Magazine Profile

Targeted for Nylon Magazine

Anam Sardar, 22, has traveled the globe in just the first part of her life.
Coming to Chicago to be immersed in its tourism delicacies and to start a
career at college has taught her the value of independence. While Chicago
has opened her eyes to what it means to live in a city, tourism is at an
increase in the city among young generations. Sardar made the
heartbreaking decision to leave her family and friends behind in Pakistan
to pursue a degree at DePaul University. In the meantime, she learned how
to unleash the Western personality she always knew she had inside her.
Seventeen hours and 23 letters. Anam Sardar read them one by one on her flight
to Chicago.
The flight attendant came by to ask her if she would like something to drink and
Anam looked up at her, wiping the wet, salty tear down her cheek. She politely refused.
The letters were spread across the tray table in front of her and the one next to
it, all handwritten in different colored ink. Written on them a final goodbye from her
tight-knit friend group back home in Pakistan.
One final tear dripped down onto the paper and Anam looked up, the white
ceilings fading to a blur as she realized this was the start of her ambition to do
something new. Anam begged her parents for three years to let her come to America for
school, only to find herself in this moment emotional about it actually happening.
The goodbyes written in these letters were the one indicator that showed her she
was ready to do this.
I remember thinking I dont want everything to change, but I knew everything
was going to change, she said, as her eyes watered.

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Anam recalls stepping off the plane in July 2011, having arrived a jittery
person, excited for the future she would be building all by herself.
Now a senior at DePaul, Anam lives with three of her closest friends in an
apartment in Lincoln Park. She gets up everyday at 8 a.m. to make hot water with
lemon, brush her long, black hair and select a sweater and tights from the urban, chic
styled wardrobe she collection from Forever 21.
*

The struggle for Anam to come here was not easy. What started as a simple idea
to leave Pakistan for college as a sophomore in high school transformed into serious
conversations for three years with her mother Iram and father Farhan. It usually ended
in an argument.
My mother was very hesitant, Anam said. She was scared of me living on my
own and she didnt want to think about what could happen to me.
Her mother Iram had an idea of what Anams future would look like and it
wasnt what Anam wanted for herself.
My mother is very concerned about what the society says is okay, Anam said. I
am the oldest daughter and therefore, my mother thought I should go to the university
with all of my other friends who were staying in Pakistan because I would be like
everyone else.
That was definitely not what Anam wanted.
It was time for me to experience something different, Anam said. I always had
a desire to leave. My mother didnt want our relatives to see that I was different than
what my culture thinks is right.

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Much of Anams struggle was about convincing her mother that it would be good
for her.
My mother and I are on better terms about it now, Anam said. But I always
struggled with arguing with her. She just didnt want me to leave behind everything I
had at home; it was just never in my plan to stay.
The decision wasnt made until Anam talked with her father Farhan. He
encouraged her to come.
He really wanted me to get out and experience something different, Anam said.
I am so thankful for that. He has experienced many things in his life and I appreciate
that he wanted the same for me.
Iram gave her only one option on where she could come in the states and that
was Chicago, because her uncle lived here.
My mother figured I would be with someone safe, Anam said. Im pretty sure
she didnt want me to get into trouble or she didnt want to know what kinds of things I
would be getting into while I was here, as long as I had someone in my family to help me
out.
Farhan lived in the states for 10 years before going back to Pakistan in 1988.
Due to this, Anam has U.S. citizenship and is able to study at school without a visa.
She had been to Chicago before with her parents on family vacations when she was
young, but didnt remember much about it.
Just a week after arriving in Chicago, Anam was living with her relatives in
Northbrook, a northern suburb of the city. Her uncle Irfan, who is originally from
Pakistan, and his American wife Jeanine lived in a thousand-square-foot house similar

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to hers back home with a large driveway, multiple bedrooms and located in an exclusive
neighborhood.
Living in the house with them was empty and lonely, Anam said. I was so
used to always having people around, always having friends around, that I began to see
many differences between this house and my life back home.
The most noticeable differences Anam saw were the formality in greeting others
and the amount of privacy.
My aunt started knocking on my door one day and talked to me outside of the
door, but didnt open it, she said. I was like what are you doing? You can come in my
room. I was not used to people not being around or someone to talk to.
No one would be home before 6 p.m. and I would be so bored throughout the
day, so I would go around exploring what was out there and thats when I started
discovering American culture.
The Pakistani culture, much different from American, is family oriented and
never separated. Anam grew up with two younger siblings, sister Sana and brother
Mohammed. Her family has two servants that live in house with them, Major, the home
chef and Jahalo, the maid.
Her third house is where her family currently lives, including her grandmother.
Located just outside of the city Karachi, the house is made of gray concrete and has all
the stocks with modern amenities, a dining and living area, a large kitchen with wood
cabinets and green, marble countertops, four bedrooms, a servants wing, and Anams
favorite part, the roof.
As Anam describes it, everyone is informal back home.

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Her 12 closest friends come over to her house after school, dressed in blue and
white cloth uniforms; they have just finished a long day at the private school in the
neighborhood.
Pakistan follows a British school system with 13 years to complete. Anam grew
up learning English as her first language. She speaks Ordu with her friends and family,
Pakistans official language.
Each girl pulls up to Anams house in her personal drivers car, usually a black
SUV, and hops out.
The girls Isha, Mahaal, and Iman have known Anam since the start of high
school. They see each other every day, spending time together like typical teenage girls.
We talk about the cute guy in our class, play pranks on each other when one of
us has fallen asleep, and gossip about our families latest drama, Anam said.
After school hangouts involve gathering around the kitchen table to eat the
home cooked food Anams home chef Major has just prepared.
Bowls of home cooked rice and vegetables are set out and in Pakistani culture,
everyone is ready to eat.
The group of friends is so closely knit, they often call each other up and drive to
the beach nearby or sit on the roof and gaze at the moon on weekends.
My home life always involves having people around and we are never home
alone at any one time, Anam said, explaining that her siblings and friends will barge
into her room without knocking.
The servants of the house are two people she misses the most after leaving.
When you walk in my house, you will always find Major and Jahalo working
around the house. If Im hungry at 1 a.m, I can go to Major and he will whip something

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up for me, she said. Jahalo will come in every morning and bang my bed with the
vacuum. She cleans and makes our beds every morning. I usually hate when she mixes
up my laundry with my sister. I often find my clothes in my sisters closet.
Despite missing the people she grew up with, moving to Chicago has spurred
changing relationships with those back home.
What breaks Anams heart is that she knows her friends will never know what
its like to get out of the country to live on their own.
When she goes home on winter and summer break each year since being in
college, she finds her friends have gone on without her.
I remember last winter break being the hardest, she said. Thats when I first
noticed that moving away did damage to what I had before leaving. I knew I made the
right decision to leave because I was tired of sitting in the same room, gossiping about
the same people. My friends were thinking about marriage at age 20. I knew these girls
were like my family and I had to accept them for the life they knew, but I felt this was
the time to focus on myself.
Relationships with her family changed too, as she found her brother actually
missing her when she went home. He would sneak into her room at night to talk to her.
Anams father would call her every two weeks to chat about what was new and her
mother stopped worrying about safety.
The memory of what her mother wanted her to be stayed with her, but Anam
had changed significantly in those first few months living in Chicago.
I didnt think like I used to before, I was drinking alcohol and talking to
American boys and of course I wasnt going to tell my mother that because I dont want

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to disappoint her, she said. My friends dont believe in doing things that American
kids do. I know my mother was afraid I would find an American boy and get married.
Anam laughed at the thought and said she didnt care what society thinks, she
knew she belonged somewhere else, a more liberal society perhaps.
*

After settling into her new life in the states for a few weeks, Anam enrolled in
classes at Oakton Community College, a 15-minute drive from her Uncles home. There
is where she met her first friend Stephanie Alban.
On the first day of classes, Anam walked quickly to her classroom. She was late.
Wearing white converse, a brown cardigan sweater, and carrying her books in her arm,
she saw a girl walking toward the door at the same time.
After realizing they were both late to class, they started laughing and introduced
each other.
She was kind of shy and quiet when I first met her, Stephanie said. When she
mentioned she was from Pakistan and she was Muslim, I became kind of formal with
her because I had no idea what her culture was like.
The two continued talking and the rest of the friendship is history.
Even though we come from different countries, we have learned our cultures
are very similar, Stephanie, who is from Ecuador and moved here in 2008, said. She
attributes this to what formed a strong friendship.
In 2013, Anam and Stephanie both transferred to DePaul. Anam felt that moving
to the city was another step to her whole independence thing.
Before moving here, Anam never washed any of her clothes, made her own bed
or cooked a dish.

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Now I do house chores everyday, I dont even think twice, Anam joked.
I am so American domesticated, she laughed.
She never had a job either. In Pakistan, Anam loved Mrs. Fields cookies, a
Chicago-made cookie company. She asked for her relatives to bring some back whenever
they visited the states.
She knew this was where she was going to apply.
On a Monday morning she filled out the job application, and the next day heard
back from the company.
Anam answered a call from Mike and was told to come to the store immediately
for an interview.
I didnt have time to change so I showed up wearing a sleeveless top and
shorts, she explained, embarrassed by her outfit. I went in for the interview and he
told me I should start training the next day.
What she thought was going to be training turned out to be her first day of work.
Again, I didnt dress right and they put me behind the register, Anam said.
When taking people orders, I didnt know the coin exchange and so this old couple
started screaming at me because I gave them a nickel instead of a quarter. I didnt know
what I was doing.
Anam worked there the entire summer and for four months after in the Old
Orchard Mall in Skokie. She had become close with her coworkers who also had
summer jobs in between school years at the community college.
We had so much fun together. We would bake batches of cookies before we went
home, Anam said. We took trips together downtown. I was so glad to make friends
quickly.

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Stephanie got a job there too soon after and Anam found herself in love with the
idea of working.
I honestly was enjoying it because I was eating cookies every day and getting
paychecks. Way more than what my parents were sending me. I had money for
everything.
With that money, Anam went shopping at Forever 21 and H&M to supply her
new wardrobe.
Carrying a yellow bag each day as she walked up to he shift, her coworkers joked
to her about her spending habits.
At home, we want to wear the clothes we bought in America. The only thing is
we can only buy jeans and hoodies when we are in America, Anam said. I figured I
would stock up while Im here.
She was also learning how to drive at the time. She had never driven while at
home and enrolled in classes with high school students.
Anam sat in the back and stared up at the white board with dozens of words
written in black. They were driving instructions and rules of the road.
She looked around and saw nervous glances on the other students faces. Her
hands got clammy and she swallowed hard.
When she got in the car that day for the first time, she made it through the first
driving lesson and had only backed into a curb three times.
I was so bad when I started driving, my teacher used to tell me, some people
have the driving the talent, and some people dont, Anam said.
With her angry eyes, the teacher was trying to tell Anam something.

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Anam kept practicing for months and drove around with Stephanie. As her
driving improved, she got her license and had her own car within a year.
The two girls got out of class every day and met outside the school garage to
drive in Anams car, exploring what existed in the neighborhood near their university.

Months passed and Anam now lives in another apartment a few blocks away
from DePauls Lincoln Park campus.
Its a red brick three-story, built in 1884, with white, chipped molding, oak
hardwood floors, and a stained glass window.
Everything about the apartment says Chicago, Anam explains. She lives there
with her three other roommates, girls she met through mutual friends.
As she sits on the back porch on a warm, March day in the magenta pink chair
with her other roommates gathered around, she talks about how far her life has come.
She wears dark blue Harem pants and a white crop top with a cardigan. Her
topaz and silver earrings never leave her and her braided, tribal bracelet hangs loosely
off her ankle, just peaking up above white converse that has a brown stain on her left
shoe. It looks like coffee but came from the other day when she went walking in the
melting snow.
The chimes from the apartment next door are ringing softly in the wind. She sits
with her leg up, flicking back her long, black hair and rubbing her eyelash behind her
round, Ray ban sunglasses.

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She is calm and collected. She sits with her roommates, chatting and laughing
about the day they just had. They walked down to Armitage Avenue, a street nearby
with clothing shops and Anams favorite frozen yogurt store.
The girls are gathered around the cups of iced coffee, dripping with
condensation onto the green table.
Discussing the plans for their Saturday night out, most likely grabbing drinks at
the bar down the street and then hopeful to meet up with friends at a club downtown,
Anam could never have imagined she found such a happy place.
She points to the girls and says, I didnt think I would find a close-group of
friends in only a year and half.
I love coming home to them. I found my mini part two version of my family.
And thats the adventure of it.
Anam appreciates every day how much of a risk she took coming here and cant
thank the people around her enough for what they have done.
Its at the point where I like eating alone and spending time by myself, she
said. Ive come such a long way. My friends turned me into an American kid.
Ive always loved the excitement of it, she went on to say.
Anam is grateful for all of the experiences she had that led up to this. She still
talks to the people she knows back home in Pakistan, but is confident about what is
ahead of her.
She applied for a summer internship at Leo Burnett, a public relations firm. And
is waiting to hear back by April. She is also leaving for spring break in Florida at the
end of March.

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Ive always had a love of traveling and I hope to do a lot of that when I get older,
she said. Ive been blessed because my parents encouraged us to travel when I was
young.
Speaking of them, Anam still gets into arguments with her mother from time to
time, but understands that this step to leave home has not been easy on anyone.
She takes calls at midnight with her friends at home because of the 11-hour
time difference and has accepted that she might not ever go back to see them.
I just dont want to live there anymore, Anam said. I remember one time I went
to the beach in Pakistan and my shoulders were bare, and everyone gave my mother a
hard time about letting her daughter wear that in such a conservative place.
I thought to myself, this is not the society I want to belong to, and this is my
body. I am going to wear what I want. If they only knew that my skirt going out on
Saturday nights in the city showed all of my long legs, she laughed.
This whole adventure has been about finding a place where I belong, Anam
said. I think of myself as independent now. I drink alcohol after all, but really I do
everything by myself, cook my own meals, book my own airline tickets, drive myself
where I need to be. This was definitely stepping out of my comfort zone, but being in
America reassures that I will be able to figure it out, Coming here, I thought I would
have no friends and be lost, but Im not and I want to stay.
Ive just been way too liberal for my own good.

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Contact Information Anam Sardar STUDENT, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

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Anam.sardar@gmail.com
Stephanie Alban STUDENT, DEPAUL UNIVERSITY
(773) 809 - 7937