January 24, 2008
I Get Busy, Mo!
S. Abbas Raza in The Smart Set:
As it turned out, the man who was led to my cell and put in it with me about an hour later was a very large (about 6 foot 4, 250 pounds) man wearing a Mark Ecko sweatshirt and white sneakers, both covered in dried blood because earlier that evening he had stabbed someone he later described to me as “that Mexican nigga” during a robbery. He came in and casually pushed my legs off the bunk, not bothering to say anything. I knew that this was my cue to get tough, but at that moment I happened to be far too busy concentrating on not peeing my beltless, falling-off pants to actually think of something to say. It got worse. He looked at me with contempt and asked what I was in for, and when I tried to answer with a non-committal reply (I obviously didn’t want to admit to my fruity suspended-license rap), to my shock and horror my voice cracked out of nervousness and I heard myself stutter something incomprehensible in a higher-pitched falsetto than a goddamned Bee Gee. This, of course, amused my new friend to no end, and out of pity, I suppose, and good humor he reassured me that he would not hurt me. I realized that it is one thing to yell at my cat at home and scare her, or even at some annoying bureaucratic drudge or other behind a car-rental counter, and quite another to try and intimidate someone who is covered in the blood of his last attempted-murder victim and looks as if he could break me in two at the drop of his sideways-worn baseball cap. I now swore to myself that if I made it through this night in anything resembling wholeness, no matter how tempting, I would never ever do anything that had even an infinitesimal chance of landing me in an actual prison, where I now knew with certainty that I would last all of about three nanoseconds.
More here.
Posted by Abbas Raza at 02:14 PM | Permalink
Comments
Dear Abbas: I would have been amused and smiling on reading these fascinating stories, if I did not know that they were true and happened to you in real life. Now it just makes me cringe and get all emotional about what you had to endure! But as they say 'if some thing this bad does not kill you it makes you stronger.' And I know you are strong enough to endure these indignities and yet be the person you are. You have written them well and they make for very good reading. It is just unfortunate that these things have always happened to you. You seem to have a proclivity to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You have plenty of material to tell stories to your grand children and so I say enough is enough. You can stop it now.
By the way thanks for coming to my sons defense (if I have not already said it many times before). Love you...Bhaisaheb.
Posted by: Tasnim | Jan 24, 2008 3:40:39 PM
Wow, congratulations! Superbly exciting and scary to read, even for someone who lived through many of these experiences with you. You brought it all to life again. Sorry I haven't helped more to prevent the experiences that generated this piece, though. But great writing.
Posted by: Asad Raza | Jan 24, 2008 4:43:05 PM
Wow, Abbas. Who could have known? I have this image of Desi as being so low profile (ignoring a certain friend's recent 100mph speeding ticket)...you have been profiled to the max. I hope the Carabinieri are much nicer to you.
Best,
Carlos
PS. On the other hand. Writers have to look within for substance. Grist for the mill?
Posted by: Carlos | Jan 24, 2008 10:00:08 PM
Abbas:
If these things had happened to a caucasian American in South Asia, Human Rights Watch would be all over it.
As it is, at least Kafka would get it.
love,
KB
Posted by: kb | Jan 24, 2008 10:56:59 PM
Abbas, it is as Tasnim says -- 'twould be hilarious reading if it hadn't happened to you. Have you considered going blond? In these horrid times, perhaps you're safer in Brixen.
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Jan 24, 2008 11:11:54 PM
Oh my goodness, Abbas! What a horrifying ordeal. And yet you describe it with such irresistible panache. I'm flabbergasted. And relieved that you live to tell the tale. Bravo!
Posted by: Marilyn Terrell | Jan 25, 2008 12:04:07 AM
As happens often, Elatia beat me to it - "perhaps you're safer in Brixen."
Abbas, these are extraordinary stories. Except for the Bangladeshi immigration official miffed at your Muslim credentials, the other two incidents are Kafkaesque indeed.
I repeated these to my husband over dinner tonight. His reaction like most readers' here, was a mixture of disbelief and amusement.
But as a South Asian woman with a husband and a grown son who frequently travel alone, I am just plain scared.
Posted by: Ruchira | Jan 25, 2008 12:12:43 AM
I have forwarded this to a Pakistani friend who, of all things, can't get a visa to visit Canada so is going to settle for a visit to the States instead.
Reminds me of leaving Israel when the immigration authorities take a dislike to one. At least you weren't submitted to a "body cavity search," as they so chillingly call them
Posted by: Mac | Jan 25, 2008 2:56:32 AM
Hi Guys and Gals,
Thanks very much for the comments. Something unfortunate and inadvertant has happened here. The editors of The Smart Set decided to stick the tag line "A Pakistani tries to get by in New York (with little success)" on the article, and perhaps this has colored people's perceptions. (The added picture and its caption didn't help either, but I think they were meant to be toungue-in-cheek.) To the contrary, I have lived in New York, and indeed in other parts of the United States with GREAT success. These were isolated and random incidents. With the exception of the skinheads (and even there, I was not the original object of their racism, I just happened to get involved), I have never felt like I was being treated the way I was because of my ethnicity or race. The fingerprint mixup was just that: a clerical error. The night in jail for a suspended licence was something New Yorkers of all races endured. And whatever prejudice there was in denying me US citienship was directed toward me by a fellow South Asian Muslim. Let me emphasize this: I have NEVER, at work, at college, at university, or elsewhere (except for airports after 9/11) felt that I have been mistreated because of race or religion or ethnicity in America. On the contrary, America has been remarkably fair in its treatment of me. (Even the citizenship was granted on appeal, after all.)
Even after the horrific attacks by Muslims on 9/11, I have never once felt singled out for mistreatment or suspicion in New York City, nor has anyone else I know, including many Arab friends. It is a remarkable and beautiful thing, really. Europe is far more xenophobic, and I have already had run ins with the Carabinieri here (sorry Bhaisaheb), and solely because of how I look. (My Pakistani friend--a prof at Oxford--and I, were stopped, for example, walking on the street and asked to show our papers and held there for a half hour until they could check up on us. My wife's sister said to me that it was just a random check. I asked her how many times she has been randomly checked in the past 30 years here. The predictable answer: zero. I have been stopped several times in 3 months.)
There is an ease with which America assimilates its immigrants that is very different from Europe. My stories were just meant to be funny. Please don't take them as some sort of complaint. I have no complaints.
P.S. Bonus Anecdote: When my Oxford friend and I were stopped, the two Carabinieri (Italian police) didn't speak too much English, and no German (my Pakistani friend speaks fluent German and I can get by in it, but neither of us speaks any Italian). So they were trying to talk to us in English. After a couple of questions, one of them, I think, meaning to ask me what I do in NY, in his broken English, asked, "Why you live in New York?" This was too much for my friend who exploded at the guy with a staccato barrage: "Why does he live in New York?!" "Why do you live here?" "Why does anyone live anywhere?" "Who do you think you are, Sartre?" "What kind of existentialist Gestapo tactics are these?" etc. It was quite funny really to see this 20-year old Italian kid become completely flabbergasted. I had to calm my friend before we got hauled in!
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jan 25, 2008 3:38:33 AM
I just want to clarify that the article, with the subheading and picture added, was shown to me by the Smart Set and I approved it. I didn't even think much about the subheading and to the degree that I did, I thought it was funny in a tongue-in-cheek way. It was only when I read the comments at 3QD that I realized that it was coming across as if I have been a lifelong victim of racism in America, something which as I have already pointed out, couldn't be farther from the truth.
Posted by: Abbas Raza | Jan 25, 2008 12:32:49 PM
I really enjoyed this - beautiful piece of writing. I think the subtitle is nice, too, actually, because it keeps things weighted, so you've got something on both sides - because after all, it's like that Brooklyn boy said . .
Posted by: C | Jan 25, 2008 5:14:07 PM
Now that's funny. I feel like this is one of those "I told you that story so I could tell you this one" routines.I didn't resist the low-profiling--profiled connection, but I'm sorry I implied that I had sensed in your recounting any racial mis-treatment. I did not. Just, perhaps, singled-out by the universe for more than your fair share of such things.
Posted by: Carlos | Jan 25, 2008 8:57:07 PM
And regarding sentence fragments.
Posted by: Carlos | Jan 25, 2008 9:03:06 PM
Excellent story-telling Abbas, and funny. It's peculiar how an experience, so nerve-wracking in it's unfolding can be infused with humor in the retelling. Who knows how many billion justifiable acts of retribution have been avoided by the retrospective application of a joke.
I once received a phone call from an old friend in NJ I'd not seen for a bunch of years. He ran a trucking agency in the Garden State, which, as many know, was one time regulated by the likes of Tony Soprano.
It seems that by some acts of pure naivete and some founded upon the timeless self-serving attitude of going-along-to-get-along, he wound up in the middle of an FBI investigation of certain people. It turned out to be one of those high-stake points in life when you have to decide, unequivocally, what move to make. As a result he agreed to tesitfy against the Sopranos.
But my friend was always the light-hearted, eloquent, story-teller of our circle and by the time we'd finished the conversation (which included such dark-sided cliche's as, a dead fish wrapped in newspaper delivered to his office, sleeping with a gun under his pillow, blowing town from a family funeral procession with an abrupt right turn to a hide-out in an out-of-state safe-house)I laughed so long and hard hard my phone was smeared with tears and my belly ached.
Frank (name changed to avoid a run-in with Paulie Walnuts) had a way to spin a dark yarn with threads of gold and silver.
You do too.
Posted by: Jim | Jan 26, 2008 8:54:39 AM
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