On Being American

You are seven years old when a grown man screams at you, spitting knives from crooked purple lips: Go home, fucking Paki.

You are confused because the ethnic slur is inaccurate.

You realize, too young, that racists fail geography but that their epithets and perverted patriotism can still shatter moments of your childhood.

You are the last to know that everyone else sees you as Other.

You keep your eyes on your paper and study and do well and stay quiet and obey.

You get patted on the head and told you’re one of the good ones.

You are a model.

Until you aren’t.

Because those manners you once minded and that tongue you once bit won’t be held back anymore.

Can’t be.

And what they think is rebellion is, in truth, survival. Because if you stay silent one second longer, the anger surging through your blood will engulf you in flames.

So you snatch their words from the air:

Terrorist

Rag head

Sand nigger

And burn them like kindling and rub the embers onto your skin, a sacrilege, a benediction, a qurbani.

For the girl you once were.

For the girl you are becoming.

The one who doesn’t ask to be recognized,

But demands to be known.

The one who presses into her fears to speak out. To stand up. To live. Anything else is death.

The one who learns that sometimes the enemy is a smiling neighbor too ashamed to reveal herself except behind the dark curtain of the ballot box. Sometimes your enemy is a friend.

You are tired of fighting for your name. And tired of the eternal question: Where are you really from?

You persist.

Because your name is who you are.

You weep.

For a land built on the backs of your black and brown brothers and sisters and soaked in their blood.

You claim your joy.

You lay your roots:

Blood and bone and fire and ash.

And in this land of the free and home of the brave, you plant yourself.

Like a flag.

Samira Ahmed