This piece is a version of a larger piece originally published on the now defunct Bourbon and Chai website. The original was written in spring 2015.

“Hey, Shams! Can you tutor me in Spanish,” one of my now fraternity brothers asked me during my pledge semester.

We were standing in the eastern stairwell of Faculty Hall. Several floors of classrooms and faculty offices, the campus building sits on the northwestern edge of the quad. It was almost always packed with students heading to and from classes or meetings with professors. This day was no different.

“Well, if I could speak Spanish, then yeah, but I don’t, so no, I can’t,” I responded, half laughing, half confused about why he thought I’d be able to help him. “Who told you I could speak Spanish?”

“That’s what everyone thinks. You’re fluent in other languages, right?”

“Ummm, No. I speak English, that’s it.”

“So you don’t speak, like Italian or French, or whatever they speak in the Middle East.”

Whatever they speak in the Middle East…I’m sure there are folks who speak those two languages there, but the general casualness with which he was comfortable in his ignorance was, looking back, more astounding than I was probably ready to admit. I don’t remember being annoyed and I think I just wanted to fit in, so I brushed it off. Maybe I was trying to be magnanimous, though I’m not sure a few months from turning twenty I was capable of anything resembling deeper thought on that issue. My desire to embrace my identity having only really emerged in the months prior.

“No, unfortunately not. I’m just a regular American when it comes to that.”

Regular American…what the hell was that supposed to mean, David. Maybe this was me trying to be more accommodating and in doing so came off slightly condescending.

“Oh, for some reason we all thought you did.”

“Hahahaah, okay, man. I’ll take it as a compliment,” I said, ending the conversation and going on my merry little way. Headed where ever to do whatever it is that undergrads did—study, play video games, drink.

This was the spring of 2002. I had, against the wishes of my father, decided to follow in the footsteps of my maternal uncles and older cousins. They all had joined fraternities while studying at the University of Kentucky (UK). The previous semester, my roommate, Greg, and I had made a pact that we’d join a fraternity together. Unfortunately, Greg, didn’t come back to school for the spring semester. I was left to join “Greek life” on my own.

I can’t honestly tell you what enticed me about “Greek” life, but for some crazy reason I found fraternity life appealed. Was it all the parties? Maybe. Was it the aura of confidence and machismo? Possibly. Or was it the often proclaimed idea of “brotherhood”? Perhaps. Regardless of what it was, I was going to join a fraternity.

For those of you who don’t know, you can’t just walk up to a frat house and ask to join. There’s a whole process that each potential new member must follow. The first step is Rush Week. That’s kind of the meet and greet of the fraternity world. Each frat tries to sell you on why even though they looked like all the others, they were better than the rest. And each rushee tries to impress one or several fraternities. Each evening the fraternities have different events, cookouts, bowling, movie nights, mixers, etc. At the end of the week pledges who have made the cut will get invited to what some fraternities call a smoker—or in the case of my fraternity the “Mystic Supper.” This gives the rushees one more opportunity to impress in a more formal—I use that term loosely, so should you—setting. The next day is what is known as bid day. This is when brothers from each fraternity hand out invitations to the ones lucky enough to have met their fraternity’s criteria. It’s actually quite rigorous, but you know I can’t really get into it since I’m sworn to secrecy and all (I’m half joking, but seriously I’m not going to tell you).

Prior to Rush Week, I had already whittled my choices down to three fraternities: Alpha Tau Omega, Lambda Chi Alpha, and Alpha Sigma Phi. I had known people in each of those fraternities and the others on campus hadn’t really appealed to me. I was leaning towards Lambda Chi, my uncles were brothers at the UK chapter, so it seemed like the right choice. But, I ended up choosing Alpha Sigma Phi. It’s a choice I don’t regret.

To this day I still keep in touch with some of the brothers. Some have lived in the DC area, though most no longer do. When they did, we would meet up from time to time, share laughs, and retell stories from our time at Murray State.

As far as the language thing goes, well it wasn’t hard to sort that out. For them, unaccustomed to diversity in the ways I manifested it, being half-Iranian obviously meant I had to be fluent in many languages. This way was easier for people to wrap their head around what I was. Even though I was White passing, I wasn’t quite White. I wasn’t Black, Asian, or Latino. That shit just doesn’t happen, everyone in their world fit into one of those categories…except me. I wasn’t what an American was supposed to look like—physically or on paper. The logic was impeccable, at least for them. ‘He’s different. He must speak multiple languages,’ I imagine them saying both to themselves and their friends.

Except the logic fell apart when it ran head on into reality. Yes, I was different in ways none of them had expected, but no that doesn’t mean I could speak multiple languages.