Being Pakistani in America

The Desis in America will lap it up. Aunts back home will snub it (in public), only after pawing it from cover to cover. Jabeen Akhtar's first novel — ‘Welcome to Americastan ' has a lot of gum for Pakistani Americans to chew on. Jabeen cocks a mischievous and playful eye on the Pakistani society in America, rousing a few laughs along the way. She de-romanticises the notions that surround the Diaspora and eschews the sentimentality that clings to it.

DIRECT CONFLICT

For second-generation middle-class Pakistanis in America, it is a tight rope between the burden of the past and the possibilities of the future. The present global scenario does not promise betterment. Osama Bin Laden has been found and murdered in Abbottabad and all Muslims, especially Pakistanis are now stigmatized by the Western gaze. But the protagonist Samira Tanveer does not wear her South Asian heritage on her sleeve and finds it amusing when others take it seriously. She does not shirk it but refuses to be a placard for the South Asian identity. The fact that somebody like her can be comfortable in both her identities baffles some of the American as well as Pakistani characters in the book.

The two worlds she comfortably traverses come in direct conflict when hit by a catastrophe. Like Jabeen, Samira works for the Government. But her name finds its way into the FBI Terror Watch list (because its post 9/11 and she is Muslim), she loses her job and she has tried to run over her ex-boyfriend. After getting out of jail, she returns to her parents' home to nurse her wounds and ego. Her life takes a complete u-turn — from writing reform policies for Congressman Jim Bailey in Washington to a state of ‘zero purpose' in North Carolina. That is when her father fixes up ‘the best daughter in the world' in a propped up job solely for her benefit.

From here on, the story concentrates on how the idiosyncratic family inadvertently acts as a buffer as she fumbles her way back on track.

PROTAGONIST'S CHARACTER

While the narrative revolves around the concerns of a twenty-something American in crisis, the questions of identity, origin and fidelity form the backdrop. In many ways, America-stan is a concept and a way of life for which Jabeen has tried to provide a slide show. She denies that the book is autobiographical but borrows heavily from her own experiences to frame the protagonist's character. For many years she wrote federal regulations at the US Environmental Protection Agency and was briefly in the news for protesting against a circus. As a PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) activist, she painted tiger stripes on her near nude body and sat in a cage in downtown Charlotte, NC hugging a “Wild animals don't belong behind bars” poster.

Born in London, she now lives in Washington DC with a television and two plants. (So says the inside cover of her book.)

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