It was a larger building, with gates built high for security. Walls surrounding the school corralled the students into the limited space. Sets of cars lined the parking lots, with guards escorting certain students into the closed-off complex. This was the school senior Neesha Malik attended for a year in Karachi, Pakistan: Karachi American School (KAS).

Malik, who spent her junior year in Karachi, went to Saudi Arabia to visit her father, who was working there at the time. She intended to move to Saudi Arabia, but never knew that she would end up living in Pakistan for a year.

Within the next couple of days, a chain of events unfolded so quickly that Malik found herself unprepared for what lay ahead of her.

“My mom and dad suggested that I check out an American School in Pakistan, and to take the entrance exam just to see if I could get in,” Malik said. “I decided to do so, but after I finished the exam, my mom and dad told me that I could choose to enroll in the school, or go back to Saudi Arabia for a year.”

The school in Saudi Arabia was already making it hard for Malik to get in, and it was until she was accepted into KAS and her family had paid the nonrefundable entrance fee that her father revealed that he had completed his work in Saudi Arabia and would be returning to California. Malik was stuck.

“I don’t know if it was originally intended for me to stay in Pakistan, but it was the way that things worked out, and what my parents needed to do,” Malik said. “My mom was with me, but I was still confused, and it all happened so fast.”

Although she was living with her mom and relatives, she wished she could go back to California, and began to ache for the feel of comfort. The unfamiliarity she felt in a country that she could not bring herself to call home made Malik appreciate the United States so much more.  

Peers and school

Perhaps the hardest adjustment for Malik was the transition to KAS. She found that she did not truly fit with the students and encountered stereotypical “mean girls” at the new school.

She noticed this during the first couple months, when she listened in on others’ conversations.

The language commonly spoken in the part of Pakistan Malik lived in was Urdu. For the first few weeks, Malik, who knows Urdu well, pretended she didn’t speak the language in order to spend time listening to other students.  

During one incident, a classmate criticized her for being an American.

“My temper got the better of me, and I stood and told her, ‘You don’t know anything about me,’ in perfect Urdu,” Malik said. “She, and all of the other students, were definitely surprised, it was like a scene from a movie.”  

Even after the incident, Malik continued experiencing cruelty. From subtle animosity to outright hostility, she began to feel somewhat isolated. She recalls the boys in her grade telling her to go back where she came from to her face.

“Some days I would just wake up frustrated and unhappy and have a really hard time going to school,” Malik said. “I just had this constant feeling of isolation when I realized that most of these people were not going to be my genuine friends. I could just tell that I would never be truly welcome.”

Malik quickly began to miss Saratoga High. Compared to  Pakistan, where there were no rallies, football games or Homecomings, and the Falcon experience seemed more appealing than ever to her.

“It’s weird, the simple things that you start to miss,” Malik said. “Other than the environment of [Saratoga], I missed my washing machine, Starbucks, In n Out, going for a walk, even the milk here. I know it’s cliche, but you really don’t know what you’re missing until it’s gone.”

Living in Pakistan

During the year that Malik lived there, she saw many differences.

In Karachi, a city of around 9 million, beggars often crowd the streets.

“It’s really sad,” Malik said. “Some of the beggars even carry around babies for sympathy so that they can get more money or sell more things.”

Malik later learned that some beggars would use drugs to sedate the infants so they would look as if they were sleeping. They hoped this would play on the sympathy of wealthier people.

Danger was also a reality. Although it never happened to her personally, Malik’s aunts had been held at gunpoint and robbed many times. The robberies were rarely deadly, but always frightening, she said. As a foreigner, she had to be especially careful. Whenever she went to markets she would cover herself up as to not draw attention. She also had to be careful about what she said and who she talked to.

“It worked in my favor that I look like the people in Pakistan, but I have an accent and I sound American when I speak,” Malik said.  “My parents were very cautious to make sure people outside of Karachi didn’t know I was foreign.”

She said Karachi isn’t as dangerous as many other parts of Pakistan, but she still tried to be  safe.

“A lot of the kids had family guards who escorted them places,” Malik said. “That’s how they got to school and got home.  Even so, when I went home, I would always text my mom and she would come to the front of the house and walk me back inside.”

The school that Malik attended held some of the country’s wealthiest students, whose families were in the top 1 percent financially.  For Malik, the stratified contrast between the poor and the rich in Pakistan was almost surreal. A number of students at her school were escorted to school in guarded cars to prevent them from being kidnapped or hurt.

“Kidnappings are frequent in Pakistan, and I even remember hearing kids talk about them as if it were normal,” Malik said.

On top of being escorted to school every morning, the students also lived lavish lifestyles, dressing in designer clothing and expensive brands.

Rich families living in such a poor country was something that Malik wasn’t familiar with, but in that top 1 percent, it was a normal way of life.

Malik felt out of place among the culturally different students. They saw her as “American,” despite her Pakistani ethnicity.

“They have very big ideas of what American students, girls specifically, should be like,” Malik said. “I don’t quite know exactly how they expected me to act, but after the first few months, people grew distant from me.”

Malik said that home life was also different, mainly in the way that her extended family treated their maids and servants.

Servants in Pakistan, who were hired by wealthier families, helped out with everyday chores and even made meals for families.  

The disrespect shown toward the servants, however, shocked Malik. Malik noticed that her extended family didn’t see actions that Americans would normally shun as harsh or offensive.  

In one instance, when Malik’s aunt snapped at a servant to bring her tea, Malik was upset. When she confronted her aunt, her aunt was bewildered.

“It was a different culture, definitely,” Malik said. “The whole ‘respect your elders’ thing is a big deal there, so the fact that I called my moms older sister out for her actions was not something she was expecting. I was forgiven, but I was also not in the wrong when it came to why I confronted her.”

Reflections on her experience

After arriving back in America for her senior year, Malik is happier than ever in her home town.

“It’s different to visit a country instead of living in it,” Malik said. “I realized that after spending a year in Pakistan. Living somewhere else, even if only for a year, entails that you have a responsibility to make a livelihood; home isn’t always where the heart is.”