All posts by Yasmine

About Yasmine

I like orange sunshine and blue slurpees.

California skies got room to spare

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs

S felt it was necessary to add to the glorious architecture
S felt it was necessary to add to the glorious architecture, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

It’s a sad testament to my slacker tendencies that not only have I neglected to write about my Blogistan meetup with Anjum about a month ago, but she has updated about her first California trip a couple of times already, and then she was back in the SF Bay Area on a second business trip, and I still haven’t gotten around to writing about our hanging-out sessions from a month ago. Talk about major laziness, man. Stab me already.

But I had long ago promised Anjum I’d post my version of our meetup(s), so here it goes, in all its rambling glory thanks to hastily scribbled notes and bullet points, but organized into paragraph-form so late that I’m probably not doing it justice.

[Oh, and in case you haven’t figured it out already, check out Flickr for some of the photos from our Berkeley/SF hanging-out sessions.]

TUESDAY, JANUARY 3rd: Anjum arrives in the Bay!

This is after about a week of us exchanging emails and phone calls. At one point, Anjum left me a voicemessage that ended with, “Umm, what’s going on with all the flooding out there?” I sent her emails warning her to bring whatever clothing she considered suitable for rainy weather, because it damn well wasn’t sunshine-y at this end. Oh, and in regards to phone calls – to be honest, I must confess I can’t recall even one single time I answered my phone when Anjum called. This was not deliberate; the reception around here sucks. But I bet it started to seem highly suspicious after the first, oh, four or five times.

The first thing that happened after I parked my car at the Oakland Airport (to pick up Anjum) was that I somehow set off my car alarm. You’d think, after owning the new car for four months at that point, I’d have learned all these fancy schmancy nuances regarding car alarms and such by now. Apparently not. The first week I got the car, I set off the alarm an average of three times a day. I guess setting it off just once in January (so far) was progress then. While I was pressing all the buttons on my keychain and cursing under my breath, a guy walking by called out, “Try locking your car, then unlocking it with your key!” So I did. And it didn’t work. But then the alarm inexplicably stopped blaring ten seconds later while I was still pressing the keychain buttons at random. So I breathed a sigh of relief and continued on my way inside the airport to wait for Anjum, who took a while getting out, but that was okay, because I highly amused myself by reading the warning signs regarding what one should absolutely positively not take on planes while one is traveling. Sadly, all I remember is the fact that paint-thinner is a no-no. Just don’t do it, kids.

While driving Anjum to her hotel in San Ramon, she glanced out the window at one point and exclaimed, “Palm trees!”
“Where?!” I said. “We have palm trees in NorCal?”
So we had a good laugh over that, because apparently there are palm trees around here, it’s just that I never notice them unless they’re as abundantly in-your-face as the palm trees in Southern California.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 6th: Jummah in Oakland, Hangingout session in Berkeley

PrincessPrettyPants picked up Anjum in San Ramon, and they drove up to meet with me and my sister in our hometown, where they jumped in my car and we raced through Highway24 to my favorite masjid for jummah in Oakland. While driving through Oakland, my sister turned to the backseat and asked Anjum, “So, how’re you liking California so far?” Anjum mused that California folks don’t seem to be in as much of a hurry as East Coast-ers, rushing around less.
My sister misheard rushing as washing. “You mean, like, hygiene?” she exclaimed, horrified.
I started laughing. “Not washing less, buddy, rushing less!”

Jummah [the Friday congregational prayers] were rocking, as usual. Afterward, we headed over to Berkeley for lunch at Julie’s Cafe (where PPP had wayy too much fun with the hot sauce), then to the Oddball store down the street (where I saw gems like this and this), then to the Berkeley Hat Co., where I was totally busted for taking photographs of – among other things – PPP trying on funky purple beanies with pom-poms attached. Somewhere in between, I saw a store display of children’s rain boots, and exclaimed, “I want those! Galoshes! That would be so awesome!”
PPP shook her head. “I never want to see you wearing a pair of those, you hear me?”
“Whaaat? I could totally pull it off!”
“No, Yazzo, even you couldn’t pull that off.”

Props to Anjum for putting up with our mass craziness, because when we crazy Cali kids hang out in a group, we are insane.

SATURDAY, JANUARY 7th: Hangingout session in San Francisco

This was the best day ever. I invited my friend S to come hang out with me and Anjum in San Francisco – basically, because I had originally invited him to Jummah the previous day and we planned it out a week in advance, but he overslept on Friday and then sent me an apologetic text message (“Good morning, I just woke up looking at the time, I don’t think I will make it to the Bay but can I come up tomorrow or Sunday to make up Friday please”). I laughed at the sheer audacity of flaking out on people at the last minute through text messaging, then called S to yell at him, made him feel sufficiently guilty, and then graciously invited him to hang out with us on Saturday, because I am so kind and forgiving like that.

S drove down from Sacramento and met me at the BART station so we could take the train into SF together. He had never ridden the train before, and professed to feeling freaked out about this. I told him to suck it up. “Man up!” as Somayya says. Besides, he was wearing his Superman t-shirt, and Superman is not supposed to be afraid of measly things like trains. Once on the train, S busted out with his Treo and started photographing the interior. I told him to calm down with that a bit, since brown people taking pictures these days is cause for such drama, mygod. Then I took the Treo away from him and started checking my GMail, even though I had done that right before leaving the house. Once I figured out how the tiny keyboard worked, I teased him, “Oh, so this is why I’ve been getting text messages in complete sentences from you lately! I thought maybe you were just turning into me, or something.” I may never pick up my phone or return calls in a timely manner, but at least I’m famous for text-messaging in full sentences, with perfect spelling and grammar.

After that, we commenced bickering about phone calls – S accused me of never returning his calls, while, in my defense, I explained that if I’m in a “not picking up the phone or returning calls” mood (which is most of the time), I’m ignoring not only his calls but also everyone else’s. This cheered him up considerably. “Oh, okay,” he said. “So it’s not me, then. You just have psychological problems.”
“Yeah, I think that sounds about right.”

We met up with Anjum outside the Powell St. BART in San Francisco, and from there made our way down to Union Square. I was delighted to see how quickly S and Anjum got along – S, like Somayya, has a habit of making fun of people as a way of showing his love, and Anjum not only took it in stride with good humor, but she dished it right back, so that in no time the two of them were all making fun of one another as if they’d been friends for years. A recurring theme of conversation throughout the day was S’s Superman shirt, ironic because Anjum and I kept accusing him of being “SO SLOW!” Anjum, fearless East Coast-er that she is, would surge right ahead and cross the street in a split second, while S and even I hesitated and looked both ways and checked the lights and signals before proceeding. Clearly, we need to work on our jaywalking skills. Pedestrians need to take back the streets!

At one point, Anjum and I ducked inside the Mocca cafe not only to check out the pretty food but also for old time’s sake because this was the spot where Baji‘s sister, LB, and I had met up for chocolate mousse cake and a little bit of hanging out at Union Square back in September2004. However, we decided to move along to the Ghirardelli store for ice cream sundaes, but S and I were really in the mood for root beer floats, and no one seemed to have ’em.

We decided to skip the food for the time being and move on to a bookstore, where Anjum browsed postcards and I found a wombat book that would be perfect for DeGrouchyOwl. I was super excited about this, and had to take a photograph. As Anjum and S continued their own browsing, I wandered down to the lower level of the bookstore, where I was delighted to find the Glamour magazine article on WOMEN WHO BLOG. While I was skimming the article, Anjum and S came by, so I gleefully pointed out the article to Anjum, who had heard about it already, too.

“Blog?” said S confusedly.
“Yes, you know, weblogs,” we said. “That’s how we meet, through our weblogs.”
“What?! I thought you were two were related or something!”
We burst out laughing and explained about the weblogs a bit more, but S wasn’t feelin’ it. He just gave us Why would you do THAT? sort of looks.

At the register a few minutes later, while Anjum was paying for her postcards, S patted me patronizingly on the head. “It’s okay, Yasmine, you’re a nice blob.”
“A what?”
“Blob. Blog. You know. What you guys do. Blobbing.”
I rolled my eyes.

We wandered around some more. Anjum was on a quest to find a post office, of which there is apparently one in the Macy*s department store, of all places. Every time we went up and down from one level to another, S, who was quite comfortable chillin’ in one spot, kept asking “Why do you keep walking on the escalators?” to which I would retort, ” ‘Cuz I’m not a lazyass like you.” To which he told me how short I am, because this is his favorite thing of which to remind me.

While Anjum stood in line at the post office, S and I went off to amuse ourselves with the plethora of other stuff available at Macy*s: disgustingly expensive fresh-baked bread in animal shapes, Mango-A-Go-Go smoothies from Jamba Juice, and vending machines that dispensed quite another form of (eye)candy altogether: iPods and their accessories!

More walking: We ducked into Anthropologie, where I decided that any store that sells a pair of pants for $165 is damn overrated. Also, I got Anjum and S to take pictures of me with Anthropologie’s humongous shopping bags, which seemed almost as big as I was.

Back out to the street: we witnessed the cablecar turnaround, some street dancing, and a reminder about how much Jesus Christ loves us.

We stood waiting in the long line for our turn on the next cablecar, which took us to Fisherman’s Wharf, by which time we were hella hungry and dying for some food. S supposedly knew of a good clam chowder place, so Anjum and I just followed his lead. Along the way, we passed some monkeys who made me think of Baji, and an earring shop at which Anjum and I did double-takes, waffled, and glanced at each other uncertainly before deciding, “Alright, let’s go in!” So we checked out all the gorgeous dangly earrings to our hearts’ content while S waited patiently, then we went and got some clam chowder from Boudin’s and saw even more animal-shaped bread.

At the end of the meal, I offered Anjum some of the orange-flavored Trident gum that I love. She chewed it for a second and exclaimed, “This is what your car smells like!” I remembered I had been chewing it the evening I picked her up from the airport. Well, if my car had to start losing the new-car smell, as far as I’m concerned the next best thing would be for it to smell like oranges.

We walked around Fisherman’s Wharf for a while longer, taking pictures of each other taking pictures, checking out the lazy sea lions, marveling at the ships and ferries and the little white sailboats. Soon, I had to leave, so S and I said our goodbyes to Anjum, leaving her at the wharf because she wanted to stay for a view of the impending sunset.

S and I walked back to the cablecar stop, and I did some bread-watching from the street along the way. Also along the way, while I was walking along and in mid-conversation with S, a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk shoved a potted bush in my face while screaming, “YAAAAAHHHHHH!”

I jumped in surprise, then yelled, “What the hell!”
S was doubled over in laughter. So was the homeless man.
I was not amused. I punched S in the arm. “What kind of damn friend are you? That wasn’t freakin’ funny!”
“It was!” he gasped, still chuckling. “You totally didn’t see it coming. He made you jump!”
“Well, he freakin’ scared the hell out of me! God!”

We got on the cablecar heading back to Union Square. The car was crowded and I had no handhold, so I reached up and grasped the closest thing I saw – the wire above my head. “Don’t pull that unless you want to get off!” said the cablecar man quickly.
“Here,” said S, “hold on to this.”
I looked up at the metal bar he was gesturing to, and laughed. “Do you seriously expect me to reach that? There’s no way I’m going to be able to reach that!”
He offered his arm as a handhold, but I stubbornly stood my ground, and somehow we made it back to Union Square – with glorious views along the way – without me falling off the back of the cablecar. Then we descended the escalator at the BART station, got on the next train to the East Bay, and then drove back to our respective homes.

The end!

Conversations about hair

Casa420 and Familia, Conversations and Encounters

Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[Because even if no one sees your hair, there will still always be conversations nonetheless.]

* Last December, at home:

I walk into my room with my hair all tousled and standing up in weird waves and curls all over my head because I just took it out of the bun it’s been in for the past couple of days. Because my hair is naturally annoyingly straight, I view the crazy curls as a delightful change.

My mother, on the other hand, shakes her head in despair. Ey kay ayya, Yasmine? Jindoo dariyn vaykhh na zara. Banda akhhay, dunya thay thud kaday bhi vaalan ni kandee na maree. “What is this? Just look at yourself – one would think you’ve never in the world combed your hair before.”

I laugh. “That’s right, Ummy. You know I never do comb my hair.” She gives me a what kind of monster did I raise sort of look.

I am notorious amongst close friends for never (okay, rarely ever) combing my hair. I wash it, I dry it, I style it by putting it up in a bun again. But combing or brushing? Waste of time. Besides, the hair is so damn straight, it doesn’t really require any of that drama anyway.

Lately, I’ve flirted with the idea of chopping my elbow-length hair all off – like I did a couple of years ago – but it’s a nice anchor for the headwraps, and I really do love the headwraps.

Which brings me to the next conversation…

* Last Wednesday evening at Rasputin Music, Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley:

A man approaches me, grinning widely as if we’re long-lost friends. I stare warily. “Are those dreads?” he asks without preamble.

“Dreads?” I repeat stupidly. “Uh, no. No, I don’t have dreads.”

He raises his eyebrows and checks out my headwrap, wide-eyed. “Wow, you must have a lot of hair, then.”

I start laughing. “No, I don’t really, it’s mainly just the scarf that makes it all look so huge. Seriously.”

“Oh, okay, ’cause I saw you and I was thinking, ‘Man, that girl must have some serious dreads, or maybe she just has lotsa hair!’ “

“Nope, neither, just big scarves to work with, more like!”

We both chuckle, and I make a quick escape to the register to pay for my CD.

Later, I laughingly relay the conversation to my sister, as we settle down for dinner with the brother in Berkeley.

She and the brother share a glance across the table. “He was hitting on you,” she says bluntly.

The brother nods in agreement. “Yeah.”

I stare. “Well…grand,” I sputter. “Clearly, I didn’t notice that part. I thought he was just excited about the dreads.”

It’s kinda not fun when non-oblivious people point out those sort of things, you know.
It just ruins the story.

Things that made even a Monday quite a rocking day

(3)BeautifulThings, All-Star Crackstar Squad

I’m lazy and still working on writing about my meetup with Anjum – disgraceful, I know – but, meanwhile, here’s a long-ish post for you, about this past Monday, no less.

ONE. Taking a nap on the living room floor, smackdab in the middle of the pool of sunshine spilling through the front windows and onto the carpet. Specifically, falling asleep while reading Ivan Turgenev’s short novel, First Love, because that girl – Zinaida Alexandrovna – was so damn arrogant and annoying and self-satisfied that I just wanted to stab her. Or rip the pages out of the anthology. [Not so rocking: leftside arm- and shoulder-aches for the next day and a half. Did I mention I’m left-handed? This is problematic.]

TWO. Snail mail! Package from HijabMan, containing:

– Earrings from the Middle East! He had asked which I wanted more, flip-flops or earrings, and my shallow accessories-addicted inner rockstar told me to go with earrings, so I did. Because we all know I love dangly earrings. I can get flip-flops on my own anytime, but earrings from the Middle East? Lemme at ’em! So HijabMan sent me a photograph he had taken, I circled the earrings I wanted, and emailed it back to him with a note: “THE RED ONE IS MINE!” When I finally got them in the mail, my first thought was, Dayam, I have hella good taste. Alhamdulillah. Oh yeah, and I wore them right away, for the rest of the day. HijabMan is the awesomest. You should be his friend.

– Another mix CD from Baji, mix-CD compiler extraordinaire! Baji had given the CD to HijabMan to give to me when he visited California back in September. He forgot to hand it over, and the CD subsequently traveled with him around the world before making its way back to me. Baji will be so proud! This is a No-Theme CD, and it’s rocking. It also has TWENTY-TWO TRACKS, so it took me the better part of three days worth of errands all around town to get through it. I’m now listening to it for the second time, and loving it, because Baji has awesome taste in music, even though I didn’t recognize any of the songs (which says a lot about my taste in music, obviously). Baji, if I haven’t said this before, you’re my favorite rockstar. You’re lucky I’m not a boy and about ten years older (oh, and ten times smarter), or I woulda challenged TP to a duel and married you myself. I woulda!

…and it’s deja vu, because…

THREE. I ran into my brother the crazy artist at *gasp* the grocery store of all places. He grabbed my grocery list away from me: “Garbanzo beans? Oho, yaar! Chholay!“

I laughed. “Hey, speaking of chholay…”
His interest was piqued. “Naan ‘n’ Curry?” he immediately asked.
“No buddy, although, yeah, we should plan a Berkeley trip to eat at Naan ‘n’ Curry, too. But, hey, let’s check out that movie you really wanted to see.”

So now we’re coordinating plans to see Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World together, even though I warned him that the reviews I had read so far pretty much summed up the film as sucky. But I’ve got to see it for myself. Plus, I liked a bit of Shaheen Sheik‘s music in the past (back when no one knew who she was and her music was good), so maybe that’ll be some saving grace.

FOUR. Phone call from my favorite San Diego-an 2Scoops! Who always merits an exclamation point after his name (hey, I didn’t start it; I’m just agreeing) even though he is stubbornly weblog-less. Nearly five-minute-long voicemessage (“you know how we do”). Best line(s) ever, about the little kids who were – uhhh, praying? suuure – at the masjid during the same time he was:

“This one kid, I don’t know why he was dressed up like this, but he was wearing a karate suit, like, the white karate suit, and he had on a yellow belt and everything. And he would stand, and then he would kick to his right, and then he would stand, and then he would kick to his left…”

Apologies to 2Scoops if I mangled his story, but he talks so fast! (All the better to fit more hilarious stories into those five minutes, before he reaches the limit and the phone automatically cuts him off.) Also, hearing myself creatively addressed as “Y-to-the-AZZO” is enough to make me laugh for minutes on end, and people who make me laugh are my favorite people ever, and hands-down awesome by default. Seeeeeeriously.

FIVE. Discovering this slurpee machine! The only reason I haven’t been talking about blue raspberry slurpees on the weblog for months now is become I haven’t found any blue raspberry slurpees since last summer. Damn graduation. At least in college, I had a steady supply of such things. It’s enough to make a kid consider going to grad suckool. Anyway, remember I promised all y’all your very own slupee machines oh so long ago? That’s right! Vote for me!

SIX. Coordinating tentative dinner plans with Anjum, who is back in the Bay on business! [Actually, “tentative” is right; it’s probably not happening this time around. Aww sadness! We’ll make it work again, buddy!]

SEVEN. Checking out my friend H’s facebook profile, on which he had posted the following quote that he himself – such a smart man – had come up with:

“Realize that maybe living the moment is not all its cracked up to be, that perhaps we need to live not just for today but for tomorrow should there be one.”

Thank you, I needed that.

EIGHT. Email from my lovely friend, D. Best line ever: “Some days I wanna be a dude with a motorbike and no plans.”

Oh, me too.

You can always use the kids as an excuse

Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs

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Who needs oranges when you can just take a bite out of your sister?, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

So I’m being blog-interrogated into updating, apparently. I have lots of stories to share (like, ooh, my five-year high school reunion a while back, and my recent hit-n-run hanging out sessions with Barsaat, and other things I can’t stop yawning long enough to remember at the moment, but, don’t worry, I have little scribbled notes on the forgotten things, so they’re not really forgotten), but it’s so much easier to upload photos than it is to sit here and compose lengthy weblog entries. Because you know I can’t do weblog entries without the “lengthy” part thrown in.

Also, I’ll let Barsaat cover the Blogistan meetup portion of it, since it’s always more fun to hear all about one’s home(town/area/state) from another perspective. Plus, she writes awesome travelogues. So go harass her! (And make sure you tell her how much I love her for bringing sunshine to California after all those endless weeks of rain.)

The above photo is of my nieces, when they visited the Bay Area with the rest of the Sacramento contingent last weekend. To see some of the photos I took of the totallyedible nieces and nephew, start here and click “next” on the set to see the, err, next photo. [Some of the photos, where indicated, were taken by my sister a few weeks before that.]

Well, I know there’s a reason to change

Links to love, Salaam Namaste

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Every day brings us closer to spring, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

As the year winds down to a close, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

Smile on your brother: The tsunami victims who are still struggling to rebuild their lives, the people devastated by the South Asian earthquake, the strangers on the street. These are just a few examples of those whose stories have deeply touched me this year. You can find dozens more, if you take a minute to look around.

I’ll put my “heartless bastard” reputation to rest for a moment and admit that this article about building orphanages in Indonesia, post-tsunami made me tear up:

What does $1 pay for in Aceh? someone asked.

“What does $1 buy here?” Alyan asked back.

“Candy!” the kids said in unison.

“In Takengon,” Alyan said, “one dollar will pay for three meals for a child.”

Her answer drew silence at first. Then one of the children said, “Let’s send more.”

[You can read more about the orphanage and Give Light at www.givelight.org. Someday I will share my tsunami poem here, if you think you can handle the scrolling involved.]

Please continue praying for the Attari family. And send some prayers for my uncle – my aunt‘s husband – who passed away recently as well.

May the year 2006 be one of beauty and blessings.

Time will tell us if we’re out of answers when it stops

Loss and laments and letting go

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After the rain, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Mother
Can you keep them in the dark for life
Can you hide them from the waiting world
Oh mother

Driving across town a few days ago, I came to a stop at a red light. Diagonally in front of me, in the next lane, was a silver Honda Accord of the type I’ve become accustomed to looking for during the past two months. I automatically glanced at the license plates: Is it 4MUH810?

But, of course, it wasn’t.

My sister, late on the evening we heard that Dr. Zehra Attari and her car had been recovered from the Oakland Estuary, said something like, “It’s easier knowing that it’s something that happened, not something that happened to her.”

What happened is heartbreaking enough, either way. But there is a sense of relief, of sorts, in knowing what happened. There is even some relief in knowing that what happened wasn’t as horrible as what could have happened. But, at the end of the day, Dr. Attari is still dead, her loss is devastating to her family, and there is pain in never knowing for certain that she did not suffer in those last moments.

The day of Dr. Attari’s funeral in San Jose on December 22nd, it seemed to me that there was more rain than Northern California had seen this winter.

Rain and mud everywhere; the hell had I been thinking, wearing my shoes with holes? But my feet were the least of my concerns: there was my sister, teary-eyed and worried about her best friend; there were Dr. Attari’s daughters, struggling to maintain their strength and composure; there was Mr. Attari, tousle-haired and heartbreakingly lost-looking.

And in between, well-intentioned on everyone’s part, was an orchestration of umbrellas: how to best keep people dry without poking their eyes out. I remembered the previous day, at the Attari home, as the family planned the funeral. “But what if it rains?” someone blurted out.

Dr. Attari’s older daughter raised her eyebrows. “So bring an umbrella,” she answered quite directly. I wondered if she were thinking, My mother has been lying in dozens of feet of water at the bottom of an estuary for forty-three days. You damn well better be able to handle a few drops of rain. But, no, that’s just what I was thinking; she was probably much more gracious and preoccupied than that.

What I liked most about Dr. Attari’s funeral – if it isn’t in poor taste to confess to liking something about a funeral – was the respect accorded to women. Women were specifically encouraged to attend the funeral, not only the prayer but also the burial. Even after Dr. Attari’s body was placed into the grave, we women were silently allowed to remain standing where we were, just a few feet away – in front, ahead of the men – as the tractor (bulldozer?) lowered the concrete slab into the gaping hole of the grave, swept the dirt back into the grave, and repeatedly slammed a rectangular piece of wood over it to flatten the dirt at the top. It was an extremely painful vantage point, but I was glad for that wholehearted respect for the women and their right to honor and pray for the dead – the likes of which I had never before experienced.

At the end of the funeral, I saw one woman, a close family friend, hug the Attari daughters and heard her – though still tearfully – defiantly say, “I will not cry for a shaheed.”

A young woman, whom I vaguely remember from Zaytuna classes years ago, hugged me and whispered, “Thank you for taking care of them.” I stared after her retreating figure, bewildered. I had done nothing. If anyone had done anything, it was my sister, who had compiled and organized and distributed the flyers and photos, who had been (and still is) available every second of every one of those forty-three days as a source of support for her friend.

After the funeral, we made our way to the Attari home. In the evening, the rest of the friends and guests were gently shooed away so that the family could get ready for the dua and prayer at the SABA Center. My sister and I moved idly around the house, trying to be useful. I found Mr. Attari at the kitchen sink, rinsing the plates and glasses.

“Here, I can do that,” I said. “Let me help with those.”

He smiled and waved me off. “No, no, I can do it.”

His younger daughter whispered to me, “My dad likes washing dishes.”

I smiled slightly. “I know.”

As we prepared to leave their home in our separate cars, Mr. Attari asked if we knew how to get to the SABA Center. “Yes, I printed out directions,” I said. “Could you please take a look at these and see if they seem okay?”

Standing next to Mr. Attari as he glanced through the sheet of paper I held out to him, I had a horrible feeling – was he remembering all the times he had helped his wife with directions? Was he remembering that the one evening he had not been there to guide her was the same evening she never returned home? It was so intensely sad to think in those terms.

At one point during the evening at the SABA Center, the congregation began reciting Dua-i-Kumayl together. I didn’t have a book to recite from as everyone else seemed to, so I kept stealthily glancing at the sheaf of papers belonging to the lady next to me. She soon noticed me peeking over, silently moved her papers over so that the pages were resting in front of both of us, and placed a finger at the line the congregation was reciting, so that I could follow along.

I still don’t know much about Dua-i-Kumayl, other than that it is regularly recited by Shia Muslims, but I quickly read the English translation while reciting the Arabic along with everyone else, and I can definitely say that it must be one of the most beautiful supplications for forgiveness that I’ve ever come across.

At the end of the Dua, I thanked the sister next to me. “Would you like this copy?” she asked, “I have another one at home.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, delighted. She was indeed. So now I have my own copy, and it’s lovely.

Over the past couple of weeks, it’s been heartwarming to read of strangers who were touched by Dr. Attari, to know that her spirit of giving and caring, her compassionate work, inspired even those who did not know her in person. My father, recently discussing her death with our relatives, said, “It’s not just that she was a wife and mother, you know. She was a respected person in her community. She was a doctor who helped poor people who had nowhere else to go. We need people like her.”

Driving to the Attari home after the funeral, listening to her family friends relate stories of Dr. Attari, made me realize what a loss her death is to those who knew and loved her well. The children Dr. Attari treated in her capacity as a pediatrician, the patients she left behind, are suffering her loss as well. To think that she is gone for sure, just a few days after I was thinking about her while in Oakland, is a difficult reconciliation.

My Lord, have mercy upon
the weakness of my body,
the thinness of my skin and
the frailty of my bones.
.
.
.
Thou knowest my weakness before a little of
this world’s tribulations and punishments,
and before those ordeals which befall its inhabitants…

– from Dua-i-Kumayl

Update on Dr. Zehra Attari

Loss and laments and letting go

Really, I have no words. So I’m copy-pasting what I just sent out in an email. Background here.

The car of Dr. Zehra Attari was removed late last night from the Oakland Estuary. She was a pediatrician who lived in San Jose and maintained a clinic for low-income families in Oakland. Dr. Attari disappeared on the evening of November 7th, somewhere between her Oakland clinic and a medical conference in Alameda, an island city in the San Francisco Bay.

Alameda County divers found her car last night at the bottom of the Oakland Estuary, flipped over and completely submerged in mud except for the wheels. It is believed that because it was dark and raining heavily on the evening of November 7th, and because Dr. Attari was not a very confident driver, she must have driven off the road, down the boat ramp, and into the estuary, which has no barriers in that area. Although the body found in the car has not yet officially been identified, it is believed to be that of Dr. Attari based on the clothing she was wearing the evening she disappeared.

Dr. Attari was also the mother of my sister’s best friend, so the news has hit hard. But as difficult as this time is for us, it is even more devastating for Dr. Attari’s family and close friends, who spent the last six weeks vacillating between hope and despair and doing all they could to gather any information about her disappearance when the authorities themselves had no news or leads to share.

Please take a minute to pray for Dr. Attari’s soul – that she might rest in ease and peace. Pray that the remarkable strength the Attaris exhibited during the past six weeks will continue to sustain them for the weeks (months, years…) to come. And that they might find peace as well.

[Some news and information]

UPDATES:

Dr. Zehra Attari‘s body was positively identified yesterday morning. The funeral is today (Thurs., Dec. 22) at 1pm in San Jose. For updates and other info, keep checking www.zehraattari.com. There is a condolence book here, that you may sign.

The Attaris held a news conference yesterday. You can watch that here. It’s about 30 minutes long.

Keep those prayers for the Attaris coming.

Hundreds of pages, pages, pages forward

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Bibliothek


THIS…is the fastest way to my heart, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Last Friday, I managed to drag my friend A along with me to Oakland, where I usually pray Jummah salah [the Friday congregational prayer]. I kept extolling the virtues of this favorite masjid of mine, until she reminded me that she had gone there with me once before.

“Really?” I said. “I don’t remember.”

“Yeah, I’ve been there before.”

“Really? When?“

This, of course, was the mystery.

Only after we had entered the masjid and settled in for the always lovely, humorous, and inspiring khutbah [sermon] from my favorite imam did I recall that A had come to Jummah with me during the summer of last year. And that afterward, a group of us had gone out to lunch at Berkeley’s Naan ‘n’ Curry restaurant [not the usual one we frequent on Telegraph, but the new – and subpar – one that had opened on College Ave.].

M, who is Iraqi, had offhandedly mentioned that he didn’t enjoy desi food, or didn’t eat it all that often, or something like that.

“But you should have said something!” I said. “We didn’t have to eat here!”

“It’s tradition,” he said simply.

I couldn’t argue with that.

Sitting in the masjid last Friday, I couldn’t help but laugh inwardly at another memory from two summers ago: the post-conference meeting for organizers/volunteers, held at the Telegraph Naan ‘n’ Curry. At the end, W insisted on paying for everyone’s meal, and went up to the register and did so, whereupon M leapt out of his chair in an effort to stuff some bills from his pocket into W’s hands. W fending him off, dodging him, the two of them running through the interior of the restaurant, skidding around tables and chairs and other customers, strangers who looked on perplexedly while the rest of us held our stomachs in aching laughter. It was good times.

After last Friday’s Jummah salah, it was time for lunch in Berkeley. Another tradition. I parked my car, and A and I made our way up Telegraph Avenue. We passed by Moe’s Books on the way, and couldn’t resist ducking inside. We went up to the third floor to look at the books on sale ($5-8 FOR BRAND-NEW BOOKS!), and I laughingly recounted to A the story of the last time I had been there, with HijabMan and my sister in September. We had all lost track of one another in the bookstore while pursuing our own literary interests. Finally, HijabMan had texted me with, “I’m on 3rd floor. East religions,” and my sister and I had gone upstairs to find him agonizing over the piles of books he had been tempted to buy.

A and I went to lunch, then walked back down Telegraph to my car. In front of Cody’s Books, someone had set up a table with the above “BOOKS AND EVERYTHING ELSE: 25 CENTS” sign. Books lined the sidewalk in neat rows. I had to stop. The lovely A stood by, waiting patiently while I jabbered on and on excitedly and picked out books. All ELEVEN of them.

I don’t know where I’m going to put these, and, more importantly, I don’t know when I’ll even get around to reading them. But I wanted them.

Here’s what I got:

– Anthem, by Ayn Rand
– The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald
– Pale Horse, Pale Rider, by Katherine Anne Porter
– 9 Plays by Black Women, edited by Margaret B. Wilkerson
– Seven Short Novel Masterpieces, edited by Leo Hamalian, et al
– Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt
– The Man Who Moved the World: The Life & Work of Mohamed Amin, by Bob Smith with Salim Amin
– The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse, edited by Oscar Williams
– The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer
– The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
– A Pocket Book of Modern Verse, edited by Oscar Williams

After I had gleefully dropped my quarters into the blue plastic mug and we began walking away, I looked back again, and gasped, “Oh my GOD, there’s MORE!” There, at the edge of the sidewalk, was a row I hadn’t seen.

Ah, well. Next time then.

A cold winter sun, my feet underground/a pale winter city, numbness for sound

(3)BeautifulThings, Conversations and Encounters, Loss and laments and letting go, Rockstar and Crescent

Bittersweet
Feeding the birds, Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[You can find all my photos from this day here. They’re more fun when you view them individually, so take the time to click through one by one, if you get a chance.]

Three days ago, I stepped inside the County of Alameda Administration Building in Oakland and set off the alarms on the security machine just inside the building’s entrance. Not just once, but twice.

Right, I am a serious danger to the world.

Was it the silver bracelets? I have skinny wrists but bony hands, and putting on and removing bracelets is too much of a painful process for me to do it regularly, so I’ve pretty much just left the same ones on for the past couple of years. Or maybe it was the hearing aid batteries. Thanks to those, I distinctly remember setting off airport alarms multiple times as a kid.

But no: “Are you wearing shoes?” asked the white-haired man at the…what is it called? security checkpoint? He tried to peer over the machine. Shoes? Why, yes, indeed I was, for once in my life. Stupid shoes. I resisted an urge to shake my fist at the ground. I always knew shoes were no freakin’ good for you.

“Raise your hands in the air and step back through the machine again,” suggested the man. I gingerly raised my hands in the air (I haven’t had much practice at it; hopefully that was the last time I’d ever have to do that) and walked through again. Another alarm.

The man just nodded and smiled and waved his hand to let me go through. I guess he had somehow come to a conclusion that it was the shoes, and that they were harmless. I took care of the business I was there for, and managed to walk out in five minutes. Across the lobby, the white-haired gentleman laughed and waved again as he saw me leaving. I waved back and called out, “Have a good day!” What a nice man. I liked this day already.

Once outside, I started for my car, conveniently parked right in front, but paused at the row of plaques hanging on a low wall that lined the building’s front plaza. It was a memorial wall dedicated to the children of Alameda County who have lost their lives by violence. One plaque for each year from 1994 to 2004. Some of the names stood out to me and I wanted to take photos, but wondered nervously whether that would be a bad idea. Setting off the security machine for wearing shoes (bracelets? hearing aids?) was amusing enough; getting busted for photographing an official county building might be a whole different thing altogether. But then I figured, The hell with it. It’s a memorial wall, I’m sure people photograph it all the time.

As I stood there taking photos, a man scrounging through the garbage can a few feet away looked over at me and muttered, “‘Bout time!” I glanced over, surprised. ‘Bout time, what? ‘Bout time someone noticed the memorial and photographed it? I wanted to ask him to elaborate, but he had already shuffled on to the next garbage can down the street.

I got in my car and sat there for a few moments, wondering what to do with myself. I had thought the Oakland stuff would take at least an hour, but it had taken only five minutes and I had nothing important to do for the rest of the day. I decided to stop by the lake I had passed while circling the block for parking. It looked pretty, and I felt like taking pictures.

I glanced cautiously around the perimeter of the lake as I was getting out of my car. Was it safe to be hanging around here, in this town I barely knew and a lake I’d never been to? But the lake was swarming with people jogging and strolling, alone and in pairs, and when I made my way down the path and stopped to take photos, I had to keep moving aside to let people go by.

I photographed a man feeding the birds. He stood calmly at the edge of the lake, throwing out bits of something, while the birds hopped around expectantly and, now and then, made a mad dash in the general direction of where he was throwing. Just as quietly as he had stopped for the birds, he was soon gone. I turned around from photographing the lake, and he had vanished. I shot photos of the water, the orange lanterns, and, oh, the birds. The birds were everywhere.

Two men paused while walking by me. “Taking pictures of the birds?” asked one in amusement. “Don’t you know you have to feed them first?”

I laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, they’ve been fed already.”

“What kind of camera is that?” asked his friend, “An SD40?”

“SD400,” I corrected.

He nodded.

“Have a good one,” said his friend.

“You, too!”

They continued walking.

I decided it had been a beautiful day so far.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that, in the past month, I’ve felt safer in my little bubble of suburbia than anywhere else [even though I now won’t drive to the grocery store just four minutes away without locking my car doors from the inside], that places like Berkeley and Oakland, which I once fondly considered only “genuine and eccentric,” now make me feel guarded and wary.

But you’ve got to get out and live, no matter what the cost or the outcome sometime. And maybe, if this is all that life comes down to, even this would be enough: Walks around the lake, words exchanged with kind strangers in passing, the remembrance of those whom we’ve loved and lost and never stopped loving.