You are Afghanistan

Broken, burdened and bartered

You are Afghanistan

Beautiful and bright

You are Afghanistan

Yearning for independence but ever so attached 

You are Afghanistan

Resilient and remarkable

You are Afghanistan

They say you will cease to exist, you will be fragmented and lost

But I have found you and will never let them forget you.

-I discovered that when I speak on stage, people actually like to listen. All those years of being verbose with friends and family apparently paid off. So did public speaking class in high school. There’s not much to it. You face the audience, look them in the eye and open your soul.

San Francisco Bay Area:

-An Afghan-American activist threw a warm and welcoming book launch party at her house in the Haight. Good company with good food, and then a walk over to The Booksmith to talk about opium.  Junkies were enjoying their heroin right on Haight Street. Heroin use has skyrocketed in America, especially in the suburbs.

-The biggest event was held in Fremont. I spoke in my mother tongue Farsi/Dari to 120 of my Afghan community members, including family and friends. Their presence was the icing on the cake. (We actually served Afghan cookie bread, cheese and crackers and tea.) Books sold out.

-At Stanford University, a male student was most fascinated by my statement that Afghanistan has blonds. That’s what you get from one of California’s premier higher education institutions.

-At Chabot Community College, veterans of Afghanistan attended and bought the book. They read it with interest and then emailed me their warm regards for the Afghan people.

-I failed to show up to my talk for 75 students at San Francisco State University — a memory lapse. I realized two hours after the event that I missed it, but I went the following day the classes were held and students had done their homework. They googled me, asked smart questions and several came up to me to share their experiences with narcotics. One Mexican student said her immediate family had cut off contact with her extended relatives because they were involved in cartels. One student admitted he was a recovering heroin addict.

-In the Santa Cruz Mountains on a speaking retreat, I focused on the personal story of an exile going home to find that home had vanished. Some empathized with tears and hugs.

 Washington DC:

-Meeting the US Ambassador to Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer to discuss opium brides was a breakthrough for me because for the first time, policymakers would hear about the issue.

-Sitting on a lone chair on the stage at Busboys and Poets bookstore to a full house while the light shined on me. I felt tall for once.

-Doing an interview with FOX News was strange because I knew I would be on the opposing side of the political spectrum with most of their viewers. They have a good make-up team.

-The Woodrow Wilson Center’s 60 turnout and media interest exceeded my expectations. I was star-struck sitting next to the director of the center Haleh Esfandiari, who had been imprisoned in Iran several years ago. I wanted to hear her talk more than me.  The book had not sold well until I made the trip to the East Coast where the press hooked on, from the Atlantic to Al Jazeera.

-Four months later at a seminar on Afghan drugs, an Afghan man critiqued my book with much respect as he went over his underlined notes of Opium Nation. It was the first time an Afghan man had read the book in full and offered constructive criticism. I appreciated his efforts more than the praise I got.

New York City:

-Columbia University was awesome. During winter break on a Friday night, the room was packed. Sree Sreenivasan, a professor at the j-school and SAJA organizer, gathered a great team of journalists to welcome me and moderate the event. The publisher didn’t send a bookseller because they thought the attendance would be low. I had a dozen books with me and I donated the sale proceeds to Women for Afghan Women, an organization doing risky and honorable work in Afghanistan. I told the rest of the crowd to get it from their local bookstore.

-Nine months later I returned to do two events on September 11 at NYU, my alma mater, and the Huge Center in Brooklyn. The turnout was low but the few who showed up took great interest in the subject. I went to NY the second time to lobby for awareness about opium brides and it’s a longterm project of mine still in the works.

Portland:

I took my nursing baby and she began screaming in the middle of my presentation at prestigious Powell’s Bookstore. I turned red but continued to talk as my cousin/babysitter eventually took her to another room. One woman who bought a book said, “I was most impressed with how you kept going during the baby’s screams.” Afterwards, I rushed to find her smiling and happy with my cousin.

Seattle:

I presented at the public library. A caring group of old and young attended with intelligent questions. The librarian gave me a tour of this library, which happens to be one of the largest in the world. I could hibernate there with my entire family. Loved the fall colors and the beauty of the city. The local press took no interest. Tozza Fikhom, as Egyptians would say.

Los Angeles

I made four trips to LA this year. One turned into a vacation with the family. Most memorable were the events with other authors like Eduardo Santiago, Lisa Napoli, Dana Johnson and Naomi Benaron. The majority of those who attended were older women, a demographic who still read hard copy and appreciate an author signature. The events benefitted charity and included auctions and a meal. I wish there were more of these in the Bay Area. In both events, women asked how I worked up the courage to travel to danger zones and report. Curiosity and a sense of adventure, but I wouldn’t take the same risks now because my life as a mother matters more. I began my talks in LA with: “I like LA because it’s the only city I don’t have to explain my hair color.” They laughed. Phew … my feeble attempt at comedy.

Phoenix and Tucson

I was afraid of Arizona because it’s notorious in the media as a conservative state anti everything I believe in. And visiting there confirmed the politics but I was surprised at the international presence of the student body. I met an Afghan Marxist who inhales books, a Mormon couple with a backyard reminiscent of my childhood. They had pomegranate and mulberry trees with a pool and Afghan gilims hanging on their walls. An 82-year-old Afghanistan expert, one of the first Americans to specialize in the country, attended one of the events with a cane and his wife by his side. I spoke at three universities in Phoenix and Tucson, the audience ranged from senior citizens in Mesa to business students in Thunderbird and Middle Eastern Studies students at the University of Arizona. Each event was well attended and in Tucson, one student inquired about American involvement in heroin trafficking from Afghanistan. I wish I had the evidence to comment on that. Some soldiers are returning addicted, but I don’t have the proof that Americans are trafficking it to the US. If you have any evidence, contact me. Most of the US’ heroin comes from Mexico and it’s becoming purer, deadlier, and cheaper, resulting in an increase in overdoses in recent years.

Skyping around the world

Skype video talks for University of Indiana, Bloomington, University of Pennsylvania and press interviews proved to be convenient but lacked human contact. A class on human trafficking sent me 19 pages of questions on how young girls were being trafficked and forced into prostitution in Afghanistan. I tried to answer some of them but not being able to look them in the eye and involve them in the presentation seemed ineffective. UPenn students who organized the International Development Conference asked me to participate in a discussion on post conflict governance. Technical difficulties made the discussion funny and frustrating with the other two panelists who were present in Philly. I talked but couldn’t hear. They listened but couldn’t comment.

Comments and reviews:

Keep them coming on Amazon or Goodreads. That’s the best way to give me feedback. 

After dozens of talks at bookstores, libraries, universities, on TV shows and radio programs, I spoke to whoever listened, reminded them that even though American troops will be leaving Afghanistan, Americans still should care. Why? Because it’s too easy to forget, and too deadly. The two countries are intertwined now, should be a part of each others’ conscience. Eleven years so far, 2000 US troops dead, thousands of Afghans slaughtered and an Afghanistan still in chaos. How can you forget?

In ritzy Carmel, people laughed at my quips and in hippie Portland, they cried at the tales of indignity and desperation facing Afghan girls and women today. Most Americans asked, “What can I do to help Afghans?” Become aware, do not stop reading about Afghanistan, become involved through a charity, and if you dare, go there and train Afghans in a professional field. Whatever you do, do not bury the story of Afghanistan just in the pages of history.

If I’ve become preachy, it’s out of desperation. The US has a short memory span – the places and people it bombs disappear from public discourse as the next international crisis develops. It’s a nagging calling for me to stop the amnesia, and this book tour gave me that chance. I was bursting to share what I had witnessed in Afghan villages from the mountains to the deserts. Speaking up was cathartic.

Some would say perhaps it’s better for the US to stop meddling and forget. I know better. The Afghan civil war of the 1990s was the result of that American abandonment.

Did all those words repeated to thousands of ears do any good? You tell me.

Critics praised Opium Nation and I beamed. I worked for seven years against all odds to make sure the stories reached the world. I lost money to write this book.  I risked my life to get the details, to hear the stories few were reporting. It became a bestseller in Australia, a PEN award finalist in the US, and something to talk about over dinner in Italy. Some readers called it “corny” while others loved it. The most supportive and most critical were Afghans in the US and abroad.

They were hurt and shocked at the title. Tired of all the negative headlines in foreign news, how could one of their own title her book Opium Nation, as if Afghanistan had nothing else to offer. I understand the critiques. I explained over and over that the publisher chose the title. My choice: Where the Poppies Bloom – that became a chapter title. The fact that Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world’s opiates did not help my case. Some Afghan men who attended my talks stood up to deny that opium brides are a real problem, one man verbally attacked me in a library and another wrote a column defaming my name and work. Incidentally and not accidentally, they were all men.

But the majority of Afghans encouraged me, gave me a voice in the Afghan media and shared the book and its stories with family and friends.

This last year was filled with a flurry of moments and a mix of emotions: exhilaration, exhaustion and exasperation. It was my first book and I had no idea what to expect. But I wouldn’t take back any of it.

The success of the book matters somewhat, but if I could save one opium bride from being sold into slavery, if I could convince one addict to stop using heroin, if I could help one farming family to wean from poppy cultivation, then my hard work will have been worth it. My job as a journalist is to simply tell the story, but my job as an Afghan, as a human being is to be an advocate of justice for those who opened up to me, let me into their homes and pleaded for help.

I voted for Obama because inside the US, he’s doing what must be done to heal the country. He’s trying to regulate the economy while the Republicans continue to support big business and reduce the middle class. He supports human rights, recognizing that women are in charge of their own bodies, gays should have the right to marry and every person has a right to healthcare. He has made mistakes – the bank bailouts were not effective – but he has acted on most of his promises.

Even in Afghanistan, Obama promised a troop surge and he delivered. The fact that the surge failed to weaken the insurgency is an 11-year-old story that began with Bush, as did so much of the mess Obama inherited.

I’m hoping that in the next four years, he’ll tackle the demise of the middle class, implement his healthcare policy and cut military spending. Let’s see if he delivers.

My article is a short opinion piece focused on how Iran influences Afghanistan based on my own travels and experiences. I discuss how Afghans returning from Iran have culturally changed Afghanistan as well as touch on Iran’s political meddling in my homeland. It was not meant to be an academic analysis or documented study of the issue. I traveled for seven years through Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan and spoke to people from all echelons of society. That is my evidence, my eyewitness accounts.  

My words were taken out of context and misunderstood in the critiques, and this was partially my fault for not being clear in my writing. This is the paragraph that was in my head but not written, and it should’ve been included: “One of the positive outcomes of the last ten years has been the advancement of the Hazara people in Afghanistan. Despite the hardships they faced in Iran, they persevered to become a success once they returned home. They are now politicians, performers and businessmen. Their women are brave enough to stand up to conservative clerics as TV anchors and singers.”

That graf might’ve made the big difference in how this article was perceived. I wrote this with that intention but it was perceived that I’m prejudiced against the Hazaras. I meant no prejudice or harm against any ethnic group or religion.

Also, some readers mentioned that I called these returnees counterfeit Afghans. This is a complete misreading of the English language. An internal tension between those who stayed and those who have returned to Afghanistan exists and some of those who never migrated call the returnees derogatory names because they are resentful. I do not call the returnees anything negative. My critics ignored parts of the article that gave it context. I mentioned that I was not comfortable with the cultural changes, like my mother’s not comfortable with a digital camera or Facebook. Change is imminent, but we have to confront that change and I write about my own internal struggle to do so. Yet, I explicitly say that the returnees should NOT be punished for bringing this change to Afghanistan. I was clear that the cultural change was a natural and fluid process, and that Afghans need to accept it. I have also written about how Afghan-Americans are treated and how those who never left Afghanistan resent them. This article was about Iran/Afghanistan and that’s why I focused on the Hazaras and returnees in general. If you read the article, I mention that my husband, who’s a Tajik, was one of these returnees.

I write about various issues as a journalist. I do not discriminate. Pakistan trains and harbors radical Sunnis. We Afghans are the pawns — we’re being used and influenced — and that’s why the article ends with Afghans need to stand united against the meddling of their neighbors. I’ve been critiquing Pakistani meddling in Afghanistan in all of my book interviews but I feel like Iran’s role has not been sufficiently discussed.  

Iran plays a key role in supporting radical elements of Shiites in Afghanistan and I have witness accounts to back this up. The New York Times as well as the premier Afghan newspaper Hasht-e Sobh have written about the specifics of Iran’s clandestine and harmful interventions in Afghanistan. What I failed to mention is that Iran doesn’t only support Shiites but any group that may contribute to the instability of Afghanistan. 

I do not call anyone a spy, as one irate critic who dedicated an entire blog to slandering my name, wrote. Indeed, I mention in the article that “few” of the returnees have political connections to Iran. It would be irresponsible to dismiss that these few Afghans are aiding the neighboring countries divide their homeland. I do not “hate” Iranian culture as this blogger suggested. Our two countries share a rich history and language that I treasure, but I like the cultural nuances in the region and it’s those variations that are disappearing or morphing into an unfamiliar culture for me.

Ignoring the tensions that exist inside the country doesn’t solve any problems. For those critics who said I was dividing the country … the country’s already divided. I believe in raising awareness about divisions and unity, and I will continue to do that in my writing.

Lastly, I was blasted for writing for FOX. I understand the distaste for FOX. I’m not fond of FOX, but it’s an outlet of information and the most popular source of news. It fit the network’s agenda to attack Iran — I realize that – but it also served my purpose, which was to condemn the Iranian government for causing havoc in Afghanistan.

 Thank you for your interest in my work and writings. I welcome constructive criticism and will respond to that. Any verbal attacks and false slanders I will duly ignore.

Below are links to articles I mentioned above:

How Iran Controls Afghanistan

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/25/how-iran-controls-afghanistan/

Farsi/Dari discussion of the New York Times article

http://www.radiofarda.com/content/f3_iran_provokes_chaos_afghanistan/24539815.html

Farsi/Dari Hasht-e Sobh articles on Iran-Afghanistan

http://8am.af/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24742%3A1391-01-11-15-03-00&catid=1%3Atitle&Itemid=553

http://8am.af/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24813%3A1391-01-13-15-30-01&catid=3%3A2008-10-31-09-37-07&Itemid=554

One of my first calls with peril occurred on a cross-country trip in 2002 from Kabul to Herat. It was me, a Spanish journalist, and a German photographer –all women–riding in a taxi with a driver from Kandahar who smoked hashish for half of the trip. As he blew smoke out the window, men in black turbans with Kalashnikovs stopped our taxi. They were not the police or foreign troops because they were not wearing a uniform so therefore, they were either Taliban or road bandits charging illegal road tolls, known for preying on foreign aid workers and journalists. My Spanish colleague took out her satellite phone ready to call an emergency number, while our stoned driver reassured us. My heart raced, but I also felt a rush of excitement. The driver and armed men exchanged some greetings in Pashto, then the driver handed one of them the equivalent of a dollar in Afghan currency and off we went.

“That was it?” I asked the driver. “They don’t want to kidnap us?”

“No. I told them you were poor writers,” he smirked. “They just wanted their toll.”

 Wow, that was cheaper than the Bay Bridge or Golden Gate.           

But that was right after the U.S. had ousted the Taliban. The risks became real in 2005 when the insurgency gained ground and I headed back south again, this time to Helmand province—the frontline.  The British were fighting rebels, many who were opium traffickers, and I traveled in a burqa by taxi again to the district where mostly everyone was either Taliban or a Taliban sympathizer. This time, it was just me with a sober driver from Kandahar and a cagey guide from Helmand. I was in search of a young girl, an opium bride who was sold into marriage to a smuggler, who had brought her to Helmand. My guide showed residents a photo of her husband while I stayed in the taxi. We failed to find them during the day so we spent the night there at my guide’s relative’s house. The next day, the men in the house figured out that I was not just an Afghan woman visiting relatives, which is what I had told the townspeople. And that’s when the trouble started.

The Taliban may no longer be America’s enemy but they remain an enemy to me—an Afghan-American woman who was nearly kidnapped by them. They became my enemy when they beat my grandmother in 2000, bruising her back. They forced my cousin, a medical student, to quit school and sit at home for six years. They forced my aunt to stop teaching and open a secret school. When the doors of the school opened, my aunt shivered in fear. If the United States is negotiating an end to war with the Taliban, I plead those negotiations do not mean the end of freedom for Afghan women.

Vice President Joe Biden’s words are not a surprise, because from the beginning the U.S. tried to negotiate with the Taliban to get Osama bin Laden. When the Taliban didn’t or couldn’t hand over bin Laden because al Qaeda and the Pakistani military had more control in Afghanistan than the Taliban, these so-called students also became a target for the war. Now that bin Laden’s dead and al Qaeda weakened, the U.S. no longer can justify its losing war.

Civilian Afghans knew little about al Qaeda’s role in terrorism or its hatred toward the U.S. They thought the U.S. was coming to save them from the Taliban, whose ideas were foreign to urban Afghans. My cousins stood on their roofs watching American bombs fall on Taliban military posts in Herat province like it was Fourth of July. Many Americans think that the Taliban’s practice of Islam is a part of Afghanistan’s tradition, but the group actually is a modern political movement born out of the proxy war the United States and the Soviet Union fought inside Afghanistan.

My memories are of a happy childhood ruptured by war. One day I played in my grandfather’s orchard picking pomegranates and grapes, on another day I witnessed my classmate die in a school bombing. I was 9 years old when my family fled the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We settled in the U.S., but I returned 18 years later, in 2000, when the Taliban reigned, to visit my relatives. My cousins defied the ban on music and sang and played music, but in the morning, they whispered, frightened that the Taliban would raid their home. The psychological fear debilitated any progress or learning in the cities. I returned after the Taliban ouster in 2002, and stayed for the next five years to witness the changes propelled by the American intervention. Afghan men and women thought peace had come—along with jobs, education, and freedom.

In some provinces, life is better, especially for women. Millions of girls are going to school for the first time, women are in the government, back to teaching, running businesses, and have access to basic health care. Reports that violence against women has risen can be seen as a positive sign, because it means women actually are reporting the violence. During the Taliban time, that violence was state-sponsored.

But in the southern provinces—the frontline of the U.S.-Taliban war—women’s lives are in greater danger. The Taliban have systematically assassinated women who work to help other women in Kandahar. In 2005 I was working on my book, Opium Nation, and traveled to Helmand province in search of a young girl, who had been bartered in marriage to an opium smuggler. My guide took me to a house he thought was safe. The men of the house claimed to be Taliban and said if they had not known my guide, they would’ve punished me for traveling without a male relative. (Some interpretations of Islam mandate that a woman can travel only with a male relative.) These men also suspected I was coming from the West and wanted to kidnap me. My guide, who was related to them, talked them out of it. The women I met in Helmand left the house with a male relative only to go to the doctor’s. They spent their hours inside their compounds. I met two women married to the same man who said they wanted to go shopping, to see Kabul, and to learn how to read and write. But they were afraid of the Taliban, who controlled their district.

I understand the need for the U.S. government to change the language of war when Americans and the world are tired of fighting in Afghanistan, and when the current Afghan government is corrupt and inept. After Sept. 11, people called the war inside Afghanistan an intervention; now that has changed to occupation. If the Taliban no longer are the enemy, they are still a threat to humanity, to any form of progress. If a political agreement is reached to include them in the Afghan government, that pact must preserve rights for women.

The political complexities and changing alliances mean little to my relatives and friends inside Afghanistan—the women are now doctors, artists, and journalists. The men are Fulbright scholars, TV hosts, and musicians. If the Taliban return unchecked, those people will be out of work with no livelihood, and these 10 years of fighting will have been futile.

I have help from a friend and sometimes from my husband. I also work from home so it shouldn’t be that hard to get things done, but I’m often in slow motion. Here’s a day in the life:

Morning:    

After I pick up my oldest from pre-school, I sit Andisha, my 6-month-old darling daughter, in her green Bumbo chair while Bonoo, my devlish 3-year-old, plays with her toys in her room. Great time to get some work done. Laptop is opened to my email. Three sentences, then there’s a big noise – in the family, we call it an explosion.  The baby is smiling wide and wagging her arms in sheer relief. The Bumbo chair somehow causes these big bowel movements that need immediate attention. I stop working to attend to diaper duty.

Bonoo skips downstairs to where we are and I ask her to help me. She brings a diaper, the cream and wet wipes and I find some clean clothes for Andisha. Then I sit the baby in my lap, holding her with one hand while I type with the other. Bonoo puts on a Bollywood CD and Andisha grabs at my chest. Baby wants to nurse, toddler wants me to clap while she dances. I shut the laptop. Maybe during naptime I can write that email.

Naptime

Bonoo’s asleep on our bed after 30 minutes of intense conversation with her imaginary friends. It’s time for Andisha to nap too so I should be able to get those emails done.  I put her down, but she’s being fussy. Let her cry it out. I turn on the laptop and continue that email. Then I hear a coughing sound from Andisha, she’s turning red. I quickly pick her up and the next thing I feel is wetness on my shoulder — my NYU sweatshirt soaked in milky projectile. It came so speedily that there was no escape. No problem. I’ll write that email after they’re both asleep at night. Now I have to change my clothes and the baby’s.

Night

Dinner is done, both girls are down for the night and I’m sitting in front of my laptop with a cup of green tea. Yes, now I can finish that email. “Dear (bookstore events coordinator)” … my eyes are closing, my brain is shutting down, my back is aching. There’s always tomorrow. Now it’s time for this tired career woman to get some sleep. Good night all.

“If fighting starts between Pakistan and the U.S., we are beside Pakistan,” Karzai responded to the question “what if … “ It was just a few weeks ago that he was threatening Pakistan’s government for masterminding the Rabbani assassination. He either has very bad media advisers or doesn’t think when he answers.

Mr. President, you really should think about being friendlier to the guys in Washington who are keeping you in power. Islamabad would like you in a grave no matter how much you suck up.  Yes, you think Pakistan will be your master once the US leaves, but then you’ll have to answer to the millions of Afghans who feel Pakistan has made their life hell inside their own country. Yes, I realize you were put on the spot, so why not answer like this: “I doubt something like that would happen since the US has given Pakistan billions of dollars in aid money. And they would not dare attack you because you have nukes.” (Okay, maybe that could be refined into more diplomatic language, but you get my twist.) You give the Pakistani viewers confidence, put their mind at ease that war is not going to break out and you don’t antagonize Uncle Sam.

No, I don’t want to be your media adviser, but you should really invest in them. They’ll make you sound a little more together, even though they didn’t do much for Bush Jr. But it’s worth a try.

Cheers,

An Afghan who once believed in you (my naivete)

By Fariba Nawa
October 18, 2011
The Christian Science Monitor

Newark, Calif.
My daughter Bonoo Zahra, age 3, began preschool in August, and my worst fear about her education in the United States is coming true – English is invading her speech.

Before she began school, she exclusively spoke Farsi, our native Afghan language, but now she shuts the door to her room and prattles in English with her imaginary friends. She prefers to watch cartoons in English and wants me to read her books in English.

My husband, Naeem, and I decided our language at home would be Farsi so that our two daughters could learn to speak it. They would learn English in school and outside the home. After watching dozens of relatives’ and friends’ children in the US forget their native language, we are determined to teach Bonoo and Andisha, 5 months, the importance of bilingualism. But it’s a battle many second-generation immigrant parents have lost to the pervasiveness of English.

Besides preserving cultural heritage, a second language can boost careers, sharpen analytical skills, and encourage communication with a world outside one’s own.

The loss of language is a deep-seated fear among many immigrants. The US has been dubbed the graveyard of languages by some academics for pushing English and excluding other tongues. Currently about 55 million Americans speak a language besides English at home, but by the third generation, the home language tends to atrophy, according to various studies. American society supports a rhetoric of multiculturalism but not multilingualism, experts say.

While many of our parents wanted us to assimilate faster and speak English better, our generation – the 30-somethings – is focused on preservation. In the past few decades, the emergence of identity politics has encouraged ethnic Americans to hold on to more than English.

More ‘heritage language’ learners
Olga Kagan, director of the Center for World Languages and National Heritage Language Resource Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, says more and more students of ethnic backgrounds want to learn their native language when they enter university. These students are identified as heritage language learners, and UCLA opened the resource center she runs in 2006 to meet that need.

“Now we are more aware of it. In the past, people didn’t pay much attention to [learning their native tongue],” Ms. Kagan says.

Unlike Europe, where the younger generation in immigrant communities seems to be more successful at retaining its native tongue, children raised in America tend to only speak fluently in English. The Hispanic community, which represents the majority of bilingual Americans, may speak only English by the third generation. But the influx of new immigrants helps keep Spanish alive in the community.

The authors of the 2006 article “Linguistic Life Expectancies: Immigrant Language Retention in Southern California,” in the Popu­lation and Development Review journal, contend that Hispanics in the Los Angeles area shift to English between the first and second generations and lose Spanish by the third.

Yet if children in other countries are capable of speaking at least two languages fluently, why can’t American children do the same?

The US movement for monolingualism began after World War I when xenophobia developed against Germans in the US and caused many German-language schools to close, according to Lisa García Bedolla, head of the Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. Ever since, the presumption is that a patriot should know only English.

“I think the issue is that we may have a rhetoric of multiculturalism in the US since the civil rights movement, but that does not seem to have been accompanied by an acceptance of multilingualism,” Ms. García Bedolla says. “It’s made very clear to children that [English is] the politically dominant language for belonging and inclusion. There’s a hierarchy of language, a power issue.”

This dominance has been institutionalized in the education system, she says. García Bedolla is the coauthor of the recent report “Classifying California’s English Learners,” which shows that bilingual kindergartners or bilingual children who go to public school for the first time are categorized as “English deficient.” Many students who are proficient in English are wrongly placed in language-development classes. California has 1.6 million English learners, a quarter of the students in its public schools.

The presumption is, “If you speak Spanish [for example], you cannot speak English,” García Bedolla says.

Vanessa Velazquez, my daughter Bonoo’s preschool teacher, agrees with García Bedolla’s assessment of the language hierarchy. Her preschool classes are 75 percent bilingual, she says. The majority speak Spanish but pick up English within a month. School policy says she can talk to Spanish-speaking children in Spanish but must encourage them to speak English in the classroom. She talks to her own children in Spanish inside and outside the home but says she has faced discrimination. A Caucasian customer at a mall told her she should only speak English in the US. “I said, ‘It’s a free country. I can speak what I want,’ ” she recalls.

Multilingualism common in Europe
In Europe, discrimination and the impulse to belong are equally present, so why does it seem as if ethnic communities speak more than one tongue? Magnus Marsden, a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London has been involved with the Afghan British community and says knowing more than one language is typical in London.

“It is a norm rather than exception to speak multiple languages…. But one important thing is that Afghans in the United Kingdom often claim to be able to learn other languages from their own region that they did not know before they came here. There are also organizations that are involved in strengthening other forms of language capacity.”

Being multilingual is part of Euro­pean culture, but unlike in the US, it’s more difficult to assimilate into the mainstream culture, so immigrants tend to keep to themselves.

Mariam Noorzai is second-generation Afghan British – she was 5 when her family fled Kabul – and she never spoke English at home. Her three children were born in London and are fluent in both English and Farsi. Ms. Noorzai says in a phone interview that her large family has been consistent over the generations with the “Farsi only” rule at home. But another reason for language retention in Britain, she says, is ethnic isolation. “We only interact with our own family. My kids socialize with others only in school.”

Mr. Marsden disagrees and says immigrant communities do mingle with mainstream Britain but are still able to retain their native language.

Nushin Arbabzadah, a research scholar at UCLA, studied linguistics in Germany. In Germany, she says, language learning has many dimensions. “For example, third-generation immigrants born in Germany to parents who were themselves born in Germany can grow up not speaking German correctly while being semifluent in their own native tongue. By contrast … committed and aspirational new arrivals can become fluent in German in a year, sometimes refusing to speak their own language in public out of a sense of shame.”

Parents like me still think there’s a way to retain language in the US despite the odds.

Anthony Henriquez, 8, and his brother Jason, 5, sit at the dinner table in their Fremont, Calif., home doing homework. The conversation is a mixture of Spanish and English. Doli Henriquez, the boys’ mother, says she’s proud that her kids speak Spanish well and do so without pressure. Anthony plops on the couch next to his mother and says he thinks in English but dreams in Spanish. “I feel comfortable in both languages and no one ever makes fun when I speak it at school. But it’s the best when we go back to El Salvador,” he says of the trips the family makes.

For the immigrants whose countries are not at war and who can afford it, frequent trips to their native land can be the answer. But it doesn’t seem wise to return with my daughters to a war zone like Afghanistan.

I call a friend in Chicago, Shahir Ahang, another Afghan-American and the only one of my generation I know in the US whose children, Emad, 9, and Zaki, 6, retain Farsi.

“From the day they were born, I have always told them when you’re at home, you have to speak Farsi,” Mr. Ahang says. “When they say something in English, we don’t answer them back. They hear five to 10 times a day, ‘Say it in Farsi.’ When they don’t know a word, they ask.”

Ahang says their friends call the couple “the language police,” but he and his wife are making their children’s lives difficult now so that they can communicate better in the future. He says language retention was a matter of preserving cultural identity at first, but now it’s the usefulness of knowing more than one language that drives the couple.

Language-immersion schools grow
In the San Francisco Bay Area, the rise of the Asian population has been accompanied by an increase in language-immersion schools. Zhenxi Dai and Yunfang Qian began their Chinese school from their home in 1998 with 10 to 20 students. They now have up to 100 students of Chinese descent enrolled.

Hieu Ta and Cindy Huang-Ta’s children, Chloe, 8, and Alex, 6, were learning Mandarin in Ms. Qian’s school before the family moved to Los Gatos, Calif. Ms. Huang-Ta has spoken to her children in Mandarin since they were born. Their first words were in Chinese, but as they get older, English is becoming more prominent. The couple researched more than a dozen Chinese schools before choosing Qian’s, but their move to Los Gatos three months ago, where there are no daily Chinese schools, has distanced the kids further from Mandarin.

“It’s a total struggle. We got a lot of advice from a lot of different people, and the vast majority said [teaching a second language] does not work,” says Ta, a software engineer.

Their friends told them the best way for the children to retain Chinese is to live in China, and the couple may do that someday. But for now, Chloe and Alex go to a weekly Chinese school 10 minutes away.

As for my own family, we’re going to follow Ahang’s advice and continue to be the Farsi police.

One recent day in the car, Bonoo picked up a book and began to count the images she saw in Farsi, “Yak, do, se [one, two, three].” I grabbed my camera and pressed the video button. Ten years from now, if she refuses to speak Farsi to me, I can replay it and remember the moment when she could rattle off numbers in her mother tongue.