Amar and Zain
My brother and I are deeply rooted in India. We never wanted to be Americans. But our sons, who were born here, are changing all of this. They’re like plants in the desert: they look small and fragile but their roots go deep, spreading out into American soil.
I was seventeen when I arrived from India on a scholarship to attend an East-coast liberal arts college. It was 1985, the Reagan years. The world was divided into freedom-loving America and a bunch of distant, strange countries. India shrank to static-filled phone calls, made with a stack of quarters from the hall phone in my dormitory. I was still a kid, but didn’t know it, far too serious to fit in with the Americans who drank too much, had their stomachs pumped, and left flaming red hickeys on each other’s necks.
I was standing by myself in the cafeteria when a bunch of Indian kids approached me. Like me, they had mustaches and wore over-sized glasses and digital watches.
“Want to have a cup of tea?” one of them said.
“Yes, please,” I replied gratefully. For the rest of the four years I hung out with these guys. Our greatest pleasure was studying hard and trying to throw the curve on exams. “Oh look, it’s the freakin’ Indians,” the Americans would groan as we signed up for yet another high-level economics seminar, all of us sitting in a row, our glasses glinting.
On the night of the Senior Formal, we were, as usual, in the overheated basement of our dorm, drinking Bud Lite and watching ‘Miami Vice’ on television. We emerged into the crisp Fall air to watch the Americans go to the dance, the girls’ cheeks pink with cold, the limos vast and gleaming. America was out there. It had nothing to do with us.
My younger brother arrived at the same college, just as I graduated. Things were a little better by now: there were more foreign students, a few more Indian restaurants, and the supermarkets had started selling cilantro. But my brother still got homesick, and he’d come to visit me in my Brooklyn slum apartment. I would cook spicy chicken keemah, lentil daal and rice, and we’d go up to the rooftop with its distant view of the Statue of Liberty. We’d eat up there and read the papers, flipping past the headlines about the thin-faced, sinister George Bush, devouring whatever news we could get about India- mainly reports on disasters, and comic incidents involving monkeys.
We were always about to go back to India, but somehow, never did. I moved to Boston, went to graduate school, got trendy glasses, and became an architect. My brother, who has always been more of an Alpha male, got his MBA, became a business consultant in Atlanta, and amassed frequent-flier miles. During late night phone calls we discussed ‘making it’ in America.
“Yaar,” we would say to each other. “These Americans are so full of it. They talk big and do little. If I had to start my own firm, I’d hire only Chinese and Indians.”
When Clinton got busted for the whole Lewinsky thing, we laughed our asses off. Of course, this is how Americans were. “Family values,” my brother and I gleefully told each other over the phone. “Family values.”
We got our green cards, we both married Indian girls. My son was born in 2000 and was named ‘Amar’, which means immortal. Anyway, it was short and sweet, and easy for Americans to pronounce. But I had forgotten the Boston way with “r’s”, and my poor baby ended up being called ‘Amah’. I fought it for a while, then gave up in quiet despair.
Amar was three-years old when he first formulated a thought about his future. “I wanna be President when I grow up, and I’ll build a lot of houses like you, Baba,” he said.
At that point whenever I travelled, I was pulled aside and checked. I had a very common Muslim name, which had landed me on the terrorist watch-list. It was the age of Bush, Jr.
“Baby, the President doesn’t build houses,” I said to him. “And anyway, people like us are never going to be President in this country.”
By the time Amar was five, he had stopped talking about being President. He said he was going to be an artist, which was okay with me.
My brother’s son was born in 2003. Just to complete the alphabet with Amar, he was named Zain. Last year, during the election, my brother went to pick up Zain from daycare, and found that he was no longer answering to his name.
“He’s not Zain anymore,” the daycare teacher giggled. “He only answers to ‘Mr. President’.”
And indeed, there Zain was, walking around with a gaggle of followers who all pretended they were secret service agents with earphones by sticking one finger into their left ears.
Obama won. By then, my marriage and career had both come undone. But this being the land of second chances, I met a wonderful African-American woman who shared the delusion that I could be a writer. Of course, when we got married, my brother was the best man. Our wedding was in a tent out on huge lawn, attended by a mix of Indians, African-Americans, and straight up white Americans, who, strangely enough, were our friends.
My wife and I both wore Indian clothes, but the ceremony was non-denominational. The main Indian characteristic of the wedding was its controlled chaos, as children of all different ages darted in and out of the tent and turned cartwheels on the lawn.
Zain, now almost six, got tired of the rough-and-tumble and decided to do the rounds of the tables full of guests.
“I’m Z-Man,” he introduced himself to one of my wife’s academic colleagues. “I’m going to be the President one day. Who are you?”
“I’m Peter,” the guest replied, hugely amused by the seriousness of this two-and-a-half foot high human being.
“Oh. And what do you do?”
“I’m in a Ph.D. program,” Peter said.
“What’s that?”
“I’m studying. I study elections.”
“I know elections. Like Barack Obama, right?”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Peter.
Zain looked at Peter long and hard, then winked and said, “Well, don’t forget me. One day I’m going to be President.”
Then, tiring of the conversation, Zain ran off and began doing cartwheels on the lawn.
When Peter told me about this conversation, I called my brother, and we both had a good laugh.
“That Zain,” my brother said, “He’s a real bullshit artist. Yeah, right. President.”
“No, man,” I replied. “It could happen. It could happen.”
Then there was a silence, so we said “Ok, bro” to each other, and hung up.
But my brother’s voice on the phone, as he said goodbye, was choked with emotion, and I found that my eyes were full of tears.
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