“Go back to your f***ing country” — the words hit me like ice-cold water. I stared unblinkingly at the speaker, unable to process the words directed at me. My face still wore the awkward smile it had when I had rolled down my window to better understand what the passengers in the car next to mine were emphatically trying to tell me. We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Hackensack River Bridge, New Jersey, just a few miles from the gaping hole and smoldering embers of what used to be the Twin Towers. It was Sept 18th 2001.
I have never understood why when I need them the most; all my witty repartees vanish like a fart in the wind! I am a writer for God’s sake; I should know how to be funny in the face of first degree insult! Nope, never happens. Instead I stared at the 5 Caucasian teenagers — 3 boys and 2 girls gesticulating at me as if I couldn’t comprehend their verbal bullets. They seem to take this as further proof of my being a foreigner who didn’t understand English, so they did what any smart person ought to do — shout louder at me! “Go back to your country!”
I remember feeling pissed and horrified and ashamed all at once. I remember my mind racing with several logical replies — “You morons, I am Indian, and no Indians were involved in the heinous attack last week” and “I worked my ass off to earn the privilege of living in this country and all you kids had to do to earn the privilege of shouting at me was to be born here” and “I am with you in this, I feel your pain too.” But, none of the aforementioned thoughts took shape in my mouth.
Instead all I did was quietly roll up my window. “They are just kids, and they are hurting for their country,” I thought. I could hear them still shouting at me — their entire rage directed towards one small brown woman, who looked like she might belong to a geographical area close to where the terrorists originated from. “I promise I will do as you say if you could just point out my country or the one you are so pissed with on a freaking map!”, I muttered to myself. Besides, how could they know where I was from — for all they knew I was born & raised in friggin’ Hackensack! I breathed deep and tried to tune out their clamor, forcing myself to look ahead, blinking away tears that had formed in my eyes for then unknown reasons.
I had arrived at JFK in the year 2000 on a bright April morning, a wide-eyed young woman on a decidedly one-way ticket, with a heart full of hope and a head full of impossible dreams. I believed, like so many 1st gen immigrants do, that I was going to find my destiny in America. When I arrived at the immigration desk, the officer checked my documents, flashed a big smile at me and said “Welcome to America!” I will never forget how warm those words made me feel inside…ok, the guy was really handsome, so that may have something to do with it too! But it’s not the entire reason, promise! It really means something when the first person you interact with at the border treats you as a welcome immigrant, it validates the story of America; one that is broadcast on a loudspeaker by the Hollywood dream factory to the world, that America was made by the sweat & toil of immigrants, that it is a country of, by and for the immigrants, so hey you, keep coming to America!
Sept 11th changed all that. Almost overnight, I saw the mood shift and darken. People’s personal boundaries hardened. Borders started turning into walls. INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) ashamed of having granted easy visas to terrorists, reincarnated first as BCIS (Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services) and again as USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services), all in the name of “improved efficiency” but also, it felt, to remove the stain on its reputation. With each iteration, the rules for acquiring and renewing visas became tighter and more tedious. Potential immigrants became potential terrorists. Welcoming America became Fortress America. Traveling abroad and returning became a pain in the rear. Instead of smiling faces of immigration officers, you were (and often still are) greeted by TSA security agents holding back fierce looking German Shepherds. What used to take 5 -10 minutes at immigration now took several hours. And when you thanked your lucky stars to have made it back inside the country, you still had to deal with kids who couldn’t keep their shit together!
Over the past 20 years, I too have had several incarnations. Through various life transitions that entailed exhilarating wins, excruciating losses and everything in between, I finally received my US citizenship three years ago — yes, it took me 18 frickin’ years of paper-work, fingerprinting, more paperwork, and more fingerprinting! I could have raised a kid all the way to college in the time it took me to get an American passport, and it felt similar, with its countless moments of pain & uncertainty such as one associates with raising children, only none of the joy!
As I prepared for my oath of citizenship, my own swearing-in ceremony if you will, I thought about the day those kids swore at me, and why it had stung so hard — besides the fact that they were frickin’ swearing at me! And I realized it was because the day I arrived in America, on that decidedly one-way ticket, in my mind I had become an American. I didn’t pine for my “homeland” as many in my community do and I didn’t ruminate on the possibility that I should return “home” to India. As far as I was concerned, when I arrived in New York that bright April morning, I had come home; that handsome immigration dude might as well have said “Welcome Home.” When the towers fell, I wept for weeks and mourned alongside my fellow Americans. It took those kids’ fury to expose to me how I could be viewed by others — a foreigner, an outsider, even a potential terrorist. Those tears I blinked away were tears of not belonging.
So, this year, on the 20th anniversary of Sept 11th, I plotted my own final comeback; my own “Return of the Jedi” moment- I am a dramatic filmmaker after all! It appeared that the world was hell-bent on mourning, and sure, mourning is appropriate, for reasons far too many to count. But, we can’t mourn everything forever. Instead, I decided to throw what I called a “Melting Potluck”, inviting friends of multiple nationalities, ethnicities and hyphenated identities. I asked them to bring a dish that represented their heritage and a story/song/ poem to share their own American story. Some of us were born here, others naturalized citizens, yet others still on visas or Green Cards — but we all belonged to the American melting pot. Together, we celebrated the American spirit of inclusion and resilience.
And I thanked those poor, ignorant, hapless, rude, hurting kids for inspiring me to do exactly what they had asked me to — Come back to my country!
More than a filmmaker/storyteller, Swati turns ideas into experience. Her work has been shown on national TV in the US and in India, at film festivals across the world, and won many awards including the “Most Important Video of the Year” award from CNN-India. She is also an environmentalist and a first generation immigrant to the United States. She can be reached via Linkedin and swati@TiredAndBeatup.com