This Is Still the Country I Argue With

Born in Karachi, raised in Dubai, now settled in California. I didn’t inherit this country, I claimed it. I see the cracks, before the flag.

Only in America can someone born in Karachi and raised in Dubai call California home.

Home. That word still feels unfamiliar. Because I had to choose it. And choosing a country is different from being born into one.

It’s not woven into your childhood or baked into your assumptions. It’s a decision you live with every day. You notice what others take for granted. The cracks show earlier. The contradictions don’t fade with time. They sharpen.

Every Fourth of July, the question comes back: Do I love America?

And I always hesitate before I answer.

I was naturalized in 2011, a decade after arriving as a student. I am married, settled, and a citizen. I passed the test, knowing the three branches, memorizing the hundred questions, and swearing the oath.

But lately I’ve started to wonder what exactly I pledged to.

I don’t have immigrant nostalgia or native delusion. I didn’t grow up hearing that America is the Great Satan, and I didn’t arrive thinking it was Disneyland. I came from a monarchy, landed in a bureaucracy, and stayed for the contradiction.

America was never a fantasy to me. It was an option. It still is.

In Dubai, everything worked, but nothing belonged to you. In America, nothing works, but everything is up for grabs.

You can call the mayor a moron and still go to sleep without a knock on your door. You can build a life in the mess — start over, raise a kid, eat biryani and brisket at the same table, and gripe about taxes while being the one who audits them. Try doing that in the Gulf.

The dysfunction here is sometimes the price of freedom. But sometimes it’s just dysfunction. I see it in the audit trail: broken schools, bloated contracts, corporate bailouts dressed up as stimulus, and enough fraud to keep forensic accountants busy until the sun burns out.

But I also see something else — in the mess of it all, the creaky resilience of the courts, the strange fact that a Muslim immigrant with a Pakistani name can belong here not by permission, but by right. Not quietly. But as a matter of law.

That doesn’t happen everywhere. That doesn’t happen most places.

I love the possibilities, but I hate the waste. I love the ideals, but hate how hollow they sound during an election year. I love the Declaration, but I hate the tax gap. I love the promise, but I hate the performance.

And I’m not alone. That’s what makes this country hard to explain and harder to leave. Everyone here is mad at America for a different reason. And somehow, that’s the glue.

Maybe love of country isn’t about loyalty, pride, or the ability to recite amendments. Maybe it’s about staying in the room with the contradiction — not because you have to, but because you still want to.

That’s what I’ve come to believe. Not that America is good or bad, but that it’s still worth arguing with. Still worth fixing. Still worth choosing.

I love that I can say all this. I hate that I have to.