ASSIGNMENTS:
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Zehra Aftab
Buffalo, New York USA
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REPORTS:
PREVIOUS NEXT
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I was born in 1984 during the middle of a hot summer in Pakistan. The earliest memory I can recall regarding my birthday, is that I thought parents made up the actual date of their child's birth. And that my parents had decided to make up my birthday to be on the same as my fathers. I Lived in Pakistan till I was five, during that time I remember squatting on the balcony and scratching at the cement so I could then eat the powdered cement. Sometimes the color of my urine would match the color of the chalk I ate that day. On my fifth birthday I caught a flight to Detroit, Michigan with my family. To celebrate my birthday the airhostess allowed me to meet the captain and then gave me one of those wing pins. Once we landed in Detroit I remember seeing my cousins on the other side of the glass at the airport with flowers and a birthday balloon. We lived in Detroit for a while, I remember in the winter, my first super cold winter, I would wear a huge puffy jacket. Back then the jacket was nice, it had triangle shaped cutouts of different colors of the rainbow, and they were shiny. After about a year we moved to Buffalo, New York. In Buffalo, my mom worked and my dad did his MBA at a college in downtown Buffalo (at the time I didn't know the name of the college). I went to elementary school in downtown Buffalo as well. My elder sister and younger brother wore the new Air Jordan's, while I was always the odd one I wore those black high-top sneakers from "Payless" which were shiny (like my winter jacket). I remember telling my mom that I liked those shoes because they were dark, so they wouldn't get dirty easily, and since they were high-top the snow wouldn't get in. I guess she liked my reasoning, because I wore those sneakers and I am reminded of them through pictures. When my dad graduated from graduate school we had to go to his graduation, he wore black, and I remember this one blonde lady with really big curly hair being my dad's friend and giving him hugs. I also remember the graduation being really long, and having to sit on the bleachers. This reminds me of when my dad would go to take exams for MBA he would dress up, wearing a suit and tie. I would ask why, and he told me that in Pakistan that's just how they would do things. During this time my mother was finishing her residency and had to take her board exams. I remember she had a little table set up in her bedroom neatly piled with really thick books, and everyday after work she would go to her table and study till after we fell asleep. These few months of studying ended after she drove off with some white man and a microscope in her hand, she didn't leave us, she just went to take her exam. The exam was in a different city so she had to stay over night there. I don't remember if I missed her, probably did. After finishing fourth grade at the magnet school in Buffalo, my family decided to move back to Pakistan, never really knew why and I don't question it. It seemed that as soon as we landed my brother and sister both got Typhoid, my brother was hospitalized. He had this one really big nurse that would always force him to eat food; I always thought she was really nice. My parents enrolled my sister and me in an all girl British school. We had to wear the most hideous uniforms ever invented. In the winter it was a dark blue dress, which looked like overalls from the top. Underneath it we had to wear a blue checkered shirt, with rounded collars, and puffy sleeves. I remember that on my first day the teacher introduced me to the class as "Zehra, the new girl from America." This led to instant popularity. At lunch, everyone wanted to sit with me, they all talked, I stayed quiet, I observed them, they were so different from the rest of the girls I knew. One time on my way home from school, our bus broke down, and I had take a rickshaw ride back home, I got sandwiched between two of the Urdu teachers, it was a bumpy ride that gave me motion sickness. Towards the end of seventh grade I found out that we were moving back to the U.S. and so I decided to not study for my finals and not tell anybody at school that I was leaving. The day before I left, a friend had a birthday dinner, and there I let it slip that I was leaving, nobody believed me, and the next day I had successfully disappeared, I smiled. Enrolled in the most non-diverse school in the suburb known as Williamsville was not easy. Everyone looked at me funny, yet they never spoke to me, and I never tried to talk to anybody either. One time a guy asked me if I spoke English, I replied "yes." After a year I finally opened myself up, and then got stabbed in the back, never trusted people since then. High school is a complete blur. It wasn't until my senior year that I met the best person ever, I was to shy to ever really become his friend outside of school. Seeing him everyday was great, I thought we had the best conversations. I still miss him. I graduated and never saw him again. I still regret not being more active in becoming his friend. I regret not saying, "yea sure I'll be there" whenever he invited me to hangout. In college I turned into a complete "I heart school" type person, I was focused, got good grades, and never did anything "bad." I kept to myself because of my past experiences. In the spring of my junior year I opened up, and it was great, I made awesome friends. I was finally me, completely bare, and then I got screwed over again, got hurt, and so that will never happen again. Now I'm writing this and realizing my life, how many memories I can remember, they take me back to how I felt at that time and who I was and how I have changed. Also realizing how many times I've typed "I" within these 4 pages.
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