I'm
really angry with my parents, and I feel like a child when I feel my
anger in my heart. It feels stubborn and stupid, and to even admit this
anger elicits a minor shame.
I have expected too much from my parents, I suppose. Their only crowning
achievement at this point in my life is managing to keep me alive and
moderately meeting my needs. There's not much to be said for the
relationship itself though. It seems to have been fractured beyond
repair by anger and the overall weirdness that comes with being at
cultural crossroads.
I was raised first a Pakistani Muslim girl. My name is not pronounced
Amber, but rather Umbur. Soft and round, a name in most instances,
impossible for the structured Western mouths to express. My father
insisted upon a strict maintenance of culture and upon beginning primary
school he did not permit me to change my name to Amber for the
students. No one could pronounce Umbur so everyone settled with Omber.
Pakistan cannot and never will translate in the West. Even my fathers
attempt to retain our cultural identity through my name failed. I was
neither Pakistani nor was I a westerner. I became my own strange awkward
looking and awkwardly named entity. The name gathered more strange
momentum when we were learning the names of food in french class and my
exceptionally fat and bespectacled french teacher taught us that a
hamburger was pronounced "Ohhmberger". Upon hearing this the class froze
and turned to Omber and one of them whispered "Omberger". My fate was
sealed (a tip for current friends: don't try it).
There were attempts to teach Amber how to pray. I resisted. There were
attempts to teach her Wudu, I resisted. There were attempts to teach her
Arabic so she could read the Qu'ran. It was hopeless. I fought all of
it. I remember when I participated in an art class at the mosque, my
cousin sent the Imams daughter (who was very nice, very good, and very
smart) to teach me how to do wudu. She was polite through the process
and did not snicker at me as though I was stupid.
I remember Arabic school. My dad stuck me in the 3rd grade because I
was in 3rd grade in the Canadian school system. Another horrible
translation. I did not have 3rd grade knowledge of Arabic. I had no
fucking clue what was going on. Our teacher was an ill tempered Arab man
who scared me. He would ask me questions and because I had NO idea what
was going on I would consistently answer with "Alif". He stopped asking
me questions or would roll his eyes and curse "Alif! Alif! Always
Alif". I resigned to drawing and one time drew a beautiful picture
which, upon seeing, my teacher crumpled up and threw away. I was the
class dunce. Even Aisha, the other Pakistani girl, refused to talk to me
because of my well demonstrated stupidity.
On our last day of Arabic school we had a giant contest, the winner of
which would receive a beautiful set of colored pencils. I remember
bombing the contest (obviously) and crying because I did not win the
prize and instead got a shitty pencil. The well versed Indonesian girl
in a hijab had flitted off with set, which was of no surprise to the
other students.
My childhood was awkward. I was hyperactive, a loner. I used to talk to
the sun in the morning and thank it for rising. I had issues throwing
away candy bar wrappers because I imagined them to be living things
whose feelings would be hurt if I let them go. I hated spiders,
especially the giant ones that lived under the siding in the portable
classrooms. I remember eating my fruit cup one afternoon only to be
chased by a wasp, at which point I threw the fruit cup at it and ran. I
remember attempting to steal snow from some boys for a giant boulder we
had built, at which point I was rudely punched and the wind was knocked
out of me.
My mother said I was hyperactive and impossible to control. I remember
being slapped a lot. The worst times were at dinner parties where a
large audience would watch my mother slap me. I have so many memories of
my mother slapping me while a group of people looked on. The shame it
produced was wretched. The feeling of love mixed with shame and
unworthiness still sits inside me and I have yet to let it go. My mother
always told me our relationship was fractured by the stress produced by
the realities of being an immigrant in an arranged marriage while
trying to raise two kids and assemble a life in Canada. These realities
seemed to have evaporated as my mother is now living quite comfortably
in Ohio as a Marriage and Family therapist.
I am the product of multiple realities.
For much of my teenage years my concept of self was framed in the
parameters of "bad" and "stupid" and "evil". I remember my parents
venomously spitting out that I was evil. "Amber lies, Amber fights her
brothers, Amber has bouts of jealousy, Amber manipulates, Amber is
Evil". When I was born my mother said her heart dropped and when she saw
my personality unravel she knew why her heart had dropped. When I was
in college she was fighting with my father and swore at him "I've known
she was cursed since the day she was born".
Starting at the age of 12 I attempted to scrub off the ways the devil
had infected me. I became consumed with a desire to do good and I was
always guarded and cautious with my choice of actions, words. I was
terrified of people getting to know me as though if they were to look at
me they would see the truth of my being. All that work I had put into
being good was a fucking lie. I was evil, I was rotten, I was useless.
I spent college over working myself to earn my parents praise. They
thought I went out too much so I stopped going out to make them happy. I
tried to get good grades all the time, "look I made dean's list!"
moments. Nothing. I swore to myself I would never date, I would never
have a boyfriend. I would never fuck. I would live up to the request of
purity that had fallen upon my feminine virgin frame.
The negativity in our home was fermenting and at some point was bound to
explode. It did precisely at the beginning of 2008. The bitter reality
that my mother had attempted to deny about her home, her husband came
forth and consumed us. That winter the lights that kept us warm and
happy died and I was emotionally devastated. To keep reality at bay I
spent lots of time outside of the home. The day after Valentine's day I
stumbled into the Shi Sha Lounge and curiously eyed a Chinese boy with
red lips that bloomed out of his mouth. A few months later I kissed him
in his bedroom and then a few months later I kissed him again in a way
my body would not forget.
Image: Madonna, 1984
