Sometimes, we walk down paths in our lives so that when we look back, we marvel at what we went through and wonder. Would we go down that same path again if given the choice?  Because at the time that we make certain choices, we don’t have a crystal ball to foresee what the ramifications of that choice will be.  All we have is our faith…first in God and then in ourselves.  Nor do we know what adversity we may face due to our choice.  Such was our choice.  And I say our choice, because when my husband and I chose to get married despite me being fifteen years his senior, we realized that the strength of our commitment had to be mutual.  That was the only way that we would ever get married and stay married.  Now, almost four years into our marriage and seven years of knowing each other, we thank God for blessing us with each other’s love and companionship.

Pre-Marriage

When we first got to know each other, my husband and I were virtual classmates living in two opposite sides of the U.S.  It was only after a year of struggling through Islamic studies online classes and getting to know each other incidentally and without pretention did we approach the idea of marriage.  I wanted to marry someone like him, but not necessarily him; and he felt the same way.  Our age difference was so great that despite our open-mindedness, we couldn’t mentally overcome the obstacles and fathom our unconventional relationship.  Yet at the same time, we did realize that we wanted to marry no one else except each other.

Once committed, neither one of us had any illusions about the opposition that we were about to face.  We both made a conscious decision to do things “the right way”; for God’s pleasure and for our parents’ sake.  From his side, he left his job and lost his U.S. immigration status.  From my side, I gave up my job and eventually left the only home I knew.  But these were small costs.  The largest cost for both of us was the turmoil and hurt we caused to our families.  If we could reverse and erase anything, that is what we would choose.  His family tried all kinds of means for the matter to “just end”.  His mother was so distraught and vehemently opposed that over time it affected her health and emotional well being.  Words cannot describe her reaction.  When he did not relent, his family tried appealing to me gently at times and threateningly in others.  In my family, my mother stopped talking to me – her only daughter and confidante.  Since my father supported me after meeting my fiance, my parent’s relationship became strained over their different stances.  All of this went on for two long years.

During those two years, we were oceans apart in two different countries.  The firm resolve that we had initially was shaken many times.  It was only to be expected.  We were being worn down so we would break.  To this day, I can say with confidence that it was only our prayers and beseeching God for guidance that carried us through that storm.  Weeks to a month at a time would pass with no contact.  The distance added to the thought that marriage was a distant illusion.  How?  When?  All of this adversity trained us to the point where we sincerely prayed to God for what was best for both of us, even if that meant going our separate ways.  Our faith in each may have wavered during those years, but never did our faith in God and His mercy waver.

Marriage

Finally, with my father’s job moving to the same country that my fiance was in, I decided to go there myself and determine if we wanted to go forward and get married or not.  Two months earlier, we had tried to do a nikaah remotely with me being in the U.S. with family and him abroad.  But after all of the opposition that had transpired over the last two years, I couldn’t go through with it.  Deep down, I knew I wanted to marry him, but I needed to see him and figure out face to face how I felt.  We had both prayed continuously for guidance, so there was nothing to lose.

Seeing him after over two years, I felt nervous and did not know what to expect.  I wanted to gauge my level of comfort upon meeting him.  It was myself I doubted, not him.  I needed to see if I felt strong enough to weather the opposition.  All praise is for God.  I felt so comfortable from the time I saw him at the airport with my father.  Within a few weeks, our nikaah was done Islamically at the courthouse.  I think my father felt such happiness and relief despite the circumstances.  We were happy for the simplicity of our nikaah; we just wished we could have had our families share our happiness with us.  But in cases such as ours, there is no wisdom in dwelling on what could have been.

In the first year and a half of our marriage, we lived in the same city as his family.  I knew no one besides my husband.  I was not accepted by his family, so my name was not even mentioned in their household. My husband would go to family events alone.  But I was okay with all of this, despite feeling very sad at times.  I never wanted him to break ties with his family.  His family had God-given rights on him.  If anything, I wanted relations to be repaired and start healing.

We had a lot of misunderstandings in those first two years.  My husband struggled with the close bonds I had formed over the years with family.  He wanted his rightful place in my life.  This was one of the first initial stumbling blocks in our relationship highlighting our age difference.  Meanwhile, I wanted him to accept me for who I was.  We were really getting to know each other now.  Even though our particular struggles may have been different, the adjustments that every newly married couple goes through were the same.

Today

Even though we have been married almost four years, I feel like I have been with my husband forever.  It would be hard to imagine life without each other.  Slowly, with lots of prayer, some family members are accepting us.  His mother though keeps her stance.

We joke about the nuances behind our age differences, and I call him an old man since he conks out by 9 p.m. at times.  Yet, we both have to be cognizant and comfortable with the future ramifications of being together.  As we get older, we realize that our age difference will become more pronounced to us.  We have to be very secure in our commitment to handle all of the challenges of the future.  But our biggest secret is the strength of our relationship to God individually and as a couple.  And with this strength, we trust in God and look forward to happiness today and always…God willing.

— Shabana Umar*

*The author’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.

Many years ago, as a college undergrad balancing very serious sounding courses like “conflict resolution in a post communist global community,” I took intro to acting. It was immediately addictive. I felt freedom in being able to express myself onstage. There was a tension release in being able to put away oneself for a few hours, and don the garb of another persona. Stepping into a character, and away from who you are, is a liberating feeling. Who hasn’t wondered what their life would be like if they could behave different, say something differently, behave without repercussions? For me, becoming another character felt this way. On stage, I wasn’t myself, I was Lady Macbeth, I was a Bosnian war crime victim, I was a newly arrived Indian immigrant, I was able to explore a range of emotion that I could never tap into in real life. I joined Arth Arts for the duration of my college life, and felt incredibly alive whenever rehearsing, or brainstorming with my troupe mates. But adulthood was calling, and as I transitioned into the “responsible” work of being a diligent law student, I put away my creativity, and stifled my passion for acting.

The famed Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib once said “ishq hai woh aatish ghalib, jo bhujaye na bhuje”, intense passion is a flame, which despite trying, cannot be extinguished. So it was with me and the pull of the stage. Eventually, returning to New York as an adult, I felt a certain spark missing, but could never put my finger on it. And that’s when I met Parwaz Playhouse.

Parwaz Playhouse is the first Pakistani Acting Troupe in New York City. We held our inaugural show “Glass” over Thanksgiving weekend of 2009 to nearly sold out audiences. Recently, on a balmy Friday afternoon in April, I traded my navy blue skirt suit and pearls for costume, and took the stage with my troupe mates to participate in the Downtown Urban Arts Festival, relishing in the honor of having our first piece “Glass” accepted for performance. And this time, we were completely sold out.

I still battle with the common misconceptions people hold of actors and actresses in the Desi community, they are narcissistic, they aren’t respectable, and they don’t come from good families. I don’t see myself as any of these things. In fact I don’t see anyone I’ve ever shared the stage with as any of these things. Once we step off the stage, we are completely normal. Some of us are full time actors, with the courage to strike out full time in search of fulfilling our passions, but many are like me, unwilling, or fearful to sacrifice stability for the thrill of devoting ourselves full time to the craft.

It strikes me as interesting, that my legal career garners more appreciation from the community, than something that is truly unique, the capability to captivate and entertain others. In my estimation, I am nothing but a textbook reader, lucky enough to have studied and made it through a few educational hoops and ended up on the other side of what is deemed a conventional career. What I admire, is the sheer veracity with which people are able to dedicate themselves wholly to the pursuit of one passion. Balancing a professional career replete with deadlines and important sounding jargon, with an acting career is a herculean task at times.

So how does balance work? Like all things in life, it’s about how high on your list of priorities you rank something. Your dedication to a cause, project or person, will outshine the limitations of your schedule, and the confines of a 24 hour day, every time. My weekends, especially before show time, are exclusively dedicated to Parwaz, meaning rehearsing in 8 hour blocks. Even though its very serious rehearsal time, it feels like an extended hang out with friends rather than working. There are of course times when work and acting butt heads. Deadlines and clients seldom care that you have to be somewhere else for a curtain call or to rehearse, and in times like those, unfortunately the craft takes second seat, but only for the time being.

Recently, someone remarked “I didn’t realize you were an actress, I thought you were a lawyer” and I smiled with the thought, that while groups like Parwaz Playhouse are making inroads in the theater community, we have a ways to go until our own Desi community realizes, we are not captive by stereotypes. We can be anything, and whoever we want to be, onstage, or off.

– Kiran Ali, Guest Columnist for NEEM Magazine

As soon as we heard:  where you are and when you there, our ears perked up and we thought, “Would I want someone that I don’t know – who is not even in my online friend circle – to know exactly where I am?”

So what are the potential risks in location-based social media?

(1) Your Boss Finds Out You Aren’t Grabbing that Cup of Coffee

The first thing we thought of was that users may be unwittingly giving away their information to everyone on these social media platforms.  Something as innocent as running out to get a cup of coffee, then Tweeting quickly about an Hermes scarf as you stand outside the Hermes store near Rockefeller could send a message to your boss that you are not where you are supposed to be.  In a world of digitally alert bosses, human resources, and co-workers, the last thing you want to do is appear to be somewhere you are not supposed to be.

Twitter & Facebook posts have gotten people fired.  Those aren’t protected classes underemployment law.

(2) Your Personal Safety is at Issue

Having spent some time working in crimes against women & children in the District Attorney’s office in Atlanta, we automatically thought of one glaring issue:  predators & minors.  With the explosion of MySpace in the digital sphere, there was a critical concern of safety issues with minors connecting with predators online.  With something as innocuous as an online post an a location-aware site, these same minors are exclaiming their location to those same predators.

(3) Everyone Knows if You are at Home or Not

There have already been burglaries that may be linked to online status postings:  ”Out of town for the week!”  on Twitter or “Won’t be home till 2am” on a public profile on Facebook.  While it’s true that most people don’t make a habit of running through social media posts to plan their next heist – it’s also not unheard of.  A location based social media platform would make it increasingly easy for these crimes to occur, because there will be an online database of all the empty homes in that location.  To tempting to resist?

We’re not saying that location based social media is a bad thing, but as with all things out there:  realize & assess the risks!

Follow SLF on twitter:  http://twitter.com/sardarlawfirm

Reprinted with permission from Sardar Law Firm and Social Media Legal.

The twin burdens of expectations and stereotypes were placed on my shoulders one day when I was standing in the workroom with my boss during my first year of employment at a non-profit agency.

I had some downtime, so I offered to help her with stuffing envelopes for a mailing that was going out later that week. As I stood there, wishing I could hire an intern so I could avoid paper cuts, she began to talk about her two teenage sons, who were both involved in numerous extracurricular activities at their high school. The question arose: “How are Asians able to get their kids to be so disciplined?” I didn’t answer her immediately as she elaborated, “When I look at graduating classes, theirValedictorians and Salutatorians are always Asian. They excel in sports and they’re always practicing piano…” As the myth of the model minority dripped from her mouth, I began to wonder if it would always be this way. Would a “teaching moment” present itself every time cultural issues arise?

My boss’s candid question caught me off guard that day. As a new employee and as a proud Asian woman, I knew I couldn’t just deflect her question and comments and continue folding and stuffing so I came up with a comfortable response that wouldn’t make me feel like I was patronizing her. I explained to her that although the label “hard-working, disciplined achiever is a positive one, I, as an Asian (who at many times wore said label) never liked the assumption that I would have a 4.0 and go on to a stereotypically Asian profession (medicine, engineering, law, business-basically anything other than the non-profit and activist positions I’ve held) that follows good grades and great expectations. I didn’t like the limitations that came with such expectations. I came out of the conversation with two conclusions: that she hadn’t yet gotten her head around what I had said and that this question would lead to many similar conversations.

The second time I realized that my boss wasn’t well-versed in the art of diversity in the office came during a staff meeting. We were discussing our relationship with a newly hired director at a branch nearby. One of the first comments out of my boss’s mouth was, “The only reason she got hired is because she speaks Spanish.” She shrugged her shoulders and a look of disbelief walked across her face. The same disbelief, accompanied by shock, rested in my gut. The location of the aforementioned branch was located in the middle of an area with a significant migrant population-a demographic very different from the one we served at our location. It made sense that bilingual skills would be crucial there. Could it be possible that my boss- an educated woman nearly twice my age couldn’tconnect those same dots?

I regret not defending the director that day. I was pacified by fear that my honesty would jeopardize my career or cause my co-workers to view me as a belligerent minority who felt entitled because of past obstacles. I didn’t want my boss to think that I thought I was better than her. Staying silent like I did in that meeting room was a mistake that I don’t want to make again, so I didn’t stay silent when my boss referred to one of our African volunteers as “white as anyone else here.” I didn’t stay silent when one of my co-workers expressed concern over supporting an international organization that sends books to children around the world-including Muslim children. Instead, I directed them away from ignorance and towards enlightenment.

Minorities in the USA come from a long line of oppression. I ask myself: If women were beaten in the early 1900s to gain the right to have a voice, why should mine be silenced? If MLK and his comrades marched for equality regardless of skin color and personal beliefs, and were imprisoned for doing so, why shouldn’t my generation continue that march today? And if Southeast Asians boarded dilapidated old boats to escape persecution in search of better opportunities in a new land, shouldn’t we find reasons to sail on?

The point is that minorities have a unique responsibility. We have a lesson to pass on, a lesson that began decades ago, originating from figures like Susan B. Anthony and John Lewis. They’re counting on us to carry on their legacy just as much as future generations are depending on us to seize the opportunities to fearlessly and proudly share our experiences and knowledge with those who don’t know any better…even if they’re older than us or wealthier than us and yes, even if they’re higher than us on the professional food chain. After all, chances are they got to where they are by fighting, too.

— MM Perez,*  NEEM Magazine Contributing Writer

“You lie!” While we as South Asian immigrants are rightfully proud to see a person of color elected to the U.S. presidency, it is no surprise that the highest office in the nation doesn’t afford protection from such insulting retorts – even from a member of Congress – and during a presidential address. After all, our communities are by no means newcomers to discrimination. However, a debate that is being dragged down to a level of such primitive accusation is neither constructive nor illuminating.

Without question, the current health care reform proposals in Congress provide NO options for the undocumented, besides maintaining many rigid barriers that make it difficult for documented (“legal”) immigrants to access health care (consider the 5 year ban on Medicaid and other government sponsored entitlements). Rep. Joe Wilson was wrong – but there are still plenty of lies circulating with regards to immigrants and our health care system.

Let’s start with the biggest lie of them all, touted by Rep. Wilson and other opponents of health care reform: that undocumented immigrants are the source of our health care woes and that they are an economic drain on our system – based on a contention that they don’t pay taxes, and that unpaid emergency room visits and hospitalizations are a significant portion of our health care expenditures. Criticism of the public option or any type of government sponsored health care has been perversely twisted into an argument against immigrants and immigration. Moreover, even progressives fighting for reform have been taking to scapegoating immigrants, as can be seen in Michael Moore’s Sicko, where he makes the case for supporting public health care financing by suggesting that Americans should receive the same “excellent” quality health care being given to the South Asian, Arab, and Muslim detainees at Guantanamo. Does this health care plan include the waterboarding and other forms of physical and psychological torture, not to mention violations of basic human rights that our community members face?

Consider a recent South Asian immigrant woman in her mid-forties, diagnosed with breast cancer and having to work hard to raise a teenage daughter and make ends meet alone after her husband disappears in the post-9/11 fear that engulfed many in our community. Complicate her struggle by considering the fact that she is not proficient in English, does not have access to the family’s finances, and is at risk of being evicted from her home since her illness makes it difficult for her to keep a steady job. Should this woman be burdened further by having to wait five years to be eligible for public health options? Why is her suffering not considered ‘sufficient’ enough to access needed assistance, which a resource-rich country like the United States has committed – in theory, at least – to making available to those in need?

The truth of the matter is that not only do legal immigrants pay taxes, but so do the undocumented. According to the Social Security Administration, two-third’s of the undocumented pay payroll taxes – to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually as estimated by the IRS & SSA. However, unlike legal immigrants and US-born persons who also pay taxes, undocumented immigrants do not qualify for Medicare or Social Security benefits. Further, studies have shown that only 1.3% of total government medical expenditures went towards care of undocumented patients, and immigrants utilize emergency room services far less than their American-born counterparts.

So let’s review: for the undocumented South Asian immigrant, a person that is dutifully filing taxes, sometimes paying back-taxes to make up for years they weren’t aware they had to pay (e.g. if they had been seeking asylum), he/she is dependent either upon their employer or themselves to finance their health care. Sounds like the same situation US citizens are in, right? Well, very similar, with one notable exception: the undocumented cannot access the majority of government-run plans – even the new ones being proposed in the current health reform plans. Products like Medicare, the vast majority of Medicaid dollars, welfare dollars, food stamps, and other such benefits are not available to them to finance their health care and support their healing.

Instead of blaming immigrant communities as the problem in health care, let’s get back to the real reason we need health care reform. Without access to health care, individuals have a greater risk of getting sicker, of having prolonged sickness, of falling into further debt, and of death. The Institute of Medicine estimates that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the U.S. Can we really afford to wait? Providing health insurance through a mechanism such as a public option can lower both the number of uninsured and costs by providing much needed coverage that includes primary care preventative services for all people residing in the U.S. Let’s fix the U.S. health care system’s most urgent wrongs – by providing health care to all — – in particular those that are most marginalized and stripped of their basic right to access health care services. It’s definitely no lie that this includes our immigrant communities.