There’s a story about me that Abba narrates to people all the time. It's about how, when I was a year old, still in an intense pacifier phase, he told me gently for the first time that the pacifier was not good for me and that I should not use it. As a response, utilizing all of my one year’s worth of cognitive development, I removed the pacifier from my mouth and threw it to the ground definitively. That was the last time I used one, he said.
Then there's another one about me at 3 years old, sitting in the officer’s dining hall with my parents, eating with a fork and knife without spilling a morsel from the plate. A uniformed officer seated at the same table exclaimed, “Sir, your daughter is already a lady!”
As I grew up, I would come to be described in many ways by family, friends, colleagues, and mentors, and some of the recurring adjectives used to describe my extrinsic qualities would be well-mannered, polite, or proper; the intrinsic qualities described as resolute and resilient.
My unyielding association with propriety started very early on, and one that I find rather comical myself. There’s a certain way I have always conducted myself and it has been this way for as long as I can remember. I sometimes wonder what it would feel like to talk loudly, bawl my eyes out, curse something/ someone with conviction, or just let my hair loose. Oftentimes, my towering rage directed at a person has taken the form of one simple sentence, “You’re not a very good person”. Period. Even though that has served to satisfy me and soothe my anger, one could argue that it isn’t as impactful as some long-standing, seasoned cuss words.
My name is Zainab Akhtar. Zainab is a Persian name that means fragrant flower or a flowering tree. Akhtar, which means ‘a bright star’, is not exactly a family name. It was the first name of my grandfather, and he was one of my favorite human beings. I feel a sense of honor carrying his name as part of my identity. He was a professor specializing in teaching methodology, and I often pondered what it meant to educate educators. He was also a brilliant poet all his life, but became a full-time poet only after retirement. He used to write in Urdu and would speak to me in complex poetic phrases just to amuse himself with my perplexity.
I am the elder of two siblings. I have a younger sister, just a year younger, who, unlike me, is the definition of gregarious. If you think the early onset of my prudence had something to do with my upbringing, there would be no explanation for the frenzy her mere presence created. I cannot count the number of times I have had to bribe her to stay quiet for a little while because her incessant, cheerful yapping would give me a literal headache. We would agree upon a definite period of silence after which she would dutifully resume. She studied English literature, got a master's degree in journalism, worked for a regional newspaper in India for a while, became disillusioned with the growing censorship in journalism by the reigning right-wing government, and chose to pivot to teaching.
Abba is an aeronautical engineer and a retired Air Force officer. Incredibly smart and a man of few words, I have always looked up to him for his wisdom, patience, and discipline. He is a man who loves physics and sports as much as he loves poetry, Allah, and his infinite blessings. There is not one subject or sport that he has picked up, as late as in his fifties, that he has not excelled in. He’s also the most unassuming man I know. How he is loved and revered by everybody in his professional and personal life is a testimony to the quiet yet undeniable impact his presence has. This quality of excelling at everything extended to all his relationships too. I grew up being his biggest fan as a little girl. When the gradual but inevitable shift to seeing my parents as fallible human beings transpired, it just humanized him without taking away any credit.
Mumma is as opposite to Abba as one can imagine. She’s vivacious and can often be quite tactless. Her boisterous and infectious laughter can be heard from a mile away. If she burst into her notable laughter at a public place, and god forbid you asked her to keep it low, you’d know that any attempt to subdue the mirth only fuels it.
She was an elementary and middle school teacher for fifteen years, often teaching in the same school where I was studying, and was adored by all her students. I was used to having classmates come up to me to express their admiration for her, for how pretty she was, or to ask about where she got her clothes from— the answer to which was that almost all her clothes were custom-made. Each fabric selected and purchased, each neckline, helm, sleeve, or embroidery designed and specified by her. No matter where we were posted, she would manage to find a tailor and local sellers to work on her exquisite wardrobe. This wasn’t an act of opulence, quite the opposite in fact- it was economical, good-looking, and unique. She now has a collection of beautiful dresses made with local fabrics and designs from all parts of a country known for its robust textile industry.
She is also often called the life of the party—if there’s a dance floor, she would be the first one to get on and the last one to get off the floor, while my father would be somewhere in the corner, a soft drink in hand, discussing politics with a group of friends.
I grew up in different parts of India because of Abba's job. I had lived in 8 different places— cities, towns, and military bases in remote areas by the time I graduated high school, sometimes living in a place for as short as six months.
I loved the long journeys by road we made each time, regardless of how long or uncomfortable they were— our small family of four, cramped in a car with the boot filled with luggage. We would reach the new place, move into a temporary small house for a few months, and then move to a bigger ‘permanent’ house— a permanent home which would house us for maybe 2 years, 3 if we were lucky. I would join a new school in the middle of the year, get new books, catch up with the new curriculum, and have my first day as the new girl—the endless first days as the new girl. I would look around hopefully, awkwardly, suspiciously as I would be asked to introduce myself, and viscerally feel the lingering or unamused gaze of the other kids around me. But that was the drill— I would go on to make friends, I would study well, the teachers would love me, the house would be set, my parents would host dinners, I would attend birthday parties, and just as it would begin to feel a little bit like home, it would be time to move again.
We’d pack our stuff, throw out all the things that made no sense to carry, bid farewell to our friends, say goodbye to my favorite teacher, get them all to sign this little diary I had made just for this purpose– a record of goodbyes, and would get ready to make another long journey.
So much of my childhood had been in this state of transit— the destination being yet another temporary stop.
As an architecture student, one of my first projects in the first year was to study the work of some of the most prominent architects in India. I remember visiting the studio of the architect assigned to my group to discuss their latest projects and then presenting a study to the class. Four blurry years later, upon graduating, that studio would be my first place of work and where I would spend the next four years- learning, growing, and working on exciting projects. The 70-year-old architect of renown, known for his design prowess and fiery temper, who barely remembered the names of the young, wide-eyed architects joining his office, took me under his wing right away. So much of what I learned in my professional formative years was through observing him, being put to the test often, and through candid conversations with him about books, design, and life in general.
I was also briefly married— a phase of my life that, after four years now, amounts to only gratitude and some obscure memories.
Growing up in India is a core part of my identity. The country hailed for being incredibly diverse and plural has never been impervious to the struggles associated with being multicultural. But I have also been a witness to, and on the receiving end of its growing hostility toward its religious and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims. You get accustomed to functioning in a certain defense mode when you have been subject to microaggressions since early childhood. I was always taught to ignore and to look at hateful comments or jokes as a reflection of one’s conditioning. It's only much later that I realized that what I attributed to a fault in conditioning was, in fact, the aggressor’s inherent ignorance and lack of empathy. My upbringing in a relatively egalitarian military environment cushioned me from active discrimination most of my life; however, when I stepped out of that bubble, I realized that people out here no longer masked their acts of othering- it was blatant, it was crude, and it was evil. As a first of many, while looking for apartments in Bombay, I was told by a broker quite impassively that the building did not rent to Muslims. Such incidents were often and only got worse in the following years. These forms of manageable discrimination would translate to a lack of opportunity, access, or violence for the less privileged in my country.
A well-meaning [albeit privileged] friend of mine said to me while I shared my rage about this, "It takes decades to build what this current regime has destroyed in mere months. It's too late, the work has been done– it's time to look for jobs abroad. That's the thing with a fool’s majority, they eventually take over.” I argued fiercely with him over his pessimism that day, only to find myself resonating with his words less than a year later, as I experienced firsthand the irrefutable state of my homeland, plagued by hatred and intolerance.
Despite veiling my insecurities about coming here, to this new country where I knew nobody, uprooting myself from the comfort of familiarity, I secretly did think of it as a crippling starting point. Some unlearning and relearning later, I am most thankful for the people I continue to meet, befriend, and learn from.
There is something about the goodness and kindness of the new that only bolsters my love and admiration for the old, the constants.
My composure mirrors my father, my occasional loud laugh is what I get from my mother, my ability to listen well and for long is because of my sister, my ability to adapt is because of my nomadic childhood, my lack of interest in traveling too much is also because of my nomadic childhood, my understanding that all social injustices and inequities are deeply interconnected is through my own experiences– I could go on with this list, piecing together every trait to the people I have known and the experiences I have had. While parts of me are easily explained this way, there are parts of me that I refuse to give language or form to.
My deep-rooted reticence, ‘sad eyes’, and involuntary repulsion to compliments are as much a part of my personality as my genuine smiles and honest frowns.
And, while I resort to taking the minimum amount of space in a room, I will always speak and speak up when I need to.