All posts by Yasmine

About Yasmine

I like orange sunshine and blue slurpees.

The Road to Guantanamo

Links to love


[Riz Ahmed, Farhad Harun and Arfan Usman star as the “Tipton Three” in Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross’ THE ROAD TO GUANTANAMO. Photos courtesy of Roadside Attractions.]

Everyone needs to go see The Road to Guantanamo, about the Tipton Three at Guantanamo Bay.

Special thanks to 2Scoops, who first brought the film to my attention weeks (months?) ago, and to my sister’s friend S, who told us about the free screening at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive, where we saw The Road to Guantanamo early last week.

Catch you on the flip side

Uncategorized

One of the reasons why I've been so busy [Catch you on the flip side, next week!]
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

It’s over, but right now I’m too exhausted (and sunburnt) to clearly reflect on the experience. A huge gratitude-filled “Thank you” to the superstar SI, who called me Friday afternoon from the East Coast to wish us good luck. Photos and lengthy descriptions coming soon. Click the photo above, or check the website, to find out more. Meanwhile, as Preacher Moss said in a conversation we had just before the conclusion of the conference: “Shut up, and pass the peanuts.”

Every state line, there’s a new set of laws

Hit the Road

License plates I’ve recently seen and enjoyed while commuting:

– YWEH8N
– I[HEART]GHEE
– OH B 1
– SOMONEY [on quite a dilapidated-looking Honda Civic]
– WISEHAG
– HARD2BHV

Also, I saw a freeway exit sign for a street called “Pasatiempo” on the way back from Santa Cruz a couple of weekends ago. Such a light, airy word. It’s stuck in my head, and I find myself mentally repeating it over and over at inopportune moments: Pasatiempo

Living on borrowed time out on the rim, over the line, always tempting fate like a game of chance

(3)BeautifulThings

Scattered thank-yous, mentally noted, from the past two, three weeks:

Thank you to the mailman whom I asked for directions when I got lost going to the evening of live Moroccan music in Berkeley. I don’t think you knew how to get there any more than I did, and you were suitably vague about what road I should take, but you were friendly and you underscored my new philosophy: Spotting a mailman when you’re lost is the best, relieved feeling in the world.

Thank you to the blonde guy biting his lips to keep from smiling at the Moroccan music dinner/benefit, for repeatedly switching around the lined-up juice bottles on the drinks table while the little boys who had lined them up giggled and rapidly shuffled them back into perfect order.

Thank you, neighborhoodies.com for keeping me amused for hours on a Tuesday two weeks ago, when I should have been doing productive things that would result in my having enough money to actually buy said hoodies and t-shirts.

Oh yeah, but I have a job now, for the summer. Thank you, people who gave me a job, for thinking I’m grown-up enough to handle work and for believing I’m actually worth hiring. Thank you for the money, too, because, I’ll be honest, I really do like money.

Thank you to the ambulance driver at Telegraph and 52nd, for not running me over when, oblivious child that I am, I nearly didn’t notice your speeding ambulance and its flashing lights in time. When I slammed on my brakes, so quickly I smelled the burning rubber from my tires, you continued through the intersection, turning in front of my lane. I did my usual throwing-up-my-hands gesture, and you smiled and saluted smartly.

Speaking of ambulance drivers, thank you, Ladder 49, for making me appreciate the work that firefighters do. Firefighters: You are ROCKING.

Thank you to the driver who so patiently waited at the stop sign on Homestead Ave., while the couple across from him at the intersection picked up their fallen groceries in the middle of the street. You didn’t honk, you didn’t throw up your hands, you didn’t seem to have any visibly impatient expression on your face. You just sat and waved at them to continue taking their time, and I feel blessed for having had the opportunity to witness your patience and grace.

Thank you, shutterfly.com, for sending me free prints. You sure know how to give a girl incentive to develop digital photos for the very first time (even though I’ve owned a digital camera since last August), and I’m staggered by the image quality of the photos I received in the mail. Oh, and my camera: I love you and your photo-taking, and your video-recording feature, too.

Thank you, clumsy young man who bumped into me on Main St.; your muttered “I’m sorry” and my unconcerned “Excuse me” gave the blonde girl with you just enough time to glance at me and squeal, “Oh my God, your pants are so CUTE!” She didn’t strike me as the type to be caught dead wearing my Elvis pants, but God knows I myself use “so cute” as a compliment more often than not, too, so I can’t fault her for the ditzy sort of exclamations.

Thank you, girl on Highway 4 who was driving with her bare left foot out the open window, for making me smile on my way back from a funeral. I know I’ve made sarcastic comments about these sort of driving habits in the past, but, still, I needed a smile desperately, and you did just the trick.

Thank you, man at the grocery store, for knocking on the watermelons for sale and bending down, holding your ear close to the fruit. There is an art to fruit-buying, and you clearly looked like you knew what you were doing.

Thank you, Jessica at the bank, for your handwritten, cursive Have a great day! notes on all my deposit receipts. Beyond the appreciation for your personal touch, I really do like your handwriting, too.

Thank you to the grinning blonde art student working on a painting in the library parking lot at the university, for noticing our curious glances and fully standing up and turning around to wave at us as we drove away. “Vhat a nice bwoyyyyy!” I laughed in my best Desi [South Asian] accent.

Thank you, A.M., rockstar extraordinaire, who had such a big name for such a small woman. If I could pick one single person whom I was convinced would change the world, you would have been it. And yet, you still did more in 22 years than many of us manage to accomplish in 45. Thank you for your exuberance, your passion, your dedication to justice and equality in all forms. We live in gratitude for your light.

Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock

NineToFive outside the 925

In preparation for telephone interview
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

You know what’s the most annoying thing that could possibly happen right before you have a morning telephone interview?

HICCUPS.

Yeah, that’s right. It was hella annoying and nerve-wracking and made me want to stab someone, which is not the best way to feel five minutes before you’re about to begin an interview, telephone or otherwise.

Also, it’s perfectly fine that I put together a small pile of notecards the night before, helpfully labeled with such headings as “Strengths,” “Org. mission,” “Prepare,” and “Questions to ask.” (We all know I hate phones – because they’re so impersonal, mainly – but, damn, a telephone interview feels like such an open-book exam, since you can sit there with your notes spread out all around you, the answers right in front of your face. I’m all about open-book exams.)

But the fact that I had to add a terse note reminding myself to eat breakfast before the interview? Just plain sad.

My name is…

Casa420 and Familia

I watched Walk the Line with the parents a couple of evenings ago, and now my dad thinks it’s the most amusing thing in the world to wander around the house and repeatedly mutter in a deep, distinctive voice, “HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH.”

Worse yet, he’s been blessed with a daughter (that would be I) who thinks this is equally hilarious. Every time I respond to his new favorite catchphrase with yet another resounding bout of laughter, he grins slyly, “You like that, huh? HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH.” Then he walks away, only to sneak up behind me a few hours later to repeat in a gravelly tone, “HELLO, I’M JOHNNY CASH.”

I foresee this continuing for the rest of the week; therefore, I think it’s time to watch another movie. Like, maybe, The Godfather or something. “Mikey, why don’t you tell that nice girl you love her? I love you with all-a my heart, if I don’t see-a you again soon, I’m-a gonna die.”

[Oh, and then we went to Sears to get a brand-new dishwasher (seriously, I know you’ve always thought my life is so interesting and important, see?), and the Daddy-o glanced around and remarked, “Look at that, Yasminay! Maybe we should get your ummy that red tractor for Mother’s Day…so she could mow the lawn.” What kind of crack the man is smoking, I don’t even know.]

"Who was that masked man, anyway?"

Links to love, Resident Rockstar

Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

This image was something I had quite a bit of fun putting together yesterday. [Click for a larger view, and to read the notes, even though, after all this time, I’m sure you already know why I specifically picked those photos.] I was inspired by Jamelah’s montage to submit my own to this week’s Challenge pool about introductions. Only now, squinting at this a day later, I realize that I neglected to include anything related to FOOD. Disgraceful! I mean, it’s not like I’d taken photos of french fries or blue raspberry slurpees anyway. But cranberry juice! Tiramisu! Pretty drinks! Fried wontons stuffed with cream cheese! How did I manage to bypass all these photos when attempting to sum up my life into nine squares? Man, we need to work on this. I gotta get with the program already. How does one get with the program, by the way? Do you know?

Meanwhile, speaking of things you know, did you know Jamelah has a weblog? Why, yes, she does indeed, and you need to go over and read it, because she writes some of the freakin’ funniest stuff I’ve had the pleasure of reading during the past couple of months. Not only does she like gelato and french fries (and blue slurpees and kind of cranberry juice) – therefore, we are friends forever, that just goes without saying – but she has also written an awesome post entitled, How to Rock: A Guide, and nothing, and I do mean nothing, is more rocking than that, buddy boy.

To get you through the day: Stories from Guantanamo

Links to love

I originally shared the following Washington Post article (via Sepia Mutiny) with selective friends/family through email last week, and just realized that others might be interested in reading this as well. As I mentioned in my email, I first read this because I’m Pukhtun myself. But this is a moving and beautifully written account, and a thought-provoking one, so check it when you get a chance – the Guantanamo diary of a Pukhtun law student, by Mahvish Khan.

Ali Shah Mousovi is standing at attention at the far end of the room, his leg chained to the floor. His expression is wary, but when he sees me in my traditional embroidered shawl from Peshawar, he breaks into a smile. Later, he’ll tell me that I resemble his younger sister, and that for a split second he mistook me for her.
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I don’t know exactly what I had expected coming to Guantanamo Bay, but it wasn’t this weary, sorrowful man. The government says he is a terrorist and a monster, but when I look at him, I see simply what he says he is — a physician who wanted to build a clinic in his native land.
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As an American, I felt the pain of Sept. 11, and I understood the need to invade Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also felt the suffering of the Afghans as their country was bombed. And when hundreds of men were rounded up and thrust into a black hole of detention, many with seemingly no proof that they had any terrorist connections, I felt that my own country had taken a wrong turn.

While writing this post, I came across another heartbreaking article, one I’ll have to share with my father the Gardener Extraordinaire: Wilting Dreams At Gitmo – A Detainee Is Denied A Garden, and Hope is the story of an innocent Saudi Arabian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay who digs a garden using spoons.

…He said, “We planted a garden. We have some small plants — watermelon, peppers, garlic, cantaloupe. No fruit yet. There’s a lemon tree about two inches tall, though it’s not doing well.”

“The guards gave you tools?”

He shook his head.

“Then — how do you dig?” I was struggling to grasp this.

“Spoons,” he said. “And a mop handle.”

The soil in Camp Iguana is dry and brittle as flint. And I’ve seen the spoons they give our clients.

“But the spoons are plastic — aren’t they?”

Saddiq nodded. “At night we poured water on the ground. In the morning, we pounded it with the mop handle and scratched it with the spoons. You can loosen about this much.” He held his thumb and forefinger about a half-inch apart. “The next day, we did it again. And so on until we had a bed for planting.” He shrugged. “We have lots of time, here.”
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For all that, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “There lives the dearest freshness deep down things.” Maybe the History of Guantanamo will have a few uplifting footnotes. America denied them seeds and trowels and they created life anyway. We tried to withhold beauty, but from the grim earth of Guantanamo they scratched a few square meters of garden — with spoons. Guantanamo is ugly, but man’s instinct for beauty lives deep down things.

You wear the day around you like it’s yours to stay around you

Casa420 and Familia, Rhymes and unrhymed lines

I ate it all This ain't henna, kids
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz. [Photo on the left taken by my friend A, cropped by me.]

The other day, I slipped on my green jacket (the one my father always glances at sidelong before asking rather scornfully, “What sport are you playing?”) and throughout the day I kept sniffing at my wrist. The perfume still lingering at the cuffs of my green jacket reminded me that I last wore it a couple of weeks ago, while spending our first real sunny (in the SF Bay Area) day with my lovely friend A, whom I first mentioned here, back when we initially began hanging out regularly outside of school, and later again here.

It was a gorgeous day. A and I hung out in town in the morning, and really quickly hit up Andronico’s to see what all the fuss is about (is it as cool as Whole Foods? I don’t really know, since I do my grocery shopping at neither). On my way out, I took pictures of the sunflowers, because roses are damn overrated, and you can’t go wrong with pretty sunshine flowers.

We headed up to the town of Martinez to pick up my brother, who was returning by Amtrak from a weekend spent in Reno. He called just when we got there: “My train’s running late. Why don’t you guys just go ahead and get some lunch in Martinez, and I’ll give you a call when I get in?”

“Alright,” I said, but little had I realized that Martinez is one of those quintessential small towns with perhaps some sort of quaintness that locals find charming (and it contains the county courthouse and the Amtrak station!), but none of the attention-grabbing sort of appeal that out-of-towners would be looking for. At least, not this out-of-towner.

We drove around (and around some more) and could find no place suitably intriguing enough at which to eat. Finally, I parked and we wandered through the Main St., where I photographed a beautiful brick wall and we decided to just duck into a coffeeshop for some cold drinks while waiting for my brother.

“What’s the difference between French sodas and Italian sodas?” I asked, and learned that French are the ones that contain cream. Next up, trying to figure out what flavor to order. I squinted at the flavored syrup bottles, some of them hidden behind others, and asked the guy at the counter for clarification. He rattled off the flavors – all fifteen of them, counting on his fingers – while I continued standing uncertainly. My lack of decision-making skills is well-documented (here, for example, amongst other places).

The guy looked amused at my still-confused expression. “Should I repeat them?” he asked.

I shook my head and made a split-second decision, bypassing my usual cranberry-flavored obsession in favor of my latest try something new philosophy, and opted for peach. And it was damn good, is what.

The brother called while we were paying for our drinks, so we hightailed it down the street to pick him up from the Amtrak station. He threw his bags into my car and settled into the backseat with a weary sigh.

“How was Reno?” I asked.

“It was snowing,” he said shortly.

“Gross. Well, at least you picked a good day to be back in NorCal, buddy. It hasn’t been this sunny for a hella long time.”

“I know,” he said, looking more cheerful. “Maybe I’ll keep my mohawk after all. It was such a long winter, it seemed kind of pointless having a mohawk, since I had to wear a hat everywhere.”

[There was so much beautiful sunshine, I drove around with the sunroof open all day long, and it was hella rocking.]

We stopped for lunch, where I devoured pasta and french fries and the brother kindly let me eat his share of fries as well. (If he weren’t already related to me by default, this is the part where I would have decided we were friends for life.) He also scribbled his rendition of my signature on my credit card receipt while I was in the restroom, and nothing made me laugh quite so much as returning to find him nonchalantly presenting me with the forged signature when he handed me my own copy of the receipt.

I dropped the brother off at his place, and then A and I headed back to my town for dessert. We parked and took a shortcut through Macy’s, where I insisted, “Wait! I needa smell good!” A, being patient as usual, stopped while I quickly spritzed on the first thing that smelled yummy to my discriminating nose (turned out to be Miracle by Lancome). Weeks later, I can still catch the faded scent on my green jacket.

We stopped by Ghirardelli for ice cream sundaes, then walked down the street and ate them while sitting at the fountain. Too soon, I had to head home to help my mother with some gardening I had promised.

So, I traded my friend and the fountain for my mother and vegetable plots. Tomatoes and jalapenos and squash it was. I HATE squash. But the gardening wasn’t as horrible as I was expecting it to be. (I always expect gardening to be horrible, because I’m lazy and I hate physical exertion and I admit it.) I had to deal with too-large gloves falling off my small hands, until I impatiently tossed them aside and dug through the dirt with my bare hands. And I didn’t even scream like a girl (not that I’m wont to do so anyway) when I noticed the snail making its slow progress up the side of my rainbow-striped skirt. But I did make a face and brush the snail off with one of the previously-abandoned gloves.

“How’s my little gardener?” said the daddy-o affectionately when he returned home from work that evening. “Wasn’t it so much fun?” I resisted an impulse to roll my eyes. I could almost swear he was more proud of me gardening for an hour than he was of me graduating from college.

(Just kidding – he totally got all teary-eyed at my commencement ceremony last year; I have it on video, thanks to the sister.)

But I did enjoy getting out of the house, being outdoors, reveling in all the fresh air and higher temperatures after the nearly every single freakin’ day of rain drama we had had going on for a seemingly longer-than-usual winter. And I enjoyed the feeling of sunlight shining down and warming my back, of using the muscles God gave me to plant tomatoes that I can hopefully soon use in made-from-scratch guacamole (mmm, guacamole!), the feeling of ants bravely forging up my bare arms (so nice to have a private yard/garden with no fear of prying eyes).

Which brings to mind some beloved Wendell Berry poetry, with thanks to Baraka for her recent post that reminded me how much I like that man:

Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shapes of clouds?

Hope for recovery

Loss and laments and letting go, Salaam Namaste

Brick walkway leading up to our front porch
Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Islamic Relief has recently been sponsoring a series of six dinners around the United States, in order to raise funds for continuing support for the victims of last October’s earthquake in South Asia:

The earthquake which devastated the South Asian subcontinent in October has affected millions. Islamic Relief is working hard on the ground and around the world in order to ensure that the 3,000,000 people left homeless are not forgotten. Please join us to help us in our efforts to provide sustained rebuilding and rehabilitation projects to a devastated population. [Rebuilding Lives, Restoring Hope]

If you were following this weblog towards the end of 2005, you know the earthquake is something I felt quite emotional about.

So when my sister forwarded the email about last Saturday’s fundraising dinner in the South Bay and I sent it to my father with a note asking, “Daddy khana, would you be interested in going to this event?”, I was gratified to receive an instant email back: “Absolutely! Let’s go.”

At the dinner, I was impressed by the rundown of Islamic Relief’s work, their speeches and powerpoint presentations and video footage and the 4-star rating accorded them by Charity Navigator (the largest charity evaluator in the U.S.), and their overall professionalism – but mainly I was impressed by their passion for what they do. The speakers I heard that evening – not only the Islamic Relief people, but also local community leaders and activists – have dedicated their lives to helping people and making the world a more beautiful, safer, respectful place, through various efforts. The least the rest of us can do is support such causes from the safe distance of the secure homes and comfortable lifestyles we inhabit.

In all the speeches about the earthquake, and about giving and making sacrifices in solidarity and in compassion, the part that struck me the most forcefully was when one of the brothers up there said, “We all set aside money sometimes, here and there, thinking we’ll use it later in the year, for something or other. I know you’ve saved your money for something important.”

He paused, then added quietly, pointedly, “Maybe this is important.”

Someone later mentioned, “Alhamdulillah [all praise is for God], the winter in South Asia was not as harsh as we had thought it might be: there was only three feet of snow, as opposed to the six feet we had been expecting,” and I sat there remembering that, in the two days prior to the dinner as I hung out with the ALL STAR CRACKSTAR SQUAD (killer phrase trademarked/copyrighted/all that drama by 2Scoops, and, don’t worry, you’ll hear more about the hanging out sessions later), all I had done every time we ventured outdoors was scrunch up my face like a disgruntled five-year-old and whine, “Why is it raining, dammit?”

I was stunned. Three feet of snow? I’m so sick of winter, I can’t even handle three drops of rain. Clearly, some necessary perspective is in order.

If you’re in Chicago, Tampa Bay, FL, or Dallas, the event’s still on. Take a couple of hours out of your evening, and go.