2023 National Medalists

Get lost in the good food, Sweet morning air

Feeling feminine and strong A country pulsating

My cells vibrating

In tune with every particle Of My Nigeria

Life has meaning,

Nigeria is my meaning

A country manufactured by the British and colonized by my heart Breast and bone and blood

Aunty Ada’s sweet stew and yam

Igbo: A language I do not know yet rich on my tongue My Nigeria

Intelligence, strength, fortitude Flooding, kidnapping, corruption Family, insanity, Nollywood

Our Nigeria

1969

The Biafran War The air raid is silent

The starvation is loud The sky is but smoke The war over but

My father’s friend killed at the border An anti-federal Biafran soldier’s uniform Tucked away in his luggage

Your Nigeria

A gross blood clot Festered by the British For personal gain 1966 to 1969

An alien pogrom, ethnic cleansing, civil war Humanitarian crises, hundreds of thousands of Igbos Starving, dying

Children cauterized by famine

Mothers wailing, heads craned toward the heavens, petitioning to God Men at war, losing

Fighting, strong, and devoted to

In the summer of my sixth grade, Lǎomā drove me to thirty-minute piano lessons in an ivy-clad brick house every Sunday. The drive to and from downtown was two hours in total, but my mom was unemployed back then, and I was never aware of how much time I occupied in her life. So it became a ritual of sorts for us to make the two-hour drive on Sunday afternoons, buckled into a sticky, itching kind of silence with our windows down and the August breeze streaming in.

That year was my fifth year spent in America. Before then I had spent a bright, happy childhood in the busy archives of Wuhan, sucking on Tanghulu and skipping rope between the crumbling buildings of my hometown. Then in the lapse of one summer, I had been shipped to cold, chilly Milwaukee— where the aunts and uncles who raised me were absent, and where I was introduced to my parents at last. My mother, Māmā, and my father, Bàba.

The terms of address had never stuck. From some point on, my parents had become Lǎobà and Lǎomā. Old father and old mother. They were not old at that time, but they were plain and common, unlike the powerful kings and beautiful queens who I’d envisioned as my nameless parents.

Five years later, my mom— who was not nameless now, but who was as foreign as a stranger all the same— rolled up the car windows and parked us near a Chinese bakery ten minutes from my piano school. The August sun was heatless but unwavering. I pushed open the car door and jumped out onto the melted concrete, two dollars balled in my sweaty palm. My mom tried to take my hand, but I slapped her hand away.

Like the two-hour drive, the bakery, too, was a ritual of ours. Maybe bribing me with egg tarts and pineapple cakes was the only way my mom could think of to make us less strangers. It had worked for a week or two, until last Sunday, out of the blue, she’d pulled to a stop near the bakery and tried to tell me a story.

The story was a true one that happened before my birth. It was about how my mom was planning to go abroad to college in Canada, and then she’d found out that she was pregnant with me, and after that she had to remain a jobless stay-at-home mom for my sake. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t really care about her life, but the story wasn’t over yet, and my mom was still talking about how Auntie Xue and Auntie Li had always hated her and raised me in China away from her. Like my aunties were evil villains, and she was just a poor princess from Andersen’s fairytales.

The story went on for a long time. The two dollars I carefully took out from my piggy bank every Sunday were beginning to turn gooey in my palms. I pried my fingers away and held the dollar bills up to the afternoon sunlight, and they were already drenched with sweat.

My mom asked, Are you listening?

I stuffed the money in my fist again and nodded. She said, I wish you could love me more.

I thought about how my aunties had warned me against my mom. Auntie Xue had taken me into her arms and said that my mom hadn’t meant to be absent in my childhood, of course. My mom only had to because she and my dad were too poor at the time, and if I wasn’t too careful with my future, I’d end up like her. But my mom was still a stranger. No amount of sweet buns would change that.

Are you listening? My mom said again.

She tried to take the dollar bills from my fist. I looked at her and saw that she had been crying— her face was blotchy and red and her eyes were watery, and princesses were much prettier than she was. I snatched my hand away from her and jumped out of the car. Behind me, my mom shouted something, but I was running toward the bakery, eager to buy an egg tart before the money disintegrated entirely.

Now, my mom didn’t try to hold onto me any longer. Even as I ran for the bakery, I could feel her eyes on me, uncomfortably heavy.

***

On the Friday my mom packed everything into a multi-compartment backpack and flew to upstate New York, there

was still one day left of my eighth-grade final exams. We were adapting to the drowsy humidity of Houston compared to the perpetual chill of Milwaukee, so when my dad burst into my room with the news at seven AM, I was still half- asleep, blissfully ignorant of what had happened two hours prior.

My dad had been the first to discover the departure. He’d woke up at four thirty to prepare for work, and when he pushed open his bedroom door, he’d come face to face with my mom. My mom was dressed for the northern weather. She had a black backpack over her shoulder and a plane ticket in her hand. She had been unemployed for years, so when my dad asked her where she was going, he thought she’d tell him that she was going for a job interview. My mom gave him a kiss on the cheek and said that she needed a break.

And on the last day of your final exams too,Auntie Xue said over Skype.She doesn’t care about you at all. My poor, poor sweetheart.

Uncle Xue said, Did she tell you that she was going to leave? No, I said. I had no idea.

My face was blank. My dad had gone off to work in a daze. Maybe I was stressed about my exams, which were starting in an hour. Maybe my mom was still a stranger to me.

Would you have stopped her if she told you?Auntie Li asked.

Yes, I said. Then, no.

Why not?

I still have exams to study for, I told her. She relaxed a little, told me to keep the Skype call open, and waved me away. I went to my room and closed the door. A slab of wood away, I could hear my aunts and uncles talking to each other in hushed voices. They had been muttering about my mom again last night, their voices just loud enough over the phone for her to hear. How temperamental, they said. What if she never comes back?

But even then, I knew that she would always come back.

***

When my mom was thirteen, my grandpa gave her a plastic keyboard for her birthday. Back in 1980s Wuhan, every little girl dreamed of hiring a Western piano teacher and dressing up for piano recitals in puffy white dresses. But even back then, grand pianos were a luxury, nothing an ordinary family would buy for a little girl’s silly dreams. So all my mom got was a 44-key plastic keyboard from the convenience store, a flimsy thing that scraped at your nails whenever you pressed down too hard.

Two months before the summer of my sixth grade, I’d fallen in love with the piano somehow— maybe it was a month of continual Piano Tiles or a recording of Étude Op. 25, No. 9 that sparked my own twenty-first-century pianist dreams. I dreamed of notes flowing like water from my fingertips, dreamed of storming through some furiously-paced sonata that ended in thunderous applause from a full hall of audiences in Carnegie Hall. My dad considered my dreams too insubstantial to purchase a full grand piano for; in the end, it was my mom who pursed her lips and lugged home a one-thousand-dollar electric piano on her own.

We had just arrived in Houston when I began to play piano again. I sat in front of the unboxed keyboard and played Piano Sonate op. 27-2 “Mondeschein”— the first movement of Beethoven’s famous Moonlight Sonata. I quit piano lessons after the summer of my sixth grade, and the electric piano had gathered dust for two years. The Moonlight Sonata ended up being the only sonata I learned well enough to play. Now, those two-hour drives to downtown Milwaukee seemed like years away.

That night, my mom asked over the phone whether I would like to continue lessons here in Houston. She was out getting Taco Bell for my dad after a long day of moving. I had already checked the map, and the nearest piano school was half an hour away, just enough time for her to tell me another story.

She heard something in my voice and said, a little snappishly, You’re too old for stories now.

I told her that I didn’t want to go to lessons, and even if I did, I was going to learn how to drive soon. I didn’t need her to drive me any longer.

My mom didn’t respond immediately. She pulled out of the Taco Bell line. I’m coming home. God, I’m so tired. Stupid moving all the way across the United States.

Can you bring something for me before you come home?I asked, but it wasn’t a question, not really. Only an expectation.

She was still unemployed. Over the international phone, my aunts and uncles still muttered about how she was useless, lazy, aging. My mom paused over our call and laughed under her breath. See, you’re like this again. Like what again?

You only call me when you need me. When you’re all grown up, you won’t need me anymore, and you won’t talk at all to me by then.

A lapse over the call. Static buzzing. I tried to think of something to say. At last I said, That’s not true.

I could hear a rustling as she shook her head on the other side. Do you know, she said. Do you know what your second uncle said to your dad about me on the phone last night?

I didn’t know what second uncle said. I had no idea who second uncle even was. What else could they say about my mom— this plain, no-income, unloved woman who demanded too much? Just what they usually say, I said. Just ignore him.

She laughed again. There was triumph in there, victory at being proven right. You think it’s easy to ignore something like that? He wanted your dad to divorce your mom, you know. He thinks your dad deserves better. Do you want a stepmom? A prettier, smarter stepmom who makes two hundred thousand dollars a year?

I stared down at my phone screen and said, You should divorce if you want to. There’s still you, she said.

I wouldn’t care, I said. It was meant to make her feel better. But from the other end, I heard the abrupt, faraway screeching of a car. Someone shouted, Watch where you’re going, fucker!

I waited until the sound of brakes was replaced by a long stretch of white highway noise. Well, she said at last. Well.

You’d be happy if I left?

I said, You should be happy too.

How selfless of you, she said, a little mockingly. She was thinking about all the times I had abandoned her; in the parking lot as I ran toward the Chinese bakery, in the waiting lounge as I greeted my piano teacher, in the four- walled living room as she argued with my aunts and uncles. Suddenly she asked, When was the last time you practiced piano?

I was practicing just before she called. She laughed. God, how proud you sound.

***

Thinking back, my mom wasn’t always this way. At some point, she didn’t complain about these two-hour Sunday drives. She didn’t cry when I never listened to her story, when my aunts and uncles muttered about her late at night, or when the piano she lugged home gathered dust. She didn’t object when we moved all the way across the United States and heaved three people’s belongings into a house that looked exactly like every other down the street. But sometime in the midst of all that, after giving without receiving too many times, we became more obligation than love. One time, even before my mom left, I ran away first. It was some hazy time in third or fourth grade when the April snow was just beginning to thaw. My mom was repeating what she always told me— I’m your mom. But this particular phrase that she always went back to, this phrase that seemed to contain the obligations of the world, I could care the least about.

That afternoon, I snuck out of the back door and ran as fast as I could. I crouched behind the hydrangea shrub next door and waited for my mom to burst out, turn on her car engine, and drive off to look for me. As soon as she left, I could run and run and never look back again.

At five or six PM, the sky was just beginning to darken. My mom stepped outside of our house and closed the door behind her. She didn’t turn on her car. Instead, she rolled out the old bicycle my grandpa gave to her on her eighteenth birthday, checked the brakes, and began to bike into the distance. No car keys, no backpack on her shoulders. Only her and her ever-lengthening silhouette, blurry and orange under the last rays of sunlight.

My legs aching and the rest of me feeling utterly stupid, I waited until she was gone, then stood up and returned to the unlocked house.

When she returned an hour later, none of us mentioned anything. My mom put dinner on the table and talked about how she heard someone playing the Moonlight Sonata today. That night, she gently looped the first movement of the sonata in the background as she searched for piano schools for me to go to next summer. Piano school would be the only thing she ever asked of me.

***

Lǎomā came home on a cloudy gray morning at the end of June. Everything was pretty much the same before and after her departure, so we slipped back into an effortless routine. I spent my summer days reading novels and playing the piano. My mom spent her days buying takeout for our family and searching for job applications she would never go to. We co-existed, two figurines in a fairytale music box, the Moonlight Sonata lilting softly alongside our movements.

Four days after her return, I was playing the first few bars of the second movement when I looked up to find her leaning against my bedroom door, nodding along.

When our gazes met, I was strangely relieved. I knew what she was going to say. It was like how I knew her stories were coming, but I didn’t hate this one.

My dad was out today. The international phone line was yet uninstalled. The newly familiar house was hushed and quiet around us. Outside, cicadas hummed as the summer breeze streamed in through the open window. It was not August, but it was summer again.

“How was New York?” I asked.

“Good. I saw my uncle— your great-uncle.”

Lost. The only word I have ever felt. Never a fit for society. Always an outcast.

Two minutes. That’s how long I have before the possibility of my vision coming back.

A possibility. 

CLANK. The noise reverberates through me as the nurses raise up the rails on my gurney. The hospital clamors around me, rushing to other procedures, to save other lives. The voices drown out my own thoughts. Engulfing me into the chaos.

I lie on the stretcher while the nurses transport me to the procedure room, the wheels rolling on the smooth hospital floor. Being set down on the table, the cool touch of the metal stings my exposed spine while the sterile smell of the hospital seeps into my nose. I close my eyes when the harsh white light of the hospital flicks on, thinking back to the first hint of steely light outside that showed morning was on its way. The sunrise that appeared as a streak in the sky to my faulty eyes.

As the doctor walks in, he opens the drawer beside me, and pulls out the needle. “Ready? This won't hurt a bit,” he assures me, confident in his skill, pushing the syringe further into my spine. The cold needle tears through my frail skin, hitting a nerve. My legs are on fire; the world goes black.

My possibility vanishes into an unlikelihood.

***

I look through the cards laid out across my bed, each written with encouraging messages of: “Get well soon!” or “You’re so strong!” How could they know that when I’m the kid they ignore as I brush past them in the hallway? I exhale shakily, trying to catch my breath one more time before they come in to check my vitals. I wait patiently, watching the rain patter quietly on the windows of my room in rhythmic patterns. Looking up from my bed, I can make out the faint shapes of the farm close by where I fell. The doctors tell me I collapsed from a mosquito- borne disease, but all I can remember is being alone.

The nurse comes in, saying we need to start an IV. I grimace as she holds the needle steady, pressing on my skin. She plunges it in, and my body goes rigid when the fluids coarse through me. I grab onto the IV pole in front of me, grasping for a foothold as my head reels. Rolling it to the bed, I lay down to see the nurse beaming back at me. She wants to know how I got here. She pities the little boy in the hospital. Everybody does. Not in the mood to talk, I take the chance to rest my eyes before the doctors approach me with bad news. Or no news at all. But isn’t that the same?

“We’ll be monitoring you over the week, but as of right now we don’t see any effects of the virus in your body. At the earliest, you’ll be out of here by Friday,” the doctors exclaim as my parents sigh wearily of relief. But I can see the truth they’re hiding. They don't know what's wrong with me. No one does. Why can’t I be normal?

***

The blinding white lights of the hospital flicker above me. “You need to stay still!” The doctors clamor around me as I thrash around, trying to regain feeling. Of anything. I try to wiggle my toes, peering over the blank sheets to look at them, wishing I hadn’t. They lie cold and motionless on the hospital bed. I tell them to stop, tasting the bitter saltiness of the tears streaming down my face. I scream. Unable to move. Unable to feel.

***

I jolt awake to the blaring sound of my alarm. I rub the sleep out of my eyes as I stretch my arms before turning off the tedious clock by my bed. At once, I turn to the receiver next to me and dial the number written down. A shrill ring emits from the phone, cutting through the room for a moment before my parents hastily pick up, making me chuckle solemnly — when they speak, I can hear the sleepless nights behind their quivering voices. They’ve been worrying about me rather than taking care of themselves. I let them know I’m fine when in truth, I miss them and my sisters, wanting to feel the warmth of their love from the depths of the cold hospital. I hear the tension in the room as my dad speaks up with a clear edge in his tone. They’ve clearly argued about this before mentioning it to me. He manages to mutter what he meant to say,

“We won’t be able to come to see you tomorrow.” “Why not?” I retaliate, coming off as selfish.

“Your sisters got the flu, and we have to stay to take care of them.”

“Well why can't you bring them here?” I grasp at a solution, longing to see my family.

“We don’t want you to get sick before getting discharged from the hospital. But, we’ll visit as soon as they start to feel better,” they promise, hearing the desperation in my voice.

The call goes silent as I process the thought of being alone for the first time. Truly alone. I stare at the numbers on the dial, all of them blurring together. I rub the tears out of my eyes, and glance again only to find the hazy numbers. Looking up at the room, the painting on the wall became fuzzier, and the sky outside foggier. I quickly dismount the bed, picking a book off the shelf in the back of the room. I started to read. Only I can’t. The words became indistinct.

***

In the morning, I pace the room as the doctor comes in to check my labs again to ensure I can leave tomorrow with my parents. Just smile and pretend nothing’s wrongI think over and over, the words pounding inside of my head. As he’s leaving, the doctor explains any residing symptoms of the West Nile Virus I may have. I struggle to speak up when he goes over loss of vision, hoping for my facade to not be found out. For my parents’ sake. When he drops his pen, I reach to pick it up, grasping at the floor. Only, I scratch at the bare ground beneath me as he picks it up from behind me. I regain myself, keeping my story straight. I must not have seen the pen land over there. The doctor looks me straight in the eyes, articulating a chilling phrase. “What have you done?”

***

“One more time, just stay still,” the doctor orders as he sends the cold needle through my spine for the second time. The needle sends away my sense of self, my legs numb, my mind split, and my arms flailing for a hand to hold. A hand that isn’t there. I reach out, with a sense of want. A sense of need.

***

They rushed me to the procedure room, scheduling an emergent Spinal Tap. The doctors explain how they'll send a needle into my Spine three times to clear the Spinal Fluid build-up that’s keeping me from seeing. The procedure is said to be painless. But, the chance they hit a nerve and I may lose sensation in my body. A chance.

They stop me in front of the procedure room, transporting me onto the bed. Two minutes.

Two minutes for a possibility. A possibility.

***

I grimace in pain as they send the needle in one more time. I will feel pain one more time. I will reach out one more time. There will be no one there for me, one more time. One more time. The needle rips through my body, hitting my spine, sending shockwaves through my legs. My mind draws a blank as the last thing I see is the blinding white of the hospital in front of me. The once sterile smell seeps into my nostrils. The cool touch of the table stings my exposed back. The world goes black. Engulfing me into the chaos.

Silky, gauzy, gossamer-like strands. Woven with precise delicacy, chiffon is intentionally structured to be a lightweight fabric — but for the past five years, nothing has felt heavier on my head.

I felt its weight when I walked into Mr. Romero’s history class in 8th grade, wearing a hijab for the first time, only months after the Trump administration enacted “The Muslim Ban.” I felt it when the Smithsonian security guard singled me out for a “random security check.” But it has never felt heavier than the day I met my Pakistani mother's eyes in the Kroger checkout line while the cashier gave her a hard time, convinced a two-by-four-foot piece of cloth undermined her intelligence. In the mere milliseconds we shared a glance, I saw the guilt my mother felt for bringing us to a country where our faith was seen as a hazard. Moments like these reminded me of the ramifications of religious discrimination, even in a city as diverse as Houston.

That night, as we put the groceries away, my mother told me a story: When she moved here in 2007, halfway across the world from her hometown of Lahore, her hijab made her a target. In the aftermath of 9/11, she was defenseless against the constant slew of Islamophobic comments. Yet despite the hate she faced, she only ever responded with kindness.

“When you wear the hijab, you represent all of us, beta,” She reminds me.

My mother’s words are something I keep in mind every time I meet someone new. Amidst the backdrop of Houston’s diversity within a politically divided nation, my hijab offers me a window into the worlds of those unlike me. In a poverty-stricken neighborhood in the Southside, my mom and I serve homemade Biryani out of the trunk of her Ford Explorer. The residents come from every corner of the world. Sitting on the curb corner, I eat with Subira— a mother of three and refugee from Ethiopia. Though she’s Orthodox and I’m Muslim, a smile splits her weathered face when I talk about the significance of the hijab. She excitedly informs me about the veil that Ethiopian women wear. We talk for hours, about everything from the conflicts in Tigray and Kashmir to the struggle of practicing religion in the West, long after our food is finished.

It’s not always this simple, however. Canvassing for Lizzie Fletcher’s campaign, I meet Phil. Our political views are vastly different, and when he makes a comment about “Muslims tryin’ to infiltrate our country,'' I'm once again reminded that my hijab makes me a monolith. While I may have once viewed this as a disadvantage, it’s really an opportunity for me to represent my entire community. With my mother’s words in the back of my mind, I push past Phil’s preconceived notions and draw him into a rich conversation. Despite our pragmatic differences — his Bible Belt upbringing and my Islamic background — we find common ground in the fact that faith serves as a guiding principle in our lives. That day, I leave with more than just a promised vote for Representative Fletcher: a greater understanding of how my hijab can bridge ideological gaps.

It’s no secret that wearing a hijab is not easy: the gas station employee acting as if I don’t speak English, dirty looks from a shop owner as I enter the store, a teenage girl muttering “terrorist” under her breath as I walk by. But it’s also incredibly rewarding. My hijab offers me the courage to connect with others, whether they’re like me or not.

My heart is a tapestry stitched with varying fabrics, a collection of stories that remind me it’s not what I look like or how I dress that matters — my words and character are what ultimately leave a lasting impression on those around me. In moments like these, the weight of my hijab abates.