I Only Wanted to Be Seen as Human

My full name is Khushboo Khan. I am a Muslim. I don’t know why, but since childhood I’ve carried a strange heaviness about this fact. I remember growing up with a discomfort that I couldn’t explain. I used to dislike people with long beards because, on TV, all the villains or terrorists looked like that. As a child, I believed what I saw.

I am 23 now, but this feeling hasn’t completely left me. Whenever someone asks me my full name, I hesitate before answering. And when I do say it, I can see the change in their eyes. They immediately place me in a box — “that” community, the one they think is dangerous.

I am 100% vegan. I sincerely try to avoid anything that causes harm to any living being. But when I tell people this, they think I am lying because, in their minds, “Muslims eat meat.” I have heard countless misconceptions about my religion, and about the people who follow it. And every single time, I stayed silent. Not because I didn’t want to speak, but because I didn’t know how to explain that good and bad people exist everywhere — no religion owns goodness or violence.

I have seen discrimination up close. When my mother goes looking for a house on rent, many times we are rejected the moment they hear our surname — Khan. That one word is enough for them to say no. I grew up wishing for just one thing: to be known simply as a human being. Just that — human. Not a label, not a stereotype.

All these years, I avoided using “Khan” in my identity documents, on social media, or even when someone asked me my name. Not out of fear, but because I wanted people to know me for my work, not my religion. I wanted acceptance without assumptions. Yet, I faced rejection more times than I can count, only because of that surname.

Today, after watching and reading so many reports about the Delhi blast, I feel shaken. I know one thing clearly — terrorism has no religion. A terrorist is only a terrorist. I have heard this since childhood, but I struggle to believe whether this country will ever rise above these divisions. Will we ever reach a point where people see humans as humans?

I don’t know the answer. But I hope.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.