Independence Day or WW III?

Independence or WW III?

About ten years ago, our Pakistani neighbor, Azlan—a gentle man with sad eyes whose wife was deaf and non-verbal, and whose six children (two were autistic) lived with them in a three-bedroom apartment—saw that my wife was admiring his outfit (shalwar kameez). On his next visit to Karachi, he bought her the same outfit and left it in a gift bag outside our apartment door. The outfit fit her perfectly. She tried to pay Azlan for it, but he refused to take any money. He even refused to take a box of Belgian chocolates she brought to his apartment as a thank-you gift. “When someone from Pakistan gives you a present, you don’t even have to say thank you, let alone buy candy. Just accept it and use it in good health,” said Azlan.

But this little anecdote is not about Azlan, or my wife, or Belgian chocolates, or Pakistan. It’s about Azlan’s cousin who came to visit during the summer, around this time, five or six years ago. When the 4th of July fireworks lit up his bedroom and the windowpane started glowing red, white, and blue, he climbed into the closet and began praying. Azlan asked my wife and me to assure his cousin, whose name escapes me now, that the fireworks were celebrating Independence Day and that World War III had not actually begun.

I tried to explain to the cousin that the tradition started on the first anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1777. Philadelphia celebrated with 13 rockets, each representing one of the original colonies. The idea was to mark the nation’s birth with a “fiery” display, but the cousin refused to listen and kept on praying. Two days later, he went back to Pakistan. Azlan shared his cousin’s parting words with me: “What starts as fireworks in America turns into a full-fledged war in other parts of the world.”

Azlan is no longer our neighbor—he and his family moved to Alabama to escape the humidity before I could convince him that New York’s humidity is nothing compared to Alabama’s. But I was thinking about him on Thursday as I stood on the roof of our building taking photos of the fireworks, which looked particularly spectacular this year. I wondered what happened to him and his family. I wondered about his cousin. I imagined Azlan smiling when I told him that my wife still wears the shalwar kameez he gifted her.

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’til next time.
ak