Ahsen Jillani
So, all this bad news is happening on the global terror front. America is bombing ISIS. Russia is bombing ISIS, but also helping the Syrian regime. ISIS is recruiting in America and incidences of violence are increasing. That’s the news. The media coverage has a consequence as well. The audience shifts daily from the far right anti-immigrant Trump to a more sedate but distrusted Clinton. Both candidates shift rhetoric with nightly news cycles. Europe wants an ethnic cleanup. America waffles as news anchors and pundits portray entire religions as being a threat to the West.
In the midst of all this macro politics is the simple act of traveling. In the last few months, a cousin and his family came and enjoyed visiting relatives and friends in the US from coast to coast. Another cousin is just leaving Europe after a month of visiting Italy, France, Greece, Switzerland and some other countries with many young and old family members. They posted pictures on social media and things didn’t seem out of whack. They were having wine and pizza in quaint places, and taking photos of naked statues.
So another cousin, an experienced journalist who now advises US diplomats about Pakistani politics, arrived recently and called from New York. He and his wife were finally on their own, with grown kids enjoying freedom at home in Lahore. I assumed things. When they landed here, I didn’t waste any time in discussing immigration. Over hot chai, my cousin told me stories about people he had seen in New York, Philly, and Washington in the previous week or so. “How real is the dream?” he asked me.
His stories were sometimes positive but mostly disconcerting. One relative of his wife was a surgeon and drove a Maserati. That was good, I thought. One journalist friend managed to immigrate but only found work driving a taxi in a large city. A fellow senior editor was now the manager (not owner) of a Subway store around Washington. I landed here in 1979 and immediately started to hear stories from people who tripped on a slippery promise right at the airport and never recovered. I met Iranian nuclear experts working at convenience stores. I met Indian ex-professors running laundromats; I met Lebanese chemists with Ph.Ds. working as waiters.
The great equalizer in America, of course, is money. I met a lot of Americans as well who told me about their rise to success. They came out of poverty, broken families, abuse, prison and set up limo companies, became landlords, or started chain motels or new restaurants. I spent my formative years admiring those with stories that documented years of hard work, perseverance, failures, persistence, and finally success. Like Rodney Dangerfield “rags to riches” characters, you could truly get out of a green limo wearing tacky clothes at the country club and ignore the stares of the old money and the snobs. This was my America.
I had my cousin’s future planned for him before he arrived. As a US employee in Pakistan, he would get the chance to immigrate after many years of service. I had the numbers too. Sell your house in Lahore, pay cash for a condo here. Put 300K in bank. Find a consulting job advising people about Asian politics, etc. He just shook his head the first night. The next day he simply said, “I don’t want to drive a taxi here during retirement. I have four brothers and 20 members of the younger generation to take care of me in Pakistan.” I related my story. I was sort of white collar most of the time. He reminded me that my lifestyle had taken me 37 years of loneliness to establish. He reminded me that I would die alone. We dropped the subject.
My cousin and his wife enjoyed the visit here. They went for walks saying that 90 degree temps were like Spring in Pakistan. They said the food we ate was healthier. They said they had power blackouts every hour all summer. They enjoyed even the code yellow ozone days saying that Lahore is so polluted, you can’t breathe any time of the year. They said our street was so quiet at night. They liked the fact that we could live in suburban America without watching television, sat on antique furniture instead of new couches, and actually talked while my wife carved spoons out of oak on the back porch. They said ours was a relaxed lifestyle.
My romance with the world of my childhood has never stopped. I left Pakistan in its prime, with a modest population (comparatively), good air, with people knowing my family from airport to train station, and experiencing a privileged childhood. Social media friends and family blast me frequently about my idealistic rants about how life used to be. I had started to believe that those who had slowly seen the geography, the social and political landscape change into practically hell would now simply want to pack up and utilize the new opportunities they were offered.
On the way to the airport, I made a last attempt and asked them to think about my proposal. It was all possible. There was a pause. “We will really never leave Pakistan,” my cousin finally said. “It is home. We will visit more.” After a few seconds, his wife softly said, “Yes.” I wanted to say things. But, but what about the American dream. What about the US citizenship? What about the country clubs and the Maserati and the beaches and the burgers and Fox News and clean air and….The TSA picked them out as high risk because of those green passports and they were put into a top risk screening line. As I waved to him, I saw ahead of them a dark cloud of smog, acid rain, hot homes, bad water, hyper inflation, constant terrorism, overcrowding, corruption, anger, angst, pain. But they were headed home. I just live in a quiet neighborhood in America.
Ahsen Jillani hates to travel.
Posted: Monday, October 24, 2016
