‘It’s just a word. It describes a place. I wouldn’t say it’s offensive,’ my acquaintance said dismissively when we discussed the word.
The word that haunted me during my childhood at almost exclusively white schools.
Paki.
I haven’t thought much about the word since a) not being in school anymore and b) moving south, away from my hometown of Hull. I hear it less regularly now. It had a resurgence post 9/11, though commonly used before, and if you are brown you are likely to have been told to go home paki at least once in your life.
The conversation with said acquaintance last year really made me question the word. I didn’t know how to feel after her statement. I laughed nervously, not quite sure why, tried to see her point of view, and then half-heartedly defended my stance. My reluctant defence has bothered me ever since. It felt unusual to me that someone could think that word was acceptable and non-offensive, as a non-brown person saying it to a brown person. Even when I heard it directed at me in the past the people saying it knew it was racist; they weren’t trying to justify it.
I was first called a paki when I was seven-years-old, by a six-year-old boy. We were in the school playground and I remember being annoyed, but more than anything shocked. I somehow knew it was bad, and racist, but no one around me seemed phased by what happened. That was the first time I had felt properly Othered. My friends did not share my outrage, nor could they truly, because I was being targeted for having slightly darker skin and everyone around me was white. In hindsight, it feels like a dream: seven-year-old me running around the playground, trying to find someone, anyone, who would care. But I found my peers to be much like the acquaintance who brushed the word aside as a non-issue.
My second memory of the slur being used against me was in year five, when a new boy at school made a joke about Twix chocolate bars. Admittedly he was quite strange, the kind of child you imagined journaling about how he would murder the other kids at school. He often gave me lingering looks, almost smiles, as though we had an in-joke, despite never once speaking.
‘What do you call two pakis in a sleeping bag?’ he asked us in class. There were about six kids around the table, including myself, and the teacher had just stepped out of the classroom.
Whilst he directed the question to us all, he kept one eye on me. The control of his stare is something I still remember today.
We couldn’t guess.
‘A Twix.’ At this point he was smiling at me. Some of the other kids smiled too. A few were outraged – as outraged as nine-year-olds can be about blatant racism. I cried. Less because of what he said, but more because of the pity surrounding me. Poor little brown girl being called a paki – but she is one. I cried also because as hard as I was trying to fit in, I knew I never really would. I knew that word would always be thrown in my face throughout my school years when I least expected it. And nine-year-old me was right – it was.
Throughout high school, ‘paki’ was almost always combined with ‘fat’. Fat paki. For no reason, of course. Name-calling was normal, as everyone who went to school will know, but whilst my white friends were being called ‘nerds’, I was the ‘fat paki’. I can’t even begin to count how many times those words were said to me. The feeling that I attach to them is potent. It made me feel uncomfortable in my own skin, for being both overweight and Iranian. It succeeded in making me feel completely Other. No matter how many white friends I had I would never be equal to them in the eyes of the name callers. I cried alone and in public often, wondering why I had to look the way I did. The hair on my fingers was entertainment to be laughed at, white boys shouted words in crass Indian accents at me, and a week that didn’t end with me crying was a good one. And if I had a good week it could, and often was, ruined by someone uttering that small word.
My family and I moved from Hull to Brighton in 2009 partly because it became too much. My mum and dad had begun walking in the evenings as a form of exercise and hearing ‘go home you fucking pakis’ every time they went was just too much. I could go on to say my mum works for the NHS, has saved countless premature babies – British babies – but even if she hadn’t, why do we have to prove ourselves? It doesn’t actually matter if we are ‘good’, much like I wouldn’t explain how good a white person was who was being verbally assaulted in the street. Regardless of who you are, and what your job is, it’s unacceptable.
The intent behind the word is complex; it pigeon holes every brown person as coming from Pakistan, as though there are no other countries in the East. It is intended to insult, but it makes me wonder, like the acquaintance, why being from Pakistan is an insult. At its very core, stripping it all the way back, it isn’t technically an insult; it’s a sign of ignorance in assuming all brown people come from one country. But like my experiences have shown, it is a word used to Other and isolate.
Part of me was hesitant to write on the subject – ironically, people from my hometown now comment that I’m ‘practically white’. Somehow, due to my skin naturally lightening with age, and my past experimentation with hair dyes, I am expected to forget the past. It is not a topic I should talk about. Whilst my skin colour has lightened over the years, I am not white. Much like I am not from Pakistan. The dismissing of my race, and it being decided for me and brushed aside flippantly is on going.
So what I wished I said was this: ‘It is not just a word, it’s fucking racist.’
