Dry Heat

I am not a violent person but nothing would make me angrier than my dad constantly asserting that the scorching Arizona summer was “dry heat” and therefore not as bad as it could be. The lack of humidity, he would assure us, would allow our bodies to cool themselves. Bullshit. You had to think twice before touching anything in this hellish desert; accidentally grazing the metal part your car or your keys would feel like taking a tray out of the oven without gloves. Even our backyard pool, which initially excited me, was turned into a sauna from the months of May to September.

The orange and lemon and grapefruit trees were seemingly only there for aesthetic reasons, for the oranges were too bitter, the lemons too sour, and the grapefruits strangely sweet. The mayor of Phoenix had decided certain telephone polls had to be “disguised” as cacti, as if there was any beauty in this place that had to be protected.

I was at my wits end that evening in the restaurant, with the dry heat, new school, new house, and no apparent escape in sight. They called the Phoenix-Scottsdale area “the valley” on account of the mountain range that circled our artificial oasis. At night I would imagine driving all the way to the edge of our new city only to find myself blocked by these dark, imposing humps of clay infested with snakes and scorpions and lizards and spiders and boar and cacti. Creatures can only survive here by being as nasty and toxic and prickly and venomous and creepy-crawly as possible. I didn’t want that to happen to me.

But was it my fault if someone else decided to take away the blissful ignorance of a thirteen-year-old boy? And made him realize that the venom and thorns were not just constrained to the mountains, but trickled down to the valley too?

They were such a nice elderly couple, like the many senior citizens who came to live here. The dry heat was good for their asthma - maybe my dad was onto something. I wasn’t sure why they were approaching our table, but whenever an old person does anything we only assume the best. Maybe they’d pay for our meal, or maybe they needed directions back home, or maybe they would say we reminded them of their own family who only visits them once a year now.

“Where are you folks visiting from?”

Not a totally unfair question. We did get a lot of tourists, although usually during the winter months. And perhaps my teenage angst made it seem that I hated this place because it was unfamiliar, not because it was 110 degrees and nobody from my middle school went to my high school.

“Oh, we’re actually from here!” my mother replied, like me totally unaware of any other implications.

“I see. But where are you from originally?” the old man continued. He clearly was not getting the answer he wanted or expected.

“We lived in Washington DC originally!” my mother insisted, going 20 years back in time, before I was born, before my older sister was born, when she was just a bright eyed girl from Bengaluru, India thinking she could make a living selling hand-sewn dresses to local retail shops.

The couple wished us a good evening and left without their answer. My mom held her ground not because she was ashamed of her roots, but because she, before I, had realized what they really meant. That we weren’t real Americans. That we had to be visiting, or “actually from” a distant land because of the color of our skin (never mind the fact that our dark skin was better suited for the desert anyways). In her 20 years here, my mother had colored her hair, gotten rid of all her traditional clothes, and even developed an unhealthy addiction to Pizza Hut. But nothing would stop her from getting asked that question. And the fact that I was born and raised here wouldn’t stop people from asking me the same question too.

I was not a violent person, but I became one. Not with sticks and stones and breaking bones, but with words. With asserting that I belong here, and wouldn’t be quiet about it. By reading, writing and creating unapologetically. By explaining to people that I was both Indian and American at once, that my parents being born in one country did not invalidate my association with another. That I wouldn’t be apologetic like my mother, who just wanted to survive. That I was still American when I put on a kurta and went to the temple, or used my naan as a utensil. That I, like everyone else, was entitled to all of the nothing in the desert, all of the pebbles and clay, all of the potentially lethal critters, all of the afternoons spent scavenging for a spot of shade only to realize there was no escape from the sun and at least it was dry heat.