Week #9: An American, an Afghan, and an Indian Walk into a Pizzeria
About a five-minute walk from the AirBNB that I have been staying at is a strip of restaurants and stores collectively referred to by locals as the “GK II, M Block Market;” it is not, admittedly, an overly catchy name, but the locality does contain some great restaurants (none of which, I have recently found out to my eternal dismay, appear to accept international credit cards. Thank God for the buying power of the American dollar, I suppose). It is this place that I found myself traversing one night with two of my closest friends from MAP’s outreach office: Saalima, a Muslim-born Indian citizen who delights in making fun of me for just about everything that I say, or do, or eat, or gesticulate at, and Ameena, an Afghan refugee who has lived in Delhi since the age of thirteen and can usually be found egging Saalima on while I am being berated for this thing or that thing or what have you. Saalima is twenty-six, holds two advanced degrees, and can always be seen wearing brightly colored head scarves and fashionable glasses. Ameena is fairly tall, is only on the rarest of occasions seen with anything but a warm smile on her face, and, at twenty-one, is significantly younger than either Saalima or me. Like myself, Saalima is an intern at the Migration & Asylum Project, while Ameena works double duty as the outreach office’s receptionist and Afghan translator. In the weeks that I have spent in Delhi, the pair have become very dear to me.
With these two delightful weirdos in tow, I ended up in a local Indian pizza joint on an oppressively humid Saturday night. Before this actually happened, however, I was badgered and berated for roughly twenty-five minutes as my friends tried to weasel out of me which specific restaurant it was that I wanted to go to (“I’m fine with anything! You guys know the places around here, just pick something that you know is good and we’ll go! Makes no difference to me!” I tried to argue in response, to no avail. Throughout my time here, I have found many in this country to be accommodating to a fault when it comes to getting food into a foreigner’s stomach). After this had gone on well past the point where our conversation was even moderately comical, we collectively agreed to simply walk over to the market and go to a restaurant that we all believed looked sufficiently appetizing; as sidewalks are practically nonexistent in India, this meant a lot of bobbing and weaving into the craziest traffic God or man has ever imagined while my friends kept asking “What about this one Tyler, what about this one Tyler?” To end my torment, I eventually just pointed to the nearest pizza place and said, “Let’s just do this one! This one looks good! Yes, I’m sure, I’ve made up my mind, I am an American and Americans like pizza!” Satisfied, my friends and I entered “Tossin Pizza.”
I embarrassed myself almost immediately while trying to be friendly towards our waitress, who was wearing a black and white baseball cap with the logo of the New York Yankees smack dab on the front of it. I had only meant to inquire if our waitress was a Yankees fan or if this was part of the restaurant's uniform, which, much to my bewilderment, seemed to cause some panic in the waitress’s eyes. After Saalima attempted to translate for me, I was informed that this look of panic was due to the fact that a white man was asking the waitress questions that she didn’t really understand. I felt somewhat guilty about this afterward, but I am not entirely sure how to adjust my interactions with people in this country going forward; there are just some things that a person cannot really change about themselves, and my pale exterior is one of them, for better or for worse.
Anyway, the most important takeaway from our actual consumption of food is that Indians eat their pizza dipped in ketchup, an act which I would label as being a crime against humanity, not least of which because Indian ketchup itself lacks much of the sweetness that is a hallmark of ketchup back in the United States. The pizza itself was perfectly adequate; my friends and I partook of one that was mushroom pesto and another labeled “Texas BBQ Pizza,” which contained the best barbeque sauce I have had since leaving America some two-ish months ago. Unfortunately, the same degree of quality cannot be attributed to the mojitos that we ordered, which were simply awful (though I ended up downing a couple of them anyway as the night progressed).
“What’s your favorite and least favorite part about living in Delhi?” I had meant this as a sort of throw-away question meant to drum up some worthwhile conversation between us, but my inquiry soon took a very dark turn as my two friends sat in progressively awkward silence as they racked their brains, trying to think of something nice to say about the city each of them had lived in for roughly the past nine years of their lives. Ameena was the first to break the silence: “Honestly, I cannot really think of a favorite thing about living here. I have not had a very nice time here.” Ameena had come to Delhi while she was barely even a teenager, her family having fled Afghanistan to avoid persecution at the hands of the Taliban. In a new country where neither she nor her family members really understood much about the local customs or languages, Ameena put it upon herself to help look out for her parents and siblings, teaching herself English and working to help her family obtain refugee cards from UNHCR, which thankfully they were eventually able to obtain. After an Afghan friend had settled in Lincoln, Nebraska, Ameena has been trying to get herself an interview to be able to come live in the United States; this was several years ago, and she is still waiting to even get her foot in the American door. Saalima’s answer to my question was even bleaker, though I have been asked not to share it in any particular detail on the off chance that someone reading this ends up attributing it to the “real” Saalima. Needless to say, India has a very complicated relationship with its Muslim population that has not always made life here particularly easy. The stark contrast between how individuals of different religions, cultures, and castes are treated by the country and its government was cited by both of my friends as one of the drawbacks of living in India throughout their lifetimes.
“What does it mean to be an Indian/Afghan?” It’s a spiritual cousin to my first question, but it is one that I have found tends to solicit far more interesting answers that are themselves particularly revealing about the people that I come across. For example, on my long, dramatic car ride to submit my relevant visa-related materials for the FRRO, I asked one of MAP’s attorneys this same exact question; he took a very long pause before saying, “To be Indian means to, at times, think with one’s heart over one’s head. I think this is why (Prime Minister) Modi has become such an attractive figure for a lot of people here, particularly regarding the way he speaks about the country’s Muslim population.” Saalima said she would have to think much harder in order to answer this particular question, but she did mention that “It’s getting harder and harder to live here” before trailing off. Ameena’s answer regarding her own country was far more animated: “People in India and outside of the country have a lot of misconceptions about Afghans. The image that I think comes in a lot of peoples’ minds are that of a terrorist, but we are not terrorists.” “So being an Afghan abroad almost forces you to be a bit of an ambassador for your country?” I ask in response. Ameena nods and answers “Yeah, sort of.”
On this overwhelmingly happy note, our conversation turned to much lighter things: the proper level of sweetness that ketchup should be (no consensus was reached on this point), what the name of that “trash animal that has the hands in the United States” was (“Raccoon,” I reply), how many slices of pizza I thought that I could probably consume if forced to (the answer from personal experience: approximately 12, though I hiccup quite a bit afterwards). After dinner, the three of us then returned to my AirBNB and played a game called “Ludo,” which I stupidly remarked was like “Indian Parchesi” before realizing that Parchesi was, in fact, a Westernized version of Ludo. Regardless, I lost the game pretty badly; Saalima had a particularly lucky streak as the night progressed and delighted endlessly in sending Ameena and my game pieces back to their starting point whenever she could. Ameena came in second place, while I arrived unceremoniously in dead last. It was a very fun night, one of the most fun nights that I have had in a very long time since coming to this country. It can be very lonely, living in a swelteringly hot place about as far away from home as you can get on planet Earth. I am very fortunate to have friends here who delight in torturing me and building me up in equal measure.
- Tyler Brooks 7/22/2024
