Last Day In Uganda

In a tiny shop in the crafts market in Kampala, I apologised to a fellow customer for cramming the space with my presence. I apologised again for moving around to see the trinkets. He asked if by any chance I was Canadian. I said, by some chance and a lot of effort, I was. But that’s not why I apologize. I smiled and stepped out of the tiny shop with my hand on my purse that held the Canadian passport. 

Only 40 minutes left to the next meeting. I have to change, pack, and check out before that. I have to submit a proposal before our ride to the airport. I have to wear a mask on the flight for 24 hours. I have to get home to my child who was not doing so well. My stomach growled. 

How do you buy a gift for a teenager who was not doing so well? Something that says I am sorry you aren’t doing so well. That says sorry I wasn’t there.

With sweat trickling down my spine, and every single shopkeeper in that market hustling to get me to buy something, I realised, anything I buy could be deemed cultural appropriation. What do I say to the hustlers trying to sell me beautiful fabrics with African bodies? I apologise to them for not buying them.

Time was ticking. I was ticking. I apologised to my colleague who drove me there. Sorry for being so confused. He bought me a gorilla fridge magnet as his gift to my daughter. I bought a giraffe for my boss’s daughter who was not a teenager.

I was late for the checkout. I was late for the meeting. The craft giraffe in my boss’s suitcase caught suspicion at every security checkpoint at the airport. 

I apologised some more. 

Not because I am Canadian. Maybe because I am Pakistani who still finds it strange to be called (out) a Mzungu (white person) by excited children on the streets. 

Strange

 

This year.

I lost all interest in life and strived even harder to improve it.

I saw a white old man take the reins of the free world from another white old man and the woke celebrated like all our problems were solved.

I wore the brightest red lipstick behind my covid masks. 

I didn’t take any photos and stopped calling myself a photographer. 

I stopped writing and kept calling myself a writer.

I fell in love with an animal and joined the ranks of those I used to scoff at who called their pets their children. 

I accepted that teenagers are not the humans they will eventually be, and I became a better parent.

I grovelled at a white woman’s feet so she would stop making my life miserable, and the grovelling didn’t make me more miserable. 

I flaunted my ‘Fuck’ mug in a virtual job interview and still got the job. 

I found joy and peace but saw my health deteriorate in the midst of all that happiness. And a naturopath gave me remedy for grief. 

Strange. This year. 

And in the early days of the pandemic, when the subway was empty and silent, I saw an ad by a shelter on my ride to work. It showed a woman of colour with a little baby. It said that Zayna used to have a steady job but now she cannot afford to make rent. They asked us to care about Zayna and her poor baby of colour. 

To the right, the tiny ttc screen flashed its own messaging which said ‘there is no excuse for not paying your fare.’ 

Between Zayna presenting the coloured face of poverty and the sign that did not accept poverty as an excuse for not paying your fare, sat a human hunched over their emaciated body with comfortable ease. 

Torn clothes, filthy hands, and the most unkempt long hair with white paint like droplets caked all over. And then I noticed the two black birds. One that sat atop the nest-like mattress of matted hair and the other one on a bony shoulder. Both birds sat quietly through the subway ride like it was the most usual mode of transportation for them. Their little beady eyes moved between states of wakefulness and sleep. Every once in a while, after every sharp turn of the train, a gentle hand patted the bird on the shoulder.

I stared. I smiled. I felt grief. 

I did not take a photo. 

Strange. 

 

COVID19 Confession

The COVID-19 pandemic has left us all in grief wrapped in fear.

I went through some stages of grief – denial, bargaining, even acceptance in sporadic spurts. And then I landed in the frenzy of a relentless need to do something.  Fortunate for me, I work at a place that does not cower in the face of a crisis. As soon as the city shutdown, we mobilized to transform our services – giving daily takeaway meals, doing community check-ins, putting together resources, and figuring out how to do more and more to respond to the needs of people who already had very little to begin with, and are the most vulnerable in this pandemic. So we put on our gloves, and we smile behind our masks as we hand out meals. We look for familiar faces who used to come to our weekly drop-ins to see if they’re doing okay. 

In this work, I forget myself and reject my fears. It is allowing me to hold on to the image I have of myself even though the world has changed so much.

But I have stopped hugging my child. When I come home from work, I scrub myself purple, I wash my clothes in scalding water. I wipe all the surfaces I have touched. And still I cannot make myself hug her.

I am not afraid of death. My resilience arrogance runs high. My acceptance of death as an absolute reality of this dimension remains unshaken. 

I am not afraid of being isolated. My solitude is my treasure, and my friends always, always there for me.

I am so privileged and fortunate to feel anything but gratitude even during these times. 

But I am so afraid of living in a world where I don’t hug my child anymore. 

xxx

PS: The gloves used in this image will not be wasted <3

More than an immigrant

Every life situation is a trade-off. You win some, you lose some. Either you justify the trade-off, or you regret and yearn for what isn’t. Either way, you move forward.

My first couple of years in Canada, I kept asking other more seasoned immigrants, ‘when does it start to feel like home?’ ‘When do you begin to feel like you belong?’ These questions left most of my subjects perplexed. I wanted them to tell me when it will happen for me, to give me some comforting milestones. I wanted to visualize the proverbial carrot that hangs in front of me so at least I know what I am chasing after. Was it stability or safety, confidence or feeling of worthiness? What is that number – the number of years you must bear after which you feel no more afraid than the people who were born and raised here?

I recognize that there is no unified response to these questions. And yet I was seeking one to feel like I was part of that unknown and at times undignified collective experience of being the insignificant and insufficient other. Until you cross that bridge and get to the other side, if there is one. Will I ever be able to cross?

With four years of social equity, a Canadian passport, and some career growth, I am still asking similar questions. Except this time, I am the subject and the object. The answers continue to unravel, and I suspect the unraveling will be a life-long journey. Maybe that unraveling is the carrot on the stick. Maybe feeling that sense of belonging you crave so much is a moot pursuit, at least more so than the other.

The fact that immigration and immigrants take up a charged space in daily discourse doesn’t make it easier to resolve this conundrum. Immigration remains a significant political and social issue. In the political industry, it lives as polarized debate on the goodness and badness of immigration in its various forms. In the social justice industry, it exists as one of the important pillars of the performative moral high ground. In all other industries, it manifests as a shallow concept of diversity, as one of the items on the inclusion checklist. And in society, it continues to be part of an organized belief system they either subscribe to or reject or judge according to a convenient hierarchy of rights they think we must earn. For me, it feels like a burden I may have to carry forever.

The awareness that you are a contentious issue, never leaves you. The feeling that you must prove your worth every single day to disengage yourself as the glorious exception never ceases to haunt you.

For me, one distinct way this awareness manifests is my obsession with following the rules – no matter how stupid or redundant they seem. For I know that as a newcomer who has ‘run into’ opportunities, I bear the responsibility of not fucking it up. For the sake of my own kind, and for the sake of my ‘right of passage’ in this society and its various industries. I do not have the luxury to break down or fight without the fear of grave consequences.

My own sense of ‘inferiority’ – gifted to me by my history and socialization in my country of origin and my country of displacement – remains in conflict with my confidence in my own 'superior' abilities and intellect. The two contradicting perceptions of my two realities co-exist, interlocked and entangled. They don’t cancel each other out. Both fuel my passion and action that make me the hard-working, self-deprecating, relentless South Asian immigrant who lives in constant fear of punishment or failure. And both, my complex and confidence, get triggered in interaction with the realities of the external world. In which your existence as the first generation immigrant will always be an ‘issue’, whether it is the matter of policy, legislation, political platform, social service, or employment on a macro level, or it is the case of your skin colour, accent, quirks, or the space you are allowed to claim on a micro level.

And so my question remains unanswered, begging me to stop looking for the answer, and just accept what is. But there are moments I can’t help but ask again.

Despite my hard work, contribution, smarts and sincerity, will I ever be more than an immigrant (issue) in this country? 

God Save the Queen

Things you do, sacrifices you make, fears you fear and take on despite...

...for a piece of paper.

The relief you feel, validation you assume, the joy you receive...

...from a piece of paper.

After three years and 273 days, two homes and three jobs.

After surviving four winters; saying goodbye to my father without saying goodbye.

After losing relationships and finding some.

After living with a dull sense of failure in my successes and a constant feeling of disorientation.

After so much rage, tons of love, and countless miracles.

I stood before them with my new and old friends cheering me on, and said:

I swear
That I will be faithful 
And bear true allegiance
To Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second

Will my journey change its course now, or has the destination arrived?

Am I successfully re-colonized?

Or have I finally become a settler?

Am I Canadian now?

Mother, should I stop being afraid?

Times of Fear

Fear is a very important emotional response we have in our collection. We entertain it, carry it, and even nurture it.

When the fear of hunger, shelter, and safety becomes irrelevant, we choose the fear of going hungry, becoming homeless, or being unsafe. 

One thing we fear the most is time. 

We entertain the fear of not having enough time after starting over, and not making it to the fearful end. Of not doing enough, or not doing it right in the time given.

We harbor the fear of time that has passed, and that which is yet to come – of the familiar and the unfamiliar.

We carry the fear of being new when so much time has gone by, and of feeling old when time has been so very still.

We nurture the fear of not having time to finish what we had started and of not starting what we have always wanted to finish.

We fear the time in which we live, and the time when it starts to change.

2018 in words

When a year is ending, it starts to look like a palpable unit of time that in turn becomes the measure of our success or happiness.

If I look back at my year, I realize that on my worst days, I used words as my weapons. On the best, I received words that shifted me, ever so slightly but significantly.

My year started with the news of a serial killer – one that was surmised for years by people who had no authority. By way of my job and role, I became an insignificant part of the stories of the people he had (allegedly) killed and dismembered. I dissociated to a certain degree to be functional and resisted going to my time in Karachi in the 80's and 90's. And then one day, a member of one of the victim’s family flew in with a simple request – wanting to tell people good things about their brother. What he loved, his favourite music and activities. They wanted to humanize the lost brother – as often the public narrative dehumanizes victims of violence who are not rich, straight, or white. My dissociation collapsed to those words, to that request.

Another day and time – someone who was homeless, beaten up, and delirious from the injuries resisted going to the hospital for help. There are many reasons for resisting, especially when you have been rejected or hurt by the system itself. But that resistance manifested itself through an immense fear of loss. It was that television set they were holding on to so tightly. It was the only thing they owned. How can they leave it behind? Those words left me worthless.

My daughter sent me a text while she was away for the summer. She said she was glad I was raising her the way I was. The 7-year journey from I hate you to this has been amazing. The surprise validation that I never expected, and those words would forever be the best text message I have ever received in my life. Even when she’s older and she denies or contradicts these words, they would always hold the moment I received them.

And then on one of my lowest days, I impulsively signed up for basic tabla lessons, just to see if my lost childhood dream was merely a story I like to tell. And I started receiving and learning new words in a new language… ghe na ghe na, ghe ge na na, ghe na ghe ge, na ge ghe na.

These words are my measure. It has indeed been a significant year.

First Year of Death - پہلی برسی

Posing - my brother's wedding

I sat in the Annual General Meeting this time last year, taking minutes, making sure all the slides were transitioning according to the words I had written. I was finding it challenging to keep focus.

An ASL interpreter I had been communicating with on email the week before came up to me and said hi; said she was curious to meet me as we both share the same last name – ‘Mahmood’. I think I smiled faintly. She said her father’s name was Mahmood. I said, my father’s name is Mahmood too.

That chance interaction was powerful for me in that moment in time. Someone said my father’s name on the day he was being buried six thousand miles away – as I sat all alone, in a room full of hundred people.

It has been a year.

I recently asked one of my sisters to share a photo of his grave with me. I felt the distance, and my absence in his moment of death when I looked at the photo.

And in the very next moment, I felt frustration that it wasn’t a good photo. The gravestone cuts off right at the top. The composition and angle are simply poor to say the least. I chuckled as I witnessed my own contrasting thoughts.

Final resting place

I have realized that it is hard to lose a parent you love. Even if you understand that it was their time. Even if you know that death is a reality of life.

I have also realized that it is hard to cope with death when you are absent from the time of pain that precedes and follows.

The last time I was present when my father had come very close to death was when I was 16. I had sneakily sabotaged my arranged marriage by writing a nasty letter to the groom's family. I had also lied to my father and applied to a business school instead of following the expected path of enrolling in Home Economics College for (good) girls. He suffered a massive heart attack, his third, and the doctors had asked us to say our final good byes. His words to me on his presumed deathbed were ‘I am dying because of you.’ 

I am so thankful that he lived then. And that his real final words to me, even if only in text, were I love you beti. There is consolation, if not closure, in that.

I still have you on skype. I still have you in my whatsapp messages. 

I love you too Abbu.

When I was cute

On my daughter's 6th Birthday

Strict father, gentle grandfather. I was forever jealous

Eid, 2005

My graduation, 2001. He was mad at me for chopping my hair off.
He noticed my bare arms as I discreetly unravelled them from under
my dupatta for the photo. I got into a lot of trouble after to say the least

My first wedding, 2003 - he thought my trouble-making days were finally over.
He was so wrong