childhood and perceptions

this is ridiculous. i realize that this blogging thing is both preciously precocious and abominably inadequate. the screen in front of me is flat, cannot possibly encompass the 3-dimensionality of character. you will see me as a product of my words - my opinions will define me, and with that power, i must be incredibly careful. if i say the wrong thing, express the wrong opinion, you will judge me as humans will, make assumptions and create perceptions that may or may not be true. or perhaps, they may be negative and truer than even i can comprehend - because we are the blind spots to ourselves. we are the points of reference that cannot be seen by our own eyes, and perhaps what we perceive to be our real selves are not our selves at all...


i had always prided myself on being open-minded. i was 11 when i went to pakistan for the first time, and in high school, i had the opportunity to visit places far and exotic over summer and winter vacations - paris, switzerland, london, saudi arabia. i was one of those kids in high school who took her foreign language class (in this case, french) seriously, stuck with it for all 4 years and finished off with ap french in 12th grade. i knew that there was a world beyond the 20 mile radius of new jersey where i had grown up and spent my entire life.

 yesterday, i drove my brothers to a friend's birthday party, following an old country highway which i haven't been on in ages. country road 601 runs through the back end of town, a strip of road with trees and farms on either side, a small homemade and family-run roadside farmer's market where we used to buy corn to barbecue in the summertimes when i was younger, used to run barefoot through our townhouse development, ran tumbling across grass to catch the ice cream truck. it was an ideal childhood, and this road is one of the last remnants of the town which reminds me of those days. in the last 5 years, hillsborough has expanded at an alarming rate. the schools are crowded and packed, a trend that was just starting as i graduated high school, and whereas i remember being one of a handful of "brown" kids in my high school (one of only three south asian children in elementary school), there are now indian and pakistani families seemingly everywhere. they grocery shop at the local shop rite in their saris and shalwar kameezes, make their way over to blockbuster in their chappals, converse in urdu and hindi at the local pizza place. and it seems that the more diverse hillsborough has become, the more xenophobic and unwelcoming a place it seems to be.

 but on 601, i am a child again, driving with the windows down at sunset, singing along to songs i listened to as a teenager. "the freshman" by the verve reminds me of the summer after my freshman year, when i watched seniors in my neighborhood get dressed up and go off in limos to their prom, the day a perfect 70 degrees, even the sky cooperating in creating that magical atmosphere, and this song playing on the radio in my room as i sat by the open window and daydreamed. dave matthews singing "where are you going" and "ants marching," greenday's "when i come around," aqua's "barbie girl" - all recorded onto cassette tapes from the radio (didn't we all do that? before mp3 players and ipods and downloads, there were the mix tapes, the songs we dashed across our rooms to record onto the blank tape waiting in our cassette players, leaping and bounding over chairs and other teenage-room-debris). this road reminds me time and again of how much i loved my childhood, loved growing up here, the way i grew up here, firmly ensconed between two worlds and two identitites - the pakistani, which meant speaking urdu with my parents, wearing shalwar kameezes to get-togethers on the weekends, wearing new clothes and missing school on eid, and the american, which required school spirit at football games, halloweens spent traipsing over fallen autumn leaves, pumpkin-carving, school plays, the school newspaper, and summers running into classmates at frank's pizza and dollar video (remember dollar video? where we could rent videos for a buck and catch up on summer goings-on, before the more expensive blockbuster came along and put them out of business) and the fireman's fair.

 do you know that there's no way to hyphenate an identity in germany? for that matter, in most of europe. you have to say it in a roundabout way. in germany, you may live as a german, but you are always quizically asked where you're from "originally" (urspruenglich) if your looks or your accent don't match. it is mostly asked without malice or prejudice, only frank curiosity, but there's no way of saying you are a "pakistani-american" or a "muslim-american" or an "irish-american." you are "american-originally from ireland." even in europe itself, as an immigrant, you spend years living it down. you are "french, of moroccan descent."

in our house in leinfelden, just outside of stuttgart where we lived for a year and a half, we once called a handyman to repair something in our basement - a leak or faulty plumbing, something along those lines. our repairman spoke little english or german, but we were able to converse, talk about his background. i remember he sighed and shook his head, so old and tired, and he told us with a certain weariness in his eyes of how he had come to germany from italy 40 years ago - but that in the eyes of everyone, he was still, and always would be "italian." he had yet to receive german citizenship, and people still asked him where he was originally from, fitting him, figuring him in. now his sons distance themselves from anything italian, try to make themselves as german as they can.

this is not, in any sense, meant to be a negative critique of just germany. this feeling about immigrants is rampant in all of europe, especially in france. and in most of my posts, i will tend to praise things i've seen in germany much more than the contrasting aspects of the u.s. - but that's because we always criticize the ones we love, the ones we know best and are closest too. something about the grass being greener on the other side...
 but perceptions - that was what this blog was supposed to be about. traveling, more than anything else, opens your eyes to how wrong you were about things before. it humbles you, makes you realize that you can never know anything, that it is futile to try to know it all - but not futile to learn as much as you can. stories about the holocaust and german atrocities from world war I and II had been drilled into my brain from 4th grade onward, so when we first moved to germany, i was intensely wary. but it's when your expectations are at their lowest that they are most often exceeded (this coming from someone neither a pessimist nor an optimist, but simply a magical realist). in subtle ways, the original culture shocks became ingrained in our lives. the irritation we felt at stores being closed by 4 (at the latest 6) pm, and completely on sunday, was replaced by the feeling of having time to relax, time to spend together, outside or in, as a family. walking became welcome, with bakeries and grocery stores and hairdressers all within walking distance, even biting winter air or beating summer sun was no longer a nuisance. we felt healthier, happier, more relaxed. i felt like i had never seen autumn leave of that hue before, felt that sort of wind, a different sort of air. everything was new, and cautiously embraced, and before i knew it, by the time i left heidelberg three years later, i was in love with the new things i had encountered in germany.
so now, my identity is split, will probably split further with more travel. i am an adaptable chameleon, at home in europe, pakistan, south america. i've tried to understand the pakistani mentality, the american one, played devil's advocate in europe and in the countries encompassing europe, extolled and derided the same aspects in all three. i've felt welcomed in venice and milan and buenos aires and the bahamas, been made aware of the color of my skin in parts of ireland and france and switzerland and england, had spiritual awakenings in part of saudi arabia and pakistan and new york city and canada, and placed myself in other people's differently-styled shoes around the world. this is where i'm coming from when i write here. i am the product of all the places i have seen, and of the ones i have yet to see...one thing traveling taught me is how very wrong perceptions and prejudices can be. naturally, we are (mostly) raised to believe that being prejudiced about anything is wrong, that all are created equal, but even then, our parents and our teachers, our classmates have negative opinions that (through some kind of mental osmosis) are transferred subtly onto us.