Reshma Hyder is Indian, Pakistani, Arab, and American. As a second-generation immigrant, she found a welcoming home for her rich heritage in the diversity of the Bay Area. A multifaceted activist, educator, and entrepreneur, Hyder says she is first a Muslim and a mother who believes in standing up for equality and justice. She finds inspiration in a principle from the Quran “I brought you to Earth, as tribes and nations, so you may know each other.”
Hyder’s husband passed away in 2019 after years of battling non smokers lung cancer. Hyder continued not only raising her youngest three children as a single mom but also sharing and guiding her six children in the rich culture and religion that is part of their heritage. “No matter where I go, my food, my clothing, my lifestyle is all desi Indian, from Lucknow,” says Hyder.
We Belong is a visual series highlighting different experiences of South Asian and Indian identity. This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Photographs and interviews by CatchLight Fellow Sree Sripathy.
Portraits were made in Saratoga, Calif. on April 21, 2023 and the interview took place on Aug. 7, 2023 via Zoom. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Can you tell me where you were born and raised?
I was born in Jeddah, but my father was an expatriate out of India. We moved around between Jeddah, Medina, and Makkah. My upbringing from kindergarten to 12th grade was in Riyadh, which is the capital of Saudi Arabia. And then after 12th grade, I ended up in India for my college studies.
How long were you in India?
My summers were spent in India, in my native city of Sitapur, near Lucknow. Every year, I spent about two months there and then for college, I was there for two years.
In my second year, unfortunately, there was rioting in a very unsecured space in the college. I had to flee from Aligarh Muslim University and come back to the Middle East and take my exams for the US SATs. My parents decided to send me to the US, so I ended up here.
Can you describe what was going on in India?
There were basically religious riots and violence against Muslims in primarily the UP (Uttar Pradesh) area, and also I think in Hyderabad. It was very, very toxic. You were not safe if you were outside. They were attacking people in the train stations and mostly Muslim-populated areas. Because we grew up in the Middle East, we had no experience.
My parents were scared. We didn’t have grandparents in India. My grandmother lived in the Middle East. My maternal grandparents were in Pakistan. There was no home for us in Lucknow. The extended family could not guarantee [our safety] because if something happened, it was a big responsibility.
How old were you when you came to the US?
I was very young. I was 19. So once I came, I turned 20. I came on a student visa. I was at Cañada College (Redwood City), which is a community college.
What happened after you came to the US and entered college?
I was engaged. My husband was already here. I got married, registered here, I think in December of 1990, and went on to community college being married.
In 1991, the Gulf War happened. And for me as an immigrant, it was shocking, because I was here, I was already adjusting as an immigrant, and then back home, the fight between Iraq, Kuwait, and then you know, affecting Saudi Arabia.
At that time, the environment in the US was very vague. I was the only brown girl in college. People would stop and ask me where I was from. I started becoming very vocal about my background, because on one side, I was from India, but I was also Arab, from the Middle East. All this was affecting me personally because my parents were living there.
This was the pre-internet age. I had CNN, and sometimes I would watch a Scud missile landing near my dad’s work. He would not know, because he was in shelter back home. I would call them on a landline and be worried about them.
I learned about standing up for rights, standing for justice, and equality. I was very active here, educating people about other people around the country. I was very surprised at college that kids my age asked very weird questions. “Oh, you’re from Saudi Arabia, that’s the desert. Do you turn on the faucet and oil comes out? Did you still ride camels?” So for me, I had a task to educate my neighbors, my classmates, about Indian heritage, and Arab heritage. We didn’t even have that many Indian grocery stores. I moved to Redwood City. There was one Indian store where I would go every day. It was a Fiji-owned place and he would have these VHS cassettes [of movies]. Every Friday, I would take the bus, go down, get the cassette, come back home, and watch the movie. I stayed connected with my roots.
You mentioned you were engaged. How did that engagement happen?
That was all very patriarchal, arranged, you know, by my uncle’s son. We met in ’87 and then also in ‘89. We were engaged, but I wasn’t supposed to be married until my education was done. But because of the situation in India, I had to be married early.
My husband was actually in the Bay Area for a long time. He moved also from Jeddah. He was at Stanford doing his master’s and then his MBA at UC Berkeley. And that’s how I came here and kind of immediately became familiar with the immigrants studying at Stanford University. They were all from Pakistan and India. Many of the Pakistanis were actually scholarship recipients from the Pakistani army.
My husband was working at Stanford and in San Francisco doing his evening MBA, so I would hang out at the MBA program at night. I was blown away with the diversity in the Bay Area. Here I was at Cañada College in Redwood City and I would go to Stanford, [and see] a very different group of people and then I would go to Berkeley [and see] another different group of people. It made me very comfortable because the way I grew up in the Middle East in Riyadh, was similar. We often met people from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. We celebrated each other’s heritage in the diplomatic quarters.
Growing up I actually was always part of the heritage group where we would display our culture to the Arab community. Whether it was a wedding scene, or a food fair or things like an Indian Club, I was very active.
My husband was from Pakistan. My mom’s side is also from Pakistan. So we participated in both Indian and Pakistani cultural activities. The heritage is pretty much the same, food is pretty much the same, and clothing is pretty much the same as Muslims. I ended up going to Pakistan and India every year.
You have a lot of different threads. How do you identify yourself?
I ended up taking my religion as my heritage. When I took my citizenship, I said [to myself] I need to pick up one identity. And I said I was going to be an American Muslim, with heritage from India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. I will live my life as a Muslim first. It’s a blessing that I belong to India and Pakistan because there’s not much difference. The families that we belong to in Pakistan are all immigrants from UP. So the actual heritage is from Uttar Pradesh, food, and clothing, like I said, are the same. Lucknow is our hometown.
I’m a second-generation immigrant. I grew up as an immigrant in the Middle East. I never fit in as a Saudi. Growing up in the capital, we were very much in close proximity to the Indian Embassy, the ambassadors or the Consul General, the Pakistani ambassador, the Consul General, and the diplomatic events. I think that was a very big driver in identifying my heritage. Coming to the US also solidified that no matter where I go, my food, my clothing, and my lifestyle are all desi Indian, from Lucknow.
And after you got married, you had kids quickly?
I had a daughter in the first year of my marriage. I was very young.
How many kids do you have?
I have six kids. The first three were born a year apart. It was like raising triplets. I had to take time off from school, which ended up in me being a perpetual student for nine years. Between 1994 and 2004, I was [studying] at various community colleges. I finally transferred to San José State and graduated in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in business and finance and accounting.
My last kid was in 2006. He’s 16 now and I was doing my certification and accounting from the University of Santa Santa Cruz. [My first child was born] in 1991.
How do you maintain your connection with your heritage? Because you’ve got Pakistani, Indian, Middle Eastern.
We’ve extensively traveled around the world. Even when my husband was traveling for work, I traveled with him. Whether it was Taiwan, Taipei, Hong Kong, I would go with the kids, so the kids got familiar with the world. And not just the world around them, but the world extended outside of the US.
On the way back, we would always try to swing by Pakistan or the Middle East, so the kids were familiar with our heritage. It was definitely the best thing. Besides religion, it was more of a cultural immersion. We weren’t going to New Delhi or Bombay, we were actually going to our villages. My mom’s heritage town is a village, a suburb outside of Lucknow.
You see things that you would never see in a town. You’ll see wild animals or common livestock on the road. We had a bull in the backyard, we had goats, chickens. There were mango farms, and guava farms. My mother-in-law’s side is also from Lucknow. Her family has a village that has sugar cane farming. The kids saw how sugar is made. That experience by far is the best in terms of the children and their heritage.
In Pakistan, I would go to Karachi. So the kids got the best of both, exposure to Pakistani culture, also Muslim culture. We flew to Saudi Arabia sometimes and they saw that, where Islam was born and the homage to pilgrimage, doing the Umrah. That was the connection the kids had with the Arab heritage. We love Arabic food. We love the culture there as well. So that kind of blended the whole identity. I think the children also identified as American Muslims, with heritage from India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
The younger kids haven’t traveled as much as the older three, and that’s the reason my older three were very comfortable pursuing education abroad. My daughter, when she wasn’t doing her undergrad, went to Morocco to serve the poor people for a dental program. Then she pursued her infectious disease specialization, a master’s in public health, and did her thesis in the Dharavi slums in Bombay. The language was not a barrier, food was not a barrier, and clothing was not a barrier.
My two boys decided to go to Pakistan to pursue their medical degree right after high school. And again, they were very comfortable in Karachi. They lived with their grandfather, went to college, and completed their medical degree in Pakistan.
And what about the younger three who have not been able to travel as much?
They identify more as American Muslims. They kind of have a better blend of both Arab and Indian. They love shawarma as much as they love pani puri. My daughter specifically dresses up both in Arab and Indian ways.
I think one of the biggest benefits we’ve had is having a local mosque that has such a huge diverse community. We have about 28 different nationalities, so the kids blend in comfortably with the Arab and the Desi community.
In the Quran it says, “I brought you to Earth, as tribes and nations, so you may know each other.” Nowhere in the Quran does it say “You need to be Muslim and not engage with anyone else.” The idea is to live together in peace and also champion each other’s faith and heritage. So if I’m a Muslim from India, I will have to cherish my heritage within the Islamic guidelines. So clothing, for instance, or food. No matter where we go, we try to eat halal food.
Halal means a certain way the food is made and cooked. If I’m bringing for instance a goat, the goat is not slaughtered in a way that harms the animal and it’s not frequently consumed. It’s on special occasions. The way you consume food, that’s the culture within the Indian guidelines and the Arab guidelines. With clothing, it’s the same way, to dignify your honor and your morality. There’s a certain way that we wear saris and all other clothing within the modest attire.
And also earning. You have to earn a living that is basically honorable, sustainable and not compromising your dignity and morality. And anything that harms the environment, harms other people, is recommended not to be done, not to be adopted as your education or career. It’s a very easy way to blend in wherever you go within those guidelines.
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This series was produced by India Currents in collaboration with CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Contributors include Vandana Kumar, Meera Kymal, Mabel Jimenez, and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton. Learn more about CatchLight Local’s collaborative model for local visual journalism at https://www.catchlight.io/local
This series was made possible in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program.
Filoli is a Silver Connection Sponsor for the We Belong series.