My Dadi’s Thanksgivings: A Personal Essay, by Zara Khan

Ever since my grandma was put on a ventilator this past August, I’ve been keeping a list of things on my phone to tell her once she comes home. Naive and hopeful, the list initially consisted of a few clipped bullets, hastily written whenever I thought of her. Passed pomegranates in the supermarket today, I can’t believe you used to spend hours shucking them just for us. I accidentally killed my rose plant; how did you manage to have such a massive garden?

But as her time in the hospital dragged on and weeks grew into months, my hope began to falter and those short sentences slowly turned into sprawling paragraphs, fraught bursts into a black void. You could chart my whole semester over the course of this list; writing became a way for me to work through my anguished anxiety over the ever-increasing likelihood that my grandmother, or Dadi as she’s called, might never get to hear any of my words. By meticulously chronicling my life, I could imagine she was still with me.

And with Thanksgiving fast approaching, my list has taken on an almost manic energy. It’s always been Dadi’s holiday. She’d start preparing for it weeks in advance, stockpiling every ingredient by visiting countless stores across Los Angeles. She’d get up at the earliest hours of dawn on the day, waking the entire house up with her symphony of pots and pans. For as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve spent every Thanksgiving week wrapped up inside her domestic domain.

Most of my childhood memories are malleable, with the good ones shaped by the rose-colored glasses of adulthood and the bad ones conveniently forgotten. Yet, I can still picture 21 years of Thanksgivings so vividly, as if it’s a film constantly running in the back of my mind and I only need to close my eyes to press play.

It opens with my grandfather’s Acura pulling up next to the hard, concrete curb of the arrivals station at Los Angeles International Airport. Dressed in a leather vest, he proudly bends down, refusing any help as he loads our suitcases into the trunk. The car climbs through the hills of Silver Lake, weaving in and out of dark, narrow streets, patiently pausing upon every speed bump.

As its tires slow to a gentle stop, Dadi is waiting for us, wrapped in a colorful shawl, her thin grey hair pinned up; she’s got a four-course meal we don’t dare refuse cooling on the stove. My cousins trickle in a couple of hours later — over the years different supporting characters have joined in — no doubt wanting to experience a fabled Dadi Thanksgiving, but, since the beginning, it’s always been the five cousins, pulled under our Dadi’s spell for the week.

The exact chronology of the scenes over the years now blur together, but I still try to remember them with a steadfast ferocity, fearful that if I stop, they might slip from my mind and float into an unreachable abyss: my grandfather wrestling with my toddler brother and little cousin; my cousin yelping out in pain as I accidentally whisk her hand instead of the muffin batter in the bowl; and her, no more than 10 years old, reciting a prayer for a crowd of relatives as I stand, mute and smiling next to her. After-dinner Taboo games, teams split by gender, oftentimes turning so competitive I found my vocal cords hoarse and fried the next morning.

I used to think of these incidental rituals as inevitable, something every family had that just magically took shape whenever they all got together. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve realized how wrong I was. Tradition doesn’t just happen overnight; it’s the culmination of small building blocks, carefully constructed and cared for over the years. For my family, Dadi was our architect and engineer. She didn’t just tend to each of us individually but was the reason we structured our lives around one another.

As I grew up and learned how to be a person in a world that is as intoxicating as it is disheartening, our Thanksgivings became a reprieve from the unnerving realm of emerging adulthood because of the way our family clung to the same routines, year after year.

I used to find it a touch ironic that my family, a gaggle of Kashmiris, chose Thanksgiving as our holiday. And we not only chose it but feverishly embraced every aspect of its Americanness. My Dadi usually cooks with such strong spices that their smell creeps into every corner of the house and their color stains her plates and storage containers. But on Thanksgiving, Dadi cooks every single dish in our overflowing buffet so purposefully bland that I, someone who is notoriously spice averse, can eat it without bursting into a dramatic sweat.

When I was nearing the end of high school, my grandmother went through a phase in which she became obsessed with dill. For some unexplained reason, she put the herb on everything, whether the recipe called for it or not. So, it seemed almost inevitable she would try to sneak some of it into the mashed potatoes. But my cousin almost lost her mind, begging my mom to cook the original recipe so her precious potatoes wouldn’t be corrupted.

At first, I thought she was being dramatic. But as I spooned the creamy dish into my mouth, letting it gently swirl and melt around my tongue, the soft, spiceless taste triggered some of my earliest memories from childhood.

My father used to always remind me how his grandfather would advise him to always leave the dinner table a little hungry. But on Thanksgiving, that advice was thrown out the window with everyone leaving the table so full they’d immediately lie down and drift off to sleep as deeply as babies.

Thanksgiving itself, due to a collective amnesia in American history, is mythically connected with the infancy of the nation. Stuffed and sated after consuming Dadi’s food, I too was brought back to the uncorrupted space of early infancy when my life consisted of eating and sleeping under the care of nurturing women.

Growing up, I always felt like I had three mothers, but it was only my two grandmothers, with their unabashed affection and refusal to see me as anything other than their tiny baby, even after 21 years, that could make me feel like it was the fourth Thursday of November any day of the year.

Last Thanksgiving, the usually predictable Southern California weather seemed to mirror my family’s collective instability over Dadi’s health. Rain callously poured the entire day, while the wind slammed against tightly shuttered windows. Relegated to the indoors for the first time in recent memory, we crammed into the living room. Sitting on the floor, in one messy circle, we balanced overflowing plates on our knees, our shoulders involuntarily rubbing up against one another.

Facing one another, we all shared what we were thankful for; only a few words had been spoken before I saw tears creep out of the corner of my aunt’s crinkled eyes. That was it. Mere minutes after, everyone else followed her lead and broke, too.

Some cousins we see once a year at Thanksgiving seemed shocked and truly terrified at this impromptu outpouring of emotion from my family, who normally use these speeches as an opportunity to roast one another.

Dadi, perched up and looking down at us from her chair, while bleary-eyed, seemed to delight in our outward, slightly unhinged display of collective pain. If this moment was a movie, it would zoom in on her face to show, yes, her tears, but also her mouth turning upward, threatening to show the smile she’d been fighting to suppress.

If for the past years we’d been consuming her love through all of her invisible hidden domestic labor — the hours spent in the kitchen as we swam in the pool, the heaps of laundry and linens she’d do, the myriad of dishes she’d wash up — that night, we rendered our gratitude visible for her to consume in return.

The last entry on my list is, A boy I’ve been seeing just told me that I’m too cold. I’m worried that I didn’t care in the slightest because I was too preoccupied thinking about you. I don’t want you to continue living in pain; I want you to be at peace, but I’m scared that if you go that’s what I’ll become.

I’ve recently begun to fear we’ve become too greedy in our fight for her. After countless surgeries, procedures and months on end in the hospital, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve been consuming everything out of her fragile body to avoid dealing with what it means to exist in a world without her.

Zara Khan is a student at the University of California Berkeley. This article was originally published in The Daily Californian and is posted here with permission from Zara Khan.

My Dadi: A Force of Nature, A Personal Essay by Zara Khan

Her voice cackled and her face flickered as the FaceTime dropped. Anxiety bloomed in my chest, spreading through my limbs and onto my twitching fingers as I tapped the “call back” button, but she didn’t pick up. I tried three more times, only to be met with a flatly typed out, “Don’t worry, I’m much better.”

My grandmother — my Dadi — was all alone and had now been in the hospital for almost two weeks, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Sometimes my friends debate over the first things they’re going to do once the pandemic is all over — packed nightclubs, far-flung trips abroad and sweaty SoulCycle classes. But I already know my answer. I’m going to go see my grandmothers and hug them. A real embrace of intertwined limbs, hands slapping backs, heads on shoulders and patted-down hair.

Each of my grandmothers has a distinct way they hug. My Nani is gentle. She’s so small that I have to bend my body down to even reach her. Her hands like to softly stroke my hair, hair she once used to condition with olive oil. My Dadi, on the other hand, is forceful. To be enveloped into one of her embraces is to feel the full weight of her love. I usually gasp for breath whenever she puts her arms around me because they crush my bones. The only word I have to describe her love is thick. Even as a child, I understood how it had the power to drown me at any possible moment.

Dadi, as her hugs may suggest, is larger than life, and unlike anyone I’ve ever met; keep in mind, I attend UC Berkeley, where I’ve met my fair share of unique individuals. When I asked her about the time she and my grandfather attended school in Srinagar together, she responded with, and I quote this from my childhood journal, “We played field hockey together. One time I took my stick and hit him in the shins because he was annoying me.”

When, much to my chagrin, my chest started growing, she bought me custom-ordered bras, making me try them on in front of my aunt and cousin, because she wanted my boobs to “look as nice as possible.” After I arrived in Italy for my semester abroad, she called me to let me know that this was the time in my life to “shop around for a fun boyfriend.” All this coming from a Muslim immigrant from Kashmir in her late 70s.

Her life may read as a series of happy accidents, but I know it comes from her uncanny ability to bend reality at will. When she first arrived in Baltimore, she somehow managed to get featured on TV and interviewed by none other than Oprah for a cooking segment. After my father left for college, she began selling life insurance, outearning my grandfather and winning a trip to Europe as one of the world’s most successful agents. She even managed to convince my uncle, a former fraternity brother at UCLA, to travel to Kashmir and come back engaged after just one week.

But as she’s gotten older, her sharp mind has fallen mercy to her aging body. Two years ago, my family and I went to play volleyball at the beach. My grandmother insisted she be allowed to play, so we acquiesced, not thinking she would ever jump up to try and hit the ball only to fall backward and fracture her lumbar spine. As she lay on the ground, writhing in pain, I asked her why she ever thought to do that. “Inside, I’m still just a 16-year-old Tasneem,” she said.

She ended up needing cement injections in her back, and this injury was the start of a long, arduous journey in and out of hospitals. I’d always known her to have a precarious health situation; she was constantly being trucked to some doctor’s appointment, and at breakfast, she’d take 10 pills and inject insulin, but right after, she’d smear large clumps of jam onto a buttery croissant and spend six hours cooking in the kitchen. This time was different. Dadi was diagnosed with idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, or ITP, which is a blood disease that causes the immune system to mistakenly attack platelets. She had to stay in the hospital for close to six weeks, during which she received countless transfusions and had to have her spleen removed.

While all this was going on during the end of my sophomore year, my dad attempted to mask the gravity of the situation by sharing only good news with me. But I was optimistic; I knew this would only be a small bump in my grandmother’s life, because I’ve literally never seen anything stop her.

After finals week of that year, my housemates and I decided to take a road trip down the coast. I’d been planning to spend a few days with my grandmother in California at the end before flying back home to Chicago. But the minute we left Berkeley, I began having vivid nightmares about Dadi, causing me to wake up with tear-stained cheeks in the middle of the night. I cut the trip short, with my new destination being Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

When I first saw her, a fraction of the size she was since I’d last seen her and with dried blood from countless IV injections running up and down her arms, I didn’t recognize my Dadi. I delicately hugged her, Nani-style, as if she was made out of glass that could break at the slightest touch. She returned my embrace with a rush of tears. Defeated and angry at being in the hospital for more than a month, she cried about how she just wanted to go home and leave this place.

One day, my grandpa left the hospital room to run some errands, leaving Dadi and me alone.

She had been getting steroids for treatment, and while she hadn’t had any that day, their effects seemed to be lingering because she seemed extra loopy. She divulged decades-old family gossip, gave me her drug-induced thoughts on our closest relatives and spoke to me as intimately as a teenage girl confiding to her diary. Though I had been suspecting it for years, it was then that I realized how similar we actually are.

When I was younger, family figures took on a mythic quality in my eyes: heroes or villains, no in-between. But in Dadi, I saw a complex woman, not just with the strength and love I aspire to one day emulate but someone with the same vices and contradictions I have, finally understanding where they hail from. I, too, could be brash, stubborn, aggressive, impulsive and overly emotional. But I realized that these attributes, which I used to try and mitigate, are nothing to be ashamed of because they are what make Dadi such a force of nature.

New insights confirm that grandmothers’ experiences leave a mark on their grandchildren’s genes. According to behavioral epigenetics, our ancestors’ excellent adventures or lousy childhoods might change our personalities, handing down anxiety or resilience by altering the epigenetic expressions of genes in our brains.

“You’re so much like me,” she confirmed to me that day, “but with one important difference: You have the freedom to make your own choices. I had so many of mine made for me.”

After tucking her into her twin-size hospital bed, I called one of my friends in the lobby.

“It’s just so hard to see,” I said, my voice beginning to shake, threatening to release the myriad of emotions I had been keeping at bay. Through the line, connecting us across the country, I heard her evenly spaced breaths, signifying her careful listening, and I felt comforted by the silence.

“I know,” she consoled, “but remember what you told me when my grandma was sick? Our grief is inversely related to how much we love someone.”

That week ended up being an inflection point in Dadi’s recovery. The day I flew home, she was finally discharged from the hospital.

Marking the one-year anniversary of the ordeal, she rang me this past May, fondly recalling how I had fought with her to try and have a cot brought out so I could spend the night next to her.

“Good thing you weren’t in the hospital this year. I wouldn’t have been able to visit you with the pandemic,” I said.

Except a couple of months later, she was back. Her ITP is still an ongoing condition she has learned to manage, but this time it was something else — her heart. She wound up back in the intensive care unit at a hospital that barred all visitors. While the pandemic has ravaged American life, patients being forced to suffer alone, devoid of any loved ones, may be the cruelest joke it is playing on us.

For such a social person as my grandmother, these weeks were an excruciating hell.

I felt trapped behind my phone screen. My pixelated face couldn’t replace our bedside chats, hand-holdings through blood drawings or cuddles during "Jeopardy!" Even if I was in Los Angeles, I knew I’d still be unable to so much as shake my grandmother's hand, petrified at the prospect of my virus particles jumping onto her.

She’s been allowed to return home but is slated for open-heart surgery in the coming weeks.

I don’t have nightmares anymore. I know my grandmother will manage to overcome this obstacle like she has shown me she can, time and time again.

Zara Khan is a student at the University of California Berkeley. This article was originally published in The Daily Californian and is posted here with permission from Zara Khan.

Sara Khan’s Family History Project

My great grandfather, Khwaja Ghulam Ahmed Ashai, was born on April 4th, 1895 in Srinagar, Kashmir. He was an educator, politician, prisoner, and a father. My great grandfather was the first Muslim graduate from the Kashmir Valley, and continued to get his B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) at the Punjab University and M.A. (Master of Arts) in Persian from Calcutta University. In addition, he got his B.T (Bachelor of Teaching) and an M.O.L (Master of Oriental Languages) from Punjab  University. He received lots of education, which is not something that happened very often in Kashmir at that time. After university, Mr. Ashai joined government service as a school teacher and later became promoted to professor at the Sri Pratap College.  In 1947, he received the honor of being chosen as a member of the State Legislative Assembly due to his hard work. My great grandfather and Sheikh Abdulluh proposed and founded a University on November 2, 1948. Subsequently, Mr. Abdulluh was arrested for conspiracy in the Kashmir Conspiracy Case. Mr. Ashai was also arrested because he worked so close with Mr. Abdulluh. He had no chance to explain that he had not done anything wrong. My great grandfather was in jail for about 2 years, and my grandma remembers going to visit him about once a month. After being released, Mr. Ashai remained active in the political scene in Kashmir. He wrote petitions to the UN, and protested human rights for Kashmiris. Mr. Ashai became ill and sadly passed away on November 14, 1964. His legacy lives on with my grandma and her siblings. Mr. Ashai had an important impact on Kashmir and was always fighting for what he believed in. 

        My grandmother, Tasneem Fatima Khan, was born on October 10, 1942 in Srinagar, Kashmir. She spent most of her childhood playing with her 8 siblings. My grandmother went to college at Kashmir University, and married my grandfather, Rafique Ahmed Khan. The two had an arranged marriage in 1962. They started a family in Kashmir and brought two boys into the world, one of them being my Dad and the other being my uncle, Obaid Khan. The family moved in 1970 when Mr. Rafique Khan received an offer to be a city planner in Baltimore. My grandmother opened a shop which she is still proud of today. The shop sold decor, spices, and clothes from Kashmir. The news channel came to interview her about 2 times, and she remembers meeting Oprah while at the station.  In 1980, the family of 4 moved to Los Angeles because of another job opportunity for Mr. Rafique Khan. My grandmother says that her career really started once she moved to LA. She was an investment broker for New York Life. Currently, my grandmother is still alive and lives in LA. Her spirit is one that I will never forget: energetic, funny, and grateful. She loves to cook and spend time with her family.

       My father, Shobi Z. Khan, was born on September 18th, 1965 in Srinagar, Kashmir. My father immigrated to the US in when he was about 4 years old and lived in Baltimore for most of his childhood. When my Dad was going into high school, he moved to Los Angeles. He later continued his education at UC Berkeley and than USC for graduate business school. Mr. Khan has accomplished many things in his business career, one of the most recent including assisting in selling GGP to Brookfield.  My Dad inspires me to work my hardest and spend time with the people I love the most. He loves his work and is determined to make my life the happiest and best it can be. He currently works and lives in London for a company named Canary Wharf Group. My Mom and I will be moving to London in July to be with my Dad. 

       I was born on January 17, 2006, in Chicago, Illinois. I  love spending time with my friends, acting in plays, and playing volleyball. My mother, Nighat Khan was born on July 24, 1971 in Srinagar, Kashmir. She is an ophthalmologist and spends her free time listening to live music. I look up to my mom because she is the most hard working woman I know. I have one older sister, Zara, who was born on December 12, 1998. She is 21 years old and is currently attending UC Berkeley in California. She plans on majoring in English and is a passionate writer. Our parents named us so similarly because they wanted us to be close friends in real life. I have one older brother, Zaid, who I am lucky enough to call one of my best friends. He was born on July 28, 2002. He is a senior at Latin and loves to play sports. Together, we love to watch movies and support the Los Angeles Lakers. To me, Los Angeles is my second home. My grandparents live there, and it’s a place for me and my whole family to come together. I have so many memories there and look forward to going there every time. My family are the most important people in my life, and without them I would not be who I am today. 

***

    I interviewed my grandmother, Tasneem Fatima Khan on January 3, 2020. Mrs. Khan is 77 years old and immigrated from Jammu and Kashmir in the 1970s. Jammu and Kashmir is a small disputed territory between India and Pakistan that many people do not know about. The interview focuses on Mrs. Khan’s immigration, father, and life in Kashmir. 

Q:  Tell me about your immigration. When did you immigrate, where, what was it like?

A: I immigrated here in 1970. I came with two boys, one was 5 and a half and 6. Came to New York. Stayed with your Farukh Chacha. My husbands brother. Stayed with him for 2 days. Then drove to Baltimore. And Baba was stationed. He was a city planner. For the Baltimore City. 

Q: You opened a store in Baltimore, when you first immigrated. Tell me about that. 

A: The store sold all decorations. Unusual items from Kashmir. It was called Kashmir. And it was beautiful and so well made, the ABC channel came to interview me twice. And then they invited me to the TV station and that’s where I met Oprah...it was magic. At that time she was not that famous but she wanted to know the different spices of Kashmir. So I showed her and how you cook them. She was impressed with my store, that’s why. 

Q: Tell me about Eid.

A: Oh, Eid was one of the biggest festivals. Like Christmas. We used to get new clothes, new socks, new shoes. My father had a shoemaker who used to make custom shoes. The shoes were custom made based on our design. And everyone would get new shoes, new clothes, and money. Instead of gifts, we used to get money. 

Q: What’s your advice to me/your grandchildren?

A: Focus your life. Focus, focus, focus. And have a goal. Always have a goal in your life. I had no goal until I came into Los Angles. [Say] This is where I want to be next year, this is what I want to be in 5 years, this is what I want to be in 10 years...Listen to your parents. They are your best friends. 

To Get to 1835 Apex Avenue, A Poem

you have to scale silverlake's steep slopes

& softly stop at

the superfluous security gate

before you make it

to the driveway.

it started out modest, only two stories

high but, over the years, they’ve made it

a house full of love

flower beds outline the pool in back, with

perceptive roses, insightful tulips & curious, cream-colored

hydrangeas their grandmother used to

spend hours hunched over,

patiently tending to their soil in this

house full of love

brown walls whisper secrets from the past,

adorned with old photographs & wooden

sculptures from abroad, study the

smiling faces for long enough & you’ll

begin to see the same characters reappear,

year after year, their faces permanently etched

& frozen in time, hanging in this

house full of love

but now there’s a strange silence coming

from the kitchen & it makes you remember

who they’re all missing;

laughter no longer bounces

off the

carelessly congested cars in the driveway

& outside, flowers lie

dead. the oven sits cold & flavorless

while the happy faces on

hollow walls taunt their

good fortune, all in this

house of love.

Zara Khan is a student at the University of California, Berkeley.