It’s Hard Being Foreign: A True Story of Embarrassment

It’s super hard being foreign. The daily taunts from Chase Stone, “Why don’t you go back to your country on your camel?” or Betsy Jean Clay (a fat girl with issues of her own) and Ginny Bryson trying to get you to date Amol Patel, a tall Indian Gujrati guy who you couldn’t have married even if you had wanted to because Muslim and Hindu fraternization was total honor killing material.

Then one day, it got worse. Nathan, a Jewish kid whose father was a surgeon and general golden boy of the 6th grade asked me, “Do you sacrifice goats?” I said “no” because I didn’t think I did (we actually do on a holiday called baqra eid…oops). What had tragically happened was that mom and dad had decided that fresh goat was where it’s at so they killed a goat on our garage on Deerwood Lane. My neighbor Chelsea, a girl whose hair was as bright and flaming as a June morning, had found a goat’s head that my parents had disposed of in the trash. Her cocker spaniel, which had a habit of leaving its business in our backyard, had brought the neighbors a “surprise” so to speak. And so, a haunting and disturbing myth followed me throughout my time at Carlisle School.

--By Mariam, Also MS1 at UTCOM