Nonfic Blog

Perhaps my most traumatizing travel experience occurred in India during my family’s 2016 trip to visit my maternal grandparents and relatives. The visit itself wasn’t traumatizing, but rather a series of events that occurred on a “mini-trip” we had all taken to visit India’s capital city -- New Delhi. To summarize, I had a series of 3 allergic reactions -- all within 24 hours. When exposed to some of my allergens, I go into a state anaphylaxis -- being unable to breathe as my airways are slowly closing due to swelling. Anaphylaxis is oftentimes treated with epinephrine (found in EpiPens); however, whenever epinephrine is used, a patient’s vitals must be closely monitored at a hospital. My severe allergies that cause anaphylaxis include peanuts, walnuts, and cashews. My less severe allergies include melons and other tree nuts. I also have a variety of food intolerances including dairy and eggs. In conclusion, my body quite literally hates the most popular ingredients, so I have to be so...

  My family from both my mother and father’s side are devout Muslims. In turn, I was raised in a household and in a community full of devout Muslims. We fast during Ramadan, pray 5 times a day, and abstain from eating pork. While these examples are daily occurrences of Muslim “traditions” we follow in our lives, they quite honestly unfaze me because of how normalized they have become in my life. A Muslim “tradition” -- more accurately a holiday -- I enjoy is Eid. From waking up at 6 am due to sheer excitement to rushing to ToysRUs after the mosque prayer to buy new toys as an Eid gift, I grew up loving Eid. It was my version of Christmas since my family does not celebrate “American” holidays.  Muslims actually get two Eids (making it better than Christmas in my personal opinion): one after Ramadan and one around 3 months later the “Ramadan Eid”. While the Ramadan Eid feels like the “bigger one” since it culminates an entire month of fasting, it is meant to be the “lesser” of ...

 On my desk sits a glass picture frame. The frame itself is not of much importance to me, but rather the picture inside of it. Upon first glance to a stranger, the picture seems quite ordinary, just a little girl with a man who appears to be her father—the both of them smiling. The image seems to be taken inside of a photo booth with the little girl on her father’s lap. The little girl has jet-black boy-cut hair with a single clip in to pull back some of her bangs, and she is wearing a shirt with a giant flower on the front. Her father is wearing a Nike pullover and wire-rimmed glasses. Spoiler: I am the little girl.  The picture captures a moment in my childhood when I was a mere five years old. The picture is a memory from the first trip my father took me on by himself. This was the first time I had been away from my mother for more than a couple days, so my father had tried to make it extra special. I had begged him to take me to the carnival happening a couple blocks from ...

  When I was younger, I quite honestly despised my name -- more accurately the way it was commonly mispronounced by those around me who did not come from my culture. I hated the way my classmates would make “fat” jokes out of my name from kindergarten to around second grade. It was frustrating to me that even the so-called “American” version of my name was difficult to pronounce for some individuals and that I would have to constantly be correcting them. It’s Fuh-TEE-muh not Fat-uh-muh. I’ve said this exact sentence at least a hundred times.  I hated the fact that I could never find my name on keychains at souvenir shops, or that I did not know of anyone famous who shared my name. I felt like an outsider to American culture and different than the rest of my classmates. Perhaps the most awkward encounters would be when adults would ask “where I was from,” and I would explain that while my parents immigrated from India, I was born in the United States. It was uncomfortable being...