I'm A Secret Muslim

You know how common it is to hear someone say - maybe jokingly, maybe not - that President Obama's a secret Muslim? Well, let me tell you, I feel like a secret Muslim a lot of the time.

As I've mentioned before, I'm just not always that comfortable talking about religion. Not always, though. Genuine interest, respectful and intelligent questions, from kind & caring people - those I can deal with, even welcome! But in this day & age in America, it can be a difficult topic to bring up, and it seems to me that not many people fall into those categories of genuinely interested, respectful, kind or intelligent. So more often than not, I just, well...don't.

I don't bring it up at work. Even two years post graduation from law school, I haven't been able to start my career. I'm stuck working short-term temp jobs. It doesn't seem worth the hassle to me to sit down with a disinterested project manager, especially when he or she might be managing a team of 200 unruly underemployed attorneys, some of whom are composing blog posts instead of working (not me!) and negotiate that area where religion meets work. It's easier for me to stake out a quite spot under the stairs, go back out to my car, or find some other out-of-the-way place to make my daily prayers. (I have talked about religion and being a Muslim with coworkers, though.)

It's the same at gatherings of friends. Whenever I'm attending a gathering of non-Muslims in the evening, I always say I've left my phone in my car, or have to go get something, so I can spend a few minutes performing the evening prayer. Actually, even in groups of our Muslim friends I generally try to find someplace out of sight of the others to make prayers, just because I feel like eyes are boring holes through my skin otherwise, as if I'll never pray flawlessly enough to pass muster, or maybe just like I don't want to feel on display like a circus act. And these are kind, lovely, accepting people we're talking about. To be sure, these are MY own issues I'm projecting OUT, I'm sure of it.

In fact, even when I go visit my own parents, I am still a secret Muslim. Actually, I just realized I'm like this in my own house with my inlaws, too. Most of the time I say "I'm just going upstairs for a minute" usually, instead of saying I have to pray. Or I combine Zuhr with putting the kid down for a nap. Also, when visiting my parents, they live far away and we generally don't stay for long, so I usually am making shorter, sometimes combined Qasr prayers. I have prayer in front of them, but I avoid it if possible. I avoid praying in front of my inlaws, too.

But I wonder if that doesn't give the wrong impression? As if maybe I'm not praying, or not serious about my religion. Maybe I'm giving off that impression to my Muslim and non-Muslim friends and coworkers and bosses too. By not speaking openly about it, maybe it only helps make me look like the stereotype of a woman who converted in name only for her husband's comfort, but who doesn't actually live the tenets of her faith. That's not the case, but it seems like I'm damned if I do, damned if I don't. I don't know how to navigate this space of being part of a minority, one that's perfectly socially acceptable to discriminate against these days, without just retreating and making it a personal matter instead. And that doesn't feel right either.

I Come Bearing Treats

A few times during the ten-week run of my Urdu II class, I brought treats to class with me. I was just so excited to be in a room full of people at least mildly interested in Pakistan and it's trappings that I wanted to share some of my favorite things.

On the first day, I brought some candy. Chili Mili, little gummy sweets in the shape of chili peppers that also have some ACTUAL pepper in them - they're spicy! I love them, and I took them to class and handed them out. Next time I brought a different kind of candy, amrood (guava) candy that also has a little spicy masala in the middle. On our next to last class, I brought Pak Cola. It was mentioned in the dialouge we were working on that week, and I wanted everyone to be able to taste what they were talking about. Now, Pak Cola doesn't qualify as one of *MY* favorites, I actually can't stand the stuff. But I took it nontheless.

Tonight is the 3rd installment of my Urdu III class, and that's the background to why my work refrigerator is stocked with Mirinda and Limca and why there are candy-coated saunf seeds sitting on the passenger seat of my car. If only I could find a why to fry pakoras and bring them with me. Or maybe I can convince my classmates to drive all the way out to the 'burbs for a full Pakistani meal sometime!

The State Of My Urdu

My Urdu classroom, held in the choir room of a church.

My Urdu class ended a few weeks ago, and many of us in the class successfully lobbied for the organization to offer an Urdu III class at its next session. During the interim weeks, a few of us would sometimes get together to read dialogues and short stories. I was only able to go to about half of these meetings, but it was beneficial and i could feel my reading skills improving a bit. Every time I went I brought Dulhan, my sister-in-law, with me. She served, as a native speaker, as one who could correct our mispronounciation and tell us what any new words meant. She was really helpful.

Last minute cramming before my weekly class, holed up in a Caribou Coffee.

Urdu III began meeting two weeks ago, this week with be the third class. We haven't yet moved on to any other verb tenses or conjugation, and it seemed like most of the 10=week Urdu 2 class was spent learning to read and write. Which I can say I am able to do now - perhaps even at a level that could be considered "elementary."

Dictation in class, with red corrections from my teacher.

My urdu classroom. It's the choir room in a church. I�... on Twitpic

My urdu classroom. It's the choir room in a church. I&#0... on Twitpic

Blogs, Then Fiction? Soon We'll Take Over The World!

I have a bit of suburban cliche in my life, and I'm okay with it. Case in point, I drive a minivan. Also, I am part of a book club.

I was invited by a friend to an existing book club and on my very first book club meeting, they were discussing Jhumpa Lahiri's book Unaccustomed Earth. I really like Lahiri's books, but since it was about immigrants to America from India and their subsequently-raised American children, and that has some overlap with my own life, I tried to repeat to myself to just keep calm, don't champ at the bit, give them a chance to get to know you before spouting off as if you know everything about the subject, which you don't anyway. (I'd like the think I was able to do that, but by the way all the members were able to recount my stories to newer members recently, I fear I was not successful.)

Anyway, since then we've read only non-gori-wife-related books, but last month's selection for this month's meeting was Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda. The proponent of the book had briefly described it, something about another country, giving up a girl for adoption. I usually read these things pretty late in the game and I forget about them until the "Oh, we're meeting this Monday!" email comes along. That's exactly what happened last week. Actually, when I responded that I wasn't finished but hoped I'd get through it in time, my friend said she was surprised I hadn't jumped all over the book. By that time I was actually 50 pages in. As soon as I opened it, I DID jump all over it, because one of it's main characters, Somer, is a gori wife!!!

(From Booklist, via Amazon: In her engaging debut, Gowda weaves together two compelling stories. In India in 1984, destitute Kavita secretly carries her newborn daughter to an orphanage, knowing her husband, Jasu, would do away with the baby just as he had with their firstborn daughter. In their social stratum, girls are considered worthless because they can’t perform physical labor, and their dowries are exorbitant. That same year in San Francisco, two doctors, Somer and Krishnan, she from San Diego, he from Bombay, suffer their second miscarriage and consider adoption. They adopt Asha, a 10-month-old Indian girl from a Bombay orphanage. Yes, it’s Kavita’s daughter. In alternating chapters, Gowda traces Asha’s life in America—her struggle being a minority, despite living a charmed life, and Kavita and Jasu’s hardships, including several years spent in Dharavi, Bombay’s (now Mumbai’s) infamous slum, and the realization that their son has turned to drugs. Gowda writes with compassion and uncanny perception from the points of view of Kavita, Somer, and Asha, while portraying the vibrant traditions, sights, and sounds of modern India. --Deborah Donovan)


So I had to repeat to myself all over again, just like at my first bookclub meeting; shut up, don't dominate the conversation, give other people a chance to talk. I resisted the urge to ask the hostess if I could bring all the foods mentioned in the book; pav bhaji, chaat, and potato pakoras (my specialty!) I could have taken all the book club members on a personal tour of my life - I even have a Gujrati speaker living in my basement for translations and pronunciation help! Luckily, I was able to calm myself down and in the end the only over-the-top thing I did was to bring a sari with me and ask if anyone wanted to be wrapped up in it. 


(I mean, besides totally dominating the conversation, of course...)


The book, I think, was a really enjoyable read. I was so engrossed in it I really did finish the whole 300+ book in less than two days. I'm not sure how much of that is because the subject matter is so intimately connected to my own life (I have both a desi connection and some prior exposure to adoption - also, M & I want to adopt one day) and how much of it was because I really wanted to know how the story turned out. I think I'd recommend it, though, because even if you didn't marry into parts of the book it's still a compelling story, especially considering that gender disparity is a current problem in India and other places in the world - this still happens today. By the end I felt like I was on a will-they-or-won't-they roller coaster ride.


As far as the Gori Wife part of the story, a lot of it really resonated with me. Though I did feel that Somer was the least fleshed out character in the book, it was almost like the author was really great at exploring the dynamics of the myriad different relationships among women except when it came to writing from an American woman perspective. Still, so much of what was written rang true for me and for experiences I've heard about from other wives of desis. I was a bit disappointed that the story of intercultural marriage was the stereotypical take on it, unyielding western wife refuses to bend or blend cultures, overly compliant immigrant husband suddenly realizes late into the marriage that he wishes there were more of his heritage imparted to his children. But I guess that, too, is a truth for many people, and perhaps it was even more so in the 1980's setting of the book. And, well, I certainly do know of experiences like that taking place right now among other intercultural marriages, so it's also a relevant story to be told.


I asked Shilpi Gowda on Twitter (Ya'll know I'm on Twitter, right?) if I could post a few paragraphs that I found particularly compelling from the book and got an answer from Harpercollins that I could. First, from the perspective of Krishnan, an Indian-born immigrant to America:



Back in medical school, even after his relationship with Somer became serious, he avoided telling his family about her. They would never think to ask him about a girlfriend: he was not expected to have any extracurricular interests, much less romantic ones. By waiting, he reasoned, he could prepare Somer to meet his family: teach her a few words of Gujarati, expose her to the food. But in reality, he didn't share very much with her about his life in India. She was, after all, thoroughly American, and he wasn't sure how she would react to reports of living in an extended family, or pigeons flying into the living room through windows that stayed open all summer. This love was new and intoxicating, and he didn't want to risk it. It would have required a concerted effort, and more courage than he felt at twenty-five, to bring the two spheres of his life together. As it turned out, it took very little effort to let them remain separate.


He hoped his parents would support him, but if he had to choose between their approval and marrying Somer, he planned to choose Somer. He was in love with her in a way he could never be with a woman chosen by his parents - she was his intellectual partner, and they had shared experiences. In India, such a relationship was unusual, if not impossible. So he chose a life in America, intending to embrace in completely. It was easier for him, and Somer, he thought, to assimilate to her way of life. But now it is clear to Krishnan that he'd done her a disservice. By the time she met his parents, it was clear that superficial gestures wouldn't make up for the reality that they were worlds apart.


And from Somer, Krishnan's wife:


She had always expected Kris to be the one to assimilate to her culture, as he had in the beginning. Even after they adopted an Indian baby, even when he missed home, even when he asked her to go with him. Somer felt she had given so much to their family already. But her mother always said the key to a successful marriage was for each spouse to give as much as they thought they possibly could. And then, to give a little more. Somewhere in that extra giving, in the space created by generosity without score keeping, was the difference between marriages that thrived and those that didn't. Every time Sundari asked one of her many questions about India and its culture, questions Somer couldn't answer and had never asked herself, it made her think there could have been another way. She could have embraced what she tried to push away. A slight shift in perspective, one small change in focus, might have made the difference.


At the bookclub meeting, I was kind of on both sides of the argument. One friend was very critical of the Somer character, and I defended her, saying that this happens a lot, men hide parts of themselves and don't give an accurate picture of what their married life might look like, what expectations might be placed on their new wives. Marrying interculturally takes a lot of patience, a lot of hand-holding, expecting someone to adapt without help, without even being told about it beforehand, is ludicrous. But then I flip-flopped, Krishnan wasn't a terrible guy, who at 25 knows exactly what they want? And shouldn't a marriage be about growing and changing together? It's a complicated equation, one I live every day, and I was impressed with Gowda's ability to navigate experiences like mine so authentically. And even if it wasn't exactly my personal experience, it was thrilling to read about it in a real, live, bestselling novel. 


(And it was fun to wrap up those ladies in a sari, too!)

If You Were Having A Baby

If you called to tell me you were having a baby, or if you Pakistani-style already had the baby and never warned me of its impending arrival, this is what I would give you as a new baby welcoming gift.

My (hypothetical) gift to you!

Mostly, I like to give baby gifts of the variety "things I wish someone had told me sooner so I hadn't spent months searching for." My favorite thing in this category is the book "The Happiest Baby On The Block" by Dr. Harvey Karp. It puts forward a newborn-soothing plan that really worked well for our family. In college, I took some child development classes and on of my professors said that adolescence, as a developmental stage, is something parents just have to get their kids through in one piece for it to have been a successful developmental milestone. I kind of feel that way about babyhood. Sometimes I liken that stage to heroin withdrawal, actually, where methadone sedation through the worst withdrawal effects can impact success in future recovery efforts. As long as you keep them calm, keep them well rested, and get them through it and  to the other side with as little stress as possible, you might be able to shape their temperament into something easier to deal with.

Most of this wholly unqualified theory is based on my sample size of one - my son. I think the techniques we used with him as a baby helped him mellow down into the mostly calm and easygoing kid he is now. I could be wrong, he could have been born with that temperament and it could've just been the luck of the draw, but just in case I'm right I usually give the book to new or expecting mothers I know. If the baby's already been born, there's a DVD version I give instead. If I've procrastinated too long and the baby's pretty much out of newborn stage, I skip it alltogether.

If it's someone I REALLY like, I include my favorite swaddling blanket, The Miracle Blanket. Or as we affectionately call it, the baby straight jacket. Now this is something I really wish someone had told me about earlier. Our kid used to wiggle out of his swaddle in the middle of the night so many times it was maddening.

I even remember when I first stumbled across The Miracle Blanket because it was in the middle of the night. The baby had gotten up one too many times and M and I were up - he was trying to hand-sew two swaddling blankets together, thinking that length was the problem and I was Googling combinations of the words extend swaddle, six month old, and ohmigod please somebody I need slleeeeeeeep. And there, I found the Miracle Blanket. We never even bought one ourselves, actually, we just used two thin swaddling blankets to recreate the same effect, but I still buy it for gifts. It goes hand in hand with the book, because one of the books main points is a good swaddle. 

Other things I give are my favorite baby products. Here's my list of possibilities:

Avent pacifiers, clear:  Avent makes a completely clear pacifier, though they're hard to track down. I liked them best because they screw up pictures slightly less. Instead of some monstrosity in the face of your precious baby in every picture, it almost disappears. Well, not really, but at least it's LESS of a monstrosity. 

Vibrating baby toys: when my son was a baby, I kept one of these on me at all times. I'm the kind of person who doesn't like to hear crying babies, so I've always tried as hard as I could to keep my kid quiet in public spaces. Of course, he does sometimes cry in public, but these vibrating bad boys would always shut him up in an instant. Just pull the string, press it up against his neck, and watch his face go from indignation to "What the hell was THAT?!" instantly. Worked like a charm every time.

The DVD, the swaddling blanket, the vibrating toy and the clear pacifiers. 

BabyGap socks: Baby feet have some magical pair to reject and maneuver out of every pair of socks put on their tiny Houdini like feet. A certain kind of BabyGap socks - not the cuff one - was the only, only kind I could get to stay on for any length of time.

Zipper-only pajamas: before our son was born, we bought all these one-piece outfits based solely on how cute they were. Who could resist the siren song on the pajamas with tiny tools and 'Daddy's Little Helper' on them? Not us, that's for sure. But then the baby comes, and then 4am comes along with a dirty diaper and you're stuck buttoning and unbuttoning thousands of tiny buttons in the dark, looking at those words on your helpless child and thinking resentfully that what would really make him a little helper would be if he'd straighten his legs for a freaking second. So, we learned quickly - zippers only! No matter how cute it is, unless it's zippered you don't want it! We always liked the ones they sold at The Children's Place.

Straw cups: I first read about this way back before I even had kids on Cagey's blog Rancid Raves. She mentioned never having gotten her kids sippy cups and instead moving them straight to straw cups. What stood out to me in my non-child-having days was that she said she never had to bring along any special cup/drink after her kids had reached that stage. Instead she could go into any place of business and get a regular straw and her kids could drink anything. It stuck with me, and I did it with my own kid. It took me a long time to teach him how to use the straw cup though, and later I also read a method for squeezing a juice box a little into their mouths so that they get the idea to start sucking. If I've procrastinated past the point of sending a gift while the baby is still a newborn and the Dr. Karp book isn't useful anymore, I include straw cups instead. Got to get that unsolicited child rearing advice in there somewhere!

Formula Carrier: Most of the moms I know had some difficultly with breastfeeding, so they at least some powdered formula in their diaper bags. If I know a mom is going to be using formula, I usually include these formula cups. I saw a lot of moms with this three serving behemoth, and I know that space in a diaper bag is never enough. I had these little single-serve containers I liked a LOT more and they are really, really hard to find. Lots of people would stop me a playgroups and asked where I'd found them because they were so small, so convenient, and could even be used with only one hand.

This is better than...

...this

Sunblock: Sunblock's not supposed to be used on new babies, but I found one called Blue Lizard that was supposed to be usable earlier than most, and it was rated as among the most effective in a study I read about how most sunscreens are misstating their effectiveness. It's also something that's really hard to find so I give it to new moms sometimes. It's usable younger because it's a physical sun barrier - zinc, I think - not a chemical one.

Lastly, this wouldn't be a post on my blog about intercultural marriage if it didn't somehow tie in with that, right? A lot of the people we know having babies are Pakistanis, and I always like to include something special in those cases.

First, I often include Urdu books. When I was still only a few weeks pregnant, my husband went to Pakistan alone and in his excitement, came back with hundreds of kids Urdu books that all costs a few pennies each. Some were stories, some where school books for preschool and kindergartners. He even had 1st grade handwriting and science and math books for his only-weeks-old fetus! There were some duplicates, and over time we've found newer and better quality books - those were bought from the guy on the next corner from his house and are not really great quality. But they still make great gifts, I think, and you can never start too early for language acquisition, right? Plus, I think a new parent seeing old stories they used to read in Urdu might feel happy and nostalgic about sharing something of their childhood with their own child, too.

Urdu books for kids. The one on the right is an alphabet book, the wolf one is a storybook.

Kurtas for kids: I like to send baby clothes if I can, if I have some new ones lying around. I try to keep plain white baby-sized shalwar kameez for boys just in case, but girls clothes are harder to shop for. Or maybe I'm just boy-biased. (I am, I admit it.) For a close friend I might include a traditional vest and hat decorated with tiny mirrors - they're just so cute! I asked my MIL to bring some on her most recent trip for a close friend of M's who had a baby, but it somehow got left out of the bags. My FIL brought it though, so I'll post a second package of just baby Pakistani clothes.

The only picture I could find of the kind of embellished waistcoat for boys I was talking about, from an earlier blog posting.

Card with name in Urdu: If the kid's Pakistani and has a Pakistani name, I'll ask M or Dulhan to write it out nicely. Sometimes, especially if a Pakistani kid is born in America, maybe the parents haven't even seen the name written out in Urdu yet. I mean, of course they've seen the name in their lifetime, if they grew up in Pakistan, but it's something different to see it AFTER you've had a baby and named it - that's now YOUR KID'S NAME. I know that I'd thought about my son's name in theory but the first time I saw it written out, it seemed like a magical use of letters, and that was in English, a script I see, read and write every day. For Urdu speakers, who might miss Urdu in their daily lives, I think it's a nice gesture. I also have done this for non-Pakistani friends of mine who are particularly interested in worldly type things as well. I haven't always done this, though, especially when the name would have been difficult to spell in Urdu.

Also, a gift reciept, for those who might not like unwanted baby advice.

There are other things I sometimes get too, a particular kind of thick bid for the stage when a kid's whole shirt gets doused in drool, a plastic-y bib for transitioning to solid foods, a favorite kind of disposable table liner, a few other options, but these are pretty much my favorites.

Also, I paid for all these things with my own money, no one asked me to review or compensated me at all for these comments; absolutely none of these companies or websites I linked to even know I exist and I get not a cent from them even if you click over and buy thousands of clear pacifiers. Which you totally should, your friends will thank you!

Trying To Keep Father-In-Laws Happy

As I mentioned, my father-in-law, Abbu, has visited America only once since my husband, M and I were married. And that was for our wedding, more than 7 years ago. I once wrote a post about his visits, and why I think he hasn't come back. Well, all that's about to change. I didn't want to jinx it by writing about it much beforehand, but he purchased a ticket.

But then he tried to back out of it. The government of Sindh, the province of Pakistan where Karachi is and where my in-laws live, was going to change their academic calendar at the very end of the year, with no notice. My father-in-law is a teacher and he didn't want to leave his students to a substitute teacher if the school year was going to be extended another month. Instead he wanted to shorten his trip to 20 days length. "M comes here for 20 days, I'm only staying there for 20 days - I have work too!" he said. The whole house was in turmoil for a week, but thankfully they changed their minds, didn't change the school schedule, and the fight died down. I still wasn't adding a plate to the dinner table just yet, though. I didn't know if he would really show up.

It seems now, though, that we've past the point of no return. Dulhan's brothers and sister have gone to M's family home in Karachi and helped Abbu pack up his luggage for America, they got him into their car, they drove him to the airport, helped him check in, and even had a friend of theirs who works in the airport escort him all the way to his gate. It seems like a done deal now. God willing, my father in law will arrive in America tomorrow evening.

Do you know that I have never - not once - cooked for my father-in-law? He's never, really, stepped foot in MY house. When he came before, I was a newlywed, moving into my husband's bachelor pad. Now he'll be in MY house, eating food I cooked. I feel a bit of pressure. They were even all telling me that he's a really picky eater! I think, though, that he might be picky or even critical of everyone else but I've never felt him to be critical of me, and neither has Dulhan. We think maybe he just gives his daughters-in-law a wide berth.

Here's what we're doing to prepare. I think the man needs a purpose. He works, he teaches, he does all the shopping. He needs to move around freely. We got him a bike. Actually, Dulhan really wanted a bike (even though she doesn't know how to ride a bike) so Chachoo bought her one. They picked a gender-neutral color so that when Abbu's here, he can use that bike. Dulhan's going to stop buying food. We have a local Pakistani owned butcher and spices shop and we're going to try asking Abbu to go to the store daily and buy the day's food needs. He can bike there are back in just a few minutes. He's also going to use his bike to go to the mosque as often as he likes, it's only 2 miles away from our house. We're also going to try having him conduct Urdu lessons with our son at regular timings.

At first he'll only stay here for four days, then we're going to take him to his daughter's - M's sister's house. She just recently had a new baby and that's mostly the occasion for his visit. My mother-in-law came back in March for the baby's birth, and now my father-in-law is joining her to visit the almost 3 month old. They also live near a mosque, within walking distance actually, but not really close enough to stores for him to go out. So we don't think he'll want to stay there more than 2 weeks, and then he'll come back here for a few more weeks and they'll return to Pakistan at the end of July.

Now, here's where I ask you for help. What other things can I do to ensure my active father-in-law stays happy during his visit to America. This is my one shot to prove to him that he could lead a happy, productive, active life here and not just be relegated to Urdu TV on the couch all week and following behind his son through the local Costco on weekends. (Though we did also purchase some Indo-Pak television service for their stay too!)

What else can we do to convince him besides Pakistani TV, a bike, and structured activities with the grandson. The only ground rules are that he can't work legally in the U.S., he's here on a visit visa only, and he doesn't drive (not even in Pakistan.)

Give me your best ideas! Please!