Tag: Me

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Where I’m From

I stand in the line at Subway in Alberta, shifting nervously. Each time the young high school student asks me about which bread I want, which meat, or which vegetables, I am confused. I have never been asked these questions before. I don’t know what kinds of bread there are. They are on the sticker on the glass. He points to them. I scan them quickly, trying to hide my shame. I realize later that these questions are predictable, like driving a road you have been on before: you know the landmarks to look for before your turn. But I have never driven this road before. When you know what they will ask, the quick words spilling out of the mouth mean something. I don’t know what these words mean yet. I do not belong. 

I am playing on the beach by the Arabian sea with my siblings, building cities in the sand, as young ladies walk by trying to talk to us. Their hair and scarves blow in the wind as they giggle to each other. They pinch my cheeks, asking me my name – asking me where I am from. This is what everyone asks me. I stare down at the sand and continue my digging. If I ignore them long enough, they go away, usually. I do not belong.

I am in Kindergarten in a small school that is run out of a large house with just a few classrooms. I’m wearing the school uniform of a white shirt, grey shorts, white shoes, and everyone is staring at me. I am in the courtyard. It is lunch time and I am the only kid with white skin and blonde hair. The only one. My stomach is a tight knot, and I wish I could cry, but that would only bring me more attention. I do not belong. 

I am walking outside. I am all ages. I am almost anywhere. “Look at the angrez,” the ‘English or white-people’ a child, or a parent, or an old lady or young man calls. Everywhere I go am angrez. Nowadays I want to tell this child I’ve lived here longer than he has. But I know the anger their words build in me is far stronger than any emotion that was put into those words. They are children. 

It is summer – the end of it, and I am riding my bike to my grandparents house. We have been in Canada for almost two months, moving from place to place, visiting family. The joy of ice cream, dill pickles, good burgers, real cheese, crunchy peanut butter, sweet corn, a community swimming pool, riding bikes around town and picking raspberries has begun to wear off. I miss my room in our house at home where we have to mop almost every day to keep up with the dust that collects everywhere, and the gentle thrum of the ceiling fan above my and my brother’s head as we sleep. I miss our little car port where my dad parks our old white nissan. I miss watering the plants on our flat roof, splashing water onto the ground so my bare feet don’t burn on the hot concrete. I am ready to go back to Pakistan. I do not belong here. 

I stand at the doorway to my dorm room in Saskatchewan, not sure how to ask my roommate. “Can you help me use the washing machine?” He is confused. I’ve never used a washing machine like this. He walks me though. He is patient and kind. I’m thankful I’m spared any further embarrassment. 

I am twelve. My parents are talking to someone in Sindhi. I am listening, not quite understanding the complexity of this adult conversation. I tug my dad’s sleeve. “What is he saying?” My dad explains. 

“He doesn’t speak any Sindhi?” They talk like I am not here, like I don’t understand what they are saying. I don’t argue because I don’t. Not all of it. Not enough. Not enough to be enough. I don’t belong.

I am walking along the street to go buy yogurt and some vegetables for our lunch. My mom has sent me out because she forgot to ask my dad to get the things when he was out shopping earlier in the morning. A couple kids shout “ching chong sheea cheecho”. This is apparently what Chinese sounds like to them. And they think I am from China. They have never seen a foreigner before. 

I am in Grade 8 in Canada. I do not know the English word for okra. I’ve never learned it. My classmates look at me like I’m crazy. I’m staring at the word now, spelled out on paper, letting it sink in. I catalogue the words I know where the Urdu comes first. Electricity. Market. Storeroom. Lentils. Flatbread. Tea. Why am I like this? I do not belong. 

I am twenty years old, sitting in a taxi on the way up the hill to my old boarding school for my sister’s graduation. I am overjoyed to be back in Pakistan to visit. Everything is familiar and strange at the same time. The evening air blows in through the open window of the small Suzuki Mehran. I am speaking to the driver in Urdu, talking about my time in Pakistan and asking him about himself. “Your Urdu is not very good.” I smile. Thank you? Do you say thank you to that? Only twenty minutes ago someone in the airport told me I speak Urdu very well. My ego had a short stint of happiness. It’s over now, as I look out the hills at the pine and spruce trees going by. 

I am standing at the post office asking to mail a letter. I am speaking Urdu, and I am thirty years old. The man is asking for my national identity card. I do not have one. I tell him but he doesn’t understand. I have a passport. I show him a photocopy. He is still confused. “But you have a CNIC card too, right?” He is not listening. I pull the blue passport from my pocket and place it on the counter. At last he believes what I’ve been telling him: that I don’t belong. But inside, I’m glowing. 

My wife and I walk through the bazaar close to our house. Our infant son is asleep at home and we are on a night out together. It is winter, I am wearing a chadar wrapped around my shoulders and she has her head covered. We eat street food and later step into a crockery store, looking at the various pots and pans, wanting to replace our pan that is quickly wearing out. The shopkeeper is a brusque bald man with little time for dithering. He knows his pots and pans. He asks us if we are from Gilgit (a city in the mountains of the North). I am so happy. My wife and I look at each other and smile. 

I am walking down the street, going to buy a few groceries from the store. No one looks at me. No one stares. No one does a double take. This is happiness. To be unseen is to be seen. To be unnoticed is to belong. Do I belong?

I am getting motioned over at an army checkpost on the way to the airport. The soldier asks me if I have foreigners in the car. Yes, I say. My sister, brother-in-law and their children are with me. I go with my brother-in-law to the small booth where an officer sits with a large ledger. I have my passport ready to show him. He asks for my brother-in-law’s. He does not ask for mine. He asks me where I am taking them. I say to the airport. He makes a call. He tells his superior officer of some foreigners passing through. They have a Pakistani driver. Yes yes, it’s all fine. They give my brother-in-law back his passport. I wait for a moment, confused, and then turn in delight. I am the Pakistani driver. 

I sit having chai at a chai shop, talking to the owner as he preps the lunch dishes they are making for the day. He knows I am Canadian. Another man sits, smoking a cigarette, chiming in on our conversation here and there. Near the end he asks if I am from Gilgit. I smile. No. And I am in heaven. 

I am walking down towards the house we are staying in for the summer. A teenager passes me on the road. “Hey bro.” He is trying out his slang with me. “Are you from China?” I laugh. This again? Has this guy never watched a movie?

“No.” I laugh. And continue on my way. He calls from behind me. 

“Where are you from?”

This question only gets harder these days. Canada doesn’t describe it. Sometimes if I’m feeling subversive I say Lahore, where we live now, but that’s only been the last four years. I feel deceptive if I say Pakistan, but in those moments when I doubt my claim, it seems strange that I can say I’m from a place that I’ve only spent ten years in, and really mostly in my adult life. And here I am, living more years in a place where I feel, inexplicably, that I am entwined with. So where am I from? 

I’m from never belonging. I’m from running down the sand dunes on the banks of the Indus and feeling the river is mine somehow. I’m from street food, and drinking chai, and buying fruit off carts on the side of the road. I’m from not looking women in the eyes, and from hugs before handshakes with men. But I’m also from liking my privacy, and not liking to talk about how much money I make when people ask. I’m from telling almost everyone I meet that no, I have no way to sponsor you to move to Canada. I’m from politely demuring from offers of chai by shopkeepers. I’m from loving bacon, and having to keep it a secret that I eat it, and from thinking and dreaming in English. I’m from needing a piece of paper every year from the government to let me stay in the country I spent most of my childhood knowing as my only reality. I’m from cherishing my Canadian passport as one of the most precious things I own – the first answer I give on one of those “what would you save in a fire” questions. 

I’m from this land, this people, this language, but I’m not. I am not Pakistani, but there is no me without Pakistan. You don’t live this many years in a place and not have it be a part of you – a part of the way you think and feel. When Pakistan went to war with India for a week in May of this year, an irrational nationalistic hatred pounced out at me from a place I didn’t think existed. When my wife asked if it wouldn’t be prudent to get a flight out to another nearby country until the political tensions relieved, I couldn’t explain to her that I felt like I couldn’t abandon this land I would almost rather fight for than leave. This feeling is the same feeling I felt a few days ago as I stood with my four year old and two year old sons on the way to the bus stop in the town nearby as two Pakistan Air Force JF-17 fighter jets roared in wide circles over the hills. These are our planes. I could feel it. When I stood in line with the kids I was coaching from my school during a tournament in Karachi, tears flooded my eyes as a video of the Pakistani national anthem played showing these scenes of mountains, rivers, people and places that were mine – that were threads of the cloth I was sewn from. This land is a part of me. As I drive in the mountains, or walk in the hills, or sit in the twilight of the city, or drink chai under a grimy fan, I belong. 

I sit on a rock in the forest right next to the path I run some mornings here in the summer, in the foothills of the Himalayas. The cicadas are buzzing in the trees, and birds flit from branch to branch as the morning sunlight slants in through the oaks and pines. I breathe in the smell of the forest: spruce, pine and leaves of the undergrowth. I know this place, and I feel this place knows me. 

I am sitting outside the Hungarian Embassy in Pakistan. I am there to get my citizenship verified. My grandmother happens to be Hungarian and only within the last couple years has my father realized he could have his citizenship as well. And now that he has completed his, my brother and I can complete ours. I am waiting to be called up to the window, sitting under an awning in the breeze of a pedestal fan. It is a hot day for Islamabad, the capital city. A young Pakistani man is sitting across from me in a maroon suit. I ask him why he is here. He is applying for a scholarship to study in a university in Budapest. He looks clean, professional, and nervous. “Are you Hungarian?” he asks. I am not sure what to say. I realize suddenly that I’m basically here at the embassy to say I am. And if this process can be completed, saying yes to that question will be perfectly true. How can I be Hungarian and not Pakistani? How can I truthfully be allowed to be from a place I have never lived and don’t speak a single word of the language, and yet feel I can’t lay claim to a place that has been the home for three generations on my mother’s side, and a land has clothed, fed and raised me for twenty two years of my life? 

I am thirty-two. I am carrying bags of gravel from the trunk of our car to the parking area of the guesthouse we are staying at. I have just driven down to a spot outside a collection of shops and houses where an old man is sitting on a seat cushion laid on top of a stone wall, smoking a cigarette. He greets me with a smile and we talk about the per-foot cost of gravel and about memories from Murree in the years passed. While we talk, a young man shovels five cement bags worth of gravel and helps me load them into my car. Back at the guesthouse, I rake the gravel across the front half of the lot where the mud collects in the monsoon rain. Three young boys walk by the chain-link gate. “Hello,” they say in English. I smile at them. “Where are you from?” They ask. They are about the age of the kids I teach at school. I speak in Urdu. I tell them I’m from Canada, but I live and teach in Lahore. I ask them where they are from. 

“Peshawar,” they say with some pride in their voices. I ask them if they are visiting for long, and if they are staying in the apartments down the road. They say they are here for another week or two. I ask them if their schools are starting soon. I tell them mine begins next week. They all have different start times. There is no anger. There is no frustration. I am still raking the gravel between the conversation, and they smile and begin to move on down the road. “See you boys later,” I say. And that is that. There is no shame. There is no deep questioning of myself and of my place in this world. I am simply myself. 

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My Porridge Purgatory

I hate porridge. Oatmeal too. Anything porridge-like, actually. All through my childhood my dad would force us to have porridge now and then, I think with the hopes that he would slowly teach us to like it. I am living proof of that failure. It didn’t hardly matter how it was made. Yes, some kinds of porridge that were less terrible than others — some with enough sugar in them to entice a younger me to almost enjoy it. But really, I would rather have just about anything else.

Today was porridge day. I do everything I can to avoid it, but since I’m working as a caretaker, I have to make whatever wants to be eaten. Every so often, after a run of waffles, and then bacon and eggs, and then a day of cereal, I can feel the porridge coming. I know it’s been too long since we had it last, so each morning I go into panic mode, knowing that it’s getting closer. A couple days ago I made a last minute change and pulled out breakfast sausage from the freezer to have eggs and sausage, even though we had bacon and eggs only a couple days ago. But this meant that it wasn’t strange to then have cereal again the next day. I’m so sneaky. But, regardless of my efforts, today was the day. “Grandpa” even poured the water into the pot himself, and a lot of it, which meant I had no say as to just how much porridge we were going to have either. Instead I got to sit there stirring this mass of porridge, knowing that I would have to eat whatever he didn’t. We have special porridge bowls here too. They’re bigger than all the other bowls — wide, beige, gaping expanses. I just don’t understand why we have to have such big bowls just for porridge day.

But, as it has been with porridge, I lived. It isn’t actually that bad, but it’s not really that good either. I don’t complain, but it isn’t without some resolve that I force myself to keep on shovelling those mushy blobs of oats into my mouth. And, since basically no chewing is needed with porridge, after a few seconds of having it in my mouth, I just swallow and repeat.

Then porridge is gone for a few days, maybe a week, if I’m lucky and can make excuses for a couple other breakfast options. But I know that before long those big beige bowls will come out again and there will be a little pot sitting on the stove with too much water in it, waiting. Waiting for me.

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Following the Tail Lights

I had just been thinking about how ungrateful I was for Spring. There was a short period where it had warmed up here, the roads were clear, and I was finally able to get out on my bike and enjoy some sunshine. I could see grass coming out and got to hear the beautiful sounds of birds again. I told myself then that I had better write something about how much I enjoyed Spring now, since I constantly found myself complaining about the winter that just wouldn’t leave — just like my cold. But, sure enough, with the first day of spring came more snow. Even now as I write, snow is slanting passed my window on its way down to the growing white blanket on the ground. I’m tired of winter.

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Today is one of those days when I just don’t feel like writing. Though, when I look back on the last couple weeks and the fact that I haven’t mustered up the motivation or inspiration to write, I’m not sure it’s just a trend of the day, or of the month. Uncertainty has a way of silencing people. I wanted to write about the things that are going on right now in my life, but it all seems so up-in-the-air right now. Classes will soon be over and before long I’ll find myself fighting to try to sit down and study for my exams — something which I’ve never been particularly motivated to do. Occasionally I have moments of epiphany, when I realise that if I spent the time to learn all the stuff I was supposed to, I could get an amazing mark on my exams. But unfortunately that’s usually where the thought/action process ends.

Times of transition always get me questioning everything. I wonder if I’m really doing the right thing, enrolled in the right degree, going to the right city, applying for the right job — the list goes on. There are so many unknowns, and it’s easy to focus on everything that’s up in the air, and lose sight of what I already know I’m standing on. For me, it’s important in these times to go back through what I already know, and the reasons for why I am where I am now. It’s good to renew the decisions I’ve already made, remind myself of what it is that I’m aiming for and why it is that I’m spending time, money and effort on things like college and work.

Transition can often be full of anxiety and uncertainties. However, it’s full of excitement and expectation as well. The ideas of new places, new classes and new experiences are really sort of an adventure, if thought of that way. Often it’s more about the frame of mind with which you go into tomorrow than the actual events that you face. It takes an almost daily opening up of my hands to say, “God, I have no idea how anything will work out these coming days, weeks and years. But I know that you know, and that’s enough for me.” It’s definitely not my natural inclination to trust and to let go off my desire to plan, control and steer. But, if I can start and end each day with that kind of realisation, it’s a success for me.

Yesterday it was snowing as I drove back to Red Deer in the morning, and there was a strong wind blowing across the road the whole time. For a portion of the drive I found myself behind a pickup truck, and decided to stay behind him, rather than pass. With the way the weather was, I figured being in sight of another car was probably a good thing, just in case either of us found ourselves sailing into the snow drifts on the side of the road. However, following behind meant that, here and there, the truck would kick up a cloud of light snow that would completely envelop the road ahead. In these moments I was left staring at the faint lines of the road ahead of me and the two tail lights showing where I was supposed to be going. And that was my drive for a good portion of the trip, with occasional moments of not being able to see anything except the back of the truck in front of me. I know I probably should have just fell further behind and I wouldn’t have had the problem, but if I did, I wouldn’t have had this little picture in my mind of the way God works at times, which I’m thankful for.
Right now I’m in one of those clouds of snow that turns the road ahead into a giant white blur. But so long as I keep my eyes on the One who knows the way, I’ll be okay. I don’t know how everything will work out in the future, but I know that I’ve trusted God to bring me this far, and I know that He will be faithful with what lies ahead as well.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. —G. K. Chesterton

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Pack, Unpack

With the school year so quickly coming to a close, I find my mind already beginning to pack up in my mind. I’ve thought briefly about the prospect of moving out of my room, trying to decide which things could even go one of these weekends and make the final move a little easier. Questions about the next step, the next place, the next home, have all started to seep into to my mind, swirling around my head at night when it’s time to be sleeping. I’ve started to begin the mental preparation that comes with packing up, pulling in the loose ends and getting ready to eventually pick up and go.

Packing has become almost second nature to me. Only a few months after I was born, my parents were packing up the things that they would take with them as they headed out to Pakistan, twenty years ago. We were always packing. When I went into boarding in sixth grade, packing suddenly became something that I had to deal with alone, joining all the other elementary kids doing the same. My mum would send me a packing list of what I should be bringing home for breaks, and slowly I would work my way through it, making sure not to forget anything I might need. Usually I would wait until the evening before we headed down the hill to the airport, before I would decide to suddenly throw everything together. That way I wouldn’t be needing things that were already packed. That was my excuse, at least. I can’t say that our houseparents were all too pleased with this method of packing, but it was pretty standard for most of us.

After a year or two, I didn’t need the lists anymore. It became pretty routine. Now, in college, I have a mental list of the essentials and I tend to leave my packing till the hour before I head to my grandparents’ house for the weekend, usually throwing my toothbrush and toothpaste on top just a few minutes before the bag is zipped up and I’m out the door and down the stairs. My bag seems to get a little bit lighter every time I travel. I’ve slowly learned not to take things like that extra pair of jeans or t-shirt that I’m not going end up wearing anyway. Travelling makes you realise how heavy your things become, so you learn pretty quickly to shed any weight you can.

Unpacking however, has been different. In high school I would come home to Hyderabad on school breaks for a couple weeks and decide to leave all my things in my suitcase. My mum would always tell me to unpack my things into the dresser and kind of “settle in”, but that never made sense to me. Why unpack a suitcase that was just going to get packed again in two weeks? Instead I would just slide the whole thing under my bed, so I could pull it out any time, get things out of it, and slide it back under — nicely out of the way. Only a day or two later, I would come into my room to find that my mum had unpacked everything into the dresser and the closet. “It’ll make you feel more at home,” she would always say. I would always argue, but I knew she was right. It did. Unpacking makes you feel at home.

Over the past two summers between my years of college I pretty much lived out of a suitcase for the entire time. I would pack my suitcase to go for two weeks at a time on a travelling construction crew, staying in hotels while we were away. When I came home I would stay at my uncle and aunt’s house, where I didn’t usually bother unpacking, since either I was about to go out on the road again, or if I was working in town, I would soon be packing to go stay with my grandparents for a weekend here and there. And of course, when I was visiting family in Pakistan, it was much of the same. I think my first summer I had four or five t-shirts that I cycled through my entire time in Red Deer: two blue, two green, one grey. I’m an extremely varied and exciting person, as you can tell. I’m sure people wondered if I actually even owned any more shirts. I just told myself that no one paid enough attention to realise that they kept seeing the same five t-shirts every time they saw me.

I have gotten a little better at unpacking though. Near the end of the summer I did eventually unpack into the dresser in my room in the basement of my uncle and aunt’s house, and made myself feel a little more at home. However I still find it hard to get passed the dilemma of whether it’s really worth unpacking, when in a few days or weeks I find myself putting everything back into my suitcase again. And this feeling doesn’t just end with packing “things” in a suitcase.

One of the first questions I faced coming to Canada in 2011 was: how much do I unpack? I was heading into Bible school in Saskatchewan, and everything was new. I knew I was only going to be there for eight months, and I knew I probably wouldn’t keep up ties with most people after the year was over, since I would be heading to Alberta, to a new college, in a new place, and would have to make new friends. I’ve heard, and witnessed in my life, that friendships with missionary kids tend to take on two forms, which I described to my roommate like this: “Either missionary kids go really deep really fast and drown a person, or they decide that that person isn’t even worth investing in anyway, since they’ll be gone before they know it.” That has characterised so much of my life. I feel like I’m constantly making that call, and sometimes I fear I lose some friendships along the way. It’s just that MKs say so many good-byes, again and again, and again. They know people don’t stick around forever, or that they themselves won’t, and they want to get the most out of the short time that they know the person — in an ‘all or nothing’ mentality. Thankfully I have eventually learned to handle friendships a little less intensely. I’ve learned to accept that every friend doesn’t have to be my best friend, and that, just because I may not see a person again, my friendship isn’t worthless.

I’ve always a question of how much I unpack. Do I let myself get settled, put down some roots, make friends, and enjoy a place? Or do I keep the roots short and thin to make sure they rip off easily the next time I have to pick up and leave? In this last month of school, I find myself beginning to make those little incisions around the roots, beginning to get ready for that moment when I’ll have to pull away from the things, places, and people that have been a part of my life for the last two years. I’m beginning to edge toward the door and put on my shoes and coat, so that all that’s left at the end will be to say a quick good-bye and disappear behind a closed door. That’s life.

When travel is a huge part of your life, packing and unpacking become second nature. But it’s always hard to know if we should let our roots grow and go through the pain of slashing them when it’s time to go, or if we should try to make the job at the end a little easier — a little less painful. Thankfully I’ve still managed to unpack during my two years here. I’ve managed to make good friends, that I imagine will continue, though they will probably be different. I’ve let myself enjoy things and invest in people and places, but I know I’ll pay a price soon. Before long I’ll be packing myself back into my suitcase. There will always be pain involved with packing up, but it doesn’t make it less worthwhile to unpack. On this, my Mummy is right. It’s taken me a while to learn that, in all aspects of life, but I am learning, slowly. And I’m encouraged by the fact that if we are rooted in Christ and not people, we’ll always have something to hold onto when everything else has to be ripped away. “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Heb. 6:19). So pack, and unpack — it’s worth it; but cling the whole while to the Anchor that will not change, will not leave and will not fail.

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Sindhi Sandals

Photo credit: Stephen Wiley (2014)
Photo credit: Stephen Wiley (2014)

I’ve been meaning to change the name of my blog for quite a while now. I only meant “Something Different” to be a kind of interim title until I could think of something better. I had been playing around with different possibilities for quite a while, but nothing really seemed to stick. Finally, while sitting in McDonalds at the Karachi airport with my parents, the new name came.

I have owned the same pair of sandals for as long as I can remember. Not the exact same pair, but the same style — I just buy a bigger size every time I grow out of them. They’ve gone with me everywhere. I’ve picked up huge thorns in them dozens of times, snapped the straps on some and worn other pairs right down till I could feel the road on my bare heel. I love them. They’re comfortable. After a number of years, my sandals (I actually call them chapals, as they’re called in Pakistan) have become even more significant to me. They bring back all kinds of memories from growing up.

They make me think of the dust that would cover my feet while I played outside, until I would finally wash them off with a hose and see those strange white toes peeking out at me. They remind me of the intense heat in the summer, when wearing shoes is just plain silly. I always wished my sandals had been part of my school uniform when I was little, instead of the hot, stuffy shoes I had to wear. Besides, you never have to polish blue, rubber sandals. I would have probably been barefoot outside all the time if it wasn’t for the sharp rocks and bits of garbage that were everywhere outside. My sandals remind me of arguments with my mum over whether or not the floppy, blue things were really church-worthy attire. I tried so many times, but I always lost. After being in college in Canada for over a year, and with my parents on the other side of the world, I did actually wear them to church once, in an act of rebellious defiance and newfound freedom. I suppose that’s one of the privileges of being an adult.

While visiting my parents over Christmas, I remember being told the news that my younger brother, Stephen had recently bought a different pair of sandals — not the blue ones. I remember voicing all kids of complaints, pretending to be so crushed by this break in his loyalty to our blue sandals (it’s been a tradition for both of us). I wasn’t seriously heart-broken, but there was a little part of me that was genuinely disappointed. It was serious history. Thankfully when we picked him up that evening from the airport, we found out that he hadn’t actually bought a new pair. There had been a miscommunication. He had actually decided to wait and look for sandals in the Sindh, because he couldn’t find the blue ones up north. My faith in my little brother was restored.

The fact that both of us have always had the exact same pair of sandals has been a little bit of a problem at times, but we’ve always managed. It used to be that we could tell the difference because mine were always the bigger ones, but those days came to an end quite a few years ago. When in doubt, we could always tell them apart by putting a pair on. The rubber sandals have a way of forming to your feet, so putting on my brother’s would mean I could tell straight away that they weren’t mine — their strange surface feeling like a foreign species to my toes. Sometimes we would take each others on purpose, or wear one of each, just to hear the other shout, “Give me back my chapals now! Yours feel so weird!” This last time we were home, Stephen decided it would be easiest to just write his initials on his pair, since they were both fairly new and hadn’t had time to get worn-in.

So, after all these years of my love story with my blue sandals, I was all ready to get onto the plane at the end of my Christmas break and fly back to Canada wearing my blue sandals. I had put on a collared shirt, and a nice pair of pants, because wearing at least semi-formal clothing when travelling tends to gain you a little more respect and friendliness. It was then that my mum made the comment “You know Josh, you’d look like a normal foreigner if it wasn’t for those silly Sindhi chapals.” Finally I had my blog name. I really would look like any other foreign businessman if I had decided instead to wear a pair of nice dress shoes. But instead, my façade of being Western was destroyed with my blue sandals. They have a really hard time matching with any and everything I wear — though I try hard to ague that they do.

The sandals aren’t really Sindhi. I’m pretty sure they sell them all over Pakistan. But I’ve never actually bought them anywhere other than the Sindh. Not only that, but all the memories associated with them take me back to my years growing up in the Sindh, playing in the streets with friends and running around in my blue chapals. They’re just one little reminder of the fact that, although almost everything about me makes me look like I should be a Canadian, my silly blue sandals make sure that something about me is always a little different. I just hope they keep making these sandals, because if they ever stop, I’m not really sure what I’ll do.