Tag: years

December 18, 2025 Thoughts Post a Comment

27 Years Later- The Ghost of December 4th

It was December 4, 1998—a Friday. I remember it felt crisp, cold, and entirely new.

I arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport ready to start a new life, stepping off the plane in my Caterpillar boots and a leather jacket. I landed in America with a heart full of hope, wishing for something better, even if I wasn’t entirely sure what that future actually looked like. All I knew for certain, deep in the back of my mind, was that I had left Pakistan behind for good.

Looking back now, 27 years later, I sometimes wonder what it was all about. The “net result” of moving here has been a mix of good and bad. Naturally, I try to concentrate on the good, but the difficult parts I didn’t see coming have left their mark too.

I still remember that morning vividly. After clearing immigration and getting the Green Card papers sorted, I walked out into an empty airport. I had flown in on Saudi Arabian Airlines; we had stopped in New York for a bit before the final leg to D.C.

Walking through the parking lot, everything caught my eye. I remember seeing a Mitsubishi Eclipse and thinking, *“Wow, what a car.”* A friend of my father’s picked us up and took us to Bladensburg. I didn’t waste any time. Just two days later, I found a job in Washington D.C. working at a Subway sandwich shop on Benning Road. It didn’t take long to realize that Benning Road was notorious—a rough area that taught me some hard lessons quickly.

That was my “Welcome to America.”

January 26, 2021 Islam, Islamabadi, Pakistan, Thoughts Post a Comment

73 Years

I wrote this last year but never posted it.

today is the 73rd year of the independence of Pakistan. The country I left as 19 years old looking for a better future. I did find religion and a future but being away from Pakistan left a gaping hole in my personality. this will be something I need to come to terms with but alhamdulillah I was born in Pakistan and lived as a Pakistani and still love Pakistan.

what religion gave me was a sense of no nationalism. Islam doesn’t preach that. but I feel that we as Pakistanis overdo it. religion is something that needs to be lived, not just professed. we pay lip service to the religion but don’t act on it. this is true in current-day Pakistan or maybe many Muslim countries but I am talking about Pakistan. what has destroyed Pakistan in the last 50 years is the culture that was elevated above religion, the nonaccountability of religious authority, the use of religion by political forces. this created a disconnect between a normal man and the accountability that needs to exist at every level. What we still wait for in Pakistan is a better day. Inshallah it will come, not sure when. Allah helps those who help themselves.

we have institutionalized corruption, given it religious NRO. you can do corruption and you are fine. the Law is for the poor. It will keep on going for the poor. The rich are untouchable. The movie Elysium, it was something that portrayed the plight of the people while the rich lived out of reach and out of reality.

Maybe this is a rant and I am just venting but we tried. We tried when the time was right but the rich won the race. I remember when i was in Islamabad there was a Landrover showroom in Blue Area, I used to think about who buys cars from there. Never saw much Landrovers on the road. I did see a lot of Land cruisers which were a status symbol and the UN had a lot of them in Islamabad also. So I assumed it is in the garages of the rich people. Come to my last visit in 2015 and the roads were littered with high-end cars. The roads were never fixed but the Rich got Audis, Mercedes, Landcruisers and alot of Range Rovers.

Long Live the Halal earned money.

August 6, 2020 Thoughts Post a Comment

Looking back

Moving to USA in 98 had put me in a unique position to jump on the bandwagon of the Internet Era. I was young and full of plans and idea. There were opportunities. Heck I saw the movement from dialup to broadband, I lived through the Napster era, I had an account on AOL, I was lucky to get an invite to Gmail early. I had my first mobile phone and did not have to pay for caller ID. the current generation cannot even imagine what life changing events we went through. moreover, I was a Muslim who moved to USA and lived through the after math of the 911. dealt with a lot of interesting things and people.

22 years later since I moved to America as 19 years old, I look back and think what happened, did I miss the opportunities.

Not Sure, maybe I will never know.