Photo by Blake Guidry on Unsplash

Getting my first passport was bittersweet. Sweet because I was traveling outside Pakistan for the first time in my life. Bitter because the passport represented everything I hated about myself and where I grew up.

I grew up with complicated feelings towards my motherland.

When I looked around, all I saw were problems.

There was the class system…

Low-income domestic workers were considered sub-human. Social striations meant that it was acceptable to shout orders at your maid. In my home, we had separate metal cutlery that was reserved for the maid. She couldn’t eat off the same glassware that the family used. She couldn’t even sit at our dinner table; she ate sitting cross-legged on the floor instead.

My mother had no malicious intent — in her world, this was normal. But it never sat well with me.

There was the fear of minorities…

With a 98% Muslim majority, Christians and Hindus were considered a museum piece — safe behind glass doors but fair game for us to comment upon. They were different. They had oddball customs and rituals that made no sense. They weren’t one of us.

But I had no qualms about sitting and eating at the same lunchroom table as the Hindu girl in my class — despite the raised eyebrows and hushed whispers.

And then there was the patriarchy…

Women were lesser than men — it was even written into the law. A daughter was entitled to half the inheritance her brother was entitled to. A woman’s witness in a court of law was worth half of a man’s. A girl’s path was predetermined — some education and then arranged marriage, followed by blissful motherhood.

I didn’t long for marriage. I didn’t mentally cherish the day I would birth a cherubic baby — and coo at it while my in-laws stood proudly. All I wanted was to leave Pakistan — and build a new life for myself in North America — the promised land where I would finally be free.

Photo by Sheri Hooley on Unsplash

Even when leaving Pakistan, my Pakistani passport continued to persist in my life as a symbol of oppression.

Travel was nerve-wracking because the accursed green passport meant that I was scrutinized at airports. The harmless-looking girl with messy black hair and baggy jeans and the rock and roll sticker on her backpack may be a terrorist, after all.

Every time I traveled with my Pakistani passport, I was acutely aware — to the level of paranoia — of how people were perceiving me. Handing my passport to a milky-complexioned agent, I could barely draw breath. I wasn’t guilty but I am sure I looked guilty. Who knew what questions — cutting or guarded — they would lob at me? The slightest misstep could send me packing.

I’d see people at airports that looked like me. People who I knew came from where I did. But while I spoke English crisply and fluently, they struggled through words when ordering coffee. While I wore jeans and a tee-shirt, they were dressed in full satin regalia and gold bangles, attesting to their status as well-kept Pakistani housewives. And while I was hiding my green passport in my purse, they proudly carried blue passports.

What had they done to deserve the monumental blessing God had bestowed on them? What had they done to be allowed entry into the blue palace?

I had worked hard, skinned my elbows and knees, refined my accent, all to assimilate, to be accepted. To be one of the chosen ones.

When I first got my Canadian permanent resident card, I was thrilled.

Sure, I would still carry my Pakistani passport until I was eligible to apply for Canadian citizenship. But I had misplaced hope that maybe the PR card was the global stamp of approval I needed to blend in with the other passengers carrying blue passports and carefree expressions.

The first time I traveled with my Canadian PR card was to Pakistan. I decided to fly Air China and transit through Beijing. When asked to present my identification, I proudly handed over my PR card. And was greeted with a puzzled look. The laminated red card couldn’t pass for a passport. As desperately as I wanted it to.

As soon as I handed over my Pakistani passport, shame-faced, I was pulled out of the line-up and ushered over to a faraway corner. The other passengers, forming a fairly long line at this point, stared at me. Or I thought they did, anyway.

I became a Canadian citizen in July of 2015.

It was one of the proudest moments of my life. The day after our citizenship ceremony, my husband and I lined up at the Canadian passport office fifteen minutes before it opened. Thirteen years after leaving Pakistan and six years after arriving in Canada as an international student, I had finally earned the ultimate prize.

We paid $250 to rush our passports to have them in hand in two days. No, we weren’t traveling anywhere. We just needed to hold our babies in our hands. What was $250 when we had already paid our dues in long years of human capital?

Once I had my Canadian passport, it was time to renounce my Pakistani citizenship.

I had envisioned the day my entire life. But I hadn’t anticipated the difficulty of the process. The country that had made me feel like an outsider my entire life balked at officially divorcing me.

I spent hours at the Pakistani consulate reassuring my former countrymen that yes I did indeed want to renounce my citizenship. Yes, I was aware that I could choose to retain dual citizenship. Thanks but no thanks. And no, my reasons were really none of their damn business.

I was asking to leave the tribe. Like a neglectful foster parent collecting government checks for malnourished children, Pakistan didn’t want to discharge its claim over me. After all, I was a potential taxpayer.

It took me six months to officially renounce my Pakistani citizenship.

Image by CJ from Pixabay

It has been seven years since I went back to Pakistan.

They are right when they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder. Sometimes, I flash back to warm memories from my childhood in Pakistan.

Spending summer vacations with my cousin-sister, only 17 days older than me, talking and giggling and wondering and dreaming. Ice-cream trips with my parents to enjoy velvety condensed milk cream from local cows, churned in a pot forged with sand. Dusky afternoons at the beach in private huts that could be rented at a pittance.

I wonder if I’ll ever go back.

When I surrendered my Pakistani passport, I made the bold declaration that I wouldn’t. But life is long. And time dulls wounds. I am no longer that angry girl that felt so powerless. Today, I have control.

I see friends that I grew up with actively working to make a difference. Whether it’s launching bold, innovative startups, championing social change, rallying around NGOs, or crusading on social media, there are those who carry a deep love for their country and refuse to give up on it.

I look at them and feel confused. But I also know everyone’s journey is different. Theirs took them on a path of passion, of seeing problems and needing them fixed. Mine took me on a path of resentment and self-sustained anger. It doesn’t make me any less honorable. It makes me human.