"What?" you say? Here, let me explain.
It happens a few times here or there every day. Someone will come to the house to visit and ring the doorbell. In America, in my own house, I would just answer the stupid door already. I am an adult, I know how to open a door. But in Pakistan, I can't. I have to sit there, staring at the front gate completely helpless. Who knows who's on the other side? Even if I do answer it, what if its a beggar? I can't always speak enough Urdu to get by. What if it's a political party seeking "donations"? I don't even know where Ammi's stash of money that she gives to beggars is kept. But it's even worse than that - even if I DO know who it is (like if M had run across the alley to the neighbor's and then called out from the other side to let him back in) I can't even OPERATE the front gate! It's got weird latches that took me forever to learn how to use, or sometimes there's some new lock or chain or bolt that I don't know how to open.
There's another gate that drives me crazy too. The front veranda - which is actually used as the dining room - has a front gate that gets locked every night. But there's only one bathroom and it's on the other side of that gate. So if you want to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, you have to be able to unlock the gate. But where are the keys to the gate? And it's dark too, so you have to be able to navigate through the house in the dark. BUT - in every single room there are people sleeping on the floor. So you have to be able to navigate through rooms, NOT STEPPING ON ANYONE, find the damn keys,THEN find the 1 key out of 30 that unlocks that particular gate, go to cross the outdoor courtyard to the far wall of the house where the bathroom is, look at all the bugs that congregate there at night while you take care of business, and then reverse the whole process to lock the door and get back to your room. It's exhausting and frustrating and I feel like a complete fool. I have had to wake up M on more than one occasion just to get his help so that I can go to the bathroom. And some days, it feels like EVERYTHING is just one big challenge like that.
The microwave - I can't figure out how to turn it on, none of the buttons are working. It turns out you have to turn on a stabilizer machine first before the microwave will be workable. Then it turns out that the power was off and we were running on generator power - but the microwave is too powerful for the generator and when I turned on the microwave, the generator starts shaking so violently that it falls off it's stand and then all the power in the entire house goes off. (True story.)
The iron - don't get me started on the iron, either! First there's always a godforsaken line for use of the iron, and someone's always got to iron something, so you'd better be quick. It's also too powerful for the generator, so if the power's off I have to wait until the last possible minute to iron my clothes. It's a really old iron, extemely heavy and you have to actually spray your clothes with water from a spray bottle kept nearby. The frayed plug doesn't always work, so you have to use the iron just so or else the plug comes out of the wall every.two.freaking.seconds. M told me that if you loop the cord just right over a nearby door handle, the cord stays in the plug longer. And anyway, how in the heck am I supposed to iron all those folds of that shalwar (pants) anyway?Don't even get me started on plugging things in, either. I am an adult, yet I have to ask for guidance every time I need to plug something in!?!! Some things can't be plugged in without an adapter, some things need a converter first, some things can't be used at all (useless American hair straightening iron!) There's always some shortage of these various adapters & converters too, so after I've asked M how exactly I'm supposed to get this camera battery charged, I'm sent from room to room to hunt one down. Which thing can I unplug? Then I have to go around and ask everyone ELSE in the house - can I unplug your computer? Can I unplug this, can I use this converter for just a short while? I'll bring it right back - M says I need it.
The kitchen is the worst of it all rolled into one terrible, humbling experience. I mostly don't go into the kitchen when I'm in Pakistan - my image as the perfect daughter-in-law who helps out in the kitchen be damned. I can't navigate in there, not even to make lunch for the baby. Where are the pots, where are the serving spoons? The worst was when we went in 2007 and the baby was still drinking formula and I would have to make bottles for him multiple times a day. I can't start the gas range, you have to flick some spark thing to get the gas to ignite and somehow I've never gotten it to work. By the time I've tried a few times, the whole kitchen smells like gas and then I'm too scared to try anymore. Even if I get M to light the stove for me, I never know which milk to use - there's always a few different pots of milk in there and I'm not sure which one is from the buffalo, which is from the cow, how long they've been sitting there, which one is for use in some dessert recipe later and which one is for tea. If I wanted to make some tea, I don't know how much tea to use per cup - it always comes out tasting terrible, sometimes too strong, sometimes too wear. And where is the tea strainer - I've check 6 drawers and I still can't find it. I can only hunt down three teacups. Once I used salt instead of sugar because they're sitting on the shelf next to each other in identical containers.
The bathroom isn't much better, either. I can't figure out how to turn on the water or how to get the right balance of hot & cold. Sometimes I'll be in there trying forever before it finally occurs to me that we're out of hot water - the water heater must be off. And they sometimes turn off the water heater at night because my inlaws think it unheard of to shower at night. I like to shower at night! I have on more than one occasion been forced to take a cold shower because of this. And then after the shower, when the entire room is wet, how do you get dressed without ending up with soaking wet pant legs? In the beginning, I tried balancing on one leg, scrunching up the pant legs and trying to quickly hop into them before they touched the wet ground, but I was rarely successful. Then I turned to squeegee-ing the whole place down in the buff before trying to re-dress. Finally I asked M - turn out he stands on the little stool to get dressed without getting wet pants as a result.
Poor M, he has to deal with me and all my frustrations. He knows about the stool already. He knows which appliances can be plugged in, he knows where all the light switches are and which key unlocks which lock, he knows about the door knob handle iron plug trick. And he tries to help, to impart this knowledge to me. But there's just too much of it and sometimes - truth be told - I'm not at my peak form to learn it all. Sometimes he's busy with his own stuff, but he's always got to stop what he's doing to help me warm up a bottle, or he has to wake up to take me to the bathroom as if I'm a child. PLUS, he has to deal with my OUTRAGE at all these little things. I can get very frustrated and difficult to deal with if too many of these things pile up at once, or if M has taken too long to respond, or if I've had to take yet another cold shower.
It feels awful to go from a self-assured, competent adult to a completely useless idiot just because I've traveled a few time zones over. These sorts of things are the product of being a traveler anywhere, really. Even when visiting at my parents house, I can't always locate the right key, or I don't know which milk is usable. But when you're traveling to such a far away place, when so many things are different, it can sometimes feel like too much to handle.
