Sonder

My eyes and ears are never closed

By Amina Ahmed

On Fridays, my family and I used to go to an old church for prayer. It had been converted into a mosque where the entire Oromo community used to gather. I remember the downstairs basement area’s vibrant blue carpet where the women and children sat. Large cement pillars were scattered throughout the room that all the toddlers would spin around. When the lectures started, I would always sit next to my mom and fall asleep on her lap. If I wasn’t asleep though, I had to find a way to entertain myself from the excruciatingly boring lecture I could barely understand.

I looked at the other kids most of the time. All of my memories are from the summer, since I didn’t go to Friday prayer during the school year, and it was always boiling hot. The basement had no air conditioning or fans, so my mom and I often sat in unbearable heat for hours. I remember being so envious of the other kids because their moms had frozen Ice Mountain water bottles that kept them cool. In hindsight it was such a minor detail, but my younger self still understood how different I was from each child there.

I often wondered how else we were different. Did our houses smell different? What did they eat for breakfast? How did their parents do their hair? There was nothing tainted about the idea, it was an innocent curiosity—it was simply interesting to wonder about the lives of people I had never met before and how different they were. This has always been a hobby of mine. Even now at 19, I still love to people-watch on the city bus to school, making up stories about each passenger I come across.

I can’t tell you when or how this idea became tainted though. Somewhere down the line, admiring individual lives became my very sorrow and resentment. There was still a beauty in it, but it just wasn’t the same. Appreciating frozen Ice Mountain bottles became self-pity and awareness of what I lack. And let me tell you what I've learned about myself from this change.

I’ve learned that there are several ways to twist a doorknob, and that I have memorized the sound of every one. I despise the sound of my phone ringing, and I know who’s at my door before they knock. I’m a light sleeper, and I’m comfortable with silence.

What I mean to say is that, in observing the nuances and complexities of the lives around us, you begin to realize the areas in which your own falls short.

As a first generation child of refugees, I know firsthand the sacrifices and compromises my parents made. I understand their sorrows, fears, and faults more than I understand my own. Thus, while I think it is imperative to honor what my parents renounced for us, I think that the guilt of being a first generation child consumed me entirely, just like it does every first generation child.

In acknowledging how much of my life I had sacrificed under the guise of filial piety, I began to realize how much of an impact had truly been made. I had become a shell of a human being. I’ve spent the majority of my life in survival mode, taking in stimuli and assessing the feelings of those around me to placate them when I didn’t even know how to do that for myself. When we think of maltreatment, abuse, or violence, I think we often think of physical examples: cuts, bruises, blood. Rarely do we ever stop to consider the mental or psychological methods.

I could tell my father’s mood from how quickly he twisted the garage door’s door knob—he only has 3 settings. My heart drops to the pit of my stomach when I hear my phone ringing because only one person ever calls it. Each individual in my house has a different level of octave when their foot hits the floor—it’s how I know who’s at my bedroom door.

My entire body is wired to pick up on the subtle changes of everyone around me. It is difficult not to be so receptive when your safety is dependent on how someone is feeling that day. Yet I think the most frustrating part of grappling with this type of manipulation is the cognitive dissonance that comes with it. It is a battle everyday to remind yourself that you do not deserve this treatment and that you can simultaneously hold love and distaste for the perpetrator, especially if it’s family.

Within cultures like mine, where elders and parents are respected above all else, holding these opposing opinions can be taken as disrespect or an insult. Despite this obviously not being the case, it’s still difficult for our generation to hold these ideas. Because frankly, I would’ve never learned these things about myself had I not stopped to consider how my life was different from others’. My heightened sensitivity would’ve gone unnoticed by the world since it was a virtue often complimented by my teachers and peers. Coupled with the expectation of filial obedience, the simple act of acknowledging the wrongdoings from my upbringing seemed impossible. Such is the result of mental or psychological abuse.

In order to move forward though, you must first acknowledge what has happened. And if that simple act of acknowledging has been made to be a preposterous idea, it often becomes a vicious cycle to break out of. I pride myself on my observational and self-awareness skills, yet it is still difficult for me to come to terms with how and why I came to develop them. I wish I had the words to accurately describe the feeling, but I think even the world’s broadest lexicon could not do it justice. All I can say is that the idea of frozen Ice Mountain water bottles may never be pure again, but the memory is still warm.