[Transcript]
Listener friends, sometimes your world is a trash fire. This episode will be about how to survive and thrive when things are going up in flames. There are things happening IRL that have made my life more chaotic than normal, and my commitment to remaining an anonymous brown girl podcaster makes this episode particularly difficult to record.
The reasons for that are complicated. For one, when you are the daughter of suck it up, buttercup immigrant parents, you learn pretty quickly that all your problems pale in comparison to the existential ones they faced when they were your age. Sad about a boy? Try staying afloat in a strange land. Worried about your job prospects? That’s nothing compared to facing deep-rooted systemic discrimination, language barriers, a lack of job experience, and no family ties to help you stay off the streets when you first shift continents. You get the picture.
I recently told my mom about a hateful thing that had happened to me. Her response was to casually share a story I had never heard before. When she was new to the country, she was rammed by an irate fellow shopper in a grocery store, a random, race-motivated attack. Translation: What I had faced was nothing in comparison to how things used to be. According to my folks, I should get over it, because in the grand scheme of things, I am winning.
But am I? Compared to what she had to face on the regular, yes. Compared to what I dream for myself, no.
It is this personal accounting that gets me every time, listener friends. And here’s the truth of it all: Things are better for folks like me—the racialized, the marginalized, the Other. But because two truths can exist simultaneously in the universe, things are worse for us too. Real change is a boulder we keep pushing, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it doesn’t push back. Because it does. And sometimes it pushes back hard.
In my parents’ time, simply being acknowledged as worthy of notice, as having your own history and worth, was enough. That’s not enough for me. I want to be included and celebrated. I want nuanced and plentiful stories to be told about my people, and I don’t want it to mean something when one of us breaks through, because there are so many of us breaking through, all the time, in every field.
When things (because trash fire) remind me how far we still have to go collectively, it gets me down. And then it makes me mad. I want it to change. But I don’t know how to make that happen.
I’ve learned a few things, though. When you are pushed out of the safety of anonymity and made to stand in the glare of public derision, here’s what you should do:
Find allies and gather them close.
Figure out who your real enemies are.
Plan out the best course of action over the next few days, and then the next few weeks, before worrying about the amorphous future with a capital F.
Remember that it’s okay to be in survival mode.
I know this all sounds bleak, but I hope to return to better times soon. In the meantime, if you are the praying sort, pray for me, or send me some of that good energy. I’m thinking of all of us tonight.
StanleyP messaged me soon after I uploaded my podcast. It was good to hear from him after our last awkward conversation.
StanleyP
I’m getting worried now, Ana. Are you okay?
AnaBGR
Not really. It’s been a rough week.
StanleyP
Remember our deal?
StanleyP was referring to our long-ago deal that he would send me a picture of his finished project, after which I would decide what to do about us. In the craziness of the past few weeks, it had slipped my mind.
AnaBGR
I remember.
StanleyP
I’ll be sending you that pic soon. I hope you know you can share things with me too. Your podcast was intense.
AnaBGR
Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day.
StanleyP
I’d like that. Take care, friend.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I had a shift at Three Sisters the next morning and I was late. I made chai and scrambled eggs for Baba’s breakfast and toast for Fazee, then threw on black pants, a white shirt, and my green hijab with the pink flowers before sprinting for the door. I would grab something to eat from the restaurant.
It was a cool morning with a hint of warmer weather in the air. I walked onto Golden Crescent toward Three Sisters and spotted one of the festival flyers Rashid and I had posted on a streetlamp. Except something was wrong. I walked closer, frowning.
Someone had written something across the front in black Sharpie: MUSLIM PIGS.
But we don’t even eat pigs, I thought. Then, realizing what I was reading, I ripped down the paper, crumpling it into a ball and stuffing it into my pocket.
I walked faster toward the restaurant. More than a week ago, Rashid and I had taped a dozen flyers side by side to the window of Luxmi’s bakery, next door to Three Sisters. Now I saw that someone had spray-painted MUSLIM TERRORISTS GO HOME across them, black paint dripping onto the sidewalk below. I tried to rip them down too, but the painted words had bled through. Now it read M————ORIST GO H——.
Luxmi Aunty spotted me and hurried out. “It happened overnight,” she said. Her eyes were round with worry and fear. “They hit nearly every business on the street, the ones that put up flyers. Even the Tim Hortons. I called the police and they said they would send someone.”
My face felt numb and she patted my arm. “The police will find out who did this. Probably some bored teenagers.”
“N-nobody saw anything?” My teeth were chattering and I was suddenly freezing. I closed my eyes, trying to calm down, but my mind created a picture of the perpetrators. They looked like the angry, red-faced men in black T-shirts who had screamed at Rashid and tried to hurt Aydin and me.
Luxmi Aunty patted my arm again. “I’m so sorry, Hana,” she said, and I caught the worried glance she sent toward Three Sisters. My stomach tightened in response, body instinctively readying itself for a punch to the gut, as I walked toward the store.
A large swastika had been spray-painted across the front window of Three Sisters. SHARIA LAW? NOT IN MY CANADA! was written below, an ugly slash of bloodred paint.
My legs felt like jelly. I reached out to support myself, and my hand came to rest on the hate-filled symbol. I jerked away, nearly falling backward in the process.
Mom appeared in the window and then hurried outside. “Are you all right?” she asked, hands clawlike on my arms.
I nodded, and she tugged me inside the restaurant, onto a plastic chair. “The police are on their way,” she assured me, as if that meant something, as if everything would be put to rights now that the powers that be had been summoned. My eyes drifted to the dripping red shadow on our storefront, and I flinched, looking away.
Mom placed a large chipped mug in front of me, sloshing some of the tea over the side. She was never clumsy. I gripped the cup with my hands before I risked a look at her face. She was smiling, but as I looked closer, I realized it was more of a grimace, frozen to her face and stapled to the corners of her mouth. She was trying to hold it together, I realized. Trying not to react.
Rashid came running into the store, eyes wide and panicked. He skidded to a stop before us, breathing hard. “You are okay,” he said, and it was not a question. He put a hand on his knee and took a deep breath. “Alhamdulillah, you are both fine.”
Mom stood up to make him a cup of tea. What was it about desis and their obsession with chai? As if a hot cup of steeped leaves with milk and sugar could make everything better.
I took a sip and felt my bones unclench. I took another sip, and my eyes drifted once more to the vandalized window, then beyond. Beautiful Yusuf stood outside his family’s store, carefully picking up the remains of a fruit stand that had been strewn across the sidewalk. Ugly words
had been spray-painted on the sidewalk in front of the store. His father stood outside, hands on his hips. I had never seen Brother Musa so still. He was usually always moving, refilling bins, barking orders, talking loudly on his phone, scowling at the world. Now his face was blank with shock.
As I continued to sip the scalding-hot tea, my thoughts began to slow down. Mom stayed late almost every night at the restaurant. Sometimes she walked home after midnight, usually alone. What if she had bumped into the people who had defaced our street? What would they have done to her?
I put the cup down and reached into my pocket for the crumpled flyer, staring at the thickly lettered words. MUSLIM PIGS. Whoever attacked the street the night before had been right. I was a Muslim, and I was bloody pigheaded.
“You used goldenrod for the flyers, right?” I asked Rashid, and he nodded.
I told him I’d be back maybe in an hour, maybe less if I hurried. Back with another thousand flyers on cheerful goldenrod-yellow paper, which I vowed to paste on every available surface of our street, of our neighborhood, of our home.
As Rashid had said, Build a dam.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I bumped into Lily on my way out of the restaurant.
“Thank God you’re all right!” she said, throwing her arms around me. “Yusuf told me what happened.”
In her embrace, I started to shake. “I was late for my shift at Three Sisters,” I began.
Lily’s laugh was a broken sob. “You’re always late, Han.”
“I ripped down the defaced flyers on the other stores. Do you think that will slow the investigation when the cops come?” I was babbling, in shock.
She let go of me and reached into her pockets for tissues, handing me one. Dr. Moretti, prepared for every eventuality. “I’m pretty sure the graffiti and death threats are enough to charge someone with something.” She wiped her face, eyes skittering past the window of Three Sisters. “Where were you headed just now?”
“To print another thousand flyers.”
Lily’s laugh was buoyant in the quiet stillness of the street, and the sound made me burst into tears.
“Hey, hey, it’s all right,” she said softly, leading me to the side of the store, to the alley where we kept the trash and where Lily, Yusuf, and I had played superheroes as kids. I had always been Catwoman because Lily insisted on playing Wonder Woman to Yusuf’s Batman. She was better at lassoing.
“Mom comes home late at night. She could have been hurt. They could have . . . People were posting things, but I never thought they would bring it to our doorstep . . . ,” I said between heaving sobs. Lily rubbed soothing circles over my shoulders and passed me tissues while I cried, murmuring comforting words neither of us believed, but which made me feel better anyway.
After a few moments I stood up. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Tell me what I can do to help.”
I looked up and down the street, at the defaced storefronts, the trash strewn all over the place, and nearly started crying again.
“I’ll organize cleanup,” Lily said decisively. “Go print those flyers.”
Rashid called while I was in line at Staples. “The police are here,” he said in a subdued voice. “They want to speak to you and Aydin about the downtown confrontation. I have already shown them the comments and threats we received online. . . . I can’t believe this has happened.”
I knew my cousin felt guilty and regretful, but none of us could have anticipated the damage to our street. I felt partly to blame as well. I had promised Aydin and Rashid I would keep an eye on the online chatter, and I had missed the signs. Or maybe I hadn’t wanted to believe that people could be so hateful.
I paid for my purchase and drove home. Lily had rallied people to clean up, including Fahim, but it was slow work. I gave my statement to the two uniformed police officers sent to interview business owners on Golden Crescent, and then Rashid and I spent the next couple of hours stapling and pasting up flyers everywhere, twice as many as the previous time. I anticipated that the media would show up soon to document the carnage.
It was late morning when we finished, and I couldn’t go home. Only a chocolate glazed doughnut and a too-sweet French vanilla cappuccino could make me feel better.
Mr. Lewis stood behind the counter at Tim Hortons. “How is everyone holding up?” he asked as he filled my order, waving away my money.
I shrugged. “How badly did they get you?”
The Tim Hortons had been left relatively unscathed, Mr. Lewis informed me. Just some ripped-up flyers and trash in front of the store. He smiled as he passed over my order. “Your cousin dropped off a stack of flyers, and I’m planning to put up a display. I’ll also be handing them out with every cup of coffee.”
My eyes filled with tears at his generosity. “What if they come back?”
Mr. Lewis walked with me to an empty booth. “My mother was born in Poland in 1932. Her family was Orthodox Catholic. She was nine years old when the Nazis invaded. Her family fled, saved by the grace of God. But they never forgot what happened to their home, and she told us the stories so we would never forget too.”
“Everything is such a mess. I don’t know what to do.”
He leaned down. “You know you’re doing the right thing when you’ve pissed off the bad guys,” he said in a terrible gangster accent.
I laughed shakily. He gave my shoulder a squeeze before returning to the counter, to serve the neighborhood he had lived in all his life, even as that community grew and changed around him. And he was fine with that. “If the people are changing, that means we’re still alive. Only living things change,” he always said.
I remembered his mother. Mrs. Lewis had died the previous year. My family had attended her funeral at the Orthodox church down the street. Mom had made kheer—rice pudding with cardamom—for the wake, and there hadn’t been a single spoonful left by the end of the night. Mrs. Lewis would visit the restaurant with her church friends on Sunday, dressed in floral cotton and sensible shoes, eyes milky behind enormous pink-framed glasses. She had always smiled whenever we met.
The chime over the door dinged and I looked up. Aydin.
Was he worried about his restaurant? Maybe now he would finally move to a less exciting neighborhood, one with a more welcoming business community and targeted by fewer Nazis. If Aydin packed up and left right away, as I had wanted all along, would that solve our problems? Could we return to the careful normality of before?
No. Three Sisters would still be in financial trouble, and there would still be hate. But maybe it wouldn’t land on us. Maybe we would be spared. Or maybe we had been spared all along. Muslims believe that when you make du’a, or sincere prayer, for something, one of three things happens: (1) you are granted your request, (2) something bad that was headed your way is deflected, or (3) the good thing you asked for is kept for you in heaven.
I watched as Aydin chatted with Mr. Lewis, his face creased in a tired smile. He reached up to run his fingers through the dark hair over his brow, and I remembered that I still had his sunglasses in my purse. I fished them out and tried them on. Camouflage.
Mr. Lewis said something to Aydin, and he turned around and spotted me.
I took a gulp of cappuccino, burning my tongue. “Are you wishing you’d picked a different neighborhood for your restaurant?” I asked, trying for a smile, but Aydin only shook his head and took a seat.
“If I had opened up somewhere else, I would have missed all this.” He caught my eye and grimaced. “Laugh at the hard stuff, right?”
I nodded, glad he’d remembered my words from the baseball game. That instant of levity felt far away in the face of this disaster. “What else is there to do but laugh?” I repeated. No, really, I wanted to ask him. What else could we do?
He must have understood, because he replied, “Build a dam?”
We lap
sed into silence.
“Are you still going ahead with your plans to open next week?” I asked.
Aydin nodded. “I’ve arranged for extra security. Will you be there?”
“I have my protest sign ready to go.” I took off the sunglasses and handed them to him. “Are you all right?” I asked quietly.
“No,” he said. “Are you?”
I shook my head. We were being careful, each trying to appear calm in front of the other. I stood up. “I should get back to Three Sisters. My mom probably needs help cleaning off the . . .” I trailed off.
“I’ll walk you,” Aydin said abruptly.
“It’s fine. You’re busy.”
Aydin gripped the sunglasses until his knuckles turned white. “Please, Hana. Let me walk you back.”
I grabbed my bag, and we left Tim Hortons together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Mom wasn’t working on pre-lunch prep as she usually did in the morning. Instead I found her in one of the booths at the back of Three Sisters.
“Are you all right?” I asked her, my voice gentle in the quiet of the dining room.
“I’m just taking a little break,” she said.
Mom never took breaks. Breaks were for lesser mortals and shiftless daughters with artistic proclivities. I walked to the kitchen tea urn, the first thing that was turned on at Three Sisters every morning.
“It’s empty,” Mom called. She was looking around the restaurant with distant eyes. “I didn’t bother refilling it after this morning.” She might as well have told me she had forgotten how to breathe.
Hana Khan Carries On Page 20