The Truth Comes Out

So we'd been dating for two months. Things were great. We spent hours on the phone and saw each other whenever we could. I had found a place in his life. It wasn't always perfect - cultures clashed sometimes, but I was having a great time. He'd met my mother and father. 

One day, I'd gone to visit him (we lived an hour away from each other), but he'd had to go to school for some spur-of-the-moment thing. I didn't have anywhere to go, so I hung out in his apartment alone. For hours. 

I've always been very nosy. We all have our weaknesses.

I started looking through his stuff. At first just rifling through papers on tables. Eventually I was scoping out a closet. And I found a Pakistani passport. I didn't think much of it for a little bit, but 10 or 15 minutes later, I had it in my hands again, wondering what in the heck THIS could be? I'd never traveled internationally. At first I though that if you had to travel to Brunei, maybe your plane would stop - maybe they gave you this as a travel document thing? But of course after a few minutes of mulling THAT over, it didn't make any sense. I kept looking over the line. Citizenship: Pakistani. They certainly wouldn't grant citizenship if you were just flying through. He must be from Pakistan. He must have been lying to me the whole time. 

I had to ask him. But how? You can't very well tell someone you've been looking through their CLOSET. I needed an alibi. I went through that house with a fine tooth comb - looking for anything I could have (more innocently) stumbled upon that would've have given it away. Nothing. Eventually I found my way to his internet site (his school had a webpage for every graduate student that detailed their work.) I'd spent two months staring at his picture on that page but I'd never noticed it until I was searching for it. But there it was - paydirt. He'd listed the school he went to for his undergraduate degree. A quick google search later and I had my link. He'd said that he's never been outside of Brunei until he came to America - how could he have gone to school in Karachi?

But then how would I ask him about it? It didn't seem like there could be any good resolution - who lies about where they're from? I couldn't think of any reasons for him to do that except for nefarious ones. I would have to make sure to ask him about it while we were in a public place, and be sure not to come back to his apartment with him - what if he was dangerous? I'll admit that I had wondered before if some of the weirdness had been because he was in reality a member of the Bruneian Royal Family - it was such a terrible turnaround to now wonder if he was a danger to me.

My time was running out though. I'd spent hours snooping through his stuff. I had to get out of there. I called him and suggested that I pick him up from his school (he had no car but lived within walking distance.) When he got in the car I racked my brain with some way to bring it into the conversation naturally, but I couldn't think of anything and just ended up blurting it out:

"Why does your website say you went to school in Pakistan?"

"Because I did..."

"But you said you'd never lived outside of Brunei before coming to the Us?"

"Oh....well, I guess it was just school, so I didn't think of it as living there..."

"But you said you'd always lived in the same house as your family?

"Yeah.....umm.....they came with me."

Ugh. That last one was so obviously a lie I was speechless. And darn that school-within-walking-distance thing, we were already at his apartment. If I'd given into my instincts I would have run away, but I didn't. Instead we just sort of sat in silence at his apartment for a while until I said "You lied to me about where you're from, didn't you?" and he said yes. What else could he say? It was so obvious.  He explained that he didn't want to scare me off in the beginning, and he thought the word Pakistan would do that. And then he was just stuck.

Turns out that one of his friends had said I was too intelligent NOT to have figured it out by then, and they'd been convinced I was just playing along. (How sad for me. Nope, apparently I'm not that smart.) We talked for a little bit about it, but then I had to go. We didn't talk at all the next day. I wasn't sure how I felt about it all. It wasn't just the two months of lying. I also felt like a fool. So stupid for not picking up on the clear signs, and for reading and talking so much about Brunei for the past two months. Also, I understood the fact that when he met me, he clearly hadn't been looking for anything serious. It was the first day we hadn't talked since we met each other.

By then end of the day I missed him so much. I was still upset and confused and didn't know what to do, but at the end of the day, I found myself on his doorstep. I knocked and he came to the door, and none of it seemed to matter anymore.

I bought books about Pakistan the next day.

It Was All LIES!

The first question I asked M when I first met him was about where he was from. He said the city we were currently in. I said, "No, I mean where does the accent come from? Where are you from originally?" And he said........."Brunei."

He lied about where he was from! 

I've since heard that he'd had some trouble with people being put off by his Pakistani-ness.  He and his friends had decided that if they met any girls, they'd lie about where they were from. (Clearly this means they didn't plan to spend a long time with the girls they were thinking of. _

So when I wrote before that the very next day after meeting M, I went out and bought a book about where he was from, I actually bought a book about Brunei. When we met at the movies that night, we met outside, introduced our various companions, bought some popcorn and picked out good seats. Then, the first words out of my mouth after sitting down were"I spent all day reading about Brunei!"

He was overjoyed, of course. Ha - NOT! I guess I'd backed him into a corner, but of course it was his own fault. I asked him so many questions that night; what did he think about the royal family? (He said he didn't want to talk about them because they were all corrupt anyway.) What would they do after all the oil ran out? (Another thing he didn't want to talk about since not enough people in the country were planning properly for the future.) What about the Australian cows! What language did he speak?

Lucky for him - or unlucky for me, I guess - I didn't figure it out. In part, this was because I sometimes answered my own questions. When I asked what language he spoke, I supplied options - Malay? Arabic? (Him: Uhh.....YEAH! Malay!) Other times I made do with his crappy deflections and changing the subject.

It went on like that for two months. Two Months! I feel so stupid when I remember all the signs I missed. I remember he said one of his friends was from the same country he was, but then that same friend talked about having an family member in the Pakistani military (easily explainable - his family had emigrated to Brunei.) One of his friends I knew was from Pakistan, and another was from some random third country (also a lie) but when I asked how they all seemed to understand the same foreign language, he said they'd just been friends for a very long time. I even saw a documentary and asked why he didn't look like most of the people in the film - of course his parents had emigrated to Brunei also. I was so blind!

And the weird thing is that he's very proud to be Pakistani. He's embarrassed now that he lied like that. Even during those two months, he was telling me things about his country that he loved. He was just worried that any potential girl would be scared away in those post-9/11 days. Actually, I'm not sure how much I knew about Pakistan then - I might not have been smart enough to think being from Pakistan was much different than being from Brunei. 

But the funniest part of the story is probably How I ended up finding out the truth? 

If You Build It...

Well Hello there! It seems I'm actually starting to get visitors and comments! I wasn't expecting this...I don't know how to deal with you people!

I suppose I should answer the questions that you've asked. 

Rainbow in the Grey Sky asked about integrating into my husband's culture after entering into a mixed marriage. Well, she didn't really have a question, but she mentioned those things. In general, I don't really think of it that way. It's pretty complicated. I like to tell people that we live a very Pakistani life, but in reality it's a constantly changing mixture of cultures. And I like it that way.

First, I don't forsake American culture at all. I was born and raised an American! It's what made me who I am and what led me to the life I lead now. It's also where we live (and there are NO plans to change that.) In the beginning, there was a bigger focus on Pakistani things. We ate mostly Pakistani food, we decorated our house in Pakistani styles. Part of the Pakistani food thing was because I never cooked before I was married, and after I was married my mother in law taught me all sorts of recipes - she's a great cook. So for the first few years of marriage, I only knew how to cook Pakistani food. 

It was new for me, and I was so excited and I truly LOVE the culture. I love adopting parts of it into our daily lives, and for my husband, it's just normal. He's only been here for 9 years - that's a relatively short time. He drank tea three times a day when I met him, and he still does now, too. Over time though, it slowed down a little. I learned new recipes, I guess, and as we moved into bigger apartments and eventually our house, we decorated with a mixture of things. M still drinks tea a lot, but I don't always have a cup. 

But now there's a renewed effort. We have a young son, we want him to know and love his culture. Both of them. But even though this is my first child, I have read a lot about raising first-generation children of immigrants. He is going to do just fine with American culture. We both feel that if we want him to know and love Pakistani culture, we'll have to overemphasize it at home. Of course, there is also the danger of emphasizing it too much - a friend of mine's parents - Chinese immigrants - forced him to speak Chinese growing up, but then would admonish him for his poor pronunciation, saying he spoke "third-rate Chinese." He refuses to speak Chinese as an adult, and never taught his children. I don't want to enforce all-Pakistani-all-the-time rules only to have our children resent it. 

Also, I try to be careful about adopting too much of the culture. I am not Pakistani. I don't want to seem like I somehow think after only 5 years of marriage I have somehow morphed into something I'm not. Besides, what's the problem with being what I am?

LuckyFatima asked about where my husband is from, whether she knows me from the blogging world, and what about Urdu and my son.

My husband is mohajir, which means immigrant. It's a sometimes-pejoratively used word for people who migrated from India to Pakistan when the two countries were made separate in 1947. His parents were both born in India (Patna) and both went to Bangladesh in the 1960's, ending up in Pakistan after Bangladesh's independence in 1971. He speaks Urdu (only), and lived all his life in Karachi, which is where the majority of Mohajirs in Pakistan live. (I think!)

According to what I've read about kids and foreign language, we follow a strict 1-language-1-parents rule. M speaks to our sons only in Urdu, and I speak only in English. We expected a delay in the age our son began speaking. Most people said that he wouldn't talk until he was older (maybe 3 or 4), but that perhaps he would then speak in complete sentences. That's not really been our experience, although I know these things can vary. Our son did speak later, and he picked up fewer words than his peers. He's just 2 now, and while some of his friends have 200 or more words, he probably only has about 50. He JUST started stringing two words together, and the majority of his words are English. (Because even though I speak English and his father speaks Urdu to him, we speak English to each other, so the majority of what he hears in English.) Some things he knows both words of (car, gardi; song, ghana; stand up, kuray ho jao) and some things he only knows in one language. Dance, sing, breakfast - things he does with his father alone - are things he knows only in urdu. (Yeah, I often sleep in for their breakfast - we'll talk about splitting household/parenting duties some other time!)

Whether or not I speak Urdu depends on who you ask. Before, I would almost adamantly refuse to speak it to anyone expect my mother-in-law, who doesn't speak English at all. Now, I'm gaining a little confidence and shedding some of my embarrassment. I'm just such a grammar freak in English - I hate when people can't speak properly. It bothers me to speak like I'm illiterate or a 5 year old when I speak in Urdu. The sentences are backwards (y'know, verb last...?) and I translate in my head as I think of what I want to say in English - so my sentences all come our backwards, too. And I cannot for the life of me remember which verb tense I want, so everything is always "raha hoon." That's like adding an -ing on everything. It comes out like this: When will us dinner having? It's terrible. 

It's really difficult to learn Urdu. Six years ago there was almost nothing in terms of books or cds or study aids. Mostly my husband and I bought a kid's picture dictionary and he would write transliterated words under the pictures for me, and we also had a notebook of phrases. I am getting better over time. Every time I visit Pakistan, my Urdu abilities jump light years - nothing like being stuck in a land that only speaks Urdu for a month at a time to help knock some vocabulary in your head!

Lastly, since this is my first foray into the blogworld, I doubt anyone knows me. I've been reading blogs for more than two years now. I stumbled on some when I was furiously searching google for explanations of pregnancy symptoms and just got sucked in. I've mostly only read "mommyblogs" and cooking blogs and parenting advice blogs until now. I never had my own because I never thought I had anything all that interesting to say. Also, I'm pretty busy. And I hate to proofread. 

If you want to know anything else, let me know. Otherwise, you won't get anything else until I can think up my OWN topics - and who knows how long THAT will take???

Eating With My Hands, Sitting On The Floor.

Pakistan is a varied place. Depending on where you go - which neighborhoods and which houses - you will see completely different things. I have been inside houses and in neighborhoods that you could barely see any difference between them and America. I've also been places that look like something you'd only see on some news show about the ravages of third world countries. 

My husband's parent's house in Pakistan is somewhere in the middle. Even though my father-in-law is VERY well educated and has worked in a government job most of his adult life, he is just middle class. Except that there really isn't much of a middle class in Pakistan. Middle class in Pakistan means that their house was really only two rooms until they enclosed parts of the front and back porch to make a few more. Middle class means the kitchen is outside. Middle class means they just got a toilet a few years ago - they used to just have a hole in the ground (now they have BOTH!)

I have also been in homes where dinner is served on a lovely table set with the best of linens. And my in-laws do have a dining table (on the front veranda) and they eat a lot of their meals there. Not always though. Sometimes meals are served on the floor. They spread a big floor-cloth and set all the food in the middle. People sit around in a big circle and eat there. No matter where dinner is served, though, they always eat with their hands. 

Of course, they do know how to use utensils, and when we're invited to someone else's house, they always use the forks and spoons. And they also offer forks and knives and spoons to guests to who over. But if it's just the regular family? They eat how they always have - with their hands. Not soup, of course - but rice! Rice is really difficult to eat with your hands, especially because desi rice is supposed to be cooked so that every grain is separate (unlike Chinese rice, which kind of glops together and even stays takeout-box-shaped if you turn 'em upside down.)

I remember that it had been a long time before I learned of the eating-with-the-hands thing. And I immediately thought back to all the times my husband (who was not my husband yet) had cooked for me, and got upset that all the meals hadn't been "authentic." So then next time we ate desi food, I made him show me how he ate with his hands. It took me a while to get the hang of it, and rice is still pretty difficult. It requires a trick thumb - you have to king of make a rice mountain, then loosely pinch some with all five fingers, and bring it to your mouth, and then, like, readjust your thumb so that it's behind the food and use your thumb to kind of kick the rice-mountain into your mouth. (Oh lord. Writer Extraordinaire, I am.)

So, as with many aspects of my life, I aim to please. When I got married, I tried very hard to seem like "one of the people." Not snobby, not arrogant, adaptable and amenable. I wanted to try my best to fit in. So I sat on the floor and ate with my hands. It surprised me how many people objected when I tried to do that. It was like I was an honored guest - they'd gotten out the fine dishes and utensils for me, and I was wasting all their effort. Or like, they were trying to accommodate me, but I wouldn't let them. I'm sure part of it was they wanted ME to know they weren't low class or whatnot. Of course, my lovely family eats with their hands, too, so I didn't think poorly of it. 

Eventually, though, it became some kind of bragging point - my father-in-law would like, point it out to people. "Look! She sits on the floor, she eats with her hands! Isn't she wonderful?" Blech. That just made me feel dumb.

I think weirdest thing that's related to this is that we went somewhere else for dinner once, and they DID NOT eat with their hands. Like, anything. A knife & fork for a doughnut. Seriously. It was like they refused to sink to the level of those savages down the street. 

Designations

When you get married, there's sometimes a little weirdness about what to call you new in-laws. This is true even in American culture. It's only multiplied is desi culture - some of that is because of certain expectations of the parties involved, and some of it is because extended families are just so darn big. My husband has more than 95 first cousins!

So first, there is a big deal made about the idea that a new bride or groom is "part of the family." He or she will immediately be called beta (son) or beti (daughter). (Actually, even acquiantences who are not family will sometimes call me beti, implying that they love me like a daughter.) 

But what to call your new in-laws? Just like in America, where some mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law will expect to be called "mom" and "dad", some (most) (or likely all) Pakistani in-laws will expect to be called mom (Ammi or Amma) or dad (Abbu, Abba, Baba). Sometimes this can lead to tension - just like in America. You already have a mom, you might not want to call someone else mom. Sometimes it just leads to funny results. I remember in the first few days after  my sister in law had her first child, she needed something and called for Ammi, and had to keep saying "No, the other Ammi!"

I never had any trouble calling my mother-in-law Ammi. Actually, I think it would have been much more difficult to marry a white guy and call his mother "mom". I already have a mom - that word means something to be that I might not have been willing to share. But Ammi? When I first heard it, that word didn't mean anything to me. After talking to my husband for a while before we were married - and discussing his family - Ammi just seemed like her actual name. And it still just feels like her first name, even after all these years. Sometimes when people hear me calling her Ammi, they get all starry-eyed thinking about just how cute it is to see this white girl calling her mother-in-law Ammi! 

And even though I know that it just comes easier for me, I'm always dumbfounded when I see people calling their in-laws "Auntie" or "Uncle" - which is what you'd call any adult older than you. Don't they know they're supposed to call their in-laws something special? Can't they think of any compromise - Like Amma-plus-first-name? It justsseems so impersonal to call your in-laws uncle and auntie - and if even the white girls do it, you really should too!

Of course you can call your in-laws whatever you want - everyone is different, right? I guess I'm just thinking of my own sister in law who calls my Ammi "aunty". It just seems weird that *I* call her Ammi, but the arranged-marriage-full-Pakistani bahoo doesn't. 

Of Sons

Being a Pakistani son is different that what we Americans (or whatever you might be; first world, western, however you want to call it) might think of being a son. The future of Pakistani families often rests on their sons - and along with that comes certain expectations. These expectation vary depending on the family. 

A lot of families expect that their sons will marry nice girls who will help cook and clean. The sons will take over as the man of the house and bring in most, if not all, of the income. Perhaps the father will retire (usually very early - in thier 50s in Pakistan). These kind of expectations are difficult for a son to live up to because he may have made his own plans for his life. Maybe he wants to work abroad for awhile, maybe he wants to pick his own wife? Some families are so adamant about their expectations that they don't mind imposing these desires on their sons against their wills. 

The family I married into is very reasonable. They would never want their sons to not follow their own path in life because of any obligation to their parents. In fact, all three sons are currently living outside of Pakistan right now either working or pursuing their studies. This is traditionally a great dishonor - to have so many sons but still be left alone with none of them staying behind to take care of their parents. Heck, it's even thought of as bad today! But my in-laws don't see it this way, and they try to discourage others from thinking that as well. In fact, they INSISTED that all of their sons go abroad for their studies, even though it meant they would be alone for some time. But people still talk.

Usually aging parents end up living with one of their sons. Now, everyone I know will tell you that it is the eldest son's responsibility to take care of his parents, but as an outside observer I've found it's most often the youngest son who ends up bearing this burden. I hate to say it, but the eldest son is the first to fly the coup, and it's the youngest son who gets stuck. He can't leave - very few Pakistani parents are as understanding as my in-laws.

The eldest son is a treasure. He is treated differently than any of the other sons. He is second in command, and someday he will stand first. Because parents end up living with their children, at some point a son must take over his fathers roles and responsibilities. This transition can be a difficult one - no man wants to be infantilized by his own son. And it's got to be a delicate balance. The elderly have great positions of respect and must be treated as such. It's like a tightrope. 

A son must also walk a delicate balance between his mother and his wife. He has to make his mother happy, but he also has to make his wife happy. Especially if they all live in one house together, they all take some piece of him. Sometimes the tension lies in how big a piece of him each party will get. Sometimes there may not be any pieces left over!

Going to the Mosque

It took me a long time to go into a Mosque. They're pretty intimidating. Not as welcoming as you might expect. I wish I could say that all changed when I finally gathered up all of my courage to finally go, but it didn't. In fact, it's a struggle to KEEP going.

In the beginning, I lived in a college town with one local dilapidated mosque. I so badly wanted to go inside - see what it was like, be welcomed with open arms, all that stuff. I went to every talk that the school's Muslim Student's Association had at the school, hoping for an invite, a hello, an acknowledgement. You'd think if you saw the same girl - alone - at every talk, and she asked informed, insightful questions and took every one of your brochures, you might reach out a little bit! Not aways so, I guess.

So I never did go. After one talk, though, I realized I didn't even WANT to go. Apparently they'd built an entire WALL to separate the men and the women.  I didn't even know what that meant at the time, but it seemed unsettling. 

The first mosque I ever went into I did after moving far away with my husband, and it was pretty nice. No wall, thank god. Just a little portable picket fence like thing. And sometimes it was set up horizontally, sometimes vertically - so I could tell myself that at least the women weren't ALWAYS stuck in the back. Sometimes they were stuck on the side. It's the mosque I still go to.  I like it, mostly because of the director - he's spectacular. I try to go any time he has a lecture because he is just the best speaker, and he has the greatest messages. 

But every time I go to the city I grew up in, for holidays and whatnot, I go to a different mosque. And it is terrible. I even once gave it horrible reviews on a mosque-rating website. (I know - who knew there was such a thing!) 

Not only are the women separated - they built an entire separate BUILDING. At the weekly religious services, the speaker is piped in on an ancient speaker & TV system. The speakers always speaks to his "brothers" - no mention of the ladies out back. And why would he - they barely exist to him. Anytime I'm there I always wonder exactly how long that kind of setup would last if the MEN had to sit and watch that stupid crackly TV screen.

Anyway. I guess the point is that mosques can surely differ, and if you're put off by one, another one might actually be friendlier or more comfortable to you...

Because who wants to go someplace where you spend an hour muttering to yourself "Separate is never equal....separate is never equal..."

Mehndi

I mentioned something in my last post that I wanted to show you. Bridal henna, or mehndi, is one of my favorite things. I think it is so beautiful, and it's such a traditional part of desi culture. A lot of American-born children of immigrants don't like it - not the look, not the smell. But not me - I'd have it on my hands & feet every day if I could!

Mehndi is not only for brides, though. Most ladies going to a wedding usually put it on - definitely the bridal party. And also on various other holidays. It's just like jewelry or makeup - for more festive events, you put on more and more. Sometimes a bride even has it done all the way up her legs and past her elbows!

There are different styles of Mehndi. I only know a few, but I know that African designs are very geometric, and Arabic styles are usually flowery and sparse, and my favorite - traditional Indian designs - which are usually very intricate. (And usually more expensive to have done because of their intricacy.)

In America, there aren't a whole lot of people who do mendhi. The first time I ever had it done was when M did it for me himself. He'd told me about it, and showed me pictures. I told him how pretty I thought it was and he said he could probably do it if we could find some henna. So we went searching. What we found were boxes of henna powder. He wasn't used to that. Back home, mehndi is usually bought pre-mixed and put into cones. Kinda like how you put frosting into those pastry bags and pipe the frosting onto the cake - only smaller tubes and much smaller lines of henna past piped onto the skin.

We tried mixing it ourselves and drawing on my skin with it, but is was a disaster. Eventually we found a store that sold pre-mixed henna in a tube - but it was like a toothpaste tube with a really large opening, and the designs M drew were hardly intricate!

They got better over time, though!

And eventually, at our wedding, I got to see first hand the difference between your boyfriend doing mehndi for you - and the professional stuff!

The Mother-in-Law

Desi culture has a thing about in-laws. Specifically the mother of the groom (sass) and the new wife (bahoo).

A mother of a desi son has certain expectations. Perhaps she expects that he will have an arranged marriage. Of course she'll pick out the prettiest, thinest, whitest, most educated girl for him. And then - of course - they will come and live in the family home together.

It's not like she expects the daughter in law to become a maid. It's not usually that terrible. It's more like she expects to then share the household responsibilities. Pakistan and India are still patriarchal countries, and I have heard many MANY desi men gloating about how they've never so much as washed their own teacup. So that usually means a desi mother has spent decades caring for her husband and children and the home by herself.

A new bride is given a little leeway. At the very least she's not expected to wash any dishes or do any housework until her bridal henna has worn off. After that, it depends on the household. I've heard horror stories. Sass and Bahoo who each have their own refrigerator because they can't stand each other enough to prepare dinner together - let alone store the ingredients together. A new bride who so badly didn't fit in that she was thrown out of the house - luckily her husband followed, but now it's been years since they had any contact with his family.

It's difficult to live in a multi-generational household, but sometimes the expectation that isn't met is that the new bride doesn't WANT to live like that. More and more, brides and grooms are setting up their own western-style newlywed households. Sometimes that works fine for everyone, and sometimes it's such a devastating heartbreak that the family is torn apart.

Personally, I must just be very lucky. My mother in law has always treated me very nicely. And the shock of having a foreign daughter-in-law was borne so well, it really smoothed any difference we might have had. In the beginning, she did expect me to take care of the house and her son as a traditional desi wife should. I didn't budge and inch, though, and think that helped define our roles from the beginning. She saw that I wasn't going to make him tea as soon as he walked through the door, and that he was often going to be washing his own dishes - and mine too! But she was very quick to accept that, and see that we were happy that way. And for that I can only thank god! Because she could have been a thorn in our side - a constant whisper in his ear that I wasn't good enough, or that our arrangements weren't how things were supposed to be. And even if a marriage could survive that sort of pressure, it would have taken its toll.

The Dinner Party

Ugh. I used to hate going to desi dinner parties.

First, I hate the preparation. What should I wear? In the beginning I really felt like people were expecting me to show up in desi clothes, but then I feel like I'm being stared at. But then if I don't wear desi clothes, I'm afraid I look like "just another American girl" who doesn't know anything about desi culture - or doesn't like any of it, maybe.

For a while I had a pretty firm stance that I would NOT wear desi clothes to desi functions. That turned out even worse because then people would ask me about it. "You don't like desi clothes?" and I'd have to drag out my stance, tell them about feeling gawked at. And then listen to them tell me I was wrong. I wouldn't get stared at. (Yeah, right. I've lived it, honey!)

So, anyway. I'm dressed, I'm on the doorstep. We knock. We're invited in. How do I greet them? Are we going with the hello, how are you? Are we doing the weird faux-Euro cheek kissing? Are we hugging? Why is it that whenever I'm hugging desis, they seem to go to the other side than I'm used to? I always end up lingering in a foyer holding a stranger's hand for an uncomfortably long time.

Then the we sit. Where should I sit? Are we doing the gender segregation thing? That's right, folks - sometimes Desi parties end up with all the women in one room and all the men in another room. On purpose. I've been to weddings where ushers would separate families at the door and you didn't see each other again until the end. So much for family celebrations.

And then the food. A lot of desis I know don't seem to drink with a meal. It's somehow unconnected with eating. Something you do after you're done, not continually throughout the meal. I, on the other hand, like to sip throughout. But if I do that then people are going to go on and On and ON about the spice level of the food. "Is it too spicy? I always put in too many green chilis! I meant to make it less spicy for you. Can I get you some plain rice? Oh it's no bother. Let me go get some. Don't be ridiculous."

And then sometimes it IS really spicy. I've been trying to train my mouth for years now, and I can take some kind of heat, let me tell you! But my husband - and other desis I know - eat tiny fiery green chilis RAW, as if it were garnish. There's no competing with that. My nose runs, my eyes water. My cheeks - which have always betrayed any exertion or embarrassment or other cause to blush - turn bright red. Then I'm caught. I'm the white girl who can't handle her spices. And sometimes it's the opposite. There's little of no spice at all and now I know that all the dinner guests are eating bland food (to them, anyway) and thinking about how this white girl always has to ruin the dinner parties. Greeeaaaat. Much better, thanks.

Let's not get started on the conversation. Sometimes, there is literally none. No one will talk to me. The older aunties even try to avoid my gaze entirely. Sometimes someone will talk to me, but it will be those prying, obtrusive questions. Did I convert to Islam. Did I change my name. When am I going to have children? Do I know how to cook Pakistani food?

To sum: desi dinner parties are difficult for me. I dread them. Well, I did dread them in the beginning. I'm getting more comfortable, I'm meeting more people, things are getting easier. The one thing that made it MUCH easier very quickly was having kids. Now there's always something to talk about! Look at my cute kid! Why yes, he does speak Urdu! He has been to Pakistan! More recently that even YOU HAVE! Ha!

Desi

Desi

I'm going to be throwing around some terminology here. I'll try to explain as we go, but this one is pretty important. I found the best decription online:

Desi is a word originally from Sanskrit literally meaning "from the country" or "of the country". In North America and Great Britain, desi is used colloquially to mean South Asian immigrants and their descendants. It is mainly used by those of South Asian origins themselves, rarely by the majority population, and carries a subtext of inclusiveness and unity. It allows South Asians to refer to their broader immigrant community, rather than requiring a specific, nationalistic label such as "Indian" or "Pakistani". As such, its connotations are positive, alluding to the shared values, bonds and experiences of descendants of the entire region.

We - M and I and probably our kids someday - use the word Desi a lot. Not just about people though - as an adjective to describe anything Indian/Pakistani. Desi food, desi clothes, desi music. Did you see that desi staring at us? (We have to use that one a lot, unfortunatly). I even refer to our kids as half-desis.

So that's how I'm going to start referring to the people I talk about now. Partly because our friends and family are varied. We know a lot of Pakistanis, but some Indians and Bangladeshis too. Desi includes them all under one big, brown umbrella! Bring on the unity! (Except for the white girl, of course. She's still different.)

The Friends

When I first met my husband - let's call him M from now on - I heard a lot about his friends. He'd been with friends the night we met, but we were so wrapped up in conversation I hadn't met or even noticed them. He'd brought a friend the night of our first date, but I only spoke to him a little bit - again because I was so engrossed in conversation with M. In the coming weeks, though, I would hear a lot about them.

He would borrow their cars all the time. He didn't have a car himself, living very close to campus he didn't need one. Every time we saw each other, he was driving one of his friend's cars. I thought that seemed extraordinarily generous. He also would borrow their cell phones, their leather jackets, and he even told me about some MAJOR money that had been leant to him in the past. He said his friends would do anything for him.

Except meet me, it seemed. We'd been dating for weeks and I still hadn't meant any of his friends save for that one guy on our first date. I hinted, I hemmed and hawed, I nudged - still no luck. Then I outright asked and it was his turn for hemming and hawing. What was the deal? 

It seemed like he thought I was weird for wanting to meet his friends. When he talked about it, he made it seem like even his friends thought it was weird. I couldn't figure it out - what could be weird about meeting your boyfriend's friends after you'd been dating for many weeks?

I guess I finally talked about it enough. A date was planned. He and his passel of best friends and me and my friend Marie were going to go out. An activity. Together. Fine.

The agony. What should I wear, what are they going to be like? Why didn't they want to meet me in the first place? Thank god for Marie. I often think that if she hadn't been there to encourage me, I might not have ended up marrying M. (And in more ways that just that day!)

So, butterflies in my stomach, we all went out together. It was nice. It seemed like a job interview. But somehow of them, not me. I went around the room, talking to each one a little bit at them time. They seemed like they were trying to be on their best behavior. The guy who'd I'd already met was the most comfortable with me, but they all seemed pretty uncomfortable to be there. 

I learned later that even though most of them had dated, they had never brought any of the various girls around their friends. And I guess none of the girls ever harped on it as much as I did. They were uncomfortable because nothing like this had ever happened before. 

We made it through the night. Eventually, it would get better. Mostly because I was just around so often, I started getting included in plans M had with his friends. They still kept their distance for a while, but at some point it seemed like I was almost one of the guys. Well, not really that much, I guess - but something more than just 'tolerated'. 

I know now that they didn't approve. They had been trying to get M out of his shell for a while, and it had finally worked, and he was sticking with this girl? They thought he could do better, but at the very least he should be doing MORE. They expected that he would move on from me, or even if he wanted to continue hanging out with me, he should be looking for other girls too. 

Luckily he didn't tell me this until we were married. And after he'd broken ties with those friends entirely. Because they told him not to marry me.