My parents and their families were in India at the time and did not migrate. A few family members on my parents side were already living in Pakistan before the division of the two countries took place. They continued to live in India. A couple of family members from my mother's side migrated to Pakistan in the 1960's after they married in India.
My parents, sibling, and I migrated to India the early 1980's. The journey to the U.S. was a struggling one. It was not as people claimed to be. Life was pretty different compared to being in India. The reason was that we were so far away from our culture and our people. I guess maybe part of that was that we had settled in a town which consisted of mostly Catholic Americans. We could not speak our own language outside because no one had ever heard of or spoke it. It was sad, because Urdu is such a beautiful language, and we could only express our thoughts in English. Because of the western culture, many muslim families did not teach their children how to read, write, or be able to speak their own mother tongue. Luckily for me, I could still read and write in my mother tongue.
There were churches everywhere and you had to drive several miles to find a mosque. It was hard to tell when was Ramdaan or Eid. Only through our relatives in India, did we get the facts. We were not able to perform our daily prayers at work. Catholics and other christians didn't understand the concept of daily Islamic prayer.
So, it was not the best experience we had, but we certainly learned a lot from our mistakes. And that is, don't leave your country when you have everything that you need. We shouldn't be that greedy when Allah gave us everything. That's what happens when we shun Allah's gift, and look for greener pastures away from our homelands.
My parents and their families were in India at the time and did not migrate. A few family members on my parents side were already living in Pakistan before the division of the two countries took place. They continued to live in India. A couple of family members from my mother's side migrated to Pakistan in the 1960's after they married in India.
ReplyDeleteMy parents, sibling, and I migrated to India the early 1980's. The journey to the U.S. was a struggling one. It was not as people claimed to be. Life was pretty different compared to being in India. The reason was that we were so far away from our culture and our people. I guess maybe part of that was that we had settled in a town which consisted of mostly Catholic Americans. We could not speak our own language outside because no one had ever heard of or spoke it. It was sad, because Urdu is such a beautiful language, and we could only express our thoughts in English. Because of the western culture, many muslim families did not teach their children how to read, write, or be able to speak their own mother tongue. Luckily for me, I could still read and write in my mother tongue.
There were churches everywhere and you had to drive several miles to find a mosque. It was hard to tell when was Ramdaan or Eid. Only through our relatives in India, did we get the facts. We were not able to perform our daily prayers at work. Catholics and other christians didn't understand the concept of daily Islamic prayer.
So, it was not the best experience we had, but we certainly learned a lot from our mistakes. And that is, don't leave your country when you have everything that you need. We shouldn't be that greedy when Allah gave us everything. That's what happens when we shun Allah's gift, and look for greener pastures away from our homelands.
I need to make a correction. I meant to say that my family and I migrated to the U.S. in the early 1980's. Thank you.
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