Being the youngest and only daughter in a Pakistani family is an unlawfully genetically sealed faith that your parents will have the utmost protection and control over you. I would know, because I am.
That’s why I chose to go to college at least an hour away from home. If you’re going to learn how to survive the world in any city on the West Coast, what better it to be than San Francisco?
I would say I was very sheltered my whole life. The rules for my brothers growing up were: Clean after yourself, let us know when you’re leaving the house, be back before midnight. The rules for me growing up were: Don’t talk to any boys, get good grades, be home before sunset, call every hour, don’t wear anything revealing, sleep early, and ultimately be home as much as possible. I was never aware of what was happening in my community because my parents thought it better for me to be put in the dark rather than to be exposed to the world.
So I went to SFSU to get away from my parents. To no longer be under their supervision and to start creating my own agenda and learning how to navigate through situations on my own. I could feel my independency growing with every MUNI and BART ride I went on and I was just dreading for summer. I was dreading having to be back in a household where I still feel nervous for saying I’m going to hang out with my friends till after 9 p.m., where I could get scolded at for being friends with a girl wearing short shorts and standing next to a boy. I was dreading having to be back on someone else’s schedule and knowing that all the freedoms the City had brought me would be taken away.
But that’s not what happened.
Well of course I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do at home that I did in San Francisco. However, what I was able to do was, strangely, get closer to my parents.
There was always a lack of communication in our family and somehow over the summer we could connect and talk more.
During the month of Ramadan, I sat in the kitchen with my Mom making Rooh Afza and she told me more about her teenage years of climbing trees. It was refreshing hearing about how my mom was once a teenager like me, racing through the streets and up the trees to find the sweetest mango.
My dad spoke to me more about his family tree that was always hard to keep up with as everyone lived in Pakistan and I hadn’t met them. He reminisced on old nights of Ramadan in Pakistan and how after the neighborhood ate at Suhoor (dawn) they all went for a walk. It was the memories they spoke of here that I would remember.
We experienced two deaths and witnessed an almost-death that had us bonded by the tears we shed and the nights we stayed up. It was crazy how fast everything happened but the strength that my parents and siblings gained out of it clearly showed me that when we truly need to be there, we are. No matter what other plans were made, they aren’t as important as being there for one another.
I also had my parents laugh at me for making seven straight gutter balls at bowling and had my mom teach me her granny way of doing so. I was treated as an adult as we discussed moving into an off-campus location along with the financial aspect of it and that’s when I knew that within my first year of college, both mine and my parents’ perspectives of each other had changed. It was as if my first year away had taught us more than just academics but about the fact that we’re all changing with the times and nothing is more important than just living and loving each other.
All of the past troubles were washed away as I took a step back to realize as annoying as it was to be kept in the dark, they did it for my benefit so I could focus on creating a better future for myself.
And now to see what the new academic school year will bring.