To me, Fremont will always represent the American dream and the American nightmare.
Often seen as the drive-by city between San Jose and Oakland, Fremont is a reminder of the original sins of white nationalism and American imperialism in all its hubris, violence and absurd contradictions. In 1846, John Frémont was sent by the U.S. War Department on an ambitious expedition to survey California. Like most colonizers before and after him, he took credit for discovering something that already existed. (Isn’t that wild?) The inhabitants of the land, Native Americans, were apparently not part of God’s plan. In order to ensure they’d be erased from the story, Frémont and his men presided over not one but several massacres of Indigenous people along the way to their destiny. None of his men were charged or punished for their crimes.
I wonder how Frémont and his merry band of murderers would react knowing that today, the town named after him is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the Bay Area, populated by brown and Asian immigrants who came from “shithole countries?” (It’s the little things that give me joy.)
“Freakmont,” as it is affectionately known by some, still doesn’t get love or respect. It’s viewed as the quiet, boring, suburban town where middle-class and upper-class immigrants and Silicon Valley workers reside for the expensive houses, great weather, excellent public schools and delicious “ethnic” food. We don’t have the Golden Gate Bridge, but we do have Pakwan, Shalimar and De Afghanan Kabob.
We also are the hometown of Olympic gold-winning figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.
During my youth, in the ’80s, Fremont had yet to experience the Silicon Valley tech boom and population growth. There was still plenty of affordable land and even many white people. My father had achieved the coveted “upwardly mobile” middle-class status a few years before most of his Pakistani peers and was able to invest early.
My grandparents and my mother in particular were quite social, and our old home is still fondly remembered for these festive Quran khatams and old-school music parties where community members and my aunt sang ghazals and Bollywood classics. My mother and aunts were trained by my Dadi to cook up a feast on the drop of a dime. People were always staying with us, some of them family and others just random folks who stayed six months or a year or two because they were related to my parents’ friends and needed a place to stay when first arriving in Amreeka.
To most this would seem like a chaotic halfway house for itinerant Pakistanis, but to me it was normal. I thought all homes were like this, filled with several generations of eccentric family members, religious functions mixed with social gatherings, giant pots of food, Urdu and Saturday morning cartoons, He-Man action figures and Sunday school where the religious teacher would come to our home and teach the neighborhood kids how to read the Quran.
We even had a huge wraparound yard with a separate garage and a giant eucalyptus tree in front of the sidewalk. It was Xanadu for us first-generation kids.
By 1987, my parents had achieved the Amreekan dream. They had checked off all the boxes for the barometer of Pakistani immigrant success:
A marriage.
A child.
A nice suburban home.
A Honda, Mercedes, BMW and/or Toyota. (Double check!)
A big-screen TV.
A job that somehow affords all this.
In many South Asian communities, personal fulfillment and desires take a back seat to “log kya bolingay,” the sole question that never receives an answer but nonetheless drives immigrants to participate in a relentless, panicked race that eventually leads them to their graves.
“What will people say?”
We spend our entire lives hijacked by “what will people say?” We are obsessed with it. We do everything we can to show our good “face,” even sabotaging our own happiness in the process. We give up so much for people who really don’t know us or care about us and who won’t even come to our funeral, because they’re too consumed and self-absorbed, running the same race, asking themselves, “What will people say?”
If you live in an apartment when all your peers live in a house, what will people say? If your kid was born here and went to school and was unable to get a “good job,” what will people say? If you’re above the age of 30 and you’re unmarried, what will people say?
My parents never drilled the checklist into my head. I never heard them obsess over the size of our house or compare our cars with our friends. This conversation never came up in my house, but it smothered my generation nonetheless. It was inescapable. We breathed it in, observing what our community elders valued, how they valued us, how they were judged, how they judged others, how people were ranked. All that was left was for me to go to a “good college,” get a “good degree,” get a “good job” with a “good salary,” marry a “good girl,” produce “good children” and then pass on this recipe of success to my “good children” so the goodness could be replicated until the end of times. Happiness is optional.
But happiness defined my childhood. I thought this was the norm, not the suburban exception. Ignorance, no matter how well-intentioned, is one of the unfortunate handicaps and setbacks of privilege.
Success in America, or the appearance of it, has its own toxic baggage. All eyes are on you. Especially when you have the biggest house in the community, your Dada is driving a Benz and your parents have allegedly “made it” before everyone else. Compliments are now laced with poison. Guests enjoy the haleem and the kheer after the music party, but a few ask, “Why them? Why not me?” Passive-aggressive cuts are delivered with wide smiles in between pleasantries.
During junior high, a friend from school moved into one of the multimillion-dollar mansions that started to quickly replace the vineyards on nearby Mission Hills. Many of my parents’ contemporaries had literally moved on up. Our house was now quaint compared to their spacious palaces. No complaints. I congratulated my friend on the move.
“Now we have the biggest house,” he responded. His voice was tinged with anger and pride, a cocktail mixed with vengeance and triumph, as if some cosmic wrong was righted. It shook me. I had no idea there was a competition. I wished someone had informed me while I was playing my Sega Genesis.
This essay was adapted from Wajahat Ali’s new book, “Go Back To Where You Came From.”
Often seen as the drive-by city between San Jose and Oakland, Fremont is a reminder of the original sins of white nationalism and American imperialism in all its hubris, violence and absurd contradictions. In 1846, John Frémont was sent by the U.S. War Department on an ambitious expedition to survey California. Like most colonizers before and after him, he took credit for discovering something that already existed. (Isn’t that wild?) The inhabitants of the land, Native Americans, were apparently not part of God’s plan. In order to ensure they’d be erased from the story, Frémont and his men presided over not one but several massacres of Indigenous people along the way to their destiny. None of his men were charged or punished for their crimes.
I wonder how Frémont and his merry band of murderers would react knowing that today, the town named after him is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the Bay Area, populated by brown and Asian immigrants who came from “shithole countries?” (It’s the little things that give me joy.)
“Freakmont,” as it is affectionately known by some, still doesn’t get love or respect. It’s viewed as the quiet, boring, suburban town where middle-class and upper-class immigrants and Silicon Valley workers reside for the expensive houses, great weather, excellent public schools and delicious “ethnic” food. We don’t have the Golden Gate Bridge, but we do have Pakwan, Shalimar and De Afghanan Kabob.
We also are the hometown of Olympic gold-winning figure skater Kristi Yamaguchi.
During my youth, in the ’80s, Fremont had yet to experience the Silicon Valley tech boom and population growth. There was still plenty of affordable land and even many white people. My father had achieved the coveted “upwardly mobile” middle-class status a few years before most of his Pakistani peers and was able to invest early.
My grandparents and my mother in particular were quite social, and our old home is still fondly remembered for these festive Quran khatams and old-school music parties where community members and my aunt sang ghazals and Bollywood classics. My mother and aunts were trained by my Dadi to cook up a feast on the drop of a dime. People were always staying with us, some of them family and others just random folks who stayed six months or a year or two because they were related to my parents’ friends and needed a place to stay when first arriving in Amreeka.
To most this would seem like a chaotic halfway house for itinerant Pakistanis, but to me it was normal. I thought all homes were like this, filled with several generations of eccentric family members, religious functions mixed with social gatherings, giant pots of food, Urdu and Saturday morning cartoons, He-Man action figures and Sunday school where the religious teacher would come to our home and teach the neighborhood kids how to read the Quran.
We even had a huge wraparound yard with a separate garage and a giant eucalyptus tree in front of the sidewalk. It was Xanadu for us first-generation kids.
By 1987, my parents had achieved the Amreekan dream. They had checked off all the boxes for the barometer of Pakistani immigrant success:
A marriage.
A child.
A nice suburban home.
A Honda, Mercedes, BMW and/or Toyota. (Double check!)
A big-screen TV.
A job that somehow affords all this.
In many South Asian communities, personal fulfillment and desires take a back seat to “log kya bolingay,” the sole question that never receives an answer but nonetheless drives immigrants to participate in a relentless, panicked race that eventually leads them to their graves.
“What will people say?”
We spend our entire lives hijacked by “what will people say?” We are obsessed with it. We do everything we can to show our good “face,” even sabotaging our own happiness in the process. We give up so much for people who really don’t know us or care about us and who won’t even come to our funeral, because they’re too consumed and self-absorbed, running the same race, asking themselves, “What will people say?”
If you live in an apartment when all your peers live in a house, what will people say? If your kid was born here and went to school and was unable to get a “good job,” what will people say? If you’re above the age of 30 and you’re unmarried, what will people say?
My parents never drilled the checklist into my head. I never heard them obsess over the size of our house or compare our cars with our friends. This conversation never came up in my house, but it smothered my generation nonetheless. It was inescapable. We breathed it in, observing what our community elders valued, how they valued us, how they were judged, how they judged others, how people were ranked. All that was left was for me to go to a “good college,” get a “good degree,” get a “good job” with a “good salary,” marry a “good girl,” produce “good children” and then pass on this recipe of success to my “good children” so the goodness could be replicated until the end of times. Happiness is optional.
But happiness defined my childhood. I thought this was the norm, not the suburban exception. Ignorance, no matter how well-intentioned, is one of the unfortunate handicaps and setbacks of privilege.
Success in America, or the appearance of it, has its own toxic baggage. All eyes are on you. Especially when you have the biggest house in the community, your Dada is driving a Benz and your parents have allegedly “made it” before everyone else. Compliments are now laced with poison. Guests enjoy the haleem and the kheer after the music party, but a few ask, “Why them? Why not me?” Passive-aggressive cuts are delivered with wide smiles in between pleasantries.
During junior high, a friend from school moved into one of the multimillion-dollar mansions that started to quickly replace the vineyards on nearby Mission Hills. Many of my parents’ contemporaries had literally moved on up. Our house was now quaint compared to their spacious palaces. No complaints. I congratulated my friend on the move.
“Now we have the biggest house,” he responded. His voice was tinged with anger and pride, a cocktail mixed with vengeance and triumph, as if some cosmic wrong was righted. It shook me. I had no idea there was a competition. I wished someone had informed me while I was playing my Sega Genesis.
This essay was adapted from Wajahat Ali’s new book, “Go Back To Where You Came From.”
