America, the land of Novelty

The subway was grimy, brightly lit. A few rats scurried here and there, if you paid just the minutest amount of attention. The floors were sticky, and your feet made a scrunching sound as you lifted them off to take another step. Trains thundered along the tracks. Garbage was lying on them, you wondered if it flew away when the powerful steel beasts came rushing in.

We were waiting at the station to switch to the train that would take us to our destination, LaGuardia. I yawned. My brother followed suit. I moved along, motioned for him to join me, moved to a part of the station that was less crowded, and kept darting my eyes around. We had too much stuff, we could not safely keep it all, if anyone did decide to run away with it. But then, no one could run far enough or outrun us carrying a suitcase. Especially ours. My eyes darted around nonetheless, paranoid as I was.

Wind howling in the tunnel we were standing waiting at told us that our train was coming. I fidgeted, my brother became more alert, more awake.

“Please stand clear of the platform edge, and let the passengers off the train first.”

We made way, then we hefted our suitcases into and ourselves onto the train. The compartment was mildly empty. We found seats and sat down, facing the side with the stations on it. We were quite a few blocks away. We started talking.

We were going to our aunt’s. Honestly, quite possibly my favorite family member. Whenever she used to come from America to visit her sister, our mother, and their parents in Pakistan, she always brought us toys. Cool things that we could never get in Pakistan. And thus, the mythos of America as this big, cool toy store was born. Granted we visited her in between her visits, so we came to America, but we were always too young to appreciate fully the stores, and the multitude of choices, whereas, it seemed like she always chose so well when she brought us toys.

She was our cool aunt. We loved her house, which always had the greatest tasting chocolates, and the food, American food was always phenomenal, steamy, saucy pizzas. Cheese so thick that it would almost clog your throat with its gooey greatness. Pasta so pure that the penne would go down your throat like oxygen and you would be gasping for more. Even when it was Pakistani food, it was somehow different from the food of home, the food that I would later grow to appreciate so much, and somehow it would be as good, if not better. Tortillas seared on a stove, tasted a lot like rotis, and a lot like a great hybrid, evolved version. Her lawn was not gated. Her house was not gated. What was this magic. Did people not have to worry in America? We visited her for 12 months, probably spread out for as many years, and still i was in awe of the fact that her house did not have a six foot wall around it, you could see into the neighbor’s backyard, and the only thing that walled her house, and only on one side, was a heap of ferns that opened out in a large field. 

We reached the airport.