My father, the Pakistani Elvis

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Graceland was one of my father’s first stops in America. He had always been a fanatic, performing his first Elvis impersonation at a talent show in Port Harcourt, Nigeria — a way for expats working on oil refineries to let loose. My mother is his enabler, sewing the sequins onto his blue satin capes, bedazzling the ivory jumpsuit with the deep V-neck. When he rumbles, “Thank you, thank you very much, especially to my Priscilla,” with a wink flung at my mom, she still beams.

Growing up in Karachi, my father and his friends would pile into the cinema, erupting in song and dance whenever Elvis graced the screen. My dad always carried a comb in his pocket to perfect his Presley-esque hairstyle: smooth sides, floppy front. Elvis personified everything American, what my dad wished to embody: charisma, rebellion and sex appeal.

My father, Airaj Jilani, immigrated to the U.S. in March 1979 and worked for an oil-and-gas company in Texas in the days when South Asian men were not welcome. To this day, he wears cowboy boots and his Southern drawl is deeply ingrained. His identity, unlike mine, has never been a question mark.

His Elvis impersonations began in Pakistan with performances for family, which quickly catapulted him into becoming a local rock star. As a kid, I watched him shake his hips in local talent shows with utter wonder. Women chased him off the stage, grabbing his scarves. He embraced every aspect of newfound celebrity. Since then, he has performed at benefits, at office parties, throughout Venezuela, on a boat in Istanbul and in a Beirut night club, where an Instagram account streamed his performance live.

When he moved to the U.S., he rejected his ethnicity. After we were born, we were to follow suit. An American flag hung outside our home; he took it down when it rained to protect it. We were forbidden to speak Urdu, but my mother still taught us on the sly. Bollywood movies were smuggled in and watched secretly. When my little sister wore a hijab to ground her in spirituality, it was incomprehensible to my father. Instead of living in the suburbs as my parents had envisioned, I became a pediatrician and aid worker who returned to the very same places that they had risked their lives to leave behind.

When I worked as a doctor aboard refugee-rescue boats off the coast of Libya, I recognized the strangers as shadows of my family. As a child, my father had boarded a ship in India and sailed north to a newly created Pakistan. He and his siblings used to play in the ship’s boiler room, hopping between turbines. It was warm but deafeningly loud, which spared him from hearing women crying above. Women wept on the vessel I worked on, too. The kids on our ship scaled ladders as their laughter ricocheted off the surf, and I imagined my father doing the same so many years ago.