Born and raised in Portland, Maine, Aleesa Salam gets asked where she’s from on a daily basis. After years of strangers not understanding how she could be from Maine, Aleesa finally decided to start making up names of new countries.
“I’ll be standing in line to get a coffee, walking to work, or even just using a public bathroom and strangers will jump at any opportunity they get to ask me where I’m from. I honestly just don’t have the energy anymore,” said Aleesa. “They really just wanna know why I’m brown. I got sick of having that convo so I stopped explaining that my family’s from Pakistan, which none of them have ever heard of, anyway.”
“It’s much more fun for me to see how far I can take it. I might as well get something out of the horrible interaction,” she adds.
Aleesa confirms she made up a new country when her manager, Rachel Patterson, asked where she was from.
“She kept saying ‘but where are you really from?’ after I told her I’m from Maine, which is so fucked up,” said Aleesa. “So I said Trickistan. It’s a beautiful place with beaches, rainforests, deserts, volcanoes, and perfect weather year round.”
Rachel was confused at first, but was quick to romanticize the fictional country.
“Aleesa is such a fun barista to have at the café,” says Patterson. “She is always telling us stories from her homeland. And it’s crazy how easy she is to understand, it was almost like she didn’t even have an accent.”
Sources confirm she doesn’t have an accent. Again, she was born and raised in Maine.
After Rachel, Aleesa gained the confidence to trick more ignorant white people.
“I’ve definitely been getting lazier,” says Aleesa. “This morning when an old man at the bus stop asked me where I was from, all I could come up with was Blahbistan.”
“I almost felt bad,” she said. “But then he started going on and on about how we need to get the troops in there.”
