Auburn student Nighet Ahmed, doctoral candidate in adult education, grew up in Peshawar, a Pakistani city about 40 miles from the Afghanistan border, alongside the children of Americans who worked at the city’s United Nations base and for the various U.S. governmental departments with offices in the area.
She attended a Christian missionary school in the almost 99 percent Muslim nation and received a degree in home economics, also from a college founded by missionaries.
“They were so open to the idea of missionaries coming in and setting up their schools,” Ahmed said. “It was just an open society, really.”
After her husband got a job at nearby Tuskegee University, Ahmed moved to Auburn in 1985, a place she now calls her “hometown.”
Peshawar was known colloquially as “Little America” because of the large amount of Western presence. Through her schooling and her travels in Europe, Ahmed said she was accustomed to much of the culture. Instead, it was the little things she had to pick up as she went along.
“Everything was new, and I was fascinated by so many things,” she said. “I didn’t even know the cents and the dimes and the nickels. If I had to buy something, I would just put the coins on my hand, and I would let them pick because I didn’t know what they were asking for.
“It was not a total culture shock, but it was different.”
In her early years in Auburn, Ahmed said she was immediately accepted as part of the community. Twenty-five years ago, she became an American citizen.
“I met people who were very open and welcomed me with open arms,” she said. “I did not feel like an outsider, actually. I never felt like an outsider.”
Once she decided to homeschool her children, she turned to the Auburn community to get them involved in extracurricular activities.
“I think the Auburn Family became truly my family,” she said. “I couldn’t be more thankful to people here for their graciousness, for their kindness. I just do not have words.”
Ahmed recalled the story of her son, a volunteer member of the Red Cross, saving someone using his training in CPR. Afterward, the mayor invited him to City Council to recognize him for his actions.
“Look at the positives there, right?” she said.
“And then he was the one who was stopped by the police and asked to show his identification a few years later on campus.”
About five years ago, Ahmed’s son was working for the University as a photographer taking pictures around campus in the afternoon when he was stopped by officers in multiple cars demanding to see identification. The only explanation for the incident Ahmed said they could think of was that he looked “different.”
“Instead of having communities where we trust people, we’ve become so suspicious of others who look different,” she said. “That’s not a healthy trend, if we live in constant fear.”
Since moving to Auburn more than 30 years ago, Ahmed said she feels like an outsider now more than ever. Initially, no one ever questioned her identity as an American, she said, but recently she feels people have begun to look at her differently.
“When I first came [to Auburn], I was like anyone else, and then after 9/11 my identity changed to being a ‘Muslim woman,’” she said. “And now over the last year or so, I have another new identity, which is an ‘immigrant Muslim woman.’
“I hate to say that because there are people who are still so supportive and so welcoming and so warm. But that is a fact.”
After being told things like “go back to your country,” by people in town, Ahmed said she is hyper-aware of her surroundings at all times and has stopped doing certain things, like driving at night in the country, in order to feel safe.
“I’m being asked about my identity of who I am or where do my priorities lie. This is a question that nobody would have ever [previously] asked me.
“I cannot deny my roots and my background, but I feel and think more like an American in the sense that I think of this as my country.”
Ahmed said she is still thankful for her hometown of Auburn, where she studies at the University, but worries about the direction the country may be moving in.
In 2002, she formed the International Women for Peace and Understanding, a group composed of Auburn women with diverse backgrounds that focuses on increasing understanding of all cultures, as a way to push back against what she sees as ignorance toward one another.
“I think ignorance is our biggest enemy,” she said. “If I’m ignorant, then I’m fearful of something, and then anybody can come and exploit me. Whatever somebody tells me, that becomes the reality.”
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