When I lived in New Brunswick a couple of years back, I thought I was living in small town America. I lived 45 minutes away from New York City, which made everything seem small, bland, and in need of accelaration. In my mind, New Brunswick badly needed all of those-- every thing was within walking distance. How much smaller can a town get? I was sure that an American small town anywhere couldn’t be very different than New Brunswick. After all, our perspectives are greatly determined, among other factors, by our current location and also by our ignorance of other locations.
Life in New Brunswick was hard for me. I lived in an absolutely run-down house with two crazy roommates. One of whom would walk around in his underwear and yell at other people for pleasure. He was an undergraduate student from Croatia, a soccer player with a criminal charge by the New Jersey State Police for beating a man to near-pulp on a bar brawl. I lived in perpetual fear that I was his next victim. My other roommate was a Chinese undergraduate student. He was quiet, nice and all that. But soon I realized that he was very non-assertive and therefore followed the other guy’s directions about almost everything; it was unpleasant. I was traumatized for a while but then I began to look for my own ways to deal with the “men in the house”. I was the true subaltern—a woman, a woman of color (to be accurate), better yet, an international student who was a woman of color. To be marginalized was my fate. I always wanted to tell them how I felt. Could I do it? Could the subaltern finally speak? Well, that’s another story.
My location changed after my one year stint at Rutgers University and so did my perspective.
I moved to Stillwater, Oklahoma in the fall of 2009. I decided to go to graduate school in order to stay close to the man I was then in love with. The love did not prosper but my knowledge about America in general broadened. After almost three years here in Stillwater, and fifteen more pounds, I am convinced that I have a better knowledge of what smalltown America is all about. Knowledge shared is knowledge squared. As an academic, I am all for that.
Small-town America is where every American has a truck. The bigger the truck is the higher the prestige of the owner. One Oklahoman friend of mine recently told me that the truck makes him feel macho! Size does matter here. And I used to think trucks were only good for farming needs. But nope, it is just a great way to show off your masculinity! If you happen to be a poor international graduate student with a bicycle, chances are that you will be pushed around by the monstrous trucks until you finally decide to get rid of the hazards of having a bicycle in the truck-town and walk the miles. But then again, Stillwater doesn’t have sidewalks on all the roads. So get ready to be pushed around, or just join the club, buy a truck.
I am from a big city is not saying much, because the populatin of my country is so huge that any city is a big one. And it is public knowledge that big cities are all about, name-calling, screaming, and half-neurotic cranky people. No one smiles at you for nothing. We get suspicious when someone is nice to us. Be it London or New York, New Delhi or Dhaka, it is unlikely that you will cross the street without being shouted at several times. And we are comfortable with that. Small town America, on the other hand is all about smiling. You walk on the street, the passer-by smiles at you. You go to a store, the attendant smiles at you. You go wherever, whoever you see smiles at you. You keep on wondering why the hell everyone smiles at you and then you encounter the smiliest people of all-- the proselytizers. They will feed you for free, take you to field-trips for free, praise your culture and food for free and then hand you a bible. And while doing all that, they will keep up their smiling face.
I remember once I went to a place to eat free lunch. I was stuffing my face with hot-dogs when a good looking couple appeared and smiled at me. As I tried to curve my face in a faint shape of a smile, they started a metaphysical conversation about, life and after-life, being and nothingness, sin and its predicament and so on. I slowly started chewing on my free food as the conversation turned to Jesus and his love. I looked at the woman with curiosity. She had bright eyes and a very convincing style of talking. She seemed so sure that I was going to hell unless I followed her prescription. I looked away and started contemplating about free food and its predicament. Just before I finished my third chili-dog, I received a revelation. I was convinced that whoever came up with the wise saying “there is nothing called a free lunch” must have been an international graduate student in an American smalltown who once had hot-dogs on a churchyard.
And then there are the Q&A sessions. A lot of them. A whole lot.
For example, Gentleman #1 asked me “Where are you from?” (Oh, how I dread this question!)
I say softly, “Bangladesh”.
-“Where?” he asked again.
-“I am from Bangladesh.” I said it out loud this time.
-“Oh alright.” (as if he knew where it was).
-“So what part of India is that?”
-“It’s not in India”, I say.
-“But you totally look Indian. There is no difference”
-“Oh I do, Thanks! Where are you from?”
- “I am from Jay”
- “What?
-“Jay”
-“What part of world is that?”
-“It’s Oklahoma. I am from Jay, Oklahoma.”
Thank goodness for the world of mutual ignorance, I thought, none of us had any idea where we were from.
And then there is Lady#2. She came up to me in a party and said excitedly,
-“I love your dress!”
-“Thanks, your shirt is pretty, too”
-“I love your accent!” she got more excited now.
- “Your accent is not too bad either” I said grumpily.
-“And your English is very good”.
- “So is yours”, I said.
This was a classic case of pragmatic failure. There was a pause-- about 30 seconds of awkward silence-- soon after which she ran towards a Chinese friend of mine. I evesdropped, she was saying the same things.
When I went back to Dhaka last summer, I realized that the smalltown ghosts could not be so easily shrugged off. I went to one random Aunty’s place with my mother. Now it was my turn to defend my smalltown existence. Aunty asked me,
- “Where do you live?”
- “Stillwater”, I said.
- “Where is that?”
- “It’s in Oklahoma”
- “Where is that?”
- “It’s in America”
- “No it’s not, you think I don’t know anything, ha?”
- “No, aunty, seriously, it is in the midwest”
- “Midwest? How far from New York is it?”
The conversation went on for 20 minutes and my mind went all north-north-west. At this point, from the interior of the house, appeared aunty’s handsome son whom my parents were secretly yet quite obviously trying to set me up with. “Come, come, beta, meet Sharmee”, aunty said to him, “she lives in Toronto”. I said hurriedly “no no, I live in Stillwater”. Aunty looked annoyed this time, “You live there, right? It’s your home. Toronto or Stillwater, what is the difference? All of those are in America only!”
Really, what was the difference?
I kept on thinking.
I have met some amazing people here, yet nothing about Stillwater feels like home. Nothing about nowhere feels like home. I am still homesick. However, when you don’t know where home is, there is really no difference.
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