The Healing Begins

As I sat at my dear friend’s Nuzzo and Sajjad Iqbal’s house glued to the TV, my hopes were dashed as state of after state went to Trump. Depression descended on all of us, and our earlier fears of when the Trump campaign returned, with macabre jokes about identity cards, even more open hostility than now, and basically open season on minorities. By 1 am, we finally called it a night, and while unable to sleep lay under our sheets in shock and disbelief. How did this happen? Why did this happen? What does this mean for us, for US, for the world?

This morning I started to crawl out of the tunnel of disbelief, and began to accept and process the new reality. My heart was warmed by so many American friends who reached out to me to tell me not to worry, that most Americans are good people and all that inflammatory rhetoric was just a game to channel justifiable anger. After all, anger needs a scapegoat, otherwise how to channel it? I even listened to Trump’s acceptance speech, and was surprised by the conciliatory note. Who is the real Trump I wondered? And how did he create trust in millions of Americans, not just the disenfranchised ones in the Rust Belt and other places, but even women and minorities- all the pillars we expected to bring Hilary to a victory? Will Americans ever accept a woman leader I wondered?

As a minority woman beneficiary of big city careerism and success, for the first time in my fifty years in this country I began to understand the depth of anger and resentment of people who could or would not evolve with the Knowledge Economy, spawned by our great country of course, as the largest innovator on the planet. I began to feel empathy for the first time for the forgotten majority, and wished that they too could feel the source of abundance and opportunity in this country that I feel, and leave behind resentment and blame on others. Could they, as they would say about inner city minorities, helped themselves more rather than just hoarding anger? Or were they truly helpless and would they need government help to get back on their feet? The post-WWII boom of capitalism and materialism ended suddenly for them, while it grew exponentially for a very tiny minority.

As an American Muslim, I have always felt that I am burdened by a dual identity that I didn’t ask for. I came here as the daughter of a Pakistani diplomat, stayed and married and became American. World events created this new community called American Muslim, which didn’t exist before. And as global wars and terrors – both mutually reinforcing and expanding- clouded humanity’s future, this reluctant identity became an even bigger burden. How am I supposed to be responsible for state and group and individual crimes all around the world, just because they have hijacked my faith, such an individual, personal and private matter? And yet the Trump campaign fueled this fire hurting so many in the process, physically and psychologically.

As an American, I hope we begin the path to understanding and healing together now. Anger, resentment, blame are all negative energies, and we can transform them into actions that move us forward. Let us check our privilege and our ecological footprint, let us think about how much luckier we are than the rest of the world, and let us use the gratitude of this fortune bring us together to help and create a more equitable society. Let us also remember that we are one human family, and loving just our country might seem patriotic, but as the more recent immigrants know, the planet is too fragile to sustain these archaic archetypes of nation states, wars, economic and political manipulations…it is time to write a new unifying charter for humanity.