We're Blazing Trails Here, People

A great perk to having your Pakistani sister-in-law move into your house is that you have an on-call Mendhi applicator available at your disposal! She started on my palms yesterday, but our plans to finish the tops of my hands have been interrupted, so I'll wait to post pictures until they're done. The reason for the interruption was the baby getting up from his nap and requesting HIS OWN mendhi. 

While we were in Pakistan and I was having mendhi done, he also asked for some and received a small flower on his right palm. He kept his hand up in the air and open for more than an hour afterwards and his flower lasted until we were back in America where he could show it to his friends and teachers at school. So my sister-in-law was happy to oblige and drew a little flower for him. But then he noticed the books of mendhi designs we'd been looking through and he also started looking through them and making requests. First he asked for a stem for his flower, then a rainbow, then a spiral, then a "patang" meaning kite. (He saw a patch of cross-hatch design, any diamond shape to him is a patang.) But then the requests got a little less mendhi-ish and a little more three-year old boy-ish. Then he asked for his name, a screwdriver, and lastly, inexplicably, a napkin. SIL was still happy to oblige, and I have photographic evidence of what I think is probably the first ever henna tattoo of a screwdriver:

A Room of One's (Someone Else's) Own

After finding out that my sister-in-law was going to be in America - in my house - within 48 hours, I went into panicked, frenzied, cleaning & decorating mode. We had begun weeks ago readying the house for her arrival, but every project was left unfinished and we really had to scramble to finish everything in time. We all worked all weekend long to make sure the room was done on time. We were literally still finishing up projects by the time we were supposed to be walking out the door to go to the airport. There's never enough time! But it feels sooooo good to be done with all those projects finally.

Do you guys want to see the finished room?

This is it! I'd picked blue for the walls a long time ago when I saw a picture from an old Martha Stewart paint advertisement with blue colored walls and some black & white framed pictures. The paint color was called "Cake Stand Blue" and even though it was discontinued, I still wanted it. My grandmother is convinced that a blue room can make you feel 10 degrees colder, and that it should have some warmed color mixed so that it's not so cold, so I MEANT to go with a color a bit on the aqua-greenish side of the spectrum, but it turned out very sky bluish - not much green. I really really like it. No reports as to the cold factor yet.

Painting was the biggest project that had to be done. First we painted the ceiling a crisp white, then the blue walls, then white trim and final touch-ups. My grandmother says a ceiling fan should be white so that it recedes into the ceiling and you don't notice it. She also says that the window curtains should be hung high - almost to the ceiling - so that your eye is drawn upward making your walls look taller and the room look bigger, but we didn't move the curtain rod. Mian installed some wooden blinds inside the window and there are flow-y white curtains on the sides. After that, Mian installed a lovely ceiling fan and changed all the electrical outlets and light switched to a matching white (which meant he had to re-wire every outlet!)

On the left of the bed is a small table for Chachoo's wife. I filled the drawer with all kinds of beauty items, face wash and moisturizer, nail clippers and tweezers. Some hair bands & clips and some hair straightening cream. Lotion, nail polish remover, cotton balls, q-tips, baby oil, talcum powder, kleenex, baby wipes & makeup remover cloths. I think that's all. I hung some hooks on the side of the table next to the wall and hung a hair dryer and straightening iron from them. There's a mirror and lamp, and under the window is a small bench that she can pull up to the table to sit down and put on her makeup. I'd hoped to have an actual dressing table - the kind you can properly sit at and put your knees under. But we ran out of time to find or build one, and we had this extra table so hopefully it will work fine until we can find something better.

The bed was my favorite part - I loooove bed linens. Crisp white bed linens are pure heaven. I have been known to iron bed sheets, but I ran out of time and the duvet wasn't too wrinkly so I didn't. I did, however, iron the pillowcases so they would have nice crisp borders and look pretty standing up. When we were leaving Pakistan in December, we had some extra space in one of our suitcases so we offered it to Chachoo's wife. Since she was coming to America soon, and it's so hard to stuff your entire life and everything you might need in only two suitcases when you're leaving to go start a new life on a new continent - any extra space helps. The light blue blanket that is folded up & sitting on the end of the bed is one of her things that we brought with us - it was a wedding gift from someone and she wanted to bring it, so I made sure it was prominently displayed.

This is the dresser for clothes storage. I begged Chachoo to fold and arrange his clothes so that she would have plenty of space, but he still took three drawers for himself. He used the TOP ones too. (I always used to make M use the bottom drawers - leave all the bending to him!) Along with the blanket, we also brought a few of her outfits with us and I arranged them in the dresser drawers for her as well. Next to the dresser is a small basket containing extra towels and his & hers prayer rugs. On top of the dresser are a few decorative items, a Qu'ran, and a picture frame.

I had wanted to have his & hers bedroom slippers as well, so I sent Mian & Chachoo for some last minute shopping just four hours before her arrival. I had a list of five items and they returned with only two of them. Well, they had more than that, but they'd made a lot of mistakes. They brought the wrong kind of lotion and they brought these slippers that were the wrong size. Chachoo apparently didn't know his wife's shoe size and even though I DID know it, they didn't think to call and ask. So I have to return the slippers and get new ones, but I still put these in the room for appearance sake anyway.

This is the desk area, which also serves as a bedside table for Chachoo. I love the furniture - the bed and desk were gifts from my parents after our wedding. (Well, the money was, with the intention to buy furniture, but we picked them out.) We've since moved into a house with smaller rooms though, so these only fit in the largest bedroom downstairs which is Chachoo's room. It was a struggle to get Chachoo to clean up the desk area. In the end I just told him I was going to do it - giving him enough warning to remove anything he didn't want me looking at. On the top shelf of the desk is a pitcher of water and glasses that we bought so they don't have to come upstairs in the middle of the night if they're thirsty.

One of the things I was really excited about was printing out and framing some pictures of her family. I wanted to have those black & white photos from the original inspiration for the blue room. I also thought it would feel very nice after leaving your home, flying to another country and moving into a stranger's house to see the smiling faces of your closest family members on your bedroom walls. Because everything I do is absolutely last-minute, I was up until 2 o'clock in the morning picking out and editing pictures for this project. Luckily, we have a website for sharing pictures with family where we all have a folder and upload a few pictures every week or more for special events. After their engagement, I made a folder for Chachoo's wife and she used it a few times to share pictures with us of her family's special events. Between that and the photos from the wedding, I was able to get a picture of almost everyone in her nuclear family - I got her mother and two brothers, and 2 out of 3 of her sisters and all but 2 nieces and nephews. I was pretty proud of those numbers! 

I was a little afraid that the pictures might make her SADDER instead of their intended effect of making her happy, but she seemed pleased with them, so thank God for that!

We're Expecting!

We're expecting......my sister-in-law to arrive tomorrow!!!

(What? What did you think I was talking about?)

Chachoo just found out yesterday that his wife finally got her passport and visa - and it has his name spelled correctly inside. They wasted no time getting her on the first flight out of there. Her plane leaves Pakistan in mere hours and after a day's worth of travel, we'll be at the airport tomorrow evening with balloons, flowers, a camera, and maybe even a hand-letter "Welcome to America!" sign. We'll see. Right now I've got to get back to painting trim. Because regardless of the fact that we had two extra weeks to get everything ready for her arrival, OF COURSE the trim still isn't painted.

OF COURSE.

Filing A Void With A Toothbrush

The day after the big groom's side pre-wedding party (or Mendhi) was the same day I went shopping for makeup. But there was something going on at the house, too. Girls from the bride's family had come to prepare her room for her.

There's an aspect of traditional Pakistani matrimony where the bride is supposed to go live with her husband - and her husband's parents - in their home. In some Bollywood films, there are even scenes about how the bride is no longer a part of the family she grew up in, she "belongs" to her in-laws now. (::Cringe::) The bride's parents shouldn't even spend too much time visiting her in her "new" home, or they can't eat there or even drink some water while visiting her. I've seen one black & white movie scene with a crying father bemoaning how he couldn't even have a bite of an apple in his daughter's new home.  I think - though of course I'm no expert here - this has to do with the groom in traditional Indo-Pak weddings having such a big upper hand in the wedding negotiations and being given respect-slash-deference because of that. You don't want to piss off your daughter's husband or her in-laws, because they might not treat your daughter well. Similarly, you don't want to be a burden on them by eating/drinking too much (at all???) in their home, because your daughter might have to suffer the consequences, perhaps her MIL will complain or expect her to do all the cooking/washing up after your arduous visit.

A majority of this stuff has gone by the wayside over time. I mean, the underpinnings can still be there depending on the family, in my experience often relative to class/wealth/socioeconomic status. So unwealthy families might still abide by some of these things - perhaps a bride would provide some larger scale jahaiz (dowry) or expect to live in her in-laws home after marriage. I think these two, at least, are still fairly common among middle class families in Pakistan and even some of the so-called upper-class families. But I've never heard of or seen anyone refusing food or drink while visiting. One of my SILs does consider the in-law's home "her home", but the other one doesn't. When she goes back to Pakistan to visit, she stays almost exclusively at her own parent's house.

All of this background to explain that when the bride's family came to our home to prepare her room for her, they were preparing it because it was to be her new home. She needed all of her things there, clothes, makeup, beauty items, shoes, anything one might want in their home. Even more so because, as a new bride, she's to be dressed to the nines all the time, bejeweled and made up like a princess and carted around to meet & greet all her new family members and neighbors at various dinner parties & evening chai sessions.

But OH. MY. goodness! These women - the bride's sister and cousin - covered every single horizontal surface in beauty products. The large armoire - meant for the new couple to share, presumably - was stacked full and barely closable because of the number of brand-spanking-new outfits for the bride crammed in there. Every drawer was full of jewelry, shoes boxes stacked high above the armoire and under the bed. Which they'd also brought sheets, blankets and pillows for. It took them hours to arrange everything just right.

I actually think this is really sweet. I imagine that after getting married and moving into a new house with almost-strangers, it would be very comforting to see your sister's little touches around your new home, all your favorite things laid out just the way you like them.

But I was upset about the toothbrush.

I had brought my soon-to-be-new sister-in-law a toothbrush all the way from America. I remembered that when we'd gone to Pakistan for the older brother's wedding in 2007, my MIL had equipped her bathroom with some toothpaste and a new toothbrush. She's wanted to use a toothbrush brought from America, but all she had in her imports-cabinet was the big Costco package of 10 toothbrushes. That meant the SIL got a toothbrush that, while new and unused, was not in any packaging. I had wanted to make sure that wouldn't happen this time, both for my MIL (who was adamant about wanting to provide an imported toothbrush) and for the SIL (because I'd prefer to be given a still-packaged toothbrush myself in that situation.) So weeks before our trip I'd bought the Costco pack AND one, single, solitary toothbrush just for the SIL. I even argued with Mian about whether this was really necessary. And I was made fun of a bit when we arrived in Pakistan and unpacked in front of everyone. But I was undeterred. I'd messed up with the 1st wedding, but this time I wanted my performance as eldest sister-in-law as unflawed as possible.

You may have already guessed, but the bride's sister brought her a toothbrush as well. I was inexplicably sad about this. That stupid toothbrush had been like my olive branch - the symbol of how I'd wanted to fulfill this role of good daughter-in-law for my MIL, making sure that we as a family were well represented by the way we provided for our newest member (yes, even by toothbrushes, as stupid as it sounds.) It was the one way I'd actively planned to fill the role of good sister-in-law to this new member of the family, my new sister-in-law.

Maybe it doesn't make much sense, or maybe I can't explain it very well, but I just worry sometimes that these people miss out because of our intercultural marriage. My MIL doesn't have the daughter-in-law she expected, yeah, of course, we all know that. My sister-in-law also doesn't have the SIL she expected. My brother-in-law never expected he'd be living in the same house as some white American girl. My very presence in their lives means the absence of something else. It's not that I feel inadequate, it's different than that. And of course, not everyone gets what they expect in life, nor should they necessarily be entitled to. I just feel like yes, we all have to make compromises, but there are some ways I can meet them in the middle just like they meet me in the middle. I can try and find out what important parts of that absence might be easy for me to fulfill. One easy way to fill the absence of good Pakistani older sister-in-law is providing a stupid toothbrush.

Oh, gosh, I don't know why I just got all Freudian about a stupid toothbrush. But truthfully, my heart fell  a bit when I saw their toothbrush. As dumb as it surely sounds.

The bride's sister & cousin, shortly after arriving and having already stuff the armoire full of clothes. Those two suitcases beside the armoire would soon be unloaded into that small room as well. The small suitcase is just makeup! Tea & Cookies were brought for our visitors, of course (on the bed.)

You Should Be Reading This...and This...and...

Along with all the blogs I read weekly - like Lucky Fatima's blog and Gori Girl's blog, which I link to fairly regularly- there are a couple I've come across recently that you should go check out if, like me, you can't get enough of this intercultural marriage talk. Here are just a FEW links to some of my favorite recent finds:


The Big Bad Blond Bahu Blog: This girl is seriously hilarious, married to a Maharashtrian Indian, and she tackles a lot of sensitive issues. She also has a lot of different experiences than I, especially on the in-law front. So if you've ever tired of hearing about how much I like my in-laws, you could find some balance over there. Because unfortunately, lots of bahus (perhaps especially the big, bad, blond type) have in-law issues.


Lucky Delicious: If you've ever wanted to cook Indian/Pakistani food, Lucky Fatima's food-dedicated blog is a great tool to help. I, too, spent hours deep in the dark corners of The Desi Cookbook back before M and I were married. Lucky Fatima, on the other hand, gives a more South Pakistani-North Indian take on the food, with tons of helpful tips and tricks and a heaving helping of South Asian history in the process. I always learn on lot over there, it would have been nice to find six years ago when I was still flailing, cooking Vindaloo for my non-Vindaloo eating Mian.


Musings From An American-Nepali Household: This is the blog of the partner of a Nepali guy, and a frequent commenter here. It's so interesting to me because many of the things she writes about are similar to things experienced by a lot of South Asians, but some of them are VERY different. A lot of times I think her stories are  like the other side of the coin I have. And this woman is my personal hero because the first time she met her in-laws, she did it by traveling to Nepal to stay with them for four days. ALONE. No boyfriend in sight - or even in the same country!


Complicated: A blog for anyone who ever feared that your Pakistani significant other - who you intended to marry- might go back to Pakistan and be secretly married off. Or anyone nervous about whether one day, your Pakistani significant other would be denied entry to the United States, deported and/or prohibited from ever entering American again, perhaps indefinitely. This poor girl's blog is bound to make anyone feel better about their situation. And surprisingly, it has a happy ending! (Well, we assume it does - she's still in the middle of telling the story. But if we all head over there and gently encourage her, perhaps she'll write more often!)


Here Only: Another blog about a woman married to a man of Indian heritage, she even has non-desi interesting things to write about, which is refreshing, and she has pictures of her kids on her site, which I would have killed to see 4 years ago! She recently wrote this post about the long journey that is this life of compromise that was just beautiful and I really identified with it. 


Sometimes Sobia Forum: Not a blog, but born of a now-defunct one. The Great Sobia, before our time, was a pioneer of being the gori wife of a Pakistani. I happened upon her stories before she took them all down, but thankfully she's left  forum up for us. There's a handful of wives of Pakistanis on there doling out advice to each other on all kinds of topics. (Though it's a bit trickier than a blog because you have to register, introduce yourself, and meet a certain requirement of posting a certain number of times so that the other members feel they "know" you before you're let into the members-only juicier areas of the forum.)


My Indian Love: Dating an Indian guy, she writes about all sorts of cultural tidbits and reminds me a LOT of what it was like when I first met M. Her stories are also very similar to what I've experienced because her significant other is an Indian Muslim, and since M's parents were born in India, their culture is very similar to that of many North Indians.  On of my favorite recent posts - titled The Americanization of An Indian - was where she posted a list of movies she was going to watch with her Indian guy. We do the exact same thing! I should write about our list too...


Intercultural Talk: A blog written by an expert in the field of intercultural communication. I've learned so much from her, and her posts always make me reevaluate how I'm communicating both in and about my marital situation. A very valuable resource!


These are just the newer things I've come across, there must be other blogs out there I'm missing, right? Do you know of any great blog - new or old, about intercultural marriage or anything else! If so leave the link in the comments, even if it's your own blog. Other people - like me - could be missing out!

Making Up My Own Self

(This post is among a series of post chronicling my experiences during our recent trip to Pakistan last December.)

So, after all the wedding preparations and the pre-wedding parties, there was one thing I was desperate to do. I needed to go buy some makeup! Somehow in my crazy-packing-list-making frenzy of the weeks before our trip to Pakistan last December, my makeup bag didn't end up in our luggage. I noticed it the very first day but didn't think much of it because I don't wear any makeup usually.

But then came those pesky wedding functions and I suddenly remembered my missing makeup bag. Or, everyone around me noticed it. All the ladies of the family were agast that I would even consider going to these wedding functions without makeup on. It just isn't done. And they wouldn't allow it. A daughter-in-law is a reflection on her in-laws. If she's not wearing enough jewelry / nice clothes / good makeup, it means her family isn't good enough to provide these things for me. And my in-laws want to make sure I look nice at these functions, so they did my makeup FOR me. Well, a few of the younger girl cousins of M's did my makeup.

I'm not going to say they did a bad job. They didn't - I actually got a lot of compliments. But the compliments were that I looked like "one of the great Asian beauties!" Which sounds nice until you realize that I'm not Asian - I'm mostly Irish. Those are two very different things, and to make one look like the other might look or feel strange. My own mother, never one to mince words, said that neither she nor my father recognized me from the picture. (She may or may not have mentioned the word transvestite. As in, "I thought it was a picture of one of those transvestites you're always taking pictures of!")

So regardless of the compliments, after two evenings being made up by M's cousins, I wanted a crack at it myself. Also, as a non-makeup wearer, when I DO wear makeup, I tend to go for a more natural look, and after two nights of heavy makeup, my skin was begging me to go easy. While these lovely ladies were willing to lend me all their makeup, but no one had any shade of foundation that didn't make me look like I'd just been spray-tanned. So M took me shopping!

We went to a store called Naheed. We'd been there before the last time we went to Pakistan in December 2007. That's when I'd run out of baby food and someone told us we could find imported jars of baby food there. I was a bit disappointed with their baby food section at the time, and the prices were steeper than I'd expected - even more expensive that in America. But I'd never seen such a huge selection of "western" products, and the shopping experience is very much American-style. There's shopping carts and friendly (well, almost) people working there in uniform, and even several cash registers with conveyor belts. This is very different than the usual way of buying groceries - standing outside a stall, rattling off a list to a store owner who then goes and fills your order without you ever handling a box. I prefer the former.

When we got there, we walked around the first floor - where the food is sold - checking things out and picking up a few items. I briefly walked past the baby food section and saw that it was bigger than it had been last time, but since my baby is now over 3, I had no use for it. (But I, of course, took lots of pictures for you all, too!)

Then we headed upstairs, where all the health & beauty items are sold. There, the shopping experience got decidedly less American-feeling. I walked around the makeup displays browsing. They had mostly Maybelline and L'Oreal, (which are drugstore or cheaper brands here. Also, in America, you can manhandle the items all you want and sometimes they even have a tester available to see if the shade matches your skin. Here they had a tester too, but they also had a GUARD there. Each little makeup booth had a woman - a Naheed employee - standing guard over the cosmetics. I had to ask her to let me try the foundation (the very lightest shade they make. I am truly a gori gori.) Then, after we'd determined that it matched, she wouldn't even hand me the makeup. She took it over to the cash register where I could retrieve it after I'd paid for it. Then, when bought, the foundation was put in its own bag and sealed with a cable-tie so that nothing else could be put inside that bag and shoplifted. Very tight security for drugstore makeup, I thought! But the joke was on me, I guess, because I'd expected to pay like $5-7 for this "drugstore" brand of makeup but it ended up costing three times that amount!

I did my own makeup that night for the actual wedding ceremony - the Nikah. I felt a lot better about my face too. Well, until everyone started voicing their discontent that I "wasn't wearing ANY makeup!" and that I should have let M's cousins do it again. Well, I liked it at least.

AND no one compared me to a transvestite, which is really the most important thing, isn't it?

The street that the store is on, Naheed Market is the large 5-storied building on the left. I think they have other locations around Karachi too, but this is the one we went to in a part of town called Bahadurabad. 

The store, after parking across the street.

Inside, you can see it looks very much like an American grocery store.

Here is the lineup of cash registers - about 4 or 5 of them, I think. And customers making orderly lines, which felt like a small miracle in Pakistan. I'd assumed it was a completely line-less country before witnessing this.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that they'd expanded their baby selections. This section used to be half its size, although I didn't go any closer to see if there was increased variety or not.

On the way upstairs, we saw they were even selling flat-screen plasma & LCD TVs.

Upstairs, in the beauty section, they had a wide variety of shampoos and conditioners that my hair is used to.

The 2nd floor, where all the beauty and health products are sold. I even bought some Flintstones vitamins for the baby at the back counter. They were like, $17 for a bottle or something...

I think this was where I bought the foundation from.

Right across the street from Naheed, we saw these women. They're wearing very "common" clothes and one's carrying a 20 lb. bag of rice on her head. Maybe they've never been in the "high-end" store they just crossed.  M said that there are families who survive on less per month than the cost of my one bottle of makeup. Pakistan can be a place of very obvious disparity sometimes.

Inlaw Influx - Weekend Recap

I had 15 Pakistanis in my house over the weekend. I'm still recovering.

We had planned a big welcome weekend for Chachoo's wife. Two out of three cousins in the New Jersey area were going to come with their families, as was Mian & Chachoo's sister (my sister-in-law) with her husband and daughter. Even though Chachoo's wife's arrival has been delayed, everyone still decided to come since it was already all planned out.

M's sister arrived first, around 3 o'clock on Friday. I had prepared a dish for lunch that my mother-in-law calls Burmi Dish or Burmese Dish* that I'm not sure is really Pakistani or if any other Pakistanis really eat it, but my in-laws do. After lunch M, Chachoo, and my SIL's husband played cricket. The baby got a few swings in too while SIL and I sat around chatting. I made potato and chopped spinach Pakoras (veggie fritters) for sham ki chai, or afternoon tea.

Cousin #1 arrived around 10 at night. He brought his mother, father, and son with him, who are in America working on their green cards. Cousin #1 is also married to an America, but she's from a Guyanese family so I feel like she has a bit of an advantage over me in the non-desi wife situation. She wasn't able to come because she'd been so over-taxed at work recently.

I cooked Nihari for dinner and I used a store-bought spice mix because I (read: my mother-in-law) don't have a recipe for Nihari. I cooked it without the aid of a pressure cooker for EIGHT HOURS because I wanted it to be authentic tasting. At the very last minute, I added flour to thicken it up and it all was destroyed. I guess I added too much flour because it turned beige in color and bland tasting (it's supposed to be a dark-brownish-red and spicy). I tried to salvage it by adding more spice mix and then food coloring, but I was out of red color and used yellow instead, but it didn't help. Ironically, my sister-in-law had cooked some Nihari and brought it with her, so I served that instead and hoped it would be enough and thank God, it was. Later when my SIL asked what the problem with my dinner was, I explained and she insisted on tasting it and said it tasted like Paya - which is another dish entirely and the two are not supposed to taste similar. So, wow I have some weird yellow bland nihari/paya hybrid in the freezer. Not a good thing.

The evening was spent playing ludo, badminton, cricket and card games. Many cups of tea were drunk, none of which were prepared by me. Chachoo has become the #1 chai manufacturer in the house these days. M and I went to bed around 2 because we had to get up early to make breakfast the next day. I heard later that most of the rest of the guests stayed up until 4 - even some of the children!

The sleeping arrangements had been difficult to figure out with so many people. We brought the baby into our room and gave his room (with queen-sized bed) to M's aunt & uncle. Chachoo was going to leave his room and give it to Cousin #1 and his son. The other bedroom was given to M's sister and her family and poor Chachoo was to sleep on that same spare twin mattress on the floor. At 4AM, though, apparently they all decided to re-arrange my arrangement and Chachoo and Cousin #1 slept in Chachoo's room together and sent the son up to sleep with his grandparents.

Cousin #2 arrived the next morning with her husband and three daughters. They only stayed for the day. We had gotten up early to prepare a breakfast of Pakistani-style breakfast potatoes, Halvah (which is usually made from semolina but I made some from yellow channa lentils), a sweet dish made of raw green mangoes called Gorumba (which I'd made ahead of time) and BRAIN. Ick. I did not partake of the last one. Everyone seemed to enjoy everything, but I got rave reviews about the Halvah. Unfortunately, when you're a gori- or non-Pakistani wife the "rave reviews" sound more like an incredulous"YOU made this?!?!"

After dinner, there was more badminton and games, this time including a few rounds on the Carrom board M built with his own two hands. The kids rode in circles around our driveway with wagons and tricycles while the adults got right to work on lunch. M had marinated beef and chicken for "Bihari kabob" and got to work threading the thin beef strips onto skewers while I started slicing veggies for salaad** and making two kinds of dipping sauces - a classic cilantro one and a new cumin & yogurt one I learned from Chachoo's wife while we were in Pakistan. Then I trekked everything downstairs so we could all eat outside in the amazing weather we had in our area over the weekend. I helped fan the barbeque flames and mop M's brow in the meantime. M had brought a Pakistani-style barbeque grill with him when we came back from Pakistan because it's hard to fit lang metal kabobs on a regular American barbeque grill. Also, the meat isn't supposed to touch the metal grill. (I don't know how to explain that part, I'll have to just take a picture of it.)

After lunch, everyone started packing up and leaving. All three families had driven away within an hour or so of finishing eating. Mian, Chachoo and I cleaned up for another hour. Then the men collapsed and both napped for an hour or so and we all reconvened to watch Men Who Stare At Goats later in the evening after the baby had been put to bed.

In a word, I'd describe the weekend as Exhausting Two words: Fun & Exhausting. Too much to think about right not: Chachoo's wife is coming soon and it will all happen again.


*Burmi/Burmese Dish - I cook a pot of beef in tomato gravy w/ red chili powder, cumin powder and some other spiced, and in another pot of, weird vegetables with some lentils & water. When the veggie-lentil mix is totally soft and mixed - sometimes I use a stick blender to help it along - you add it all together in some kind of thick, mashed-veggie & beef glop and serve with rice. Perhaps I'm describing it very well, because so far it sounds disgusting but in reality, it's one of my favorite dishes, and one of the first Pakistani foods I truly loved and craved and requested by name.)


**"Salaad" is what we call plain, sliced veggies served with Pakistani meals; as distinct from the American-style salad where the veggies are mixed and usually served with a dressing. Pakistani "salaad" is more akin to a crudite platter. M and I just draw the "A" out really long and pronounce the word like it's said in Pakistan to denote the plain veggie one so that the other one know what we're talking about.

She's Married to WHOM now???

My sister-in-law's arrival has been delayed for two weeks or so. It's still a bit up in the air. There is still an ongoing hurdle remaining in her visa situation. She'd applied for the visa, traveled to Islamabad, and been interviewed and approved. All that was left was having her passport mailed back to her with the completed visa in it. And even that happened - she received it more than two weeks ago. But it had a problem.

You see, my husband and brother in law have weird first names. Not just like, they sounded weird to me when I first heard them (also true) but like actual Pakistanis think "What the hell kind of name is that?" When introducing his brother at a dinner party, I heard a friend tell Mian "Are you kidding me?" thinking Mian was making up the strange name for his brother.

Not Mian so much - his name is pretty uncommon but not unheard of. My brother-in-law, on the other hand, is probably one of a kind. If you google his name, you will only find him. (That's how I found embarrassing photos of him once!) It seems there is no one else named Chachoo in the entire world. But all three of the brothers have similar names - the first three letters of their names are the same. So Mr. Very Uncommon Name Chachoo has been running into the same problem throughout his life that people misspell his name. And apparently the most common mistake is that they call him or spell it like his eldest brother's name instead. My Mian.

This issue has reared its ugly head again a few times in the passing weeks. When one gets married, there's a lot of paperwork to be filled out. It turns out that on a few of these instances of paperwork, it listed the newly married couple as my new sister-in-law married to MY HUSBAND. And when you husband hails from a land that dabbles in polygamy, this can raise a few internal flags!

So Chachoo's poor wife has been anxiously awaiting her visa and when she gets it in the mail, the visa wording says "F-2 visa for Ms. Chachoo, wife of Mr. GoriWife'sHusband. So she mailed it back, hoping to have the error fixed. As the date of her  flight came nearer, Chachoo and Ms. Chachoo wondered weather the visa would arrive in time. They waited until the absolute last minute they thought advisable and changed the ticket to a later date a little more than 24 hours before her scheduled departure.

Of course, hours later the visa arrived.

But then it had ANOTHER error! Instead of misspelling her husband's name, they'd left it off altogether. So now she's Ms. Chachoo, wife of BLANK - an F-2 without an F-1. So they sent it back again, and now they wait anxiously again, hoping hoping hoping that it arrives before her departure date. And I have two more weeks to make sure her room is ready for her.