My Terrible Urdu

Someone asked about my Urdu the other day, about how I had learned to speak Urdu. Perhaps you all have the wrong impression. When anyone asks me if I can speak Urdu, I always reply "Mein thori si Urdu boll sukti hoon" - I can speak a little Urdu. Really, after seven years of trying to learn the language, I should have advanced more than I have. But in the pursuit of full disclosure, here is a portrait of my Urdu language development:

Example #1

What I said:

Ammi, kuch cha-he-yay, mein bataoongi.

What it means:

Ammi, if YOU need something, *I* will tell you.

What I meant to say:

Ammi, if you need something, tell me.

Example #2

What I said:

Hum sarray beemar hay. Bachay bhi, patta nahin kidher ya kyun lena.

What it means:

We are all sick. Babies (plural) too, (I) don't know where or why to take.

What I meant to say:

We're all sick, the baby too. I don't know where or when we got it.

Example #3

What I said:

M thora aur maza aye-ga - mujhay bager. Ugger mein ja rahi hoon, M bohot kam kay liye. Baat kerna, meray liye, translate ker raha hay. Mein nahin jaongay, M relax ho jata, M chutti lengay.

What it means:

M - (as if I'm addressing him, which I was not. I was talking to my MIL about M who was not around) you have a little more fun without I. If I am going, M because of a lot of work. To talk, for me, he is translating. I will not go, M would have been relax. M will take a vacation.

What I meant to say:

M might have a little more fun if I don't go. If I do go, M has to do a lot or work, a lot of translating. If I don't go, M can relax and enjoy himself.

My mother-in-law, somehow, still raves about my Urdu. I even overheard her saying on the phone about how much improvement I've made, saying that I never speak to her in English anymore - it's always Urdu. Apparently she's still proud of that despite the fact that she probably can't understand much of my crappy Urdu.

Obligation And Complete Opposites

While visiting my SIL this weekend, I thanked her MIL for something she'd done - I can't even remember what - and she responded "This is not a thank-you kind of thing, this is my obligation." Usually with regards to cultural differences I think of it like a spectrum, a rainbow, many variations, blah, blah blah. But this, I think, is one thing that's completely opposite between American & Pakistani cultures. To an American, saying "this is no big deal, it was an obligation" could be offensive, even. Americans don't like to feel like an obligation, almost the same way that Pakistanis I know think of "thank you" as negating the good deed, Americans I know think of obligation as negating the good deed. But in this context, she was trying to say that she holds me as close as if I were her own family member, someone she would be obligated to, and that whatever kind thing she had done for me was borne from that high esteem. Which is really a compliment.

It can still be weird to hear, though.

(Maybe it means something more/different too, but I'm not sure and M's asleep so we'll have to wait to explore any further, my fellow culture spelunkers.)

M Wants You To Know...

Ah, intercultural marriage....

• Last week via email from me to M: 

"Please remember to put money in the baby's daycare cubby. Another parent is going to collect it all and buy end of the year teacher's gifts. Cubbies are those long racks of stacked boxes where we leave all of the baby's stuff."

• Later that night:

Me: "Did you remember the money at daycare?"

M: "Yeah." ........ "And by the way I already knew what cubby meant."

• Last night while searching for inspiration for a blog post,

Me: "What are some of the things I had to explain to you recently? Like cultural stuff you didn't know?"

M: (blank stare)

Me: "Like 'dead ringer'? Remember? The other night, when you asked me what dead ringer meant? It was in your magazine? Some chair was a dead ringer for some other woodworker's whatever?"

M: (finally some recollection)

Me: "I'm trying to put together a post for the website. I want a couple of examples, can you think of any more?"

M: "Hmm.....what about the thing where [coworker] gave the waiter money to get a better table at the restaurant?"

Me: "Perfect! That makes three, which is a nice round number!"

M: "What's the other one?"

Me: "Hmm? Oh - the daycare cubby thing from yesterday."

M: "Daycare cubby? I already knew what a daycare cubby was. His teachers say cubby all the time. I drop him off every day! Where did you think I was leaving his jacket every day?!"

• This morning, after perusing the internet,

M: "Did you go back and say that I already knew what a cubby was?"

Because The Cultural Assimilation Often Goes Both Ways

Things I have explained and/or defined in the last two days:

Daycare cubby:

Photo Credit

"Dead Ringer"

Photo Credit

"Greasing" the Maitre D' at a restaurant to get a good table:

Photo Credit

My First Ramadan

When I met M, I knew a bit about Islam already. I've always been interested in the world around me,  and I used to work in a bookstore and manage the religion section, so I'd done a fair share of reading on my own. I owned a copy of the Qu'ran before I met M, but it wasn't a very good translation. Also, it was post September 11th, so one would hear about Islam and Muslims in the news as well (for better or worse...)

So a few weeks into dating M, when I'd heard somewhere about the impending start of Ramadan, I already knew that meant he'd be fasting - although I was sketchy on the details. And so it was me who brought it up in conversation. M was never good in talks about religion in the early days; he would visibly squirm in his seat whenever it was brought up. But he did his best to explain about fasting and the reasons behind it, and I tried finding better answers elsewhere. I remember that most of our conversation that day was about what Ramadan was like in America versus what it was like "back home."

And so the day came, the day I knew that M would wake up to eat breakfast before dawn. The day he would not eat  until sunset. I don't know what possessed me, but I decided to see what it was like. To see what M would experience and to fast just like he was. I didn't tell him what I had planned to do. I didn't even have the plan to fast until I woke up that day.

It was difficult. I thought about giving up several times. I was working two full time jobs at that time in my life, and I remember that around 3pm, I started to think "What in the heck am I doing? I'm not Muslim!" Not to mention that people in my life were a little puzzled as to why I would want to voluntarily and for no reason refuse to eat all day. But I made it, and that after-sunset meal was probably the most I had ever appreciated food in my life.

Later than evening, when talking to M on the phone, I told him that I too had fasted all day long. He was surprised, of course. Until I told him about how difficult it had been and then said "...but every time I felt like I couldn't last all day, I just drank a big glass of water and it would help relieve the hunger for a little while."

Whoops. Fasting in Ramadan means no eating OR DRINKING - at all - all day. Clearly I'd missed that part somewhere.

So when Day 2 rolled around, I figured I'd try again. After all, I hadn't really experienced what M was going through which had been the whole plan in the first place. Surprisingly, Day 2 was a little easier than the day before even though this time I hadn't even had any water. It seems like fasting all day might be terrible, but I was really proud of myself, and really appreciative of even the crappy poor-student-staple Ramen noodles I'd brought to work to eat. It had been a wonderful experience and I felt really good about the whole thing.

Then on Day 3, due my crazy hectic life (two full time jobs...), I'd run out of my apartment without breakfast, and hadn't been able to catch a break until late in the afternoon. By the time I'd sat down, it was just over an hour before the fast-breaking time anyway, so for some inexplicable reason, perhaps because I'd felt so good about it the day before, I decided to wait just a little bit longer and log another day of fasting. 

By Day 4, I was like "more than half the week down, might as well finish out the week!" By the end of the week, I'd decided to go the whole month. M was supportive, if a little confused. He brought me a printout from his local mosque with the entire month's eating times. A few of my coworkers and one of my bosses gave me a lot of crap about it. My family, I think, just figured it was another one of those weird things I usually do. 

The worst part was Thanksgiving, which fell right in the middle of Ramadan. M was to meet my extended family for the first time on Thanksgiving (except my parents, who he'd already met.) My family eats Thanksgiving dinner at midday, but both M and I were fasting and I wasn't really up to explaining that to the myriad of people who attend our family's large-ish Thanksgiving gathering, so instead we made plans to arrive at Thanksgiving dinner late, just a few minutes before the time to break the fast so that M could go upstairs and make his prayers and then we could eat slightly-cold Thanksgiving food. Thankfully (ha! get it? Thanksgiving? Thankfully?) everything went off without a hitch and the only thing people remember from that first meeting was that we arrived together on a motorcycle (scandal!)

Luckily, Thanksgiving and Ramadan shouldn't coincide again for about 25 years.

A (Very Basic) Ramadan Primer (according to my sample of 1 Pakistani)..

Not exactly a traditional Pakistani suhoor, but we make our own traditions here.

Today is the fourth day of fasting for the month of Ramadan. It can be a little misleading to say that Ramadan is a "month of fasting" because sometimes people think that means we can't eat anything for an entire month! That's not true, we do still eat and drink during the month, it's just WHEN.

In Ramadan, we fast from dawn to dusk. That means that we wake up before the sun rises and eat breakfast (called suhoor or sehri in Arabic/Urdu) up until the beginning of the dawn. Sometimes that means shouting to each other "Hurry up! We only have six minutes left!" and we stuff our faces with cereal and fruit. M has been known to pour his piping hot tea into his saucer to cool it down faster so that he can drink it all before the time of sunrise.

Then, still before the sun rises, we make our usual morning prayer and then usually go back to sleep. Then we spend all day fasting, which means we abstain for all food and drink until the sun sets. Actually fasting is supposed to mean abstaining from other things too, including smoking, backbiting, and even sex.

After the sun sets, we have a fast-breaking meal called Iftar. Sometimes we invite our friends and enjoy this together at an Iftar party, or sometimes we're invited to one of their parties. We break our fast first with a date and a glass of water, and then the iftar meal usually consists of all the traditional Pakistani iftar appetizers like pakoras, samosas, chaats and fruits, or even soup. After eating (/gorging) on all the appetizers, we make the sunset prayer. Sometimes we eat dinner right after that and sometimes we eat later in the evening. It depends on how full of pakoras we are.

In the evenings during the month of Ramadan, we attended special prayers called Taraweeh prayers. At these prayers, a portion of the Quran is read every day so that by the end of the month, we've listened to it in its entirety. Sometimes M or I will stay home with the baby because they're so late at night, but luckily our local mosque has a lot of options with respect to offering childcare or having taraweeh prayers at different times and locations, so sometimes we're both able to go.

At the end of the month of Ramadan, there is a religious holiday called Eid-al-Fitr when we attended a special congregational prayer in the early morning and then spend all day eating and visiting family and friends. In Pakistani traditions, new clothes are also very important on Eid. Kids also usually get money (or sometimes, although rarely, gifts) that is called Eidy.

Because I've only celebrated 6।5 years of Eids, I feel like I still qualify for Eidy!

The mountain of dishes after an Iftar party we threw on Sunday. I still haven't found the bottom of the sink.

Translation Needed

The Pakistani man who marries a non-Pakistani girl had better ready himself for a lifetime of translating. Unfortunately, I know that not all Pakistani husbands are all that great at this, but thank god my husband IS! 

My poor M, it's like he's always on the job. 24/7 - 365 days a year, no day off for the rest of his life, he'll have to be translating for me. Even if I'm one day, god willing, fluent in Urdu - there will still be odd cultural references or literary things I won't get and M will have to swoop in and clue me in. He's so very good at it though. We have some kind of unspoken bond, I think. He knows me and my Urdu language development better than anyone else around, so he can tell when I'm lost or have missed something important. And he's able to seamlessly, usually without garnering too much attention, lean over and fill in any missing gaps. 

Sometimes we'll be across the room from each other and one big unknown word will totally throw me and suddenly I have no idea what a conversation is about. Across the group, we'll both look up at the same time and he'll silently mouth the missing word to me and like a magic puzzle piece, I'll be back in the game. 

I think that if I had only one piece of advice to give to the new husband of a non-Pakistani wife, this would perhaps be it: be a good translator. It's so important. In my case, with so much of M's family who doesn't speak English, it would be very difficult to make a place for myself in his family if I wasn't able to participate in a large percentage of the conversations. Being a silent follower is not the same. M, with his almost-unwavering patience, is always willing to speak for both himself and me. 

One funny example: once while we were visiting Pakistan, M's whole family got into a heated debate about how we were all going to go somewhere. Would we take two cars? One car with everyone piled in the back sitting on each other's laps? Should two people take a cab and meet the others later? M and I had different opinions and to the outside observer, he must have looked schizophrenic because one minute he'd be arguing that his brothers should take a rickshaw, and the next moment he'd have to translate my opinion as well. 

Rather than let me blather on pointlessly, he made sure that what I wanted to say - even though I couldn't say it myself - was heard by everyone else. Because it's just and important to him that I have a place in his family, in his life, and that I am comfortable and feel like I both know what's going on and feel like I am also being heard. Even though it means more work for him, and even though he must often forego his own comfort and peace, he's always by my side when I need him. 

He's even had to sit amongst all ladies talking about hair and makeup. Once he had to stand in the entrance to an all-ladies beauty parlor helping me tell a beautician exactly how I wanted my hair and makeup to look for the wedding function we held in Pakistan during our first visit. He's even come with me to every single meeting with a tailor and told them my opinions on cut and fit of outfits I was having made, and come with me on every single shopping trip translating my favorite colors and styles. 

I sometimes feel a little bad for him. Before me, he could visit his relatives and sit down on a couch, relax and enjoy talking to his relatives. And don't we all sometimes feel like we'd rather not talk all that much? Now M never gets to do that. He's always on, always working, and always talking. He's not sitting on a couch relaxing, instead he's by my side, not just listening to a story but evaluating it against the backdrop of his wife's language skills. And when he sees a need for his skills he must act instantly or risk that his wife will no longer be engaged in what's going on around her. Which is vitally important to us both.

Preparations

Alternatively titled: Buying an entire cart of vegetables that will only last the weekend; most of which will be cooked into indiscernible, not-at-all healthy looking curries. 

Or: Getting my kitchen ready for a month of deep frying.

Before

After

Ramadan Blessings, everyone!

Weird Things In My Kitchen

Having married a Pakistani, and learned to cook Pakistani food from my mother-in-law, I have ended up with some things in my kitchen that are pretty strange. Things I would not have known existed before. There are many, many of these kinds of weird things in my kitchen. So many that perhaps this should be the first installment of a regular series of "Weird Things In My Kitchen." Not to mention that when we bought our decrepit old house, we inherited seven mice. They're no longer with us, but maybe there are even weirder things just lurking around waiting for me to discover. Even weirder that some Pakistani cooking implements, perhaps?

Like this thing - what is this thing? It looks like a hand or something. 

It's really a serving utensil for rice, I don't know why it has to look like it has knuckles at the top, though. The little one is for serving dessert-y type things, I guess. We never have enough of these when dinner party time rolls around, though. Maybe I'll bring back a caseload of 'em next time I go to Pakistan.

And what about these kettles? These are the three kettles I could find within reaching distance of the stove. I know there's one more in the cabinet, and two more out in storage boxes, too. My husband has a love of making tea and seems to collect new kettles every time he goes to Pakistan. He's been there twice without me, and he brought back more without prior approval, and now I'm swimming in tea kettles. 

The one on the left is the very first tea kettle. The one M brought with him on his maiden voyage to America. The kettle I had my very first cup of tea from. The kettle that we had in our first newlywed apartment. The kettle I used to make crappy tea for my mother in law when she visited for the first time. The kettle that I learned how to make good tea with when my sister-in-law visited. The kettle I left on the heat too long so that it's plastic handle melted and stuck to M's hand when he came to finish making the tea I'd forgotten, leaving a burn on his thumb. Even though we have a 2nd, newer kettle the same 2-cup size, neither of us can bring ourselves to part with that beloved first kettle. (The last one is a 4-cup kettle we use when we have visitors, like when my mother-in-law is visiting.)

These things are among my favorite weird Pakistani kitchen thingies I have in my house. It's a simple twist of wire - any guesses as to what it's for? I first saw them in Karachi and asked my father-in-law to go out to the metal market to get me one. He brought back two, in two different sizes. The shopkeeper had asked my father-in-law if he was planning on starting a tea-shop business. Because these are for selling tea!

These little cups hold about four ounces of tea, and in Pakistan young men and boys roam the streets and shops, taking orders for tea. The sell the cups, filled with sweet, milky tea, for five rupees each. That's the equivalent of about six cents. The wire carriers go out filled with cups of tea and they come back empty. I've never had a glass of tea on the street like that, though.

When we have a dinner party of 14 or fewer that includes Pakistani immigrants, I serve tea in these glasses from the wire carrier. It's usually a big hit. People like nostalgia, I think. To be reminded of the things they knew so well, of things they haven't seen in a long time.

Cooking For White People

I was recently visiting the 'ole family home, and I decided to cook a traditional Pakistani meal for my parents, grandparents, aunt & uncle. It went really well, and every raved about the food. I always reduce the spices a little and try to keep one or two non-spicy dishes so that those who aren't used to that level of spicy food can keep to the non-spicy if needed. I know before marrying, I couldn't take spices at all! I didn't even really like Taco Bell growing up because I thought that was too spicy for me. 

The undisputed star of the meal was the appetizer. I've perfected the pakora, I think. It's a fried vegetable fritter dipped in a batter made from chickpea flour (also known as garbanzo bean flour, gram flour, or besan.) I've been cooking these pakoras forever, and I've probably made them almost every day for roughly seven months (during the last seven Ramadans). They're so good that people request that I bring them to dinner parties even when it's not a potluck kind of party. My family was no exception and there was only one lonely potato pakora left on the big tray I'd put out.

For the dinner, I made aloo matar qeema (spicy ground beef with potatoes & peas), fried okra, and a moong & masoor daal (yellow lentils cooked into mush). I had also planned on cooking zeera pulao (a cumin-flavor rice) but I forgot and had to make last-minute plain rice, and I had also planned to cook Murgh Cholay, a new chicken & chickpea dish my mother-in-law taught me last week , but I couldn't find the appropriate Shan Masala packets at the local Indian grocery and had to make achaar chicken, a kind of pickle-y tasting chicken dish in a tomato gravy. 

The one "ethnic" store I knew in my old town had closed down, so I didn't know where I would be able to find the right ingredients. I had planned to bring everything I needed with me, but I forgot (of course...). So I googled and found something on the other side of town. I had also found some backup places in the next big city, but I thought I'd go looking for the local place too, and I was pleasantly surprised. 

It was not very nice, and the store was too big and half of it was empty and dark, but the shelves were well stocked even if a little disheveled. So disheveled, in fact, that I had to ask the owner for help. And I couldn't even remember the english word for the ingredients I needed, so I had to ask him in Urdu. At first he didn't understand when I asked for saunf - fennel seed - but he soon caught on and was also able to help me find zeera and kalongi - cumin and onion seed. The green chilis he had were also really fresh.

When I was checking out, he asked me how I'd learned how to cook Indian food. I told him that my husband was Pakistani, and that my mother in law had taught me how to cook many of her regular dishes after I'd gotten married. "What's his name?" he asked, as if he might know him. I had to explain that I didn't live there, I was just on vacation and was going to cook for my family. He asked where I lived and what my husband did ("Does he run a store?) and we had a nice pleasant conversation.

It was one of the nicest shopping experiences in a desi store I have ever had!

Doodh Wala

Two guys on a motorcycle outside of Lahore with milk jugs strapped to the back.

In Pakistan, M's family uses milk from water buffalos. They don't refrigerate it and instead keep it in a pot on the stove and re-heat it every time they want to use it. It's mostly for recipes and for use in tea anyway, as they don't drink milk very often. M only occasionally drinks milk, and only a small glass of warm milk at night once or twice a year. His whole family is like that, too. 

Milk jugs on a motorcycle in Pakistan.

I think that M's family's system is not uncommon for how milk is incorporated into Pakistani life, and the reason I think that is because it's easy to see milk being delivered around the city throughout the day. Milk is usually carried by guys with big metal jugs on the back of their motorcycles. They have a delivery route and when they stop at your house, you bring a pot to the door with you. He fills up your pot with the milk and drives off to the next house. 

In Lahore, on the drive to the Wagah border, we saw a lot of these milk delivery motorcycles because we were driving through the countryside where a lot of water buffalos are. One guy had five jugs, one of which was strapped to his front wheel. Sadly, we also passed by a couple of guys on the side of the road after a bike had toppled over, spilling all the milk alongside the road. I didn't get a picture, and luckily everyone was okay, but the doodh wala (milk guy) was out a whole days' work.

The Milk Delivery guy M's family uses.

M's brother waits for the Doodh-wala to fill up the pot with milk.

M says that doodh walas on the whole are very poor. His family gives all of their old stuff like clothes, shoes, schoolbooks and every extra food to the doodh wala to take home to his family. When M's sister went to Pakistan to visit for the first time since leaving, she even brought the doodh wala a present - a "#1 Dad" t-shirt she'd found on sale at Target. This was when we'd brought our son to Pakistan and M joked that if anyone deserves a #1 Dad t-shirt it was him. He said that the milk delivery guy would just have to wait until they came out with "#1 Doodh Wala" t-shirts. 

When Will Men Learn? Jokes About Polygamy Are Never Funny.

The Gori Wife & Mian: Thank you so much for inviting us over for dinner. Everything was delicious!

Man of the house: Our pleasure. I keep telling my wife that I should have more wives so that we can invite people over for dinner more often! 

The Gori Wife & Mian: ***silence***

Worldy

When we were in New Jersey last weekend, we were walking around near the Oak Tree Road shops and I saw a man doing some yardwork in his house about a block away. He looked like your average white American guy (although I didn't interact with him at all, so I have no idea what his lineage was.) I wondered about this man, and any other people who live in the area who are not of South Asian heritage. What must they think of their little corner of New Jersey being overrun with all-brown shoppers on the weekends? Do they know about desi fashion and Indian food because of living in such close proximity? I never knew anything about South India before meeting M - save for having watched Ben Kingsley's Ghandi in elementary school - so I wonder what it would be like living in the midst of the culture without being South Asian yourself, or being part of a South Asian family. 

I wonder about other spouses in my same situation too - how much did they know before marriage? Were they the kind of people who went out for Indian food weekly? Or even people who aren't in intercultural marriages, like when I sometimes see non-desis eating in Indianor Pakistani restaurants. In my own life in recent years I've met some people who are very worldly and knowledgeable. People who have traveled all over the world, even to places like India, and even without having married an Indian. One girl who grew up all over the world because both her parents were part of the foreign service, living in some far-flung places. She is so very knowledgeable and worldly! Suffice it to say that I doubt I would have even been considered "worldly" before marrying someone innately worldy!

What about you? How worldy were/are you?

Kind Of Like Chinatown.

There are a couple of places in North America where the desi population is so large, they've carved out a place in a city for an all-desi area - kind of like China Town in San Franciso, New York, and Washington D.C.. I don't know where all of these places are, but I do know of three of them; Toronto, New Jersey and Chicago. I haven't been to Chicago, but I have heard that the Devon Avenue area is almost completely desi, with exclusively Indian, Pakistani and other South Asian restaurants, shops and businesses for a large stretch of the street.

I have been to Toronto's Gerrard Street, and I remember the wonder and awe in M's eyes when he say signs in Urdu for the first time outside of Pakistan. He was almost giddy at the prospect of eating Pakistani mangos, and even contemplated breaking US law and hiding a box of mangos in the trunk of the car on the way home. 

The only other desi area I have been to is the Oak Tree Road area of Iselin, New Jersey. M has cousins that live close to that area, and we went to visit this past weekend. For an immigrant who still gets homesick for his country, it's a nice place to visit and see faces that look like yours, smell all of your favorite foods, see shops selling clothes you like and travel agents specializing in travel to your country - both with signs in your native language. 

Visiting these bastions of desi cultures in North America a window into the diaspora. It's so interesting to see the many different ways of living desi in America.

A sign advertising bridal jewelry.

East meets West - my life on a sign.

One of our favorite restaurants to visit when we're in the area.

I love to look around the clothing stores, even if I never buy anything. It's so much more expensive that just having my mother-in-law ship me clothes from Pakistan.

One of the signs with Hindi.

Towering boxes of (sadly, not Pakistani) mangoes.

M, very happy to be able to get some Paan.

So tell me, where are the other places like this besides the ones I already know about? I would love to find out there's something like this in my own backyard that I've been overlooking this whole time.