Category Archives: Casa420 and Familia

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.

Change views, not channels

Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road


When they said ‘palm trees,’ they really weren’t kidding, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

[The “Change views, not channels” post title is inspired by those smug little San Diego-advertising billboards that I used to pass on my way to Sacramento everyday.]

Like everything else I’ve ever written, this is long overdue, so I figured I might as well get this Thanksgiving-roadtrip-to-San-Diego update out of the way so I can write about other things. However, I can’t conceive of this being really interesting to anyone, so if you get bored you might as well skip the words and jump right to the whole entire set of pictures. And that was only some of them. Yeah, I know.

Alright, here goes my (probably unsuccessful, I can tell you that already) attempt at conciseness…

First of all, why San Diego?

I talk about my father a lot on this weblog – mainly about his obsessions with gardening, shopping at Costco, and trying to convince me to go to law suckool so we can finally have a lawyer in the family. I believe I may have neglected to mention the fact that my father is also an avid cook, “avid” being keyword for “experimental.” His favorite phrase to use while cooking is, “Special recipe.” His style of cooking can best be described as “everything but the kitchen sink.” He’s lucky that everything he cooks tastes wonderful.

One of my father’s other obsessions revolves around someday owning and running a restaurant. In this fantasy, he will be the main gourmet chef, and I have a feeling the rest of us will be relegated to lowly kitchen help, like chopping the vegetables. Much like what happens when he decides to take over the kitchen on some weekends.

My father scrutinizes food daily at the table, whether it’s breakfast, lunch, or dinner: “This,” he’ll pronounce, “will be a great addition to our restaurant, don’t you think so?” As if there is no doubt that there will indeed be a restaurant. “When we open our restaurant, we’ll call this…aloo omelette…and people will line up at the door to get a taste of our food.”

In typical Yasminay-style, I’m making a short story too long. Let’s wrap this up:

So, one evening about a month ago, the daddy-o was cooking dinner and raving about the latest edible masterpiece he had whipped up. “We need to move to a college town,” he decided. “The college students will never be able to get enough of this kind of food! That way, we can make sure we always stay in business.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said noncommittally. I decided not to point out the fact that there was no way in hell any of us were moving anywhere again for a while. Whenever the daddy-o is feeling high-spirited and exuberant, he is just as easily brought down by comments he finds deliberately antagonizing from those who refuse to share his enthusiasm. This usually, all too easily, escalates into bad temper at both ends. It is best to be silent sometimes, even at the risk of being labeled indifferent.

“Houston,” continued my father. “I think we should move to Houston. There’s a good college town!”

I decided silence was not an option any longer, even though I knew this was a theoretical conversation. “Houston?!” I said. “Who wants to move to Houston? Dude, if you’re looking for college towns, we might as well move to San Diego. They have a bajillion colleges there. Plus, they have nice weather, too.”

“San Diego! That’s an idea! And,” he added mockingly, “they have plenty of warm weather and you won’t have to wear your sweaters all the time.” The daddy-o finds my obsession with sweaters slightly amusing and mostly mentally unstable. Much like everyone else I know. Shut up.

The conversation petered out eventually, but later when we were throwing around ideas of what sort of roadtrip to take for this year’s Thanksgiving break (roadtrips are becoming tradition now), the daddy-o brought up San Diego, and that was that.

Alright, so here’s how it went:

Day 1: Thursday, 24 November 2005

Driving down to Los Angeles, where we would spend the first night. All I really remember is, lots of stops for gas. Also, being shocked at gas prices near Bakersfield: $2.85/gallon? Good Lord. The sister and I were slightly annoyed because the Daddy-o thought it was a terrible idea for us to even consider buying an ice cream bar at one of the gas station convenience stores. FINE! we fumed in true little-kids fashion, and decided to gorge ourselves on all the leftover Halloween candy that my sister had wisely brought along. Good lookin’ out, buddy. This is my favorite photo from that gas station.

Also: Stopping for lunch and prayer at Fort Tejon State Historic Park. A nice young man apologetically approached us in the middle of our lunch to say that their Pathfinder had a flat tire but the tow truck guy was unable to unlock the tire. He noticed we were driving a QX4; perhaps our tire-lock rod would work, and could they please borrow it for a few minutes? “Sure,” said the Daddy-o, adding in amusement, “As long as you know where it would be, because I don’t know.” Apparently we have all these tools and things attached to the bottom of the passenger seat. Amazing.

The tire-lock worked, the flat was replaced with a spare tire, and not only did the guy and his family thank us about ten thousand times, they also gifted us with tin of cookies and waved a lot as they were driving away. Rocking!

What else… Made it to our hotel in Los Angeles, and I was in pain because my ears were popping from driving through the mountains, so I took a nap on the couch after unsuccessful, frustrating attempts to hook my dad’s laptop up to the hotel’s wireless network. I woke up to find him playing Solitaire/FreeCell on his laptop, an addiction I thought he had kicked, years back when he used to stay up ’til late, late at night, engrossed in the game on his computer.

Later in the evening, we had dinner at a desi [South Asian] restaurant called Bismillah in Buena Park. Eating out with the parents is always tricky, because my father doesn’t believe in ordering whatever one can cook at home (he once refused to let me order spaghetti at an Italian restaurant), which also does away with the desi food option most of the time, whereas my mother is wary of eating anything other than what we eat at home. What a process.

Day 2: Friday, 25 November 2005

Woke up to this in LA. Yes, I was hella annoyed. But the fog (and some of the smog) started to clear away as we hit the road and the day got warmer, which cheered me up.

We were aiming to make it to Jummah [Friday congregational prayers] at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD), and stressing it a bit because we thought we were running a bit late. But we turned out to be early. The ICSD is absolutely gorgeous. I wandered around stealthily taking pictures for a few minutes while waiting for the prayer to begin; this was my favorite, because it made me smile: warm fuzzy feelings!

We settled down for prayer, and I got sidetracked making funny faces at the little boy next to me, who couldn’t have been more than two years old. He reminded me of Matteo, the toddler I used to work with as part of my Human Development lab practicum back at university. If my weekly Jummahs in Oakland have taught me anything, it’s that I’m all too easily distracted by adorable little babies at the masjid. But I managed to drag my attention away from the Matteo-lookalike to listen carefully for once, and I’m glad I did, because the imam gave a beautiful khutbah [sermon] on gratitude. I sat there remembering my friend S’s Thanksgiving voicemessage from the day before: “I don’t know if you celebrate Thanksgiving but, hey, we have things to be thankful for: We’re alive and kicking!” It was a lovely reminder, and I’m blessed to have the friends that I do.

Here was the funniest and most random (as far as I’m concerned) part of my Jummah:

Walking out of the masjid, dawdling a bit behind my mother and sister, squinting at the sun in my eyes, and hearing someone call out from my right: “Can’t say salaam?”

The world always comes full-circle, doesn’t it? It’s extremely fitting that after almost exactly a year to the day that we missed meeting up with 2Scoops while he was at Jummah in the East Bay and we were Thanksgiving-roadtripping it to Santa Barbara, we instead run into him at Jummah prayers in San Diego. Very slick indeed. I always had a suspicion my life goes around in circles, but this just confirmed it.

Apparently the way to make my father’s eyes light up and to get him to like you enough to give you his business card is to mention two words: BUSINESS and LAW. Preferably in the same sentence. Way to go, buddy.

Next up: Trying to figure out what to eat, and where to eat, for lunch. [My dad still laughs, remembering the words of one of the San Diego guys (a friend of 2Scoops’, I believe): “If you’re looking for good Afghan food, you’ll have to eat it at someone’s house.”] Finally, we gave up and settled on french fries. Yay! Then we hit up Balboa Park. Those San Diego people are so smart: they put all their tourist attractions in one single location, so confused people like us don’t have to waste time wondering what the hell to do with ourselves. We checked out pretty buildings, the Japanese Friendship Garden [did you seriously think we could go anywhere without my parents checking out the gardens somewhere?], various other places, and, finally, the San Diego Museum of Art, which was totally drool-worthy.

Too bad I couldn’t take photos inside the museum, because the galleries and exhibitions were gorgeous. We spent almost two hours in there, finally dragging ourselves away past sunset, and still only managed to get through Galleries #1-5. Out of twenty. Yeah, you read that right. The “Selected Masterworks of Indian Painting” was enough to keep the parents occupied, while I was mesmerized by the “Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self” exhibit. Right up my alley.

We spent the night in San Diego, and not only did the manager lady, Annie, 1) have a rocking Scottish accent [I especially loved the way she pronounced “laptop,” and couldn’t stop mentally repeating it to myself for days afterward], and 2) advise us to eat dinner at an awesome Italian place down the road, but she also 3) helped us connect the daddy-o’s laptop to the wireless network, thereby earning our never-ending gratitude forever and ever, amen. It was to be the only internet connection we’d have for the three days we were on the road, and we were all twitching to fulfill our various online addictions: weblogs (me), Facebook (the sister), email (everyone).

Day 3: Saturday, 26 November 2005

We checked out of our hotel, stalked the ICSD for some more pictures, picked up lunch from Jamillah Garden, and hit the road back north.

The daddy-o, regarding San Diego’s maze of well-connected freeways: “These people just won’t let you get lost. It’s terrible!” He broke it down easily for me, the navigational amateur-rapidly-turning-pro: “They call all their big roads freeways,” citing Balboa Avenue – which is apparently also called 274 – as an example.

He didn’t like Interstate-8 though. Somewhere around there, he started singing, to the tune of “‘Tis the Season to be Jolly”: “8 is a screwed-up freeway, la la la la la la la…” Good times.

Leaving San Diego:

Sister: “Daddy, are you going eighty?!”
Dad, unrepentantly: “Yes, is that a problem?”
Sister: “Yeah.”
Dad: Why does that bother you? You’re the one who said you wanted to get home in at least an hour.” [Laughter at the exaggeration.]

Driving north, I decided Southern Californians put a lot of creativity into their street names. Some of them are really beautiful. Check:

Via de la Valle
Street of Copper Lanterns
Ava Magdalena
Bluebird Canyon
Boat Canyon Drive
Morning Canyon

And there was a town with the lovely name of Lemon Grove. Oh, and there’s bougainvillaea everywhere! Absolutely gorgeous. The daddy-o and his inner gardener couldn’t stop marveling at it.

The parents especially liked the Cardiff and Solana Beach areas of San Diego. “Let’s retire and move somewhere around here,” suggested my father.

“Yes,” said my mother, “but maybe closer to where that masjid was.” My ummy was really liking the masjid.

Around Carlsbad, my father started getting antsy: “Southern California is so boring. All you see is palm trees and U-Haul trucks.”

But then we stopped for coffee, milkshakes, and smoothies at Orange Inn in Laguna Beach, which made for some cool pictures and refreshed tummies, and all was well.

We made it home late Saturday night. I fumbled my way out of the backseat blankets and the daddy-o’s sports coat and tumbled out of the car onto the driveway, where it was so cold that my ears almost froze and fell off my head and I decided this was unacceptable and I’d have to move to sunny Southern California after all.

The end.

The ties that bind

Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road

The week before last, my mother and I spent two separate days visiting various relatives and family friends, which is a lot of time considering the fact that, since we kids have grown up, we’ve fallen out of our weekly visiting-the-relatives habit. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I do start missing all those crazy people after a while.

While driving up to see the relatives, my mother and I listened to the “Rough Guide to the Music of Pakistan” mix CD that my brother had compiled for our father a while back. At one track, my mother started at the singer’s distinctively deep voice and exclaimed, “That’s Amitabh Bachchan!”

I glanced at her in amusement. “He sings, too?”
“Yes! Don’t you remember how he sang all those songs in the movie we saw?”
She and I had just watched an Amitabh Bachchan movie the day before, and she still had it on her mind: “Yaadiya, us na putthar jeh moyiay, thi ke kuch karneya? [Remember, when his son died, all that he did?]”
“That was in the movie, Ummy. I don’t think he really sang all those songs. Or this one either.”
“Well, it sounds just like him.”

Visiting the relatives is all about the food. Well, sometimes. There are very few people whose food I enjoy eating; that would be my parents’, my own and my sister’s, and Somayya and her mother’s. Well fortified with kabob, halwa, samosas, and a parathha or two at the behest of Somayya’s ummy, we continued on our way to visit other family members.

[Speaking of Somayya’s ummy, I spent the majority of one of those days hanging out with her, and all I gotta say is, If you were ever wondering where Somayya gets her crazy crackheadedness from, look no further than her mother.]

I love ’em all, but they drive me crazy. As always, conversations invariably centered around my education, the way I dress, my career aspirations (“Umm, no, I’m not going to medical school; why did you think so?”), my car, and, uh, the way I dress. Basically, the usual. Not that they could say anything bad about my car though, because I’ve had it for a month now and it still has the new car smell. Take that! My mother laughed, relaying to my uncle the story of how Somayya’s mother, upon hearing about my new car purchase, had remarked in amusement, “Oh, so it’s black just like that one sweater Yasmine always wears?” Actually, that sweater I always wear is dark gray, thankyouverymuch, but vatever. I am obsessed with sweaters, seriously.

My uncle chuckled at this story and said dismissively, “We are old-fashioned. Our kids, they know what they’re doing when it comes to car colors and clothes and things. We should just leave these decisions to them.” My uncle is a rockstar. The end.

Reminder to myself: Ramadan is coming up, and I need to focus on thinking before I speak. After all, targeting the relatives with sentences like “I don’t even answer my own phone; why should I answer yours?” and “Why are you giving us food to take home with us? Don’t. No one will eat it” sound about forty-seven times more rude and obnoxious in Hindku.

[I hung out a lot with my nieces and nephews – both the really and the fake-ly related ones – during those visits. You can see some cute little kids here.]

Swing-set superstars

Casa420 and Familia, Glorious mundanity

I love swings. I think we’ve pretty much established this by now. And if I had to choose one single reason why I love my mother, it would be because when I said the other day, “Ummy, I want to go to the park and play on the swings. Do you want to come with me?”, she didn’t reply, “What sort of 24-year-old hangs out at the playground when she should be writing cover letters and applying for jobs?” Never mind the fact that she doesn’t know what cover letters are anyway. That’s besides the point.

The point is that, instead, she said, “Okay,” and went with me to the park, where I swung my heart out while she sat patiently on a bench and smiled indulgently whenever I waved at her. In case you can’t tell from the photograph, it was a gorgeous day (look at my mountains in the distance! And that blue sky! And the yellow sunshine colors!).

Definitely a day to “enjoy sun, scene, speed and swing,” as Arafat had once said so well.

What do you do to relax? And why is your mother cool?

Get a grip on that enthusiasm

Casa420 and Familia, Conversations and Encounters

This past weekend, my father and I stopped by a car dealership in an effort to alleviate my pain and suffering at not having had a car for the past…oh, thirty-six days. [Which pain, by the way, is finally over, as of three days ago. Good lookin’ out, God.]

As we were getting out of our car, we were approached by two salesmen. [I was about to use the word accosted, but that’s not quite correct, since we were there of our own volition and all. Also, I need to stop this newfound fascination with brackets in my weblog posts.]

Polite introductions and handshakes all around. “Whoa, you’ve got quite a G.I. Joe grip there!” exclaimed Salesman #1, laughing.

I smiled and shrugged lightly, while the daddy-o, amused, explained, “Yes, she’s practicing for job interviews and entering the real world.” I tried not to roll my eyes. I’ve always had a strong handshake, whether I’m meeting social acquaintances or prospective employers. Veeeerrry funny, daddy-o.

[As an aside, I have yet to meet a woman who gives a decent handshake. Every woman I have shaken hands with just sort of leaves her hand there, limp in mine. I constantly fume to Somayya, “What’s this ‘limp fish syndrome’ going on? I want to shake her freakin’ hand, not hold it!”]

The salesmen mouthed some pleasantries about how nice it was that we had stopped by. My father, in characteristically blunt fashion, mentioned that he hates visiting dealerships when buying a car, because it becomes such a convoluted, painful procedure. The salesmen nodded understandingly. “It’s kinda like dealing with lawyers,” cracked Salesman #2, then assured us, “but we’re a step above lawyers. Maybe a very small step, but still a step up!” He peered at us through an exaggeratedly small crack between his thumb and forefinger. I thought he was getting annoying already.

My dad perked up, waving a hand in my direction. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I’ve been saying she should think about doing.”

“Become a car salesman?” said Salesman #2 blankly. I started laughing, all the while thinking, I really don’t want to buy a car from you. Perhaps the look on my face said it all. My father frowned at me and explained, “No, a lawyer.” Needless to say, I didn’t come home with a car that afternoon.

Law school is my father’s new favorite bullet point on the list of things I should consider doing with my life (along with, oh, maybe being less sarcastic and abrasive and perhaps also offering to pull the weeds in the front yard once in a while. Not gonna happen). I should also mention that, during the past year, I’ve read enough law student weblogs – and weblogs of law school graduates stuDYING for the Bar Exam – and made new law student friends and tried to (most unsuccessfully, probably) cheer up 2Scoops during his Bar Exam madness to realize that I just don’t have the level of dedication and commitment required for law school. So there. The end.

“Law,” intoned my father recently, “is a lot more interesting, practical, and challenging than even psychology. Non-profits, they always need lawyers. Plus, all your experience in writing and public speaking would go very well with a law degree.”

While he makes some good points, my rejoinders so far have all been along the lines of, “But, Daddy! Law school requires writing papers. Remember, we agreed that this having-to-write-papers drama was seriously out of control when I was an undergrad. I don’t want to have to write papers ever again.”

“Yes, but there’s writing papers, and then there’s writing papers. Law school papers are fun!”

“Sure they are.”

Since that line of defense has failed, I have, of course, resorted to addressing the daddy-o’s hints in the most childish way possible. For example, when he offhandedly mentioned last week that our neighbors’ son, who recently completed his undergraduate degree, would soon be taking the LSAT in preparation for law school, I replied, “How gross. That’s disgusting! Why would anyone want to do that?”

I mean, really.

Don’t wait up, we’ll be fine, somehow we might get it right

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Casa420 and Familia

Evidence #49247 on the list of Reasons Why Yasmine is an Incompetent Fool involves me accidentally formatting the memory card on my digital camera and thereby deleting the 200-300 or so photos I took yesterday evening during a wedding mehndi ceremony my sister and I attended. Within two minutes of leaving the bride’s home, no less. I wouldn’t feel so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the wedding party’s unprofessional photographer had double-booked and then canceled on them last-minute, and they had asked if my sister and I could cover the photos for the mehndi at least.

Right smack in the middle of Bean and I having our post-event “I had a lot of fun!” “Me too!” exchange while hitting the road to head home, it all went zzzaaaaaaaapppppp. The most comprehensive set of photos from the entire evening, all gone in a split second. All I was trying to do was check how much space I had left on my memory card; one slip of the finger had me pressing “OK” for the “format memory card” option on the same screen. Ouch. With a 1GB card, there was absolutely no reason why I needed to verify space anyway. This obsessive-compulsiveness has got to go, and now.

Result: Lots of cursing; a few frustrated, angry tears; and the singularly awesome Bean consoling me that it was okay, because she had gotten about four rolls of photos, too. So yeah, that was one grand f*ck up, and I can’t stop wincing every time I think about it, and I’ll probably continue grinding my teeth for another week or so. I can’t remember the last time I felt so stupid and useless, and I’m pretty stupid and useless by nature, so that’s saying a lot. Freakin’ hell.

In much, much happier news: A psychopathically crackheadedly crazily huge congratulations to my lovely Somayya, who got accepted to her top-choice post-baccalaureate premedical program like the smart child that she is. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say where, but rest assured it’s in the SF Bay Area, because s’all about the Bay, baby! Come join us on the dark side! Now all I need is a job in the Bay, and we’re good to go.

Don’t mess with the marigold queen

Casa420 and Familia

In my family, the word we use for the massive gatherings in which we lend a helping hand is hashr. I’m not sure if it’s a Hindku or Urdu or Arabic or Pukhtu word. “Hashr karna” [to do a hashr] is one of those phrases we use naturally without analyzing the etymological background, just as we call the little hillside of land behind our house tibuki. I’ve always equated a hashr to traditions such as when neighbors gathered together to help harvest one another’s annual crops or built homes as a community. My father translates it as a “house party”: “You invite a whole bunch of people over, and work together to accomplish something, and provide meals throughout the day.”

Through the course of conversation one day, my sister and I decided the reason we’d been feeling so irritable and impatient during the last several weekends was because much of that time had been spent in the company of our relatives. There was the weekend we were in Sacramento when one of our uncles was re-configuring his sprinkler system and laying sod for his front lawn. There were the two weekends when everyone came over to our home in the Bay Area to help erect the new back fence. There was the other weekend when another uncle needed helping hands for painting. Mix in a couple visits for various family anniversaries and baby births, and you’ve got way too much time spent in close proximity with dozens of relatives who, while arguably loveable (in moderate doses), know just which buttons to push to make you feel defensive and drive you slowly insane.

One of the last heated discussions we had, for example, concerned my aunts’ argument that Taha, the new baby of a family friend, was named after a famous PTV film star and not the Quranic chapter entitled “Ta-Ha”. The disagreement was momentarily interrupted only when another one of my aunts absently turned away from the television set and exhorted everyone to “Be quiet and pay attention to this drama that just came on!” [And, yes, I just had to share that conversation with 2Scoops, who, if I remember correctly, was a mixture of amused and insulted, and rightfully so.]

The hashrs at our house were enough to drive me up the wall. Not only did I spend an inordinate amount of time staring wide-eyed at the amount of food my male relatives consumed, I also had to entertain (and pick up after) my nieces and make sure my bedroom was in a presentable state because the women always love walking right in unasked and sitting down to converse with one another. It also involved lots of yelling at the boys, who kept walking in and out of the house without removing their shoes, consequently leaving dirt-tracks on the expensive Persian rugs. And other things I don’t remember but which gave me a headache, and I get headaches on an extremely rare basis.

The good part was, I didn’t have to do all this on my own, because that’s what the other women were there for, to help out. The downside of that was, I hate it when people underestimate what I can do. All day long, I had to stop myself from reminding everyone that during the time our mother spent seven years in Pakistan [this was from 8th grade up until the second year of college for me] and we saw her for a mere three months out of the year, we three kids became adept at running the entire household on our own. Yes, I do know how to cook, and well. Yes, I know which platters and dishes and pans accompany each type of food. Yes, I’m pretty sure I know just how many seconds are required to warm up the baby’s milk, and while I understand your concern that I might give her boiling milk or something, telling me once is good enough, thanks, so stop hovering over me already unless you want to do it yourself. Yes, I already know which mixture of spices go in each dish. Also, I know the dining room rug needs vacuuming, but you’ve got to be kidding me if you seriously think I will even consider cleaning it until after your little granddaughters are finished with their meals. Oh, and one more thing: Leave my damn chicken alone! Thank you.

So perhaps you could understand my annoyance when we wandered outdoors in the evening and my aunt plucked a dried marigold flower – or saathbargay, as we call them in our Hindku dialect – and handed it to me. “See, it’s so dry that if you twist it just a little, it falls apart. Hold it like this and twist it around in your hand, see?” I bit my tongue in an effort to refrain from shouting, “I’ve already taken it apart, see? I don’t need your stupid directions for such a simple task. You’re killing me!” She continued, “And you can take the seeds and throw them wherever you want and the flowers will grow there. You should throw them over here, in that row. Go on, throw the seeds.”

In a petty gesture of rebellion, I spitefully scattered the marigold seeds not in the garden terraces my aunt had advised, but within the brick circle bordering the crepe myrtle tree, all the while thinking resentfully, I grew up with these flowers! Who is she to explain them to me! Yes, I am quite childish, I admit it.

A few days later, while walking in the yard with my father, I laughingly recounted this story to him: “So yeah, boboji wanted me to scatter the saathbargay seeds over there, but I threw them over here instead.”

He was amused. “You just wanted to be difficult, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah! She kept talking to me like I didn’t know anything about those flowers! Remember when I was really little, you used to put me down on the tree stump by the saathbargay and Khalida [our cat, who actually turned out to be a Khalid, but sshhhh] used to sit by me, and you’d take pictures of us? And that one time when I was, like, eight, you and I scattered saathbargay seeds over on tibuki, and when we checked it out a long while later, there were iceplants all over the place, and so I thought that saathbargay seeds turn into iceplants!”

“Yes,” said my father. “But it would have been nice if you scattered the seeds over where boboji wanted you to, because that’s where all the other marigolds are, see?”

“I know, but she was being so patronizing and it annoyed me.”

He laughed a little, shaking his head at the same time. “Well, there’s no need to be defensive all the time, you know. Everybody loves you, you know, but for some reason you’re still so obnoxious. You still persist in this…this hoodlum-ness of yours.”

“Hoodlum-ness?” I repeated, shaking with laughter. “Is that a real word now?”

“Yes,” he said darkly. “That’s what you are.”

“You know you love it!”

“Well, of course I do. Even though you’re so difficult all the time.”

“And obnoxious?”

“And obnoxious. I mean, just look at how you messed up the symmetry here. There aren’t supposed to be any saathbargay growing under the crepe myrtle.” He clicked his tongue, shaking his head in regret.

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

The end is nigh

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Casa420 and Familia

This one goes out to blogger extraordinaire Yaser and to my cousin Somayya [aka SuperDuperWoman aka PrincessPrettyPants (PPP)] and to the at least half-a-dozen other friends of mine who will be taking the MCAT tomorrow. You’re almost done, peoples! Rock it up tomorrow, and then you won’t have to review physics ever again. Because physics is stinky. Also, make sure you take your three forms of ID with you, and get fingerprinted all nicely to ensure that it’s really you yourself who are taking your exam, because we all know that, as M remarked sarcastically this morning, “Yeah, that’s what I like to do, take MCATs for other people in my spare time.”

Much love and good vibes and blue raspberry slurpees for celebration. Meanwhile, go score the hell out of that stupid test!

hamsafar

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road, Salaam Namaste

After picking my mother up from our relatives’ in Sacramento last week, she and I settled into my car for the hour-long drive home. After the usual impatient verbal tussles (“Why is the seatbelt always messed up in your passenger seat?” “It’s because you always twist it the wrong way whenever you use it, Ummy.” “I don’t twist it. I just pull it in the direction I need to fasten it.” “Ummy, you’re pulling it too much.”), I glanced out the window and noticed the moon, hanging unusually low in the sky like a large orange-red globe.

“Look at the moon, Ummy!” We both ducked our heads and peered at the moon through the side windows.

Long after I had pulled away from the curb in front of my relatives’ house and we continued home along the freeways, I would periodically glance at the moon out of the corner of my eye and exclaim, “Look at the moon, Ummy!”

“Very pretty,” she would agree with a smile. “It looks like it’s traveling right along with us.”

If my father were there, he would have predictably followed my mother’s comment with a reference to “hamsafar,” an Urdu word meaning “fellow traveler” or “traveling companion.” I was reminded of the PIA (Pakistan Internation Airlines) inflight magazine entitled Humsafar, which I had first noticed on our trip to Pakistan when I was eight and which had resulted in my father’s etymological explanations.

Appropriately enough, my mother and I spent the drive home listening to songs by a woman named Mahjabeen (literally: moon-face moon-forehead, beautiful forehead; basically: having a face as beautiful as the moon), a name that strikes a deeply personal, emotional chord with this family. The songs were performed in what seemed to be a mixture of both Pukhtu and Hindku, helpfully translated line-by-line by my mother, who would repeat each line after the singer, then turn to me and translate. My initial exasperation soon gave way to amusement at hearing my mother continually translate the Hindku lines into…Hindku, the dialect I speak fluently and use to communicate with her.

In a gorgeously fitting end to the day, I received, just a few minutes after arriving home, a text message from a friend exhorting me to “Look at da moon tonight it looks hella beautiful.”

vindication. On the phone with my father, two wee…

Casa420 and Familia, Suckool

vindication.

On the phone with my father, two weeks ago:

Me: So, guess what, Daddy khana! It turns out I got an A- on my NPB midterm!
Daddy-o: Really! Wow!
Me: Yup. I can’t remember the last time I even passed any sort of bio exam. But now I have to keep studying so I don’t get all arrogant and mess up on the next midterm.
Daddy-o: Well, that’s impressive.
Me: Yeah, I guess I’m not a lost cause after all.
Daddy-o: Is this class with the same professor you had during spring quarter?
Me: No, different guy; he’s with the School of Medicine.
Daddy-o: Oh. Well, you know what you should do? You should take this midterm scantron of yours over to the old professor and wave it in his face.
Me, laughing: Revenge!
Daddy-o: Yeah, like revenge. That would be the true Pukhtun thing to do.