Walking to school with my friends

Show me your papers.

My Grandparents immigrated from India to the United States before the bloodshed commenced in the Punjab. There was one larger than life man that warned against what was to become. Nobody listened to him. His name was M.K. Ghandi. My Grandparents became US citizens. My parents were born in the US so they also are US citizens. My brother and sister of course were born in the US so we are also US citizens.

My family is Sikh. Many in the US do not know what that is and appear to lump Muslims and Sikhs into the same bag. There are 2 billon Muslims world wide and 30 million Sikhs so the lumping bag is really big.

I am thirteen years old. I have several close friends. We are all different colors and come from diverse backgrounds. We often speak about our home life, our home food, our religions, our family members, our ideas about living. Many of us are bilingual and have fun learning colorful expressions from our different languages and slang. We are interested in finding ways to communicate and appreciate each other. We all relish our varied differences. We all learn from one another. We like to be with one another having fun living life.

We all live in the same neighborhood so we walk to school together everyday. Which is a lot of fun. One day on the way to school several large black trucks came up to us as several large men wearing masks and dressed like military people jumped out of the vehicles and surrounded us on the sidewalk. We were all surprised and of course scared. The men demanded that we show them our “papers.” I told them we were all just kids on the way to our school and did not have any papers. This seemed to make the men angry. One man asked us our names and asked if we were US citizens. We gave them our names and told them we were all born in the US, that our parents were US citizens also born in the US. The men did not seem to believe us.

I am fairly large for my age. I have never cut my hair as this is part of our religion. I wear my hair on top of my head with a small cloth covering the topknot. My skin is brown as are my eyes. One of the angry men asked if I was from Pakistan. I answered that my grandparents immigrated from the Punjab. The man asked where is that? I answered, it is located in the northwest portion of India. He asked if I was Muslim. I answered, no I and my family members are Sikh. He said, so you are Muslim. I answered no sir I am Sikh. He answered what you are son is sick. He grabbed my arm, twisted it behind my back and tied my wrists together with some kind of plastic cable. The plastic cable hurt as it dug into the skin on my wrists. He then forced me into one of the vehicles. My friends are all yelling and freaking out as the vehicles drive off.

I don’t know where I am now. After being driven away from my neighborhood we drove for what seemed a long time. I spent the night in a large metal like shed. There were a lot of other kids there looking sad, scared and lost. The next day we were put on an airplane and we flew for hours. Now I am in a prison. That is the best way to explain the environment. There are even more kids here. All are from the US. All of us are between the ages of ten and fourteen. The guards do not speak English nor any of the languages that we know. I do not understand the language that the guards speak. There is no one here that understands what has happened to us nor are the guards interested in finding someone to communicate with us.

I have been here several months now, I think. It is hard to know how much time has passed. No one has come to speak with us. What I keep asking myself over and over is what did I do wrong?