The Home Clock

Zahir Janmohamed (ZJ): From Feet in 2 Worlds, this is a Better Life, a podcast about the impact of Covid-19 on immigrants.

A few days ago, I broke the news to my parents: I am probably not going to see you this year, I told them. They live in Sacramento, California; my wife and I live in Portland, Maine; and I just don’t know how we can visit them without putting them, or ourselves, or others, at risk.

I am heartbroken. Summers are about hanging out on their porch, hearing my mom tell her crazy stories, or listening to my dad insist that Rachel Maddow is the best commentator in America.

I carry this guilt and maybe you do too, if you are the child of immigrants: Am I doing enough?

My parents are Indian immigrants from Tanzania. They gave up everything for me.

These past few weeks, I have been asking myself: Why didn’t I drop everything at the start of the pandemic to be with them? I kept telling myself that there will be time that I will visit in the summer, but now, I look at the Covid numbers in California, I am scared.

I want to be home with them again.

This is what our episode is about today.

Beenish Ahmed, a reporter based in New York City, set out to visit her Pakistani immigrant parents in Ohio early on in the pandemic.

Her journey began in May when she picked up the phone.

Beenish Ahmed (BA): I tried to sound calm when I called home. The death toll from coronavirus in New York City, where I live, had risen from five thousand, to ten thousand, and then to fifteen thousand. My husband Fareed and I were lucky.

We worked from home and barely left the apartment. We had everything we needed inside: 20 pound bags of lentils and rice; face masks and vinyl gloves. We were safe, I told my parents in Ohio…but I guess they could hear the anxiety in my voice. My dad kept telling me the same thing:

Dad: …will come and pick you up, you know, I’ll come and pick you up. I spend the night and then you hop in the car and then I’ll bring you from New York to here.

BA: It’s not just that I wanted to flee the city. I hadn’t been home in a long time…and now that we were working from home, I kept thinking we should work from home, home. From my parents’ home.

My parents, they left behind everything they knew when they came to America. My mom doesn’t have a single relative in this country. My dad has lost both of his parents and two siblings since being here — and couldn’t make it to even one of those funerals. My parents always said they stayed in America for my three brothers and I — and then we all left them. School and work took us across the world.

But as much as I wanted to be with them…there was no way I could let my dad drive into the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic. My dad is high risk when it comes to the virus…but don’t tell him that.

Dad: Beenie, I don’t like people telling me you are in the old age. I am young And I don’t like people tell I’m in an old age. As long I’m young in heart. I young.

Mom: Only, only…only he sleeps a lot. [Laughs.]

BA: That’s my mom.

Dad: That’s why I’m so young, you know, because I sleep a lot that, you know, make my body strong.

Mom: No, no that doesn’t make your body strong. It make your body lazy.

BA: But you have diabetes, I tell him. That’s another risk factor.

Dad: See I take medicine, I don’t consider myself Diabetic. As long I take medicine and my sugar is always good, normal, healthy, running around everything is fine with me. 

BA: So…yeah…you see what I’m up against.

My parents live in a suburb of Toledo, Ohio…which had far fewer cases of coronavirus than New York City. Like 150 times fewer. So my dad didn’t think all my concern made sense for them…

My dad is a landlord — nothing fancy, just a small business he runs mostly himself. It does keep him busy though…because I’m pretty sure he’s the world’s most responsive landlord. He gets a call about a broken window or a busted furnace and he’s out the door…day or night, snow or sleet.

I can’t bear the thought of him rushing out from house to house in the middle of a pandemic. Everyone is home. I tell him. Why can’t you be too?

My husband, Fareed, manages an education company that switched all its programs online. It feels so unfair that we can do all our work while staring into a screen in the impenetrable bubble of our apartment…while my dad is out there working.

Dad: I sometimes I feel like it’s not here, that bad. You know, it’s not bad here. 

BA: But not that bad doesn’t mean not at all.

This isn’t something I like to admit, but I have kind of a reputation in my family. I’m the one who’s always nagging everyone…especially my dad. I’m always telling him what to eat and how to get better sleep. I send him herbal supplements and yoga videos.

So when coronavirus broke out, I snapped into action. I set timers and called him three times a day to find out what kind of work had come up — to figure out ways for him to do it as safely as possible. I got him to pick up rent from mail boxes instead of front doors, to put off anything that wasn’t absolutely essential. I think he listened…I hope I did, but mostly, this is what I heard from my parents…

Dad: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s true. You have to be careful and you have to be careful. 

BA: My father came to America from Pakistan in 1978. He landed in the middle of a blizzard and a recession.

The story of what brought him to America is sort of random in the way of a lot of immigration stories. His eldest brother had moved to Ohio for a medical residency. And his youngest brother thought he would have better job prospects there…My dad was halfway through a masters degree in chemistry and working a promising job at a bank. He didn’t want his youngest brother to feel alone with their eldest brother so busy with a new clinic and a new family…so he dropped everything and went with him. Soon, they were helping to support their family back home.

A few years later, my dad went to Pakistan to marry my mom. She joined him in Ohio. There was a lot of talk about going back in the early years…but it never seemed like the right time. So both my parents have been working — tirelessly, endlessly — in the same corner of America ever since. My dad especially. He’s missed family roadtrips and friends’ weddings because of work. He’s barely been back to Pakistan to see his family.

He came to America to work. So when the pandemic broke out and America told him to stop working…it wasn’t easy for him to listen.

Worrying about my parents kept me up at night. I asked Fareed every other week if we could go to Ohio…we talked about it and came to the same conclusion over and over again. We couldn’t go see my parents because we couldn’t risk bringing the virus with us.

Then…on May 15th…this happened… 

Clip: It is time to reopen Ohio a little bit further. Today retail shops are back in business with mandatory and optional changes mandated by the governor…

BA: My mom is a hair stylist… I asked her not to go back to work after that order from the governor to re-open salons… 

She said she felt safe with all the new rules put in place — everyone in a mask, no one in the waiting area…but I started to check in on her too…

Mom: But she’s still still, um, when we come home. Did you wash your hand? 

BA: My nagging was in full force. Fueled by pandemic anxiety. 

Mom: Did you wear your mask? We’re wearing that…the ninety nine to five mask. No. Which one is it? Yeah. And she doesn’t understand when you’re working up public and wearing that big mask and talking to people. It’s not easy but we’re trying our best to be safe.

BA: I knew they were trying their best….but when my mom went back to work, something in me shifted. 

If she had all of these random people sit in the chair in front of her getting highlights and haircuts…then why couldn’t I sit down at our dinner table in front of her? Why couldn’t I be there with my family?

I kept coming back to the same questions: How could Fareed and I get across the country and not expose anyone to the virus if we were carriers? There had to be an answer out there. And I knew someone who would have it. An epidemiologist and friend named Flojaune Coffer. I called her up…

Flojaune Coffer: Ok, so you’re not going to be able to go the whole nine hours without stopping to use the bathroom.

BA: Uh. No…

Flojaune: But…Bathroom visits are generally low risk, so the big thing to do would be to make sure that you find one that is clean and not crowded. My recommendation, given how strictly you all have been sheltering, was to get tested when you first get there.

BA: An hour long consult with Flo, and Fareed and I felt like we could do it. We could drive across the country and keep ourselves and my parents safe.

My older brother lives in Europe and couldn’t come home because he was worried he wouldn’t be able to get back to Belgium if he did. My baby brother was already home, sent back in the mass dismissal from universities in March.

I wanted my other younger brother, Najeeb to join us. He’s an investment banker and lives in Boston. When I talked to him about it, he brought up this other issue…

Najeeb Ahmed: And like, it’s kind of like are not on your own clock, like your own, you know, home, the home clock.

BA: The home clock has an alarm that goes off for breakfast, snack time, lunch time, tea time, and… 

 Clip: “It’s America’s game! Wheel of Fortune!” 

 BA: Wheel of Fortune time, dinner time, and tea time again…before it all resets. 

Najeeb:  I just feel like I don’t have the same kind of like gears in me to, like, be productive at home when I need to be like I just don’t feel confident about it.

BA: We normally only go home for a few days at a time, usually over holidays, and when we do, my parents just want to sit on the sofa and sip chai and gupshup — Urdu for chitchat. My mom presents us with multi-part feasts we can’t help but overindulge in…and my dad shows us his new favorite Whatsapp videos of old Bollywood songs or chickens running around with sneakers on…

Which is to say…I get where Najeeb is coming from…Fareed and I had some of the same concerns. Like would our trip home turn into one never-ending tea-party? 

Dad: Ninety nine…not ninety nine point nine nine percent, 150 percent feel comfortable, that’s his own house. Whatever he likes…

BA: 150 percent, we should feel like we could do our own thing. We had my dad’s word.

That word is hubbub bubbub…one of his many catch phrases.

Dad: No hubbub bubbub.

Beenish: What does hubbub hubbub mean?

Dad: Hubbub bubbub means feel free. 100 percent. That’s what hubbub hubbub means right now. 

Beenish: Hubbub bubbub means something different every time you say it.

Dad: Yeah, this time means, apnay ghar ko apna ghar samajhay. 

Beenish: Ye aap ka aapna ghar hai…that’s another thing I hear my dad say a lot. It literally means “This is your own house.” So like, chill out, have some more samosas, put your feet up, you can relax here. My parents say this to all kinds of guests, so of course they mean it for us, their children.

BA: And so with the promise of no hububbubub…we got to packing everything we would need on the road…

Najeeb: [Rumbling.] Cooler…I don’t think I’ve even seen one of these coolers own retro things. Oh, there’s an ice pack in here.

BA: I told Najeeb about our plan and he came around to it…I’d like to think of it as a solid victory for my nagging. So that was it. We were all going to Ohio.

Our part of it is a suburb that eases into cornfields. The coolest place in town is an ice cream shop that doles out massive styrofoam cups of softserve with all kinds of confections swirled in —  from peppermint cream to pop rocks. There’s an old-timey downtown strip and one of those new outdoor malls with a fountain at every unnecessary roundabout.

Our hometown has none of the appeal of New York City…beyond the mosque that I went to as a kid and the community that came up around it…I don’t have much attachment to Ohio anymore. But that’s where we were headed…

Najeeb: Hey, sorry, I’m on the road right now, I left a little later, I apologize…

BA: That’s Najeeb…coming down from Boston in a rental car. We load up the car…and set out…

Najeeb: So if you guys want to connect your phones to the bluetooth if that’s of interest. Obey traffic laws, be alert and use voice commands while driving… Are you guys going to wear masks in the car?

Beenish: I am…

Fareed: I don’t know.

Najeeb: Why are you doing that?

Beenish: We haven’t been exposed to you.

Najeeb: There’s not a lot of social distancing that can happen in the car…

BA: I might be older than Najeeb, but he’s without a doubt more rational. I’m all words and emotions; he’s numbers and logic. 

I know he’s right about the masks… but it feels almost illicit to be in close quarters with someone other than the one person I live with…Now that this thing that had seemed impossible for so long was happening…and I started to wonder if we had made the right decision after all…I hadn’t been more than 500 meters beyond my apartment in 10 weeks. And now we were headed 500 miles away.

ZJ: We’re going to take a break from Beenish’s story…we’ll be right back. Stay with us.

[Ad Break]

ZJ: This is A Better Life? From Feet in 2 Worlds. I’m Zahir Janmohamed. Let’s get back to Beenish’s story.

BA: Somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania, we stopped at a rest stop that was half Exxon Mobile, half I-Hop…

Fareed: That’s such a weird pairing. I-Hop take-out.

Beenish: Gasoline and pancakes.

Najeeb: Yeah, gas and pancakes. What’s more American than that, Fareed?

BA: We take every precaution. Fresh gloves at rest-stops. Only food from home. We don’t interact with a single person on the way. It feels eerily quiet…but it’s also an easy drive.

I call my mom to give her an update from the road.

Beenish: Oh, we’re entering Ohio now.

Mom: Oh, really?

Beenish: Yes, right, right, right, right, now we just entered Ohio…

Mom: Which is good. 

Beenish: Which is good.

BA: Our late start set us back and by the time we get to my parents house, it’s around 2:00 A.M.

I feel like a thief sneaking into my childhood home. I put on gloves and wipe down all the door knobs, faucets, and soap dispensers we touch as we make our way into the house and into our beds. 

In the morning, we sleep in late and then inch downstairs…masks on. My mom’s made a big brunch — curried potatoes, keema, eggs, and homemade, fresh paratha. We had all been dreaming of just such a feast, but when it comes time to eat, we don’t sit down with my parents and baby brother. Instead, Najeeb, Fareed, and I eat outside.

My mom comes out onto the porch to offer me some orange juice and I pull my napkin across my face and tell her to get back. She looks hurt and retreats to the house, still holding the glass of juice. It’s for her own good, I think, but it feels awful.

The next day, we get tested for coronavirus. Najeeb, Fareed, and I self-isolate until the results come in…all negative.

That’s when we finally eat dinner together as a family…

Dad: Mango juice…this is really spice. Really?

Dad: Wonderful, we are very happy that you take your mask off. Now we can see you better.

Mom: Not only see you better, we feel that you are with us now. Before you guys were at a distance.

Dad: Feeling good now. I’m glad your test came negative. Congratulations.

Mom: I knew it would be negative, I knew it.

BA: We kids spend a lot of time in our rooms working. It’s gotten to be more normal day by day. And it’s so nice to be able to spend time with each other.

In the evenings we come together for dinner and chai, walks in the park and badminton in the backyard.

We’ve been home for more than a month now, and I still call my dad to check on him everyday when he’s at work. I ask him what he’s doing and try to give him tips on staying as safe as possible. He does not love these calls. Or my insistence that he come right home instead of his usual stop at the grocery store.

That’s his happy place. When we were kids, he would come home with arms loaded with bags of groceries…saying look what I gotchya and pulling out pineapples, guavas, and tangerines for my brothers, a box of strawberries for me. Keeping the fruit bowl full is how she shows he cares for us.

But surely he can avoid the grocery store in the midst of a pandemic…

Beenish: Tell me how you feel about that.

Dad: I feel better…I don’t go everyday now…yeah, except inventory was getting low and I thought let’s go get the mangos, you know. Especially for the guests and Najeeb likes mangoes, Fareed likes mangoes, I don’t know about you.

BA: Hear that? It’s my dad questioning my loyalty to what he calls the king of all fruit —  just because I don’t want him restocking the inventory everyday.

Anyway, I’m the one who cleans every single one of those mangoes…rinsing them three times each and laying them to dry on a dishtowel. My parents think I’m shell-shocked from having lived in the epicenter of coronavirus…and I don’t understand why they can’t take simple precautions to avoid a deadly illness…

We’re trying to find some middle ground so we can all feel at ease…I have to say am a lot more calm here than I was in Brooklyn just like my dad predicted.

This time at home has given me a better understanding of my parents’ lives without us kids here. I’ll come down from my room to get a cup of coffee and see my dad watching Pakistani news and repeating all the worst parts.

My mom’s on the other couch, her ipad on her lap and headphones in her ears, lost in a video on how to make an almond peach cake…

In normal circumstances, they go to their friends’ houses and to the mosque for Friday prayer…dress up for wedding festivities and graduation parties…

My parents keep busy, but for the most part, we kids have always been their center of gravity. We’re what anchored them to this random corner of the country…now it’s like we jumped ship and they’re still there, just treading water, looking out at the horizon for the next time we’ll be home, planning the next meal we’ll eat together, the next trip we’ll take as a family.

That’s how I see it anyway. Being home now, I feel like I finally have it in me to ask them how they feel about staying in the United States for us — and then us leaving them…

Dad: Feel great. You know, as long as you are happy. You know, we are happy. Yeah. We talk very often. In the beginning, it was tough and, you know, but slowly, slowly, we get used to at long over. Children are happy and we talk to them all very often. So we know it’s for their future. The good future. You know, good thing, you know.

BA: My brothers and I, we’re all living breathing examples of the better life that so many immigrants dream about when they come to America…but the good life here isn’t the good life in the place they left behind.

It’s true that all of us kids went to good colleges and got good jobs. But then….we left home for good.

America taught us to value individualism, ambition, the pursuit of happiness. To never let anything get in the way of our dreams. That’s not how things go in Pakistan…there, life is all about family, selflessness, and sacrificing what might be good for you for the good of the people you love.

That’s what led my parents to the U.S. and that’s what kept them here. They kept their Pakistani values by supporting their families back home. They embraced American values by encouraging us kids to strive towards our dreams. But, somewhere along the way, it’s like they got trapped between both those opposite ideas of the good life…and didn’t get to live either version of it for themselves.

Whatever was good for them…that got lost somewhere in between.

Dad: Something you gain and lose all this. That’s part of life, you know. So, you know. I’m not sorry. My children got good education alhumdulillah and all are doing good, so that’s my success.

BA: It means a lot to me to hear my dad say that…but I wish he could feel he had his own success. Or that he didn’t have to lose closeness to his family back home, and to his kids here.

My dad says he’s ok with us living halfway across the country — but I know he wishes we were closer…A house just sold in the neighborhood and my mom told me that my dad kept saying my husband and I should have bought it.

Almost everyone of our relatives in Pakistan lives with three generations under one roof. Staying with your parents, having them help with your kids, that’s what they grew up with.

That’s what we deprived our parents of by living out our dreams.

Dad: Obviously, obviously, is better if they lived close to me. She’s my daughter is close to me right now. So my view is its good. I’m happy. And I’m requesting them to stay here as long as possible.

BA: We want to stay too.

We’re still negotiating things day by day. The mangos. The masks. The mosque just re-opened and all the people my dad used to meet there for morning prayers have gone back. Every few days he asks — should I go too? It’s hard to know the answer to these things…but we’re trying to make decisions together…to keep everyone safe.

Coronavirus made me more afraid than ever of losing my parents. And that brought most of my family together for longer than we have been in years. It hasn’t been easy coming together under one roof with different ideas of how to live out a pandemic, but it feels like we’re coming together in new ways, like we’ve found a better balance between the good life in American terms and the good life in Pakistani terms.

ZJ: Producer Beenish Ahmed from Ohio.

That’s all for this episode of A Better Life.

Our executive producer is Mia Warren. Our audio engineer and senior producer is Jocelyn Gonzales. Our assistant producer is Anna Dilena. Our development coordinator is Alejandro Salazar Dyer. Our executive editor is John Rudolph.

Our theme song was composed by Fareed Sajan.

I’m Zahir Janmohamed. Thanks for listening.

Next week, please join us for a call with another immigrant elder.

And in two weeks, we’ll be back with another installment of A Better Life?, a podcast exploring how the coronavirus has changed and challenged immigrants’ ideas of America.

John Rudolph (JR): A Better Life? is produced by Feet in 2 Worlds. For fifteen years, Feet in 2 Worlds has been telling the stories of today’s immigrants and advancing the careers of immigrant journalists. Our supporters include The Ford Foundation, the David and Katherine Moore Family Foundation, the Ralph E. Ogden Foundation, the J.M. Kaplan Fund, The Listening Post Collective, an anonymous donor and listeners like you. Feet in 2 Worlds is a project of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.