[Reader-list] saturday in new york

[rehan ansari]

It was heartwarming the anti-war protest in New York
City on Saturday. I am glad because standing in the
cold, many degrees below freezing, we all needed all
the warmth we could get. I had a feeling that by going
to the protest I was going to be part of the largest
assembly of people in my experience. 

The protest centered around the UN Headquarters
building, which lies on 1st Avenue and 41st street.
The closest I could get to it was 68th street. People
flooded all of 3rd avenue, 2nd avenue and 1st avenue,
between 41st and 68 streets. When a cheer would rise
it would travel 20 blocks and lift you up. 

After the protest I went to my sister's home in
Brooklyn where she and her husband are packing to
leave for Lahore. As I surfed channels I noted CBS
News reported 500,000 people, and CNN's grudging
admission of  "several hundred thousand" people at the
protest. My sister, Saniya was filling kitchen
utensils into boxes and talking about her work in New
York. She was a host for a television show produced
for Zee about NRIs, and currently worked in
advertising. She said she is thinking about the move
to Lahore as a "sabbatical" from work. 

Baber, walked into the apartment with beer. Baber came
to the US at 17, attending Philadelphia College of
Textiles; upon graduation working with Nike in
Portland (Oregon) and then landing a job with
Dyersburg, a garment manufacturing corporation in New
York. Dyersburg went bankrupt last year. He went into
business for himself, which he found to be a wonderful
change in his life. However, with the new Registration
law the authorities are no longer tolerating out of
status Muslims in America. The fact that his H-1 visa
has lapsed when his corporate job ended, he can only
stay in the US with short term business visas. So its
goodbye to living in New York. He can only come here
for business. 

Friends began to trickle in, as this was Baber and
Saniya's last night in their Bergen Street apartment,
the scene of many parties over the last four years.
Their place is not large, it's a one-bedroom, but they
do have a rooftop deck, and their hearts are large.
Asohan Amarasingham, 'Han' to everybody, walked in,
Saniya looked up and said "Calculate something for me,
Han." Whenever she meets Asohan, a math Phd at Brown
University, she greets him by saying something
randomly math-sounding. Han was at the protest as
well. We started talking about posters and signs that
we liked, recalling the following: "Drop Bush not the
bomb; Baby, I am the bomb; Axis of assholes; Reelect
Carter; Screw interns not the economy; Fight plaque
not Iraq; Smoke Iraqi weed not Iraqis; Bake cookies
not Iraqis; Take the War Heads out of Washington; Jews
for Burning Bush; Colin Powell you are from the
Bronx-- Shame on you!"

Han asked Baber why he didn't go to the protest. Baber
responded: "They gave me a business visa, not a
protest visa." I asked him about his experience of
getting the visa and the registration process. Baber
said, "It took a long time, the fingerprinting and
everything else. I did get a sympathetic officer who
began by saying that everything has changed. The worst
part was when she asked me if I had any relationship
with New York City: if I ever lived here, if I had any
friends. I said, no, no, and No!"





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