Baba nodded, hesitating. “How many customers today?” he asked.
I kept my face averted when I answered. “A slow day. Nothing to worry about.”
“Things will get better,” he said. “Inshallah.”
I squeezed his shoulder, then pulled out the tray that held his latest jigsaw puzzle: a Scottish castle, five thousand pieces. I set it up on the coffee table before letting myself out the front door.
My phone pinged with a new email as I stepped onto the sidewalk. It was from the public radio broadcaster—the dream job StanleyP had asked me about earlier.Please, Allah,I prayed fervently. My fingers fumbled as I opened the email app.Please, please, let this be good news.I read quickly, eyes skimming, heart pounding.
Dear Ms. Khan,
Thank you for your interest in the position of junior producer. We regret to inform you the position has been filled. We thank you for participating in our interview process, as we encourage diverse voices to continue to apply and make a difference in the Canadian media landscape...
I deleted the message before reading the rest, and my fingers automatically moved to the messaging app.I didn’t get the job, I typed to StanleyP, but then my fingers stilled.
Maybe this rejection was a sign that I should focus on what was happening right now, and not worry about dream jobs, or future relationships, that were out of my reach. I erased the message and walked to the bus stop. My dreams could wait a little while longer.
***
Welcome toAna’s Brown Girl Rambles, a podcast about the life of a twenty-something Muslim woman in Toronto.
One of the questions I posed in my first episode was about family. What do we owe the people who grew us up, who first made up our entire world?
It’s complicated for the kids of immigrants. I’m not talking about the usual “my parents don’t understand” thing. My parents believe in the power of choice, and they never asked me to sacrifice my dreams for theirs. Yet I feel like I should anyway. Where does that feeling come from? Is it just loyalty and strong family ties? Is it because, as part of a marginalized community, we all had to stick together to survive, and that sort of experience tends to become habit? Maybe it’s about guilt. We are kids who benefited from the sacrifices our parents made whenthey decided to move to a richer, safer country. If we then grow up to grow apart, have we become ungrateful villains?
My parents would say I’m being dramatic. Maybe I am. Then again, the beauty of running an anonymous podcast is that I can be as dramatic as I like.
I do know that, for all the benefits of being the daughter of immigrants, the one drawback is I’ve had to establish my own sense of place. All my extended family live elsewhere, on a different continent, and we don’t visit often enough to form real ties. There’s a lot of freedom in being a pioneer of your family’s history in a new place, of course. But there’s a lot of loneliness too. I’ve had to find my own family, to make the sort of friendships thatarefamily. Yet that lack of history means my roots here are shallow, my stories only a few years old.
Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so restless today, a little bit stuck. I’m waiting for something, only I’m not sure what. This is when I imagine a different sort of restlessness—the kind my parents felt, the kind that drove them to get on a plane decades ago and leave behind their own world, full of stories and history, for something new.
In so many ways the choices they made have limited mine. No doubt the choices I make will do the same for the generation that follows. I guess we all make peace with that in the end.
Thanks for listening, friends. Let me know if you have similar stories and how you’ve navigated your own road.
COMMENTS
StanleyP
Great second episode!
AnaBGR
The bot returns.
StanleyP
I subscribed. I guess I’m a fan. My fam isn’t as understanding as yours, but I feel you about the loyalty, and the guilt. Can’t wait to hear what you come up with next. You should do this for a living.
AnaBGR
Inshallah.
StanleyP
God willing.
AnaBGR
