The Taste of Crab Apples

I’ve been thinking about my siblings lately. I have three of them, and we were all vastly different ages when we moved to America. That first year, I remember a borderline traumatic game I would play with my younger brother, where I would ask him to go sit in the closet and as I shut the door on him, I would tell him that when I opened the door, everything he knew would be gone and everyone he knew would not remember him. Dark, I know. And we always laugh it off whenever we reminisce about that time. But being a bit older and wiser has opened a new window to the why of it all. My siblings and I, due to a choice made by our parents, were shuttled halfway across the world, far away from everything and everyone we knew. Of course, our lovely parents didn’t put us in a dark closet, but we had emerged from a stuffy stale aired airplane bleary eyed and confused, somehow in a new country so very unlike the one we had just come from. 

There’s a smattering of memories I have from those early days. Our bunk beds in our first apartment. My sister vacuuming while blasting Pakistani rock music. The sharp smell of chlorine from the community pool. A dented plastic shopping cart in a narrow hallway. Crab apple trees. 

We were so happy to find those crab apple trees. The four of us siblings were exploring the apartment complex, sprawling and quiet in a way our ears were unaccustomed to. The excitement of finding and picking fruit was a link to the life we had just left. Our home back home had guava trees that loomed above us, their branches heavy with fruit while vines threaded the wall of our backyard, with endless clusters of perfectly tart green grapes. Noisy streets were made even noisier with calls from the animated fruit vendors on every corner. You could buy fruit from your car window and be on your merry way, plum juice dribbling down your chin and lychee peels collecting at your feet. America was different. Organized and quiet, and if you wanted fruit, well, there were stores for that. But here we were, in America, with our bounty of freshly picked crab apples. Of course upon tasting them, we weren’t exactly disappointed, but suffice it to say, we never picked crab apples again.

We made our way to a nearby hill overlooking a busy road and sat together watching cars fly by, counting colors until we were bored enough to stop. We drew our attention to the sky, giving names to the shapes of the giant clouds that floated above our heads. We were so very new to this country, and I wonder now what each of my siblings must have been thinking. What they must have been feeling. If they even remember, like I do, the four of us, sitting together in a row on a hill, watching the cars go by, with the bitter sour taste of crab apples lingering in our mouths.

Resilience is a funny thing, especially when it comes to children. With their silly games and diaries with flimsy locks, they cope and grow, many times without anyone even really realizing, even themselves. For as long as I can remember, I’ve written. And my first few years in America, I wrote it all. Big feelings, small feelings, to-do lists, not-to-do lists, any thought that had the pleasure of zipping through my brain found its way onto a piece of paper. My ugliest of thoughts, the ones that came from anger and hurt, I would scribble onto scraps of paper and eventually throw away once I felt better. Of course, in retrospect, feelings are feelings, and I would never categorize them as ugly now. But even until recently, I had the habit of leaving journals half written when things got a bit too dire, to start fresh with a new one. Luckily I had the sense to hold onto them. That’s growth, I suppose. Now, I persevere, allowing the feelings to pass onto one page, and simply flipping to a new page when it’s time. And that’s respect for paper, I suppose. And resilience. Without even realizing it.

Maham Khwaja is a Pakistani-American writer and artist based in NYC. She has worked on feature films, network television, and children’s programming, including Sim SimHamara (Sesame Street Pakistan). Her work has screened at film festivals and was featured as part of the Smithsonian’s Green Revolution exhibit. Maham leads art workshops for students and community members in New York City, and is currently developing her first feature, AuntieExpress, about a boisterous trio of Pakistani-American aunties taking an epic cross country roadtrip with their beloved food truck. The Home We Make marks her children’s book debut. You can find Maham online on her website or on Instagram, @mayhemintheam.

Giveaway Information:

Barb Edler won a copy of The Home We Make by Maham Khwaja donated by Lee & Low Publishers. The book winner also won a 20-minute virtual author visit with Maham.