Epic Magazine: Little America

Czechoslovakia Nevada

Daniel Pohl

The Communists never liked my family. At home, my parents steered clear of political issues because my father had been in prison for punching a Communist informant. I never understood what was happening to our country and why we couldn't leave. Why did I need to call everyone comrade? Then I met a man named Marcus in karate class — he was a kind of "mad scientist" who made his living as a lumberjack. He was older than me, 35, and explained to me what was happening to our country.

I was a 19-year-old railway tech graduate running yoga sessions, religious discussions, and a raw-food movement in my hometown of Litomysl, Czechoslovakia. To the Communists, I was a dangerous spiritual gangster. Together, Marcus and I decided to escape the iron curtain.

First we decided to flee on foot, but we were caught on the Slovak/Hungarian border and grilled by the secret police for 48 hours. Then we tried to build a hot air balloon, but we found out someone else had already done it and the government was watching the skies. We attached motors to illegal hang gliders, but neither one of us wanted to be shot down from high in the air onto coils of razor-bladed barbed wire. We thought of building a submarine or at least semi-submersible. Everything failed. Finally, we came up with an insane idea. It was so crazy that no one had ever done it before. We were going to zip-line out of the country on a power line. It took seven to eight months to plan and execute this escape.

We worked on our equipment in Marcus's cellar mainly during the nights for five weeks. We would have had the contraptions done a lot faster if it weren't for one Mr. Nedoma, a nosy man who lived in the apartment complex and who was constantly snooping around. Being a commie "favorite sweetheart" as he was, he had a suspicion that something anti-government was cooking down in the cellar. We used collapsible seats and attached them to pipes found at the dump. On my night shifts at the train station, I occasionally unscrewed aluminum handlebars from the passenger trains and snuck them home in my ski sack. We constructed these brilliant and unique contraptions, which were designed proportionally to be carried in our backpacks. We now had the chariots, which we'd ride to our freedom.

We looked at many power lines, but there was no Google and it was difficult to know where they would take us. Finally, by hanging with local drunkards who knew the area, we found a dead power line at a nuclear plant that crossed the border into Austria. We got our equipment ready: Each pulley had a little wheel that fit over the wire. A sturdy rod was attached to the wheel and fitted with a small seat. We would sit on the seat with the rod between our legs and hold on — when we first took off we would essentially be going downhill, but when we got to the middle of the wire we would have to pull ourselves the rest of the way with our own strength. With fifty pounds of supplies on each of our backs, we would have to reach out and still keep our balance while hanging over 175 feet of empty space.

It was night, so we couldn't see anything. Marcus went first. It was amazing how quickly he disappeared into the blackness. The speed we picked up was mind-boggling. Then we had to pull. Inch by inch we advanced across the sagging line. In the middle of the journey we were so heavy we sank dangerously close to the live high-voltage wires that ran beneath us. I thought we wouldn't make it. As we went right above the border guards' heads, I had a horrible image of our bodies with current passing directly through them, superheating the moisture and expanding the fluid in our cells until we exploded. But after a long hour, we made it.

When I got to America, I worked as a food server in a restaurant and as a landscaper. But I was in Boston, and the Northeast weather was taking a severe toll on my health and often made me wonder: How exactly did the Pilgrims make it? I seriously entertained the thought of migrating to a warmer climate — and a Catholic priest played a decisive role in my decision. I shared with the priest that the church I was attending was more like a Christian version of the Taliban, and that I needed a break, a normal new life. The priest took me to a strip club called Golden Banana, and after we had an absolutely epic experience, he told me: "Son, you really think this place is great? This place is a dive, believe me. You should go to Vegas to see the real deal." It didn't take long, and I went to Vegas.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Jen Percy

Iran New York

Farhad Gremipor

A few months ago, I was online looking at real estate sites and I found a really great piece of property for very cheap. It a was a very good deal — maybe too good for Yonkers. It was $19,000. It should be $200,000! I thought I'd found a deal like no one else has found. I went there to see and I found out there is this huge rock in the middle of the land. I mean, this thing is huge. It's like 8 feet high and maybe 50 to 60 or 70 feet long. The rock takes up maybe 30 percent of all the land. Let me check my papers. Yes, the rock is exactly 7,535 square feet. In Iran, we lived in the country, on a big farm filled with apples, grapes, almonds, and pistachios. Farmers brought cows and sheep and goats to my ranch and I'd auction them in the early morning at the bazaar. I still have my ranch there because one day I wish to go back. I dream of returning to Iran. I never wanted to live in the United States, but my wife and I left Iran in 2016 because my kids were coming to America for college. We thought they were too young to be here on their own. So we moved to Yonkers.

But now I must build a house. Now, my wife and I live in an apartment, but in our culture, back home in Iran, having a house is very important — there we live together most of the time. My kids will go to school nearby. It's different in America. This is why I need to have a house for my family. My parking lot business is in Yonkers and so I'm really just looking for land in Yonkers. I'm not the kind of guy who wants to drive two, three hours during rush hour. In Iran, you want to know the distance from my business to my house in Iran? A five-minute walk.

So okay, I say, no problem. It's a rock. I will destroy the rock. I figure, why just not hire someone to remove the rock? I do some research on companies that have the equipment and skill to move such a giant rock. I found a few and asked for price estimates. How much to remove this rock? They all guessed around $80,000 or $120,000. That was too much. So I went back to one of the companies and I used my skills as a businessman from working at the bazaars in Iran to negotiate. I'm not in a hurry, I said, I'm going to pay you guys in cash to remove the rock. Anytime your employees have nothing to do, come over to this land to start chipping away at the rock. They gave me a good number for that deal.

First we have to chip the rock and make room for the driveway and the two-car garage. It's going to be a four-bedroom house with a two-car garage and a very big kitchen for my wife. She wants the very big bedroom and very big kitchen. Then we just have to nail the house to the rock. So the house will be on the rock. Actually, it's a nice foundation. We won't see the rock out the window at all. We will see a view of a beautiful green valley.

There will be some problems to start. The rock makes problems. Sewage and digging, for one thing. But I think I can handle it. You have to have perspective. You know, this is why I fly, this is why I paraglide. I have a paragliding site in my backyard in Iran. Paragliding is my habit. I can't stop. I started six years ago. I was driving to my ranch when I saw a man flying through the sky, and I stopped and asked a man on the ground, "What is this?" The man said, "It's not for you, it's for the young guys, and it's not good for your heart." I said, "I'm not that old!" He said, "Well, if you want to try flying, try it tandem with me." I said, "I want to try it right now." And so I flew. I did. And I loved it. It is my dream. I have to do it every weekend.

When I'm flying up there, everything looks very small. Every person, every city. The problems you have down below become very small. Difficult problems suddenly become easy. Down here, you think This is going to take a lot of thinking and doing, but up high, it's nothing. It's a pack of cigarettes. A big rock becomes nothing. So if you can get up there, then you can live better down here.

We sometimes fly as high as 11,000 or 12,000 feet. Do you know how high that is?

Did I tell you? Next month I will fly 65 miles from Mont Blanc to Switzerland. And soon I will fly in Rio de Janeiro, and I will fly over the Jesus. This is my dream. I'm going to do it with my wife next year. One day I might buy another property in America on top of a huge hill and maybe I can fly from there. For now, every day I see the giant rock. I drive by it every day. It's right next to my apartment. In fact, I can see it through my window right now.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Jen Percy

Syria Idaho

Shadi Ismail

It was Friday night, and my best friend Sam said: "I want to show you something." We ride bicycles two miles across Boise, Idaho. We come to a place called The Balcony. It is a gay bar in Boise. I don't know this. I am just new here. I don't know gay bars. There is nothing like this in Syria. We went late, around 11 p.m. But there is a man at the door who wants to see ID. "I don't have," I said. I wasn't speaking much English then. I look at Sam. He translates for me. Sam says to me, "How about your papers?" He means my refugee status papers. I don't have anything to prove who I am but my paperwork from Homeland Security. A 901 paper, or 109 or something. I was just coming to the United States, and this is all I have. But the bar does not know this document. So they don't want to accept it. The man says, "No, this is no good."

I was nervous. Because before, in my experience, people can be dangerous. They will kill you if they have the chance. I don't trust people. Because of what happened in Syria. I lived in a small town, called Qardha. I had to leave my house after my father walked into the living room and found me kissing a man. He burned my arm and cut my hair, and said that if he ever caught me with a man again, he would kill me.

The second time, I did not let my dad cut me. I just run away. He walked in on me with another man one day. I was on the third floor of our house. But I just ran away. I escaped through the window and jumped onto the roof of my grandfather's house and then into the woods. I slept there the first night, in the woods. Then I go to Damascus, to stay with my mother. My parents divorced when I was 3 and I know my father doesn't speak to my mother. I spent a year with her there. I knew my father's family must be looking for me, but in Damascus I had no problems at first. I was normal, having my life, working and everything.

I got a job at a restaurant. It was American-style place, and the owner knew I was gay and he was very supportive. Working there it was really just me and another guy, an Iraqi named Sam. I know Sam is gay the first time I saw him, but at first we hate each other. He was acting pushy, and he is a very tiny guy, being pushy. But then we became best friends. We were together 24 hours every day. At work, they help me rent an apartment, and Sam lived with me. Not boyfriend, just friends. Everyone always ask us how we have so much to talk about. We talk so much about the future — where to go, what we want to do. He talked about America, and being in LGBT community, making house, all kinds of stuff. It was fun to talk to Sam, because he was extremely wise.

Then one night Sam called me and told me to not come to work again. I was scared. But I went to work to see what was going on. I saw his face was pink and his neck looked cut up. "What happened to you?" I said. He told me, "Your brother was here. They know where you work, you need to leave." They had hurt him. Sam had fought with them. He did not tell them anything. He was a hero for me. "Where am I gonna go?" I said. "I have no place to go." Sam is smart, very smart. He had already run away from Iraq because same things happened to him there. Sam told me, "Go to Jordan."

The next day we went to the government, we got passports, and I went to Jordan. I took a taxi there, to the border. I knew I could make a case with the U.N. office in Jordan for refugee status. The U.N. can't protect you in your own country, only another country. Sam knew a lot about the process. He taught me. Because he had already applied, when coming from Iraq. At the U.S. Embassy in Syria, I heard that 90 percent or maybe 98 percent of people don't get approved, but the chance is better in Jordan. I was in Amman for three years waiting for my application. I worked at a shawarma place and an ice cream shop. I had my first real boyfriend there. I worked as a bartender. I walked four miles to work because I had no car. And then my application was finally approved. When I applied for asylum, they ask you to put three options. I wrote America, Canada, and America. I arrived in the United States on May 12, 2012.

I go to Boise. Sam had been approved in 2011 and went to Boise. He was there already. The caseworker asked if I know anyone here, and I say, "Yes sir — I know Sam, and here is his address." They say it helps to go somewhere you know someone. I knew nothing about Boise but I didn't care. I was just so happy to be anywhere but Syria.

When I got to Boise, I had to go to an English-language school. I had the address downtown. I rode my bike. I followed the bus downtown, but then got lost and couldn't find address. I spoke no English, but I saw a woman, and I said "Hi," and the lady looked at the address and grabbed my hand and walked with me across the road and showed me the door and told me good luck. This was my first impression of Boise. People are nice. And when somebody does make fun of me or make joke about being Arabic, other people stand up and say how wrong is it. A lot of people stand up for that.

Pretty soon after came that night at The Balcony. I remember I was wearing shorts. What do you call military colors? Camouflage. Dark camouflage shorts. And the bouncer was just shaking his head at my paperwork. I got the paperwork at the airport, in Jordan. It was in a bag and was sealed. They told me, "Keep it with you." The bag says U.N. on the side. But the bouncer still looks at the refugee papers. I think we cannot go in. Luckily, we have an American with us, and he knows people there. So the supervisor from The Balcony comes over, and he read the papers, and he's like, "Yeah, he's fine. It's okay. He can come inside."

It was overwhelming. I walked in and then cannot believe what I see. The bartenders were shirtless, and music loud, and people dancing. Guys kissing guys. And a guy and a girl. It was all mixed. Crazy night. It was too much to process in my head. First time I see club like that. Let's say, my mouth was open all the way. I was shocked, like, wow. We don't have this in Syria. Sam bought me drink, and I just start watching people. Here they are having fun, and who cares? I did not dance that night, I just try to enjoy everything. People start talking to us. Sam translates. People are friendly. This was my first night at The Balcony. Later I meet my boyfriend Ian there. Now we are engaged. We will buy a house and want a kid one day. Ian makes fun of me because I like birds. My favorite morning thing is to make coffee and watch the birds. And listen to my special music, by Fairuz, a famous singer. She sings songs about me — about a boy named Shadi — but it's sad songs. It's a story of a kid who is lost, and then she finds him, and then she lose him again. Twenty years she's still waiting for him. It's sad, but people make it as fun, because my name is Shadi. In the song it says, "Where is Shadi?" And people say to me, "We find Shadi. We find him right here."

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Jen Percy

Nigeria Louisiana

Igwe Udeh

I remember the first time I saw a cowboy. It was a surprise — because I didn't think cowboys existed anymore. I'd only seen them in movies. It was the fall of 1980 in Norman, Oklahoma. I was sitting in a classroom at the University of Oklahoma, where I was getting my master's degree in economics. A slim, tall man strolled in. His heels clicked as he walked. He wore a red-checkered shirt, thick denim jeans, brown leather boots, and a wide-brimmed hat that obscured his face. He took off his hat and set it down. The hat took up its own seat, and nobody dared to sit there. I stared at him, in awe of his confidence. In Nigeria there were nomads who raised cattle and wandered from place to place, but they had no style. This man was the first American cowboy I'd seen in real life, and I was amazed.

I'm from a small town in Nigeria called Abiriba. I'm a member of the Igbo tribe. Growing up, I watched all the American Westerns — the John Wayne movies, Clint Eastwood movies. I know all the lines from A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — both of which I must have watched 50 times. There were peddlers who'd come to our village, show American movies on a projector, and sell us American products. So I'd always had a vision of the cowboy in the back of my head. Cowboys were a myth, a symbol to us, but when I came to America my professors were cowboys, my classmates were cowboys. Oklahoma was full of them.

When I left Nigeria, the country had just emerged from a very brutal civil war. The country was devastated, so if you could afford it, you left for better opportunities. I'd come to America to get my master's in economics at the University of Oklahoma. I was the only black man in my program, and one of the few in town. I quickly learned that there was no barbershop in Norman that could cut black hair. I let my Afro grow. My accent was thick; to Okies, unintelligible. Sometimes they'd pretend like they couldn't understand what I was saying. Some were rude, and I thought their attitude was … unpolished — let me put it that way. I'd go to churches where I was the only black person, and sometimes I'd be wearing traditional Nigerian garb like a dashiki or isiagu and no one would talk to me. They'd look at me like, "Why are you dressed like that?" I'd sit down and people would get up one by one from the pews and move somewhere else. I'd leave feeling rejected and alienated. I didn't become an American on the spot. I wanted people to know that I'm still African. They were proud of their culture, and I was proud of mine, too.

But I could also see the Igbo spirit in cowboy culture. The Igbo spirit is tenacious, and we are deeply connected to our land, which is rich and full of oil. I could see how much cowboys loved their land — they'd stay here forever, they would never leave it. Cowboys are unapologetic, too. Blunt. They do not care what other people think. I could imagine them a hundred years ago, when Oklahoma was still known for its quarries. They had to tough it out themselves. They could not depend on the government, they could not depend on anyone else. Coming from Nigeria, where the government was never on my side, I could identify with that.

It was easy to dress like a cowboy because that's what all the thrift stores sold — so eventually, I began to dress like one. I bought flannels and checkered shirts with silver glass buttons, second-hand jeans, brown leather boots that went up to my calf and made me taller. I couldn't afford the custom-stitched ones that other cowboys had. I tied a red bandanna around my neck because it reminded me of the white neckerchief my dad wore back in Nigeria. I even bought a Kawasaki motorcycle — the biggest one I could afford, even though I already had a car. It was my iron horse, and I rode it without a helmet because my Afro was too big. Everything about being a cowboy appealed to me, except chewing tobacco. I tried, but it always felt too disgusting. Back then, the floor of the university bathroom was covered in tobacco spit, and it made me cringe.

At first, people were confused about my new clothes. They'd never seen a foreigner with so thick an accent dressed up this way. They were tickled. The first time I walked into a classroom in my new cowboy getup, someone said, "Look at that! Igwe wants to be a cowboy." I smiled and replied, "Yes, I do."

I used to think about returning home and buying land in Nigeria — I thought that was where my kids were going to grow up. But that has changed. If I'm ever rich enough, I'd like to own a cattle ranch here. Maybe I'll go west, where there are a lot of trees and no swamp. I was invited to a classmate's cattle ranch once, and I was in awe. We played horseshoes and went skeet shooting. At the end of the day we ate very nice steak together. There was a lot of it. You could eat meat until it dropped out of your nose.

PHOTO BY: Will Widmer / STORY BY: Natalie So

India Kansas

Usha Reddi

The first time I ran for office, I lost. I live in Manhattan, Kansas, and like most of the residents, my opponents were white, Christian, and had lived in the town their entire lives. On the other hand, here I was, a bindi-wearing immigrant.

Manhattan didn't know what to make of me at first. I learned this from the first graders I taught at the local elementary school — they were six-year-olds, and very honest, and they repeated things their parents wondered behind closed doors:

"What is that thing on your face?"

"Do you like America?"

"Are you trying to change our religion?"

I explained that my bindi was part of my identity, the way a necklace or a tattoo might be part of their parents' identity. I said I had lived in America since I was a little girl, and I liked the country very much. It was the reason I wanted to run for office.

For most of the 20 years that I was married, I was a stay-at-home mom of three. Then my husband and I started having issues in the marriage and we divorced. I had an existential crisis. I had to figure out who I was now that I was on my own. The Indian population quickly distanced themselves from me — they thought divorce was "contagious." I stopped getting invited to parties and weddings. It was already hard enough being a single mother. After my divorce, the first thing someone told me was, "Welcome to poverty."

I had always watched politics, even from a young age. I always followed the elections and watched every debate. I decided to run for State Board of Education. I was very excited — for my first election, I drove to Topeka and gave them my name in person!

My opponent was a woman named Carol. We were both Democrats. I sent out 10,000 postcards with my name on it. But I didn't realize what it meant to send out a photograph of myself to Kansas wearing a bindi on my forehead. Most people in Kansas probably know a Carol, but they don't have an aunt or a sister named Usha.

The Indian community did not help either. "We won't put your sign on our lawn," one man told me. "We want nothing to do with politics in this town." They refused to donate to my campaign or promote me. I knew it would be hard, running for office while raising children and being a teacher, but I threw myself into it.

In the end, I got 47 percent of the vote. It was close, but I was devastated. "They want someone who looks like them, who is like them," my mother said. My family in India didn't understand. "You need to become a Republican. You need to marry a white person." I told them no, I'm not any one of those things. That's not who I am. They said, "Well, if you want to win office, that's what you have to do."

As I was raising my children, I always wanted them to be true to themselves. I've adopted the American culture, but I also wore my Indian clothes, went to Indian events. I knew my kids would hate it the most if I changed my life to win an election.

Not long after I lost the State Board of Education, I received calls from former mayors, board of education members, and city commissioners. "Look," they said. "Everybody loses their first election. People know your name now, they like you, they like your platform. You should run again." Three positions opened up at the City Commission in Manhattan. If you get one of the highest votes, you have a very high chance to serve as mayor, which is appointed by the Commission. I decided to run.

I had always told my kids they would have to work 100 times harder than anyone else, and that's what I did. Some of my opponents were incumbents. Some were businesspeople. Some had really deep pockets. I didn't have any of those things. I walked and walked, and I talked and I talked. I went to all the rotary clubs, the community meetings. I went to all the businesses, and left my card, let them know that I was running for office and I'd like to hear from them. I went on every station that would let me — country rock, Christian rock, K-State's Kissin' Country, soft rock. I went to county fairs and walked in every parade I could find.

I also went door-to-door. At first, people looked through their peepholes and walked away. "Go in bad weather," a friend advised. "That way, people will feel sorry for you and let you in." And that worked! I hate snow and rain, but that's what I did. People would let me in and talk to me. I met all kinds of people and listened to them. And they got to know me. Even if they don't vote for you, it helps build relationships. People tried to tell me to go through all these talking points, but I never did that. I told them who I was and listened to who they were. I spent an hour and a half talking to one gentleman who was a hard-core conservative, but he invited me in. He was in construction, and told me about what he wanted to build in Manhattan and the laws and ordinances. He told me his life story. We had a great conversation. And before I knew it, the afternoon had gone by, and he said: "You know what? I'm going to vote for you now because you took the time to talk to me."

Gradually, I started to see signs in yards that said my name. People were willing to give me money. People I didn't even know were sending checks — I didn't even have to say anything. People wanted to have fundraisers for me. A lot of small family groups helped me. People wrote letters to the paper on my behalf. I got a treasurer.

I started inviting myself to important events, like this big gala at K-State for the 150th anniversary. I knew there would be hundreds of important people there, and I had to figure out how to get in. When I got a ticket, I was nearly in tears. But then I realized how nervous I was! I wouldn't know a soul there, and I didn't have a dress, and this was a formal event. But I knew I needed to do it.

At the gala, it was awkward at first. Everyone knew everyone else, but I was just kind of … I don't know, a black rose in a sea of red roses. I was often just trying to start small talk with strangers. I knew a few familiar faces out of the hundreds, so I tried to stick with them, but I think they were happy in their own cliques as well. So, I was just kind of wandering, trying to fit in and dance to the live music. I felt I just needed to be out there. And slowly they got used to me and I connected with people.

On the night of the election, I was at the county office in a state of shock when the results came in. It turned out to be the victory party! I was going to be mayor! I screamed and hugged everybody while on the verge of tears. The community believed in me. It was overwhelming. And I never hid the fact that I was an immigrant. I never hid my religion. I never hid my gender or my skin color. It turned out that spoke well to Manhattan.

I was a mayor for almost a year and some Manhattanites still didn't know that they have an Indian-American mayor. People would walk into a room, shake the hand of the white guy sitting next to me, and then are surprised when they find out that he's not the mayor. My second husband is a tall, white gentleman, and so he often gets mistaken for the mayor. At dinners or events, he likes to correct people: "I'm here because of her. She's the one you want to talk to."

PHOTO BY: Annick Sjobakken / STORY BY: Jen Percy

India Utah

Kunal Sah

I was five years old when we moved into the motel in Green River, Utah. My family had immigrated to California from India in 1990, and for seven years my father worked odd jobs: dishwasher at Pizza Hut, burrito roller at Taco Bell, line cook at Jack in the Box. He saved every cent to buy that little independent motel.

I'd follow my parents around while they cleaned rooms. I put on pillowcases and folded towels and made sure there was fresh toilet paper in the bathroom. When it was lunchtime, my dad would run to Arby's in the little Nissan Sentra he had and get ten bucks' worth of food. It'd be chicken tenders and some potato cakes and curly fries and mozzarella sticks, and we'd eat. Then we'd get to working again.

We worked on that The Budget Inn for about four years. My parents wouldn't hire any staff. They were just saving money. They saved and saved and finally had enough for a Ramada Limited. My father bought some land, had a hotel built from the ground up, and in 2002 was issued the Ramada franchise banner.

All my other friends in town, they were always just getting yelled at by their moms and dads. But my mom and dad, they knew how to do it right. When I finally got the hang of riding a bike, my parents had a manager cover for both of them so we could all ride together. Sometimes my dad would get this look of conviction in his eyes, and he'd look at me straight and say, "You are the best in whatever you do. You can be the best. This is all up to you now. This is all up to you."

I still remember the day, July 7, 2006, when they packed their bags. My mother and father had been fighting a deportation order they received in 2004, and their citizenship had been pending for 14 years. I was 11 years old. They were not being deported on the basis of criminal activity. They were being deported just because their citizenship application was in queue since 1990 and their time was up.

My dad asked his brother to move to Green River to be my guardian and take care of the Ramada. But he became abusive. If I missed the bus or came home five minutes late from school, I would get beaten. One time I put my name in to run for class president. I told my uncle, and he beat me with a broom. I was a 4.0 student; I wanted to go to an Ivy League college and then become a neurosurgeon. That was my goal. "You can't do that." That's what he'd tell me. "You cannot be a doctor. You can't." That was the only grown-up voice I had in my household, telling me that.

I had made a minor career out of competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. My eighth grade year was my last chance. I was desperate to win. I wanted to bring attention to what happened to my parents. For ten hours a day I'd sit with my Webster's Third New International Dictionary. It's 2,600 pages, and I would go page by page writing words down that were new or challenging to me. I'd study roots and language of origins, prefixes and suffixes.

I made it into the finals that year. We went to the White House so they could film a segment to introduce the spellers, before the prime-time broadcasts. We met Laura Bush. Everyone was given a chance to introduce themselves to the First Lady. When my turn came, I said, "I am Kunal Sah, and I want my parents back. I really need some help. Please." I was sitting on the floor in a circle with all these spellers, and I start crying. "All these kids here that are with me, their moms and dads are here. Mine should be, too." That's all I told her. Mrs. Bush walked over and consoled me a little bit; she said, "This is something that we can address if you write to my office." It was a generic answer. "Write to our office"? "We'll address it"? Come on. I had been doing that for the past two years. My dad had. My mom had. I had written to congressmen — Jim Matheson and Orrin Hatch, and all of the representatives of Utah. A few years later, I'd write to Obama's office nearly every day.

I was the first one eliminated in the final. I ended up taking thirteenth.

I returned to Utah depressed, afraid, angry. This is my parents' house, I thought. My dad built this from the ground up. This is their place. I turned 12 and then 13, 14, and 15 years old, each day playing the role of my mother and father. Trying to maintain my GPA, but more importantly keeping their business afloat. My uncle would be drinking beer on the lobby couch, and I'd be doing hotel laundry, washing and drying the linens, renting rooms. Setting up breakfast in the morning before I took off for school. It was just overwhelming. It was too much.

My uncle went to India for a few weeks, leaving me to run the hotel full-time. I hadn't seen much of anyone in days, so when friends asked if they could come hang by the hotel pool, I told them sure. They arrived with a rack of Budweiser. I figured it'd be okay; it was a slow night. I cracked a beer. Within an hour, the cops arrived. We weren't being rowdy or loud. Some kid who hadn't been invited tipped them off. But because the drinking took place at my house, I was the one charged with serving alcohol to minors. It didn't matter that I had good grades and no previous charges; that my teachers thought highly of me and that I wanted to be a doctor one day. I was sentenced to 46 days in detention. Suddenly I'm in a jail cell at 15 years old. It was my sophomore year and I was kicked out of school.

When I was released, I was placed in foster care for two years, in a town about an hour outside Green River. I finished my senior year of high school online. I never got a graduation ceremony. I never got a prom. I didn't go to college. When I turned 18, my uncle called. "I don't want to do this anymore. I can't do this. I'm leaving. I'm leaving your property and you can do what you want with it."

I returned to Green River to take over operations. In my more than two-year absence, the hotel had been neglected. Every aspect of the place. The walls were damaged. The carpets were stained. Stucco was chipping off the outside of the building. The roof was missing shingles. The pool and hot tub were disgusting.

I found myself in a daze. I'm talking to the banks, I'm talking to my accountant about things and I don't even know what they mean. I don't know what quarterly tax is. I don't know any of this shit and it's all just blowing over my head. I'm lost, not knowing what to do or who to call. The hotel is everything. It was, it is, our home. We lived in an apartment right behind the front desk. And I just don't know what to do.

So I start with what my parents and I did together when I was a kid. I put on clean pillowcases and sheets, fold fresh towels, and replace the toilet paper. And then I pull hair from the drains, scrub at the walls and carpets, rake the leaves, and sweep the dirt around the pool. But most importantly, I'm at the front desk. I'm on the phone. I'm there. People see my face and they hear my voice and they have the assurance that their lodging will be okay.

In 2015, my dad calls and says, "I got a letter from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. It has interview dates for me and your mother. December eighth." I couldn't speak. I just hung up the phone and sat there. I looked around and thought, Everything's about to change.

My parents returned to the States in January 2016. We'd been apart for ten and a half years. Spotting them at the airport terminal, weaving through the crowd toward them, it was surreal. My dad's hair is gray. It was black when I last saw him. To see the look on my mother's face, to see the joy, but also the pain that's been in her eyes for the past 10 years, being away from her only child. I don't know. You only see that type of stuff in movies.

Since they've returned, we've raised the hotel on TripAdvisor from tenth best in Green River to second best. With their help, the skills I developed while they were gone can suddenly be used not just to stay afloat, but for progress. Actual progress. But I'm my own man now. And even though we're back together, our conversations are still mostly all about work. Nothing else. That hurts. I'm sure they want to reach out just as much as I want to, but we don't know how to talk about things after so much time apart.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Emma Gross

South Africa Arizona

Cole Son

It all started with Elvis Presley. I was a paratrooper in the South African Army, and on August 16, 1977, we were sleeping in trenches on a night operation when the news came over the radio that Elvis Presley was dead. My platoonmates were shocked. I was like, "Who is Elvis Presley?" So I went and bought a record, and when I listened to Elvis — well, it's something I can't explain, but it felt like lightning. All this energy came into me. I started writing songs, writing stories, writing scripts — it was like a floodgate. I even started singing to my platoonmates and they said I sounded like Elvis. I drove my buddies crazy with my singing. I played air guitar with my rifle, you know?

I've been driving an Uber in LA for five months, and I've been attracting people who need healing. That's why people get in. I've driven so many girls to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I look at them, I see their problems, and I give them some guidance. Yesterday I was with an 80-year-old Persian man, and he said, "Thank you, you taught me some things today." I said, "No, we learned from each other." I've healed people. I had a woman in my car kiss my hand. She was in tears. She said, "Who are you?" And I said, "I'm nobody, I'm you." I've sold about 100 copies of my book in my car — my book is called The Power of the Thinking Mind and it is about my philosophy. I've given many copies away too.

I try to avoid the drunk people. I don't drive at night. I've never had anyone puke in my car. If somebody screams at me or honks at me, I know it has nothing to do with me. I just focus on being calm. I'm at peace when I drive. Everyone says "Wow, it's so peaceful in here." Well, it's the healing energy in my car. There are no crazies and no worries.

This Mexican man, he was on his phone before he even got in, and he was talking, talking about how his mother hates him and his wife hates him. He was just full of hatred. We were at a pumpkin patch outside New York City. When he hung up the phone, I just slowly started talking with him. He said he just got out of jail. "You cannot change them," I said. "But when you change your inner world, the outer world will automatically change. Then your mother will change and your wife will change. You are a being of love. Hatred is not real; hatred is energy on the planet, and hatred cannot exist where love stays. The light is always brighter than the dark." He was in tears. He was crying. He said, "Can I call you?" I gave him my card.

I started working in the movies, as an extra, as a stand-in in Los Angeles. I did a commercial for Taco Bell. I was writing screenplays, but I couldn't break through. I got married to a girl from Texas, got divorced. Then I put my whole life in my car and drove to Nashville. I had a nervous breakdown. So here I was in America, trying to survive. I read The Secret. I listened to audio recordings of [the story of] Abraham from the Bible, then I read the story of Seth. I kept on searching. I kept on wanting. I couldn't figure it out. I realized I couldn't fit into the world. I was always walking in a different world.

I started meditating more. I said, I believe in me and I can make things happen and I don't need Hollywood to come to me. I had no money, but I put a crew together and I made a feature film for less than $5,000. I starred in it, I directed it, I wrote it. It was kind of like Fifty Shades of Gray, a dark psychological thriller. A really bizarre and weird movie. I wrote all these books and songs by candlelight on a farm in Africa, and now they are on Amazon — can you believe it? But, you know, everyone has this talent. We just don't tap into that power because it's hidden and locked away.

I went down to my farm in South Africa for a visit and wrote hundreds of songs. I walked deep into nature. I learned that to understand humanity you need to go away for at least one year to connect with Mother Earth and the cosmos. I almost drowned. I was one breath away from death in a deep lake where I swam every day. My dog was drowning and I swam to save him. The dog was on top of me. He scratched me and pulled my legs down. I had to let the dog go to save myself. I was floating back to shore, and the dog was following me. It was almost like I was having an out-of-body experience. Then I collapsed and blacked out. I realized I was every blade of grass, every leaf on the tree. It was me, everything was me. This is the message I want to bring to humanity.

People say to me, are you Buddhist? No, I'm walking my path. Imagine sitting in Africa, on a farm in a developing country, with no money. You're not going to make it. But if you forgive yourself of all your mistakes of your past, you can also forgive everyone else. So I forgave myself. I just focused on the moment, grateful that I could swim in the lake during rainstorms with the crocodiles.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Jen Percy

Kosovo New York

Giorgio Kolaj

We were Albanians from Kosovo. That was part of Yugoslavia then. It was a strict Communist regime, a dictatorship. There was ethnic conflict in that part of the world. Albanians are Muslim. Serbs are Christian. During World War II, when my father was a young man, the Serbian Partisans came through his village and slaughtered my grandfather. My father's father. They chopped him up, and my family only discovered what happened to him when a shepherd found his hand with his wedding band and brought it back to them.

Under Communism, life was hard. My father and my mother never went to school a day in their lives. They were both farmers, and their parents were farmers, and their parents' parents were farmers. My father had to teach himself to read and write. I sometimes think about my father and ask myself: What gave him the idea to leave? In Communist Yugoslavia, you didn't have ideas. It was dangerous to have ideas. To even think that the West was better was outlandish.

And how would he even know to think such a thing? All the propaganda told them: Communism is the only way. The state news in those days showed America as a hell on earth: race riots, crime, the war in Vietnam. It was the ‘60s. I wonder: How could my father know otherwise? But something stirred so deep, so profoundly, that he knew he had to leave. He sold the farm. My mother tells the story about how she was absolutely terrified. They had four children. This was the only world she knew. That's where her family was. Her brothers, her sisters. She did not know how to read. She had never ridden a bicycle. She had never tried to swim. She did not know what America was.

There were underground routes out of Kosovo. Other Albanians had gone before us. They sent handwritten letters back telling the way. My parents received letters from Italy. So they went there. Luckily for us, Italy was taking in immigrants and refugees from all over, and we waited there for our paperwork to come in from the United States.

My father had arranged for us to stay on a farm. It was what you might call a feudal arrangement, but the owner of the farm was a wonderful Italian gentleman named Armando DeLuca. He needed farmhands, so my father, and later my uncle and my aunt, would receive free room and board in exchange for our farming services. That's where we were going to stay until we could go to America.

My mother was a superstitious woman. She saw signs. She saw omens. On that farm, she had a premonition. One day, Armando dropped off my father at our house in his white station wagon, like he did every afternoon. But my father didn't come inside. My mother went to the balcony and saw my father. "What are you doing?" she asked. "Why haven't you come up?" And he said, "Go back inside, because the baby needs you." I had just been born. I was not even 2 months old. After some time, my mother went to the balcony a second time, and my father was not there. No one was there. And then she sees Armando and his white station wagon pulling up to drop off my father! She told my father she had just spoken to him. "What are you talking about?" he said. "I was in the fields," he said. "I was not here." My mother knew this meant something bad would happen. She thought it was a bad omen.

A month and a half later, in November, my father fell from a tree while picking apples for us. His injuries were bad, and they called my mother to the hospital. She sat by him for six days. Her hands were at my father's feet. My father knew she was scared. She would want to escape back to Yugoslavia. That was all she knew. But my father's dying wish was for her to continue on to America. On his deathbed, he told her, "I will haunt you from my grave if you go back." He knew she was old-fashioned and she believed in those things. She had no one there in Italy. She had no one in America. All she knew was my father's dying wish. She did not want to go, but she knew she must carry out that wish.

We got our paperwork to come to the United States, but we had no money at all. The town took up a collection to bury my father. And Catholic Charities gave us a $280 loan to buy plane tickets to New York. My mother had never been on a plane. Before Italy she had never ridden on a train, or even in a car. Just a horse and buggy. She never saw a telephone until Italy. Catholic Charities drew up a promissory note for the loan. My mother didn't even know how to sign her own name.

We landed at JFK. We did not know where to go. Social services came, and we were settled in the South Bronx. In 1970 in the Bronx there was no need for farmers. So we grew up on welfare. We lived at 575 Castle Hill Avenue. I still see the building when I fly into LaGuardia today. If you're coming in from the west, and you fly over the bridge, and if you happen to be sitting on the right side of the plane, you'll see about five or six red brick buildings, on the very tail end of the Bronx, right by the water. Those are the projects where we lived. That's where my brothers and sisters and I used to lay in our bed and watch all those planes coming in for a landing, touching down in New York.

My mother always dressed in black, out of respect for my father, like widows in the old country. I saw my mother only in black until I was 17 or 18 years old, until my first brother got engaged and there was a party. In 1986, I took my mother to visit my father's grave. I had never seen it myself. We walked around the village cemetery, looking for the one Albanian name. We found him buried in a mausoleum, and here's the thing: The white marble was clean, and there were fresh-cut flowers. I turned to my mother and asked, "Who is taking care of dad's gravestone?"

We went to find Armando at his farm. It was an August evening and the sun was setting and the fields were washed in gold and I see this one man in the fields — believe it or not — carrying a sickle in his hand. In my broken Italian, I yelled to explain who we were and he was already weeping. Yes, he said, he was still taking care of my father's grave fifteen years later. He invited us to his home, and I wanted to give him a gift. I had only $500 to my name. I took it all out of my pocket and said, "Mr. DeLuca, I would like you to have this." "What is that?" he asked. "For all these years of fresh flowers," I said. "I want to give this to you." He looked at me and said, "I would rather that you slap me in the face. I would never take this money." Later, Armando took me up a mountain on his farm, a big hill where he had a lot of billy goats. We looked at the land together. He was a real farmer. A real gentleman farmer.

In the Bronx, I learned a lot. I had the privilege of being poor. But I also had the privilege of being raised in the most culturally, ethnically, religiously diverse society in the world. I've seen racism, but I've seen beautiful things. One day when I was a boy, a woman knocked on our door at our house in the Bronx. This was unusual. My mother jumped up and we all followed her to the door like baby chicks following a hen. And there was an African-American woman with an old shopping cart. My mother undid the chain and the woman pulled out some boxes, which she opened to reveal … hamburgers. She came in and we sat there, not knowing what to say. My mother couldn't say anything in English. There we sat, eating together with this mysterious woman. I thought I had hit the lottery. I never saw her again. I still don't know why she came.

PHOTO BY: Mark Hartman / STORY BY: Joshuah Bearman

Cuba Florida

Danilo Torre

Miami in 1988 was hot and humid, and the drag scene was in full bloom. And cocaine was everywhere. We were in an era of darkness, yet the parties were sensational. We danced every night, but we grieved too — AIDS had come, and every day there was a new diagnosis. Everyone was trying to live like there was no tomorrow. Carlos and I were too.

We first met back in Havana in the front yard of my ex-boyfriend, a dancer for the Cuban National Ballet. I was going in, and Carlos was coming out — my shoulder brushed his. We smiled and said hello. I was struck by how much we looked alike, though he was slightly taller — almost like a mirror image. We looked at each other, thinking, Well, this is what it is, honey. Our orbits in Cuba overlapped every once in a while — we were trying to make it as dancers, so we'd see each other at auditions. He gave me queenie attitude, I gave him queenie attitude, but we knew that we liked each other.

A decade later, I spotted him in a new wave punk club in Miami called Fire and Ice. We were both wearing black in a room full of pink and green. I was bored, but when I saw him, I thought, Oh my god, another crow! I went up to him, we recognized each other, and then we hugged. We were both exiles. We listened to the same kind of music — Depeche Mode, The Cure, and all that — and had the same taste in clothes. People thought we were twins.

I had known I wanted to leave Cuba ever since I was a little kid. My family did not belong to the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, which meant we were the black sheep on the block. Carlos was also anti-Communist. He was openly gay and extremely funny. He left because he didn't have a family there. In 1980, when the Mariel boatlift happened, Castro was sending all the "trashy" people in Cuba to the United States. If you were homosexual or a prostitute, then they thought you were "trash." You could go to the police station and say, "I'm a prostitute and I want to go to the United States." Carlos took advantage of that, like many other people. He went to the police station, said that he was a horrible faggot, acted very queenie, and the police took him to Mariel Bay to leave in the next boat to the U.S.

After Carlos and I were reunited in Miami, we became inseparable. We partied together, did crazy things together. We tried drag. On one occasion, we were invited to perform at our friend's pool party. It was our first drag performance ever. We planned to wear these slinky designer gowns that had been given to me when I was a hairdresser in Paris — Nina Ricci, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, all beautiful stuff. We went downtown and bought black pumps and cheap blonde wigs. The wigs had horrible broom-like bangs, but we thought it would be a glamorous debut.

It was a lavish ranch-style house with a pink marble bathtub in the middle of a massive tacky bedroom. Our dressing room for the night was the pool house out back, and we were supposed to wait there until someone called us to perform. We could hear the guests arriving and mingling and talking. There were around 100 people. But we didn't pay any attention to them. We were having our own fun, preparing ourselves for our big reveal: I want bigger hair, I want more eyelashes, I want higher heels. We didn't even notice how many hours had gone by, and we still had not been called on to perform.

At midnight, my boyfriend at the time, a wealthy French diplomat named Alain, burst into the pool house. He was pale, with sweat on his arms and face. He said that something terrible had happened. He could barely speak. Carlos was unconcerned. "Calm down," Carlos said to Alain. "Take a picture of us in our outfits."

But Alain was shaking. Something was very wrong. When we pulled open the double doors of the pool house, we were mystified: The entire party had vanished into thin air.

We didn't know it, but the host was a cocaine dealer. And while we had been transforming ourselves, a group of five masked men had barged into the party with machine guns. Our friend owed them a lot of money and they said they would kill him on the spot. But he didn't have the money, and he begged Alain for help. Alain had never seen guys with machine guns before. The men took Alain and drove him around Coral Gables, stopping at three different banks so that Alain could take out money at each one — enough to pay off our friend's debt. They had to find French banks because Alain had French accounts. Alain said the energy was okay, that all the men wanted was the money — not a dollar more, not a dollar less. After they got the money, they were happy.

The dropped Alain back off at the house. The owner had fled. So had everyone else. We were the only ones left. Alain was still shell-shocked. I was too. Oh my god, I was thinking, this is like the movies. I would have been on the cover of the Miami Herald — two dead drag queens in tacky clothes, floating in a pool, and I would have been wearing pumps I was very unhappy about. Carlos shrugged and asked if the guys had been good-looking.

Carlos said that we came here to perform, we prepared for three hours, we look pretty, so let's perform. I didn't want to, but he pushed me. We cued up the music and stood by the pool. There was no one there, really, but we put our hands on our hips. We strutted and pranced. The moon was out. We didn't know it then, but Carlos would die from AIDS three years later.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Natalie So

Uganda Kentucky

Elizabeth Kizito

We didn't have chocolate chip cookies in Uganda. Our lives revolved around the banana tree. Mostly we ate bananas — bananas steamed in banana leaves or made into a porridge. The women had babies in the banana garden, so that's where I was born — on a banana leaf, under a banana tree. Maybe once a year, I would get a bottle of Coca-Cola, and it would take me two hours to drink that soda. I wanted it to last forever. We had very few sweets, in fact — sometimes hard candies, or sugarcane, or mangoes, but that's it. I was always craving candy. I thought, When I grow up, I'm going to eat all the things I like.

I was 17 when I tried a chocolate chip cookie for the first time. It was 1972. One of my teachers in Uganda helped me come to America. She found me a host family in Denver, Colorado. They were a very excellent family: a husband and wife who were both schoolteachers. One Christmas, the lady baked chocolate chip cookies. She told me to come to the kitchen to try them, and I could not believe it! They were hot and fresh and so good. I liked them too much. The lady had to make some more because I couldn't stop. At that moment I decided, "I have to make some cookies so I can eat as many as I can get my hands on."

So I taught myself. I got a recipe from Good Housekeeping. I made just enough for myself — however many cookies you can make from one bag of chocolate chips. Six years later, I met a man in Denver, we got married, and I started making cookies for him too. Together, we moved to his hometown in Louisville, Kentucky, where we had a baby in 1983. Then we divorced.

I was newly single and trying to make enough money to support my baby boy. I waited tables at a restaurant called People's Place on Bardstown Road. During my time off I baked cookies, and I took them to work to share with my coworkers. "Why don't you bring some more the next day?" they said. "We'll buy them from you." So I did, and I made a little profit. I started selling more cookies, week after week. My coworkers would say, "Elizabeth, go make some fabulous cookies." I wondered if I could sell cookies on the street and make more money than I did from waiting tables.

At the restaurant, I met my current husband, Todd. He was a cook there. He suggested that I make some other cookies. That's when I started making oatmeal raisin. And later someone said, "Have you heard of snickerdoodles?"

I started selling my cookies door-to-door. Different buildings on different days. Sometimes when I couldn't find daycare for my son, I'd bring him along, too, walking all day with a baby on my hip. Soon I decided to do this full-time. You know, in Africa, they do most of their vending on the street. And everything is harder there, so I knew I could do it here. And sometimes it was hard. When I went to the permits and licenses bureau, they asked me what I wanted to sell. I said "cookies," and they laughed at me. "You don't have a hot dog stand, you don't have a taco stand. You're just going to sell cookies?" They rolled their eyes. I was going to show them how it was done.

My tiny apartment became a factory. On baking days, it was as hot as the oven all day long and I cracked eggs and mixed dough and slid tray after tray of cookies into my oven. I lived in a forested part of the city, and squirrels loved to sneak in for a snack. I became tired of hearing them gnawing on my walls, so I soaked my entire door in Tabasco sauce to keep them out. Todd thought I was crazy. "Maybe it's time to find somewhere else to bake?" he said. So I began to use the kitchen at a local pizza parlor. I'd arrive as they were closing up, and all the barflies and drunks would still be there. They loved to talk to me; there was always some guy who'd offer me advice or say he knew where to get some piece of equipment — one time a guy helped me get my vending cart. I'd bring my son along, too, and he'd sleep quietly in the corner on a pallet, or wherever we could find some room.

It was my husband who had the idea that I should carry the cookies on my head, like we did in Africa. One day I was dancing in our house with my basket on my head. It dawned on him: "Whoa, that's what you need to do to be famous. We need to put a basket on your head and go out there and sell those cookies. Everybody will know you." It was true: instant success! I think people had seen women carrying things on their heads in National Geographic or on TV, but they'd never seen it in real life. "Who is she?" people asked. "What are you doing?" Sometimes I'd wear a traditional Ugandan outfit, too, with African jewelry. Everybody would honk at me all the time, everywhere I went.

You know, when you come to America from Africa, your family wants you to be doing something really big, like working at a bank, or being a nurse — something very professional, something they can tell their friends about. But selling stuff on the street? My mom was not happy about this. In Africa the people who do this type of work are the lowest — they are the women who have no money. When she heard I was doing this in America, she was so embarrassed she didn't tell anyone.

My mom came and visited me in Louisville in 1989. She was surprised by how many people knew me. I had become famous by then. I'd go to the mayor's office and all the girls there would stop whatever they were doing and say "Cookie lady's in the building!" She'd go with me to the ballpark or to the flea market, where I sold cookies, and people went up to her and congratulated her for being my mother. When she saw my success up close, she changed her mind about me. She said, "Oh god, you work so hard, I didn't realize that. Everything's great." Once I left her to man my booth at the market, even though she didn't speak any English. People came up to her and asked, "Do you know where the bathroom is?" But she didn't know what they were saying, so she'd tell them, "Chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, peanut butter." She had a great time. She didn't know where the bathroom was, but she knew how to sell cookies.

She told me I needed a real bakery, a place people could come to buy my cookies. I told her we didn't have money to get a place, but she insisted. She took me for a walk in the neighborhood and found a place that was for lease. She said, "You have to get a place like this. You have to do whatever it takes." I didn't think I could do it, but we got together the money and the business took off from there. She was a wise lady.

The mayor of Louisville was one of my regular customers, and he arranged to present Mamma with a key to the city. She was so honored. It became her prized possession. She pulled it out every time we went to the embassy for a visa. She would hand it to officials and I could see the pride in her face. She understood that my hard work was recognized here by important people.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Natalie So

Ukraine California

Igor Pasternak

I've been making blimps since I was a child in Soviet Union. This was late sixties, and we lived in Lviv, Ukraine, near a meteorological station. They worked with balloons, and I loved to see them lifting into the sky. I became friends with the supervisor of the station. I asked so many questions. How does this work? And he'd say, "Go away, Igor." How does that work? "Not now, Igor." Until one day, he said, "Come here, Igor. Let me show you how they work."

The first thing I put in the sky was a hydrogen balloon. The balloon was not tethered, it was free-flying. Those balloons go 60,000 or 70,000 feet, and they transmit information back to earth with radio frequencies. We watched the numbers come in — atmospheric pressure, temperature, wind speed. It was so exciting. I've known what I want to do since I was six years old, and it has never changed.

As a kid, I went to the library and checked out all the books on airships. I began designing. And not just drawings — calculations and detailed plans. My friends knew, "Igor is the blimp guy," and they would see me going to the park with my homemade balloons, trying out new things. When I was teenager, I went with my friend to a conference of Soviet avionics experts. We talked our way in. No one understood why we were there. At university, I became engineer. But I could not study aeronautical engineering because my parents were Jewish. They called them refuseniks. I had to study civil engineering. After school, I still wanted to make airships. You know, it's hard to remember what inspires a young man, but at the time, airplanes were flying, the rockets going into space, but no one was working on airships. There was a lot of innovation in aerospace. But airships were left behind. I felt hunger to create something new, and a kind of self-determination to express myself as aerospace engineer. But no one built airships in Soviet Union. Everything belonged to the government. There were no market forces, no private enterprises. So you cannot even start your own company to build airship. It was impossible.

My father came to the U.S. before me. He was an engineer. My mother too. And my sister. A whole family of engineers. In America, I got certified by the FAA to build airships. It was 1993 and I went to California, near Castle Air Force Base. I built airships for Defense Department. And then I moved to Los Angeles. My sister, she became my partner, my right hand. My father also was very active, coming in every day to work with us. Together we become biggest builder of airships in the U.S. The creation of these air vehicles, this route, this success you cannot achieve without family. It was all of us together.

Blimps, for me, is about personal expression. Planes are planes. You can make better landing gear. You can make better wing. But you cannot change the plane. I want to design something that no one has done before. I want to make an entirely new vehicle.

You see, a blimp is very impractical. To land Goodyear Blimp, you still need guys with ropes. I want to build a ship that controls itself. This is very old problem. Oldest in flying. First flight was hot air balloon, for Louis XVI! They flew a sheep over Versailles. [Ed. note: The sheep was named Montauciel, meaning "Climb-to-the-sky," and the balloon also carried a duck and a rooster.] You still have same engineering problem for airships as then. No one has solved it. Everyone has tried. Everyone failed so far. That is why sky is not full of blimps!

I was playing with equations, and I realized: This can be done. I do calculations by hand, on pen and paper. I have 50 or 60 engineers working on my new airship. The full version will be 787 feet. It will be able to fly 5,300 miles. People say it's not going to work. But if it works, it could change the world!

I am building my new airship in Tustin. In California near Los Angeles. There is giant Air Force hangar, from World War II. I drive down to see progress. Yes, my driver takes me. He is also Russian. Everywhere, Russians! I made modified SUV to be my office. So I can work longer. I eat in the car, read in the car, look at plans. From Beverly Hills to Tustin. The car has Wi-Fi and flat-screen. And a bar, for after-work cognac. Also, cigars. And my glasses. I have many pairs. In the car, at the office, at home, at the airship. I lose my glasses all the time, so I have dozens of pairs made — hundreds! — and I leave them everywhere.

Everyone knows I am workaholic. Yes, I am married. On my third one. I stay up late. I can't sleep. I see equations. I am 64 now. My sister, she has passed. She was working on airship. It was a tragic event. We made a memorial in our engineering conference room. It's a dedication to her. A dedication that is always with me.

My father is still essential part of the business. Last week we celebrate his eighty-years party. And my son is a blimp designer too. At seven years old, he was making plans. He has good ideas. It's impressive. I bring his plans to my engineers.

Do I know how to fly the crafts myself? Of course. But I am not licensed. I do not pilot the airships. I like to go up. Every first flight I am there. Every time you're inside a ship, and you feel it lift from the ground, it's an unbelievable feeling. You can live for this feeling. The biggest high is when a new craft takes off. It is like you are an addict for this feeling. No, you are absolutely addicted. Then there will be another one, and you will look for that feeling again. This is the reality. You don't know what the hell else you can do in this life.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Joshuah Bearman

Ukraine Washington

Naomi Bashkansky

My mom tried to teach me chess when I was four, but I couldn't understand the pieces. But when I turned five, my brother sat me down and it just clicked. I'm 14 now, but according to my mom, when I was six I would beat 13-year-old boys. And they would be like, "Oh, wow! We lost to a six-year-old girl, man!" I wouldn't pay attention to that, because they were just weird boys talking.

I have an aggressive playing style. I'm good at attacking. I keep crushing the opponent and squeezing them. My Grandmaster coach sometimes thinks I'm too aggressive. "Young lady," he says, "hold your horses. You cannot attack just to attack. You need to prepare your attack." But playing aggressively works for me because I'm good at it.

My goal is to become a Woman Grandmaster by the end of high school. That's the highest title in the world. For four years, I've been working to move up, to become a Woman FIDE Master, which is only two away from Woman Grandmaster. This past year the World Schools Championship was in Sochi. If I came in first, I'd finally, finally earn my next title.

My parents travel with me to competitions to make sure I breathe and don't go to sleep at 1 a.m. When we found out the championship was in Russia, they were really excited. My mom and dad are both from Ukraine, so just seeing plane tickets and airline safety pamphlets all in Russian was a big deal to them. I can't read Russian, but I was excited to play in the snow. And also for the mashed potatoes. Chess tournaments always have really good mashed potatoes.

I wasn't nervous. To be honest, I thought I would get first place. I came into the competition ranked second, but suspected I was underrated. And the first round is always the easiest, because it's when the highest players play the lowest.

This time, though, something went wrong.

I had studied my opponent before the match, her typical openings and her playing style, but after a few turns, she did a move that strayed from what I had seen her do in previous games. I wasn't sure how to respond. I moved my queen. But then she moved her castle. This put me in a vulnerable position, so I was forced to move my queen back to where it was before. I tried again and again to increase my position, but I kept getting stuck, locking the two of us in back-and-forths that destroyed my game.

The playing halls are always very quiet. There are pieces hitting the board. Or someone clicking the clock, maybe someone coughing or sneezing. But other than that, it's completely quiet. I guess it's for concentration. But no matter how quiet it is, it's hard to play when you're losing.

I hate draws. I hate not fighting until the end. But in the case of this game, I knew I couldn't win and that she couldn't either. At international tournaments, to signal a draw you hold your hand above the board and cross your index and middle fingers. And that's what my opponent did.

I was disappointed, but I knew it was just the first round. You earn a point for every round you win, and a half point for draws. I could still come in first. I'd just have to make up for the lost half point in the next rounds. I sat down at the board for the second game. But again, I felt myself losing. Finally, the player crossed her fingers again. Another draw. I knew the third round couldn't possibly end in a draw. The player was much weaker than me. But … crossed fingers again. I was now 1.5 points behind. Too far behind to get first place. I wouldn't get my title.

At dinner, I was quiet. My mom is typically the one who asks about my games, because my dad doesn't know anything about chess. "What went wrong? Was it in the opening? Did you blunder?" But that night they could tell how disappointed I was, so they didn't say much. They let me spend some time thinking by myself.

The waiter brought us soup, a type my mom makes sometimes at home because my dad really likes it. Even though it hadn't been too long since my mom had prepared it, there was something about eating it there, in Russia, that made my parents really happy. Watching them eat, I felt sad. We had traveled a really long way to get to Sochi, and I knew it was an expensive trip, and I knew it was important to my parents that we were there. I had just really wanted to win.

I was nervous before the fourth round. Really nervous. But right before I went to play, I got an email from my brother. He's at college and we don't talk much. When we do, it's sort of sarcastic. But he looked at my scores from the first three rounds in Sochi. "Keep playing," he wrote.

In the fourth round, I moved first. I did my favorite opening, the one where I get a strong center and then I attack the opponent's king. I pushed my pawns forward; I got my pieces. It was like I felt my brain turning on. I played how I normally play.

I returned to my parents and told them I won.

I won the next round, and then the next and the next. Point after point after point. Before my final game, I looked at the standings. I was tied for first place. But if that final round ended in crossed fingers, I wouldn't win. I studied my opponent's openings and style, and as we played, she followed it closely, until one move. She messed up. I won.

When we got up from the board, I realized she was probably pretty sad. She had played well, and I wanted to try to make things feel not as bad for her. I have this bag that I always bring with me to the games, with cookies and other small snacks, and there was this one very large chocolate chip cookie. I looked for her in the hall and when I finally spotted her, I ran over and tapped her on the shoulder and held out the cookie, gesturing "Do you want one?" But she didn't want the cookie at all.

In the months since then, I've earned my next title: Woman International Master. I'm now only one title from Woman Grandmaster. I'm 14, and I've traveled to Rio, British Columbia, and New Jersey. The thing is, chess is a hard lifestyle. I don't know if I'll continue with it, if I'll do it professionally. I know in other countries, chess is sort of an escape. It offers opportunities people wouldn't find otherwise. But in the U.S. there's a whole bunch of things I could do. I could become a software engineer. I could go to medical school and become a doctor. Or maybe I'll start a business, I don't know. I still have plenty of years to decide. Any of those jobs, they'd certainly not be as stressful as chess. And regular life isn't like chess. In a chess game, when you lose, you lose. But in life if you lose, you keep on going.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Emma Gross

Switzerland New York

Yemana Sanders

My parents, they loved adventure. They would travel. But when I told them I was leaving my hometown of Bern to study meditation in India, they said, "Great, now our daughter is in a cult." It was 1980 and I protested, "Humans have climbed every mountain, seen every river, but we haven't looked within. How will we move forward?" I spent two years in India, and then I learned of a yearlong silent retreat in Massachusetts. I thought: Why not?

I had been at the center in Massachusetts for nine months when Clark arrived. A lot of people came for one or two weeks. They came and went. Clark was new, arriving toward the end of my time there. He came because his little cabin had burned down. At the time he was having women left and right—he was very good-looking—and a friend told him, "Maybe it would be good to break the pattern." As his cabin was burning down, he thought it would be a good time for some reflection. He was there for a five-day retreat, and had never done anything like it before.

Everything was silent. When you sit and say nothing for a long time, you spot things, and your mind makes up incessant little stories. It creates and reacts. You wonder, you doubt. You see people that pique your interest, and you have an internal romance with them. You marry them, divorce them, create a vendetta against them—whatever you make up in your mind. "Oh, this one looks awful, I would not want to talk to this person." Or: "There's a nice person. I want to know them." We were supposed to watch out for the romances where your mind says, "Aha—I am in love with this person," even though you have not spoken.

Clark spotted me right away. At that age, I seemed to catch men's eyes. He wasn't like the other men there, whose energies skewed feminine. He reminded me of Thor Heyerdahl, a figure from my childhood. That was my idea of adventure: strong, sunburned, and with an earring. I had never had the experience of a real male energy.

One afternoon, a teacher led us through awareness exercises. She had us stand in a circle, look at each other, and then put our hands on another person's head. We weren't supposed to look up much. But I remember I had on these little red Chinese slippers. Clark was across from me. He put his hand on my head and energy shot through my body.

At the end of his five days, he wrote me a note: "I'm leaving town now. Could we go for a walk?" It was a short walk, and it was then that I heard him speak for the first time. We didn't communicate well. He was still transitioning out of his silence—but he also didn't really talk much, even when not on a silent retreat. Before he left, Clark gave me a second note. He asked if I wanted to come visit him. I hesitated. I had spent a year in silence. I did not know what a true relationship was.

I arrived in upstate New York in May. It had been two months since we had last seen each other. Clark was building a house, and he lived in a tent under some trees with his dogs. He had a little seat and a gas lamp outside his tent, and he would read there. At night, you could see only the outline of a tent and a man reading. I said to myself, "Well, this gets as close to Thor Heyerdahl as I could imagine."

I stayed with Clark from May to July, in that tent under the tree. We still didn't speak much. But I was pregnant, I'd learn. Clark was the father.

My daughter was born, and two more children followed. We grew in unison. When the kids were small, he started telling them stories. They were captivated by his stories. He was animated, inventive. He was again like Thor Heyerdahl. But when the kids were grown, I needed to go off on my own again, to adventure again. Clark and I parted ways. He is remarried now, and I am alone. Happy as a clam alone.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Emma Gross

Mexico California

Reyna Pacheco

The first time I played, I was 13 and undocumented. There were 30 of us packed onto a court. My school rented squash courts at a private club in Mira Mesa, San Diego, and divided them up with a big makeshift wall. On one side tutors helped with homework; against the other, we hit balls and watched them bounce high and hang in the air. I'd felt like I was barely surviving school that year — I'd been fighting other kids and had my mind set on leaving. I couldn't understand the point of college. My brother had dropped out of high school, my mom spent hours cleaning others' homes. But here was one thing I could focus on, swing at.

I wasn't great that first time. To be honest, I was the last kid to hold a racquet properly. But something about it appealed to me. I started bringing a racquet home — using it to pick up t-shirts and oranges. It became like an extension of my hand and made me feel kind of powerful. My brother kept asking me why I practiced this thing from the rich part of town and all I could say was, "It's different."

And it's true. Squash isn't accessible like soccer. There's no pick-up in neighborhood parks. It's played in a white cube. I could only go to the courts when paying members weren't using them. A lot of kids in America play squash to get into college. Their parents belong to private clubs, invest in lessons, and dream of the Ivy League. My mom didn't even feel comfortable watching me play. She'd say, "Reyna, look, my shirt isn't even clean enough for me to walk in there."

The courts I had to use were 18 miles from my home; a thirty-minute drive if you have a car. My mom and stepdad needed their car for work, or sometimes didn't have enough money for gasoline. So I would take a three-hour bus ride at 4 a.m., hit balls from seven to eight, take another bus to school, go back to the courts at around 5 p.m., and then head home. Sometimes if I ran late I'd have to race the bus from one stop to the next, or pound on doors until they opened, or even sprint into the middle of the street and demand the driver let me in.

I was surprised at how quickly I improved. I learned to volley on the side walls and came away from matches with scraped knees from battle. I couldn't take private lessons, but my coach, Renato Paiva, was a former Brazilian squash champion whose practices were academic quizzes and endless runs. With him I was always thinking, I must do more, more and more. This is why he made me team captain, even after I lost my very, very first match. That day I dove, I fell, and Renato said, "You have fighting spirit." And so I started planning my comeback.

Outside of practice, this game was a foreign world. Most tournaments are at East Coast boarding schools. I'd take five-hour plane rides with my racquet and sleep on the hotel room couches of my competitors. They'd be in their own made-up beds, and if they were nice enough to let me, I would sleep on the floor near the coffee table. And when we went to warm up, they'd be dressed in beautiful polyester shirts with red and white stripes. These are the jerseys you get when representing the U.S. in squash internationally. People I played with had tons of them — they'd hang out of bags and sit neatly in lockers. But I couldn't wear them, even when I was winning enough titles to become Top 15. I was still undocumented. And that meant that I couldn't play in sanctioned events. I couldn't even travel the world. I could tell that these parents buying $300 hotel rooms and kids with laundered jerseys weren't able to understand what brought me to the court, why I stayed.

It wasn't because this sport was different. It didn't feel that way to me anymore. During tournaments, I'd hit the ball, and it'd always come back. This return always had something unexpected — spin, bounce, the direction of my opponent's feet. I had to be aware, constantly pushing and perfecting and ready for my next shot. This immediacy fit how I was living — at school where I didn't know if I'd be in the country for our next exam, and at home where we turned boxes into chairs and wondered when the next check would come in. I had to take it all day by day. Squash had a rhythm that matched my life.

There was a game that my friend's father, Dickon Pownall-Gray, played with his wife: They would sit at bars, look at people, and guess: "That woman in velvet is a fashion editor," "The person reading O Globo is a translator." One day, they saw a guy sitting surrounded by books, looking studious. "An academic." "A Wall Street man." They had to ask. He turned out to be an immigration lawyer at one of New York City's biggest law firms. Mr. Pownall-Gray wanted me to have the same opportunities as his own daughter; he told this lawyer about my case. I don't know what he said. What I know is that the lawyer took me on pro bono and I agreed to trust him, though I was nervous. My family had tried to apply once before and a lawyer told us, "Don't try again, you're going to get kicked out of this country." But with this lawyer, I filled out a lengthy application, got fingerprinted, and went in for my interview. Just as all my classmates were beginning to apply to college, I got an envelope. A totally standard one; USPS Priority. My green card had arrived, but it still felt like an impossibility.

Now, I'm able to travel the world. I'm asked questions about the election, about walls, about growing up in a place that had crime and drugs. And it's odd because I'm the American — but I'm also Mexican. Residency doesn't mean I'm not thinking about my identity. It doesn't make me feel like I definitely belong. I'm always adjusting to new places and people, and that's part of life and training and squash. Things are never guaranteed. All I know is that on the court I feel safe to push boundaries, to set goals. On July 8, 2016, I played in my first U.S. Federation event. I wore a shirt with a red, white, and blue logo. Before putting it on, I held it in my hands and cried.

PHOTO BY: Mark Hartman / STORY BY: Alexa Daugherty

Sri Lanka Texas

Dilini Jayasuriya

My husband and I started calling in to radio contests last year. We share a car, so on our commute whoever was in the passenger seat just called and called. It became a game. We won tickets to the Austin City Limits Festival and then to Modest Mouse, The Weekend, 1975 — I even won a meat smoker. It may seem like we're crazy people, but we don't go out of our way and have the radio on all the time. That would be crazy, right?

One afternoon, someone on air says, "Oh my god, I'm the ninth caller. I won a car!" I pulled over and went to the Kiss FM website because I couldn't believe they were giving away cars. And, of course, they weren't. To win the Kia Sentra you had to kiss it for 50 hours. Twenty contestants would compete, and the last person with his or her lips on the car won.

I was up for it. We were living paycheck-to-paycheck. I thought if we had a little bit of money, my husband and I could put it toward a house. I started dialing. Ten times turned to thirty turned to sixty, busy signal after busy signal, until finally — it rang. I had won a spot at a challenge, a spot at a real opportunity.

The competition was held in the showroom at the Round Rock Kia dealership. Nineteen other contestants and I were brought in front of big Kiss FM banners, fluorescent lights, cameramen, and news anchors. At 7 a.m. sharp, I was told to kiss my husband good-bye, and then walk over and kiss the car.

I started with the passenger window. People were kissing the doors, the door handles, the tires; one guy was lying on the hood of the car. We rotated each hour so everyone would get a chance to stand or sit. They gave us wipes for the saliva.

By law we were required to have a 10-minute break every hour for the bathroom, food, and water. There was a couple that kept debating what would happen to the car if they broke up. There was a mom who left her baby with a friend. Next to me on the car was a guy named Tyler. He was trying to win to pay for grad school. Serena was on my other side. Her boss told her she could take off work for the contest, as long as she wore the company t-shirt.

The pain began around the fifth hour. My teeth started hurting, I guess because of the weight of my head pressing down on them. I was positioned by the tire and there was a chemical, oily smell, and it was all I could do to keep from coughing. Plus, Kiss FM was blasting the entire time. During the course of the competition I would hear "Believer" by Imagine Dragons at least a hundred times. By hour twelve, five people had dropped out. Most of them had accidentally fallen asleep and their lips came off.

It was around the twenty-fourth hour that I started hallucinating. I saw rapid flashes of bright colors and geometric shapes. I saw physics formulas — nothing I recognized, just random numbers and symbols. And they were flashing rhythmically, to the beat of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift songs. My neighbors helped bring me back to earth. Tyler hummed harmonies to the pop songs, and I started tapping my fingers. Whenever I looked to the side and saw Tyler and Serena, I thought, Okay, they're still there. I can keep going. Late in the second day, however, Tyler's portable phone charger, which he had balanced on the roof, dropped on his head. His lips came off. It was strange — I felt sad for him, but I also got scared of what would happen to me. Tyler had been next to me for thirty hours. He had made me feel at ease.

Around the thirty-fifth hour I started hallucinating again. I thought I saw my dad. He didn't come inside the dealership, but was watching from the parking lot. My dad moved our family to the States when I was 13 so my siblings and I could have better educations. Back in Sri Lanka, he was a musician. He played for stage dramas and events and traveled all over the world. But in Austin, the music stopped for him. He began work at a computer company, but was soon laid off. He ended up finding work as the custodian at my high school. That's when my grades started to slip. I finished high school, but I dropped out of college. I know this pained my parents, that it has weighed on them to no end. And I know my dad did not come to watch me at the Kiss a Kia competition. But the thought that maybe he was there helped me through the early hours of the second day.

At the forty-eighth hour, there were seven of us left. My wrists hurt, my back ached. I was barely conscious. My mind wandered uncontrollably, zeroing in on the pop song lyrics, traveling to places around Austin, to the beach, to the fruit trees in Sri Lanka, and then suddenly to my ninth grade English teacher. I know it sounds strange, but there was this one day in class when my teacher told us, "There is a nationwide contest to read thirty-something books, 6,000 pages in a couple months. If you read everything and pass a test, you get a $5,000 scholarship." I hadn't been in the States that long, and English was my weakest subject, but I decided I would win the contest. I read at night in our bathroom. Outside, before school, and during lunch. I put my head down, and I had this inner motivation, this drive. And I won. My ninth grade English teacher said something that, during those final hours, I remembered. She said, "That was perseverance."

At the car competition, I thought about that day in ninth grade. I was proving again that I could do something if I put my mind to it, if I worked really hard, if I focused. And like that, the 50 hours were up. There were still seven people left, so they picked the winner from a bag. It felt unfair that it had to end this way, left to chance, when all seven of us had held on until the end.

"You're the winner!" I heard them yell. But I didn't move. I thought it was a trick to get me to take my lips off. "Dilini! It's over!" My husband helped me stand. I was bombarded with reporters and people. I don't know what I said. I was excited but so disoriented. I'm sure I smelled terrible. I just wanted to hide.

After the contest, I learned that my brother had put the TV on for my dad. He had watched the entire competition. "I know it's a car," he said, "but I believed in you." He was so proud that I stuck around. I always believed he thought I was weaker, but he was proud of me, and that was a big deal.

PHOTO BY: Kathryn Harrison / STORY BY: Emma Gross

little
america.

little america.

little america.

Czechoslovakia Nevada

Daniel Pohl

Iran New York

Farhad Gremipor

Syria Idaho

Shadi Ismail

Nigeria Louisiana

Igwe Udeh

India Kansas

Usha Reddi

India Utah

Kunal Sah

South Africa Arizona

Cole Son

Kosovo New York

Giorgio Kolaj

Cuba Florida

Danilo Torre

Uganda Kentucky

Elizabeth Kizito

Ukraine California

Igor Pasternak

Ukraine Washington

Naomi Bashkansky

Switzerland New York

Yemana Sanders

Mexico California

Reyna Pacheco

Sri Lanka Texas

Dilini Jayasuriya

little america.

littleamerica.

Czechoslovakia Nevada

Daniel Pohl

Iran New York

Farhad Gremipor

Syria Idaho

Shadi Ismail

Nigeria Louisiana

Igwe Udeh

India Kansas

Usha Reddi

India Utah

Kunal Sah

South Africa Arizona

Cole Son

Kosovo New York

Giorgio Kolaj

Cuba Florida

Danilo Torre

Uganda Kentucky

Elizabeth Kizito

Ukraine California

Igor Pasternak

Ukraine Washington

Naomi Bashkansky

Switzerland New York

Yemana Sanders

Mexico California

Reyna Pacheco

Sri Lanka Texas

Dilini Jayasuriya

little
america.