Nikhat auntie was loud and proud. She was the Fierce Auntie who wore pastel shalwars under her white lab coat. When she entered a room, you knew the fun would start then.

And she cared about anyone. She Fedexed me Nyquil from Texas when I was sick with the flu in New York. She fed the pigeons that gathered on the hospital lawn. She looked after her elderly patients and brought cakes to their homes on their birthdays.

I grew up a in a community of fierce aunties in Fort Worth, Texas in the 1980s. They raised money to build mosques, schooled Texas butchers on how to make meat halal, and once they knew that Texas was their ultimate home ­— not Pakistan, nor Hyderabad, nor Lebanon, they were on call to wash their dear ones' dead bodies so those who passed could be buried in a plot carved out in the Fort Worth prairie. (Read more.)