ONCE, A BOY at a college party in Wisconsin asked me where I was from. Born in India to Indian parents, I had done a year of high school in Palatine, Illinois, and spent eight months in Ontario. I usually said, “India,” when asked my origins, or if I wanted the conversation to end soon, offered up “the Chicago suburbs.” But this boy held a sensitivity in his face that made me wish to divulge something real. And so I said, pulse quickening, “Oman.”
He narrowed his eyes, cupping a hand around his ear. “Did you just say you’re from the moon?”
Memory bit me then, drawing blood. Low-slung mountains, cobalt sea. Tawny-gold sand dunes, arched like the back of an animal. Endless date palms lining smooth new roads. Houses smelling of frankincense. The capital Muscat: serene, white-painted city by the harbor, where I’d grown up. And the heat: the throbbing, mauling heat. My parents’ injunctions to wear modest clothing, and to always, always be careful around men. My small, airless, fearful life, lived between school and home.
I was 16 when I departed Oman for the States; that was 16 years ago. In the years that followed immigration, I slowly became someone else. I learned to ride a bike, to pitch a tent, to run a meeting, to hold my own. But fear—born of inexperience, overprotection, deep patriarchy, and the second-classness of growing up South Indian in 1990s Oman—has left its mark on me. Being taught to assiduously avoid risk, especially risk to your precious body, changes you. Being encouraged to let adult men do the work of driving or planning or paying or chaperoning your safety—that shapes you, too.
That long-ago moment at the party is what I think of, and stepped away, at once humored and sad, into the cold night air. Now I’m moving through space, voyaging to the moon. On my tray table is a list scrawled on paper: . It is an itinerary I find intimidating. I’m afraid of heights, I possess the upper-body strength of a 10 year old, and I have only about 40 hours of driving experience. But finally, I’m returning to Oman. To chase adventure, to test myself, to see what I can do. To measure how far I’ve come from the girl who’d never so much as crossed a street alone.
