‘Returning’ Home
Nov 13, 2013
Abbu,
I am sorry that I have not written a long email in a while. Writing long substantive emails require a state of mind that I have not achieved in a while. Right now I am flying from San Francisco, California to Charlotte, North Carolina.
As you can see it is a beautiful day outside and I cannot help but feel tremendously grateful for all of the places that I have visited, all of the people I have met and the experiences I have had. I have had a lot of mixed feelings about returning to Dhaka. On the one hand, I have been feeling suffocated by not having seen you, Ammu and Tushar for over two years. It’s not just that I have not seen you, but we have lived lives over the past four years that have been as different as night and day. Every wonderful experience here has been accompanied with an unsuspecting shard of pain at not being able to share the moment with you all. So in a sense this unforeseen turn of events has some how been exactly what I needed — an opportunity to recalibrate our lives.
On the other hand, the States has presented everything that the idealist in me could ever conceive of. A place where women can walk the streets free of fear (well for the most part, unless they were roofied or blown up by a maniac gunman), where strangers on a bus can hold a conversation that turns hours into minutes, where technology solves mundane problems even before they are able to materialize. Of course this is also the place that taught me about racism and a very subtle misogyny. It taught me about what incredible wastes can take place both in the material world and the world of human emotions. Without making this some kind of an exercise to prove out conclusively whether the U.S. is ‘good’ or ‘bad’; the point I am trying to get at is that this is the place where I have grown tremendously. I have been handed incredible opportunities, shouldered heavy responsibilities and experienced an unbarred freedom. I know Ammu’s prayers have kept me safe and I think there has always been Someone watching over me and setting up invisible padding over the edges where I fell. Suddenly the world has felt like the playground that I never had. As I prepare to head back I feel my spirit crying out, like a child whose playtime is over. It was not her choice to leave while the sun is still out but she is trying to be brave about it. She tries to argue and run away to the swings one last time but alas the decision is not hers to make. So she gives in; a quiver in her lips and the weight of the world in her heart as she trudges back.That’s the part of me that is being hard to reach over phone and email. And when I can be reached, I am still unavailable. The part of me that is just annoyed and does not want to talk to anyone right now.
I am starting to realize that the physical act of ‘going back’ has me a little confused. As if I am somehow doing a 180 degrees and moving backwards. In reality I am going home as a new person and moving forward towards a new set of challenges because frankly the 9–5, the material overabundance, the overflow of praise was making life a little too bland and lackluster for my taste anyway.
So this is the dramatic take on my state of mind at present. There is more nuance in each sentiment expressed but if i were to delve in those nuance I would not make any point at all. I miss you and love you loads.
Love,
Aniqa
