Noor
As my plane approached O'Hare, I looked out my window at the city of Chicago. It was a beautiful sight. The sun was out, its rays bouncing off the high-rise buildings that made up the Chicago skyline. Lake Michigan was a bright blue color. I had never seen water that blue. Back home, I lived by the coast of the Arabian Sea. The sunsets were gorgeous, but during the day all you could see was the grayish sand and brown sea water.
We landed as smoothly as one can expect for an Airbus and the passengers broke out in an applause.
Why do people always do that. I thought it was a desi thing. Apparently not!
The pilots are literally just doing their job. I don't get an applause after running a successful code
'Finally!! Home sweet home!', said the middle-aged man next to me.
Yeah, finally I'll be able to spread my legs like you did the whole 15+ hours on the plane!!
Men made me wary in general. Outside of my own father and brother and couple of family friends I had grown up with, every man I knew either ignored me completely or kept crossing personal and professional boundaries. I didn't want to die a spinster...I believed in love and marriage and a happily ever after. But at this moment in my life I just wanted to be left alone to pursue my dreams.
Honestly, one of the things I was really forwarding to in the US was being just an ordinary, brown, Muslim, immigrant woman. Those qualities should be deal breakers for most American men. Though, judging by the number of brown faces around me as I waited to collect my baggage, maybe Chicago wasn't the best place to come if I wanted to be left alone by desi people.
The cab ride on I-90 was more of a slow crawl than an actual drive. It reminded me of my usual drive home from college, meandering through the evening rush in my stick shift Toyota. With horns blaring, and the smell of diesel in the air, the cars, motorcycles, bicycles, rickshaws and even donkey carts sometimes, intertwined in an elaborate web, which you think would remain in a perpetual deadlock, but somehow people managed to keep moving forward.
I noted how despite the traffic here, most cars stayed in their own lane. And when someone did try to cut in to another lane, they used their turn signal and other cars politely made way for them. I chuckled at the thought of these drivers ever needing to drive in my home town.
As we inched forward towards downtown it finally hit me: I had left my nest!
For the first time in my life, I was going to be truly independent. I had traveled internationally before, but hadn't stayed away from home for more than a few weeks. A feeling of dread took over. I was not ready for this. I had literally lived in my parents house for 23 years. Why did I think it was a good idea to move to another country half way across the world?
I took a deep breath in. I deserved to be here!
If I had managed to survive 5 years of med school, I knew I would survive this. I remembered my father's parting words.
'Never forget who you are, and where you are from. If you stay true to yourself, no challenge will be insurmountable', he had said with tears in his eyes.
Making sure the cab driver hadn't noticed my mini-anxiety attack, I wiped away the moisture in my eyes. My family was my everything and I already missed them terribly.
Common on, get your act together. You want this.
You were born to be a doctor, save lives and change the world.
Two hours in to this journey is too soon to start falling apart.
Salman
I hated the sun. Especially, the sun that shone in through my windows in the morning when I already had a headache.
I need to invest in blackout blinds!, I told myself as I buried my head in my pillow.
The metaphorical sun stood for everything I was not. Light, brightness, luminescence, were not words in my dictionary. My world was dark. And I preferred it that way. I deserved it that way.
My phone's text message alert went off and I extended a hand towards my bedside table to grab it without opening my eyes. Of course, I knocked off the half full beer bottle that hadn't moved from that spot since over a week.
"Fuck...", I muttered, opening my eyes to survey the damage.
I decided to ignore it for now. It's not like anyone ever came into my house anyway. This place was strictly mine. It was a place where I could peel back my external shell and let my past consume me. It was a place that I could yell at the walls, and curse at the inanimate objects and no one would give a damn.
Not that anyone had ever given a damn about me anyway
My phone pinged again. This time I did mange to grab it without knocking anything else down.
'Dude, you up? Sam and I are crashing the new interns' welcome party tonight. Want to come?'
That was Mark. He and Sam were co-residents with me at the Children's Hospital of Illinois. He and Sam were also my partners in booze, drugs and partying. Without those two my habits would have been discovered a long time ago.
And I would have lost the only purpose I had in life right now: Finishing my pediatric residency and getting the hell out of this stupid city.
I had thought I would get a fresh start when I came here almost six years ago. Instead, I felt like I was getting dragged under the surface deeper and deeper everyday. And today was one of those days when the dark walls of this house were a welcome respite from the sun and brightness outside.
'I'll skip', I texted back.
Mark's name lit up my phone again, but this time he was calling and against my better judgment I picked up.
"I said I am not coming"
"Are you in one of your moods again?", he shot back, "Come to the party. Chicks love that dark and moody, yet sexy senior resident look you have going. Maybe you'll find someone to take home with you and cheer you up"
"Shut the fuck up Mark", he was really starting to irritate me now.
I didn't pretend to be moody to score a chick. But that was totally something that Mark would do.
"Whatever man...", he gave up, "Call us when you're not asshole anymore"
He hung up and I rolled out of bed careful not to step on the broken glass. I still had a splitting headache but my stomach was also growling now. Somehow I managed to stumble across my living room to the kitchen and forage through the fridge for something edible that wouldn't make me throw up.
Outside of a rotten apple, a carton of eggs, some smelly milk and stale bread there was nothing else to eat or drink...except three bottles of beer.
"Beer for breakfast it is...", I told the walls around me.
Mark's words came into my mind as I sank into my recliner and turned on the TV to watch some random European soccer match.
Maybe you'll find someone to take home and cheer you up
I laughed at the thought of some petite, little intern 'cheering' me up. I didn't need some stupid intern. I needed to just wipe my memory and reset my wiring.
Like a fucking computer
That analogy had just occurred to me but was so true. I was smart and intelligent by most educational standards. But like a computer I had no emotions. And I needed it to stay that way.
Because emotions made me weak.
And weakness made me vulnerable.
And vulnerability had already destroyed me.
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