Category: Memories

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.

June 3, 2026 Islamabadi, Memories, Pakistan, Thoughts Post a Comment

The Kodak Bag, Wasta, and Walking Across Islamabad

Before coming to the “land of the free,” I was born and raised in Pakistan. There was a brief stint where we moved to Bahrain because my father was posted there for the bank he worked for. By the time we returned to Pakistan, I was around 15 or 16 years old, right at that awkward age where you’re trying to figure out where you fit in.

Fitting in academically turned out to be the first hurdle. I couldn’t get admission into any high school because my 10th-grade matriculation exam grades just weren’t that great. This is where the classic Pakistani concept of “reference” (better known as Wasta or Sifarish) comes into play. It’s that age-old system where you find somebody who knows somebody, and you pull a favor. In my case, that favor came from a very good friend of my father’s whom we called ChaCha. He happened to know the principal of Islamabad Model College for Boys (IMCB for short) in the F-7/3 sector.

Just like that, I was in.

But I didn’t even have a proper school bag. All of our belongings were coming from Bahrain on a ship in a container, a process that took months. So, every day, I went to school carrying my books in a free promotional bag someone had given us. It was a bright yellow Kodak bag. It stuck out like a sore thumb, but I carried my stuff in it day after day without a choice.

Life at IMCB: Early Buses and Long Walks

Despite the rocky start, life at IMCB was amazing. It holds some of the best memories of my life, and some of the people I still call friends today are from that exact time period.

Getting there was a daily saga. I took the bus every morning. For half the year, the bus would come incredibly early; for the other half, it would arrive late, just 30 minutes before school started. Those early days were brutal. I had to wake up at the crack of dawn to get to the bus stop by 6:30 AM, which itself was a 20-minute walk from our house.

Then there were the days when I wouldn’t take the bus back home, usually because I skipped school or left early for whatever reason. Coming back on my own left me with only two real options:

  1. The Long Way Around: Walk an hour from the school, cut behind the Blue Area next to the Saudi Pak Tower, and catch the 120 van to F-10.
  2. The Scenic Route: Walk along the main Margalla Road, catch a Suzuki van to the intersection where F-9 Park started, walk the entire one-kilometer length of the park, and then walk another kilometer all the way home.

Because there was no public transport on our side of town, and because there were times when I literally didn’t even have the money for a fare, walking wasn’t just a choice, it was the only option.

Hitchhiking and Reality Checks

Looking back, those days of walking from the college all the way home were incredibly interesting. I’d be walking without water, trying to hitchhike a ride across F-9 Park.

Sometimes, luck was on my side and strangers would pull over. Once, I ended up getting a ride in a police van, which was basically a transport bus with no open windows. That was a surreal experience. Another time, we lucked out and got a ride in a brand-new Honda Civic VTI, which was the car to have at the time.

My walks often took me past Froebel’s, an elite school that, at the time, was attended by the son and daughter of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Walking through those ultra-wealthy Islamabad neighborhoods, you couldn’t help but wish you lived like that or had that kind of money. But we didn’t.

That was just the reality of being brought up middle-class in Pakistan. Honestly, thank God for those experiences. They keep me well-grounded to this day.

The Round Market and 500 Rupees

Living in Islamabad back then really was a beautiful experience. Right across from my school was the Round Market, home to an ice cream shop called Hot Spot. That was the spot for all the kids who were dating, hanging out, or showing off their cars.

As for me? I barely had 500 rupees a month in pocket money. We couldn’t afford to hang out there. If we bought ice cream once, the entire month’s budget was completely wiped out.

But looking back, I wouldn’t trade that bright yellow Kodak bag or those long walks across the city for anything. They made me who I am.