Student Spectrums

I am American. I am American. I am American.

Am I?

“What is it to be an American?” I stare at the words drawn out in faded Expo at the front of the classroom. The lights in this room will always be too bright, and the board will always be loose against the dirty walls. I look at the question, then down at my paper, then at my brown hands like the color of caramel, then back at the board. I am American, aren’t I? I was born here, raised here, I live here, and I know of no other life. So why can’t I answer this question?

“15 minutes,” Mrs. Black whispers from the front of the classroom.

She believes in only whispering while we write because apparently noise is the ultimate sin of the classroom. Some quote she read on Twitter 3 years ago and has stuck with her since. Never will I understand how she’s anyone’s favorite teacher. I hate to say it, because she really is nice, but she’s probably the worst teacher I’ve ever had. She tries, but not everyone is made for teaching. I think that behind her corny quote, she just wishes all the noise would go away. Don’t we all?

I begin jotting down anything I think relates to America; red, white, blue, freedom, White House, border, politics, freedom, money, happiness, freedom, perfection, freedom, freedom, freedom. God, I keep coming back to that word. The word that has become the ultimate metaphor. Metaphor for the trapped souls and depressed teens. Metaphor for the starving poor and obese rich. Metaphor for the skyrocketing suicide rate and the booming immigration. Metaphor for everything and anything that everyone and anyone could want. We are only free to be what they want us to be.

Only if they are willing to sacrifice everything in return. Only if they dare to skin themselves. But isn’t that our whole world? Isn’t it everywhere? The idea that no one can be something unless everyone around them is the same. The painless cleansing of our identities until we are blank sheets painted in the colors of our flags.

Mrs. Black stands from her table, cluttered with papers and dried-out Expo markers and a coffee mug that I’m pretty sure hasn’t moved since the beginning of the year. “Turn in your papers.”

I stand from my desk and bump into the girl who sits next to me, Clara. She’s white, with two French braids that trail from her scalp down to her shoulder blades, and her essay looks awfully long.

Of course it does, I think to myself.

And then I stop. Because why would that be obvious? Do I think she should know what it is to be American simply because she’s pale and wears sunscreen like her life depends on it? Should she be able to define American better than me? Is it wrong to think that? I ponder over this as I walk to the front of the classroom and push through the crowded halls until I reach the front doors of school. I begin my walk home in the burning heat, not thinking about the prompt, but my right to answer it. My right, Clara’s right.

Which one of us should be able to answer such a question? Yet both of us have the privilege to sit in a suffocating classroom where we must answer it.

I keep walking, not towards home, but towards the park near my house. I listen intently to my footsteps, and the longer I listen, the more they begin to sound like the drums my father plays at home. Not the home 15 minutes walking distance from where I stand, but the home 7,500 miles away in Pakistan. Then it hits me. How dare I hear the cultural drums of my homeland in the footsteps upon the soil of freedom. The soil that so many children would give anything to walk upon. And here I am matching my footsteps to the beat of a memory tied to the country of my heart. As if both my free steps and my chained music can live within the same heart, tugging at its edges until it rips and frays like the edges of a flag.

I walk past a blue house, with an abnormally large front door, 3 floors, and at least 4 rooms. Then I focus on the front lawn where an American flag stands stuck into the soil. American soil. The same soil on which I stand and reminisce about my homeland. Is this what it is to be American? To enjoy the privilege while a piece of me lives continents away, chained to memories I can only dream of recreating.

I am American. I am American. I am American.

I sit on the swings pondering over this. I listen to the rust of the metal and the chirping birds that seem to sing songs of freedom. But do the birds back home not sing the same song? Yet the birds here do not seem guilty of their song. They do not seem ashamed of their ungratefulness. Perhaps they are not ungrateful. Perhaps they are American in their bones, blood, flesh, feathers, hearts, and heads. Why can’t I be like the birds? But if I were, would I really enjoy the guiltless life, or would I use my wings to ride the wind back to my chains, my home? Life in Pakistan is not the tragedy we make it. But who’s we? We are Americans, so I guess it’s not the tragedy they make. But if they are Americans and I say they and not we, then am I not American? But I am.

At this point my head has started to hurt and I’ve started walking toward the ice cream truck parked a few feet from the swingset.

I stand in front of the white truck covered with labels and prices of every color on the spectrum, then peer inside to see a dark-colored man, Pakistani or Indian, a generalization I realize would’ve offended my parents. Then as my eyes skim over the truck, I take in each colorful label that makes this truck the attraction of the whole park. Perhaps America is the same. A blank, white nation, made up of all the cultures we seem to accumulate, taped closely together, yet separated enough for the white to show through. United and divided all within the same nation, yet still the attraction of the world. A one-of-a-kind truck in a not-so-vast parking lot, for there’s really only 7 continents after all.

I am American. I am American. I am American.

I walk back to the swings, passing a strong-smelling barbeque, with clusters of people gathered around, mostly Hispanic. Then I spin around to see a group of girls playing volleyball, mostly white. I continue to spin and see a group of kids having a picnic; they look like me. Again I spin and catch a glimpse of a husband and wife walking their dog; they are African American. I continue spinning until the rainbow has surrounded me and my feet feel as if they will drill a hole all the way to China. I spin until I am surrounded by every flag I can think of, wrapped so tightly my breath is being hugged away.

I stop spinning to find little kids staring. They look Chinese. Then I set back upon my mission towards the swings. My mom won’t be expecting me home till sunset, by which I must be home. Again, a cultural thing. Does being American mean staying out once the sun has sunk? Does it mean walking in the cool night, under the stars that never grant wishes and the moon that doesn’t even glow from within? Would my wishes come true if I wished upon the stars back home? And would the moon shine brighter? I realize this is a dumb question, since we only have one moon.

I am American. I am American. I am American.

I chant these words in my head until they are engraved into my neurons, written in the walls of my stomach, flowing through the veins in my flesh, and coming out of my mouth. I miss my family, my home, my drums, my bed, my life. I miss all of it, and that is what makes me American. I miss every bit of it, and that is why I am here. I am here to appreciate the life I’ve been given, a life of beauty and pain, of hardship and ease, of everything and nothing. I am here to live this life and still remember the life back home. Because home is where the heart is and my heart is split. Being American is not spitting on the countries that are not white, red, and blue. It is mixing the colors to paint a cohesive picture that incorporates every bit of culture until it all swirls together as a beautiful galaxy full of stars that do not lie and a moon that shines bright. I am American. I am Pakistani. I am a Pakistani American and the soil of America gives me that right. The soil of this land, built upon lives sacrificed in the name of my right to call myself what I am.