Furquan Saeed on Urdu at home, a dessert named for a window, becoming "Asian American" after 9/11, Partition, and Jackson Heights when it was Little Pakistan

My name is Furquan Saeed and I am 28.

I was born in Boston.

My family is from Pakistan, but my parents grew up in Dubai.

I only know two. I grew up speaking Urdu in the house and then, you know, English outside of the house. My grandma speaks a lot more because she grew up in like a mountain city in the north of Pakistan. So I think she speaks like two other, she speaks a little bit of Punjabi and she speaks Pashto, which is like a really regional language.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So my mom, my grandma did most of the cooking growing up. My grandma makes like Hyderabadi biryani. Like my family originally is from Hyderabad in India, or a lot of them are from there. So biryani is like kind of like the staple food of there. It's like this like really rich, like rice dish with meat. And then my mom made a lot of like basic staples. Like she made dal, which is made of lentils. We ate a lot of mutton growing up, which I know is like not that big in America, but like that's what they eat over there. So we would get it from the halal butchers. Um, and, uh, yeah. Um, my mom also is really good at making haleem, which is like a chicken, chickpea, like stew kind of dish. And then my auntie makes a really good nihari, which is like a really thick beef stew, which is really flavorful.

Oh yeah, there's actually a few. They're mostly desserts. So, um, there's a word in Urdu called jali. It means window. And basically like, if you think of like, like a 17, 1800s, like Indian palace, you'll see that they have like these like really ornate sort of like windows with like these like really precise carvings. They're like, because it's such a hot climate. They don't, they're not like these big windows you open up. They're like almost like these screens. And the word for that is called jali. And in my family, we make a dessert called jali. And it's basically like this almond, like sort of confection. Um, and then they're like dyed different colors and they're covered with silver and gold leaf. Um, and it looks like kind of like a window pane or a mirror, um, with different, like, or like stained glass with like different, like cut out carving.

Hmm. It's a good question. I think it was like, I think I started realizing this, I mean, the Asian thing specifically, well, you know, I grew up like, right, like I started going to school, like right after like 9-11. So it was like mostly like Muslim American, but then when it shifted to Asian American for me was like, when I realized that, um, I had a lot of stuff in common with like my East Asian friends at school and Southeast Asian friends. Like we had similar to like, you know, ways of thinking about food, like our families had like different, same, similar ways of like thinking about hospitality. Um, the academic pressure was like also kind of similar. Um, and then like, yeah, like, you know, there was just like, you know, like taking your shoes off, that kind of thing in the house. That was all like, that's when I started realizing, oh, it's not just like, I'm not just like, you know, Muslim American and Pakistani American. I'm like also within the Asian American community. Um, and so that's really when I started like feeling kind of affiliation or affinity with the term. Um, yeah.

Yeah. Um, that's a really good question. Um, I think the question would be like, I mean, the question would probably be where are you from? Um, cause I get asked that a ton. Um, and the followup is like, oh, I've eaten so and such food from India. Um, but besides that, um, I guess I like, I've also been asked like, you know, like when did you move to America and stuff and I was born here. So that's always been annoying. Um, yeah, those kinds of questions. Um, or actually like, you know, there's like, like I got asked a few times, like, you know, like my relationship with religion and stuff, just because of like the sort of like 9/11 and sort of, um, post-9/11, like atmosphere, which I grew up in. So that was, that's also been like, you know, a reoccurring theme, but all these questions I'm very tired of answering.

Hmm. Um, that's a good question as well. Um, well, I think there's a lot of like, you know, like, I think a lot of people get a little bit like they, they don't, they don't really understand like the whole India, um, Pakistan partition split. Um, so like I said before, like my family is from Hyderabad, which is in India. Um, but they might, a lot of them migrated over when, um, India and Pakistan declared their independence in 1947. So what happened was that it was one of the most, um, largest and most violent, um, mass migrations in human history. And, um, they, like my grandfather kind of, he left on his own, uh, my dad's dad and just like took a boat from India to Karachi. And that's kind of like Karachi at the time was just like kind of small port city. Now it's like 23 million people. But at the time it was just like this port city. It was relatively small. It was a new capital initially of Pakistan before they moved it, um, and kind of like established roots there. Um, and then my other side of the family also moved from India, um, again, like had a family rift as well.

So it's like, I think, you know, like people like talk a lot, a lot about like the India, Pakistan, like, um, sort of like animosity, but what they don't necessarily realize is that a lot of Pakistanis are actually Indian origin and a lot of Indians are Pakistani origin. And there's a huge, like history of like migration and like mixing, but also like disruption, like families were like severed in two, um, people lost contact with relatives. Um, and like, they just never saw entire halves of their family over after, you know, for the rest of their lives. Like, I think my last time my grandfather went to India was in 1953. And again, he went by boat. He took a steamboat, um, up the river and saw his family. And that was in 1953. And then he never went back. Um, they ended up moving to Dubai, my, both my grandparents and like starting their families there. But yeah, it's just kind of crazy to think that, um, you would one day just leave your family and never see them again.

Hmm. Yeah. Um, I don't think we really learned about in school. Um, what I like, like growing up, my conception of Asian American history was that it started in 1980, because that's when all the like, you know, the wave of like model minority immigrants started coming over. Um, in college, I took a class about immigration and migration and learned that the history of Asian American or Asian migration to the Americas went like centuries earlier. So that started first, like when I started thinking about, or like even knowing about this stuff, like apparently the first mosque in America was like, you know, opened in like the early 1900s. So again, like just like a part of history that I wasn't really aware of. I think the only thing we learned in school was the 1882 Asian or Chinese exclusion act.

Yeah. So I think that, um, well, Asian American history, to me, it's kind of like the story of the Asian diaspora in America. And it's important because one, it's like a really diverse community, right? I mean, like, like I said, like, I didn't really realize that I was even part of the Asian American community until like, I was like, probably like in like middle or high school. Um, and then, you know, I didn't like really understand what the greater, like historical arc of that community was besides the fact that, you know, like we were good at, we were supposedly, supposed to be good at school. Um, so I think that was something that I really like started thinking about more in high school.

Um, so what it means to me is that it's just like this, like we all share a background because of our like diasporic nature. And we have all been through this sort of like long migration and maybe it's, it's for a lot of the times for very different reasons. And we're from different communities back in Asia and we settle in different ways here. But like, the point is that we're all like, kind of have this sort of like narrative of diasporic, like migration, and that's what connects us together. I think it's really important because, you know, I mean, especially now, like there's so much anti-immigration rhetoric going on. There's a lot of like, there's cancellations of visas that are really important to Asian Americans. And we're basically what we're doing is like reversing what's been like a several decade long trend of like, you know, um, like bringing the best and brightest, a lot of the best and brightest from like Asian countries and bringing them to America and like having, giving them like a lot of opportunities. So, um, and also like the other, the flip side of that is that like, you know, to know that there is like a history of Asian America in the US that was, is, does not follow that trajectory that like came way earlier, that struggled a lot, that was like, you know, involved in the trans-Pacific or transcontinental railroad that like, you know, was used as like subjugated labor force or like, you know, all sorts of different, like, you know, like underclass sort of positions. So it's really important to know about those just so that we understand the diversity, the strengths, and the resilience of this community.

Hmm. Interesting. Um, that's a great question. I think it would be, I think it would be the history of Jackson Heights. Um, Jackson Heights is a, is a neighborhood in Queens and it became for a while in the eighties, it was called Little Pakistan because there were so many Pakistanis there. Um, I had an uncle there. I had several uncles who lived there actually. Um, and then it kind of dispersed. So it's interesting because like, one of the things that's really, really interesting about like, you know, American cities and like the way they renew themselves is that like different communities, like find a foothold in different neighborhoods, but then like a generation later, it's a completely different, like sort of community. Right. So now it's like all Bangladeshis. Um, but it's really cool to just like go there and see the last like vestiges of what I remember to be Jackson Heights, which was all like Pakistani restaurants, but then see like what's there now, which is like all Bangladeshi restaurants and Bangladeshi culture and Bangladeshi stores and stuff like that. Um, so yeah, I mean, there's like, it's a very, like, it's just like a history that like continues to move in a direction and you never like, you don't realize that you were part of this historical thing until that moment has passed.

Yeah, of course.

Thank you.