July 20
Through 2nd grade, besides my brothers, I didn't know any people of color. I know I had classmates who were students of color, primarily black. I also don't recall meeting people from other countries, with the exception of an East Indian couple who came for dinner, and all I can remember about them was being enamored with the wife who looked like a princess to me.
So my entire family was in for quite a change when in 1982, my parents decided to move us to Karachi, Pakistan. My dad was offered a job as a hospital administrator for a hospital/nursing school being built by the Aga Khan in Karachi, Pakistan. For those of you who have not heard of the Aga Khan, he is the spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims. So this was also my first introduction to Islam and it had nothing in common with the Islam I heard about in America years and then decades later.
When we arrived, we immediately met our servants: Philomena, the maid, and her husband, Dwarf (that is how we pronounced his name, but that can't be the spelling), who was the cook; Niaz, the chokadoor (phonetic spelling of an Urdu word I have not said for years), our house guard, and Mansoor, our driver. Mansoor and Philomena shaped so much of what I came to believe about life, including race.
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