South Asians in Midwood
South Asian Muslim immigrants gather around an Afghan-inspired halal food cart and talk about life in New York City.
As the sun goes down behind a stretch of shops lining Coney Island Avenue, Fouzia Waira fires up her grill.
Inside her food cart—a tiny kitchen encased by a metal box on wheels—she starts cutting up chicken and lamb pieces. Here in Midwood, Brooklyn, a largely Muslim area on the cusp of breaking Ramadan fast, having the meats at the ready is just good business. “The men are sometimes very impatient to eat,” the 36-year-old Afghan native said.
While the call to prayer down the block may just be for Muslims, Waira’s Afghan-inspired halal food is not. Indians, many of whom are Hindu, also show up tonight for a bite and the company. Worrying about world politics and religious differences, it seems, is counterproductive in a land these immigrants still say abounds with opportunity.
“When you’re in the U.S., you’re on a different mission,” said Jagajit Singh, neatly eating a vegetarian falafel topped with green hot sauce. Singh came to the U.S. in 2001 from India, got his master degree in sociology and now runs a non-profit on Coney Island Avenue helping scores of South Asian immigrants—Muslim and not—better establish themselves.
“The kids that come to my program hear about terrorism, know a bit about politics, but they’re too worried about emulating this [American] culture, about getting the latest technology and so forth,” he said. “I tell them education is the way, and hard work.”
Waira, a Muslim, knows something about hard work.
In order to earn a little over $35,000 a year, she puts in 12-hour days, every day.
“I don’t know how I do it,” she said through the food cart’s window. With dirty finger nails she diced green peppers. “I fall asleep everywhere. In my car, at the breakfast table. I may not agree with everything the U.S. does [politically], but the chance to work hard, make money is so much better.”
But the opportunities here hadn’t always been as plentiful. When South Asian immigrants first started arriving in Midwood in the 1980’s—the first were Pakistanis, many of whom had been displaced by the building of a massive dam in their country—the neighborhood was dilapidated.
“The place, no doubt, was a nightmare. There were no shops, no nothing,” said Freddy Khan, a 28-year-Midwood resident who spoke between bites of his halal hotdog. “We built it up, period.”
Indeed, stores on Coney Island Avenue that rented for $500 in 1982 now rent for $3,000 or more. Similarly, houses in the area once valued at $60,000 now go for about $650,000. Midwood today is home to taxi drivers, store owners, food cart vendors, construction workers and a professional class. Despite the adherence to South Asian traditions still felt palpably here, America ones aren’t forgone. South Asian teenage boys, for instance, were playing handball behind Waira’s food cart.
“They play day and night,” she said, checking a propane tank at the front of her cart. After cleaning off her grill of chicken bits, Waira sat down on a chair inside the cart. She looked again at the boys playing handball and shook her head, slightly confused.
“Just a little blue ball. Do you understand this game?”