On my way to work at an oil refinery in Karachi, Pakistan, I used to pass by the U.S. Embassy every day on my Italian-made Vespa scooter.

One day, I stopped and asked about the requirements for a visa. Eight months later, I was given an immigrant visa based on my qualifications as an engineer. It was completely unexpected. I was not sure I wanted to go to the United States and even brooded over it for months. I had a good job, family, friends and a bright future.

When I boarded the London-bound plane on a September afternoon in 1969, I was still second-guessing my decision. I remembered my birth place, a small village called Bedadi.

Consisting of 200 mud homes in the foothills of the Karakoram mountain range, Bedadi is a mixture of Pushtoon- and Hindko-speaking agrarian people, subsisting on the rice, wheat and corn grown on their ancestral lands.

I had many relatives, all very loving and caring. I then remembered moving to Karachi, a city of 1 million people, with my parents after the partition of Pakistan and India, and recalled the riots and curfews that ensued in 1947-48. In Karachi, I spent my childhood in a blue collar, multilingual and multi-ethnic neighborhood.

As a teen-ager, I had friends with an African heritage, and some who were fair-skinned and blue-eyed. I remembered my classmates and teachers in my primary school, located next to an ice factory, my secondary school next to a synagogue.

I recalled the Christian students in my engineering college who spoke English better than I, and the Jewish family who lived in my apartment building when I was only 5 or 6.

I reminisced over the good times with the few scattered relatives I had in this metropolitan city. As the plane began moving along the runway, I cried. I was leaving my life behind.

When I arrived at San Francisco International Airport, I had a mere $25 in my pocket. Nobody greeted me; my cousin and uncle had not received my telegram. With the help of a friendly stranger, I surprised my cousin with a phone call from the airport. She picked me up, and took me to her home. When night came, I lay awake in a new bed, in a new world.

After two months wearing out two pairs of shoes walking the streets of San Francisco, I found my first job as a drafter for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Five months later, I landed a job as a refinery engineer, then moved to the nuclear power sector.

Over the next 22 years, my job took me from San Francisco to Hastings, Minn., then Boston, a three-year stint in Spain, and finally an assignment at Rancho Seco, which served the Sacramento area, in 1981.

My first years in the U.S. were very lonely and difficult, but fascinating. I thrived on competition and hard work, enjoying my freedom in this land of opportunity. I became a U.S. citizen in the Bicentennial year and registered as a Republican. I was fascinated by the politics of the Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy, the cornerstone of which, I was confused to find, is brute force and very little diplomacy.

Since 1981, my wife, three children and I, have lived in Lodi. It is lovable, livable and it is home.

My life in Bedadi and Karachi are happy memories, a journey that I hold dear and share with my children. I can only imagine what their journey will be.

Taj Khan of Lodi is a consultant and retired engineering manager for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Contents

»Pakistanis leave their native land to find Lodi
»Pakistani men adjust to life in Lodi
»Lodi’s Pakistani women struggle with clash of cultures
»Educator explains background of women’s modesty
»Young Pakistani Americans find themselves caught between cultures
»Pakistani police officers in Lodi bridge cultural gaps
»Lodi Muslim Mosque provides worship place for Pakistanis
»Journey brings loneliness, opportunity