"The Pike" sculpture installation

A gateway sculpture “The Pike” by artist Daniel Lipski, is currently being installed at the Arlington-Fairfax County border, (Columbia Pike at South .Jefferson Street).

It is a wind turbine blade, mounted on a base embedded with thousands of coins from around the world. It was a multi-year process getting approval and the installation done. A ribbon-cutting will occur in the fall of 2022. 

More information about the sculpture and installation is at ArlNow and on Arlington County government's site here.

It was interesting to hear local Pike residents comments as to what they thought the sculpture was.

Updated photographs of the finished installation will be posted later this summer.

Photography by Lloyd Wolf.

Noe Cuadra

Noe Cuadra came to Arlington from El Salvador with his family when he was seven years old. He is a graduate of George Mason University with a degree in business management and a minor in environmental enterprise. He currently is a shop manager at Phoenix Bikes, an Arlington nonprofit  organization along Columbia Pike that combines youth educational programs with a professional bike shop  and retail store. 

"I was born in El Salvador. I came when I was seven and lived in Arlington for about seventeen years.  

I joined Phoenix Bikes when I was a freshman at Wakefield High School. I was looking for a job because I wanted money. A friend of mine told me, "there's this bike shop in Arlington that will show you how to fix bikes, and you get a free bike at the end of the program." And I was like, "Oh really? Let me go see and figure out what the program was about." So I walked there with my friend and stopped by there just to get an idea of what the program was about. I never really went back until after buying my own bike. I ended up getting a flat on the way home one day and stopped by Phoenix. I didn't have money with me so I asked, "Hey, can you guys help me out, or show me how to do this?" The program coordinator, Stephen Green, sat down, and showed me how to take off a wheel, and how to patch an inner tube. I told him that I didn't have any money and he said, "Don't worry about it. We'll just show you how to do it and if you want to come back, you can learn how to do it yourself, and then you'll have the opportunity to build your own bike." I thought, "Oh, this is fun. I can get a free bike and a faster bike than what I had before." After that, during the summer of my freshman year in 2012, I joined the earn a bike program. 

Back then Phoenix was on South Four Mile Drive. I volunteered my freshman year, sophomore, junior, and  senior year. In my sophomore year, I got busy with sports, wrestling, and lacrosse, so I barely went to  Phoenix. In my junior year, they offered me a job, and I started working there. During the summer of my sophomore year, I volunteered for more than 500 hours. It was fun because the environment there is welcoming, and the staff cared about you. You can bring your friends, it was a cool hangout place and you get the opportunity to learn new things. Everyone's like, "Hey, how's it going? How are you doing?" If you had an idea of how to make the environment better, let's say the shop was really crowded and you thought moving the stands in a certain direction way was going to help, the staff would be, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's try it." That was really helpful because it gave all the youth a voice, the staff was there to listen and help implement their opinions and ideas. I met a lot of friends there, too. Working at Phoenix introduced me to a big community, a cycling community, and a professional community. I met friends my age, I've met board members and community leaders. I was able to speak to leaders at a young age through the opportunities that Phoenix offered. I met people who traveled around the world on a bike, and people who had experience biking across the states. I learned a lot. 

I still stay in touch with the people I’ve met through Phoenix. A lot of the ones that I am in touch with are the staff and youth that I used to hang out with. Some of them live nearby, so we still bike together or they come by the shop and say hi. A lot of the youth who volunteer or work at Phoenix live in South Arlington. They mostly go to Wakefield, Washington-Liberty, Gunston, Kenmore, and TJ. Those are the kids that are able to come to the shop often. We do get some kids that come from other counties in Virginia, and places like DC, or Maryland. Some manage to drive all the way up here which shows that they really like coming here. 

Our main goal at Phoenix is to provide affordable transportation to the community and provide an  opportunity for kids to learn bike mechanics and receive a free bike. A lot of students can't afford a bike, because bikes are expensive and a lot of the families that live in the area are low-income. Having this program where kids get to learn how to work on a bike and keep it at the end of the program has been helpful for students. We have a diverse group of students. Hispanics, African Americans, Asians.

 

When it comes to promoting a healthy lifestyle we don't really enforce it but we do know exercise is healthy for the person. "Hey, if you go on a ten-mile ride or if you go exercise for an hour, it would make you feel better." Mostly we take kids on a bike ride to have fun. The health aspect is implemented in there, but we barely talk about it. There are kids that come in that like to eat junk food. They're kids and I think it's fine once in a while, but we also try to say, "Hey, you shouldn't be drinking this, it's not good for you." Or "Hey, if you want to become faster on a bike, you should be drinking more water or eating healthy."

The kids look up to me but being in charge of them you sometimes can't see it yourself. A lot of the youth look up to us because in this environment it's not, “you come in and work for us.” It's more like, "Hey, you're going to get a free bike and you're going to earn it but at the same time, we want you to grow as a person. You're a youth, you're a minority. We want to give you all the tools to succeed in life." Things like, "Do you want to learn how to talk to people? Public speaking. Do you want to get your first job at a bike shop? We'll show you customer service skills, such as answering the phone, or learning business operations practices." It's not the main program, but we offer kids the opportunity to grow as a person. I graduated from Wakefield in 2016. I then went to NOVA Community College for business administration, then transferred to George Mason University in 2018, and graduated in 2020 with a business management degree. 

I am managing the place now. My passion for leadership began when Phoenix Bikes went to the National Youth Bike Summit. It's an event where nonprofits come together and talk about how they're growing, how they need help and any new ideas they have. All the workshops are run by youth. I attended one of them, it was about leadership. I was a junior in high school at the time. I was thinking that if I'm going to be a leader and I'm going off to college, what can I learn now? What can I do now to make my resume or my application better? So I went to this leadership workshop that was run by youth and that just opened up my eyes. I'm like, "Wow." I thought it was going to be a workshop taught by adults but it was taught by youth. That’s where I said, " if they can do it, I can do it too." 

The other thing that I enjoyed about the summit was that it was my first airplane ride. We went to Seattle, Washington and Phoenix Bikes took five to ten students. All we had to do was fundraise and then Phoenix would cover everything else. From then on I realized that this organization cares about the kids, the youth. I felt like my voice was being heard. Ever since that day, I started noticing it's not just me, but all the staff put the same amount of energy into each kid. If that kid wants to grow, we'll give you the tools and we'll guide you. We quite literally give them the tools, both psychological and physical. 

The store is open from Tuesday to Saturday. From Tuesday to Friday we're open 10:30 AM to 6:00 PM. Most of the kids come around 2:30 because that's when middle school finishes, and then high school starts showing up around three to four. The youth have to attend orientation first to give them an idea of what they’re going to be learning. This is not a class-based style, it's more, "Here's your checklist. We're going to show you how to do it, and now you're going to work on it by yourself." During orientation, we'll talk about the rules and checklist. After attending orientation it becomes a drop-in program. Whenever the kid is available and we're open, they can come in. We always have instructors here so it doesn't matter if you're ahead on the checklist or behind on the checklist, it's all self-paced and we have teachers helping you out. 

Covid affected our operation. In early 2020 everything went down. We closed the doors to customers and  youth. We were doing sales and service and we were offering give-a-bikes to people in need. Give-a-bikes are basically bikes that we fix up and give to those in the community who need them such as someone who is homeless and just got a job and needs transportation. Some organizations that we work with will email us and say, "I have a client here who needs a bike." And then we'll help those folks. We were working with youth during Covid 19, but it was online. But teaching bike mechanics over Zoom is not fun. Near the end of 2020, in the winter, we started offering outdoor bike classes to a small group of maybe five kids. Last year somewhere in the summer we started offering more and larger classes outside. Now we're fully back to where we were before. The shop is open for customers and youth. Students can come in on a drop-in basis, and we're also having after-school classes at middle schools and high schools. During the school year, it's hard for the youth to come to us, so we go to them. We teach three to four after-school bike classes every semester, a curriculum for an eight-week program. They first learn the parts of a bike and then the tools. They learn the same things that they would learn in the shop. Interestingly, we actually had more girls that joined the program than boys that year. We do try to have an all-girls bike club and we try to encourage more girls to join the club. 

I am the first person in my family to go to college. As a kid, my family encouraged me to go to college, be the first in the family to be educated and put the family first. Some could say it was a burden, but I never really thought about it like that. I thought about it as "This is a cool opportunity. They're going to help me. It's going to be a struggle because I'm doing everything by myself." Due to the environment that I was exposed to at the shop, I learned that you can always ask for help and people will be there to help you out. I had a couple of friends who have the same backgrounds as me but never had the community to help them out, they basically had to learn everything by themselves. 

There's a group I joined in school called Boys Cohort. It’s like United Minority Girls, but the boy’s version. When I was in it, Mr. Beitler and Ms.Maitland ran it. Joining that program opened my eyes to realize the opportunities I have. There was this one time when we talked about statistics within the minority class. They presented numbers about being in a minority, and one of them was, that if you're a minority, you're more likely to go to jail. I don't remember the exact number but the way they put it was that if there were ten minority boys in the room, potentially “about 70% of us will go to jail based on stats.” That’s where I was like, "Just because I'm a minority you think I'm going to go to jail?" Everyone felt the same way. Like, "Hey, we're here to pursue higher education. We're here to make a difference and numbers can't decide who I'm going to be or what I'm going to be." That environment was really helpful because it basically guided me to get a college degree and gave me the tools to figure out how to get there. We would meet once a week, we dressed up professionally, and we sat down with a group of minorities who also valued higher education. We talked about what was going on with school, and we were also looking for any volunteer opportunities. It was a way to put us out there, to make us more visible when applying for college. 

As a kid, I knew every decision I made had to be the right one because I had a lot of people behind me who were trusting me and it was a lot of pressure. I never really thought about it until now that I have completed everything they asked me to do. My family always said, "We want you to finish high school." I'm like, "Okay." I finished high school. Then it was "I want you to get a college degree." I'm like, "Okay." I finished it. "Now I want you to get a job." Okay, I did that. So I'm at this point where I did everything they asked and now it's my turn to decide what I want to do next. I have a university degree in business now. I am working at a nonprofit organization and now I'm trying to figure out what I want to do next. 

Being on the Pike for a while has been easy to spot changes. The biggest thing I noticed is the building improvements, plus it's easier to walk on the sidewalks now. The sidewalks are much wider now. For example, on the bridge heading towards Four Mile Run Drive, the old sidewalks were very narrow. You had to get off and walk if you were biking. If there were two or three people, you had to be careful because you were basically touching shoulders. In the section where the new Harris Teeter store is now, there was a store called Food Star. That whole area was torn down. But with these changes come new opportunities, though some changes affect the culture in the area. 

I did notice the diversity is greater here when we moved from Barcroft park over to Columbia Pike. I get different customers and cultures with different styles. I meet new Ethiopian and Hispanic people from different areas.

I recently bought a house. I'm moving at the end of this week over to Maryland. I've been living in Arlington for years, but it's hard buying a house in this area now. A townhouse is expansive for one 

room. I know Arlington offers a lot of help and resources for people. One thing I wish they did better is making resources easier to find. For example, there's an Arlington Free Clinic and I didn't know about it until my mom talked about it. I know there are a lot of people out there who could benefit from insurance or having a clinic to go to and not have to pay a lot. Ever since I heard about that, I've been telling other people who can't afford insurance or are afraid or can’t afford to go to a hospital about that resource on the Pike. The other resource I can think of is AFAC [Arlington Food Assistance Center]. They offer food if you're in need. There are other resources in Arlington that should be promoted. We need to make it easier for people to find. It's harder for people who can't read or use the internet and that's the people they should be targeting. 

Lastly, I believe cycling gives you freedom. You can get on a bike, get on a trail, and just bike wherever you want. Taking the right tools is important because you can fix your bike in case something happens on the ride and if you get lost you can always go back to where you started."

Photography and interview by Lloyd Wolf.

Columbia Pike - support for Ukraine

Seen along the Pike.

Photograph by Lloyd Wolf.

Manoukian Oriental Rugs- 100th Anniversary celebration.

Manoukian Oriental Rugs, located at 2330 Columbia Pike, Arlington, VA 22204, recently celebrated a century serving customers as a business in the area. They have been located on Columbia Pike for a number of years, and the family members are long-time residents of Arlington.

Virginia State Delegate Alfonso Lopez presented the family with an official proclamation from the General Assembly marking this milestone achievement. Music was provided by members of the Arlington Philharmonic, poet Philip Rosenbaum gave a reading, toasts were raised, and traditional food was provided to friends and family.

Congratulations to the Manoukian family- Mikael, Donna, and Paul. May the next one hundred years continue to be fruitful.

They have an uplifting story of a successful refugee family. From their website:  

“Now in [their] 3rd generation, Manoukian’s has been in the local rug business since 1922. [Their] story began when the Manoukian family fled the Armenian genocide in the early 1900’s.,, After gaining safe passage on a French rescue ship they entered the US first through Alexandria, Egypt, and then via… Ellis Island. At the start of their new life in America they worked in the grocery business. In 1922 Manouk, one of the brothers, opened the first family owned rug store [in Washington DC]. Eventually Manouk, along with his brothers Noury, Moses, and Mishel merged their individual rug shops.. The brothers made regular buying trips to the New York wholesale rug market where they acquired their handmade carpets. Over the years, they cultivated an honest and long-lasting rapport with their wholesaler partners. Often such transactions meant examining hundreds of colorful hand knotted carpets, combined with skillful negotiations over cups of strong coffee. This was a congenial but typical Middle Eastern business transaction. Many Armenians had previously been businessmen and traders in the old country, including in the oriental rug business, and they naturally brought this skill with them when they immigrated to the US.
 
[They] have furnished, cleaned, and repaired rugs for politicians, judges, ambassadors, business leaders, lawyers, doctors, architects, and rug connoisseurs and aficionados throughout the Washington, DC area and beyond.  [They] have serviced the rug needs of institutions including the U.S. Capitol, the Supreme Court, National Archives, Cosmos Club, National Cathedral, Blair House and the Smithsonian, as well as many embassies, clubs, universities, organizations, and private companies.”

Photography by Lloyd Wolf.

Virginia Museum of History and Culture

The artists of the the Columbia Pike Documentary Project have numerous photographs and interview texts in a new exhibition at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. The work depicts the lives and culture of our vibrant and diverse community.

The work is presented in a long-term display about the Northern Virginia region of our state, consisting of a hands-on interactive digital feature and an introductory video.

The grand opening for the public is the weekend of May 14 and 15, 2022.

Thanks to Adam Scher, the museum's director, for his confidence in our work, and to the team of exhibition specialists who prepared our images and words.

Alison Munaylla

 Alison Munaylla, 19, is a biology major at Marymount University in Arlington. Originally from Peru, she has lived most of her life along Columbia Pike.

"I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but I was raised in Peru. I consider myself Peruvian because my whole family's Peruvian. I was about two or three years old when we came to America. When my dad, mom, and I first moved here we rented rooms on Columbia Pike. After they got divorced it was just me and my dad renting out rooms until we met my step-mom and brother. That was when we moved to Arbor Heights apartments. After that it was Westmont Gardens.
 
I went to Carlin Springs Elementary School, Thomas Jefferson Middle School, and then Wakefield High. Now I’m at Marymount University, studying biology with a minor in sustainability. It's mostly environmentalism work. What I'm really focusing on is conservation because I've had lot of work experience in conservation and it's something I really enjoy doing. I first found out about this field when I saw a position posted for the American Conservation Experience. I thought it would be just a nice summer job that I could have working outdoors, earn a little extra money. That was the summer of 2019 and it was the most memorable summer of my entire life so far. It was a lot of working outdoors with other people along the George Washington Memorial Parkway. We worked doing eradication of non-native species. It was just so much fun that I decided to apply to another conservation program called the Youth Conservation Corps, the YCC. It has become my area of study in college. it works for me so I'm deciding to keep pursuing it.

I wrote a piece about my life growing up on the Pike for a summer project that I was working on. We learned about Latin culture in the DC area. I wanted to express the knowledge gained from that course and decided to do my piece on Columbia Pike because it's my home, it's what I've known my whole life, my whole experience. I focused on the perspective of my parents because they're the ones who have had the most impact on me. They're the ones who took care of me when I was younger. We didn't have a lot of money, we didn't have a lot of friends, we didn't have a lot of family either in America. So they had to use what they could, the resources they were given, which was all along the Pike, to make friends, to be familiar with what they could do to get ahead in this country. It was very difficult growing up. My parents did a really good job at protecting me from things that come with going through the immigration process and how difficult it can be. They’ve tried their best to help me have a normal childhood with friends I could play with, with getting a good education and I really appreciate them for that.
 
My dad started off as a construction worker along the Pike and my mom was staying home in a room that we rented, taking care of me. Eventually they did get divorced because of, I guess, differences in what they wanted out of when they came to America. That was difficult for me because I was about four years old, still new to this country, and I didn't understand why if we moved somewhere so far, why did they have to get divorced and why couldn't they stick together through this very difficult time we were having? But eventually it's all right in the end. I'm living with my dad right now who remarried and it's consistent. It's fine. I guess the biggest thing that we struggled with was the living situation in because we didn't really have a lot of money. We would live with a variety of people as we moved around, because we could not afford to rent our own place. Some people were good, some of them were people you just wouldn't want to be with, but you really had no choice to live with. We were less fortunate than the other families around.
 
I believe the fact that when we came to Arlington that it was already a very diverse area helped me a lot. I don't run into a lot of racist encounters or discrimination. I think it's very fortunate that we moved here out of all places in America, because it really helped me grow up in a healthy environment.

When I was in high school, I was in a support group, United Minority Girls. It really helped me understand that there are other people just like me, because it's not easy to really connect with people just because they're minorities. I think it was a really good way to make friends, especially being a woman and pursuing an academic career in education, I think it does require support from other people and I'm really thankful for that. The program gave me a lot of support. Obviously there was the youth network and there was also a lot of encouragement from the staff. I remember there were many moments when us girls would just feel like giving up and really feel over-stimulated, overwhelmed by the process of getting into college but Mr. Beitler, Ms. Maitland, and Mr. Cotman would help us out and encourage us to keep going, encourage us to go against the odds, go against what other people were seeing about girls like us. We understood that as immigrants, it was not the easiest to get into college, especially if you're undocumented, which some girls were, but it is still possible. It's a very difficult process for some, more difficult than for others, but we were able to work hard, push through it, do our best.
 
I was encouraged by my family, especially my dad. He always cared about my education. He always prioritized it over everything and I don't think without him I would be where I am today, how I am today, or have the mindset I have about education today. Neither of my parents went to college. They didn’t have that opportunity. They did graduate high school; they had some education, and they saw it was important for me. 
 
When we were living at Westmont Gardens, my mom and my aunt, not really our biological aunt, but we consider her aunt, Tia, I remember me and my cousin, Emily, her daughter, would play in the two parks there. We would stroll around in our little carts, always fighting with each other, trying to gross each other out and it was so much fun. Just moments being a child, growing up and feeling unaware of the situation you're in, unaware of the stress your parents are going through and just creating those memories. I do remember a lot of happy times, especially with my family.
 
I had friends in school who were from other cultures, though a lot of my friends were Hispanic and Latina. That was very fun. Most of the memories I had of them were at school, on the playground, in class. Good memories. In Carlin Springs, we had talent shows. One time we did a fashion show and we would all have to rehearse during our after-school programs, and we'd wear these really crazy funny outfits, boa scarves and grass skirts. We would all just laugh and have fun. When it came time for the talent show, We would do our poses that we’d rehearsed, obviously forgetting things because we were children, but is was really fun. I didn't go to a lot of football games at Wakefield High School , but when I did the spirit was always there, the cheering. There were dances, homecoming, I've only been to one homecoming and that was my senior year, right before COVID hit so, I never got to have a graduation ceremony.

I never did have a Quinceañera and I regret it to this day. I think when you grow up and you're 14, 15, you don't want a lot of attention. You're kind of closed off, maybe a little insecure and I think that's what struck me. Also, I didn't want my parents to spend money because I know those are very expensive too. The struggles we had brought us closer together. My family is very supportive of me, especially my dad who has been there most of my life. He's always been just the constant in my life, always there for me.
He is now an electrician for a company and he did school after that, about four years of school of studying while taking care of me and my little brother. And I'm really proud of him, honestly, for coming such a long way from where he started.
 
It has been a change going to college in a way, but since I commute there, and I still live in the same place, but I think it's different than some other students. It's a little more lonely than high school. It’s not as easy to make friends because everyone is there to get an education and  it’s such a small school. The focus is really get your education, get these experiences, get these credits. So not super easy to make friends, but still...

I'm a US citizen now. I did speak Spanish at home, but it's kind of erased a little bit as I’ve continued my education here, which is unfortunate, so I'm trying to relearn it. I wasn't really connected to my Peruvian culture too much growing up because I felt my parents were already struggling to adapt to the environment here in America, to become American US citizens, so we didn't really have a lot of time for doing things like that. We also didn't have a lot of friends so we didn't immerse ourselves into the Peruvian community here. We were pretty alone for a very long time, but very close as family. If I have a family in the future, they will be the core, but not exactly in the way that I was growing up. I'd want them to explore the world and see what it is truly like, because I think that can prepare people better for the situations that they'll encounter out in the real world, the people they're going to meet, how to treat others who are different than you.
 
I would say if my regular diet is more Brazilian than anything because my stepmom is Brazilian and she does cook a lot of food for us. When we visit my cousins who are over in Sterling, we have really good Peruvian food because they really love the food there and wanted to keep that when they moved here. I really love ceviche. There's also these kernels of corn, canchitas, that we eat as appetizers before the entrees and chicha morada to drink. I had it a lot, it’s made from purple corn, spices, and fruit. When there was a Food Star grocery store where the Harris Teeter is now, we did our shopping there a lot. I miss that Food Star. I miss the giant Food Star sign I used to see over there. 
 
I didn't experience a lot of prejudice growing up. Thankfully I've never gone through something horrible like that, but I know the same can't be for other people here, because we all share different experiences of prejudice. When I was in the United Minority Girl group, other kids shared stories of hardships, including some from the Hispanic girls. For some of the people from other counties though, it would be harder for them. They did experience prejudice.

I have noticed things changing along Columbia Pike. New shops are popping up, there’s been some remodeling. One thing that hasn't really changed is the construction on the Pike. There's always been construction on the Pike. My dad would always complain about it. Ever since I moved here, there's always been construction, there's always been some potholes here. I found it very annoying, but I don't know when it will end. It may never end. I think the kind of people who are living here are pretty much the same as there has been my whole life. Maybe it attracts new people, now but it's still a very diverse area, which I'm thankful for. 
 
Home to me is somewhere where I've shared a lot of experiences with something familiar. It may not be the happiest experience or the best experiences always, but they're definitely memorable experiences that have helped shape me to be the person I am and the perceptions I have about the world today.

In ten years hopefully I will have completed some sort of higher education, get some job in the conservation field, hopefully live close to there. I do want to travel a lot before I maybe settle down for a job or a family. I've thought about where I will live in the future. If I did have to stay in Virginia, I would stay here right in northern Virginia close to DC on the Pike. It's a really wonderful community here. A lot different than places in south Virginia. I really like this place."

Interview and photography by Lloyd Wolf.

Nadia Akther

I met Nadia through AHC Inc’s Teen College and Career Readiness program. She is the daughter of Bangladeshi immigrants, so we had a language in common as I am Bengali from India. At the end of the interview, she asked me if I spoke Bangla and I said I did. She said she spoke Bangla too, but it was bad. I told her, in Bangla, she could speak with me as mine was bad too after living in the U.S. for 23 years. She laughed and said, “Aamar shada manusher accent ache,” meaning I speak with a white person’s accent. We laughed, because she did! - Sushmita Mazumdar
 
Difference in Opportunities
“I have lived on Columbia Pike since 4^th grade. For my freshman year of high-school I went to Wakefield but then transferred to Washington-Liberty to get better opportunities. There are more things W-L does, for example, the Virginia Junior Academy Science or VJAS. At Wakefield we didn’t have much support from teachers, no one talked about it or even knew what it was but I did VJAS since 7^th grade so I was really good at that. I was the only freshman who did VJAS at Wakefield. In 10^th grade, I asked to be transferred. When I moved here, it was so different. There were three teachers sponsoring VJAS and so many posters all over. They had more outreach. My friend Afrin and I just did a project on this problem. It’s a part of the systemic racism and how people of color first get lacking education, because of that, not the best jobs and don’t make much money. Those families then end up living in poorer neighborhoods and their kids grow up there and they get the same lacking education. It’s a never-ending cycle. It was a project for French class and the assignment was to make a news video. We three decided to ask students of color about Systemic Racism. We talked to a Black student, an Asian student, a Hispanic student, a White student and got their input on the issue. It was after I transferred to W-L I noticed all this.

Stories of Childhood
I really liked my childhood on The Pike. I went to Randolph Elementary as I live near there. All the kids from Barcroft Apartments, Quebec Apartments, Westmont Apartments, and Oakland Apartments go there.  We had no busses—we all walked to school. In 5th grade I was in the gifted program, and we did most of our classes on the stairs because it is such a small school and there was no space. But there was a lot of love in the school, and they spent a lot of money on field trips—at least one every month, sometimes two or three. I loved that very much. One field trip we went on was the Outdoor Lab. I remember I didn’t bring a coat and it was so cold. My tent-mate farted, and I peed my pants! And we found someone’s underwear in our tent, and it wasn’t any of ours! It was so chaotic and so funny!
From when I was a baby to age 7, we lived in Alexandria. After that we moved to three different buildings on The Pike. Me and my family we joke about how we moved 7 times in 7 years—for financial reasons perhaps. Me and my sister would talk at night about how small our house was getting and how it was getting more homier, as there was too little space to be independent. The Alexandria house was a bigger house and I only talked to my sister there. But when we moved to The Pike, we also had a baby sister so now there were three of us. Then we moved to a smaller apartment, and we were all devastated but now grateful for it as it brought my entire family and I closer. I remember being sad, though, as I stood in a corner of the empty apartment. It was smaller than our older place and my baby sister was really, really sad. Sometimes when you constantly move around, you don’t feel like you live anywhere and don’t want to get attached to your current living space.

Immigrant Life
My dad said he came here from Bangladesh by winning a lottery. He then brought my mom over a few years later after he built a life here. He was roommates with my friend Afrin’s dad. He and a lot of other immigrants from Bangladesh lived in Westmont Apartments on The Pike. You know the rule how four people can live in a two-bedroom apartment and six people in a three-bedroom apartment, but there were many immigrants illegally living together in a one room apartment. 
 
I am feeling all the emotions again as I tell you this! I felt like I was not appreciative. I guess I was a spoiled kid. When we moved and moved, I didn’t like being poor. Because we were rich when we lived at the Alexandria house but then later, if I wanted something my parents would say you can’t have this and you can’t have that because we were devastatingly poor. However, growing up, I became grateful for the small things, grateful even for showering, because you can really take that for granted when you live a privileged life. All those memories are coming back. I am learning so much about myself now, as I speak. I think I put all these feelings in a box and thew it away somewhere.

The Road Ahead
I don’t really have any idea of what I want to do after school, but I know I want to work with kids. My mom was a babysitter all my life and she couldn’t do that after I was in 6^th grade. I am the middle child of three sisters and am really close with my baby sister. I enjoy being around kids. I don’t really know what I want to do but I want to live life. I don’t want to be disappointed by having too many expectations. I’ll just go with the flow. I don’t have a passion job or anything, but I want an education because that helps you go places. My parents are very much like “Be a Doctor, Be an Engineer!” Sometimes it can be stressful.
When I go to W-L, I stay more in the Ballston area than The Pike. I don’t really like that. The Pike feels more like home, more people look like you there. Here the people give off the vibe of click-click, do this, get this done, quick. The Pike is more calming, like take your time, and it’s so different. The downside is that other students think The Pike is like “ghetto.” One student just told me that he was once lost, his phone was dead, he was scared and telling me he was in danger. I thought he was in another country where he didn’t know anyone or maybe another state. But he was in South Arlington, one mile from his home! I was pissed off that people had that perception on my neighborhood.
I used to hate being Bengali/Bangladeshi. In W-L I’m in social anthropology class and the teacher really emphasizes culture and languages and I started enjoying it because so many of the other students, who are white, don’t have any of that. So, I started to embrace it."
 
Project Mother Tongue: April 12, 2022
 
The day of the photo shoot with Lloyd, Nadia told me a friend had dissed her because she didn’t know a second language. I told her I had an idea and asked if she would like to translate a few words or lines from her interview and learn to write it in Bangla. I said I could teach her because I had been re-learning how to write Bangla myself for a project of my own. She was excited and came to my Studio during Spring Break.
 
The first line she wanted to translate was the funny one. “I have a White person’s accent.” It was why she doesn’t really speak the language, she said. People laugh at her accent.
I tried to write it but when I got stuck on certain letters, I put in into Google Translate and saw the Bengali translation. The words weren’t the same as Nadia's but we found key spellings and adjusted the sentence to be hers. 

আমার সাদা মানুষ er accent আছে

Then I showed her how to write those words forming shapes, finding similarities to other shapes she knew. She saw the Bangla letter Cha and found in it a lowercase B and the number 2. She tried it but was nervous saying she would mess it up. That’s when I brought out the sketch book and water-soluble graphite and crayons. When we can make writing our language into a fun art, it becomes different and we can enjoy it. 
 
Then she wrote the word White. In Bangla it is shaada. She added red and green—colors of the flag of Bangladesh. It looked beautiful and was totally readable and high-fived and clapped.  When we stepped back and looked at the word, she said she saw how it looked like the English letters S, M, and T! 

Then she wanted to write her name. I typed it, Nadia, into Google Translate. I clicked on Google’s suggestion: Nadia. I showed her how the spelling was different. I asked her what her name meant, and she shrugged. So, we looked it up. Nadia: a girl's name of Arabic origin meaning "tender, delicate, pleasant, kind."
 
She was overjoyed. She asked me if I knew what Akhter, her last name, meant. I didn’t. She colored the words in red and green again but in a different way, writing the meaning in English using the black crayon. Akther: a Muslim origin surname meaning "star, good luck."
After that we looked for another funny bit in her interview. She picked the line where she says how she and her tent-mate found someone’s underwear in their tent in the Outdoor Lab. “My mom says Undie,” Nadia said. She couldn’t make the proper Bangla sentence, but I told her I didn’t care. We were just having fun. What she wrote was We Didn’t Have Undies. She made it colorful, the Bangla letters rolling off the end of her water-soluble crayons easily now. She had let go of her need to be perfect, something many good students—young or old—struggle with. “Our language and script are our heritage,” I told her. “It’s all somewhere inside us whether we use it or not.” “Yeah,” she said. “This is who I am, Bangladeshi, no matter what language I speak or what clothes I wear,” she said.

The artworks dried as we talked and shared many stories. It was a wonderful afternoon during Ramadan and I also got to learn some beautiful Arabic words and their meanings. 

Interview by Sushmita Mazumdar. Portrait photographs by Lloyd Wolf, studio photographs by Sushmita Mazumdar.