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.
