Mighty Woman with a Torch

Happy Fourth of July everyone. Seems appropriate to share this post today, from '30 days 30 gratitudes', on coming to America, visiting Lady Liberty, and remembering those for whom the American dream remains just that, a dream.We traveled to NY this weekend to show Saanya’s visiting host-sister from Spain a glimpse of the Big Apple and to try to convince my parents to drive back to DC with us for Ramadan.We spent the day at the Statue of Liberty. I hadn’t seen her up close since I was a child, and she held a whole new meaning for me. To think of all the millions of people from all the distant lands whose deepest desires she holds tight against her chest, stretching one arm high to provide encouragement and strength.My family’s port of entry to the American dream was not NY harbor but JFK airport. I was seven, my brother nine, when we arrived in this country, leaving behind our family, our home and any sense of belonging. “Where you wanna’ go”, the airport cabbie shouted at my father, as he tossed our suitcases in the trunk. “Take us to a neighborhood that you think would be suitable for my family,” my father said. And so began our journey, almost 40 years ago. (Our full story here: Pakistan on the Potomac)I thank God for the opportunities this country has provided my family, myself, and my children, the most profound of which is the possibility to dream our destiny, and then set out to make it happen.As we stood in line that day, parched and hot, inching our way closer, with hundreds of others all speaking different tongues, to add our own whisper of thanks to this ‘mighty woman with a torch’, an old bearded homeless man crouched on the sidewalk was playing a sonorous ‘Star Spangled Banner’ on his flute — a poignant reminder that the promise has not been kept for all.