The Gori Wife Life

Eight Years Ago

2011-12-13T09:04:00.000-05:00

Eight years ago today, I married Mian after a whirlwind seven week engagement and only have known him for fourteen months. I once wrote about our wedding day which involved two different wedding functions in two different cities. Today I will tell you about our honeymoon.

It's a short story. We didn't have a honeymoon. The End.

Of course that's not the end - it never is with me, is it? I am nothing if not long winded. My honeymoon was living intimately with my Pakistani mother- and father-in-law for fifty two days. People laugh at me when I say that, like "oh ha ha, you counted all the days?" but believe-you-me, if your honeymoon had been 52 days with your in-laws, you'd have been keeping count too.

M's parents had originally organized a trip to the US to attend their precious eldest son's graduation ceremony and see him hooded with the big D R. Two weeks after they got their visas, they got the "surprise, I'm planning to marry a white girl while you're here' phone call. They had planned to stay two months and our wedding was to be at the beginning of their trip, so really, a honeymoon was never even really discussed. We were all going to be in Florida for the wedding and graduation, and then we'd go back to the DC area where M lived. Since we'd be in Florida, we decided we'd take Ammi and Abbu, (Mian's parents) to Disney World and Sea World. We ended up getting married on a Saturday, holding our Valima on Sunday, attending M's graduation on Monday, going to Disney World on Tuesday, going to Sea World on Wednesday, and flying to DC Wednesday evening.

It was very hectic.

After getting to M's apartment, there was a scuffle about where everyone would sleep. M only had a tiny one bedroom apartment, and his parents didn't want to force the newlyweds to sleep on the couch or something, but we in turn didn't want to make the elderly sleep on the couch. In the end we got an air mattress and M and I slept on the floor of the living room. Ammi and Abbu would wake up early and pass by us on their way into the kitchen for morning tea, where Ammi would try very hard to keep Abbu quiet as long as possible so we could continue sleeping. Sometimes she was almost successful, too.

I actually didn't stay for the whole 52 days, though. I was on winter break in the last year of my undergraduate studies and I had to return to Florida the second week of January. I was scheduled to return to Virginia two weeks later to visit, but by that time Ammi and Abbu would be on their way back to Pakistan. We said our goodbyes at the airport and I awkwardly hugged them both. (Oh, also, while they were here during the first three weeks of our marriage, there were two deaths in their family. Luckily no one ever mentioned that perhaps M marrying me had brought bad luck to the family.)

After Ammi and Abbu were gone our real married life started. Unfortunately I was absent from it for most of the next six months because of school. I flew back to Virginia SIXTEEN times between January and July, but only for weekends and Spring Break. Then in July, finally finished with school, M flew back, we rented a big SUV and we carted me and all my possessions to Virginia for good.

Over the course of two years following our wedding, we would take a few trips and call them our make-up honeymoon. First we went camping over spring break a few months after we were married and called that our honeymoon. Then we went to Niagara Falls and that became our make-up honeymoon, usurping camping because Niagara Falls is such a traditional honeymoon location. Then we got to go to Italy because M's company paid for him to go to a conference there and I got the tag along for only the price of airfare. Well, Italy by far beats out camping and even Niagara Falls, so that got top billing from then on for the slot of make-up honeymoon. After that we stopped and future trips could just be self-justified rather than having to fill the honeymoon gap.

Now, whenever we travel anywhere, we talk about our son's honeymoon instead. M is always insistent that he will pay for our son's honeymoon and send him to all the places we've been. I'm pretty sure our future daughter-in-law will want to choose her own destinations. We'll see though.

Here's to a happy and healthy year number nine!

Passing Up Fame (But Not a Refrigerator)

2011-12-06T23:58:00.000-05:00

Back in 2009, I was interviewed for a magazine. One of the bloggers I'd read for a long time had been writing for a magazine for awhile and she mentioned on her blog that her next story was about people living together in non-traditional living arrangements. She was asking anyone interested to contact her. I thought to myself 'well heck, my living arrangement is certainly non-traditional for Americans,' and I contacted her.

I was interviewed over email back and forth a few times, then several months went by and I assumed the story had died or I'd been cut from it. It had seemed that the magazine wanted an economic downturn spin to the story, kind of like 'we moved in with my parents when I lost my job.' The writer had said she liked my story and wanted to include it to illustrate that larger, multi-generational family living situations are the norm through much of the world, but after waiting most of a year, I figured I just hadn't fit into the kind of story they'd been looking for.

Then finally I heard from her again. The story hadn't been published without me, it'd just been delayed during an editorial shakeup, and now it was back on. They wanted a picture of my family, as well as all of our real names - (which was when I decided NOT to tie it back to this still-trying-to-remain-anonymous blog.) Then a few tweaks with the photo editor and confirmation from a fact checker and the next month, the article came out. I was famous.

I told my family about it, and my close inlaws. I didn't really want all of M's cousins reading it, but Chachoo and Dhulhan read it. I posted it on Facebook. Then I figured my fifteen minutes of fame were up. Then one day I got a phone call. It was an associate producer for the Nate Berkus Show. She'd read my story in the magazine and she wanted to talk more about my life and see if she couldn't include my story as a possible pitch for a future Nate Berkus Show.

I freaked out. I don't have cable, so I'd never seen his show, but I knew him and liked him from his time on Oprah. I also knew his was the kind of show where participants sometimes end up getting free stuff and/or home renovations. People, let me tell you that my tiny house is too darn small for all these people we have stuffed inside it, and our kitchen and bathrooms have never been changed since the house was built in 1975. I have harvest gold toilets. Our kitchen is a postage stamp and we REGULARLY have 5 people in it at once. There may or may not have been some uncomfortable brushing-ups. So when I got to thinking about being featured on the Nate Berkus Show, and the possibility of him helping redo my basement or oh-god-please-my-kitchen, I started to consider that possibly I would kinda maybe want to do that. Now I'm pretty sure television ruins marriages. That's clear by now, isn't it? I have no desire for fame, and the kind of fame reality television shows bring seems to be of the destructive-only variety.

But who can pass up a possible free kitchen!!?!? Not me, I tell you.

So I talked, I answered questions, I tried to really push the one-big-happy-family-in-a-too-small-house theme, and oh, did I mention how tiny our kitchen is? The producer was really nice, and we chatted a bit. I carted out all my witty banter and funny stories. Then later I told my whole family about it and we instantly became huge Nate Berkus fans.

Unfortunately, I never did hear anything back. But then, weeks later, I got another phone call, this time from a producer at the Rachey Ray Show.

I never called that one back though. Rachel Ray doesn't renovate basements as far as I know, nor does she give away kitchen appliances. And I already have some time in my life where I sit in someone's house and overtake the conversation by going on and on about how differently my life turned out from how I was expecting and no one gives me a new refrigerator at the end of it - that's my monthly bookclub meeting.

Friends Who Hate Me (Part 2)

2011-11-28T11:31:00.000-05:00

We left off with M's closest friend telling me that I could consider him a friend and to call him whenever I needed to, and M about to jet off into the great unknown far, far away from me. At the time I was already living in another city in my last year of college, four hours away from where M lived anyway. I would come home to visit every weekend, visiting both my family and my then-boyfriend Mian. I was finishing college, and trying to get involved in the school's Muslim Students Association and taking a lot of religion classes, and eventually, a few weeks later, I converted.

When M found out, he immediately hopped on a plane and proposed. It was unexpected because we didn't talk about religion very much at all, as I've said before he was usually not a very good resource for religious questions I had. The only "our future plus religion as a stumbling block" conversation we'd ever had prior to that had focused on him asking a friend who he considered knowledgeable person on religious questions whether he could marry a Christian - getting the answer that he could marry a Christian if they really were a Christian and not just a lapsed Christian and M kind of trying to coax out of me whether I considered myself lapsed or what. Me becoming Muslim was never on the table as an option -converting wasn't expected and wasn't tied to a marriage proposal. So I was surprised that he proposed.

Apparently, M's closest friend Shane had a different understanding. Later, M would tell me about how he called Shane to break the news of our engagement. He called Shane and told him first that I had taken shahada and converted to Islam. He said that Shane immediately started laughing and didn't stop for awhile. Then he said "Well, I guess you guys are getting married then." M got angry about that and the conversation didn't last long.

Then several weeks went by with M calling Shane and his other friends, Mike and Oliver, and not really getting much back. His calls went mostly unanswered, his messages unreturned. Finally it was Thanksgiving, and M was to fly down and attend my family's Thanksgiving dinner and stay at Mike's house. The evening before Thanksgiving I was supposed to come over to Mike's house so M and I could go out for a movie. My mother even made strawberry shortcake - M's favorite - for me to take to all the guys.

When I got there, M was alone. No guys, no strawberry shortcake sharing. M was so angry he was red. They'd had an argument. M had asked what the heck was going on and Shane had tried to get out of talking about it but then there was a big long discussion about how I was no good, M could get a better girl to marry in Pakistan. You're in America, you have a Ph.D, Shane said, you can pick the best of the best in Pakistan. She's white trash - she even says so herself, Shane said, and she'll never go to law school, she's lying to you and she's just out to get your money. American girls, he said, were just for "playing" - not for marrying. Mike added nothing except that M should think about it some more, he was rushing into his decision to marry. Oliver said I could never be a good Muslim and he knew M wanted to live a good Muslim life, so he shouldn't marry me. M defended me, told them he was sure of his decision. Shane said he couldn't stand behind him, he felt guilty and responsible for the fact that M would soon marry me and later figure out what a bad decision it was because he was responsible for our meeting. He said he couldn't attend our wedding. M pressed him - you're my best friend, he said, I need you there - but Shane said he couldn't, he might not be able to control his tongue and he'd tell M's parents "the truth" about me.

M still hoped his friends would come to the wedding. Shane didn't. Mike and Oliver stood in as groomsmen. Eventually Mike stopped returning his calls too.

Ever since then, it's felt like the situation with Shane is still waiting for the other shoe to drop. A year later M got a phone call. Shane was saying he was sorry, he never should have butted in a said anything, but he was just trying to protect M from what he thought was a bad decision. He wouldn't do it again. I don't know what M said, but he told me it was over, he couldn't have Shane in his life. "You're my family," he said "I can't have anyone close to me that would say or even think those things about you."

Two year later he got an email, Shane was departing for Hajj and wanted to make amends before leaving. If there's anything I've done to wrong you, please forgive me. M replied - you're forgiven, have a blessed Hajj. Three years after that, six years after the blowup and our wedding, M signed onto Yahoo Messenger for just a second (he never uses that anymore, but all the other options weren't working well that morning) and who should send him an IM but Shane.

It was a crazy long IM conversation. Shane saying he's sorry, he was just trying to protect M, that's what a good friend would do. M saying a few things about being disappointed, and how Shane was wrong and how M needed support at a critical time and Shane not being there. Shane saying he said a lot of things he regretted . "I am sorry for what I said about [Gori Wife] before you two got married. I never said anything after you two were married. My intention were always right. I looked at you as a dear friend and I thought at the time that you were being taken advantage of by [Gori.] You were my friend not so I was being protective about you. I agree once you had made that decision I should have stood by you which I didn't. Other people around you didn't care what you did at the time but I did.I went too far with that and that was my mistake."

M saying hey, you're crossing a line by repeating those things again, and forgiving isn't the same as forgetting. Shane saying he wanted M to bring his family to his house for dinner, M saying that's crazy, we can't have a relationship, it's over and done. Shane saying M should just say so if he can't really forgive him, not say he's forgiven but then refuse to ever talk again. M saying he's has forgiven him, but doesn't want to be friends again. There's no path forward from here. The whole conversation was incredibly long and convoluted, and of course I saved every word of it. M and Shane both left it at we hope and pray for the best for you, and then it was done. There's been no contact since but I'm not positive there won't be in the future. I'm not even sure which ending I prefer sometimes.

I still scan the crowds whenever we're at a mosque in Florida, or at a shops near Shane's house. In some ways I'm really sad that M lost his best friend. For a very long time, and even still today, M was really damaged by that. As if he didn't want to be burned like that again so he wasn't going to put himself out there. He's pretty social, but he never brings anyone close into a real, true deep friendship. I had always assumed they'd get over it and one day Shane would come crash on our couch or something. For a long time I tried to get him to return Shane's calls. I didn't want to be the thing that stood in the way of them.

Then later, Oliver got a job at the same company M worked at. I used him like my one path of redemption. I pressured M to invite Oliver for dinner often. We had dinner together 3-4 times a week sometimes, and we always made him a big birthday dinner, three years in a row, even though his birthday was on Valentine's day. M would sometimes just want to come home and chill and have dinner and I'd insist he invite Oliver. It was like I had one last opportunity to prove myself as a good Pakistani wife. But I preferred to prove myself to Oliver instead of to my own husband. I cooked the best foods I could think of - always Pakistani. I talked with him about books and current events and updated him on my law school. I just wanted desperately for those ghosts from the past to acknowledge how wrong they were - how good I was, how good our life was, how good we were together. It's like after being put down so badly I needed to gain the approval of those who had wronged me, and Oliver was the only one I had access to.

After Oliver married, things slowed down. A little time and space helped me realize (at least I think I've realized) that I don't need to prove myself to anyone. We've been married eight years now almost, we have a beautiful boy and a house and a family that loves us. We can be content in that.

And I can try my best to stop scanning crowds whenever we stop near where Shane lives on our yearly trek back home for Thanksgiving.

Friends Who Hate Me

2011-11-23T12:24:00.000-05:00

When I first met Mian, my husband, he had a group of very close friends. There were four guys, we'll call them Oliver, Matt and Shane. Shane was the ringleader and the one M considered his very best friend ever. He was the one trying to get M out of his shell, trying to get him to experience some of the American culture he was living in the midst of. Shane and Matt took M out to shop for new clothes once they realized he wasn't ever going to stop wearing those pleated khakis. They took him to a barber and taught him exactly what to say to get a cool looking haircut. They convinced him to stop oiling up his hair and scalp with coconut oil all the time. They took him out to the entertainment complex the night we met - they're the reason M and I ever met in the first place. Shane even came along for our first date to see a movie.

After we met, I didn't meet his friends for six weeks. He kept talking about this close group of friends and how loyal they all were to each other and how they'd do anything for each other but somehow I couldn't swing a meeting invite. Later I pressed him (and pressed some more) and finally got my friend Jennifer and I an invitation to join them at a pool hall for a fun evening. It was nice, all the guys were on their best behavior and friendly. Later, M told me they didn't want to do it. "No one had ever introduced a girl to the other guys before" he said.

After that, we'd occasionally spend time all together as a group. M was a student, he didn't have a lot of free time, so he'd often combine his social outings. At first it was fine. I've always been a mostly "guys-gal" kind of person, so I was fine hanging out with these four guys. We'd go to dinner or shopping or to a pool hall. They often barbequed at home together. (M and Oliver were roommates, but the other two lived pretty close by and visited often, usually unannounced.) Occasionally someone would throw a dinner party and I'd see them there (this was after other friends got married, the married couples would throw dinner parties. The barbeques were very bachelorhood-ish affairs.) Eventually, I felt pretty comfortable around them, though there were a few strange times when it seemed I was unwelcome or particularly made fun of. I could always take it though, I'm pretty self-deprecating most of the time. And usually after the first awkward hour together things would normalize and we'd have a good time all together.

Soon, though, M's graduation was upon us. He interviewed for two jobs, one in Alabama and one in DC. After a year of knowing each other I'd become his official airport-dropper-offer, and I took him for the first one. Before the second, though, I got a phone call and it was Shane on the other line. That was a first, we had never had any contact except when we we'd been thrown together in order to hang out with M. He told me on the phone that he'd like to be the one to pick up M at the airport because he hadn't been seeing him much lately and he missed him. Somehow it got turned into a big group affair and I showed up at M's house and met the three guys, went with them to pick up Mian at the airport and then we all went out to dinner. I remember talking to Shane about it on the phone and arranging how it would be a surprise, and then M wasn't surprised at all and he told me Shane had already told him he was coming. I felt so stupid. Why didn't he just tell me the surprise thing was out and he was telling M.

That phone call and the weirdness that accompanied it was the first glimpse I had into the next few weeks and how Shane would come to haunt me and my relationship with M. It just got stranger and stranger every time I saw him after that, and then soon turned into something I thought was openly hostile. M had accepted one of the job offers and was preparing to move. I was very sad. I was certain this meant the end of any relationship I had with M. There was no question in my mind we had no long-term future, and his moving several states away just hastened the end of any short-term future we had. I was sure he'd be in a marriage arranged by his parents within the year. I was okay with that, I'd expected it all along, but I was still very, very sad about it. So I was a bit emotional at the final dinner I was invited to at his apartment. All the guys were there, and after dinner they all went out to smoke cigarettes and drink their tea. I went with to drink tea and chat with them and Shane asked me "So how does it feel knowing you'll probably never see him again?" right there in front of everyone. Me and these four guys, and he's calling me out like that. I didn't answer, I just tried to hold it together and couldn't. I slowly, slowly started falling apart, first glistening eyes, then droplets ringing my eyelashes, then frantic batting them away as they started their descent.

M very quickly remembered something he had to do at the school and asked if I'd like to walk with him and I protested, all the time saying "I'm fine, it's nothing..." but luckily he still pulled me away. Then I really got going when I was out of the presence of these three judgmental pairs of eyes. I just couldn't understand why he would want to ask a question like that. Eventually I got it together, M wrapped up whatever task he'd remembered, and we went back. I don't think there was any mention about it again. But then two days later, after M had been deposited at the airport and seemingly out of my life forever, I got another call from Shane. I didn't know what to expect and almost didn't answer. I was sure no good could come out of it but curiosity and nosiness got the best of me and I answered anyway. He was calling, he said, to apologize. He hadn't meant to upset me and he'd also felt very emotional that evening because his closest friend ever was leaving and he also didn't know when he'd see him again. He ended the call by telling me that I should consider him a friend and if I ever needed anything, to please call him.

I was shocked. It made me happy. In the coming months I would think about Shane's phone call again and again. Unfortunately I would think back in confused wonderment, though, as things between he and I went from bad to worse and eventually Shane boycotted out wedding and threatened to tell M's parents "the truth" about me - whatever the heck he thought that meant. Why tell someone to consider you a friend when in reality you think they're white trash, not good enough for your friend, and you plan to work very hard to overthrow their relationship? It still confuses me to this day.

Two (of each) For The Road

2011-11-21T21:19:00.000-05:00

The yearly Thanksgiving pilgrimage to my family home begins. This year in new and improved comfort of a minivan. But as I was packing, I once again was struck by how even small, little things in my life reflect our half-Pakistani, half-American life:

Behold, entertainment for a five year old boy of half Caucasian American, half Pakistani heritage about to embark on a 16 hour roadtrip:

I Have Officially Started Lying

2011-11-17T11:06:00.000-05:00

I have finally done it and taken the plunge. I am a full time liar now. When people ask me about how I became a Muslim, and whether that happened because I married my Pakistani Muslim husband, I say "Oh, I converted before marrying him."

That's not a lie, that's true. But if they press me I'll even say I converted before I even MET him, and that's not entirely true. I said the shahada - the statement of faith that I believe in one God and that Muhammad ﷺ is his messenger - the thing that one must say before becoming Muslim - after I met him. BUT! I starting reading about various world religions - shopping around, really, - well before I met him. I was the assistant manager of a book store when I was 20 and I was responsible for the religion department. Then I exhausted my small community college's entire Religion department course offerings. All 100% before ever meeting M or knowing the first thing about Pakistan. M, was, however, the first real, live, practicing Muslim I ever got to know. (Only once before him, a heavily bearded man in a long white cloak used to come into the bookstore to special order stacks and stacks of some hard-to-find religious material. I never read the booklets he ordered. I think that's probably a good thing.)

Here's why I've decided to change my story. Every time in the past I would say that I converted after we'd been dating for 14 months and then we got engaged, it seems like I can never find any legitimacy again. Not among Muslims or non-Muslims. Muslims will likely always think I'm not a "real" Muslim and I converted in name only in order to marry. Non-Muslims will likely also think the same thing, probably along with things like I "had" to convert because a Muslim man couldn't marry me otherwise (which is not true) or that my husband is controlling (also not true.) No amount of trying to change those perceptions seems to work, but of course it could all be in my own head. Some part of it definitely IS in my own head, and some definitely ISN'T, though it's difficult to say how much.

Lying, though, solves all of that. Whatever they think about my conversion, they don't associate it with my marriage. Whatever part of it is my own issues of searching for legitimacy on other people is gone too, because I've invented my own legitimacy.

I avoided lying in the past because I feel bad about it. Lying is wrong. Of course it is. I don't know exactly what is making me lie now, but I don't really feel bad about it for two reasons. First, it's none of these people's business anyway, really. I'm not lying about anything they have a right to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about. Second, in some ways I think it's not really entirely a lie. The PROCESS of my conversion did start way before I met my husband. I had already read parts of the Qu'ran, I had alreadly taken classes in college that explained the tenets of the faith. Perhaps if I'd lived in a more diverse area I would have even visited a mosque before meeting M. In one of the college classes I took an assignment was to visit a local faith organization other than your own. Had I done that before my marriage I think I would had definitely chosen a mosque.

I did choose a mosque anyway, though. Because I had already converted, and married, I wrote about visiting a mosque. I didn't lie though, I told the professor that I'd recently converted and thought I could write the paper with a different outlook anyway, and she was fine with that.

So at least I wasn't lying back then...

Ghosts of Pardesis Past

2011-11-16T10:31:00.000-05:00

Back in the day, before this blog, I used to say that I'd never met another person in my situation. I even wrote that a few times in the first year of posting here, and mentioned how wonderful it had been to find a whole community of people who knew and had experienced some of what I had experienced in navigating an intercultural relationship. It can be hard to find someone who knows what it's like to introduce your partner to your family and then turn around and explain to them why you'll likely never have a future with this person because of his or her cultural baggage. Or try finding someone who knows what it's like to travel to the developing world with all of their own cultural baggage in tow and stay there for a month without stepping on any toes with "well, in America I'm just not used to seeing children working. Those kids should be in school..." Anyway, it can be strange to relate these kinds of experiences to people who haven't experienced them. But I was wrong, I HAD had a few interactions with people in my situation before, I'd just forgotten about them.

First, I've written about it before, was the wife of one of M's acquaintances. I think the acquaintance was a friend of a friend. However he knew of him, M remembered that he knew a Pakistani guy who had met and married a white American girl. After he'd proposed and I'd accepted and we were in the midst of wedding planning, he sent an email to the acquaintance and asked if his wife would mind reaching out to me since we were soon going to be in a similar situation. M had already cleared it with me and I'd been eager to talk to this woman. But when her email came, while it was friendly, it also made me feel weary. She told me to ask any questions I might have and congratulated me on coming to Islam and suggested links for if I wanted to learn various headscarf tying methods. My own personal shyness coupled with the fact that I didn't cover my hair meant that I never did contact her. Opportunity wasted. After a year or two I'd wished I had - since I felt so desolate at the prospect of never meeting another person in my situation - but it felt like too much time had passed. Later I stopped using that email address and lost her contact information entirely.

Another one of my first resources into intercultural marriage has been around me all my life, I just hadn't realized it. My grandmother's very very close friend had married an Iranian guy and all my life I'd known her and her children. After we were engaged, I'd asked my grandmother to tell her I wanted to speak with her about any insight she'd have into what my future would be like in an intercultural marriage to a Muslim man. A few weeks before our wedding, M and I met and talked with her during Thanksgiving. She has been one of the best resources for me and I thank God for her being in my family. Some of the things she's said have really stuck with me and I've adopted into my life. One I remember in particular is that she said over the years her family had a coping mechanism with her mother-in-law living with them for many months of each year and for years at a time throughout their own green card acquisition process. She said they had a master bedroom and seating area upstairs and that often, maybe even every night, they would retire upstairs to bed with their kids and watch a little television there together while the mother-in-law retired to her own room for bed. This way, they'd get some time with just their own nuclear family. I think that's been really helpful to me. In a multi-generational living environment, my own upbringing of "just parents and kids" can feel stifled and overwhelmed at spending ALL of our time all together in a larger group. In finding ways for our own little nuclear family to be together it strikes a good balance for me that makes me better able to interact as a large group the rest of the time.

Another great benefit to having this close family friend has been that even when I'm not around to explain or defend the things my own family finds strange, she has been there whispering rationality into my grandmother and other family members. So when my family says things like "Are you really sure you want your children having identifiably Muslim names in this day and age?" she was right there to reply "My kids all have Iranian names and they grew up during the Iran-Contra times and they were fine, so her kids will be just fine!" Or if they worry about what it will be like for me to have my mother-in-law living with me, they can think back to her mother-in-law. This elderly woman in her billowing black clothing running around a tiny southern town gathering up secondhand jackets to take back to her country. Then when I talk about my own mother-in-law shopping for gifts, they know something about that, it's not completely and totally foreign to them. She's an example of what a successful and happy intercultural marriage can look like and since it's been around them for thirty plus years, it's something they have always accepted. It would have been so much harder for my family to understand some of these things if they hadn't. They may think that Muslim in-laws living with you spells disaster but they also know that can't always be true because here's this happy half-Iranian family and they've been married forever and have these happy, healthy, uber-successful kids and grandkids. It makes my job of helping my family understand my life choices exponentially easier.She also knows me well and thinks highly of me so she's able to tell them not to worry so much about me, I have a good head on my shoulders and I'm not going to go off the deep end or anything.

My last example is of a meeting that came after M and I were married. I think about a year after our wedding, M met a guy at our local mosque. I wasn't there so I don't know or don't remember the details of their meeting. All I remember is that he told me later he'd met a white convert who was married to a Pakistani-American girl and they'd talked about getting us all together for dinner. I was on board and he made the arrangements and one day we drove off on his motorcycle to the local mall to meet at a Chinese restaurant together. It was lovely. They were also newlyweds, neither of us had kids yet, and it was the exact opposite of our situation. It was one of the most enjoyable dinners ever. It was the first time I'd ever gotten to spend a good chunk of time just dishing with someone else about the things most people find strangest about my life. I think that evening has been part of the reason why I'm so fascinated by the "desi girl, pardesi guy" version of intercultural marriage, it's just so interesting to me to see what it looks like from that angle.

Those are three of the pre-blogging experiences with other people in similar situations. Three small tidbits of a feeling of community, a feeling that other people were out there blazing these trails right along with me and thankfully, ahead of me as well.

Three Years Strong & Urdu Status Update

2011-11-14T12:40:00.000-05:00

I started this blog in November 2008. I haven't been around much to write these days. Back then, I was in my last year of law school and my Mian had just left for a month long trip to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. I had a lot of free time and a lot to talk about. I still have lots to talk about, it's just harder to find the time. So as you can see I've recently been on a bit of a blogging vacation. I tell everyone who asks about it that I have puh-lenty of ideas and I do. I have a "blog post ideas" list with close to a hundred topics on it. Some of them mundane, some of them silly, some of them about lotas. (I have been accused of tweeting about lotas a lot and I want to even it out here on the blog too. I can talk about lotas in many different dimensions.)

One of the reasons I've blogged less though is that I have real, live people that I can talk to about these various stresses and joys or intercultural married life. I've actually met some of the other bloggers doing this thing in person. Several times now. There are other places we talk too, sometimes forums, sometimes Facebook, sometimes email. And one lucky lady even gets to give me free Urdu lessons which then sometimes dissolve into hours-long chats about things other than Urdu.

Oh! Urdu! It was coming along nicely. I loved the classes I was taking mostly because of the amazing teacher. A few of us in class had formed a group that sometimes studied together and progressed on to the next class together. Then, unfortunately, our teacher decided not to teach for the next semester. He was going to be traveling and having surgery. They interviewed another teacher, someone who'd taught Urdu in Pakistan before, and they'd brought her into our class to do a small lesson and observe her teach.

That sealed the deal for me that I wouldn't be continuing with the classes for as long as she was teaching. Not that there was anything wrong with her. She seemed lovely and friendly. It's just that I don't think she could give me what I need right now. I have a good sized vocabulary, I just don't have the means to make the words into sentences. I don't have all the bits and pieces of different verb tenses and the only way I've been able to progress past the bits I've learned just by hanging around my family has been having a teacher who is a true linguist and can tell me WHY the grammatical rules are the way they are. I need it be taught like math. I need the grammatical rules like math so I can learn to just plug in the things I need. During her sample teaching class I asked a question about word use - something about chaning a word into its oblique form and when to do that and her response was just that it was right one way and wrong another. My original teacher had to stand up from the sidelines to flesh out the grammatical rule. I think the new teacher could offer other students a lot, but for me, in my situation, I think I've had years of "it just sounds right this way" and I'm not going to gain much further unless I'm working with someone who can give me the hows and the whys so I can start actually thinking for myself in Urdu rather than just stringing random words together like I have in the past. I've done that enough in the past, as you could read here if you'd like to laugh at me.

Eid Prayers

2011-09-01T08:40:00.000-04:00

A (loud) view from the ladies section of a rented hall at the Hyatt.

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder, Right?

2011-08-29T08:54:00.000-04:00

So I'm back. Maybe you hadn't noticed I've been gone, but I was. Work and Ramadan had me unavailable to blog for awhile, and THEN! I jetted off for a European adventure!

One of the benefits of being married to a research scientist is that he sometimes goes to these scientific conferences, where all these people write scholarly articles, and some of them are accepted into a journal or conference for publication. Then some of those are further selected for oral presentations or poster presentations or things like that. M's company tries to stay on top of developing research in their field, so they have their researchers write papers and sometimes send someone out to attend these conferences.

This time M was among those that wrote a paper, and the only one available to attend the conference. What does that mean for me? Subsidized travel! Since his company is already paying for his air ticket to Europe, and for the hotel during his conference, I can tag along and we can have a lovely European travel adventure for only half the price if would have cost us otherwise. And during the days when he's stuck working at his conference, I can wander around some beautiful city on my own.

We've done this before. My first ever travel out of the United States was for the same kind of setup to a conference in Toronto. That time we just explored Toronto and then drove down through Niagara Falls on our way back to the Buffalo airport. Then, a year or so later, his company sent him to Como, Italy for a conference. We took the opportunity to spend two extra days in Italy after the end of his conference and also saw Venice, drove through Florence and take a picture at the leaning tower of Pisa. We've used other non-conference related work trips to also vacation in San Diego and Florida.

This time, his conference was in Belgium, and we decided to go three days early and see Paris. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to this. I started taking French lessons when I was in first grade. I loved the idea of Paris so much I thought I'd live there as an adult. My aunt told me if I became fluent in French she'd take me there someday, so I also took French for three years in high school. Sadly, all that french is just about gone from the recesses of my brain. The only remnants of my French obsession are the decorations in my downstairs family room. They're all the things I had in my first apartment, an Eiffel Tower lamp, and framed picture of the Eiffel Tower architectural sketch, a tablecloth with some french phrases. I'd never been there but I'd bought all the stuff in advance!

The trip was lovely, just perfect. We left our son at home with Chachoo and Dulhan, my husband's brother and his wife who live with us. Staying in America with his aunt and uncle was the best thing for our boy - a whirlwind trip through France and Belgium would have been too much for him - but it was fairly traumatic for us. Dulhan tells us he was fine, but whenever we called of Skyped he'd cry terribly when we had to hang up. We missed him so much and debated the entire trip back and forth about how we should have brought him and then return to how it would have been extremely difficult and expensive to travel with him. Then we had an earthquake and our boy was terrified of it and crying and my heart broke into a thousand tiny pieces. Then a hurricane was headed for us and I hoped and prayed it'd just wait an extra day or two so we could get home easily without interruption, which it did thank God.

We returned home over the weekend, I slept and slept and slept, and now Monday morning I'm somehow expected to return to my normal life. I had to go to WORK this morning! It's so hard to go to work after a vacation. But thankfully I only have to work for one day before I take my next vacation - Tuesday is EID! Today is the last day of Ramadan and the festival day to mark the end of the month of fasting will be on Tuesday, God willing. We're planning a backyard barbecue bash, which I will tell you all about after I tell you about our trip to France and Belgium. Just let me cut M's head out of a couple of pictures and I'll get right on that.

Eid Mubarak in advance to those celebrating!

It All Happened So Fast

2011-08-04T05:09:00.000-04:00

We went to the US Citizenship & Immigration Office Tuesday morning for Mian's interview. In the last moments the night before, gathering documents, we realized there was a problem. His interview notice called for all passports, all green cards, all former documents. We couldn't find a few of the advanced parole travel documents he'd been issued, but more importantly he didn't even have his current passport, it was at the Belgium embassy here in Washington, DC, awaiting decision on a travel visa. We assumed that would mean needing to make another appointment, but since the interview notice says to keep the appointment and show up even if you aren't fully prepared, we went anyway, disappointed that it probably wouldn't be that fruitful of a trip. I even spoke with my mother on the phone in the morning, telling her the problem and that we didn't know what would happen.

Instead, he was called into his interview and emerged not even ten minuted earlier, triumphant. Across the room he nodded at me, smiling and glistening-eyed. He'd passed his six question test of American history and cultural knowledge, he'd spoken and written a sentence of English, he'd even told his interviewer about his passport problem. Should be fine, she'd said, and given him a slip of paper to bring back at 2 o'clock that afternoon, for his oath ceremony.

After such a long journey, it was finally going to end that very day. He took his oath of citizenship and it was a really wonderful event for our little family. I was lucky enough to remember Faiqa of Native Born and Hey That's My Hummus's old post about her husband's naturalization and I made sure to tell him thank you. Thank you for doing this for our family. For making our future more secure, more firmly rooted in this country of my choosing, my home - now our home.

Did I mention that this all happened 9 years to the day after Mian and I met? How poetic, August 2nd has always been a special day for us. A day when our lives change forever.

Coming to this stupid building for the last time. (Except for all the future times to bring M's family here.) Well, last time for M's case at least!

His welcome to America packet, including a letter from President Obama that starts "My Fellow American..."

M filing into his designated seat to take his oath.

Everyone's capturing the event.

Celebratory iftar/dinner at the American-est place we could think of. Chili's. The place we ate when he met my parents.

2011-08-02T05:14:00.001-04:00

My Mian, my husband, was born and raised in Pakistan. He came to America for grad school and stayed because he met and married me. He was always planning on staying a little while, at least long enough to get some foreign work experience and make some money in American dollars - apparently they save up faster than Pakistani rupees. While he could have very easily stayed in America because of his job (his employer sponsors all their international Ph.Ds in their research group on H1-B visas) the company lawyer said it would be quicker and cheaper for M to apply for adjustment of immigration status, and employment authorization that allowed him to work in the United States, on the basis of our marriage. That's not actually what happened though, as his case took longer than all of his coworkers.

Today is a special day for us, though. Today is M's naturalization interview. The one where they ask him questions about American history and government, and test his English skills. The one where they decide if he can become an American citizen or not. Because of this special day, I thought I should bring you all up to date as to our immigration journey until now:

September 2003 – M (my husband) changes from his student visa statusto OPT (optional practical training) status after graduation and moved several states away for his new job. This allows him to work in the US for about one year after he finishes school. We weren't even engaged at the time, he was still planning on having his employer sponsor him on an H1-B visa, leading to a green card 5 years later.

December 2003 – We're married. We spend the next six months living separately because I had to finish up college and we wait to file any immigration paperwork because we fear that having two different addresses will raise some flags.

August 2004 – We finally live together like a normal married couple and finally file all of our paperwork; M applies for an Employment Authorization Document (EAD) and an Advance Parole (a document which allows him to travel while he's in limbo between immigration statuses) on the “Seeking Adjustment of Status” basis while waiting for our stuff to go through. ($) It would end up being a long wait.

(In the year interim, we go to our local USCIS office every 4-6 weeks to check on things)

Fall 2004 – M has to renew his EAD and Advance Parole. ($$)

September 2005 – We're finally called for our green card interview, about one year after our application. Our interview was even easier than most people's because we weren't asked ANY questions about our relationship. Our interviewer silently flipped through M's file, asked only for our tax returns from the previous 2 years, and declined when I asked if she wanted to see the pictures I'd brought with me. Then she said she would approve his application the same day but wouldn't be able to stamp his passport that day because his “name check was still pending.” We were sent home expecting his green card to show up in a few weeks.

Fall 2005 – Renew EAD and Advance Parole ($$$)

(For the next TWO years we go to the USCIS office every 6 weeks to check the status of his name check. No answers. At one point we got a semi-lucid USCIS officer who suggested there was some problem with M's alien registration number, which is kind of like the social security number of the immigration world. There were two different ones and he was going to petition to merge them. Every other time we came after that the officers said there was NO problem with his A numbers – even when we got the same guy again! We were always told that the hangup was that M's FBI name-check was still pending, that there was nothing we could do to speed it up, no one we could talk to at USCIS or the FBI to inquire into it and that we had no recourse.

Fall 2006 – Renew EAD and Advance Parole ($$$$) Spend 2 weeks freaking out when the EAD takes longer than expected and he is sent home because he's no longer able to work in the US legally. (He was instructed to apply 3 months prior to its expiration, and that year it was changed to 6 months. It's only good for 1 year and he had to apply 6 months before its expiration?!?)

October 2006 – Our son is born. A US citizen.

Fall 2007 – Renew EAD and Advance Parole ($$$$$). M misses out on a great business opportunity where his company wanted to send him to do their stuff in Saudi Arabia during Hajj season because his advance parole has lapsed and it takes months to get a new one.

November 2007 – I contact my Congressman, Frank Wolf. His constituent services office gets back to me via form letters within a few weeks, and every month or two thereafter to say they're still looking into his case.

February 2008 – We make our usual appointment to check out the local USCIS office and are treated more rudely than ever before. Apparently once you've contacted your congressman or -woman, you get thrown into a different line and they don't expect or want you to show up and check on your case individually anymore. It's all supposed to go through your congressional representative's office thereafter. We waited more than an hour for the Congressional division rep to come down, only to hear him tell the officer we were dealing with to do whatever she had to do to get rid of us. When he finally shows up he is so rude he makes me cry. Which I never do in public.

March or April 2008 – I get a letter from Congressman Wolf's office that the problem has been found and it's (gasp!) that he had two different A numbers! It was to be sorted out shortly.

May 2008 – M's green card arrives in the mail!

(The lowdown on the problem: When M came to the US he was given an A number that started with 135 or something, and that's what we put on the application for his green card when there was a box for A-number. Perhaps we were supposed to leave that blank, because for the green card application, he was issued a new A number that started with 9, I think. Whenever we asked if that was the problem - that there might be two a-numbers floating around with different parts of the process in them unsynchronized - we were told that the 135 number was a “machine generated number” and couldn't be his real A-number, so there couldn't be a problem (What the heck ever…) But if he wasn't supposed to have an A number, or put it on the form, then why was there a box that said A-number on that form to be filled out? And if the 135 number was so obviously a “machine generated number” why was half his application under that anyway?)

Anyway, for people who marry an American citizen, after 3 years of being a green card holder, you can apply for citizenship. You can apply 90 days in advance of your 3 year anniversary, so a little while ago M got all his application materials together and mailed them in and we waited. Then we got a notice that his naturalization interview would be August 2nd, and M started studying up for his "Civics Test" questions - all of which are available online at the official US immigration website. I send him random text messages throughout the day like "Who wrote the Federalist papers?!?!" and "Who was President during World War II?!?"

I'm helpful like that :-)

Meeting The Amer-rents

2011-07-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

I wrote once about what it was like for me to meet Mian's parents for the first time. It was just days before our wedding, they'd arrived in America only a few days prior, and in less than a week we were all living in the same house. Whirlwind doesn't even begin to describe it.

How Mian met my parents for the first time was a bit different. After I met him, we were officially boyfriend & girlfriend only one week later. That's pretty much all it took for my mother to start haranguing me to bring him to meet my parents. Well, maybe not right then, but it certainly wasn't a full month before I was being repeatedly asked when this meeting was going to take place.

First, I worried about how to ask Mian to do this for me. It's a strategic dance, modern dating is. I didn't want him to freak out that I was "moving too fast" but I knew that by all accounts asking your 1-month-shy boyfriend to meet your parents did certainly qualify for moving fast! But my parents weren't letting up, my father joined in, and anyway, I REALLY liked this guy and we were already speaking for hours on the phone every single day, so I took the chance.

We went to pick up a pizza once, and while waiting in the parking lot, I sprung the question on him. He responded in a kind of measured way, told me he'd think about it, and get back to me. The rest of the evening was awkward, the pizza was tasteless, and I couldn't wait to get out of there, sure I'd ruined it. I only found out much later that he consulted with his group of close friends about it - all of whom told him it was too soon, too fast, definitely don't do it.

Luckily he ignored them. Or just wasn't able to do what they told him for whatever reason. I can't remember exactly how he told me he'd do it, but he said he was nervous - he'd never 'met the parents' before. Suddenly I had an idea - I could bring a friend! Jennifer, the girl who'd been with me the night we first met, who'd gone on our first date with us, who'd hung out with us in a group many times since then - she'd be perfect! She was my best friend since our early teens, she was close to my parents, close to me, comfortable with Mian, and she'd help deflect attention and keep conversations going. She could serve as Mian's backup. I asked and she agreed, so we set up the meeting with my parents.

I was nervous. It's such a strange thing. Two sides of your life converging. Your parents could end up looking at you like "Who is this girl? We raised her to date THIS kind of man?" and your boyfriend could end up looking at you like "What kind of crazy woman is this if THAT'S the kind of people who raised her?" M was really nervous too. "Backup" as we started calling Jennifer, was enjoying her important role.

We decided to meet my parents at a restaurant - neutral territory. M, Jennifer and I all drove together - he was really pleased with the idea of having backup. When we walked into the restaurant - Chili's Tex Mex - my parents were already there, standing in the lobby waiting for a table. Introductions were exchanged, hands were shaked, and then, my weird parents immediately launched into making fun of Mian for having to bring backup.

My family is a very jovial, joking group. I'd known that would happen. NOW, with the benefit of eight year with him, I know how weird that must have been for M. He took a long time to fully understand all the ins and outs of my family's very sarcastic American humor. But back then I didn't know how different our families were from each other. Looking back, I'm really impressed that M was able to kind of immediately adapt and roll with the punches that evening, to give almost as good as he got and fall into a pace with my mother and father. The dinner went really well, with both my parents telling me later that they really liked Mian, that they enjoyed seeing our interaction, and M saying that he'd enjoyed meeting my parents. They didn't meet again for two months, when I brought M to his first official large family gathering - Thanksgiving.

There are a few things remaining in our lives from that one meeting, though.

First, because the meeting took place before the truth came out about where Mian was from, my whole family knows the Brunei story and still tease him about it sometime. It was actually one of the few faults they found in him during the early days, kind of a "if he lied about that what else is there..." kind of thing, for which I can't blame them and thought myself for a while too. Luckily, eight years down the road we all pretty much know all there is to know about him and it's just a joke.

Second, when I first met him he'd introduced himself with a shortened version of his name - only the last four letters of his seven letter first name. By itself those four letters are a common men's name in America and elsewhere. I found out that his name was longer than that on our first date when I asked him if I could rifle through his wallet, but I just assumed it was the nickname he went by. What I didn't know is that *I* was the only one calling him that nickname, he's chopped his name in half right on the spot when we first met and no one had ever called him that but me. But I didn't know then, and I introduced him to my parents with the short Americanized version of his name. They still call him that. In fact, I still call him that most of the time when I'm talking or thinking about him, just because that's always been the way I thought of him from Day 1. (I call him "Mian" when I'm talking TO him.)

Lastly, ALL of us still call Jennifer "Backup" sometimes - it's our little nickname for her :-)

My First Word of Urdu

2011-07-12T09:07:00.002-04:00

I still remember the very first word of Urdu I ever learned. It was the word for dance, and when I learned it, I thought it was a word in Malay since I still thought my then-boyfriend was from Brunei.

We'd gone to eat at Taco Bell for lunch one day. While we were standing in line, M looked up at the menu board and smiled. Then he turned to me and told me that the word for dance in his language was on the menu board. "Nacho," he said. "It means dance, but like you're ordering someone to do it, like 'Hey you, DANCE! Nacho!'"

Now, everytime we eat Taco Bell I think about that. And do a little dance :)

Happy 4th!

2011-07-06T07:46:00.002-04:00

Hope everyone had a happy 4th of July! We had a good ole American barbecue - with real, live Americans in attendance. And I mean Americans BESIDES JUST ME AND MY SON! A victorious day.

In order to not poison the Americans with "halal" meat from our local shops, which I generally deem fine for our everyday use but was worried about poisoning guests because with burgers, you never know who's going to want medium or rare and our local shops usually cut poultry and beef on the same table. Wow, that was a run on sentence that never ended. But the point of it was supposed to be that I drove to another state to go to a butcher shop I'd only heard of through word of mouth and it was just as great as I'd heard.

Everyone wanted well done after all, so perhaps the special butcher was overkill. But the coleslaw was fantastic, our guests brought deviled eggs to up the Americana ante a bit, and the kosher hot dogs were delicious too, lemonade was ice-cold and the root beer was extra soapy. Pillsbury Funfetti red, white & blue cupcakes finished out the afternoon. And no intestinal troubles reported thus far, so all in all, a success I'd say!

After our America barbecue we went for a local fireworks show. I think it was the first time my father-in-law had seen big fireworks in person. He loved them. And then something that's quickly becoming a 4th of July tradition in my household - funnel cake!

Hope you all had a great Independence Day!

I'm A Secret Muslim

2011-06-27T22:25:00.001-04:00

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

2011-06-22T13:16:00.003-04:00

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

2011-06-19T22:48:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-16T12:23:00.000-04:00

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!

2011-06-14T22:58:00.000-04:00

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

2011-06-10T00:30:00.005-04:00

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

2011-06-06T22:37:00.000-04:00

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!

Memorial Day Celebrations

2011-05-31T09:57:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was Memorial Day in America, a day when we celebrate our armed forces, remembering those killed in past wars as well as prisoners of war and those missing in action. It's also a day when a lot of Americans get together with family and friends for cookouts. My whole family, several states away, had a barbeque. And we did too! I write here about my experiences in an intercultural marriage and that's mostly about my adjustment to the Pakistani influence in my life, but my husband and his family could write a blog all about the exact opposite situation - intercultural marriage and dealing with the weird American influence in your otherwise Pakistani life. For heaven's sake, my sister-in-law and mother-in-law tasted a hot dog for the very first time yesterday. Does it get an more American than hot dogs on Memorial Day?

Actually our whole day was an exercise in the American experience. We all started the day with yard work. We're building a planter in our backyard and it's requiring everyone to pitch in. Then we all went for a dip in the inflatable pool - it was 95 degrees outside during all that yard work, after all.

After that we fired up the grill and then came a little. Pakistani influence. Dulhan spiced up half the ground beef with Pakistani spices because ahe thought plain burgers would be too boring. But don't worry, the hot dogs were unadulterated :-) We also had potato chips, pickles, lemonade and watermelon.

Then, as we all munched on our mostly-American fare, I put on a movie for us. What better way to cap off a day of classic Americana - Superman! Truth, justice and the American way!

Hope you all enjoyed your holiday!

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The Care and Storage of Spices

2011-05-25T21:21:00.000-04:00

LuckyFatima wrote about how she stores all her spices and invited others to do the same. I meant to do it right away, but I wanted to take some pictures of it and wanted to wait around for good daytime lighting, but the light never came, I guess. Yesterday, though, I just decided to do take the pictures in whatever lighting was available when I got home from work - which means, sorry for the bad lighting :)

So, spices. We have a lot of spices. Pakistani food, which we cook a lot around here, usually calls for a lot of different spices in every dish. We use maybe close to 10-15 very, very commonly, maybe almost every day. Then there are weird spices that we use only in a few dishes, maybe we only use them once or twice a month. I'm not much of a foodie, so I actually never really think about spices going bad and keep them around for probably longer than they need to be kept. We do cook for a lot of people in this house though, so hopefully we're cycling through them so fast they don't have a chance to go bad.

For the regularly used spices, we bought some square jars with glass lids and a plastic-y seal from IKEA back when we first got married. They are not airtight, but they're pretty close.

They're theoretically stackable, and in the first couple of months or years we did stack them but it can be a big pain in the butt to un-stack four jars from on top of the ONE spice you need right then, so we eventually decided to make a shelf for them. Which means I told Mian what I wanted and he built me a shelf.

My spice shelf

Here's where my regularly used spices live in the kitchen. They're on one side of the sink - the oven is on the other side, off to the left of where the picture ends. The spices live right between the cutting boards and the water pitcher. It's a bit further away than I'd like from the stove where all the spices actually get used, but I prefer that over having them right next to the heat of the stove.

For most of the spices, you can tell what the are just by looking at them. Red chili powder on the top, in one of the big jars. Yellow in the middle is tumeric (haldi.) Big and small cardamom (illachi), fennel (saunf), cumin seed (zeera), cilantro and onion seeds (dhuniya and kalonji.)

From left to right, cardamom, cilantro seed, tumeric and red chili powder.

Some of them are harder to tell - they're all brown powders - so we've labeled the jars. Z is for zeera poweder, D is for dhuniya powder, G is for garam masala powder, C is for chaat masala. We JUST wrote those letters this year, for the past SEVEN years before that we'd either tasted of smelled the different powders to tell the difference. I don't know what took us so long.

The other, not regularly used or larger quantity spices or ingredients are kept in a pantry off in the opposite corner of the kitchen - on the other side of the oven.

It's usually an unorganized mess, but Dulhan does try to contain my overflow from time to time, so it's only 25% of it's usual messiness here. We keep out atta - whole wheat flour - in the big white metal container on the floor. You can barely see it there because it's covered by a big Costco-sized sleeve of paper cups. The next shelf up from the floor holds lentils (daal) that we use in really big quantities around here. Dulhan and I like to joke that these Bihari men that we married want to eat daal with everything. Sometimes it seems like they can't choke down rice until it's sopping wet under some daal. And strangely, the baby is the same way. He'll struggle with dry-ish rice, but he'll eat daal chaval - rice and lentils together - faster and in much greater quantity. That's the lentils on the next-to-last shelf, the large jars full of small yellow lentils.

On the other side of that shelf is where we keep pre-mixed spices sold in boxes for special dishes. I like to call them the Hamburger Helper of Indian food, minus the hamburger. We use these to make dishes that are really difficult to get the spices right, or very labor intensive, or whatever other reason. I don't usually like to use these spice mixes, but some of them are actually better than what I can make on my own. That's a whole 'nother post on it's own though, because there is some tension over who uses pre-made spice mixes and who doesn't. Another day we'll tackle that, I promise.

On the next shelf up, we store the spices we use rarely, thinks like anardana - pomegranate seeds, amchur powder - unripe green mango powder, and Ajwain - carom seeds. We also keep the remainders here. That's when we buy the industrial-sized bags of red chili powder, but only 1/4 of it fits in my often-used glass jar by the sink. We store the rest here, then replenish the glass jar after it empties.

Those are my spices! They have changed a bit since Dulhan has moved here because she cooks some different dishes than I used to. I mostly only know how to cook Mian's mother's recipes - mostly pure Bihari north Indian style food. Dulhan is Kutchi and they have some different dishes than I'm used to cooking. Some of the rarely-used spices for me are actually often-used spices for her, so some of the arrangements change from time to time. It's not the best system, it's probably not ensuring the freshness or longevity of my spices, but it works for us. As you can see from my kitchen pictures, we are in need of a major kitchen renovation. It's the original kitchen in our 1975 house and hasn't been changed at all. Maybe when we're able to renovate our kitchen, we'll renovate our spice storage system as well.

Babies With No Gestation Time

2011-05-24T22:44:00.000-04:00

One of my Pakistani husband's Pakistani friends from grad school married a Pakistani girl from the same grad school. They just had a baby boy. We never even knew she was pregnant! This is probably only because my husband refuses to use his Facebook page and is woefully uninformed about the goings-on of his friends and family, but it also reminds me of something I thought was weird when I first found out about it: sometimes Pakistanis don't talk about pregnancy until there's a real, live baby on the outside. It's quite a shock when you're not expecting it and you, like me, think of babies as taking some time to appear rather than just magically, one day, showing up.

One of his friends from college back in Pakistan came to America for grad school and told my husband that he should come also. He had already applied to some schools but also applied to the friend's school and ended up going to the friend's school, (mostly because of funding.) About two years after graduating and marrying me, while living in a different state than the friend, my husband got a phone call from the friend; he and his wife had a baby girl! I was like, what? That's a very good friend of yours, how could you not have known his wife was pregnant?

Also, on our first trip to Pakistan, we visited another grad school friend of my husband's. He'd actually graduated the same week I met M, and he'd returned to Pakistan to teach at a university in Lahore. We wanted to travel a bit during our first trip in Pakistan, including seeing Lahore, so he called up his Professor friend and made arrangements to visit. He and his new-ish wife (though they already had one baby) insisted we stay with them for the two nights we'd be in Lahore. They were lovely, wonderfully generous, kind and fun people - the most amazing hosts I've ever had before or since. But his wife was a niqabi - she covered her whole body and even her face in flowing fabric and all you could see were her eyes. I had a headache the first night and we were out until late the next night, so I went straight to bed both evenings and never even got a chance to spend any one-on-one time with her (meaning: I never got to see her uncovered.) So I never saw what she looked like at all, though from what I could see from outside the layers of fabric, she seemed....a bit plump. I am a bit plump myself, so I just thought even nicer of her husband, the Professor friend, for giving the larger ladies of the world some attention :)

You might already know where this is going, but just 7 weeks after returning to America, my husband got an email birth announcement of their second child. She'd been pregnant! We'd stayed with them for three days and two nights, wound through the crazy streets of Lahore together and no one had even mentioned it!

My husband says it's always been that way and that in the circles he runs in in Pakistan, nobody talks about pregnancy. "It's embarrassing," he said. He couldn't say exactly why it's embarrassing, though I think it has something to do with screaming from the rooftops "By the way, in case you didn't already know, I've been HAVING SEX!" He said it was different back then, when you'd still know what was happening. He could see various ladies expanding and hear them asking other ladies to borrow their larger clothes. "Hona walli hai," his mother would say - 'It's going to happen...." though no one ever said exactly what was going to happen. (Or how it happened, actually.) Nowadays we're usually far away from people living in different cities or countries. We can't see bellies expanding or who's wearing borrowed clothes. We just get baby pictures in emails.

(That's not true of M's close family, though. They've gotten advanced in this area in the past decade. So when his sister was pregnant she called to tell us as soon as she knew, and we told them within a few weeks when we were expecting. We've gotten pregnancy announcements even from cousins, so maybe this is changing throughout his entire socio-economic class back in Pakistan - I don't know. I assume different hierarchical levels in Pakistani society treat these sensitive matters differently, also, so it may be the case that the very rich have been speaking openly about pregnancy for decades or something.)

Bad Luck Bride

2011-05-18T11:00:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure when I first learned about this particular tidbit of Pakistani culture - it could have been through my Mian, educating me about where he came from, or it could have been in one of the many fiction and nonfiction books I read about Indian and Pakistani culture. In any event, at some point I heard that when someone gets married - let's say a guy - and if, after the marriage and the new bride's arrival into the (presumably multi - generational) family home, bad things start happening in the family, it might be attributed to the new bride. As if SHE is bad luck, and it is her addition to the family that is actually bringing about the tragedy or loss or hardships. She might end up kicked out of the house, divorced, or worse, just because of superstition and poor timing. I had already learned of this before engagement and our wedding.

Then, not two weeks after our wedding, after me, Mian and his parents have moved into a tiny, 700 square foot apartment to live together for several weeks, M got a phone call from Pakistan saying that his Nana, his mother's father, had died. I was suddenly tasked with comforting my mother-in-law while she was terribly upset about the loss of her father while she had - for the first time ever in her life - lwft the country without him. He would be buried wirh a day and she would never get to say goodbye, never get to see him again. Her only closure was that one phone call.

Still though, I didn't think about the bad luckt hing. Not until two weeks later when M got another phone call. This time I wasn't there, I'd returned to college for the beginning of a new semester and wasn't scheduled to return to my new husband for two weeks. The phone call was to inform M and his parents that his uncle Puppa, M's father's brother, had died.

This time I didn't have to console anyone, at least not in person, though I did speak to my FIL on the phone. I was rendered impotent several states away. And this time I had plenty of time to think about the bad luck bride thing.

To my in-laws EXTREME credit, they never not once not ever said anything even hinting at the idea that I might be a bad luck bahu. Not then and never since. And if you think about it, they wouldn't even have had to believe it to have tried to use it as an unscrupulous advantage. Had they viewed their son's marriage with an American as something truly terrible that they needed to prevent by any means, surely after only two weeks the death of the family patriarch would have been used to try and convince their son to back out of it now, before I could cause any more damage. I've heard stories of horrible inlaws - or maybe they're not horrible they're just desperate to keep their family safe from an impending trainwreck of the unknown - who would do just that.

I was reminded of this last night when we were all looking through old pictures from M's first visit back home after coming to the US for graduate school. He went back for three weeks in December 2000 years before I even met him, and Nana and Puppa are in the pictures. I never met them of course, but I've seen so many pictures that I can still point them out, and I pointed them out fot Dulhan who also never met them. She asked when it was that they passed away and the answer for both is "just a few weeks after N and I got married." So I gave her a "Let's move on from this topic" pleading look because even if my inlaws are lovely and its been eight years since then, I still would rather superstitiously prefer not to highlight the connection.

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Date Night

2011-05-11T01:20:00.000-04:00

PG-13 my behind! Netflix delivered the movie Date Night to our house the other night and I thought, Hey! It's PG-13, no need to check my beloved Kids In Mind Dot Com! Even little thirteen year olds could see this movie, surely I can watch it with my in-laws without discomfort, right? Right?

NO! It was so uncomfortable within 30 minutes I'd buried myself in my cell phone playing Angry Birds. Then my Mian and I decided to throw in the towel and give up, coming upstairs instead of finishing the movie. Lesson learned. Always ALWAYS check movie reviews if you can't stand the discomfort of sexual ineuendo around your inlaws!

Intercultural Dream Home

2011-04-19T22:33:00.002-04:00

Sara (no h!) from A little of that, too and The Big, Bad, Blonde Bahu wrote recently about her intercultual marriage dream home - a home that could fulfill the unique requirements of marriage to a desi. For me, that would mean something similar because both they and I share concerns about having in-laws live and/or have extended visits and balancing those in-laws against the American desire for privacy and closed, lockable doors. I too have an intercultural marriage dream home!

First, it's got to be BIG. My mian and I would like to have more kids, and even adopt some extra ones. These hordes of children won't be getting their own bedrooms though, so perhaps 3 or 4 bedrooms would just be for my own small nuclear family, depending on the number of kids.

Then, there's my husband's parents. They'll soon be living with us for 1/2 of each year, maybe more, and until then they still visit for months at a time. So they'll need their own room. My mother-in-law has had her hip replaced and also had an unfortunate accident years ago that led to a broken ankle, a difficult recovery, and a loss of some mobility. Basically, the Pakistani parents-in-law need a space on the main level, so that they can do all their daily stuff without needing to climb stairs. That means they have to be on the same level as the main living area, dining area, the kitchen, and the laundry facilities as well. On the main level we'll also need at least one guest room, because we have a lot of guests over.

That was my dream home as of a year ago, back before Chachoo and his wife moved into our house. Back then I saw their living with us while Chachoo finishes his graduate school as a temporary favor we'd be doing them. Now, though, I think it's so beneficial to live in an extended family situation that I wouldn't mind if we always lived together. So we're going to need extra space for them as well. And not just a single bedroom either because surely they're going to want to have children of their own soon. So I think we'll need to dedicate at least half of a very large basement to them so that they can have a master bedroom and at least two bedrooms for kids, a small kitchenette, perhaps a family room and at least two bathrooms. Preferably a walkout basement so they can have their own entrance and they won't have to deal with dampness or cold. And the basement should have it's own HVAC system too since they have different temperature preferences than I do.

The rest of the basement can be some kind of playroom or game room or something, I think. A movie theater?

All of my nuclear family will have bedrooms on the upper floor of the house, along with 2-3 bathrooms up there. There should also be a small open room in between all these so that our small family can have some time together if wanted. There's a close family friend I know who married an Iranian man and her house is set up similarly - they all slept upstairs and the MIL slept downstairs - and she says they all used to go upstairs and watch TV together and it was nice to have time just for the parents and their kids. I would like a place for us to do that too.

You know with that many people living in one house we're going to need a HUGE kitchen and a commercial range, oven and refrigerator. Maybe refrigerators - plural. Several sinks and at least two dishwashers. I wonder, now, about how many washers and dryers we'll need. We'll also need a dining room table and chairs to seat at least a dozen, depending on children, and even then no guests will ever be able to sit at our table unless its seats closer to 20 or more.

We're not even finished yet, though. We're going to need an outbuilding. First, my Mian is quite the hobby carpenter and when we were house-shopping our number one concern (seriously!) was whether he'd have enough space for his woodworking tools. We bought a house with a huge 2.5-almost-3 car garage and there's almost never been a car in it. It's just full of tools. So he's going to need a real, honest-to-goodness workshop and not just a garage in our dream home. Then we'll also need a garage - another outbuilding!

On top of his workshop, I'd like to build a little guest cottage for my own parents. They visit pretty often, and it's possible they might end up living with us one day too with the way their retirement planning has gone! They'll just need a bedroom, maybe another small room for an office, a living room and a small kitchen with an eat-in nook. Maybe their own little ambling driveway to the back.

Finish it off with a nice big deck, a small patio off to the side for bihari kabob grilling, and a big playset for all those children! Maybe a nice big garden both as a food source for all those mouths and something for my in-laws to enjoy and work on.

Now, if only I could find a job....for those not keeping track that figures out 9 bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, not including the American in-laws guest house.

Mark All As Read

2011-04-17T22:08:00.001-04:00

***Edited to add link at the end***

I have fallen way behind. I know when it started too. It all started when I went to Pakistan last year for a visit. I'd planned to document the trip as it happened, but as you might imagine, a trip to Pakistan where your husband has over 100 first cousins and his youngest brother is getting married can be a busy, hectic trip. So I wasn't able to keep up with it as I liked any by the time we returned to America, I had only documented the first week and a half of our 3.5 week trip. It took me MONTHS to finish up the trip log.

But that's not actually when I fell behind. I fell behind because while I was in Pakistan, I lost my cell phone. Well, lost and/or it was stolen. Depends on who you ask. I did keep my huge diaper bag on random tables at the the wedding halls and events we went to and didn't monitor it as closely as I should, and I arrived back on the shores of the United States without a phone.

And it had been a cool phone too, a Google G-1, the first Android phone and my first and only phone with access to email and the internet. It helped me keep up with the ramping up blog comments I got, and keep up with the ever-increasing number of blogs I was reading. After it was stolen, I couldn't keep up. When we got back I just used one of my Mian's ancient work blackberries. Except that it was prone to calling 911 from my pocket so instead I kept it off for the most past. Then when Chachoo's wife came to live in America, they got a family cell phone plan and since she'd recently gifted him a nice cell phone in Pakistan, he just switched out his SIM into that and gave me his free phone. No internet though, and no email. (But thankfully no unwanted Emergency responders either.)

But I've finally bought a new cell phone and it has the glorious capacity to access the internet and email whenever I want to. It's a brand new day - a fresh start. Except for a suffocating email inbox that has - seriously, no lie - over FIVE THOUSAND unread emails. And a Google Reader that has over 600 unread blog posts from people who I know and love and have missed reading.

It's been more than a year and I just keep drowning in unread emails and blog posts. I've finally admitted that there's no way I can ever get back on top of this pile and as of just now I've gone ahead and pressed the Mark All As Read button for all the various blog posts I never got around to. Also for all the emails sent to me since December 2009. I apologize if you are someone who just got inadvertently marked as read. But, hopefully this will enable me to - from today onward - to participate in blogging more than I have been. Please forgive me if yours was among the emails/blog posts just glazed over. If it was an important email, feel free to re-send it.

Hello internet, I'm glad to be back!

(Commenter bideshibiya has informed me that this is called declaring email bankruptcy and it's not unheard of! I feel better knowing I'm not the only one.)

Parenting Surprises

2011-04-12T09:03:00.001-04:00

We went to Ohio last weekend. We visited with grandparents and brand new baby cousins, but my son was perhaps most fascinated with their Wii. He'd never played video games before.

It wasn't until we got home that I heard him, asking for his very own Wideo games. Instead of any W-W-Wideo games, he's getting phonics lessons.

(Also, I know the commenting is screwed up. I'm trying to fix it, but I feel way over my head. Hopefully the husband or brother in law will help me figure it out soon.)

A Welcome New Odyssey

2011-03-31T22:36:00.000-04:00

We've been having a big problem. And I just couldn't take it anymore.

We bought a minivan.

You see, we travel a lot. A LOT. Some of my friends have joked that we're gone more weekends than we stay in town. We drive regularly to New Jersey, Delaware, and Ohio to visit my husband's various relatives. We drive occasionally to Florida to visit my relatives. And for the last year and a half we've been doing all that driving - all five of us - in tiny little cars. Our options were a too-little Jeep Liberty, the car we bought when we first married, or an itty bitty Toyota Corolla, the car we bought for me to commute to law school. In December Chachoo, (my husband's brother who lives with us) bought his own car and our options were expanded to include a Mazda 3. Except that's not really an expansion because it's even smaller that the Corolla. But we still stuffed all five of us into it for a drive to New Jersey once. We almost always travel in the Corolla because it gets so much better gas mileage. But the two times we drove to Florida we took the Jeep. It's was the largest of the cars, though not by much, and with a 16 hour drive you really need as much room & comfort as you can get.

It really was too much to ask though, to have poor Dulhan and Chachoo wedge themselves into such a small space. But they preferred it over taking two cars. Since Dulhan moved here, though, I've wanted to buy something with a third row of seats in it. Mian and I actually had some tense conversations because I wanted to buy something bigger a lot sooner and he thought we couldn't afford it. He was right, of course, but so was I that we really needed a solution to our expanding family. The paychecks I've been getting recently helped us to be able to afford it. And when it was decided that my mother-in-law and father-in-law were going to be visiting America this summer, I knew we'd soon finally be buying one.

(I think it's so funny that our impetus for buying a minivan - our expanding family - is seemingly so typical but for most normal people that means another kid on the way. In my case? It means two elderly Pakistanis. Ah, the Gori Wife Life!)

Mian has this way of buying new cars. He went to school with a guy who bought a car this was after he graduated and he's been holding on to the idea for years and was finally able to try it out when he helped Chachoo buy his Mazda. We went to test drive a couple times but when we'd decided exactly what we wanted (A Honda Odyssey) he contacted all the Honda dealers in this area and asked them for their best deal. Once he had the lowest two or three he pitted them against each other - all over email - to get them to lower their asking price even further until he ended up several thousand dollars under what we'd expected to pay. You have to make sure you specify exactly what you want in the car and specify that the price includes all the various options you want and tax, tag and titles fees so that the dealer can't try to up the price once you get there. That was especially true for us because the lowest priced dealer ended up being an hour drive away. It would have sucked to drive for an hour just to have the deal fall through and drive back still at square one. But luckily that didn't happen and if you live anywhere near the DC metro area I can personally vouch for my experiences with Sport Honda in Silver Spring, Maryland. They didn't give us any run around. M says that when they bought the Mazda at a different dealer, they kept going on and on about how they were getting a really good deal and not really treating them very well. That didn't happen with us and every interaction I've had with our dealer and our salesman (Chris Lee) has been extremely, extremely positive. (And we paying for the car ourselves - neither Honda nor the dealer have any idea I'm writing this)

Driving in a minivan - I cannot tell you. It is fantastically comfortable. We all have so much room to spread out and all manners of storage so that there's not a pile of crap in anyone's lap. I used to have the GPS, Mian's & my phones, Mian's shahi supari, and a computer in my lap during drives. A computer, you ask? What, doesn't everyone drive down major highways Skype-ing with their oversees relatives? No, just us? Oh...

We're actually in the car right now as we speak. (As we type?) We're on our way to Ohio to visit Mian's sister (my sister-in-law) who had a new baby girl three weeks ago. Gotta love technology. And minivans.

I'm a convert - I love my minivan! It's just one more product of my strange half-Pakistani life that I never would have expected but end up loving.

A (Short) History of Father-in-law Visits

2011-03-18T11:02:00.000-04:00

My mother in law, Ammi, arrived in the U.S. a few weeks ago. She stayed with us about two weeks, then Chachoo and his wife Dulhan drove her to the midwest where her daughter - my husband's sister - was close to the end of her pregnancy. Close call, too, because my sister-in-law went into labor within 48 hours and now has a brand new baby girl! Unfortunately, my work situation is a bit crazy right now, and we're right at the end of the minivan buying experience, so we can't head out there to visit the new baby just yet. Maybe we'll go in the first week of April.

We'll also be going at the end of April, because my father-in-law will be coming to America as well at the end of April. This is a momentous development.

My father-in-law, Abbu, came to America in 2003 when we were getting married. He'd also been to the U.S. twice before that in the 1990's when he was working on research in conjunction with a university in America for his Ph.D, but he'd only stayed a few weeks at a time back then. In 2003, Abbu and Ammi originally had planned their trip to American to attend their son's graduation. They got their first visit visas on that basis, and those visas were for five years, multiple entry. Later, Mian told them that ..... oh, by the way, he thinks he'd like to get married while they're here and no he doesn't need them to find a girl for him, he's already picked someone out and what? They'd like to see a picture of this girl? Oh yes, let me just send one right now without giving them any notice of what white non-Pakistani picture they've got waiting in their mailbox.

Whoops. That was a run-on thought if I ever saw one.

Anyway, their graduation trip got turned into a wedding trip before they could even blink. Ammi and Abbu stayed in the U.S. for 50+ days. You may have noticed that Ammi has been back to America four subsequent times, but my father in law has staunchly refused to come back to America since his 2003 trip.

I think he pretty much hated it here.

These are my hypotheses: We had just gotten married. During his trip we did a few tourist-y things. We went to Disney World, we went to Sea World, we went to New Jersey to visit relatives, and they went to the Shenandoah National Park for the scenery on Skyline Drive. (I wasn't there for the Skyline Drive trip, I had to go back to school. We were married during winter break and I had to go back to school in mid-January, about 2 weeks before Ammi and Abbu went back to Pakistan.)

Besides those few tourist-y things, we mostly sat around the house. Mian went back to work. I took Ammi and Abbu shopping occassionally - they had a long list of things that they wanted to take back to Pakistan with them - and Ammi taught me how to cook some Pakistani food. I often did schoolwork. We edited our wedding video in the evenings. M did the editing, I picked out pictures and Ammi and Abbu brainstormed about which music to include, but it was still a mostly boring activity. In truth, all of these things were mostly boring - especially for Abbu.

Let me tell you about Abbu. He is really independent and likes to be busy. He worked two jobs all of M's life, as a zoologist during the day and teaching on nights and weekends. He retired from his government post a few years ago and about went stir crazy at home until he decided to go back to teaching. Now he's back teaching at the same school that M and all of her brothers and sisters went to school from Kindergarten to Matric. He's never driven a car and still rides the same tiny motorbike he has for the last 30+ years, a Honda 50cc. He likes to go out and run errands and he does all the shopping for the house. He's not a very expressive man, and I think he shows his love by doing things for other people like running errands. The times I've had to ask him to go out and buy diapers or milk for the baby, he's been extremely happy when he comes back, bursting to show me these things he's bought for us.

Now contrast that with his existence in America, when he's in the house all day, completely dependent on his son and his new daughter-in-law who is almost a stranger to him. Any time he left the house he did so because I or Mian was there to drive the car. No Honda 50 for Abbu here in America.

The only reason he finally did agree to come back was because his visit visa expired and they went to get a new one. Both Ammi's & Abbu's visas expired at the same time, so they just applied for them both again. I don't think Abbu enjoyed his time here, but he didn't go so far as to say that he never wanted to come to America again, he just kept telling us "Oh, not this time Beta, I'll come next May maybe..." even when our son was being born. But when the time came to re-apply for his visa, he did it. And since he's finally received it, and Ammi planned this trip to come see her daughter's newest baby, all of Abbu's children have suggested to him that if he doesn't travel on this new visa, they might never give him another one. He now believes that if they gave him a 2nd 5-year visit visa and he doesn't use it, he'll probably never get another one after this. So he's coming.

Now it is my mission to make this visit different than Abbu's first visit. I don't think it will be difficult. I think that our life has changed a LOT from what it was like back in 2003. We have a house, and a baby. That's comfort and entertainment right there. We live in a better, more accessible location. We're only 2 miles from the local mosque. There are stores that Abbu could walk to - or maybe ride a bike to - very close by. We have several social circles and host and attend dinner parties often. Hopefully he'll find a niche, he'll be able to leave the house of his own volition, he'll be able to run errands and buy things. He can go to the mosque whenever he wants. Hopefully he'll enjoy our friends as much as we do.

I'm trying to think of things I can do to convince him that he could be happy during visits to America. Eventually we'll want him to pursue a green card permanent residency and I feel like this will probably be our only chance to influence his opinion of what living in America would be like for him. I think the biggest hurdle is a job. He's not allowed to work as a visitor, but if I could find/think of something where he could volunteer at that he would find professionally fulfilling, I think it could make the difference. Teaching, maybe - our mosque has its own school and Abbu is theoretically fluent in English. But in practice, it can be hard to communicate with him sometimes. Plus I don't know how Pakistani teaching would translate to American teaching. Some methods used in Pakistan would not pass muster here. Plus, he might not like the idea of volunteering.

I'm not sure what we'll do, it's still mostly up in the air. And I'll admit that some days I still think that I'll believe it when I see it, he might decide at the last minute that he doesn't want to come to America after all. No plane ticket has been purchased yet. As always, I'll keep you all updated.

"BLANK Is Such A Rich Language"

2011-03-17T14:36:00.000-04:00

I have billed over 100 hours at work last week people. I'm sitting next to another blogger who writes about Iranian politics and we've started talking about the similarities and/or differences between Urdu and Farsi and it reminded me of a funny joke me and my Mian always say to each other.

It started a long, long time ago, probably before we were married. We're both always asking each other questions about the other person's native language. We still do that. M will hear some saying at work and he'll ask me to explain it, or we'll come across something in Pakistan and he'll ask me what it would be called in English. I'll ask him how I would say something in Urdu, or like my Urdu teacher, he'll try to think of ways to rid English words from his speaking and he and his brother and sister-in-law will brainstorm about how to say certain words or phrases in Urdu rather than English.

So some language question came up one day a long time ago, and he asked me how I would say something in Urdu. Instead of one single word, I could only answer with a longer explanatory phrase and he asked me if there wasn't just one single word for that and I said no. He replied, a bit wistfully, I think:

"Urdu is such a rich language...."

Then, just a few days later, I asked him how to say a word in Urdu, EXAMPLES, and he told me that he'd say BLANKS, just with a slightly Urdu-affected accent and I said "Isn't there a word in Urdu?" and he said no. So I, sarcastically, replied

"English is such a rich language...."

Ever since then it's been an ongoing joke. Anytime there's an easy way to say something in one language but not in the other, we bring out this joke all over again. We're always going back and forth with it and it's the first thing out of our mouths whenever these language questions come up with unsatisfactory answers. It's like we have some language competition going on (but of course we don't, it's just a joke.)

Recent Updates

2011-03-09T11:56:00.000-05:00

My temporary work project in is the last throes of existence. A week, maybe 8 or 9 days stand between me and unemployment. I have to say at this point I welcome the downtime. Just yesterday, in the push between us lemmings and our deadline, the project manager announced an increase in hours we're expected-slash-encouraged-slash-expected (his words, not mine) to work from a former nice round 75 hour workweek to a future 112 hour workweek starting tomorrow. 112 hours, you may ask, how is that possible? That, my friends, is 16 hour days, 8 days a week. Saturday, Sunday. Add to that a 2.5 hour commute and you'll see that it is not, in point of fact, possible. Not without unethically endangering those on the road with my in an early morning commute to DC. But I will do what I can. Last night, after not seeing my son for the last two days, I climbed into his tiny bed so I could at least spend 6 or 7 hours with him him whilst he slept. Desparate times call for desparate measures, I thought, as I whisper to him and myself "It's only one more week, it's only one more week."

But that's not an update at all, you might say, that's just a plea for pity! Well, perhaps. Here are some actual updates, then:

I met last night with some local bloggers! The Big, Blonde, Bad Bahu and Milwaukee Masala. Lovely, both of them. It reminded me how much I am missing out by being away from blog reading the past few weeks and months. There are so many of you whose blogs I truly, truly love and want to read all the time but haven't had a chance to. I will, though. Expect comments on weeks-old posts coming soon. And new blogs! Ones I don't even know about. I wish I had more time, people, I truly do.

As for my blog, I do sometimes slip away from my workstation to post something small. I'll continue to do that for the next week or so. I seriously think of three new ideas every day about my weird life. They're coming soon, to a computer near you, as soon as I get the chance.

Urdu class is going well too. I'm as eager as ever and my heart has stopped pounding during the last 30 minutes of class like it used to when I realized I was way out of my league. My reading is faster, and we've finally waded into some territory and vocabulary that I didn't already know. It's like the first few weeks everyone else was doing the whole curriculum and I was just focused on the script and reading/writing it. Now we're all on relatively equal footing. There are two other gori wives in my class as well. I invited them to yesterday's meetup but it was too short of a notice. Perhaps they'll come to the next one. We all had so much fun last night that we've pledged the next one will be soon.

Lastly, my own blog. I've heard from a friend who said that Disqus and/or word verification makes commenting difficult for some people, so I plan to change it. Does anyone feel the same way or have any other suggestions for me as far as blog management? Here are The Gori Wife Life, we appreciate your suggestions :)

Pakistani Music, Second Edition

2011-03-02T09:46:00.000-05:00

I wrote before about how my first exposure to Pakistani music was not from Mian but instead was from my Roommate at the time. After listening to a cd from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, though, my second exposure to Pakistani music was ALSO not from my Mian - it was from his friend Muda.

He hung out with three other guys all the time, all four of them and in various combinations of 2 of them or 3 of them - sometimes I was also included. Once, M invited me to go somewhere with M and his friend Muda. It was the first time I ever got to ride in one of his friends cars (M didn't have a car when I met him) and I really liked the music that was playing. They told me it was arab music, not Pakistani music, but I still associated it with M because that was about the only international music I'd heard and I didn't hear it any other place except Muda's car.

A few weeks later, M told me he'd sent me a package in the mail (we lived about 75 miles apart so it wasn't easy to see each other whenever we wanted.) I waited. And waited. And waited. I am not a patient person. I asked M about it but he wouldn't tell me anything about it, not even a hint. Then one day, he told me he'd recieved the package back because he'd put the wrong address on the box. My lack of pateince got the best of me and I drove 75 miles to personally retreive my package, though he teased me that he was going to correct the address and mail it again and make me wait. Inside the package was a copy (copywright infrigement, surely) of the CD and a case with a special inscripted message for me.

For months, I listened to that and only that CD in my car. Even though I couldn't understand the words, I could eventually sing many of the songs from memory. Later, after another trip in Muda's car, I recieved another illegal copy of a CD, this time a Pakistani musician named Faakir. That one replaced my Arabic Groove cd and soon I was singing songs from Faakir's Aatish CD.

To this day, while sitting at my desk semi-mindlessly clicking through documents, occasionally these songs come on my iPod and I smile. They bring me back to feeling like I did in the very early days of infatuation with Mian and everything connected to him.

Still Talking About Baby Urdu

2011-02-24T13:36:00.000-05:00

Just a couple of wrapping up points and things I wanted to clarify about the last post and its resulting comments.

First, I would absolutely never judge anyone who chose NOT to teach their child another language for any reason they might have. I do think that it's a good thing to do, but just as I think that taking a lunch to work is a good thing to do. I don't look down at those who go out for lunch instead. How could I possibly know about others' siutations, motivations? We're all just trying our best in this our, trying to do our best by our children.

Second, even if one wants to teach another language at home, it is HARD. We are all sorts of gung ho about it in my house and even then, one or more of us will slip, will revert back to English. Will repeat a sentence in Urdu too many times and finally give in, translate it to English for the sake of time preservation. And we're not even dealing with a revolt from the kid yet, telling us he doesn't want to speak in Urdu. I can only imagine how difficult it is or will be then. Because I think that's a common experience. I've heard a lot of parents talk about it, at least, about when their children start refusing to speak in Urdu, answer questions in English only. I wonder if its a stage that all kids being raised bilingually go through? Having never been in that situation before or yet, my only thought is to try and persevere through it, hoping that it's a minor power struggle and that on the other side lies more language acquisition waiting.

Third, even if you're dedicated to speaking in Urdu and try your best to surround your kids with Urdu speakers, there's no guaranteeing that they will actually speak to your kid in Urdu. For some strange reason I can't figure out, in my experience lots of Pakistanis seem determined to speak to kids in English. Even Pakistanis that don't speak english will cart out the few words or phrases they do know when speaking to kids. Even Pakistanis that ALSO know that we are trying our best to drill Urdu into our kids, and those who feel the same way, will slip. Maybe they'll say something in Urdu but then immediately repeat it in English, as if the defauly language of children is English. And it's not just for my white American kid, either, I see this happening in Pakistan when we're there to Pakistani kids too (Though I know the motivation there is often that they want their kids to be as fluent in english as possible so that they will have a brighter future, so it's different.)
Lastly, is the flip side of the coin. I touched briefly on it above, the idea of an impending rebellion against Urdu. Maybe it will just be an elementary school age thing, or I've even seen it persist into adulthood, the hatred of a parental heritage language. The last post I wrote about was all about our enthusiasm and overemphasis of the Urdu language in our home, but it's not all Urdu all the time no matter what for the rest of our lives, either. I have two stories that I keep on the other, cautionary side of my brain also.

The first is my aunt's husband, whose parents emmigrated from China and spoke only Chinese at home. My grandmother tells me that they berated their children's Chinese - in an attempt to encourage them to progress and develop linguistically - saying "You speak third grade Chinese!" As a result, my uncle refuses to speak Chinese at all to anyone else, even though he still feels like he can only speak Chinese to his parents. When Chinese solicitors call his house - they have a very Chinese last name - he will say that no one speaks Chinese there. He didn't want to teach their kids Chinese either.

The other story was from a friend of mine in law school, whose parents were from the middle east (I don't remember exactly, but I think one was from Lebanon and the other was from a different, neighboring country.) Once, over dinner and talks about teaching children language, she told me that her parents also emphasized Arabic in their home growing up and while she was grateful for it, she also remembered being a teenager coming home from high school excited to relay some story and having her mother respond to her excited, quick ramblings in English that "Speak in Arabic! I won't listen to you unless you're speaking in Arabic!" and feeling like saying "Well fine, I don't want to tell you anything anymore!"

The point of these two stories is that while we try to encourage Urdu, I don't want to go so far as to poisoin my son's vision of the language, the culture. I don't know if that's even possible, though. Like many commenters said, it's all an experient, I guess. We just have to do the best with what we've got.

Urdu for Babies

2011-02-16T09:55:00.000-05:00

Before my son was even born, we knew that Urdu would be an important part of raising him. It was our intention to shove as much Urdu as we could in his general vicinity, including forcing him to study it into his teenage years, in the hope that he will have some fluency as an adult. The only thing we are intent on avoiding is that he'll feel cut off from his heritage and decide to become a filmmaker and make a coming-to-terms-with-my-father's-homeland movie.

In all seriousness, I think that it can only benefit him to feel connected and comfortable with the places he comes from - Pakistan and America both. We live in America, we speak English all the time and live a regular busy American life and he's close with his American grandparents. His Pakistani half is always in the background, but it's just that - the background. So we overemphasize it in some ways so that it hopefully some of that background sticks. I just want him to be a well adjusted, self assured adult. I want him to know where he comes from, where his parents came from, and to feel as comfortable as possible moving around in the world. Who hasn't heard of a person who has some discomfort with their parents heritage - I just don't want that to be my son. Language - Urdu - is a big part of that.

Not everyone is okay with that. I have heard people tell me that we shouldn't teach him Urdu, for varying reasons, none of which I buy into. That it will slow down his language development, that he's a poor confused baby, that he's in America now with no use or benefit to be derived from wasting his time on Urdu.

I'm not a linguist and I have no background in language except that I am an amateur English grammar freak. But even then I don't actually know how to diagram a sentence, I just know when something *sounds* right, generally. And I use proper punctuation, even in text messages. And I took 2 years of forgettable French in high school. But the methods of teaching language are a mystery to me. I read up a bit when I was still pregnant, and our pediatrician spoke with us after he was born and suggested that we stick to our own languages; M should speak in Urdu, exclusively, and I should speak in English, exclusivery. And that's what we did, mostly.

The baby picked up a bit, but not much. I read and worred that his language development would be delayed because of being exposed to two languages, and honestly, it was. By his 2 year old checkup, his pediatrician said he was supposed to have 50 words and he had only a dozen. The doctor wasn't worried though "Oh, he's being raised bilingually?" she said "Oh then he's doing fine, good job, keep it up!" I talked to other mothers about it too, whose kids were chatting up a storm. Don't worry about it, they said, he's being raised bilingually! I even called out county, which gives free language screenings "Bilingual!" they all said. I couldn't seem to explain it properly. It wasn't that I was overly worried, or that I was considering stopping the Urdu, I just wanted an evaluation of his language abilities. Surely linguistic evaluaters of children would be able to factor in the biligual part into the evaluation of his language ability, right?

Then one day, everything seemed to click into place for him and he was speaking a lot more Urdu and English both. Strangely, it seemed like it was our most recent trip to Pakistan that straightened out his language. Like fianally being immersed in Urdu, even for just 30 days, got him to realize the difference and whens and whos of speaking Urdu. Mommy = English, Abbu=Urdu. America=English, Pakistan=Urdu. Then just a month later, Chachoo arrived. The his chachee, Dulhan. And then his Urdu REALLY picke up.

After Dulhan, the baby's Urdu just exploded. Within the first week, she corrected something that the baby said, that he'd been saying for a long time actually, and I realized that Mian hadn't been correcting him barely at all. He was just so excited to hear Urdu coming from his son that he hadn't thought to correct his mistakes except a few really glaring ones. But Urdu has so many things to get wrong, subject-verb agreement, gender of innanimate objects, levels of respect. As soon as he had Dulhan correcting him, it was clear that helped his Urdu a lot. (And now everyone corrects him.) Dulhan also holds Urdu lessons with the baby, where he's learning the Urdu alphabet and has begun writing the letters these days. Before Dulhan, Mian had a powerpoint presentation of the letters that they used to go through occassionally, but not every day.

Since Dulhan's arrival and ther baby's Urdu advancements, we've even reevaluated our language policies. I'm not sure now that one-language-per-parent is the best strategy for our son. I'm worred about speaking Urdu in front of him though, because if I speak incorrectly, I'm worried about negatively impacting his Urdu. Pidgin, right? But the things I know I say correctly, I try to say in Urdu. It can only help to have as much Urdu exposure I think. Because it's clear that it was increased exposure that helped our son. Before Chachoo and Dulhan, it was just Mian and me around the baby. You'd think that means 50% Urdu and 50% English, but that's way off. ALL conversations between adults in our house, the conversations with the big words, were held in English. Now, I'm a tiny minority and the baby hears lots of new words in adult conversations held entirely in Urdu.

One confession though, I often use Urdu when I want to yell at him in public without being overheard-slash-judged by people around me, especially his doting grandparents and great grandparents. And nowadays when I speak in Urdu, he'll say "No, Mommy, you speak English!" and when I say "Ji nahin, main Urdu bol sukti hoon!" he just laughs at me. Not the best confidence booster, let me tell you.

Impending Sass

2011-02-14T10:37:00.000-05:00

Sass - it means mother-in-law. I call my mother in law Ammi, which means mother in English but has always just seemed like my mother-in-law's name to me. So the title means that my mother-in-law is coming. But in English sass means "having a spirited attitude; possessing an impertinent, insolent, or saucy quality; derived from sassy." Which alludes to the fact that you probably wouldn't want to be in my house in the upcoming week while I stress out and probably yell a bit about getting the place in order before her arrival. I don't know if you know what it's like to have your mother-in-law coming for a visit, but I get stressed and want to make everything look nice and have everything tidy and welcoming. Tidy is not something that comes to me by nature.

She arrives Sunday night, and I have a 70+ hour work week between now and then. Also, my entire main level is in disarray because Mian has been building and painting some built-in cabinets for us. Then comes to carpet cleaning, so the disarray isn't getting any better anytime soon. The in-law's bedroom is mostly okay, just a few things need to be done in there. We painted it blue a few weeks ago, and bought a new down comforter that has to be stuffed into its duvet cover. I'd like to go through the clothes that Ammi left in her cabinet and wash them for her. The last time she came, they'd been in a cabinet for a long time and she smelled like a pine tree for the first few days before I had the sense to wash everything. I'd like everything to be ready and waiting for her this time. I'll also have to cook something special for her arrival night. I wonder, what meal do you think is best for the night after a 24+ hour, multicontinent journey?

My mother-in-law probably won't be staying with us very much, maybe 10 day to two weeks in the beginning, but then she'll be off to the midwest where M's sister is soon going to be having a baby. Ammi will probably come back once in the middle, and stay with us a week or two or three at the end. No definite plans yet. And we'll want to do some fun stuff with her while she's here. So far we've only talked about maybe going to Maine, eating some lobster and going on a whale watching tour. We took her to Disneyworld and Sea World on her first visit, and on her second we took her to Niagara Falls. On her third, we had a baby, so no time for tourism. I don't know what we did last time. Do you have any suggestions for fun things to do with Pakistani parents-in-law between the Eastern seaboard and the Ohio River Valley?

What's The Opposite of Multiculturalism? Uniculturalism?

2011-02-11T08:53:00.001-05:00

Are you married to a Pakistani? Do you ever feel like your life gets a little TOO Pakistani sometime? Perhaps after the fourth uninvited guest drops by your house to visit, preventing you from leaving to take care of your errands. Or after you've eaten through your fourth straight day of biryani. Mayeb you're just tired of sitting in on conversations you can't understand, except when they involve people speculating on your weight, THAT you seem to understand just fine. (That actually happened once. I'll have to tell you about it.)

Well, if you'd like a brief foray away from all that Pakistaniness - a place where you will find no masala at all in anything stronger than a chili dog, might I suggest attending a Monster Truck Rally? I can almost guarantee your husband will be the only brown person there. And the audience will be made to sing and/or several patriotic songs. Then, there will be a lenghty tribute to the various American armed forces, transitioning into a tribute to all service workers such as police and EMTs and doctors. (I made my Mian stand up when they called for doctors to stand. Hey, a Ph.D. counts!)

I joked as we were sitting down that I was positive there was no one I knew in the audience - non of my friends would be that kind of crowd, I thought. Later, one of thr truck drivers signed a t-shirt and was going to throw it into the audience and M yanked our son onto his shoulder and began shouting for the driver to throw the t-shirt in our direction. And he DID! And we ALMOST caught it to, it grazed M's hand and then my hand and then fell into my seat, but the evil teenage girl sitting behind us nabbed it (nabbed it from a four year old boy, I might add.) Later, M said "Wouldn't it be funny that probably the only Pakistani guy here gets the signed t-shirt?"

Minutes later, a coworker of his sent him an email "You almost got that shirt! I saw you on the Jumbotron!" I guess the Pakistani has more sterotypical American friends that I do!

A trip to the museum first, to see a woodturning exhibit (Mian's choice, it was his birthday weekend afterall.)

Pizza at the only restuarant we ever eat at when we visit DC.

Heritage Speakers and Code Switching

2011-02-07T23:21:00.001-05:00

Two separate topics. Two separate questions for you, my dear reader:

First, heritage speakers. Lucky Fatima said this word to me once - someone who grew up with a different language spoken in their home. In this blog post, it refers to someone who grew up speaking and.or writing, to varying degrees, Urdu in their home and who now, as adults, have decided to take a greater interest and attend classes to further their language skills. A few of my fellow students. One in particular, in fact. We'll call her Rude Girl (R.G. for short.)

Last week, back when I was trying my hand at different levels or Urdu class, I was back in the Urdu 1 class and assigned a part of a dialogue to speak out loud. It's very simple, just the first chapter of our book, so I am able to pronounce all or almost all of the words correctly already. The teacher rarely calls on me, I think because of this. Sometimes I'll need a little help with retroflex or aspirated letters, but mostly I'm allright. Towards the end of class, I got picked to speak the part of Mr. Aslam, and another girl in class was picked to speak for John, the doctor from London who can't find his hotel.

She also spoke really well. All her bohots were very bohot, no bohoots to be found. Nice short vowel sounds. (Or long? I could never remember which are which.) Toward the end of the dialogue we stopped talking about John's hotel and instead start talking about Bohri Bazar, a marketplace in central Karachi. R.G. pronounced Bohri Bazar just like I would have and our teacher told her to make her bazaar a little longer in the first vowel sound - baaaaazaar. Then we finished up, and the teacher asked if we had any questions. R.G. raised her hand and said "I have a question. I grew up speaking Urdu and we say bazar, not baaaazar." To which my Urdu teacher - nice and humble and soft spoken - hemmed a bit, hawed a bit, and told her that he thought the longer vowel sound was more correct.

My question to you is - are heritage speakers always this difficult to teach language to?

My comments to her would have been different. Like perhaps a "Why are you even in this class, if you're not open to receiving instruction and/or criticism in order to improve?" or maybe even a "Would you ask that of a teacher who was Pakistani and a native speaker?" Not that I would know what it's like for her at all. The only heritage language we spoke in my home growing up was Pig Latin. But even in studying pig latin would try not to be ain-pay in the utt-bay, if you know what I ean-may.

Now, on to code switching. It's when you go back and forth between two languages. UmmIbrahim brought it up in the comments to my last post. I have no opinion on the matter. I watched (a bit) of this talk about how code switching, where Tariq Rahman says something along the lines that code switching helps keep a language vibrant and most importantly, alive and in use rather than dying out. I can see his point. But my teacher, in his Youtube sensation video, makes a point of saying as few English words as he can, a purist perhaps. I can see the point of that too. And M's family is more the latter than the former, they talk about how beautiful Urdu is and try to use old, some say antiquated words. They (some) even rant (a bit) about the terrible state of contemporary Urdu in Pakistan and how there's no need for it to be littered with so many English words.

What do you think? About both questions!

Tales of Urdu Aquisiton - In The Beginning

2011-02-07T11:56:00.002-05:00

Last week (I wrote this over the weekend and by the time you read it, it will be Monday, so I guess I mean the week before last week) I attended my first ever formal Urdu class. It was fantastic and now I annoy all my friends and family by wanting to talk about Urdu and Urdu class every single waking moment of every day.

I had signed up weeks ago, and fretted in the meantime. I have tried to review a bit in the weeks before but never found the time. There once was a time when I knew the whole Urdu alphabet. On my first trip to Pakistan I even read the names 'Bilal' off the back of a rickshaw and 'Mah Rose' on the sign at the beauty parlor. That was the end of my Urdu adventures for almost five years though, as life got busy and I never had time during law school to continue my solo efforts to tackle the Urdu language. I was really most nervous about the writing. In the seven years of my marriage I have picked up a fair ammount of spoken Urdu purely through osmosis and three Pakistan vacations worth of immersion. I have a good sized vocabulary and a lot of pre-memorized full sentences. LuckyFatima told me once I even have an allright Urdu accent, so that's nice. I thought that would give me a leg up in class and partially make up for the disadvantage in the writing part. I could spend less time memorizing the vocabulary words I mostly already knew and more time trying to get the writing and reading down. That was the plan, anyway.

So then came class day. I had to leave work a bit early and walk to class. It works out pretty well that my classes are only about 10 blocks from my job. Back when I was unemployed, it seemed like more of a hassle to have to get downtown to take these classes but now that I'm working, I'm nearby at those times. I walked to class, checked in at their registration desk, and was told to wait in a room "upstairs at the end of the hall." When I walked in the room there were three people - two caucasian women and a desi guy. I sat down, starting filling out a questionaire given to me by the registration desk, and started introducing myself. Turns out the two white ladies - married to Pakistani men! Hurrah!

More people started coming into the room. Many of them were for the French class and the French instructor came soon after and kicked us out ("Just like colonialism, all over again," someone joked later) so we had to wait in the hallway. I joke "Well, who here expected the Urdu class to start on time anyway!" Turns out our teacher was already in another class, teaching Hindi, and they'd just run over a bit. The director of the language school came by to get them up and moving and as the Hindi students straggled out, and we Urdu students straggled in, I got to see my new Urdu teacher for the first time. And you'll never guess who it is. Mr. Youtube Urdu sensation himself!

I was so shocked - I'd tried to research who the past instructors for the class were and he was not among my researched possibilities, nor did I think he taught language, from what little I knew about him - that I went right to him and said "Hello! My husband stood talking in the back of a hotel conference room with you for more than an hour a few months ago!" I'm not sure what he must have thought about me then, but he smiled nicely at me at least. Class went well. Until the writing/reading part. He was only going over the first five letters of the alphabet but I still couldn't quite keep up. At the end of the 90 minute class, he had everyone try and read tiny starter words and everyone else at least tried, or did in fact read them. I was the only one who stared blankly at my page and finally, defeatedly, said "I can't even begin..." At the end of class, as we were walking out, he said "Now was your husband the actor...?" and I said "Oh! No, he's a computer geek guy." Mian tells me I should have told him about the 0% of his Urdu comment, as that was something they had talked about. But I think I'll keep that emotional scar to myself for now.

During the rest of the week and weekend, I practiced and studied as much as time would allow and by Monday morning, on the metro ride to work, I was able to read very small words. More than just Bilal and Ma Rose! On Tuesday morning, my teacher emailed all the students from Urdu 1 that those of us who felt more comfortable with the script might want to try our hands at Urdu 2 instead. He'd already worked it out with the school's director that we could try one class of Urdu 2 free of obligation, and I decided to try it out. That's how I ended up going to two different Urdu classes this week, Urdu 1 on one night and Urdu 2 two nights later. I actually hemmed and hawed about it for a little bit just because one of those Gori Wives from Urdu 1 had seemed really likeable, but luckily, she also decided to try out Urdu 2, and she's decided to stay in the second level class, as have I.

I still feel like I have a lot of catching up to do in the reading and writing department, but as I told the professor when I was asking his opinion on which class was right for me, I did once have these letters memorized and it might just be a matter of days before they dig themselves out of the recesses of my brain. And I also live as a small minority in a house full of native Urdu speakers, all willing to help me brush up on my language skills. The Professor, I think we'll call him Ustad-ji, said that he thought I might have to spend a week doing catch-up work, but that he thought the Urdu 1 class would keep me behind. With that pat on the back, I decided on Urdu 2. The only sad part is thinking that after these short weeks of Urdu 2, there's no Urdu 3 - that will be it for my language instruction? Surely I won't be fluent or even proficient by then?!
We shall see, I guess. It's already Week 3 out of a ten week class. Of course, just like in real life, this will probably be ALL I talk about here now.

Poetry Night

2011-02-02T10:23:00.001-05:00

I have a story I want to tell you guys, but I have to tell you another story first, kind of as a backdrop. It happened maybe 2-3 months ago and I meant towrite about it right after it happened, but I just have no time these days! I wish one of some uber-loyal reader could accompany me on my work commute and transcribe my words because I swear I have like 4 or 5 ideas for blog posts every day, I just don't get the chance to write as often as I get ideas!

Moving on. This background story needs its own background as well. First, there was a time when all desi people I know were reposting links to some Youtube video of a white guy speaking flawless Urdu. I followed the link, watched the video (understood a little bit of it too!) and then watched it with my husband. I wrote about it here. While watching it I mistakenly asked him how my Urdu compared with the man in the video's - not expecting it to be at all similar but perhaps I have 5 or 10 percent of his skills - and then my husband obliterated my years of hard work trying to absorb Urdu.

Another tidbit of background is that we have these friends. They are a maried couple who are both the Us-born and bred children of Pakistani immigrants who came to America decades before Mian did. They were raised here and are very American, but they also speak Urdu and aften wear Pakistani clothes and participate in Pakistani and Muslim events. We met them at a dinner at a mutual (Bengali couple) friend's house and all three of us couples often hang out together as well. When this Pakistani American couple had a baby, we met their parents as well when we visited them and their new baby. Over time, we saw their parents at various dinner parties and events at our local mosque as well. The guy's father puts on a lot of events to promote the Urdu language and once, at an Urdu book sale, Mian got to talking with him. My Mian gets along really well with 'the Uncles' - older Pakistani men - because he is old at heart. He is only 36 and he is already an Uncle.

So this friend's father was helping to put together a Poetry night to celebrate the famous old Poet Mirza Ghalib, and he asked my Mian if he could attend, if he could also help with setup, and if he could please invite as many people as possible so that the event had some possibility of turning a profit or at least breaking even. Mian agreed to do all three. Then he found out that the main speaker at the event was going to be that same white guy from the Youtube video. I was so excited! To which my Mian replied "Oh, but it's thirty dollars..."

(That man is crazy. I've tried to learn his language and he's going to suggest I not go to an Urdu language event because $30 is too much? Let me tell you what some people might consider too much: having to live half your life not understanding what's going on around you. That's too much. $30 is nothing compared to that. I told his as much (perhaps not in very kind words) and he reconsidered. Not that I have stopped telling people about it. And eventually I did not end up attending because of other reasons. It was really far away, someone had to take care of the baby, and I wanted to encourage Chachoo and Dulhan to go rather than stay home with the baby because I thought it would be more enjoyable for them than me.)

Everyone really did enjoy it and it turned out that my Mian spent almost an hour in the back of the room talking to white Youtube guy. He raved about him when he got home. It turns out that the Youtube guy and Mr. Youtube's original urdu professer were the main speakers at the event along with a man in charge of the organization who put together the event. The organizer was Pakistani and a native Urdu speaker and he spoke in English the whole time! At an event meant to prserve and promote the Urdu language! Even over the boos of the crowd!

Some picture from that evening:

Mr. Youtube sensation himself!

Book fari outside the event hall.

Mr. Youtube's professor

Thank God for Sisters-in-law

2011-02-01T13:50:00.000-05:00

I have been working some crazy hours, with even crazy hours looming in thr future. Right now I'm out of the house 13+ hours a day - that's generally a 2.5 hour roundtrip commute and a 11 hour workday. Soon, though, I'll also be working the same schedule on Saturdays. Most weekdays for the past four weeks I haven't seen my son awake. I leave before he wakes up and I come back after his bedtime. The only days I did see him awake were days he hadn't fallen asleep right away or I left work early due to some workflow problem.

What, tell me WHAT would I do without my sister-in-law? Mian drives the boy to half-day preschool three days a week and uses his lunchbreak to take him back home. But Dulhan takes care of him the rest of the afternoon and then all day long the other two days a week. She has to wake up earlier than usual, enfore naptime even though he's always been a fighter of sleep, and then she even continues his Urdu lessons every afternoon. She spends lots of time each day skype-ing with her family and our shared in-laws, so he also gets to talk in Urdu lots throughout the day. Then - THEN - she even cleans and prepares dinner for us all every evening. She makes sure it's ready at our usual dinnertime (7pm) even on nights that her husband Chachoo doesn't get home until late. (And on those nights she also waits to eat with him, so she finishes dinner hours before she'll even be eating it.)

I cannot imagine how do normal people work full time. I am barely holding the threads together and I have full-time, always there childcare. Snow day? Unplanned daycare closure? Two teacher workdays in a row? Eh, what do I care, I can still get to work on time and I don't have to leave early either! PLUS, the boy's still in his own home, being taken care of by his own family who love him. When I get home Dulhan and I chat for a long time each day about all the cute things he did or said, it's clear that she's as smitted with him as we are. She even takes lots of pictures and videos every day and calls me on the phone when he says he wants to talk to me, so I feel like I'm still apprised of his daily activities. At least once or twice every day Mian or I will look at each other and say something like "What would we do without Dulhan?" or "Alhumdulillah for Dulhan!"

Pakistani Music Exposure

2011-01-21T11:25:00.000-05:00

My first exposure to Pakistani/Indian music did not come from my Mian. I had known him for a few months by then - long enough to know he was really from Pakistan and not from Brunei - and my roommate was in college for musin composition. We both worked together at a Bookstore and Roommate was in the last year of a piano composition degree and forced me to attend recitatls. At the bookstore, you could special order in all sorts of wierd stuff and after we learned that Mr. Mian (not yet Mian at that time since the word mian means husband, but you get the point) was from Pakistan, Roommate ordered a CD, after looking into Pakistani music history a bit. "Pakistan's biggest music star" Roomate told me, was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. We played the CD at blarringly loud volumes in our apartment and looked strangely at each other until Roommate asked me "Do you like it?"

What do you guys say - do you like it?

Developments in Language

2011-01-18T22:01:00.000-05:00

Remember my terrible, horrible, no good very bad Urdu skills? (If you need a memory refresher, a sampling of my Urdu skills can be found here here and here.) Well, that's all about to change folks! I am officially enrolled in a formal Urdu class - it starts next week!

The inspiration for this was actually another gori wife. A college friend of M's married an American girl a few years ago and they were visiting our house. She mentioned that she'd found a formal Urdu class where they lived and I thought "Wha?! If there's an Urdu class THERE, I should certainly be able to find one HERE!" So I renewed my old google searches and though it took a while, I did find a local class. I yelped it, then I emailed the Big Bad Blonde Bahu to make sure her bad experiences with Hindi class weren't from the same place (they weren't.) Then I finally buckled down and sold me old law school textbooks online so I could justify the fee. THEN, FINALLY - I was enrolled! Only 8.5 years after meeting a Pakistani boy and 7+ years of marriage, and I finally might crack this thing.

Wish me luck. I'm alternating between being nervous that I'll never be able to master it and self-assured that I'll walk into the room with a pretty big head start what with the 7-8 years of Urdu vocabulary I've somehow built up by osmosis in my head. After all, I doubt many people in the class will already know how to say "We will become three bad blenders" in Urdu on Day One. Right?

Riiiiiight....

First Brush With Pakistan

2011-01-17T21:42:00.002-05:00

I once met a guy of Pakistani heritage, and he lied about where he was from. And I'm not talking about the year 2002 and the man I would eventually marry. I'm talking about way back in 1997! And I didn't find out the truth about that for 10 years, which makes my Mian's two month lie look like a comparatively smaller deal, I guess.

I lived in California when I was in fourth and fifth grade. I made friends with a neighbor girl and she became the longest lasting friendship I've ever had. We actually were just casual friends when we were young, she was two grades higher than I was and changed both her home and school until we rarely saw each other. But somehow after I moved all the way across the country, we began to write letters to each other. Then phone calls. Then her family came to my state for a vacation and invited me along for a few days. Somehow we'd managed to become best friends strictly through cross-country correspondence. Then, the summer before my senior year of high school,. my parents bought me a plane ticket (I can't even remember the occasion, maybe it was a birthday present or something) to fly back to California and visit for two weeks. It was on this trip that my best friend introduced me to her boyfriend.

She'd met him online, and they'd been dating for a while by the time I met him. I don't know much about him, and I remember even less than I probably once knew, but I remember being told that he was "Persian." I've heard that a lot since, people calling themselves Persian. I always want to say "Oh yeah, show me your passport from Persia, then." On that trip, the details I remember were that he was vacationing with his family in France and I had to use my 2 years of high school french on the phone to ask for him at his hotel because somehow his parents already hated my best friend and might recognize her voice. My friend told me that they'd found out their son was dating an American girl and wanted him to date a girl from his culture - even though his mother was not Pakistani! Also I remember when he got back, we went for dinner and he tried to order something that wasn't on the menu - some delightful potato pasta dish he'd just had in Italy, could the waitress please ask the chef if he could prepare it even though it wasn't on the menu. Turns out it was gnocchi - oh, and did I mention we were dining at that fine establishment known to connoisseurs as The Olive Garden? I don't think he or I liked each other very much, for various reasons. Anyway, they dated for a few years and broke up.

Then, some five years later, I met a Pakistani guy. Then I married him a year after that, and went to Pakistan a year after that. But somehow I'd forgotten all about this guy until maybe a year after THAT. Then, somehow, and for no discernable reason, it occurred to me that Mr. Persian had a VERY EXTREMELY PAKISTANI name. So I googled him, and it turns out that he was Pakistani! And (I think, from what my googling tells me) that his father even started some Pakistani businessman organization or something like that. I can't find any confirmation that his mother was non-Pakistani, but it turns out that he and I have the same profession.

When I was in high school, and my best friend was dating this young, upwardly mobile wealthy guy, I had an interest in boys who were anything but upwardly mobile. We used to have this joke - that one day I would end up living in a trailer in the backyard of she and Mr. Persia/Pakistan's back yard. It didn't seem like Mr. Persia/Pakistan liked that joke very much. (The joke lasted well past the era of Mr. Persia/Pakistan, actually, because my taste in men didn't improve until I met my Mian.) Now, I wish I could somehow talk to that guy and ask him questions. I've always got questions for the children of Pakistani immigrants raised in America, especially if their mother is non-Pakistani! I'm raising one of those kids!

And I'd tell him how my life ended up strangely similar to his. Somehow it amuses me to think that I had a brief glimpse into my future when I met that guy...

Easy Meat

2011-01-09T22:51:00.000-05:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-12141603

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12142177

Southern Pakistani

2010-12-24T02:43:00.000-05:00

Have I told you guys yet that my husband harbors some secret dream to become a good ol' Southern boy? It's not just the Monster Trucks, though it may have started there. He wants to go hunting, he wants to go fishing. He was looking through sale circulars in the mail and told me he wants to buy one of those ubiquitous country boy plaid jackets. He goes to Tennessee to attend woodworking classes. He reads magazines about whittling and takes his carving knives on vacations. He said he wants to retire to a farm one day and wake up at the crack of dawn to milk his cows and/or goats. He is obsessed with trucks and wants to own the biggest one he can find, as well as fix up some old truck too one day. Though he gave up smoking a long time ago, he still wants to smoke a pipe. A pipe! Like he's some old man!

I come from The South but my Pakistani born and bred husband seems to be working harder on embodying the typical redneck persona. I sometimes joke that it's because he's SOUTHERN Pakistani!

2010-12-23T12:02:00.000-05:00

Oh, I forgot to tell you what I got for my Mian for our anniversary. It was my mother's idea. And by idea, I mean fault. She suggested a concert or something, which took me to the ticketmaster website, where I saw a listing for something truly dreadful. Something M went to once during his grad school days and loved. Something he'd recently mentioned wanting to take his son to one day. Something I would never, ever want to have to endure. But because it's our seventh wedding anniversary, and because I know how much he would love it, I purchased it anyway. And at great personal sacrifice (to my dignity, at least) in mid-January I will be accompanying my two boys to a Monster Truck Rally.

(Of course later I told him I was going to COMBINE this present with his birthday next month and he's not getting a birthday present, which he was fine with.)

Various December Festivities

2010-12-21T22:03:00.000-05:00

December is a month of a lot of festivity around here. Not only does it include Chachoo & Dulhan's wedding anniversary, but it's also the month of my birthday and M & my wedding anniversary as well. They're only two days apart. Which kind of sucks. I grew up with a birthday two weeks before Christmas. Usually that's a huge downer and people with birthdays near Christmas end up getting ripped off on the presents front. July birthdays bring huge parties and lots of gifts, but everyone's too busy with Christmas-related events to throw you a party and your relatives and friends already bought a present for you for Christmas that's waiting in their closet, so they don't go all-out on the gift they get you for your birthday.

I didn't actually have this kind of birthday experience growing up though, because my parents were really careful to make sure my birthday was as big a deal as it would have been if it didn't fall in December, so I had nice parties and far too many presents. No combining at all. So perhaps that's why I was lulled into the false idea that it would be no big deal to get married just 48 hours after my birthday. And my Mian has been trying to do the big combo move ever since. Which I adamantly (and angrily) refuse. He gets a big birthday fuss AND a wedding anniversary fuss, yet he tries to slyly COMBO on me. No sir!

This year, he took us all out for breakfast - eating breakfast at a restaurant is something he doesn't like much and I love. Then he'd made a surprise appointment for a manicure and pedicure for me, and he'd scheduled us to go for a movie afterwards. But he had NADA planned for our wedding anniversary so after I got done throwing a fit, we moved the movie plan over two nights and just did a low-key dinner & movie (The Tourist, which despite the bad reviews, I really enjoyed) on our wedding anniversary, which was a Monday night, and Chachoo and Dulhan took care of the baby for us.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that M said we should buy Chachoo & Dulhan a wedding anniversary present "but just this once." So we decided on a gift certificate so they could go to a fancy dinner and since they're limited to what they'll eat out we picked Red Lobster. They said they liked it and it was the best seafood they've had since being in the US. Then they went to a movie, but I don't remember which one. Our local theatres play a few new desi films, so it was one of those. They also bought us presents. For my birthday, despite me forcing M to tell them NOT to buy anything for me, they got me a nice leather wallet that I actually really love and I'm very happy they didn't listen to M! For our anniversary, they bought us blue shirts - also very nice! Then, afterwards, we all agreed no more presents on anniversarys!

Next up is Christmas. Usually the baby and I (and M, if he's available) go back to my parent's home during the years we're not in Pakistan to partake in their Christmas celebrations. This year, I'd hoped to be working and have enough money to go but my upcoming work project just keeps getting it's start date pushed back again and again (and again, unfortunately), so we won't be going. The baby has a Christmas gift on the way from his grandparents though, and he bought them each something too but it's yet to be packed and shipped. I wonder, if I remember to go to the post office tomorrow, how long will I have to wait in line and will it get there in time to be actual Christmas gifts rather than belated ones? We shall see.

Next up - January and all its boringness!

One Year Down

2010-12-12T23:34:00.000-05:00

This weekend saw Chachoo and his Dulhan's one year wedding anniversary. Can you believe it's already been a year since we last traveled to Pakistan to attend their wedding?

Here's a cute tidbit about Chachoo and his wife - they truly believe they will never have an argument. Never! I tell everyone this, and Dulhan says that you can tell how long people have been married by how loudly they laugh. Can you imagine - never arguing with your spouse! This whole topic started soon after Chachoo moved into our house last January. He and I were talking about something, I think I was telling him that he would probably be the silent treatment type during a fight just like his brother. He replied that he and Dulhan would never have a fight. Fine, I said, during an "argument" then. He said they wouldn't have an argument either. Yeah sure, I said, during a disagreement then. He said they weren't even going to have a disagreement! Then we discussed the exact definitions of disagreement/argument/fight and he begrudgingly admitted that they might occasionally disagree about something, but it would never become an argument. He just thinks they're both so agreeable and mild mannered that they'll never argue.

The kicker is that later, when Dulhan came here, I asked her if she also thought that and she said YES! Dulhan also believes they will never have an argument. That when I started saying that I'm going to have to get them to write it down on a piece of paper and sign it so I can present it to them one day in the future. Occasionally I will ask them if they're still argument free and they both say yes - so far.

Join me in wishing the happy couple Happy Anniversary. Do you have any fantastic marriage advice - especially if it's about avoiding disagreements, arguments, or fights?

Tools to Battle Awkwardness

2010-12-06T23:35:00.000-05:00

There are so many wonderful things that come from living in a multi-family system. People keep pulling me aside and whispering "How is it REALLY?" and I just can't stop raving about it. Maybe tomorrow I can make a bullet point listing of all the plusses from our arrangement with my husband's brother Chachoo and Chachoo's wife living downstairs in our basement. But it's not without its hiccups either, though they may be minor in comparison. One of those hiccups is our television. We can't just watch whatever we want anymore. And I think it's only half because of the Pakisani part of my life. The other half of the problem comes from my own upbringing.

The Pakistani part is that there's this "levels of respect" thing where Chachoo - being younger than my husband Mian - has to act in a certain way. He has to be spotless. And Mian, my husband, also has to behave in a certain way - he has to act the part of respected elder. So if there's some lewd joke or nudity on screen, both have to act their prescribed roles - my Mian has to act like it's terrible and Chachoo has to act like he doesn't understand the joke, would be my guess.

The part that comes from my own upbringing is that while I don't think I grew up with very strict parents, I remember not being allowed to watch a lot of movies. I think I was in 3rd grade when Dirty Dancing came out and all my classmates raved about it but I wasn't allowed to watch it. I don't think I was allowed to watch it until high school actually, and only then because it was on TV and they'd cut out the controversial parts. I didn't know that though. I thought the controversial part was the dancing. Surprise surprise for me when I became an adult, bought a copy in the clearance bin at Best Buy and saw for the first time in my life the substantial portion of the plot that gets cut out of the TV version where a main character seeks and procures a back alley abortion! Besides that one example, my mother also had a profanity limit to any movies we watched as kids. If there were more than (I think it was three?) curse words in a movie it got turned off. And there was a lot of fast forwarding too, sometimes it was kids-leave-the-room-and-then-fast-forward, like in Top Gun. I didn't see the love scene in Top Gun until I was 22, and only then I was watching it to help with M's Ph.D. dissertation (which has something to do with movies and computers.)

So that's where my awkwardness stems from - it has roots in both branches of my half American, half Pakistani life. If something untoward comes on screen, I can't just cringe and bear it. It's too awkward. It's not just around my Pakistani inlaws either, I would feel the same way around my own parents. In fact, my parents used to tease us growing up about how awkward it was to see loves scenes with them in the room by telling us "I see romance!" in a sing-song voice. It still gets to me today.

Ever since Chachoo came to live with us almost a year ago, there's been a lot of fast forwarding. When his wife, Dulhan arrived a few months later, it was worse. Maybe because Chachoo and Mian - even though they had that age gap Pakistani respect awkwardness, were able to just cringe and bear it and I was the only one really uncomfortable. But when Dulhan arrived, she felt it at least as bad as I did, I guess. She's the lowest on the totem pole in our house in terms of Pakistani respect, so she has to be the chaste-est and she is the most embarrassed by these kind of not family friendly scenes in movies. Or, she would be if it wasn't for my own weirdness, because it turns out that I usually am the most uncomfortable all the time.

And lest you think we are watching some really terrible movies, let me tell you that this all started with The Big Bang Theory. Do you know that sitcom? It is an entirely nudity-free, perfectly normal prime time comedy show. Thirty minutes of pure hilariousness. We all loved that show, especially living with these current and former graduate student science nerds. Only it was also thirty minutes of agony unless Chachoo and his wife were not home that evening. I tried to find a clip of what I was talking about and I couldn't figure out which one was more cringeworthy: one, two, three, four, or five. We joked for some time about putting up a curtain across the room so that we could all enjoy the show and try to forget about the others in the room. Eventually we just stopped watching it entirely - yes, that's how far this insanity runs, we actually changed our behavior because of it. Even though all four of us are adults, and even though we all individually like the show!

There's nothing I can do to bring back The Big Bang Theory in our house, I'll just have to watch them in my room alone I guess. But movies were still a big problem, especially for movies I hadn't seen yet. Some of the movies we watch are old classics I like to foist upon the rest of the group, but we watch new movies sometimes too. I really didn't want to get caught offguard by one of these uncomfortable situations so I began to google the movie titles in advance to see if there were any scenes I should anticipate. It was then that I found a great resource - movie reviews directed at parents! Now I look up movie titles on http://www.kids-in-mind.com/ or http://www.parentpreviews.com/ or http://www.commonsensemedia.org/ all three of which are really great resources if you find yourself in a situation like me where you want to be able to fast forward through every difficult scene, or, in the case of some movies, avoid them all together. I only wish I'd known about this before our family screening of The Red Violin!

Thanksgiving, Extended Relatives Edition

2010-12-06T01:15:00.001-05:00

Last week, my family and I packed up and drove 16 hours one way to visit my relatives for Thanksgiving. Our first problem was logistics. We had to get me, my husband and our son as well as my brother- and sister-in-law into one car, comfortably, and with enough room to sleep. Because we always do this journey in the middle of the night.

We do it at night for a few reasons. First, Mian doesn't want to take much time off from work and if we leave after work on Tuesday night, he only has to take off Wednesday and Friday - and up until last year his company gave everyone a half day on Wednesday, too. Second, we've never wanted to spend money on a hotel room along the way unless we really had to because everyone was too sleepy to drive. In the first three years after we were married, I was really scared of the driver falling asleep at the wheel and M and I had a pact that we would either both stay awake all night long or stop for the night. Usually I would try to sleep during the day and he would do the entire 14 to 16 hour drive by himself with me keeping him company or talking or dialing his phone for him (because he uses long overnight trips as opportunities to do Pakistan extended family calling.) Another reason we do it overnight came after the birth of our son - it's just so much easier to drive during the hours he would be sleeping anyway. And our pact about both staying up pretty much ended when the baby was born too.

This year I slept as much as I could the day of arrival, then M drove the first two hours and I took over while everyone else slept through the night. The plan was that I would drive until morning prayers and then M would take over and I would sleep the rest of the way. I wasn't able to sleep as much as I'd wanted though, because I'd procrastinated on getting a special turkey from a Muslim butcher shop. My parents had insisted that Chachoo and Dulhan (my brother- and sister-in-law) should be able to experience all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods, so I'd tried to help them by taking care of the turkey part. As usual, I put it off until the 11th hour and had to spend a bit of my supposed-to-be-sleeping time buying and then speed-defrosting a turkey.

Next, after a three hour nap, M and I went to pick up a rental car. We'd decided that in order to make it down south in one go, we'd need a rental car. Our little Toyota Corolla just wouldn't accomodate Chachoo, Dulhan and the baby in the backseat with enough room to sleep. I'd tried to find a way to rent a minivan but it was a very expensive prospect. We ended up doing priceline.com and getting a "premium" car for $25 a day - which after taxes, fees, insurance and a $10/day extra driver fee turned into $50/day. But this was still by far the cheapest option and I can say with authority now that a Chrysler 300 does allow enough room for two adults and a big-car-seated-baby to sleep fairly comfortably on a 14-16 hour trip.

Our plan worked almost seamlessly except for the little hiccup of leaving the baby locked in the car at at rest stop. I'd finished my driving shift and we'd all gotten out of the car for bathroom & washup runs, and we were all going to come back to the car for morning prayers and then be on our way. We were about 3 hours from our destination, and someone - I won't point fingers except to say that it wasn't me but I wans't entirely blameless either - left the keys on the passenger seat while all the bodies were outside of the car and all the doors automatically locked. We wasted almost an hour at the rest stop waiting for the local police (who wouldn't do anything about it) and then a local locksmith who came and then unlocked the car door (for FREE!) After than I was so juiced up on adrenaline, fear and anger than I found it difficult to sleep.

Wednesday was spent helping set up at my Grandmother's house followed by my family's traditional Thanksgiving Eve dinner of delivery pizza. Thursday was Thanksgiving. It was okay this year - not the best it's ever been. A few of our family & close friends were unable to come this year so it was a little sparse. We're used to having a really big gathering and it's always loud and goes too quickly, but it was quieter this year. Chachoo and Dulhan seemed to enjoy themselves, and I heard them discuss it with family members in the car the next night (during the late-night-driving-international-phone-call-session) and they described it glowingly.

The next day was our usual Friday religious services at Mian's old school mosque. Remember when we tried to branch out last year and it went terribly? This year we knew the imam at the old mosque was different because we'd seen the old imam in the news during that burn-a-quran fiasco and he was listed as the leader of a new mosque, so we thought we'd go back and see if it was any better. It was allright - the speech was not about how terrible Thanksgiving was, so that's a plus. But the women are still siphoned off into a separate but unequal building and instead of a fuzzy TV and crackly audio transmission of the speech from the main building, they'd gotten rid of the TV and the audio was so loud I could barely understand any of it. So that's a minus and it basically evened out, I guess. I'm still in the market for a good mosque near my parent's, is what I'm saying.

Because we're getting old and homebody-ish, we actually starting driving home right after Friday prayers. In our advanced age, it is so important to get home with enough time to decompress before having to start the workweek again. The only other thing on M's wish list was a stop at his favorite place in the whole world. It's surplus (i.e. JUNK) shop on our way home. I made him promise we wouldn't stop for more than 30 minutes and he was done after 20, thank God. And he didn't even buy anything. He just wants to look. He loves that place so much that a few years ago he talked it up enough to convince my grandfather, father, and uncle to go there with him even though it's close to 2 hours away from where they live!

The trip back was successful. Not only did we make good time and have Sunday at home - no babies were locked in the car on the way back! Our definition of successful road trip has really sunk, it seems!

Hope those of you who celebrate it had a happy Thanksgiving! A few pictures:

Setting up the tables, chairs, and place settings on my grandparent's driveway.

M and the baby taking a walk before the dinner begins, and Dulhan starting down the line of food choices.

Chachoo also filling his plate. We set the food tables up on the back porch.

Mian showing you his plate full of Thanksgiving food - turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, brocolli casserole, squach casserole, carrot soufle, green beans (and yeast rolls, but those were on the table.)

The dessert table - there are always at least half a dozen dessert options!

The morning of Thanksgiving, we always watch the annual Macy's parade on TV and this year we were greated with bollywood style dancing - a perfect parable of merging my two lives together this year with Chachoo and Dulhan tagging along for Thanksgiving, I thought.

Junk or heaven, depending on who you ask...

Mian, showing you all his paradise.

I was happily waving goodbye.

Some Things To Chew On

2010-11-23T13:23:00.000-05:00

Before I met M, I hear he was quite the cheapskate. Which sounds weird to people who know us in real life because he's still a cheapskate. But what I mean is that he really, really, really didn't spend money on anything but neccessitites. He owned less than 10 shirts. So the first time we were shopping together in a desi grocery store, and he pointed to something on the counter and told me how much he loved that stuff, I wondered why he didn't buy it. "Oh, it's five dollars for that whole box, back home it wouldn't cost more than a dollar!"

The thing he loved and missed was a smallish box filled with 2 dozen tiny packets of seeds. It was called Tulsi, a certain brand name of seed mixture. It was one kind of "sweet supari" or "paan masala" packets. We call them "chalia." There are lots of different varieties but it basically seems to be a variety of mixed seeds, nuts, and/or dried fruits. Sometimes there's chopped coconut or candy-covered fennel seeds.

He didn't buy the box that day but he did a few months later. And when we went to Pakistan the first time and loaded our bags with various things to take back to America, we didn't even think about it. But the second time we went to Pakistan we realized that pillow covers and silver platters are not that practical to schlep to America and we loaded our bags with boxes and boxes of various chalia mixes. Now they're everywhere in our house, in ever vase or covered container - reach your hand in and it's probable that's what you'll find.

I don't chew the stuff - never have. I've only tried the candy covered fennel seed and that was allright. I'm not adventurous enough for the rest of it. And there are a lot of varieties:

This is M's favorite kind. It's called Sunny. When we went to Pakistan last December we brought back 11 boxes JUST of the Sunny variety, and maybe a dozen more, 1-2 each of other kinds M likes. He still runs out of Sunny fastest, though. And anytime a family member comes from Pakistan, he asks them to bring a box or two of Sunny with them. We recently found it available for sale at one of the desi grocery stores we frequent. This is quite a development because back in 2003, you could only find one or two of the most common varieties for sale at one store, but now you can find quite a variety at many stores. Some things never change though, because when M saw the box of Sunny for sale, the first words out of his mouth were "SEVEN DOLLARS?!"

One more thing about Sunny chalia - it was the one thing that disgusted me the most during my pregnancy. I just couldn't take the smell and it seemed to linger for hours!

This variety is called Naz, and M says it's for girls. It's a lightweight's version because it doesn't have any of the hardcore things like areaca or bettel nut, and it's got more of the sweet things in it like coconut and candied fennel.

The reason I decided to write about this topic today is because we're packing up for our annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to visit my family. Baggies full of chalia are a much needed part of any of our road trips and the times we forget to bring it with us are always met with sadness and disappointment. So I was packing up a mixed bag - enough for 32 hours worth of round trip driving!

Happy early Thanksgiving!

Weird Things in my Garage

2010-11-19T13:44:00.000-05:00

I once wrote a blog post about weird things you would find in my kitchen if you visited, but how about some weird things in my garage? Well, first off I guess I should tell you that it would be very, very weird for you to find a CAR in my garage at any time. My husband Mian's all-consuming woodworking hobby has taken up residence in there and leaked into other parts of the house as well. The only (ONLY!) time I ever got a car in there was way back in November 2008 when Mian went to Pakistan and then Saudi Arabia to take his mother for the Hajj pilgrimage and I stayed home by myself. I cleared out enough room in the garage to park one of our cars there should it snow, and I spent the rest of my time either at school or bored to death at home. So bored, in fact, that I started this very blog! So happy anniversary to me!

So speaking of Hajj, and garages, last night if you came into my garage instead of cars - or even woodworking supplies - you would have found quite a surprise. Two dead animals being dismembered. Gross, right? Just one of the perks of intercultural marriage - having to live with things you think are gross. Have I ever told you guys that I was a vegetarian for TEN YEARS? And now I have cow and goat parts all up in my freezer. (I took a picture but I'm going to put it way at the end of the post and separate it by a jump break so that those of you who don't want to see raw meat hopefully won't have to.)

(For those who may be wondering, the animals have to do with a Muslim holiday that was on Tuesday called Eid ul Adha, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage. The Hajj pilgrimage is mostly a set of rituals meant to celebrate and re-create the parable of Abraham (صلى الله عليه وسلم). You know, the one where he's asked by God to sacrifice his son and ends up sacrificing an animal instead? Well, there's a lot of other stuff in there too, but that explains why this particular holiday ends up with a dead animal. In fact, each adult has to - if they can - sacrifice an animal on this Eid. And there's some math involved, because a goat or sheep only counts for one person, and a cow or camel count for 7 people, so you can go in together with your friends or family on a cow. Just what you always wanted - 1/7 of a dead cow! In your garage!)

The goat was particularly bad. because my Mian had decided he wanted to sacrifice his own animal this year. He contacted a local farm and headed up there on Eid day after we were done with the Eid day early morning religious service. Then he came back with two ominous black trash bags. Mmmmm.... hygienic! The cow wasn't that bad - it was Dulhan's cow and they had just placed their order with the local Muslim butcher and picked it up, so it looked more like meat and less like animal. (I KNOW those are the same things, okay - I'm just saying it was less gory and graphic, and I was able to stay in the area rather than running inside retching a bit.)

The baby and I had gone to his preschool after Eid prayers. His class was going on a field trip to a local restaurant and I figured that first, there's going to be plenty of stuff he'll miss out on because of his religion or paternally inherited culture - like half his winter vacations because he'll be visiting Pakistan - why start so early? And second, I didn't think he was ready to go to the slaughterhouse at this age, though Mian said there were kids there his age. No, just no. Whenever he decides on his own that he'd like to make the connection between the farm animals in his fuzzy board books and the ones on his dinner plate, then maybe I'l think about it. Maybe.

The rest of the day was spent preparing for our Eid party. It's such a drag when Eid falls on a weekday, (go read what Faiqa wrote about that particular suckage, it's a great post) but we were determined to make the most of it anyway. So we threw a party and cooked one of my favorite favorite things to serve - Halva Poori! (Recipes here.) It's thin flatbread that's deep-fried (!!!) and served with all these sweet and salty snack-ish kind of things. Curried chickpeas and potatoes and sweet halva (semolina, kind of like a cream of wheat pudding.) Dulhan made some smoky ground beef and we made this vermicelli pudding dessert called doodh sewaiyen.

Unfortunately because it's a weekday and a lot of our friends and either sick or have recently moved out of town, there were only a handful of people. But it was still very nice and a lot of fun! Last Eid was a three-day extravaganza, though, so it was hard not to compare it to how much fun that had been. And very soon afterward we were all elbow deep in dead animal flesh and hard at work, and then Eid was over.

I hope you all had a lovely Eid. Tell me, what did you do for Eid?

Mian and chachoo at the slaughterhouse, trying to keep the goat still but comfortable. He was very khurant, a new word the baby and I learned that means something like difficult animal.

Dulhan did mendhi for me until 1:30 at night.

Meat pictures below:

A view of my garage. Beef, beef, everywhere. Dulhan gets Mian another baggie while Chachoo labels them.

Not even half of the beef, and there's still all that goat as well.

My freezer, full to the brim with cow.

Battle of Birthday Traditions

2010-11-11T09:19:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was Dulhan's birthday. We were all still awake and chatting at midnight, so we all said Happy Birthday to her and then Chachoo went to get his hidden bouquet of flowers and birthday cake. So we enjoyed Boston Cream Pie style cake at 12:15. Dulhan had already begun recieving birthday congratulations phone calls at that point as well. And somehow her family timed it perfectly so that in the middle of the day, DHL delivered a birthday package for her all the way from Karachi with a present (some clothes) and a whole bushel of birthday cards, one from every family member including all the children. They were so cute.

We went out for dinner and ice cream last night to celebrate and M, the baby and I all gave Dulhan gifts. I got her a sweater and the baby got her a small stuffed penguin. She likes penguins. At Target, the baby had first selected a Zebra. But since his name starts with Z, he seems to think that he and zebras are one in the same. When he sees any zebra he says "Look, it's me!" So I knew that letting him get a zebra for Dulhan would end up in some confusion about whose room the zebra should stay in afterwards. So penguin it was. My mian had one and only one idea. Very practical. Some winter gloves. I insisted that HE should pick out his own present for her so when he never thought of anything else, gloves is what she got. Chachoo had bought her a sweater (oh no, too many sweaters) and a mug and a card.

There was a battle of birthday traditions, though. When the cake came out, I tracked down some candles and tried to convince them to put the proper number of candles on the cake - 28. My American childhood tradition of putting the same number of candles on the cake as years you've turned lost out to their tradition of only putting ONE candle. And then cleaning it and saving it afterward for future use because "It's still new!"

I was triumphant for a later battle though - one I've been fighting for a long time - the wrapping paper. I insisted that they tear away with abadon. That's half the fun of opening presents, going crazy on the wrapping paper. M and his family have always been careful tape peelers and used wrapping paper folders, and it seems Dulhan hails from the same stock. But I insisted (and maybe even helped a little) and we tore that wrapping paper all the heck up:

Well, the pink one is torn. I had to do the polka dotted one, but somehow the blue flowery one survived.

Three Things I Love

2010-11-08T16:06:00.000-05:00

I saw this commercial on The Huffington Post today and it has three things I love in it - American Express, Conan O'Brien, and white guys speaking terrible Urdu/Hindi. I heart anything that makes me think "Well, at least I can speak better than THAT!"

I thought you guys might like it too. Watch Conan tonight! Do it for me, because I don't have any cable service and will instead be forced to scour the internet for free clips tomorrow.

Oh yeah, and no one paid me to endorse Conan O'brien. I've been staying up way past bedtime to watch his show since high school. And no one asked to me say I love American Express either. And white peopl speaking terrible Urdu? I only WISH there was some company out there paying for that service!

Well, not JUST White People...

2010-11-04T10:20:00.000-04:00

Sorry about the crickets here. My parents were visiting. Behold: I am hilarious!

I'll think up some drivel to share with you tomorrow, m'kay?

Hamburger Helper - Yes; Rocky Horror - No

2010-10-28T01:33:00.002-04:00

Today I came across two thing that I think are uniquely American.

First, this morning, I read around the internet that a popular television show called Glee did a remake or performance or something of the 1975 cult classic, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's a strange little movie with a cult following, and I grew up in a house that always contained a copy of the movie. So I don't even really remember the first time I saw it. I do remember that once my best friend Jennifer's parents traveled out of town while we were still in high school and I went to her house to stay the night with her because she didn't want to sleep in an empty house. She fell asleep early and when a television station began airing Rocky Horror at 2am, I tried to wake her up to watch it with me. The next morning she thought it had all been some bizarre, horrifying dream. But no - that's just Rocky Horror!

My first thought was that I had to track down this Glee show - we don't have cable or TV service, so I hadn't heard of it before - to see for myself. My second thought was - how the heck would I explain The Rocky Horror Picture Show to my in-laws? My third thought was "probably best not to bring it up..." Which is a weird reaction because transvestites are perhaps more common in Pakistan than in America. Well, at least I personally have seen more cross dressers and/or transvestites in Pakistan than in America. Which is saying something, actually, because I spent much of my college years attending occassional drag shows. But still, perhaps Rocky Horror is best approached at one's own pace. It does still have a lot of strange humor in it, and certain scenes that would be uncomfortable to watch with my brother- and sister-in-law.

In the evening, with no leftovers in the fridge and no desire to really cook - and Dulhan busy taking an online course, so she couldn't cook either - I had my second big flash-back to my traditional American upbringing. We had very limited quick dinner options. No frozen pizzas, no canned soup. So I decided to break out that old American staple, Hamburger Helper. I was nervous Chachoo and Dulhan wouldn't like it. I remember that my Mian wasn't a big fan way back when either, but he's learned to like it since then and we used to eat it fairly regularly before his brother came here (though he adds a spoonful of vinegar to it, which is weird beyond reason.)

Nervous though I was, that was about the only quick option we had, so I decided to prepare the in-laws for it. I told them both about my dinner plans. "So it won't be very spicy?" asked Dulhan. "It won't be ANY spicy," I replied, and told her that we had plenty of different hot sauces and chili sauces and tabasco sauces they could use if they found it too bland or whatever. And the vinegar too. "Is this something you've eaten?" she asked. "Ohhhhh yeah," I said "I grew up on this stuff." She assured me that she thought she would like it because she likes macaroni and trying new things. I went through the same spiel with Chachoo later, too, though he thinks I may have cooked this for him once before his wife came to live here.

In the end, they both said it was good. I didn't see how much of that chili sauce they put in their portions, though...

(Also: I was completely wrong about Rocky Horror being an American thing. Turns out it was originally a British play, and wikipedia says it has a large international following. Ya learn something new every day!)

Dogs

2010-10-20T01:20:00.001-04:00

I saw-slash-eavesdropped on a Twitter conversation about dogs and Pakistani boyfriends between LuckyFatima, Julia, and TheBigBadBlondeBahu (I think?) Since we had dogs in our house for the very! first! time! ever! on Saturday, I thought what a wonderful topic of conversation for ye ole' bloggity blog.

So. Dogs. My Mian can't stand 'em. If you ask him why he'll say it's because Karachi is filled with stray dogs that roam around foraging for food. He'll tell you about being chased by these possibly rabid, hungry stray dogs looking for some dinner in his flesh. He's even been bitten by a dog on more than one occasion.

He probably won't tell you about the "ritually impure" part, though. He knows by now that this sounds weird to a lot of people. But many, if not most, Muslims I know think of dogs as impure. Mian used to think that if a dog touched you, you'd have to wash up before making your next prayer because you were now ritually unclean. Heck, he probably still thinks that. I've read in many books and articles that dogs and Muslims don't mix - the angels won't enter your house if there are dogs inside. (You can see here for someone espousing this same view.) The word for dog in Urdu is used as an insult.

I can't even remember when I found out about M's views about dogs. I think it was during college, when I was taking so many classes in the religion building. I must've come across this view about dogs and Islam and asked him about it. The next thing I remember about dogs and M is that after he'd graduated and moved to DC for his new job, he mentioned that a new coworker of his had brought her dog to work and had asked him to hold it for a minute while she attended to something important. That was the first time he ever touched a dog (of his own volition) in his entire life up to then. And he'd gone to wash his hands right after. I asked him if it had been terrible for him but he said "No, it was not too bad. It was a very small dog."

I can count on one hand the times I've seen M touch a dog since then. Well, maybe four fingers. There was a small white dog once, though I can't remember exactly why we were around that dog. Then my uncle's catatonic dog Mister - I saw him pet Mister last Thanksgiving. Then we went apple picking a few weeks ago and there were three very friendly but still very calm dogs roaming the farm and I crouched down to pet one and since he was very calm and immobilized between my knees, Mian and Dulhan came over to pat his head. And then Saturday, when a lunch guest brought his dogs over, M patted one's head to be polite. I saw him minutes later washing his hands at the kitchen sink. "The dog licked my hand," he said, almost apologetically.

This view of dogs impurity is, in my experience, very common among the small circle of Pakistanis I'm familiar with. I have heard of some Pakistanis owning dogs - for hunting or protection. I saw dogs sitting at the gates of the very large homes we drove by in Rawalpindi. And I've heard recently of some very rich, high class, or "westernized" Pakistanis who keep dogs as pets too. (Both in America and in Pakistan.) But I've never personally met a Pakistani who owned a dog. It was one of those things that I had ignorantly generalized in my mind to apply to all Pakistanis and then the entire Indian subcontinent actually, based on my tiny window in one part of Pakistani culture, thinking it was true of Indians, Nepalis, everyone, really. I was really surprised to learn of desis who owned dogs, but it just helped me re-realized that Hey! You don't know everything, Gori Wife!

I, theoretically, like dogs. I always grew up wanting one - maybe two - dogs, but we never had pets in my home (except fish.) A beagle, maybe a labrador retriever. But in real life - not just in my mind - I'm actually quite skittish around dogs, not quite comfortable. Just a bit scared. Usually in direct proportion to their size, level of activity, or whether they're barreling towards me or jumping up on me. I have always been this way, even when I had to pet-sit my best friend's large German Shepard in high school. I bought a box of dog treats and would throw one to the far side of their yard and use the one minute that would buy me to dash into the yard and retrieve his food and water bowls. Then another thrown treat to put the fresh bowls back. But I think it's gotten worse since marrying my Mian. I think this Muslim/Pakistani view of dogs has leaked into my psyche, making me even more skittish around dogs than I used to be. Even I washed my hands after handling our guest's dogs this weekend, though I touched them more than once. When one of the dogs licked my chin, I washed my chin, too.

I'd talked a bit with M about the possibility of owning my theoretical dogs. You know..."later".... when our kid is old enough to take care of it. (Yeah, right - like that ever happens.) M was never on board with that plan. Our biggest worry - both of us - would be how my mother-in-law, Ammi, would deal with it, because she surely holds a traditional view of dogs and would never want one in the same house. Neither of us would ever want to make my Ammi uncomfortable. But I've heard him talk about it more freely in recent years, even so far as to wonder if our son would want a dog when he grows up. And whether keeping a theoretical dog outside would be okay with Ammi (and/or would count as "protection" to satisfy his Islamic fears.) I think his "theoretical" is starting to match mine, at least, even if he can't quite will his hand to reach out and pat most dogs just yet. That's leaps and bounds, I think.

Our son, though, is completely terrified of all dogs, big, small or anything else. He's actually terrified of cats, too. Or anything that moves, really. We went to a petting zoo once and he refused to touch any animal. Even in Karachi, when we came across a pet goat, M couldn't convince the baby to pet the goat, even when M was elbow deep in petting that goat. (M looooves to pet goats and other animals - just not dogs.) I know why the baby is scared of dogs, too. It's because of our neighbor, who has a large, black labrador retriever. "He's just too friendly!" our neighbor will say. But in actuality, our neighbor refuses to observe leash laws and his "too friendly" big dog bowled my son over on more than one occasion when he was only 2 years old. These were the very first introduction to dogs my son had - being jumped on by an uncontrollable, unleashed dog twice his size. Three times (at least - that I know of.) Add to that his father's fear of dogs which he would have picked up on through osmosis, along with my own uncomfortableness around jumpy dogs that the baby can also sense, and you have a recipe for a baby that screams so loudly at the sight of a even a cat that he startles YOU, too.

So, what do you think about dogs, and why? And don't you agree that my neighbor should have to pay for terrorizing my son like that. I mean, he STILL walks that dog off leash! Even though we've talked to him about it. Like leash laws are optional or something!

Our lunch guests

The baby and the dogs. He looks like he's crawling towards the dog, but really he's desperately trying to keep his ball away from the dogs, and he's crawling in reverse because his broken leg prohibited him from just up and running.

Introducing Our Dulhan

2010-10-17T22:38:00.000-04:00

Now that I've finally finished documenting our trip to Pakistan last December to attend my brother-in-law Chachoo's wedding, I should introduce his wife. The newest edition to the family. The product of all those wedding functions. The other person living in my basement. We'll be calling her Dulhan. It means “Bride” and as she’s the newest edition of family brides, it’s fitting. Mian says that his grandfather always called their first daughter-in-law Dulhan, even after 30 years.

Dulhan and her family are from a different ethnic community that my Mian and Chachoo's family (they're Bihari, remember?) Dulhan's family are Kutchi, which I know next to nothing about. All I know is that most of the Kutchi community is from and still is in Gujrat, in India. That means that her family speaks Kutchi and Urdu (and she also speaks Gujrati because of growing up near some very close Gujrati speaking neighbors.) She can also speak Sindhi because she says its very close to Kutchi, and she also studied Sindhi in school. She says the people of her community eat a lot of fish. She must be missing it, because we don’t generally eat much fish. Except now that she’s here she sometimes cooks it for us.

Dulhan's father was an advocate (which is what they call a lawyer in Pakistan), the Deputy Mayor of Karachi, and also Law & Labor minister at some point. He died when she was an adolescent and Benazir Bhutto (who was Prime Minister of Pakistan at that time) came to their family home to pay her respects. Her father raised a wonderful family though, they're all very kind, loving, welcoming people. Dulhan's mother was the second wife after her father's first wife died, and she was only 17 when she was married - he was 27 years older than her at the time. Dulhan has three sisters and two brothers. Her family is in a socioeconomically higher rung that my Mian's family, which is still middle class. She lived in nicer homes and neighborhoods (but not Defense/Clifton the most expensive area) and had many nicer things growing up than Mian and Chachoo did, but her whole family is still very kind and humble. She told me once that even though her father was in such a high political position, he still sent his kids to school by vans & public buses rather than private driver and car, so it's clear he was trying to make sure his kids grew up with their heads on straight, and he definitely succeeded.

The first time I ever met Dulhan's family was when we went to Pakistan for the second time in 2007 to attend Mian's middle brother’s wedding. Since all the family was finally in the same place at the same time, it was decided that they should begin the process for Chachoo's wedding as well. So my mother-in-law called Dulhan's house and said we all would like to drop by for a social visit (although everyone knew the meaning of this was "come by and size up your daughter for marital purposes." And actually it wasn't even a sizing up, because it was already decided that they would extend Chachoo's marriage proposal, but I'll get to that.

We drove over to where they lived and were escorted up to their apartment. We sat in their living room and her eldest brother, his wife and children, and her mother came out to chat. Eventually she came out as well, and I asked if I could take a picture of her. They were all very nice, but it was formal and now I know that they weren't really being themselves that night. I left thinking that her mother was nice, but either stern or perhaps shy. It must've just been shy because now that I know her better, I think she is the laughing-est woman I have ever seen in my life. She always - always - has a smile on her face and she's laughing all the time. When my mother-in-law met my family for the first time she described us as "they sure laugh a lot," but we were just the warm-up act, I think, for Dulhan’s family. Dinners at Dulhan's house are full of jokes and laughter and fun times.

Dulhan's family also had a bit of a mis-perception abut our family. After that first meeting they thought that Ammi - Dulhan's possible future mother-in-law - might be very stern also. In part because she was formal, wears glasses and "looks like a school teacher," but I think it was the same shyness. Ammi is also a smiley, laughing kind of person. Dulhan's family wondered if Dulhan could have a happy life with a stern mother-in-law, but they did accept the proposal. Actually, they had planned to come to the middle brother’s post-wedding reception (called a Valima) and scope out the rest of the family too, but Bhutto's assassination changed everyone's plans and Chachoo spent a few nervous days wondering if he was going to be rejected before hearing the good news.

When asked if their marriage is arranged, both Chachoo and his new wife would say yes. But what they mean is that their families got together and made the "ultimate decision" about whether they would be married. And they also don't want to be considered a "love marriage" because in many people's eyes that means bad things - maybe a bold or uncontrollable child, possible future divorce, or even a hint of impropriety. None of that is the case here, but their marriage isn’t the type where it was so far removed from the bride and groom that they met for the first time on their wedding day.

Nope. Chachoo and Dulhan have known each other almost their entire lives.

Mian and all of his siblings went to the same primary school (grades K-10) because their father taught there. Their family got a break on the tuition prices, and also most of the teachers were some of their close family friends. They were all very good students so they were in high regard as a family at that school. All of Dulhan's siblings also went to the same school. When I asked why, at that first meeting, I was told "it's kind of a family school," but that was just their humbleness again. After she came to live here, I found out that they all went to that school because her father was among the school’s founders and chairpersons.

So Chachoo and Dulhan met when they were in 1st grade, only 6 years old I think. They went to the same school until 10th grade, and then went their separate ways for College for 2 years(or Inter, as it's called.) Then they were BACK at the same school again for University for 4 years, in the same computer science program. They weren't always in the same batch or classes together, but they were friends throughout.

Actually, Dulhan was maybe the first thing I ever talked about with Chachoo. Mian and I were talking to his family in Pakistan over the phone. I hadn't even met yet. I mostly just talked to Ammi and Abbu (my mother- and father-in-law) a little bit, and then barely ever talked to M's siblings. At that point, I was just parrotting back whatever M told me to say in an effort to build relationships with these people. So one of the first conversations I had with Chachoo, M said "Ask him about Dulhan," so I did and he laughed, saying "Nothing about Dulhan, she's just a friend." It then became a bit of a joke. As the eldest sister-in-law, one of my responsibilities is to tease my brothers-in-law and I take that job very seriously! So I teased him about Dulhan often over the next few years. Just friends, he always said. Well, clearly he was interested in her, because after he went off to Saudi Arabia for his Master's degree, when he was nearing the completion of his Master's and had gotten a job, he told his mother that he wanted to get married to Dulhan.

So, their engagement was settled in December 2007, the very day Chachoo was to depart back to Saudi Arabia. He went back to Pakistan some months later and they had a proper engagement party. Then a little over a year later, they were married! They only spent a few weeks together before he came to America, and she followed shortly thereafter.

It seems like it was recent, but she's been living here for almost six months now and things are still going really nicely.

Mosque Relations

2010-10-05T01:55:00.000-04:00

As I was carting the baby around town to various medical offices last Friday, Mian called the President of our local mosque to tell and then update him about the situation. My M was seriously pissed off. He was out of town for work, but he was coming back the next day to "relax" at home for 24 hours before leaving again Sunday. He wanted to meet with someone at the mosque while he was here, and let them know he was going to take action. He said he was going to let them know he was going to call "the authorities" about the mosque's safety problems. Fire marshal, maybe - police? We didn't know. Whoever is responsible for rampant unsafe conditions of buildings open to the public.

First, he wanted answers about who was responsible for what happened. Who pushed the wooden fence-like barrier that separated the prayer hall in half, designating the men's section from the women's, and how would they help us track the pusher down? Then he wanted to discuss the mosque's commitment to the safety of it's patrons. Why were these barriers there anyway since they are such a menace? (My sister-in-law relayed another story of a barrier falling over during Ramadan, and I remember another child getting their fingers pinched underneath a teetering barrier after another child had been climbing all over it.) And why was the response after the accident nonexistent?

I was expecting it to be a complete waste of time. The phone response had not been very promising; first that it was "just an accident" and then offers to help get my son to a doctor - a fellow "brother." I'd already taken care of doctors, of course. After we found out his foot was indeed broken, Mian called again to tell the President that and let him know the scope of the proposed meeting which was scheduled for the next day.

We had to take the baby and his temporarily-splinted foot with us to the meeting since Chachoo and his wife have a swimming class on Saturday mornings. (Adult Beginner lessons - aren't they cute?) We had to wait for 15 minutes because the President was late. Of course. And nobody else in the office attended to us, either. When the President had us sit in front of his desk, M asked "Is it just you? Isn't there anybody else coming?" First the President said yes - it was just him; when he understood that this was an unsatisfactory answer to M, he excused himself from the room and brought back one of the prayer leaders too, an imam. I knew the Imam only as one of the secondary prayer leaders, and one that Mian didn't like. I'm not sure why he didn't like him, but M always tries to avoid that imam when he can. So when I saw that he was participating, my heart sank a little further thinking we'd dragged our injured baby out of the house mere hours since he'd broken a bone for what would likely be a complete waste of time.

We were wrong, we left feeling like it had been a productive meeting. And the imam guy turned out to be a huge asset. He was on the same page with us right from the start, kind of like good-cop/bad-cop with the President. (The president wasn't really a bad cop per se, though) The imam agreed with us that the barriers had to go right away - he said it before I could, even. And I'd thought that might be the biggest battle. I'd asked M to say it so that it didn't looked like "liberal American woman" versus the patriarchal mosque. But the imam was the one who said it. He asked the president if any other accidents had occurred and when the president said he wasn't aware of any, the imam himself offered another example of a time a man fainted and took one the barriers with him into the women's section - luckily no one was hurt then. (The lawyer side of me was thinking - jackpot! Favorable bigmouthed witness from the defendant! He even asked the President, "You guys have insurance for things like this, right?" which the President was then forced to answer.)

I left feeling like our mosque is - well, not committed enough to safety, but at least concerned with it. I know they're a growing organization and they're run by a transitory and often volunteer bunch, but they have got to make sure people are safe, if at least to cover their own butts. M said "How can we in good conscious send our son here alone in a few years to attend your Sunday school?" I left feeling like they will address their safety concerns; that they might remove these barriers, look for and address other hazards, and find a way to implement a policy for what happens when there is an accident. When M told them we weren't after money - not even insurance money - and that we'd rather they spent every minute not reporting accidents to their insurance but addressing our safety concerns, they seemed more dedicated to our cause too. The president said the monthly board meeting was scheduled for the next day. He'd discuss the accident and our concerns and get back to us.

I left feeling really good.

But then, no follow up. No email, no call.

I went back for Friday prayers, and thankfully the barriers were gone. Just some caution tape strung between a few chairs to delineate where men's lines end and women's lines begin. My mian had told me I had to be strong and try to track down the perpetrator. Stand up for the baby, he said. I told him it would be difficult, I though I could probably pick the guy out of a crowd but I feel so infantilized in the mosque, like I shouldn't - or couldn't - step forward into the men's area and take charge. But I promised to try and find the guy who was the pusher.

I knew the second I saw him walk in. I'd seen a few old men before him that could have been the one and I was unsure and began to doubt my ability to remember the guy. But when he walked in I was positive. Positive it was him - not positive I was going to be able to do anything about it. I spent the rest of the sermon pep-talking myself. When it ended, both the guy and I stayed for community announcements. The last announcement was about my baby. If anyone knew anything about the little boy who got injured last week, please come forward so we can find the ones responsible. As the Director of the mosque walked out, I stood up, waved him over to the caution tape and pointed out the guy. "I'm pretty sure he's the one who did it," I said, "the guy in the blue blazer and the white hat, in sajada right now." "Was it your child?" he asked. To which I thought, why the heck does that matter, but motioned to the baby, sitting at my feet with his leg in a cast.

The Director said he'd talk to the guy, but he was talking to others when the guy finished his prayers and began to walk out of the building. I had to do it again - blaze through a throng of startled looking men and tell the Director - please! He's leaving! I ran back to scoop up my things and as I approached them I could see their head-bobble conversation through the glass doors. As I approached I could hear the Director, in Urdu "...little boy is hurt...."

'His foot is BROKEN." I said. The guy only said "I'm very sorry" and later told the Director that someone else had pushed him and he'd gone into the fence not of his own fault. The Director took his name and number and I told him my husband was out of town but we'd be in touch. Mian's tried calling the Director since then, but got no response - again.

I don't think the guy is telling the truth. I didn't see the exact moment the fence got pushed, but I saw seconds before and after. There was a line of men, but no pushing. And afterward, just one second afterward, there were surprised faces all around except his. His was looked like guilty shock to me. And when I yelled at him, he didn't protest at all. No "I was pushed by someone else" then. Only a week later - after ignoring the Director's plea for information - did he claim he'd been pushed by someone else.

Anyway, we're biding our time until M gets back. Both M and I are committed that we have to hold the mosque accountable for the safety of their building and patrons, and we'll see what our next course of action will be when he's done with his office trips. We also plan to ask the guy who pushed the fence to reimburse us for our out-of-pocket medical expenses (co-pays and whatnot.) Accident - sure, whatever - but someone has to be held responsible for accidents too.

The baby is doing just fine. He's started back to school this week and he's very happy not to be bored to tears anymore. He's probably watched more TV in the last 10 days than the whole rest of his life combined. He's just started crawling around the house (and school, today) to get where he wants to go. He's been the recipient of too many to count gifts, toys, candies and cards. Today he got his first signature on his cast from a favorite daycare teacher.

I'm fine too, mostly, except for a few areas. I have to carry him everywhere now, which I haven't had to do in years. My arms are killing me. And the potty. He was doing all that on his own too (mostly) and now I have to take him, get him to balance on one foot while I handle his pants, and then put him on and take him off the toilet. Plus clean up. Then, how does he wash his hands when he can't stand? I tried sitting him on the counter but you can only easily get to one hand that way. And he can't do the one-footed balance because he can't use his hands to hold on to the counter - I need to wash them. We're still figuring that one out.

Basically, we're on the mend and doing well, with both hits and misses from the mosque. Hopefully things will continue to get better in all respects. I can't thank you all enough for your warm responses. When I was stuck glued to the couch with my broken baby, it was you all that made me feel better as each nice message poured into my inbox.

Tough Decisions

2010-09-27T15:56:00.001-04:00

It took a long time, and he changed his mind twice, but eventually he settled on...

dinosaurs!

Broken

2010-09-27T01:13:00.001-04:00

On Friday, I took our three year old son to the mosque for Friday prayers, the weekly compulsory religious service for Muslims. Our local mosque holds a lot of different prayers at various locations in the metro area, and I usually bounce around, picking our weekly location by the scheduled speaker. Sometimes, when I have no preference between speakers, I'll pick whichever one Mian is going to (his is always the same location, the closest one to his office, though he chooses between two times.)

Last Friday, Mian was out of town for work so I used the next factor in my list of choices: which prayer location and timing fits best with the baby's naptime? Closest and earliest, of course.

How exactly did that once small choice end up breaking the baby's foot? I'll get to that.

So we park in the mosque parking lot, and I'm hurrying the baby because I don't want to be late. We had to backtrack to the car after a few feet because he'd forgotten his snack in the car. A baggie full of raw broccoli. But I can see some of the leadership of our mosque at the top of the stairs, welcoming a well-dressed man as I walk into the building. So I know we've just made it before the sermon (or khutbah) was going to start. I took off my shoes and the baby's shoes - no shoes allowed in the prayer hall - and we walked into the women's section and found an open space to pray. I began to make my initial two rounds of prayer that you're supposed to do when you walk into a mosque; a greeting to the mosque, if you will.

The baby? Well, he loves to make prayers with me. He stands next to me, bows next to me, gets down on his hands and knees and presses his forehead and nose to the ground next to me. He loves it mostly because of how much we praise him for it, and how much all the people around us praise him too. I've been praying with him underfoot since before he could crawl away. Back then he would laugh out loud every time I bent down over him, like it was a game. Now he gets big hugs and kisses and words of amazement afterward when I loudly tell his father or aunts or grandmother that "The baby did such a good job! He made ALL his prayers and was still and quiet for the entire khutbah!"

In anticipation of those accolades, he was standing next to me as I cycled through the various motions of the Islamic prayer as we stood in the first row of the women's section. He was distracted a bit, as was I, when right in front of us in the last row of the men's section - only a wooden fence-like barrier between us - a man making the same prayer began to cause some congestion. Muslims generally try not to walk in front of someone praying, so a small line of men were waiting for him to finish so they could then squeeze past him into the already-fully-occupied space just past him. I looked up a bit and, I'll admit, inwardly shook my head at these men who would not just go to the upstairs or downstairs areas instead of disrupting their fellow worshipers. Then I tried to steel myself against this distraction and re-focus on my prayer.

So I didn't see when one of the men waiting tried to push his way behind the praying man. I didn't see the wooden barrier wobble. I only noticed when I heard the women behind me shout, and I saw the hands of men dart into my field of vision, trying to grab onto so many pounds of wood; falling so fast yet seemingly in slow motion.

I couldn't move fast enough. I instinctively hopped back a few inches. I reached out for the baby. My hands wouldn't get to his shoulders as I pleaded with the air in between us. I was once hit by a truck when I was eleven years old, and I remember time slowing down as I saw the truck headed for me on my bicycle. Each pedal pedal pedal accompanied by my plea to go faster, please faster, just a little bit faster, it's almost here.

I hadn't seen it quickly enough, but I saw it afterwards. The pain in his eyes. His shoulders shaking. My baby boy, who never took an unsure step, who almost never fell even when he was learning to walk, who has always been cautious, certain, careful. Nobody moved. The imam didn't even stop talking over my baby's cries. The impatient man just stared at me, terrified by the look in my eyes as I glared at him while removing the baby's socks. Not even a sorry. No offer to help, not from him or any other man or even any woman. Just one woman coming up behind me to say "They have some ice in the kitchen."

I scooped him up, still wailing. Finally someone from the mosque came to ask me if I needed anything and I asked for some ice. He took me into the kitchen and gave me some ice on a paper towel. I asked for a bag, but he just stared at me blankly and pointed to the baby's fist clutched tight with broccoli. I dumped out his before lunch snack and put the ice inside. A older Pakistani lady preparing lunch to be sold to the prayer goers asked me what happened and then smiled at me, "InshaAllah, I'm sure he will be fine!" I left the kitchen after that. These people didn't know my baby. The didn't know that his shoulders were still shaking. His shoulders never shake. A firm squeeze, a kiss for a boo-boo, that's all it takes. He recovers very fast, and cries about almost nothing. His shoulders never shake.

I sat in the lobby for five or ten minutes. No one offered us a chair, so I propped him up on a table. The very table that would hold the lunches being sold in a few minutes - holding the ice on his foot and watching his shoulders. He never stopped crying. The only person from the mosque I'd seen - the one who'd given us the ice - stood a few feet from me but didn't approach me again. I scooped up my baby again and marched over to him and spat out my words at him as I left "I'm going to take him to see if it's BROKEN or not."

I called the pediatrician, who could see the baby in 30 minutes. I called my husband, who asked to speak to the baby. When I offered the phone to him in the backseat, he cried so hard saying "No, NO! I don't want to talk!" For any of you who know my son, you know how serious that is. For my son, the world begins and ends with his father. He has never chosen ANYthing over a bit of time or affection from his father. He has never refused anything from his beloved Abbu. For me, it was the shoulders. For Mian, it was the phone call. He knew then that this injury must be serious.

The doctor was not convinced. He wouldn't stand on it at all, not even for a second to be weighed, but she said it wasn't in a place you generally see a break and by that time he was coherent enough to tell her that his foot didn't feel good. Plus, perhaps she'd never been in a mosque to know, and I'd forgotten to say, that he hadn't been wearing shoes. She sent us to another office for an x-ray anyway though, "just to be certain."

Two hours later, sitting on the couch at home with his foot propped up on a pillow, an ice pack on his foot, I got the phone call. Broken. First metatarsal non-displaced fracture, possibly second metatarsal as well. Too late on a Friday to see anyone. She suggested we just wait at home all weekend until he could be seen Monday. The bone hadn't moved out of alignment, so it didn't need to be set in the interim. I couldn't do it though - how would he sleep at night? So we went off to the urgent care center to have his foot and leg put in a temporary splint. Our third doctor's office of the day and yet the problem still hadn't begun to be fixed.

He's been fine since then. (I'm a wreck, though.) Very regular doses of over the counter pain medication. Keeping his leg propped up as much as possible. Copious amounts of children's movies and television programming. He never gets to watch TV or movies - we don't even have cable or television service in our home. And now he's spent the better part of three days watching things he didn't even know existed. Dora the Explorer. He already knows the theme song. Dinosaur Train. In a moment of desperation, Angelina Ballerina. Whatever I could find in the "Watch Instantly" section of Netflix.

We also took him out shopping once he started going stir crazy from the couch time. I had to track down the stroller for the first time in two years, but it was a great way to keep him sedentary. Somehow he ended up with a lot of new toys, too. Sympathy from Chachoo and his father, mostly. An entire box full of Legos - wheels and axles only. Chachoo has spent a few hours building Lego cars and helicopters with him so far. Mian bought an RC helicopter and we propped the baby up between two lawn chairs this morning (one for his bottom and one for his leg) while they tried to learn how to fly it. I cannot tell you how much candy and bubblegum he's been able to get from these guys either.

When people ask about our living arrangement I always say that the benefits outweigh any costs. Let me tell you about benefits in an emergency. When you have someone waiting at home to entertain your son with a broken foot while you run out for ice and pain medication. When someone helps you give him his last bath in perhaps the next 6-8 weeks. When there's someone there to carry him between the house and the car when your arms feel like they're about to fall off. I haven't carried this kid around in two years, and he's grown a whole lot since then; my arm muscles haven't kept up.

Somehow the family, toys, TV and candy got us through the weekend. Mian left again for work tonight, he's 7 hours away until next Saturday when he'll be back for little more than 24 hours. I'm manning the ship by myself again. Tomorrow morning I'll start calling around to find a doctor for the baby and hopefully he'll get a cast as soon as possible. I pray his fracture is the simple kind, not in the growth plate and please God don't let it have to be set. I can't imagine how I could be next to him by myself while he has a bone set. I barely survived when he had to have a tick removed once.

I'm so sad and angry. I'm unreasonably upset about his swimming lessons. He was doing so well that he was bumped up to the next level and now he'll have to drop out. One day when he's all grown up and I tell someone that he broke his leg when he was only three, I'll hear something about how "boys will be boys" and it will make me angry all over again. I've had people tell me that my son is the calmest kid they've ever met - boy OR girl. My kid is not the "boys will be boys" type. He doesn't jump off high things, he doesn't run into things or crash into people. He is careful and considering of his actions. You might think it's stupid for me to say that of a three year old but it's true. I doubt he would have ever inflicted something like this on himself.

No, no, someone ELSE went and broke his bones for him. At the mosque, of all places. And now he - we - have to deal with the aftermath.

Eid Retrospective

2010-09-21T01:29:00.000-04:00

So, Ramadan ended. Last weekend. I just can't keep up these days! The day after the month of Ramadan is one of two celebration days in the Islamic calendar. This one is called Eid-ul-Fitr.

The day started with a special occasion morning religious service. Our was held at a local conference center so that we could all join in one big group celebration. Even then, they held five different sessions and each was full. Maybe tens of thousands of Muslims passed through the doors that day. Hectic, but nice. A local politician came out to address the crowd. As a US tax-exempt organization, our mosque can't endorse any political candidates, and if they invite one they have to invite them all (or they risk losing their tax-exempt status.) I always take note of who shows up, who thinks it's important to talk to Muslims too. This guy - Mark Herring - did a nice job, and even mentioned that he "will stand by your community." And it's not an election year for him, but he still came. Bonus points.

After the prayers, we stopped by the little carnival our mosque held in the same location. Moonbounce, cotton candy and a toy for the baby from one of the vendors. The baby chose a bubble-shooting gun thing that the vendor guy was holding in his had to display. The one he sold us worked for exactly NOT EVEN THE FIRST SECOND. Seriously, not a single bubble was shot. But triumphant Mian to the rescue, he was able to Macguyver-style fix it with the tube from a ballpoint refill later in the afternoon. Even then it worked only for about 15 minutes, but the holiday was saved!

A big part of Eid celebrations is about new clothes. I had three new saris I'd brought back with me from Pakistan last time, but it's hard to pray in a sari. I didn't think I had anything else new, but at the last minute I found one un-worn shalwar kameez. It was very plain though, not shiny enough for such a celebratory day, so I only wore it to the morning prayers. We had invitations to two parties on the Eid day, so after we came home and ate some brunch, I changed into one of the glittery sarees. A red & orange benarsi silk number. We went to a friend's house, his family is Bengali and I hear Bengali women wear a lot of saris, so it turned out to be a good choice and his mother complimented me a lot :)

In the evening, I changed clothes again! My sister-in-law had brought me a new saree when she came to live with us and she had a matching one. They were different colors; mine was greenish-grey and hers was blueish-grey, but they had the same borders and embroidery, so you could tell they matched. We wanted to wear them together, and the Eid party was the first opportunity.

We'd bought new clothes for M and the baby from Karachi when we were there. Both wore blue Junaid Jamshed shalwar kameez and M had a waistcoat. I'm telling you, I love the way a waistcoat looks! I wish I could have found a matching one for the baby, but I've only ever found those chamak-y, mirror-worked waistcoats for kids. This one was a formal, pinstriped number. The boys all of course wore the same outfits all day. Boys! My sister-in-law had been saving her favorite not-yet-worn outfit for Eid, a red shalwar kameez.

On the second day of Eid - celebrations last for three days, did I forget to mention that? - we hosted a barbeque at our home. Mian is known for his Bihari kabab skeellzzz. We invited 40 people and Chachoo spent 2 hours painstakingly threading thin strips of meat onto skewers. Mian spent three hours grilling them! I spent those three hours running back and forth between my kitchen and the backyard getting all the other supplies. Onions must be sliced, ice refilled. The four cakes our guests brought must be set up on the dessert table. Still, a barbeque is a relatively less stress party to have, so it was very nice. We did it last Eid and I think we'll make Eid barbeques our tradition from now on.

On the third day of Eid, we went to the closest cousins' house, about two hours away. M has a small contingent of cousins between us and New Jersey, so most of them all congregate at this one middle cousin's home. I wore an old shalwar kameez, one from Chachoo's mehendi. (The green one from this post.) Everyone else re-wore their Eid clothes. The party was nice, and it was nice to have so many things to do all Eid weekend. But it ended on a bit of a sour note when one of M's cousins who was there said something that upset me. There was some discussion going on and I had lost track of the conversation, so I looked to my Mian for some translation and the cousin said something like "Look how much pain he's in, he has to make his wife understand." And he's freaking right, because I didn't even understand that part and M had to tell me about it later. He told me just a few minutes before we were leaving, we'd already packed up, and it upset me so badly I had to go to the bathroom because I was starting to cry. I'm a source of PAIN? And calling me that on Eid, and then I don't even understand it. I just felt like such a huge idiot, being talked about behind my back but I'm RIGHT THERE, and too stupid to even get it. And this is supposed to be my FAMILY. I cried a bit on the way back home too, and everyone tried to make me feel better. (But that made it worse, since I'm generally a closet crier and hate to be emotional in public and I was trying to hide it as much as I could. But failing.)

I feel so incredibly lucky to have been so welcomed by M's family, it stings to think that's not always the case. To feel judged. And I know a lot of people in my situation have dealt with serious issues - this is not serious. But it still really hurt my feelings. Anyway, it was a great, great Eid for 2.85 of the 3 days, with just a bit of a sour ending.

What about you all - how did you spend your Eid?

Chicken & Beef, spiced & threaded onto skewers.

Mian at work. We brought this barbeque grill from Pakistan so we could make bihari kabob even more authentically. It took almost an entire suitcase.

Overstocked dessert table.

My boys in their Eid finery, on their way to Party #2

Strapping In Around The World

2010-09-16T00:33:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I know I said we were done with the almost a year old Pakistan Travel Diary posts, but I got a question from a reader. And as always, I took pictures of the darn thing, I'd just forgotten to include it in any of the previous posts. So I'll just briefly cover it and then hopefully, possibly, maybe we'll be done.

Okay, first some history. I've been to Pakistan 3 times. The first (in 2004) we didn't have a kid so I didn't think about this at all. The second time (in 2007) we traveled when our son was 14 months old. I fretted about the car seat issue for months in advance. At home, here in America, both M and I are pretty crazy about car seat safety. I'm the type to research for days and spare no expense - and he's even worse because he's the type to actually stop strangers (and worse, family members) to tell them their kid's car seat straps are too loose. So, I fretted. He fretted. I spent some time on a car seat forum even. We didn't think we could bring a car seat with us because of baggage limits, and I didn't think car seats would be available for sale in Pakistan. Even if we did bring a car seat, where would we put it? M's family car had no seat belts in the back seat at all. In the end, we decided to try and buy something while there, but then we couldn't find anything. They had things that looked like infant car seats, but were just "baby seats" without any harness or way to latch it to the car. I felt incredibly pressured while I was there that "this is the way babies travel here" and not to worry because "driving is so much slower in Pakistan."

Well, it turned out to be my biggest regret and I hated every second of riding in a car with my son on my lap. I held him so tightly my knuckles were white. It was very stressful. Hey, I'm not judging anyone - every single other person I've seen in Karachi holds their kids in their laps. I have never ever not one time never seen a car seat in Pakistan. We all have to do what we think is best. I, personally, just didn't want to do that again.

For one I am very risk averse, and I have been in cars that go plenty fast in Karachi. Secondly, on our 3rd trip the baby was going to be 3 years old - plenty old enough to enjoy riding in a car without being strapped in and old enough to make it difficult to get him re--adjusted when we got back home. Third, I didn't want glorified peer pressure to be the reason I took chances with my kid's safety. You just never know, y'know?

So I decided that this was among the battles worth picking, and we set out to find a solution. We decided to take a car seat with us. I bought a convertible (from infant-toddler stage) car seat to take with me to Pakistan and leave there for future use. I found out that bringing a car seat with us would not count against our baggage limits (at least as far as Etihad Airlines was concerned as of December 2009.) We made arrangements to borrow a new car with seat belts. I looked around at various ways to rent cars in Karachi without a driver. And as a final backup idea, we bought a set of heavy-duty tie-down straps from Home Depot.

When the family met us at the airport - there was no rental car. We'd arranged rental through a friend of Chachoo's and that night they said it wouldn't be available until the next day. Chachoo's soon-to-be-wife's family was at the airport to receive us as well, though, and they have a shiny new car. We checked out the backseat and saw no seat belts, though. Turns out that even when there ARE seat belts in newer cars, they stuff them way down behind the seats because they're not used anyway. So M - in the parking lot of the Karachi Airport - took out the back seat of his brother's fiance's brother's new car to find the seat belts. ALL the while people kept telling us that a car seat wasn't necessary in Karachi, they don't drive very fast there, this kid and that kid and the neighbor's kid did just fine in the lap. We just tried to tune them out and some time later, our car seat was installed for the 30 minute ride home. It felt like a small miracle, a triumph of my principles.

The borrowed car came the next day and all was right with the world. Until like, three days later when it fell through and the friend came calling, asking for his car back. Literally MINUTES before we had to leave the house for I-can't-remember-what function.

At that moment, we decided to break out the tie-down straps. M is quite a handy guy to have around, so I'm not sure exactly how he did it, but he got that car seat strapped in there so securely it felt just as tight - if not tighter - than the LATCH car seat setup we have at home in America. And in our own car, too. It was so great that we were satisfied with it and that's how we rode around the city for the rest of our trip. And I left both the car seat and the tie-downs in my in-law's house for whenever we go back.

There was just a little tension about the car seat setup. Not really from my in-laws, they're very respectful and respected our wishes even though it meant we'd have to take two cars all the time. But I did hear bits and pieces of talk about our car seat and how unnecessary it was. I heard that it might even lead to our car being burglarized since it stood out as a symbol of expatriate-ism Even when we weren't in the car and it was parked on the street, it could be broken into because of the car seat. I also heard that the baby must be very unhappy/uncomfortable/sad in the car seat since he was all alone in the back seat tied up like a prisoner. I worried that my friends and family might think our insistence on using a car seat meant we thought we were better than or that Pakistan was inferior in general or something. Which, I don't know - I certainly think that the child restraint safety standards from where I come from are, in fact, superior because they save kids lives. But it's not a judgment of a whole people or a whole nation or anything.

Anyway, I stopped hearing anything about our car seat after 2 days, so it died down really quickly. (Relatively speaking, I mean - I STILL sometimes get questioned about my name!)

Here are some pictures of our car seat in Pakistan:

Back seat - the safest place for kids.

Close up - the view from the trunk/hatchback. Here you can see M's handiwork, trying to turn some tie-downs into a LATCH system.

You can see the blue strap peeking out in the back where the LATCH straps normally go.

The only real problem we had was on the airport ride back. We left the car seat and took a cab, so I did one last white-knuckle carseat-less ride. And it was the most insane driver I'd ever encounter, of course. The universe's way of telling me not to do that again, I thought. I almost kissed the ground when we got to the airport safely, he was such a bad driver. Next time, I'll have the in-laws bring it with them to the airport when they pick us up.

Summing Up. Finally.

2010-09-08T22:53:00.000-04:00

This is going to be a long one folks, but if you're very, very patient, and you promise to look through far too many of my probably not very interesting navel-gaving pictures, it seems like this will be the very last post about my family's recent (not recent. not at all recent. almost ten months ago) trip to Pakistan. And then we can be DONE with that topic officially. And then you can all collectively breathe a sigh of relief that we don't have plans to visit Pakistan again this year because MY GOD WOMAN, HOW LONG IS THE NEXT ONE GOING TO TAKE?!?!

Okay then. So after all the wedding hullabaloo (which I'm not even going to link to because I'm sure we are all so over it, but if you want to refresh you memories the archives are over there to the right -->) Chachoo's new bride actually went back to her mother's house for a few mornings. Apparently this is something her community does, they send the bride back to her old house every morning for, I think, a week. Chachoo, though, was to ship off back to Saudi Arabia a mere five days after his marriage, so they only did it three mornings. Otherwise they would have spent a good chunk of their very limited time together apart, and since they were going to be not-apart for such a short time, they dispensed with more than half of her cultural tradition. This three days, though, was a little boring back at M's family home because this is not his community's tradition at all, so after she left every morning, my in-laws all just sat around together thinking, "Well, what do we do now, then?"

There was one thing the new bride had to do at home, though. In M's family, the new bride gets a repreive from housework for some time but then, when it comes time for her to begin helping out, the first thing she should do it cook kheer, Pakistani rice pudding. So a few days after the wedding (again, a bit early because of how rushed the newlywed's time was) Chachoo's new wife headed into her new MIL's kitchen to cook her first official dish for her new family.

Cooking, with a watchful eye from the MIL.

It was yummy - she passed the test!

Every afternoon or evening the new bride would come back home, though, and we'd head off to some family gathering to have dinner. A lot of post-wedding functions include traipsing all over the city to present your new family aquisition to the family-at-large. It's nice for the new bride because she often gets gifts and/or money upon arrival at another one of her new family's homes. There were too many of these family dinners to chronicle them all, but one of my favorites was when the bride's family invited all of US over. They made far, far too much food and it was all so delicious. Then I very obtusely forced them to take out all of their family pictures and we looked through them all until my father-in-law had fallen asleep on their floor. Then we looked some more, actually, and wound up heading home after 2am. On the way home there was a bit of a scary situation where our car (which included M and Chachoo and us two wives, the baby and a large percentage of Chachoo's wife's gold which we'd stupidly thought we should transport to her new home at 2am) came upon a few motorcyles on either end of the alleyway leading to M's house. It was pretty obviously a trap so that these men on the motorcyclists could rob the cars that passed by. We were circled by one of the motorcycles twice and then Chachoo - sweet little Chachoo who I always think of as a little boy - somehow turned out to be the one guy you want with you in a crisis situation! He is unendingly level-headed and he and M conferred for just a few seconds and hatched a plan to get us out of there that included some savy driving, a quick left, a few circles around the closest brightly-lit and well-attended intersection, and sneaking back home through a side-alley One of the few times I've been frightened in Karachi and it lasted not more than 10 minutes. No pictures of that, though.

One funny thing about looking through Chachoo's in-law's family pictures though. I may not have mentioned it, but Chachoo and his wife have known each other since they were in Kindergarten. Both of their families sent all their kids to the same school from kindergarten until they finished matric (like high school.) In my in-law's case, it's because Abbu was (and still is) a teacher there; In my sister-in-law's case it's because her father was on the foudning board of the school. In any event, Chachoo and his wife have been friends forever, but their families didn't know each other until their engagement. While looking through very old pictures of school events and awards ceremonies, though, I found a picture of an audience and there was a picture of my mother-in-law sitting right next to my sister-in-law's mother. So many years ago, they could have looked at each other and said "Hey, we're going to be family one day!"

There were a few things we wanted to do besides family gatherings while we were still in Pakistan, though. Shopping was one of them! I've never been shopping at any of the higher-end stores and malls, save for one trip to Naheed market in 2007 and once prior in the most recent trip. But I've heard a lot about really nice malls and I asked M to take me to a few of them. People are always asking me how I like these malls, and then they're surprised when I tell them I'd never been there but I cannot count the times I've walked through Lalukhait. First, we went to Makro - a big warehouse store kind of like Costco in America. But time ran out though, so after that I got only two hours to see only the most important things; I chose a jaunt through Park Towers mall and a drive through the Zamzama shopping district.

Makro's huge underground parking lot.

Going up an uphill escalator that would somehow grab hold of the shopping cart too.

Inside Costco - uh, I mean Makro.

Well, you can't buy a motorcycle inside a Costco store.

"Loose spices"

This was their achaar counter - spicy pickled vegetables of every variety, even mango which isn't a vegetable at all!

M liked their ginger and garlic achaars that we bought extra to bring back to America with us, then he asked Chachoo's wife to bring even more when she came four months later and he'd run out by then.

I took this picture only because my father used to work for this company when I was a kid and it was a very "the two sides of my life meeting" kind of moment for me.

The Park Towers mall

Inside the 3 story Park Towers. We had to show IDs to get inside the parking lot. But M didn't have his and they let him in anyway, so whatevs.

Fancy store that every was talking about. I preferred the Junaid Jamshed store, I just love their stuff.

Eating at the food court. I really wanted some American food by then, so I ordered a kid's chicken nugget meal, but it was still Pakistani-fied chicken nuggets so it didn't hit the spot. The chocolate cake we got at this place was also just okay - the frosting was really good but the cake was that very Pakistani, light and airy kind of cake.

Junaid Jamshed for little boys. LOVE.

Later, we drove through the Zamzama shopping area and this was about the only picture I took. We drove by a Subway sandwich shop though, and I was disappointed I hadn't know about it before because that sounded WAY better than masala chicken nuggets.

Another thing that we'd planned was to stay in the house at least one evening. It was a surprisingly difficult thing to do, actually, because so many people are jockeying for your time and it can be an insult if you go to one person's house but not another's. When we would apologize and say that we just didn't have time to go to a cousin's or uncle's house for dinner, they would ask us for details: "But what about Monday, what about Tuesday?" and then when they found out we were dedicating one day to just hang around the house, they were adamant we should fit them in on that day. I think some people's feelings got hurt, but M and I had talked about it way in advance, back in America when we were just starting to plan our trip. I said that since the family was now fully complete - everyone was married and everyone was in Pakistan at the same time - it would be nice if we dedicated some time to bonding as a family. We bought a dart board and I put the other sister-in-law in charge of another game. After her marriage to my other BIL, he'd gone tot their house for dinner one night and they'd played a "Getting to Know You" game kind of like that Newlywed Game. (Except no risque questions at all - this was extended family, very proper, and in Pakistan, after all!)

I think it's pretty unanimous that the night we stayed home and played these stupid games was THE BEST NIGHT EVER in Pakistan. It was so, so much fun. Even the stupid $5 dart board we'd bought on a whim at a Wal-mart pre-Christmas sale turned into a major tournament, and the questions game was VERY revealing and very bonding. Poor newlyweds knew almost nothing about each other though!! Ha ha!

M and Chachoo installing the dart board.

Installed!

After that evening, family started leaving. Chachoo left first, then M's sister and her family left for America, I think. Then it was almost time for us to pack up and head back too. So then the family procession began in reverse, with all the people whose homes we'd just eaten dinner at coming by OUR house to bid us a proper farewell over the last two days of our trip. Mostly there wasn't even a place for them to be recieved because we'd taken over most spaces with our belongings and lugggae in an attempt to fit all the things we wanted to bring back with us into the airline's baggage limits.

And that was all - time to head to the airport. I'd brought a car seat and used it the whole time we were in Karachi, but I wanted to leave it in Pakistan for future use so the ride back to the airport was sans carseat and of course the craziest taxi driver ever showed up. I don't think I breathed at all on the adrenaline filled trip to the airport and I still thank God we made it there safely!

Bags packed, ready to go home.

At the airport, trying to take a farewell picture of my in-laws, but these guys kept getting in my way. I have like, six of them walking back and forth until the black jacket guy realize I was getting annoyed and pulled his sweater-vested friend out of my way.

Final farewell shot of Pakistan - the crowd at the airport.

More About The Floods

2010-09-02T01:02:00.000-04:00

Because it seems like you won't hear much about it in the regular news. It's still a terrible, terrible situation and they need help. The US State Department is even trying to educate Americans about this crisis and giving us easy and trusted ways to donate to help the more than 20 million people homeless and hungry because of flooding. Over at Sepia Mutiny there's a discussion titled "Why is no one donating?" about why the response has been so lax for this natural disaster compared to other recent outpourings of support for similar travesties, even though its bigger in scale and has affected many more innocent lives. I saw more heartbreaking pictures on NPR today. One of the best things I've read recently, the one that makes me most hopeful, is a committment by TED's Chris to report "The stories from Pakistan you're not being told." The stories of hope and human triumph, the stories that will hopefully soon show a sea change in these people's lives. Last but not least, UN Ambassador Angelina Jolie also implores you to help.

Please. Give what you can. Until September 12th, the Canadian Federal Government will match your donations here: http://www.cbc.ca/pakistanrelief/

What I Love About Ramadan

2010-09-01T23:22:00.000-04:00

I sometimes get wierd reactions when I mention that we fast for the month of Ramadan. Actually, I have been continually suprised by how many people actually know about it beforehand, and most of the good friends and family in my life are very accepting and even encouraging - even when it's not a part of their own lives. But still a lot of people assume that it must be incredibly difficult, torture, or unhealthy at the very least. I don't often get a chance to explain why it's not any of these things, thanks in no small part to my own incredible discomfort discussing religion in public, but I'll give it a shot.

Ramadan is actually one of my favorite times of year. It's like a big de-cluttering project except instead of cleaning out a closet, you're making much bigger "Toss, Keep or Donate" decisions. The nighttime - when you have to fit in a day's worth of eating, hours and hours of extra prayers, and oh yeah - sleeping and spending time with your family - are pretty slim. We only have about eight hours for that these days. It makes you seriously prioritize in a way that you're usually not able to the rest of the year.

Maybe most of the year you think "Oh, I should really go to the mosque more often." But you can never find the time, even for this thing that's really important to you. Then Ramadan rolls around and you're suddenly able to find the time. Maybe you get bogged down sometimes, visiting friends your don't like all that much or reading crap on the internet you're not even all that interested in. (uh...hypothetically speaking, of course...) The great big life cleanup that is the month of Ramadan helps you focus all that energy into something that is more important to you - perhaps the most important thing to you - your spirutal life. It can feel very cleansing and carthatic, like riding a wave back to a place where you know all things operate better from. You become a better organized person, a better friend, spouse, employee - even during the day.

The day is also good. Sure, you're hungry. It is difficult, it's meant to be. It started out really hard, but you get to used to it after some time. But then a day will come where the second you wake up to start your day your mouth feels glued shut and all you can think about for the next 12 hours is a cool glass of water. Or my poor Mian, who will still have to mow the lawn for almost two hours in the heat and amond all that dust and stirred up grass clippings, all without a drink of water. Because even though you're hungry, even though you can't drink anything, you still have to go about your daily life. (Well, that's not actually true in many countries where the whole place seems to shut down during the fasting hours, but here in America you still have to go to work if you want to be able to afford the ingredients to make pakoras.) Being hungry and thirsty all day can teach you a lot of things, not the least of which is how terrible it is that plenty of people the world over have this kind of hunger and thirst and thankfulness for even then simplest of things - that first sip of water. I'm just doing it because I WANT to, but I still, all day long, still have access to clean water and plenty of food.

It's nice, is all I'm saying. And it's not unhealthy. Most people go 12-14 hours all night without food while they're sleeping at night and we're just doing the opposite and cramming all the same amount of food and drink (and sometimes more!) into the night hours. And of course, if you have some good reason you can't fast then there's no problem forgoing it. It's just between God and you, afterall. And if my husband passed out or has some other medical difficulty after mowing the grass you can bet I'll be the first person trying to help him out and force him to drink a glass of water. It's not about depriving yourself at all costs, it's just about trying to do what we believe is a religous requirement and reaping all the benefits from it, those that we can see and those we might not even understand.

It really is one of my favorite times of year. Some years are been better as far as spiritual upliftment (if that even a word?) and some are more like going through the motions, but even when that happens it tells me that I needto focus my efforts in some aspect of my life. Ramadan is like a diagnostic tool - taking my personal engine to the mechanic to make sure everything's the way it's supposed to be. Making sure everything's in good working order for the journey ahead.