April 15th
Two years ago today, my uncle passed away. I send him my prayers.
College Essay
As a current junior in high school, my brother is writing practice college essays. And since I’ve forgotten how much fun some of these prompts are, I decided to answer one myself.
A community can be defined by its shape, by who finds a seat there, by what transpires there, by what is inspired there. Tell us about your table.
-2010 college application, University of Chicago
My life has been about finding tables to sit at, people to eat with, something to define me. There is something unique about being an immigrant in the way I am an immigrant. First generation, because I was born in Karachi, Pakistan. Second generation because I moved to Chicago, Illinois at the age of three, raised as an English-speaking Pakistani-American. Third generation because I am part of a community of Pakistani-Americans who have lived in Chicago, Illinois since 1964. I feel each generation’s burden, each struggle to assimilate further and further into blended cream-colored America.
High school often felt like belonging to no one besides my family. The Arains defined my every fiber, my thoughts revolved around them. I rejoiced in the fact that I belonged to something outside of high school, the ultimate downfall of so many self-esteems. But I was just as low as any of them. I brushed aside high school because I knew if I cared about it, the outcome would have been the same. I gave up – quit before high school could hurt me. My brown skin kept me away from the center of goings on, my strange introverted extraversion kept me from making any real friends besides my cousin. I spent weekends pretending I was too cool for any of them.
I took the opposite attitude in college. This was where I would belong, I decided, because if it wasn’t, then I would fail at belonging to things afterwards. I spent my time in my dorm hall freshman year, with my Munhoes. It was tight-knit in a way that I had not known before. It was like going to Hogwarts, being around your peers all day and all night, our optimism for the future was like our magic. Everything lay ahead of us, we had all left high school behind like throwing out trash. Anyone who didn’t do so wasn’t part of us.
And yet, the nagging feeling that I should reject this, too. They were not so easy to cast aside as high school – they were real to me in a way my peers in high school were not. But they drank things at the table that I did not. As an American Muslim, my ties to my table at home kept pulling me away. I started to spend weekends at home. My cousin started spending whole weeks away from them. We retreated to the suburbs again, our comfort zone.
I still feel guilty about it all in hindsight. Don’t we all feel guilty for the people we didn’t treat properly?
My table now is emptier than ever. I soon retreated away from everyone, even my family. This Fellowship took me away from them all, from the only city and place that I love. I love it not because it is beautiful, though it is. I love it because it holds all my guilt from everyone’s failed expectations of me. I did not become who they thought I was going to be.
A Portrait of the Bay
I am beginning to understand this place, The Bay Area. Suddenly I am in a time crunch. Only about three months left until I return to my natural habitat.
Saturday was spent in Berkeley, which I just fell in love with. It is full of rebellious youth, cafes, and tattoo shops. Berkeley is everything Stanford isn’t; the public university open to the rest of the Bay, full of industrial 60’s architecture. The students dress themselves in boots and oversized jewel-toned sweaters, and their faces adorn the lampposts down the quadrangle. It made me miss my university, which so resembles Berkeley. A walk down University Ave. felt like walking down a less gentrified Halsted. Each second-hand shop looked interesting, and I had to push away the enticement to roam through the stalls and immerse myself in the comfortable experience of shopping.
As a city, Berkeley is like its university campus: oddly diverse to my Chicagoan sensibilities. Perhaps not so diverse as Fremont, the most diverse city in the world, though Fremont is Silicon Valley and thus feels diverse in the most suburban geeky way possible. Berkeley’s diversity is the opposite of Fremont’s; no one is looking replicate their home country. And the yuppies are notably childless on a Saturday afternoon, unlike Lincoln Park mothers pushing strollers through Argo Tea.
At the end of the day, after a one-man show in San Francisco, we drive for an hour back to my Santa Clara apartment. In the heart of Silicon Valley, I fall asleep wishing I lived in other parts of this amazing place, so distinct from the rest of this state. The Bay has it’s own pulse; it ignores India’s and China’s recent booming successes, it ignores New York City’s obsession with culture, it ignores Los Angeles’ absurdity and fame. There are times when I see how it exists for itself. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel – these seemingly inanimate companies who produce things that we often cannot touch or feel – they have a physical entity here that I never realized. Google is a place, an actual place.
And the mountains are real here, too. So is the ocean. So are the trees – oh the trees are my favorite. The Bay is only a few hours away from the most amazing redwood forests. Forests are my escape – I always wished we had more nature in the Midwest. Not cornfield nature, not planted arboretums, but real protected nature. For things to grow as they were meant to grow. The redwoods in Muir Woods having creeks running in between them, with quaint bridges to take you to different paths. If I had a car, that is where I would spend every single weekend.
I leave this place on May 22nd, 2010. I am beginning to understand it, but I am not sure I will return here. I am made already of too many regions, have already spent too much discovering my identity without adding “the girl from Chicago” into it. That is who I am here – the girl from Chicago. And to Chicago I will return. Back to a place I already understand, where all the conversations have a familiar string running through them. And where everything has a meaning. Where the fight that needs to be fought hasn’t happened yet.
A New Career Path? Maybe.
Sometimes I wish I could comment on House Hunters for a living – like a House Hunters critic of sorts. Because I have the television set now. A television commentator – a lofty profession. Worth looking into, I’d say. But House Hunters, because it is just so fascinating. It’s just regular people buying shelter. Most of them are either married to each other, affianced, or in a serious relationship. Most of them are heterosexual. What a picture of quote/unquote mainstream society. Isn’t it? Yeah. I think my favorite part of every episode is the inevitable joke about the closets. On literally every single episode, the guy makes a joke about the girl taking up all of the closet space. Even if it’s a huge walk-in. Every single episode. It really makes you think who started that tradition. I’d very much like to strangle that person.
Movie Night
“I do realize I’m a bit older than you.”
“Thirty-two is not that much older.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not.”
“But don’t you think you’re just at a different place?”
“A different place? No, I’m right here in London with you.”
“No, I mean a different place in your life. You just finished graduate school. You just started working and everything.”
A long pause.
“Do you think maybe it’s you that’s in a different place?”
A short sigh. “Maybe I am. I mean, maybe I’m bringing this up not because I’m older, but because – well – you’re younger. And I’m a damn workaholic, you know. And you’re so… yeah, you’re just so…”
“Young?”
“Twenty-five is not that much younger, though.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s just a different place in life, I suppose. I’m just saying that I’m not sure about how this works if you’re the kind of girl – “
“The kind of girl who what? Who goes out?”
“No, I don’t mean that at all –“
“Then what?”
“Just forget I said anything. Forget it, it’s fine. This is fine.”
“I thought we were just having fun. I mean, I don’t mind that you’re older. It’s nothing besides fun. Right now.”
A long pause.
“See, that’s just it, though.”
“What? What now?”
“To you, this is just fun.”
“And this isn’t fun to you?”
“Well, at the moment, not really.”
“Oh my God, why are you taking this so seriously? We were just going to sit and watch the movie and just – God, I mean – we were just going to hang out. Thirty-two-year-olds still just hang out, don’t they?”
“No, I’m not talking about today or the movie or anything. Just – okay, fine. Forget I said anything. It’s okay.”
“Okay, you’re – okay whatever. I’m forgetting you said anything.” A deep breath. “Okay, I’m good.”
“Okay, then.”
A long pause.
“Do you want popcorn?”
