharp, literary weapons waiting
For my command.

I see her the next day.
I will see her tomorrow
And the day after, and more.
Each day she will approach
Me to ask
For my thoughts and justifications.
And each time,
Despite her entreaties,
Comes my level, distant reply:
“I have no words.”

Sometimes
The truth lies not in words
But in actions and endeavors.
I bathe, hoping someday
The water substitutes for light.
I will pray on carpets that scrape
My sunburnt skin
And on rugs that cushion
My blistered feet
And on marble floors and green lawns
That cool my face in prostration,
Hoping for levels higher
Than that which I know.

I will prove my worth
And challenge definitions,
Even if I must
Redefine challenges.
I will continue to smile at strangers
Unapologetically.
And I will change the world
Tomorrow,
Or the day after,
And more.

Because I,
One woman walking,
Represent so much
More.

And when I see her again,
It will be a new season
And perhaps a new
Me.
I will be able to speak
That day,
To give voice to the muffled words
Of my soul,
To speak of sparks of light
In twisted hearts,
Prayers that illuminate darkened corners,
Joyous laughter that stems
From gratitude for relief
And salvation.

But today
There are still words left unsaid,
Thoughts unknown,
Actions unconceived.
And I stumble on the path,
Fumble for words,
Laugh at my own confusion,
Throw up my hands
To relieve myself of
The burden of justifications.

This season is cold.
My conscience feeds off
My soul.
And there are
Days of darkness,
Nights of rain.

But tomorrow will bring
The light.

Belief makes things real, makes things feel, feel alright

Conversations and Encounters, NineToFive outside the 925, Rockstar and Crescent, Suckool

He’s a graduating senior. He’s very articulate, and passionate about diversity issues on our university campus. His family fled Iran when he was a child, soon after the revolution (Which revolution? cracked my father, when I came home and recounted my day to him. Iran goes through a revolution every few years.) He doesn’t consider himself American even though he’s lived in the U.S. for most of his life, because, in his mind, he’s still an immigrant and very much Persian.

These are the things I observed and learned about him during the course of our group discussion. As part of my internship, I’ve met and interacted with many interesting people during the past year. Still, but for the exchange that followed, I most likely would have forgotten about the Persian boy by the end of the evening.

As we remained in our circle of chairs, waiting for the other group to finish its discussion, he crossed the room and dropped into an empty chair beside me. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Are you Muslim?”

“Yes.”

He moved his hand in a circle around his face, referring to my headscarf. “You wear hijab.” He then looked down pointedly at my feet. “But you’re wearing sandals.”

I couldn’t help laughing a little. “Wait, so, as a Muslim, I’m not allowed to wear flip-flops?”

He held up his hands. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“I’m not offended at all,” I said. “But, based to my understanding of Islam and modesty, what I’m wearing right now is in accordance with hijab.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” he repeated. “I was just curious, because I’ve seen Muslim girls on campus who won’t wear sandals.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You sure it’s not just because they don’t like sandals, maybe?”

He laughed. “No. I went up to them and asked them about it. Like I said, I’m very curious.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “I’ve never even noticed that. I guess, for some people, it depends on where you’re from, where you live. Like I said, for me, what I’m wearing right now constitutes hijab.”

“I think you mentioned this earlier, during the discussion, but you’re Pakistani, right?”

“Right.”

He jerked his chin at my flip-flops again. “And would you be able to wear those, if you were in Pakistan?”

“Of course!” I said, both bewildered and amused. “I’m from a village, and everyone there wears sandals and flip-flops. It’s a normal part of life. In the summer, it’s really hot – you need sandals. And even in the winter, not everyone can afford to buy real shoes.”

He nodded. “Okay. But Pakistan – it’s very strict, isn’t it? Like Saudi Arabia?”

“I’ve never been to Saudi Arabia, so I don’t know what it’s like there,” I replied. “And I’m from a village in Pakistan. A village is like –”

“– its own little world,” he finished.

“Right,” I smiled. “There’s a lot of cultural influence there that is not necessarily Islam. If I wanted to step out into the main part of my village in Pakistan, I had to wear a chador. But in the Pakistani cities, as well as in many other places, I think what I’m wearing right now would be commonly accepted as adequate hijab.”

He nodded in understanding. “I went back to Iran after tenth grade, and everything was just…different,” he said. “Before, women were totally covered, fully veiled. I went back and, all of a sudden, women were wearing capri pants. They said that it was okay, they had found justifications for it. But you know what, people are always going to find ways to excuse what ever they want to. The lines and boundaries are constantly extended.”

“Yeah. Each community tends to have its own interpretations.”

He smiled wryly. “I really hope I didn’t offend you with my questions. I’m just fascinated by hijab.”

“Trust me,” I said, “If I were offended, I would really let you know.”

“I used to be Muslim,” he commented. “Up until tenth grade, when I went back to Iran.”

The casual ease with which he made the remark stunned me. I tried to hide my blank shock behind a noncommittal nod. He turned to me again. “So how long have you been Muslim?”

Taken aback, I replied, “I’ve always considered myself Muslim.”

“But how long have you been practicing?”

I thought about it. “My parents raised me so that I was constantly surrounded by and reminded about Islam. But I guess I didn’t really start practicing on my own until I went back to Pakistan when I was thirteen, and lived there for eighteen months.”

He looked at me with an inscrutable expression on his face. “I guess we have opposite stories, huh?”

“I guess so,” I agreed.

I had so many questions, but I didn’t get a chance to ask him any of them. The other group had finished their discussion by then, and it was time to wrap up and head home. I smiled politely at the Persian boy and wandered back to my colleagues.

While walking across campus toward the end of the week, I saw him performing a spoken word piece during a culture show he had co-organized. Since I love spoken word but rarely get a chance to be at an event, I stopped to listen, and found I could relate to many of his experiences and struggles in balancing his ancestral culture with life in America. He has his grandmother’s nose and his father’s eyes, he was relating to the crowd, and as a young child newly arrived in the U.S. he used to be terrified of tennis lessons because the relentless speed of tennis balls shot his way made him think of cannons. I tried to fit these pieces together with what I already knew of him.

A few days later, a friend admitted to me, “I used to drink alcohol, smoke drugs. Yet even at the height of all that, I couldn’t bring myself to eat meat that wasn’t halal.”

“Why?” I asked. “What made you stay Muslim? Why didn’t you just totally give it all up? What made you keep identifying as Muslim even though your lifestyle didn’t reflect it at all?”

He looked at me and replied in all seriousness, “Because I have an English translation of the Quran, and whenever I opened it and read it, I felt that God was speaking directly to me. I could just feel the power of the words. That’s the one thing that kept me connected to Islam, even though my life, and the world, and everything else was completely jacked up.”

I find it interesting and intriguing, juxtaposing these two young men’s very different approaches to Islam. If I were to meet the Persian boy again, I wouldn’t be able to stop asking questions. I want to know why this boy – who is such an expressive communicator, deeply involved with student-campus relations, genuinely proud of his cultural heritage, passionate about intercultural dialogue, understanding, and alliance – doesn’t align himself anymore with the religion he was raised on.

Other things I would ask him:

What made you decide not to be Muslim anymore? Was it something specific, or a series of events? How did you decide? Did you sit down one day and say, Okay, I’m not Muslim from now on? Did you wake up one morning and not feel Muslim anymore? Why did you totally break away from Islam, as opposed to – like so many others – remaining Muslim in name only yet not practicing? And, by the way, what is your definition of Islam anyway?

But most of all, I want to know why a boy who doesn’t consider himself Muslim anymore remains so obviously fascinated by hijab.

postscript Due to popular demand, and because I r…

NineToFive outside the 925, Rockstar and Crescent, Salaam Namaste

postscript

Due to popular demand, and because I really want to update but can’t since I have highly annoying papers to write, I’m instead posting my article that was published in the South Asian magazine on campus. Long-time readers may be interested to know it’s an edited and slightly more formalized version of this post from April 2003. The “infamous poem” is having issues being uploaded properly, so I guess I’ll have to resort to other measures. It’s 2 pages (with 2 columns per page) on a Word document, so that’s a lot of scrolling if I just simply post it here. Let me know if you’re up for it.

[M is for Multiculturalism]

As an undergraduate student, I currently hold an internship with the campus Multicultural Immersion Program. A subdivision of the university’s Counseling Center, the Multicultural Immersion Program is an intensive internship geared towards educating and training selected student leaders in workshop development and implementation in the areas of race relations, intercultural communication, and related diversity issues. As campus diversity facilitators, we’re required to put together workshops and presentations designed to foster understanding of multicultural issues.

People constantly, curiously ask me why I’m a part of this program. My way of looking at it is that people need to be educated. About me, about you, about themselves.

My story: I was born and raised in the United States, and spent eighteen months living in Pakistan, my parents’ homeland, when I was 13-14 years old. In the process, I learned to accept the inevitable truth that Pakistan was also my own homeland, even though I hadn’t been born there. Before living in Pakistan, I had considered myself neither wholly American nor wholly Pakistani. This predicament placed me in an uncomfortable state of limbo, although, as a child, I think I tended to lean toward the Western culture I grew up surrounded by. My ambivalent attitude, however, changed after living in Pakistan. Through first-hand experience, I absorbed details about Pakistan and its religion, culture, and customs, as well as about the people and their way of life—also my way of life during the time I was there. Hard work and a complete immersion in the Pakistani culture were the starting points towards the discovery of my roots. Life in Pakistan taught me to appreciate the best of both East and West, and to consequently reconcile the two.

But I’ll be fair and admit that life in Pakistan wasn’t always perfect. For eighteen months, I missed “real” chocolate, had cravings for Bakers Square cream pies, cursed the fact that the electricity went out a dozen times a day, cringed at the lizards on the walls and the cockroaches in the bathrooms, prayed that I wouldn’t fall into the well during my amateur attempts at drawing up water, and put up with the stereotypical “desi aunties” who visited us in a nonstop stream for eighteen months (ostensibly to welcome us to the village, but their bluntly-put ulterior motives were more along the lines of obtaining American visas for their sons/nephews/grandsons/brothers/etc.).

It really wasn’t until after I returned to the U.S. that I appreciated how much the time I spent in Pakistan increased my depth of world knowledge. I’m exceedingly grateful not only to have had the opportunity to broaden my horizons, but also to have been blessed with the ability to integrate aspects of two very different cultures into my life. My pride in my Pakistani heritage has given me a self-confidence and sense of self-worth that I cannot but believe I would have lacked otherwise. While the process of reconciling my two identities was a long and difficult one for me, I feel that I have finally reached a point in my life where I am fully comfortable with my ethnicity and heritage, to the extent that I have lost the defensive feeling that initially characterized my responses to peoples’ questions about my ethnicity or religion. Now that I am secure in my own racial identity, I am able to interact with people of other ethnicities and educate them about my race and religion without feeling defensive or suspicious of their motives in expressing interest in these topics.

As individuals, we all fashion our own sense of identity, and the process often takes years, even a lifetime. Each of you probably already know this from your own experiences. But in the end, though, it’s difficult to find peace and contentment in one’s personally chosen identity if the rest of the world doesn’t understand it at all. What good does that sense of personal content do for you then? Living in a self-enclosed bubble doesn’t prepare one for real life. Even in our modern, forward-thinking world today, people stereotype each other’s identities, or scorn and mock them, or deliberately refuse to further understand them, and in the process they belittle something that is inherently precious to each individual, no matter how widely each person’s sense of identity differs from another’s. It therefore remains to each individual to educate the rest of the world about his identity, so that others can understand it does matter.

I personally feel that educating the people I come across throughout my daily life is an important step towards enhancing intercultural relations in our society. In one of my sociology courses, I once watched a video called The Way Home, in which dozens of women were separated by racial identity and then left to talk among themselves about their experiences within the definitions of that category. One of the things that struck me the most was hearing an Arab woman, tired of the association of Arabs with terrorists and oppressed women, say in exasperation, “We accuse people of not understanding us, but at the same time we refuse to speak out about who we really are.” Exactly.

Last year, I enrolled in Sociology 30A, the first in a two-part series entitled “Intercultural Relations in Multicultural Societies.” One of the topics that hit closest to home for me was that of incorporating immigrants into the society of their adopted homeland. As my professor explained, there are three methods of incorporation: exclusion (immigrants are viewed as second-class citizens or temporary guests in their adopted country, and are “segregated” from the natives), assimilation (immigrants learn a new language and culture, completely giving up their old ones), and multiculturism (immigrants are bilingual and bicultural).

When the professor asked the class at large to express their opinions regarding immigrant assimilation, many students raised their hands and brought up a point on which I agreed: that immigrants should most definitely make an attempt to learn the language of their adopted country, because only then will they be able to interact with their neighbors and colleagues. The same students also added that while language skills are essential, immigrants should be allowed to retain their ethnic identities as well. While I was nodding my head in agreement over the previous students’ responses, the professor called on another student in the back of the class.

Listening to the next student speak, I found myself taking offense at what I perceived as his lack of respect for cultures and heritages beyond those of America. I disliked his condescending tone when pronouncing, “In order to survive in America, you have to walk the American walk and play the American game, and in order to play the game you have to speak the language and wear the same clothing as the American people wear.” Continuing further, he held forth his personal view that it was perfectly fine for immigrants to speak their native languages and wear their ethnic dress while in the privacy of their own homes, but when venturing out into public, the same immigrants should be required to wear American clothing and speak English.

I believe my disbelief and irritation were fully apparent from the look on my face, and I saw others sitting around me glance nervously towards me during the student’s discourse. While I sat staring at him with my eyebrow raised in utter exasperation, those around me were busy taking in my headscarf and semi-ethnic form of dress (jeans and a Pakistani kameez). Before the student in the back raised his hand and shared his views, I hadn’t been planning on putting forth my own opinion of immigrant assimilation, because I felt that the students who spoke prior to him had already emphasized most of what I also thought about the situation. However, this particular student’s patronizing view towards assimilation, and his firm belief that all immigrants should be required to hide any vestiges or signs of their ethnic backgrounds while in public annoyed me enough that I raised my own hand and stated my own views on the matter. Although I now somewhat regret the sarcastic and combative way in which I began my “obviously I speak fluent English and wear my ethnic clothing at the same time” approach to addressing the other student’s views, I am glad that I had the courage to speak up when I disagreed with what he said. While I firmly agree that immigrants should make every attempt to learn the language of their adopted country, I just as firmly believe that no immigrant should be required to compromise his ethnicity and heritage just to fit into the cookie-cutter patterns dictated by society.

Although I was born and raised in the U.S., my parents and relatives did a commendable job of ensuring that I never lost my sense of identity in terms of being a Pakistani Muslim. As a result, I consider myself to be bicultural and multilingual. While strangers may take one look at me wearing my native dress in public and instantly judge me as a “fresh off the boat” immigrant who most likely does not speak a word of English, I am completely comfortable in my identity as a woman who has learned to integrate both the East and the West into her life.

I’ve learned that it’s all about compromise. And it’s about “optional identities” too, in which people take the best of all their cultures and make that their identity, picking and choosing from their various identities that which they specifically wish to incorporate into their lives. Balancing or juggling identities is often a circus act, and eventually one becomes proficient at the pick-and-choose aspect of optional identities. In the end, I think, it’s all about choosing the most appealing from everything that one is handed, and making that our own personal way of life.

UPDATE: Check out Annie‘s May 11, 2004 post for an interesting perspective.