Sheba Karim

I just came back from a 3 day tour which consisted of visiting 12 schools and libraries in Silicon Valley.  My young adult novel, Skunk Girl, about a Pakistani-American teenager who grows up in upstate New York, was chosen as the young adult selection for the 2012 Silicon Valley Reads Program.   The theme of this year’s program was “Muslim and American: Two Perspectives.”

During the school visits, I talked about my novel, and also about was it was like to grow up Pakistani and Muslim in America.  Skunk Girl was set when I was a teenager, in the early 90s, and I recently wrote a short story for a young adult anthology about bullying called Cornered (coming out by Perseus Books in July 2012—I just read the advance copy and it’s excellent).  I decided that I wanted a Pakistani-American protagonist for my story, but, unlike Skunk Girl, I would set it in the contemporary, post 9-11 world.  This got me thinking about the difference between growing South Asian/Pakistani/Muslim in the 80s and 90s versus now.  I discussed a few of these differences in my school visits, but being back inside actual schools (5 middle schools and 1 high school), triggered forgotten memories of my own school years, and made me think further about this topic…

From Woodshop to Whitney to Vitriol: Pakistani/Muslim and American: My Perspective

Woodshop
I went to a small, public middle school in upstate New York.  There were some wonderful teachers, and kids, but it wasn’t the most academically rigorous of programs.  A lot of the students were poor, and it was expected, though not, of course, desired, that a few would become pregnant and drop out in high school, and that many would not go to college.  But I was a child of immigrant desi parents to whom academic success was, well, almost everything, all social and extra-curricular activities superfluous.  There was no notion of exploring and finding yourself—there’s a course in middle school where you learn about different potential careers, surgeon and attorney but also careers like police officer and chef.  To my parents, this made little sense. Police officer and chef were not career options.  Nor was journalist, or bus driver, or politician.   There were really only two options: doctor or engineer (although desi parents have since expanded their horizon, and now currently lauded professions now include law, finance, computers, especially if you become a dot.com millionaire, and even academia).

In spite, or perhaps because of, my parents’ emphasis on academics, my proudest moment in school had nothing to do with getting honors awards or A’s on my report card.  It was making something in woodshop class.  Woodshop was where you wore protective goggles and headphones and used table saws and could potentially injure yourself.   In woodshop, we each made a giant clothespin out of wood.  Mine was one of the worst in the class.  Its two prongs were uneven, as was the stain, but I’d cut the wood myself, shaped it and sanded it and stained it, used vices and sandpaper and saws, and I was proud.  I kept it for years, as a reminder that I, who rarely got to make things, or spend time with nature, who was so clumsy with her hands, had once created something from a block of wood.

Whitney

I did a school visit at a middle school in Silicon Valley that was not a charter school but felt like it, with a small student body and very nice facilities.   I got there early enough to witness the students recite their pledge as someone read it over the loudspeaker.  The gist of their daily pledge was responsibility to others and self-affirmation.  I believe in myself, they recited in unison.  I will never give up.

When I was in middle school, every morning we recited the Pledge of Allegiance.  Our version of self-affirmation came through music.  We memorized and belted out “We are the World,” and, at least for the duration of the song, it felt like we were the future, and together we really could end something like starvation in Africa.  And then there was our penultimate affirmation song, “The Greatest Love of All” by Whitney Houston.  I loved singing this one and did so off-key, but with a lot of gusto and fervor, perhaps because it was a personal anthem against the immigrant parent idea that you had been born into this world to be made in their mold.  I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadows, if I fail, if I succeed, at least I’ll live as I believe.

Vitriol

I also meant it when I said the Pledge of Allegiance.  One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  In the two decades post-middle school, the God part has strengthened and the rest has started to crumble.   I grew up avidly American.  I was a bit of a misfit in America, the one brown Muslim girl in my whole middle school, but this was a country full of misfits, all kinds of immigrant kids, Native Americans kids who grew up on places I read about called reservations, black kids who’d been American for generations but still faced discrimination.  This country had had hippies who’d once gotten naked and danced and copulated in fields and gay people who were out and churches and synagogues and mosques and cults. This sort of diversity would never happen in Pakistan.  No, I belonged to America, and it belonged to me, and hence the Pledge meant something, an affirmation that America was my home.

But, in the past few years, I’ve begun to question this.  There’s a hatred in this country that I’ve never seen before, delivered daily by the media, uttered openly and fearlessly by politicians, like Representative Peter King, who has held a widely criticized Congressional hearing on the supposed radicalization of American Muslims. It’s a totally open, no qualms hatred, and it’s directed, nearly all of the time, at Muslims.

At the Santa Clara public library, I was on a panel with three Muslim teenagers, all of whom wore hijab.  One girl described that one way life was different for her as compared to Nina Khan, the protagonist of Skunk Girl, was that she wore a headscarf, which meant that everyone could instantly identify her as Muslim.  She described how people often came up to her and asked her questions about 9/11 (why did it happen, how could they allow it to happen?) and she often felt like she was expected to apologize for it, as if it was her fault.  “I’m very sorry it happened,” she told the audience, “but I’m not going to say I’m sorry for it because I didn’t do it.”

And therein lies the problem of today’s American Muslim.  We all feel sorry for 9/11, but we’re also suffering for something we didn’t do.  Terrorists are the bane of our existence.  When a crazy French guy of Algerian origin shoots Muslims and Jews in France, it will not help the cause of the Palestinians or avenge his so-called enemies or accomplish any of his declared goals, but it will almost certainly make the lives of regular, hard-working, doctor/comedian/teacher/aspiring actress/lawyer/Sufi/7-11 owner/club kid/student/taxi driver/geneticist/homemaker/stoner/professor/drummer/investment banker/erotic writer/computer programmer and yes, police officer and chef Muslims, who make countless contributions to this great county, a hell of a lot harder.

On top of this, a lot of people in America refuse to believe we exist, or might accept our existence on an individual, exceptional level, but not as a community.  You could argue they don’t even want us to exist.  They prefer to believe, as, apparently does the FBI, that mainstream Muslims are violent and radical.  One man in Florida was so angry that a reality TV show dare insinuate that Muslims are ordinary people with boring problems like everyone else that he called for the program to be banned and Lowe’s actually pulled their ads.

One of the main selections for the Silicon Valley Reads program this year was The Muslim Next Door by Sumbul Ali-Karamali.  The book’s purpose is to educate people about Islam in an informative yet engaging way, written by a woman who, like me, grew up in America and had almost no other Muslims in her school.  One of the messages of the book is that Muslims are regular people too.  As it states in the introduction, Muslims “struggle with the same daily conflicts and challenges as our non-Muslim neighbors.”  See, everyone?  Two hands, two eyes, two ears.

The fact that this message is even necessary frightens me, and we hear it constantly refuted on media outlets like Fox News, who devotes a lot of its programming to talking heads yelling abut Muslims.  And now these talking heads and politicians are directing their anger and vitriol toward women as well, and, as a Muslim woman, I’ll be damned that the country I so wholeheartedly swore allegiance to growing up is now rife with virulent attacks on the two things about myself I can’t even help—the gender I was born and the religion I was born into.

And it just keeps getting worse.  Women are being called sluts for wanting coverage for birth control and the NYPD has secretly made entire maps of Muslim neighborhoods and Muslim-owned businesses in Newark, and if you thought that you were pretty safe, well, you aren’t, because it’s officially official — your government will not think twice about spying on you just because you’re Muslim.  You could be the epitome of a law abiding citizen, a surgeon who’s saved lives, a teacher who’s inspired students, you could be a drama major at Yale, but none of it matters, because you’re Muslim.  You got that?  You’re Muslim (or maybe you just study them), so you better watch out.

I don’t practice, but I am Muslim for many intents and purposes.  I will always be of a Muslim family.  I will always be moved by Sufi qawwali music and unthinkingly say “bismillah” when a car stops too quickly on the road.   I see sense in atheism, but I still talk to Allah every day.  Will the government spy on me?  Are they already?  Should I look over my shoulder on my next whitewater rafting trip?  What would once have sounded paranoid does not seem so anymore.

And so now, I ponder questions once unimaginable.  What ever happened to the America to which I so fully belonged?  But where do I belong, if not here?