The two Americas This is either your America or it is a foreign land Subcontinental Divide by Ahsen Jillani I don’t know many “desi” folks here. Actually, Saathee’s editor and his family may be the only desi folks I’ve been in touch with since my graduate school days 35 years ago. I am just alive in middle America. Mine is a quiet neighborhood where the doors are never locked. Neighbors just walk in and share food, bring vegetables from their summer gardens until way into deep autumn, and then the exchange of holiday treats starts. A tree falls in the yard and everyone shows up to help. It’s a friendly world in a place that overseas folks think is a racist South. I have encountered prejudice here occasionally over the past 43 years, but I don’t live my life with hatred in my heart. People have treated me with love and compassion for the most part. So, when my nephew (some folks here say second cousin because he is my cousin’s son) Mustafa (Musti for short), arrived from the West coast after landing here from Pakistan to look at graduate school programs, I was at a loss for how to show him America. He had gotten his undergrad in Southeast Asia and was now exploring options for a literature program that could accommodate his unique angle on the post-colonial world that is Asia. But something I have discussed with cousins on the West coast over the years came alive again when Musti
was sitting here with my cat napping on his lap in suburbia. These cousins have PhDs in engineering or work for Fortune 50 companies as senior managers. But they have mentioned over the years that they chose neighborhoods and locales according to the ethnic mix there. Someone like me who hardly hung out with desi people, or never dated desi women was puzzled by that. A third party like Musti coming through unexpectedly got me to thinking in more of an existential manner on the phenomenon. Immigrants have poured into this melting pot for centuries now, and perhaps the first generation cowered under the intimidating aspects of being newbies in a culture dominated by English-centric norms and religion. But despite the Irish, the Italian, the Chinese enclaves in larger cities, the second generations somehow walked away to fit into America – or at least fight to fit into a resistant America. Today, we have India Festivals; the Greeks bring us into their culture with events but continue to maintain a sense of ethnic pride. Lots of us are bilingual. We now have Bollywood dancing at white weddings here and in Europe. Everyone loves Indian and Greek food. We can’t breathe without pizza, and the whole country parties at St. Patrick’s Day. Welcome to America. It was the peak of election season and I was working continued on page 80
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