Karachi vs. Kansas: Who's who?

Natasha (N): So I know you guys have been dying to know who's Karachi and who's Kansas, or what it really means. Well, take it away Faryal.

Faryal (F): I used to joke that when I was younger, I didn’t know I was any different from my peers in the white suburb of Kansas City. As I grew up, I began to slowly realize my "browness." What started as me avoiding pork or missing school for Eid developed into having “brown friends” and “school friends,” and later grew into realizing my worldview was fundamentally different from that of my peers.

N: See, I lived in Pakistan from ages 3 to 10. The only fundamental difference between my Pakistani peers and me during these years was that I was one of the only kids with a single mom, which is relatively rare in Pakistan. When we were moving back to the United States, I remember emailing my dad with a message titled, “America at Last.” I was waiting for this place where I thought I would fit in perfectly. Little did I know that the move would create an entirely new set of dilemmas and differences.

F: It wasn’t until I was around 18 when I started confidently calling myself Pakistani-American. I considered myself a “hyphenated American,” as Woodrow Wilson once called us. Though I have never lived in Pakistan and have only visited the country sporadically, it is a part of my identity that I refuse to compromise. Even my parents are confused about why I hold their origins so closely to my identity. Yet, its culture, politics and struggles are what have inspired my career aspirations.

N: When I moved back to the United States in northern Minnesota, I was basically the only child of an immigrant in my whole school. Since both my name and features are generally considered “ethnically ambiguous" — other than having to explain once a year to my dumb-struck friends that my family didn’t celebrate Christmas — I basically was American during the year and Pakistani when I visited my cousins and grandparents during the summers. For me, my political and more critical interests in Pakistan were what led me to see my identity as hyphenated; it was now more than just the warm and fuzzy memories I had at my grandmother’s dining table.

F: This summer, I was able to visit Pakistan with my dad through a new lens: instead of making the day-long journey to attend a family wedding, we explored the country for the sake of learning. This experience was very different from the version of Pakistan I’m constantly fed in my classes and in the media. I came away from this trip wanting to use my identity as a Pakistani-American to add to the Western conversations about Pakistan. 

N: For both of us, the hyphen represents something different because of our different upbringings and the ways we’ve interacted with Pakistan. For me, it's more connecting two separate things, while for you, they were always connected: it was a matter of separating them so they’d stop fighting each other. I find it difficult to balance my personal and academic connections to Pakistan, while not getting caught up in the romanticized version of Pakistan to which most diaspora cling.

F: So, basically, we both have a "Karachi" and a "Kansas" wrestling each other inside of us. Stay tuned to see who gets knocked out first!