Enough With The Backstory!

Eventually I'll get around to all the "gori" details. (Aha Ahahaha!) But for now, let's talk about how I don't fit in ANYwhere in my life. 

I am an enigma. 

So I'm not the "average white American" I used to be. Before I didn't really know all that much about the real world. 

I eat all manner of strange food. I almost only know how to cook Indo-Pakistani food. I can't buy a spice rack because I used enough spices to fill three of the ones sold at Target. When people ask about whether this or that Indian restaurant is good I say things like "Oh, yeah, it's allright - but it's really much more 'south indian' than I prefer." Who says stuff like that?!?

Some of family thinks I'm pretty weird. Like, 'why did she abandon her culture' weird, sometimes. Some people seem to think that my adopting a second culture meant I was revolting against my own. But its not! I love both. I used to say that I felt like being white was like being without any culture, but having experienced so much of Pakistani culture has taught me that's not true, and even instilled a new admiration for my own culture.

But I certainly don't fit it with the desis*. I'm a pariah at some dinner parties. Everyone's thinking "Who brought the white girl?" Not many people will talk to me. Aunties** usually won't at all. Strangely I feel like I fit in better at Pakistani functions when I'm in Pakistan than functions in America. At least then I'm a guest of honor - everyone wants to talk to me. (Even if they might be saying something different when I'm not around!) 

It's been very hard to find any meaningful place for myself in the desi community. And to find a way to redefine my place in my old American community. It's a work in progress, I guess, and I'm certainly in a better place now than I ever have been. Maybe in the very beginning I felt okay, but that was because I only knew a limited number of my husband's friends. They were all university students who weren't forced to deal with some American on a daily basis, and over time we grew to know each other better. After we both graduated, we moved far away and had to make all new friends - plus we were married and on the market for other couples to be friends with. Unfortunately it took a long time, and we still only have a few. 

I've gone through so many stages along the way also. At first I felt so excited - like I was a sponge just desperate to soak up Pakistani ways. Then at some point I felt saturated, like it was all took much and I would never find a place - never be accepted, no matter how hard I tried. Later, I felt like I knew everything and was put off by people who assumed I knew nothing. What the heck were they thinking? I'd been married to a Pakistani for years, I'd been to the country, I could speak some of the language - couldn't they SEE how Pakistani I was? 

Nowadays I don't feel like that. I know I'm not Pakistani - I'm American, and I'm very happy with that. I think I'm more comfortable with my place, and I don't feel the need to "prove myself" anymore. I know that my desi side may set me apart from some people, and I know that being white will probably always play a role in my interactions with desis. I've finally realized that being white is its own culture, and marrying a Pakistani has helped me love my American life even more. Luckily, I also know there's always more I can learn, and I feel comfortable with myself enough not to be offended when someone implies I don't know some very basic thing.

Well, usually! Let's hope that improves even more with time, too. 

*Desi - a term for an Indian/Pakistani person, or as an adjective to describe something as being Indian/Pakistani. It comes from a word meaning "country."

**Auntie is what you call a woman who is not a member of your family who is older than you.

Boyfriend.

I bought every book I could find about Pakistan. Initially I just wanted to be able to say a few things in the language he spoke, and then things just got out of hand. I became obsessed. 

Looking back on it now I realize I've always been obsessed with different cultures. I envied people who'd traveled a lot - I didn't even have a passport. I loved a good accent and I read travel books and kept a map on my wall with pushpins to all the places I wanted to go in the world. I'd just never been to any yet. Even my family was really open to learning about new cultures and my mom would cook all sorts of weird foods and tell us all about the countries they were from.

I'd never even been all that attracted to the basic white American guy. I'd always like something different. And this was different. I knew NOTHING of this culture. I read anything I could get my hands on; which in those days wasn't a lot. This was in the years before Kite Runner and The Namesake and America became inundated with Indian and Pakistani culture. (I mean, c'mon - have you BEEN inside a Pier 1 recently?!?) I read the Culture Shock: Pakistan and the Lonely Planet Guide to Pakistan, and then I moved onto fiction. Jhumpa Lahiri saved my life. Interpreter of Maladies. Best Book Ever. Arranged Marriage by Chitra Divakaruni was also really good. I asked nonstop questions. 

What is bhel puri? Is it good? It sounds horrible!

Why do wives call their husbands Suniye? 

Do donkeys really travel on the highways?

What is Paan? And what does it have to do with people spitting red stuff all over the place?

Why do they decorate the buses?

and of course, 

Will YOU have an arranged marriage?

The First Date(s)

We saw each other for the next four nights.

The First Official Date: We had plans to see a movie and I'd given him my phone number the night before and told him to call around 11am and I'd have the movie time picked out. He called at 9:45am. We met at the same entertainment complex we'd been at the night before, which I only found out later was actually pretty far away from his house - he didn't tell me and I just assumed, and he drove all the way there for the movie! He brought a friend with him because of my friend. My friend was not happy about this. The guy who sat in front of us wasn't happy either because we talked the entire movie. At some point I grabbed his hand to hold it and felt like I was back in middle school. 

He called again the next day and we made plans to go for pizza. We sometimes call this our first REAL date because we did not bring our friends this time. We ate pizza and walked around talking for four hours. There was an interesting pizza ordering mishap that produced an extra slice of pizza because we couldn't understand each other! I thought he'd ordered two slices for himself, so I ordered one for me, and when he tried to explain it, we got jumbled somehow. I remember there was also some discussion about not ordering pepperoni. 

It was an interesting mix of emotions then. I liked him. A lot. He was funny and smart and I loved hearing all about his culture and experiences in America. But then we wouldn't be able to communicate enough to get the right amount of pizza and I'd think - what the heck am I doing here? Or he'd talk about his sister not being "allowed" to walk to school by herself. And he was Muslim. I didn't know what to do about that, either. I liked pepperoni :)

But then he'd call me again and we talk for hours and I'd feel like I knew exactly what I was doing hanging out with him. 

The next night (three days post meeting, for those keeping track) was a friend's birthday party and I invited him. He came and brought a gift for the birthday girl, and flowers for me. He told me he was going out of state for a conference and I offered to take him to the airport, so we saw each other three days later too. When I asked him how he had planned to go to the airport before I offered only 24 hours prior. He said a fellow student was going also and they were going to ride together. I asked what he'd told his friend about how me was going to the airport now.

"I told him my girlfriend was taking me."

How We Met

He waved at me. 

Seriously. 

We were at one of those huge shopping-dining-entertainment complexes. Y'know, the really happening ones that turn into hunting grounds for single people on Friday and Saturday night? My best friend and I always went there on Thursday nights, but our schedules had not coincided that week so we'd postponed in until the next night. The place was very different on Thursday nights than it was that Friday night! We were not entirely prepared for the meat market our usual quite Thursday evening had become. After some time, a random guy started talking up my friend for a while, so I'd had to make myself busy. I stayed close by, but left her to talk to this guy, when all of a sudden this brown guy waves at me.

I'll be honest. I inwardly groaned. Here I was being waved at by some smallish, geeky looking, brown immigrant guy. I had never been attracted to an Indian guy before, and it certainly didn't start with that first wave. But, I wasn't rude! I waved back. 

He said Hi.

I said Hi.

He asked my name.

Then he mispronounced it. I had to coach him through it. Twice.

I asked where he was from. I was a young American girl - I had no idea what Pakistan was. (Except he hadn't said Pakistan, either.) So, I asked what his country's biggest export was. 

(Now who's the geeky one?)

We talked. And talked. And talked. Some of that was because we kept having to ask each other to repeat our sentences. He'd only been in the country from 2 years at that point, so his English wasn't all that great and he wasn't used to listening to some white girl talking so fast. (Before me, he'd never really spoken with all that many Americans, and never for very long. His school had an okay international population and he had a lot of Pakistani friends to escape to. )

So anyway, we talked a lot. We just stood there for over an hour just talking. My friend had already wrestled herself away from whoever had been talking to her and now SHE was waiting around for ME. For a long time! I finally told him I had to go and he asked what I was doing the next night. Unfortunately I already had plans with my friend to see a movie, so I told him that. He asked if he could come along. And that's how our first date got planned.

I remember thinking he was smart and funny. But I also remember that I was disappointed when he said he was a 27 year old student. I didn't know anything about Ph.D's and it just sounding like he was too old to still be in school without a job! And I wasn't really in love with the accent, either!

The Cast of Characters

Me: I was always your typical white America girl. I was raised by two parents in affluent suburbs. We went to a Methodist church and my mother taught Sunday school. We were not the richest on the block, but we always had everything we needed - and most of what we wanted.  A few relationships here and there but nothing serious. I mean, a few guys met my parents but I never found anyone worthy of telling my mom "He could be The One!" In my last year of college I met a brown guy. (The story of that meeting will be told in due time!) I went to school for English Literature and ended up double majoring in Religion & Philosophy because of him. I converted to Islam in October 2003 and he proposed shortly after. 

Him: He is your typical brown Pakistani guy. Raised by his parents (who had an arranged marriage) in Karachi. He's an electrical engineer - like 50% of all the boys in Pakistan (ha ha! Pakistani joke!) He came to America for his Master's degree and stayed for his Ph.D. He always expected to have an arranged marriage too. Then he met the white girl. 

My parents: Mostly happy about it. My mother has always been understandably worried about the less pleasant aspects of Pakistani culture and Islam. My father has always been 100% supportive of me and my decisions and he seems genuinely pleased with the turn my life has taken. I love him so much for that. Having an intercultural marriage can sometimes feel like you're struggling with every part of your life (your family isn't happy, his family isn't happy, and they're making you both unhappy - why are we doing this again?) It's nice that I almost never have felt like I was struggling with my father's acceptance. 

His parents: Wonderful people. My father in law is a well educated, middle class government worker. My mother in law is also educated and raised four wonderful kids. They have been very accepting of me, and I truly feel like part of the family. In time, dear readers, you may understand why that's unfortunately not always the case with the Pakistani in-laws. I really lucked out!

The Baby: We have a son who's just turned 2. The great light of our lives. He's changed the picture in so many ways. Figuring out how to raise a child of an immigrant parent is one of the things I'm really interested in. My wish is that he will truly love his religion and his Pakistani culture throughout his life. 

Introductions.

Gori. It means white girl. In Urdu and also Hindi, spoken in India and Pakistan. And that is what I am - a white girl.

I married a Pakistani guy a few years ago. We've been married for more than 5 years, but I already feel like an honorary Pakistani. With that comes a lot of interesting experiences, people, travel and food. Some of that is really really good. Great. Spectacular. And some of it is....a little trying. We'll try to cover BOTH! My life is pretty different than it used to be. Heck - I'm different than I used to be. 

I remember that when I first met my husband, I searched high & low for any information about Pakistan and Pakistani culture I could find. I didn't always find what I was looking for. My writing here will at the very least leave some information for gori girlfriends to have peak into what the gori wife life is like. Welcome!