My Parents Gave Me a Global Perspective

And I am forever grateful to be mixed race.

Photo by Abyan Athif on Unsplash

My story is that I was born in 1991 in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, the same year that the Soviet Union fell apart.

My mother is Ukrainian and my father is Pakistani. They met in the medical institute in the Soviet Ukraine, fell in love, and started a family. By the time I was born they also had another baby, my older brother. Things…