Brown Boy: a Memoir by Omer Aziz

Author:Omer Aziz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2023-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

14. Future Perfect

Later that summer, my father was still unimpressed by my plans to go to Paris. He was walking around the house, hair slicked back like a beret, uttering criticisms under his breath. For a few weeks, he had just assumed this was a fanciful goal—no one from around here went to Paris—that would not come to fruition. I proved him wrong. Now I was spending all my free time reading the history of France, teaching myself French, and studying maps of Paris.

My father, irritated, came into my room.

“Why are you going to Paris?” he asked. “You can stay here, maybe work somewhere. Instead, why not transfer to a university closer to home?”

“I need to go,” I said, getting anxious. “I want to broaden my world. Europe will be a good experience.”

“But how will it help you?”

I brooded on the question. For my father, the idea of Paris was too utopian. It would not translate into a job or into any currency, so what was the point of going? University was for employment, not to discover yourself or have adventures, and it didn’t matter what “Europe” or “the West” or “Paris” symbolized.

He grumbled and mumbled.

“You’re going to university and making so little money.”

“I have a scholarship,” I said.

“Your books won’t help you pay the bills. And anyways, what do you have to show for yourself after two years of studying?”

I had heard verbal criticisms all my life and tuned out these comments. I also knew that this grumpy, stern-faced treatment was how fathers expressed themselves in our world.

Dada was still angry. “You’re going away to Paris.… How will we eat?”

I felt the guilt in my throat. I knew he was exaggerating, but still, the idea of creating hardship for my family gnawed at me. Maybe it was better to kill off these dreams before they consumed me. Maybe I should just stay local.

A week later, my father entered my room again. I was surprised to see him.

“My friend,” he said, “your uncle Mahmood. Do you remember him?”

I shook my head.

“He has a relative of his, another uncle, who lives in Paris. He said he would take you in until you found a place.”

I was elated. Finding somewhere to live in Paris was no simple task, now Dada was coming through for me. I wondered about this uncle, where he lived, what he did, but was too relieved to ask more questions. The uncle was Pakistani; that and his passing familiarity with my father were enough for him to open his door to me. Later, I understood that this uncle was part of that immigrant network of distant family friends who were sprawled across the globe—the uncles and auntees who had migrated to Europe and North America, existing in the background and responding when called upon. This was our social capital: the mechanics, airport workers, cabdrivers, small-shop owners who had arrived a generation before and were now willing to take in a young student from halfway around the world.

It would be easier to find a flat when I was in France.

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