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Hi, my name is Zainab Aslam. I was born on April 26th, 1989 in a small hospital in Lahore, Pakistan, which makes me a Punjabi by heritage and by birth. I lived, however,in apartment C3 in Officer's Colony on Garden Road in the more urban Karachi, Pakistan with MQM supporters as neighbors and a view of the police station across the street. Personally, I remember the two groups exchanging fire quiet often and all the neighborhood "uncles" being worried about driving down silent roads yet, I still have some of my fondest memories in Pakistan. I am not sure if it is because my parents were good at maintaining calm exteriors or because I was simply too young but I remember feeling completely normal and safe even when getting ready for saturday school because my school was closed due to bloody strikes during the week.
My older brother, Ahmed and I in our home in Karachi

It was really in 1998 that I became slightly more aware that there was something wrong with our lifestyle. It was in November of 1998 that talks of posting my father in New York had begun in the Export Promotion Bureau, where he worked. Suddenly, my parents began to pray for the position with a desperation I had not seen before. Finally, on February 16th, 1999, we were walking through the JFK terminal overwhelmingly with excitement.

Since then we have moved from Scarsdale to Little Neck to Fresh Meadows and I have still to figure out how to fully consolidate my two identities. In Scarsdale, for example, I was the foreigner who remarkably could speak English. But in Little Neck there were a lot more foreigners, so I told people I was half Arab to distinguish myself. I figured I wasn't lying since my mom was raised in Saudi Arabia. By the time I moved to Fresh Meadows, however, I was barely able to lay claim to my Pakistani identity as many Pakistanis would give me disdainful looks for not speaking fluent Urdu.

My Aunt (second from the left) sitting with her friends in the picture that was sent to my uncle with a marriage proposal.
But as the immigrant experience goes, I also spent a great deal of time trying to disappear into the American backdrop of my schools. Ironically, it was at such times that elements of my religion and culture were thrown at me. For example, whenever I informed a fellow classmate that I wasn't allowed to date, they would ask, are you getting an arranged marriage? When I was 10 and first asked that question, I wasn't sure of the answer. At 19, I'm still not sure. I look at my family's traditional history and the random acts of modernism that fit in along the way and I don't know what comes next. But as always, I'm hoping for the best!
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