A year ago, on the eve of 9/11, sitting in my flat in Glasgow, I wrote up my thoughts on America - an outsider's perspective on a unique country that I had the privilege of residing in for three years, before and after the WTC attacks. It was more in the nature of a catharsis, as I had gained much, and lost much, in America. I was trying to give voice to ineffable & contradictory feelings that eluded capture.
As I mentioned at the end of that post, I was meaning to go back for a return trip when my circumstances would allow me. Earlier this year in March, I finally made that journey back, to my old haunts in north Texas: Denton, Carrollton and Dallas. A week in the Texas sun would do me good, I thought, away from London's grey clouds and tiresome damp. And indeed, from the sky, Dallas looked beautiful and inviting - laid out like a board - houses, streets, swimming pools, golf courses, all shining in the sun.
For a week I did nothing but drive all over the place and toast in the sun. My friends and I travelled down the interstate to San Antonio for a two-day trip, a beautiful old-world city that I had criminally failed to visit during my earlier three-year stay. The Alamo and Riverwalk, followed by the world's biggest Chinese buffet! On the drive back to Dallas, we stopped by for a quick drink in Austin, at a bar across the UT campus. I remember saying to my friends that the world's smartest and most beautiful people seemed to have got together in that bar.
As my former roommate, now happily married with a job in Fidelity, drove me around, over a hundred miles every day, I would look out in the evenings at the sky, that giant sky, the like of which I've not come across anywhere else. It would be streaked with red in the evenings, and Cormac McCarthy's subtitle to his novel Blood Meridian would inevitably come back to me - The Evening Redness in the West. That described my own personal Texas sky.
Things seemed to be much the same as ever, calm and peaceful and prosperous. Some things had changed. Developers had paved over every last square inch of virgin north Texas soil, or at least were planning to - new retail and housing developments were everywhere. My friends seemed a little older, a little more mature, a little more content. Some still struggled with immigration problems, with life and career; some had gotten married and settled down.
A couple of Bangladeshi stores had opened up where none existed before, testimony to the pulling power of the Sun Belt. The most successful of my friends was the angriest, while the calmest of them had quietly bought a picture-postcard house, out in the middle of cattle country.
All in all, it was a reconnection for me. That land has a strange pull that is hard to shake off, even when you're not from there. My parents back home were certainly pissed off that I had chosen to revisit America for my first holiday instead of going back to Bangladesh! I couldn't quite explain to them, so I didn't try. But this morning's headline in the NYT - that, in spite of everything, record numbers of Muslims are permanently migrating there in search of the American Dream - that headline only seemed to confirm that wordless pull...
With apologies to those who may have seen this before, I repost again, after a year, my original 9/11 post from last year. Many thanks, and best wishes to all of you. You are lucky to be from a country that is so unique and uniquely beautiful.
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First written for Daily Kos on 9/11/05
My impressions of several years in America: a few thoughts provoked by Addison's remarkable post.
I grew up in Bangladesh during the 1980s, and back then America to us meant an intoxicating mix of Dallas and LA Law and Knight Rider and MacGyver and The Cosby Show and Family Ties and every other weird & wonderful 80s show you could think of.
And America was the places I saw in the movies - the endless skies of the West in Butch Cassidy, the gin joints in The Sting, the neon streets of Taxi Driver, the suburban wackiness of Ferris Bueller.
It was weird. America was the place where all my friends wanted to go, and where half of them did end up. Then I went to America myself to study, and I landed in LA. The drive from LAX airport to my uncle's home in Glendale took an hour and a half! I was thinking, "This is insane! Are we there yet? How much do these people drive!" But I'd spotted the Hollywood signs, and I was feverish with excitement. Finally I was in Philip Marlowe's town, inside LA Confidential.
America was a trip to the beach at Santa Monica. And it was the eye-dazzling beauty of Santa Barbara. Within 3 days of being in the States, I wanted to retire in Santa Barbara. I've never seen a prettier seaside town in the years since.
And then America was Bloomington, Indiana. 4 months in the most tranquil city in the Midwest. I'd seen the movie "Breaking Away" as a kid, and I could never get over my good fortune when I finally got there, to that same town.
And such friendly people. People would nod at you in the street and smile - and at first, I was so puzzled. Why?! Why nod at me, a brown stranger? Then I realized it was a mix of two things - innate friendliness and egalitarianism, and the sheer rarity of pedestrians! I didn't have a car and walked a lot each day, so I got lots of smiles.
America to me was the first Target store I ever walked into. It was the size of a football stadium, and I remember my sense of shock to this day, the automatic way I recoiled from the sheer size of it, the monstrosity, the excess. And I kept thinking back to the poverty and want of people back home, and how such a store could have kept thousands of them happy for months on end.. if only they knew what I'd seen.
America was the first Thanksgiving dinner with an American family who invited me, as part of the college's student-link program, to their house out in the country.. a massive house built with logs and the entire family, 3-4 generations, assembled for dinner. I thought the food was fine, if a little new for me.
America was a 20-hour Greyhound ride from Indiana to Dallas, picking up jailbirds at Terre Haute, and waiting in the Greyhound station at Memphis at 3 in the morning, surrounded by drifters, night-birds and Elvis memorabilia everywhere. The faintly bad smell of a Greyhound bus. Next morning, America was the lush greenness of Bluegrass country and horse-paddocks in Kentucky.
And then America was Denton, TX, 30 miles from Dallas - and that I felt was a harsher place. Baking sun, soulless freeways, Mexican workers, too many strip malls. But people were still pretty friendly. And there were many more brown people there, drawn by the pull of the Sun Belt. Suddenly I found myself among half a dozen old friends from home, and I moved too.
America was the entrepreneurial vigour of Masud, a fellow Bangladeshi who'd moved 20 yrs ago and had opened a string of convenience stores and had become a millionaire.. I worked in one of those stores, the graveyard shift. America was a graveyard shift for a few months, selling six-packs of Bud Light to Mexican immigrants and college kids on Saturday night, and getting 6 dollars per hour for it.
America was the sheer brilliance of my professor, who taught econometrics and who made that bone-dry subject seem fascinating. I used to think - goddamn, how good must you be, Dr Tieslau! America was the amazing fact that even a regular state school had hundreds of Ph.D's the length and breadth of the campus. America was a superabundance of brains and intellectual resources.
America was sitting on the balcony with my roommates and watching the red Texas sky, and idly chatting away the golden years of my life. America was talking on the phone to my girlfriend in rainy England, and telling her about the beautiful weather we were having out there.
America was the grasping materialism of my deshi friends, who wanted to forget about home and often spoke in a contrived American accent (in often incorrect English) and spoke only of getting and spending. Of things - music systems, home theater, cars. I never knew why immigrants were so chary of ideas, of politics. They spoke of upgrading their cars, to BMWs and Ferraris. Although as loyal brown folk, they never strayed from buying either a Toyota Camry or a Honda; the rich and the brave would opt for an Acura.
America was too many people intoxicated by the opium of mass entertainment, pop culture and crap TV, and faux-stimulated into desire and greed for material things by too much advertising.
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America was a trip to Chicago - perhaps the most beautiful of all the big American cities. America was strolling on Riverwalk and the University of Chicago campus (Hey, Senator Obama!) It was visiting the Art Institute and at last seeing with my own eyes Hopper's Nighthawks and Grant Wood's American Gothic. America was Liechtenstein's "POW"!
And America was New York City, and mad Manhattan, and the Columbia campus, and the roof of the World Trade Centre in August of 2001. It was the lights of Sixth Street Pier coming on at sunset. America was the loneliness and ambition of my school friend from home, who'd become an investment banker on Wall Street, and didn't like his job but wouldn't leave for the money. (He was let go 18 months later).
And then 9-11. And America was fear and panic. And then anger and backlash. America was a steady drumbeat where I was astonished by the unthinking supineness of the newspapers and the TV channels. America was 70% of the nation supporting an invasion of Iraq.
In the middle of it, America was the acrobatic brilliance of Kobe, and the Zenmaster's Lakers winning the three-peat.
America was new immigration rules for me and my friends. It was the beginning of disillusion. The smiles had faded away by then. People would look at you for half a second longer, and then look away.
America was the recession. Some of my friends losing their jobs through lay-offs, others moving to Canada out of despair, others working double-time to cling on grimly to what they had.
America was my friends not being able to visit their families back home, because they were afraid of not being let back in at the airport. Afraid of losing everything - car, apartment, credit cards, their way of life. America was driving down to the INS office in Dallas early one morning to register as a legal alien - fingerprints, retina scans, names, addresses, bank details, everything.
It was a decision to leave. America was one final visit to friends in Denver. The Rockies. Endless, and endlessly beautiful. It was a trip up to Buena Vista and a rafting trip down the Arkansas river, and a drive back through the most amazing landscape made by God - magnificent thunderstorms were flashing on the horizon. And I thought, won't I miss this?
It's been two years. And I miss it at times, and I don't at other times. America was hope and potential, and America was that spoilt by a bearded madman and a cowboy-hatted fool. America was a mix of kindness and reflex jingoism. In the end, America was a goodbye at DFW airport.
America, I hope, is renewal. I'm visiting you again this winter. You can't help but love the place somehow. America is hope. And America is my twice-daily visits to Daily Kos, and a salute to fellow Kossacks, who I'm convinced are the finest that America has to offer.