21 Dec Star Wars
You don’t ever forget your first Star Wars movie. It doesn’t matter what Episode you watched, it leaves a bit of an imprint on you or in my case a lasting impression.
Only 10 months earlier had my family immigrated to the United States from Pakistan to a suburb of Chicago called Bellwood. My English was getting better every day but I was still struggling to adjust. As the story is told to me (I’ve tried desperately to block it out but it is true- 100%), it took two grown adults to drag me to school every single day for the majority of that first school year. My parents were working so the job rested with my paternal grandparents, Daadi (Grandma) and Daada (Grandpa), until they started their business and then my paternal great-aunts, Chotee and Bhari, took over the “drag show”.
“It was the summer of 1980. My first summer in the United States! I was going to have fun…”
Chotee (“younger or little one”) and Bhari (“older or bigger one”) were nicknames that I bestowed on them at a very young age because they were my Daada’s sisters. They never had children of their own but helped “raise” dozens of nieces and nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews, and great-great nieces and great-great nephews. I happen to be one of those blessed family members to live under the same roof as them for 20 years so my “village of elders” was growing even in suburban Chicagoland.
Chotee and Bhari were some one of the first women to go onto higher education in all of India and in later years Bhari became headmistress of an all-girls secondary school and Chotee taught English, so dragging me to school was no problem at all for these 5 foot tall on-a-good-day, petite, strict educators.
“Samita, school is number one- always. Remember that,” both of them would say throughout the days, weeks, months and years to come.
It was the summer of 1980. My first summer in the United States! I was going to have fun: play across the street at the park, play with my friends on the block, visit Daadi and Daada at the gas station for a cold pop, come home when the street lights came on and just be.
On one of those humid Chicago days where nothing cools you off but sticking your head in the freezer, staying in a pool or going to a movie, one of my uncles decided to take all the younger nieces, nephews and cousins to a movie that was playing at the singleplex. I think it was my Uncle Lucky (Liaquat). I’m sure he used his own money to purchase the tickets for our group, a dozen in attendance. The only information we had was the movie had to do with “stars”.
Uncle Lucky corralled us all into the theatre and guided us into a couple of rows of seats. I knew I was safe being in a large, dark room because family surrounded me; it still didn’t stop my heart from beating faster and faster.
Complete darkness. Powerful, magical music. Words scrolling across, no upward on the screen. I can read these words. I’m seven years old, my English is better and I can read without help, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” For the next couple of hours I was transported to the land of George Lucas. One man’s vision of foreign worlds, alien beings, good versus evil, balance in the Universe, the “force”, and all things unknown. For those two hours I knew that all of us in that theatre were experiencing something powerful, something unknown and new, something that resonated long after we left the building- something holy.
“For those two hours I knew that all of us in that theatre were experiencing something powerful, something unknown and new, something that resonated long after we left the building- something holy.”
I am not a religious person. I was raised by a loving Muslim family. I married into a loving Jewish family. I am a spiritual being raising three souls to the best of my ability. Recently, I joked with a friend that my religion is Star Wars: The faith that “energy” flows in everything, we are guided by a “force”, the Universe is balanced between good and evil, and in the end we return to the source from where we came becoming even stronger and existing in the stars for all of eternity. Sound hokey? Sound sacrilegious? Perfect! That’s how most people judge religions “other” than their own.
Yesterday, our family went to see Rogue One also at a singleplex- El Capitan in Hollywood. There were Storm Troopers, a light display, smoke, and all of the drama that Hollywood embodies. Then there was our group of 26; most of us friends since junior high bringing our children for their Star Wars experience. I was once again surrounded by my “family” experiencing something powerful, something unknown and new, and something that resonated long after we left the building- something holy.
-Samita Syed-Needelman
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