Category: America

June 3, 2026 America, Memories, Thoughts Post a Comment

Racing …. sort of

After being in America for a few months, we finally managed to get our first car: a 1989 grayish Honda Accord with those iconic flip-up headlights. Man, I loved that car.

It actually had cruise control, which felt like technology from the future. I had my license by then, but my brother didn’t yet, so I was the designated driver. The only problem was we had absolutely no idea how to actually activate the cruise control. We would drive around for hours trying to make it work through pure guesswork. Remember, this was 1998—there was no mobile internet, no Google, and no YouTube to quickly show us how to turn it on. After a ridiculous amount of trial and error, we finally cracked the code and figured it out.

Coming from Pakistan, where cars with fancy features like power windows were still a rare luxury in the late ’90s, this Honda felt incredible. We had bought it for $2,300 from an auction. It had its quirks, of course, namely, it drank engine oil like it was refreshing Gatorade, but it was mine, and I drove it everywhere.

Then came the day I almost lost it all.

I was living in Bladensburg in Prince George’s County (PG County), an area where you really don’t want to mess around with the law. One afternoon, I was driving down Annapolis Road, coming from somewhere near the Baltimore Washington Parkway. I stopped at a red light, and a car pulled up right next to me.

At this point, I was still a total “FOB” (Fresh Off the Boat) and full of teenage adrenaline. I looked over and thought, This guy wants to race.

I gripped the steering wheel and revved the engine. The second the light turned green, we both stepped on the gas. Tires screeching (not sure), we were absolutely flying down Annapolis Road, locked in a serious, high-speed street race. After about a quarter of a mile, I started pulling a little bit ahead. Feeling proud of my $2,300 Honda, I glanced over to my left to give the guy a look.

My heart instantly dropped into my stomach.

The white car next to me turned on its police lights, it was an unmarked police car.

Right at that exact second, the officer flipped on his hidden lights. I thought I was completely done for. A reckless driving charge just a couple of months into living in the U.S. would have ruined my license, if not worse. But instead of pulling me over, the officer just looked right at me, shook his head, and threw his hand up in the air as if to say, “What the hell are you doing?”

He didn’t brake to pull behind me. Instead, he just accelerated past me and took off into the distance. I assumed that an actual emergency call had come in at that exact moment, saving my skin.

I sat there trembling, thinking, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this just happened.” God bless whatever emergency called that police officer away, because he was about to take my car and my freedom.

Needless to say, I drove the rest of the way home strictly under the speed limit, staring at my dashboard, praying my Accord wouldn’t run out of oil before I made it to my driveway.

June 3, 2026 America, Memories, Thoughts Post a Comment

Welcome to America

I arrived in the USA in 1998. I was just a 19-year-old kid eager to see America and explore the “New World.”

I touched down on a Friday. By Sunday, I already had a meeting lined up with a Bangladeshi who ran a Subway restaurant in Washington, D.C. He hired me on the spot, and I was scheduled to start my very first shift on Monday morning.

Come Monday morning, I arrived at the location around 7:30 AM. The store didn’t even open until 8:00, so I was pretty early. It was a freezing winter morning. Coming from Islamabad, I had absolutely no real understanding of cold. Back home, winter just meant wearing a cool leather jacket to look stylish while braving the chilly air. But the cold in D.C. was a completely different beast; it bit right through you. I was standing there wearing my Caterpillar boots, which I had proudly bought in Pakistan as my designated shoes for my new American life.

While I waited outside the Subway shop on Benning Road, I started taking in my surroundings. It was a small strip mall: a cell phone shop on one corner, a laundromat next to it, then our Subway, and a couple of other shops I can’t quite remember now. At the time, I had no idea that Benning Road was notorious for crime. To me, it didn’t matter… this was America.

I walked back and forth between the parking spots just to stay warm, but mostly because I was buzzing with excitement. I had never worked a day in my life before this, and I couldn’t wait to start. This first week was going to be my training period. I think I was being paid $275 for roughly 60 to 70 hours of work. Looking back, that was nothing, and I was being overworked, but it was my first week in the country and my first time ever earning money. Coming from a culture where you’re taught to excel and be perfect at whatever you do, I wasn’t about to complain about the pay. I just wanted to do a great job.

So, there I was: shivering in the freezing air, staring up at the city, full of hope.

Then, completely out of nowhere, three police cars with their lights flashing tore into the parking lot, followed closely by a prison van. Men leapt out of the van wearing ski masks with their guns drawn. They rushed straight into the laundromat right next to me.

I just stood there, completely frozen, trying to process what I was seeing. What is happening?

Within a span of about five minutes, the officers walked out of the laundromat with two guys handcuffed behind their backs, loaded them into the prison van, and sped away. Just like that, the parking lot was completely empty again, and I was still standing there in the cold, wide-eyed.

It turned out those guys had been dealing drugs inside the laundromat, and the police had swooped in to take them down.

I had only been in the United States for three days. No filters, no movie magic. just a raw introduction to the streets of D.C. That was my official welcome to America.