Hi all! Apologies for the long break between posts- life has been exhausting lately and every time I thought about writing, I couldn’t get myself to do it. But I’m back!
Last week my husband Abbas and I spent a few days in Cape Cod, MA to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. It was a beautiful trip with plenty of beach time, quality time, and time spent exploring some of New England. We stopped in Providence, RI and Mystic, CT on the way back and I was so charmed by both towns. I love quick little stopovers in towns like those and I had such a great time.
Now that I’m back home, I’m focusing on reading, writing, and learning. I’m taking both driving and swimming lessons this Summer which has been a unique experience. As someone who has always lived in cities, I never had much opportunity to do much of either, and I want to fill that knowledge gap between me and my suburban raised counterparts. The most difficult thing isn’t learning new things, because I love to do that, but learning things that could possibly kill me if I make a mistake, lol. I am proud of myself for finally learning these skills, though.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about indigineity, diaspora, and home. As a Desi woman whose grandparents experienced the Partition of India, it’s hard for me to say or know where my home actually is. My grandparents were born in India, my parents were born in Pakistan, and I was born in the US. Where does that leave me? I also have little knowledge of my ancestors in terms of where they came to India from. There are theories and stories about Shias leaving the Middle East to live in India centuries ago, but I don’t know details.
Last night I was wondering about the differences between occupation and gentrification. People in Palestine are displaced from their homes and forced to live in refugee camps, while people in the US are displaced from their homes and forced to live in homeless encampments. I know the two things are not the same, because of things like military presence, indigineity, and the fact that the US is stolen land. But I can’t help but think that we all have more in common than we think. We’ve all had places ripped from us, and frankly all of us in the US are complicit in ripping away land from the Indigenous.
For me, being a Shia Muslim adds an extra layer of confusing diasporic feelings. My grandparents left India so they could live in a Muslim country without fear or threat of persecution. But in the years since Pakistan’s creation, Shias have had to flee the country because of persecution against them. Whenever I feel overwhelmed by anti-Muslim sentiments in the US, there’s an extra element of sadness knowing that I wouldn’t even really be safe in my parents’ country. So again, where is home?
Over the past few years, as I re-built my life from NYC to Philly, I felt my heart was in different places even more. After building a community in Philly that I love, I know that this is my forever home. Regardless of where I am in Philly, I feel at home around my friends and husband. When I’m not in Philly, and with my siblings or best friends, I feel at home then too. So for me, home has turned more into a feeling and people, rather than a place. Where I came from, I’m not really sure. But where I am now, and where I’ll be, is no question.
In the vein of thinking about home and places, here’s a mini essay about Jackson Heights, the city I grew up in. I read this piece for a Personal Velocity event a few months ago and have heard from my friends that it was their favorite piece I shared. I hope you love it too!
Jackson Heights
If you mention Jackson Heights to any South Asian person in the Northeast, they automatically think of Kabab King, Indian grocery stores, an enclave of South Asian treats and necessities. But I grew up on the other side of Jackson Heights. The side with half a dozen public schools, parks on every block, and my family: us and my parents lived on 91st street, my aunt and her kids on 92nd, and my aunt and uncle on 89th. And I think about it everyday. Jackson Heights was at one point the most diverse zip code in America; a fact I proudly tell anyone who asks me about where I grew up. I was surrounded by immigrants and their children, largely South Asian, Central and South American, and East Asian folks. It was normal to not hear English at all while walking down the street, and even more so at after school pick up at PS 149. There were always multiple Muslims in my classes, in my building, and in the neighborhood that I never felt othered. People laugh when I say it now, but as a kid I didn’t realize that white people existed in real life. They seemed so out of reach, as if they lived on another planet. In middle school, a teacher told my class full of brown and Black kids that we were minorities, and it made no sense to me. Where is the majority, then? I remember thinking. It wasn’t until the end of middle school and in high school that I realized what she meant. There was only one white girl in my Jackson Heights middle school. Her name was Katarina, and she was a recent Eastern European immigrant. All of us unloaded our questions about whiteness onto her, not realizing that she was also experiencing it as a newbie. I think of her often. I wonder if she learned more about her whiteness as an American, her privilege, and what she thinks about growing up with all of us. I wonder if she ended up more successful than the rest of us just by virtue of her skin color. For our eighth grade senior trip, we took a day trip to Hershey Park. It’s funny to me now, since I live in Pennsylvania, but at the time I had no frame of reference for this part of the East Coast. My class of brown and Black children wandered wide-eyed through the park: we were staring down at the masses of white people, and they were staring back at us. When my sister and I got home that night, we asked our parents, in shock, if they realized how many white people there were in the world. “We have to get these kids out of New York,” I remember my mother saying to my dad in response. One of my favorite memories is the Northeast Blackout of 2003. The entire neighborhood streamed into the parks, boom boxes, beer bottles, and games in hand. My family’s favorite pizza spot, Pizza Sam, because it famously only used a vintage cash register, was the only place anyone could buy food. I know that the blackout was rough on many: my aunt and uncle walked home to Jackson Heights from their jobs in Manhattan; but I always remember it as the most fun Summer days I ever experienced. After Donald Trump was elected I spent a lot of time at protests around the city. I didn’t live in Jackson Heights anymore at this point, but I still referred to it as the place I was from. At one of these protests, I started a conversation with two women standing beside me. I told them I was from Jackson Heights and they got excited. “She just moved to Jackson Heights!!” One of them said, pointing to the other. I was puzzled. Not to sound like Karen in Mean Girls, but my first thought was ‘…then why are you white?’ She was thrilled to be speaking to me. She told me she had moved her family to my city because she was excited for her children to grow up around diversity. She then started peppering me with questions about restaurants in the area. “I was a kid when I lived there,” I told her. “I wasn’t seeking out the best Colombian food.” This interaction was years ago at this point, but I think of it often. White people are now moving into my neighborhood to experience the diversity I grew up with. But how long until there are so many of them that the diversity is nowhere to speak of? In 2022, I took my partner to Jackson Heights and gave him a walking tour of my childhood. My schools, my favorite parks, the buildings my family lived in. We even had lunch at Pizza Sam. I was shocked to see a Chipotle, Paris Baguette, and other chain restaurants on the strip of Northern Boulevard that was once home to countless mom and pop shops. I thought about the white women from that protest. This was their Jackson Heights now, I figured. As we walked down Northern Boulevard towards my middle school, my heart ached at the shops that no longer existed, and soared at the ones that did. When I’m asleep, I dream about Jackson Heights. I’m usually back in my old apartment building, or my aunt’s, and I’m so happy to be home. Even years after my immediate family had moved out of Jackson Heights, my aunt and cousins remained. It wasn’t until 2015 that we said goodbye to it completely. But my subconscious still hasn’t. When I’m awake, I daydream of moving back there. My happiest years were in Jackson Heights. But it doesn’t belong to me anymore. If the gentrification continues, I’m not sure who it will belong to. All I know is it will always be the backdrop of my favorite memories.
Let me know what you think of today’s post, and keep an eye out on my Instagram for what I’ve been reading in June!