<i>My American Dream</i>
I believe in second chances. I believe in this absolutely, for my life is a testament to the universe's ability to press the refresh button, to at least give back some of the things that are taken in its purging tsunamis, where the storm washes away the clutter and sometimes leaves clarity in its wake.
When I came to America as a student on a fee waiver scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, I only wanted to get my degree and go back home. After my second year, I took some time off to work illegally as I ran out of money. I came to Milwaukee, and soon a semester turned into two, a year turned into five, as I became a well-paid supervisor at the Miller Brewery. My employer, my co-workers, my friends treated me as an American, and I felt like one. Not having papers was just a technicality. I was living my own American dream, a blue-collar worker's paradise with no stress, fast cars, big TV, weekend getaways and nightly barbeques. No stress, until that knock on my door six months after 9/11.
"Mr. Fuad Hassan, this is Homeland Security. Let us in, or we will break down your door." My American dream ended with those words, to be reborn again in a Jewish butcher shop.
Blood red. Meat coming out of the meat grinder; that's the only image that now comes to my mind when I think of my first day at the shop, the Weinstein Butcher and Deli. My first day at the shop, I was only allowed to man the meat grinder. I stood behind the meat grinder, fed the chunks of meat into the machine, and saw the red remains come out.
"Good work, Fuad," Mr. Weinstein smiled at me, his eyes barely visible behind his long beard and thick glasses. After three years of being locked up in the downtown detention center with gangbangers and pimps who spoke in monosyllables; whose curses and grunts were accentuated with a kick or a punch, the pleasant voice and demeanor of my boss was tonic for my caged soul, a springboard from which my prison battered senses could recover and find the glimmer of the optimism I felt before I was incarcerated. I smiled back with enthusiasm. The blood in my hands was not refuse; on that first day out of the center and at work, at the only place that would hire me after I won my appeal to the Immigration Tribunal, the blood felt like the birth remains of newborn possibilities and opportunities, my new American dream.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments