The Journey to a Better and Free Life
Matthew Chaney, staff writer
In America today, people take for granted the certain unalienable rights they receive when being born here. From across the globe, millions of people try to gain these rights and start anew when immigrating here. The promise and chance of a new life is more than appealing to these immigrants. At the Virginia Festival of the Book on March 22, at the Martin Luther King Jr. Performing Arts Center, Khizr Khan discussed his book and what he experienced coming to America and living here.
The theatre was packed full of people. As the lights dimmed, the theatre got eerily quiet. There were over 500 people waiting intently for Khan to tell his story.
Douglass Bland walked out on the stage and introduced Khan before he conducted the interview. He gave a short introduction on how he got to know Khan.
As Khan walked out on the stage, a deafening round of applause filled the theatre. He put his hands together from the countless praises from Bland and the audience. Then it was his time to tell his story.
He grew up in a small town in Pakistan, where he witnessed tyrannies and regimes controlling his country. When he first started writing for the newspaper in Pakistan, he was scared to even speak out due to the threat of the dictator’s wrath. He then moved to America where he seemed to instantly lighten up. When he received his official US citizenship certificate, he was overcome with a sense of freedom and clarity.
Khan said, “Getting my US citizenship certificate, my eyes saw it as a ‘Human Dignity Certificate.’”
Khan said reading the Declaration of Independence made him appreciate his new rights even more. He said he read it multiple times with other government unifying historical documents.
Then he got in a serious tone when asked about his son, who was a University of Virginia graduate and US Army Captain but was killed in Iraq in 2004. He then explained how grateful and thankful he was for his rights as an American citizen, saying he believes everybody should have to read the US Constitution.
Going into more detail, he believes it is important to safeguard these beliefs and rights as American citizens. One of the rights he gained as an American citizen was the freedom of religion. It was obvious that this was a soft and passionate spot for Khan. Khan said his religion of Islam should not have been hijacked and misconstrued around the world because of a radical and extremist group.
Interested people that would like to read more on Khan’s experiences and life can in his book An American Family: A Memoir of Hope and Sacrifice.
