I Came to America Because of a Dire Straits Song
What I want my son to know about why I chose this country
My dear Ellis & Adam,
I have always thought God is a song.
A very specific song.
Which one?
Well, that depends.
For instance, the God my mother, your grandmother, prays to is probably the Bob Marley song Three Little Birds. A God that assures you of a happy ending provided you have faith in him.
The imam, the preacher of the mosque I lived by in Bombay, well his God would definitely be Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising. A God that demands fealty because of the horror that is just around the corner.
Your mother would undoubtedly say God is Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic, a beautiful song that actually doesn’t make much sense. This fact, though, doesn’t take anything away from it and it is still worth listening to and appreciating.
For Choti, my aunt, God is Jimi Hendrix’s Castles Made of Sand, a God that urges you not to validate yourself on the success of your aspirations.
On the other hand, my father’s God is likely the Hindi song Ajeeb Dastan by Lata Mangeshkar. A God that asks you not to waste time trying to understand the strangeness of life, just believe in its wonder and embrace him.
To me, God is the Dire Straits song Sultans of Swing. A song that narrates the story of a mediocre band, playing in an obscure bar to a tiny audience, but not letting any of that weigh them down. They play their hearts out, thank the uninterested crowd, and proudly remind them of their grandiose name: “The Sultans of Swing.” And this is what God is, a reminder that we should all strive to be that song, where a band is doing its best, trying to bring something new to the world, undeterred by their circumstance and proud of who they are and what they are doing. A song where the audience, while disappointed that instead of rock and roll they have to listen to Creole, let the performers finish their set. A set that, despite its mediocrity, one audience member finds so inspirational he writes a song about it. And that song, written by Mark Knopfler in 1978, is what God is to me.
God is a song. A Dire Straits song. And this is what led me to America.
My decision to leave home and come here was predicated on the belief that America was the only nation in the world that aspired to epitomize the values of this song. Not that it embodied them, just that it aspired to them. To an eighteen-year-old Muslim boy from Bombay, knowing a place existed that simply aimed to do so was sufficient reason to leave home, friends, and family. As most immigrants, I was not naïve about America when I set forth for its shores. I knew its reality was far from its aspiration. We immigrants are aware, even from afar, that there are two Americas: America the country and America the idea. America the country is not really that different than the places many of us come from. It has crumbling structures, wealth undivided, many of its citizens are forgotten and derided. But we also know that there is America the idea. America the idea is where we expect the system to work for all. For us to be allowed to be who we are live how we want.
It is this idea, this America, we choose to believe in. Why? I am not really sure. Maybe we see a nation where everyone, save for a few, was just like us when they came. They left all they knew behind, because they too, like us, yearned for more. And they, also like us, believed America would be a place that would allow them to realize their ambitions. Now we know that America the idea is not even close to being true. But just the fact that this country was built on it, and aspires to it, is enough for us. And that is why we come. Because America aspires to be that Dire Straits song. Because we allow ourselves to believe this aspiration is genuine, for it was written in the core of this country by those like us.
We allow ourselves to believe this aspiration is genuine.
When I learned about the American Civil Rights Movement, it blew my mind. As a child of the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1992, where I saw state sanctioned violence against people of my religion, to learn of a nation where a civil rights movement could take place made me feel like I did the first time I heard Bohemian Rhapsody. In awe and unsure that what I just experienced truly happened. Not in awe of the result, that I knew did not come close to achieving what the movement set out to do. It’s funny, the week I first read MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, was the same week I listened to Springsteen’s 41 Shots. But to young me, scarred from the riots, living in a city governed by a party whose leader had openly suggested, There is nothing wrong if Muslims are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany, I was in awe of a nation that allowed for a movement which forced it to grapple with its faults. I took this as evidence that enough people there cared, that enough people aspired to its idea. An idea that I thought worthy of the Sultans of Swing.
I am no longer certain that is the case. Current evidence points to it not being so. In fact, I often fear that the President will tweet an executive order that leads to Muslim immigrants being rounded up for some unfounded reason. Fears that echo those that many of my brethren feel in India today. It appears to me that America the country has deemed America the idea not worthy of pursuit. And if that is the case then I was wrong. My belief that there is a place in the world that is worthy of a Mark Knopfler song was misplaced.
Yet, despite these fears, despite these doubts, despite the evidence, I, perhaps naively (maybe even foolishly), still find myself refusing to accept my folly. Find myself still believing that America was worth it. Worth me leaving everything and everyone I knew to come to this strange land. I remind myself of all this nation has given me and that now, as a citizen of it, it is my job to help curb its worst impulses. I look for small, perhaps insignificant, ways to try and create some good in it. I do this because it is the only choice I have. It’s what the Sultans of Swing would do.
