Free Fall

Every time I close my eyes, I see Afghans falling from the sky. I see them using their nails to cling onto the smooth steel skin of an airplane, begging to be let in. I see grips borne on sweaty palms from a fabric of desperation that twists and contorts and strangles like a black hole. How does one hang from an airplane long enough to be flung into the sky? 

I think about how an American’s eyes must’ve locked sight with hordes of bodies hanging from their limbs, pleading for safety. And while watching with a videogame-like voyeurism, wearing the brand of “US Air Force” like a badge of honor, this American took off – coursing through him the blood of a line of colonizers and slave traders that came before him. Blood giving him the strength to litter the ground with fragmented bodies, bodies yearning for a security that had been snatched from them by the same badge that tossed them bones like they were animals. This, is the American patriot. 

There is something about the American in my identity that often pumps my body with arsenic. I am conditioned to think of the sacrifices that my parents made to bring me to this land, to allow me to generate wealth and exploit endless opportunity that I would never have back in Pakistan. And I am appreciative of these opportunities, knowing full well that the United States allowed an entire generation of Shiite Pakistanis to create prosperity away from religious persecution. But a split identity, an identity shared amongst multiple worlds, can only scream in protest when one attacks the other. My eyes become mirrors that reflect the toxicity in the American touch – the shattered economies, destruction of empires, stolen resources snatched from decaying hands. And in those moments, I switch. I am no longer an American, I am a Pakistani. 

But there is something about the Pakistani in my identity that often fills my lungs with dirt. I am conditioned to think of the severe exploitation and depravity that brought the country to where it is today. The brutalizing forces of colonizers tearing through the Indian Subcontinent with shovels of golden entitlement, sucking dry a land and a people once rich with resource. I recognize the interplay of history and white politics in what has become of a country that was conceived upon such bright dreams of abundance. But my mirrors reflect the horrors of Pakistan’s crimes – the way they twist the word of God to manipulate those from which they’ve stolen the right to rational thought. The way they sell the women they’re meant to protect, strip from them their right to participate in a world made for their voices. The way they hold my Shia in chains tightened around their bodies, praying for the day they eradicate us all. And in those moments, I switch. I am no longer a Pakistani. My identity leaves me barren like the desert.  

How are we meant to define ourselves by conversations held behind closed doors? By conversations had by perverted politicians, religious fundamentalists, and white feminists that brand themselves with my identities to manipulate me into complicity? I weep for Afghanistan, a country that my identities fought to destroy. A country that Americans tore to shreds 20 years ago in a time when I was not cognizant, a country that Pakistanis used to promote an extremism that has left a trail of death and destruction upon whatever land it touched. There is nothing salvageable about the parts of me that associate with such bloodied hands, with hands that make mangled bodies of those born to the wrong circumstance.

And yet, privilege is persistent and pervasive the way it has embedded identity within me. It is my American education that has pushed me to criticize, to think liberally and critically about the institutions and political affiliations I hold close. It is this country that has pulled from me the survival mentality that clouded my ability to use reason and logic. And it is the survival mentalities of Pakistan that allow me to see farther than what I am told, to look for stories and human experience as a way to connect with those outside of my familiarities. American and Pakistani brands have been stamped into my skin through the privileges that have built me to question, and to reject. 

But knowing this, I feel shaken with disjoint – like the world I navigate is starkly different from those I navigate it with. That I can take the crippling feeling from watching the brutal demoralization of an entire population, and somehow philosophize it into a discussion about identity conflict. That I can morph the forced subjugation of an entire country to a state of radical terrorism, into a conversation about how I am affected by a war I will never experience. And yet, I can’t watch a plane fly above my head without seeing bodies drop.