by Laura Lee
* * *
With her Pakistani friends who do know of us as a couple, they see my foreignness, remark on it. “But she’s not Pakistani,” they say, as though this is a problem insurmountable. “She can’t speak the language.” At least they are honest about their feelings.
“Oh, you’re American, aren’t you,” her friends say occasionally, turning to me. To undercut their complaints about American culture (or to empathize with my condition, I’m never sure which), they add, “sorry.”
In truth I usually feel more comfortable with their perspectives than I do with the average American’s. I usually agree with their criticisms.
“I have the best of both worlds,” she says of me. “You have an American personality, but Asian values.”
At her favorite Pakistani restaurant, the man taking our orders, a non-Pakistani, doesn’t understand when she asks in English for three cups of tea.
“Teen chai,” I say.
“Ah, teen chai,” he agrees.
She and I laugh. She wants me to take over the ordering, so she can hear me stumbling in my American accent. Her culture will never be mine, nor mine hers. It’s a relief. It’s a relief to date someone who understands the odd composite that is me, who doesn’t expect me to explain my cultural inheritance. This, I think, is why she and I get along so easily. We accept each other as experts in our own experience.
I marvel sometimes at her ability to communicate, in human terms, despite her English being less flexible than her Urdu. There’s a simplicity that comes with speaking in one’s not-home tongue. There’s a clarity, too, for a certain kind of thinker.
What appeals to me in being with her is not her “foreignness.” It’s the way she feels like home. She’s similar to what I would’ve, could’ve been. When so much is ruled out, it leaves clarity around what is.
* * *
She will never marry, she tells me—and certainly never a woman. To be legally recognized in one country means giving official recognition to something that cannot exist in another.
With her country, I run up against the limits of American belief in possibility. It’s too intractable there. It’s not just about one’s own life, she tells me. It’s about protecting those one loves—her amma, her baba, her family—from their beliefs in a damaged afterlife, from death threats.
Even though she’ll defend Pakistan passionately against any criticism I might voice, against misrepresentations and the ways only certain stories are told, she, too, chafes at the restrictions women face. At the violence, the regressive religious fervor of conservatives. She knows her country won’t change anytime soon. She loves it anyway. I came across a quote when researching: “To love a Pakistani is to love Pakistan.” This, we agree, is true.
She doesn’t have the financial safety net that many here have. Her family is solidly middle-class. A middle-class Pakistani family of five has an income of, let’s say, $20,000 a year. She has a different kind of safety net. She understands the power of a close, loving family over an American passport, over wealth. She is firm in her sense of identity. She makes up her own mind about people and things. She is strong.
* * *
I want to spend time with her in Pakistan—will, pending the other chaos in my life. It’s easier, to tell certain internationals about what’s going on in my life. They don’t trust the police, understand how dealing with them can wreak havoc.
“You’ll probably feel the same way in Pakistan as you did in Egypt or India,” she tells me, by which she means the comparable poverty.
She knows of my experiences in Cairo, where a man trailed me through the city’s crowded streets, turn after turn, where a policeman I asked for directions assumed I was a prostitute for traveling alone, where I eventually settled for the refuge of a hijab, which rendered me seemingly invisible.
In Egypt I was culturally ignorant, doing all the things I wasn’t supposed to do—but the palpability of anger in Cairo’s streets was still unmistakable to me, so much so that I wasn’t surprised when Arab Spring erupted two weeks later.
“You were there two weeks before the revolution? Ah, you were there during the golden age,” an Egyptian acquaintance tells me, with a bitter laugh, to my surprise.
“What did you think of Egypt?” this acquaintance asks me. I can tell she’s hardened to the nonsense she hears, from people who know nothing of Egypt aside from their tour-bus adventures to the pyramids.
And I don’t know how to say traveling there was the first time I understood the sorts of things my parents felt they’d protected me from by virtue of my American birth. That it was the first time I’d confronted true poverty. That I came to understand the limitations women face, in moving freely and independently, as I became reliant on male traveling partners I met. That as an American who couldn’t read Arabic, every street sign meant I was lost. That any description fails, serves only as a projection of my vantage point, and anything more concrete was inaccessible to me. That the way the sun’s orange hues bounced off white buildings and smog and flooded the streets of swerving traffic was unlike any other sun I’d seen, even if it was the same.
Poverty wasn’t the main thrust shaping my perception of Egypt. It was the anger, the discontent, throbbing at an intensity unmatched elsewhere. In India I confirmed only how much cultural context I lacked. There, after our hired driver knocked over a woman with our car while turning onto a side street in Bangalore’s heavy traffic, I glimpsed how differently humans can be valued, based on life circumstance. This is explicitly true here, too, of course—just visible in different ways. He heckled and yelled out the window, rather than offering apologies or assistance. Strangers on the street pulled her aside as our driver kept driving, as we did nothing to intervene.
I have only snapshots of the places through which I’ve traveled. I had my American privilege, as well as my inability to leave my American judgments aside.
“It’ll be different,” I tell her. Not just because it’s an entirely different culture. “I’ll be traveling with you.”
On this we agree: we experience places differently through the eyes of those who know and love them. On this we agree, too: that a non-desi American shouldn’t bother going to Pakistan alone.
* * *
It’s funny how after you’re reduced, once you’re stripped of pride, after you’ve survived the realization of some of your worst fears, you meet those most capable of love. One of life’s compensations, perhaps.
“It’s the turmeric,” I tease her, after reading a study about curcumin’s ability to impair fear responses and treat symptoms of PTSD. I’ve seen her season nearly everything with the yellow powder. In classic fashion, Americans have since tried to stuff into pill form what others naturally ingest. “That’s why you’re so chilled out.”
We each earn just enough. I could have my freedom taken away from me. She could have her right to live in this country revoked. My country may recognize our right to a relationship, but her country does not. Despite our shared happiness, due to powers beyond our own, our relationship is also insecure.
I know how unpredictable the future is. I know how quickly relationships can warp. And I know, too, despite all of this, how fundamental our relationships are to grounding us on this earth.
She and I know full well the impermanence of built constructions. We choose to build family with each other, anyway. Perhaps just as the sacred and the profane coexist, so, too, does innocence and wide-eyed perception of the world.
8 LINEAGES OF FOOD
My cooking tendencies reflect my own muddled roots. No one style of food predominates, because that wasn’t how I was raised.
One day last fall, I stopped by my local Indian/Pakistani grocery store. Since I lived in a rural location, Lafayette, Indiana, I didn’t know what to expect. I knew I wanted a wide array of spices—cumin seeds, cardamom, coriander, turmeric, dry ginger, and more.
On my first visit, after taking a few wrong turns, I found the tiny market, which offered
little in the way of consumables. The store felt overly lit, bathed in a harsh white light that revealed all the scratches and dinged walls. The commercial chest refrigerator was askew. The metal shelves and wire wall displays were empty save for some knocked over, randomly organized boxes and bags of dry goods and cleaning supplies.
“Come back in a week,” the owner told me cheerfully, following me out onto the sidewalk as I turned and walked out the door. “We’ll be stocked then.”
I nodded, though I didn’t think I would return.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“My parents are Korean,” I told him. I knew what he really meant.
“Ah, Korean,” he said. “Come back next week.”
I came to the grocery store in the first place because I’d made the mistake of telling my new girlfriend I was a good cook. I’d answered her question honestly, without thinking too deeply about it.
“I’ll cook for you,” I told her. It was only later, when brainstorming what I might be able to cook for her, given her tastes, that I realized I should have been more specific. I’m good at cooking certain kinds of things.
In any area of life, surely this is true. We contain indices of knowledge that we fall back on, in the skills we already possess, effortlessly. As a rock climber, for example, I know my strengths and weaknesses in terms of body movements, preferred handgrips, and preferred rock angles. I know my style and its hallmarks, as do most climbers.
At a reading I heard rising-star poet Kaveh Akbar mention how, on a daily basis, we draw upon a bank of three thousand to five thousand words that we use regularly, despite the English language holding so many more possibilities. This is probably why we can so easily identify the language of someone close to us, even if we see only their words, stripped of orality—because we recognize the unique speech patterns they’ve developed.
Style carries over to the simplest things, including how we communicate. And in cooking, surely the same accumulation of knowledge exists. Just as do other cooks, I know the flavor profiles, techniques, and recipes that I own, as well as those I don’t.
“I wanna make you nihari,” I told her, in a moment of optimism in my abilities. Never mind that I hadn’t yet tasted the dish. Nor had I known, prior to meeting her and hearing her salivate over the dish each week—and then relying on Wikipedia and internet research—that it was the “national dish of Pakistan.” I’d never cooked Pakistani food before, but theoretically, it seemed easy enough to make. She laughed at me then, poked fun, but also lit up at the idea.
After looking through recipes online, I told her to ask her mother, whom she said made the best nihari, for the recipe. Her mother’s advice? “It’s too difficult for her. Tell her to buy a box of Shan’s nihari masala and follow the recipe on the back of the box.”
“Your mother must be appalled,” I said then, “at the idea of me trying to make nihari.”
“No,” she replied confidently. “An American cooking nihari? She’d be proud.”
When I lived in New York City, I cooked frequently, and my spice collection was fully stocked. Whether I sought ingredients for Italian, Thai, or nearly any other cuisine, I knew I had a wealth of options a subway ride away. These were the things I took for granted. I could stop into Sahadi’s during lunch break in Brooklyn, or Kalustyan’s in Murray Hill, or even trek to Jackson Heights, if I had a craving for seasonal shipments of fruit. A coworker, knowing I was a foodie, once offered to bring me a few alphonso mangos from the stand near her subway stop.
Since relocating to rural Indiana for graduate school, I’d downsized my selection and lived simply. I might need to drive an hour south to Indianapolis, or more than two hours north to Chicago, to find the sort of fully stocked stores I’d once taken for granted. This had been an adjustment for me—the idea that choice meant at least an hour’s trek.
A week later I found myself returning to the tiny store two miles from my home, curious to see what its full selection might look like. Surely enough, shelves had been restocked, and though I knew I wouldn’t be able to find the whole spices I preferred, a spice blend seemed a possibility.
“Let me know if I can help you find anything,” the owner said, smiling at me.
Since he offered, I asked, “Do you have Shan’s nihari masala?”
“You know nihari?” His face lit up in genuine surprise and recognition, and he began laughing with pleasure. I looked at him more closely then—at his striped white button-down shirt, at the closely shaved whiskers on his face.
We chatted comfortably after that, about the renovations he had underway, about whether I lived nearby. I left the store thinking about much more than groceries—though the three boxes of spices I bought were remarkably cheap, costing $5 and change. I thought instead about the recognition we each desire—what it means when we feel seen by others, and the ways in which food can serve as a vehicle for feeling known.
* * *
When I think how attempts at connection often fail, I think back to when I stayed alone at a hostel in Cairo, two weeks before Arab Spring. My sister and I had decided, as a post-chemo celebration of life, to meet for a wedding in Bangalore and adventure abroad together for the first time. With no preplanning or foresight, I stopped over in Cairo, on the way from travel I’d already embarked on alone. I saw only two other travelers in my time staying there, and I felt lonely and scared. On my way back and forth to the solitary bathroom, I frequently passed a middle-aged white American guest.
We made eye contact, and I said something casual, like “Hi, how are you?” each time I saw him. He, in turn, greeted me respectfully in very proper-sounding Korean and a sort of head bob/bow combination. I had no idea what he was saying, since I don’t speak Korean—but I can imagine that for someone who was Korean, his politeness would have been very comforting and welcoming.
This nonsensical exchange happened numerous times before something finally clicked, and he realized I was American, just as he was. After that we ducked out of the hostel and grabbed a quick meal of kushari together—an Egyptian dish of rice, macaroni, lentils, tomato sauce, and fried onions—at a casual restaurant where we stood at a table, eating in the open air.
I don’t remember the specifics of what we talked about—beyond the time he’d spent in Korea, his work, other idle chitchat. But I do remember how silly our exchanges seemed, until finally I saw the recognition in his eyes—that we, in fact, shared common ground, though on different terrain than what he’d assumed. It was only when he saw me for what I actually was, a fellow American, rather than what he thought I was, that we could relax and bumble along as equally clueless tourists, in search of sustenance.
Sometimes our clumsy attempts to connect, as we make assumptions and projections, only create distance where none was intended. Sometimes it takes admitting what we don’t know—our fundamental foreignness as strangers to each other—to see individuals for who we actually are.
* * *
When white Americans have asked me, from the time I was little, about what I ate growing up, their statements revealed a certain longing for an easy narrative: of “home” food, in which I dined on traditional Korean food, which my mother then taught me to cook, which I could now cook for these white Americans, in turn. They’ve offered tidy stories for which they’d like confirmation—that yes, what they know of Koreans or Korean-Americans is essentially accurate.
White Americans frequently volunteer to me, apropos of nothing, that they like kimchi, or that they know bibimbop, or that they love Korean barbeque. At a writer’s conference, though my short story had nothing to do with food, my white workshop leader blurted out to me that he liked kimchi—something for which he later apologized.
“That’s great,” I say blandly, while thinking, “What does that have to do with me? Why am I provoking this particular recollection?”
I feel the same frustration in the insistence of the question I so frequently hear: “No, I mean, where are you really from?” Regardless
of the question’s intentions, its doubt renders me alien. I am American. I’ve often wished that non-Korean-Americans simply asked me different sorts of questions—ones that don’t qualify me as somehow foreign, but ones that allow me to define who I am, on my own terms.
Instead, depending on the tone of the questioner as they ask whether I’m Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, I find myself mildly correcting by saying my parents are Korean; or, if the interrogator is rude enough, insisting I’m from Colorado and ending the conversation.
Yes, I am Korean-American, but my inheritance doesn’t fit the neat and tidy parameters of what little is commonly associated with Korean-Americans. My food lineage is messy and complex, as with most individuals, with our own unique amalgamations of past travels, influences, and familial and cultural inheritances. In a place like America, seemingly devoid as it is of a monocultural tradition of food appreciation, this lack of cohesion feels fitting.
* * *
I remember an ex’s stepmother laughing in surprise, when she learned my Korean short ribs recipe came not from my mother but from the New York Times. Despite the assumptions of most who first encounter me, I didn’t learn to cook from my mother. At any stage of cooking, I taught myself.
I remember, as a fifth grader, cooking a chocolate cake for my older sister’s birthday, from a battered paperback, a red-plaid-covered Better Homes & Gardens: New Cookbook, that my mother kept in the top kitchen drawer.
Growing up I remember baking biscuits, adding Crisco to flour, rolling them out on the countertop, and cutting out circles with the floured rim of a glass. I baked these in batches, kept them in plastic bags on the counter until they ran out. I melted slices of orange American cheese over biscuits, for snacks.