Category Archives: Casa420 and Familia

but you never seem to run out of things to say

Casa420 and Familia, Conversations and Encounters

We have guests over at our place today, some relatives. They have three daughters, one of whom is an 8 year old named Somiyya. Somiyya is driving me crazy, and that’s a fact. The Human Development major within me can’t help but wonder if she has ADHD.

“So why does Somiyya dislike climbing up the steps of her schoolbus, or on the jungle gym at the park?” asked her father when I carried a jug of cold water out to him and my father as they sat in the shade of the fig tree on the lawn.
“Maybe she’s afraid of heights,” suggested my dad.
“She probably just wants attention,” I said snappishly, in a sour mood from having Somiyya following me around nonstop and clutching at my hands and calling after me in whining tones. Clingy people make me impatient rather quickly, and even cute children get excused only to an extent.
Her father chuckled good-naturedly, while mine explained cheerfully, “I told him you’re a Human Development major, so he should ask you, since you would have all the answers, Yasminay.”

Every two seconds, I hear Somiyya yelling, “Apa? [What she calls me.] Apa, where are you?” and then, triumphantly, “There you are! I was looking for you! Where were you?” The child is killing me. Luckily, my sister has so much more patience at being a generous, compassionate hostess.

“Apa!” Here she comes again, holding a water bottle this time. “Do you want some water?”
“Sure,” I say with some amusement.
“Okay.” She turns and leaves the room, still grasping the water bottle in her hands.

And here she is again with two of our fancy glasses, each filled with about an inch and a half of water. “Here you go!” She presents me one glass rather proudly.
“Did you fill these up yourself?” I ask, touched in spite of myself.
“Yes.” She clinks her glass against mine, says, “Cheers!” and downs the contents, after which she picks up a book off my bookcase and yells, “I read this in high school!”
This is especially hilarious in light of the fact that the book she chose is Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali’s Dear Beloved Son.

The child is all over the place, from my desk to our closet to the dresser, from my bed to the wall hangings and paintings to the bookcases, from the floppy disks to the photo frames to my sister’s stuffed penguin lying around here. Every other question she asks is, “What’s this? Huh? What’s this?”, followed closely by, “Can I keep this?” I don’t think I’ve ever before said “No” so often in one day. I’ve also never before been aware of how much stuff I have in my room. The kid is killing me, did I mention?

“I like your cell phone,” she said meaningfully.
“Thank you,” I said politely, moving it closer within my own reach. “I’ve dropped it lots of times. See all the scratches?”

Right now, she’s sitting behind me, oohing over the contents of my sister’s jewelry box. She just tried on a couple of rings and extended her hand, palm outward, to better view her fingers, exclaiming, “Look how good it looks on me!”

Next up, delving into the eyeshadow from the makeup case: “Can I try these on?”
“No,” I say firmly.
“But I will look fabulous!”
I better take this all away from her before she starts drawing with the mascara.

“I’m a queen!” she says. “You could boss me around if you wanna.”

so you think you can hold the world up by a string…

Casa420 and Familia, NineToFive outside the 925, Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Suckool

so you think you can hold the world up by a string.

You’re a tough crowd, Blogistan. I recently update this joint after a three weeks’ hiatus, and I get complaints that the post isn’t sufficiently about me. Not to mention the fact that every time I write about male friends/acquaintances/nice guys at Borders/old men at the post office and at cafes, my audience (that would be you) invariably articulates their suspicion that said male figure is hitting on me. JESUS. Peace be upon him.

Lucky for you, I have a love affair with post-it pads (and, more recently, pocket-sized Moleskine notebooks, discovered while shopping for birthday presents for my brother), and carry one (or two or three) around with me wherever I go. The end result? Three weeks’ worth of words, phrases, experiences, snippets of conversation, lines randomly recalled and quickly scribbled down in the midst of lectures and discussion sections, just so I could share them with you all on the weblog. That hiatus turned out to be a but more extensive than I had anticipated. I need to get all this stuff out of my head, and, although I could probably make individual weblog entries out of each of these, I’m far too lazy to even attempt such an endeavor. For your edification and amusement, then, I present an update almost entirely about me, list-style based off my post-it notes, and with minimal references to guys. Imagine that.

– The past month’s conversations included such highlights on my part as:

“Hi, I’m calling to check on the status of that tow truck I called in for, about forty minutes ago… What? No, I’m not in Southern California!”

and

“I’ve taken almost enough English classes at this campus to declare a minor in it, if I wanted. What do you mean I still need to take English 101?!”

Between these and a host of other disagreeable experiences, I’m sure you’re starting to see why I mentally referred to these as my What the French-Connection-UK! weeks. They were filled mainly with thoughts of homicide, and attempts to squash an ever-present rising surge of profanity in my head, and made me feel, by turns, like crying or smashing something. And since I’m not much of a crier, being a lean, mean, green smashing machine felt like a good option. Except I think Najm already has first dibs on being the Incredible Hulk. It felt like one really, really long day, the kind you’re just itching to use the “fast forward” button on.

– Let me tell you about my major advisor. My major advisor has the expressionless, dead stare down to an art. It’s highly disconcerting to be confronted with that blank look when I’m stopping by to get some questions answered and to ask for advice. Because she’s an advisor, no? No, apparently not. My advisor is not supposed to make me do a teeth-gritting, fist-clenching, sidewalk-stomping dance of annoyance in downtown Sacramento while trying not to shout on the phone at her that, “No, my minor is from the College of Letters & Science! So my minor petition is not supposed to go to the Dean’s office at Ag&ES; it’s supposed to go to the Dean’s office at Letters & Science, even though my major is at Ag&ES!” My advisor is also not supposed to ask in response to this, “Are you sure?” Yes, I’m sure, dammit, because I’ve made phone calls and tracked people down and verified everything I needed to know and even everything I didn’t need to know. Why are you not sure, is the question.

My major advisor also has a deplorable habit of answering one single freakin’ question of mine, then getting up and crossing the room to stand by the door while I’m still sitting next to her desk, mouth half-open to launch into my next question. Apparently, this is her signal that my time is up. No “Do you have any further questions?” No “Is there anything else I could help you with today?” Not even an “Okay, bye.” As I mentioned to my sister once, “I want closure, dammit!” The last time I was there, my advisor pulled the same “getting-up-and-heading-for-the-door” maneuver. I rolled my eyes and followed, accustomed to this by now. At the door, she flicked her finger against the stack of papers I held in my hand and asked, “What are these?”
“These,” I replied coldly, “concern other questions I wanted to ask you, but apparently you don’t have time for them today.”

My major advisor is an incompetent buffoon, my minor advisor is never available and should thus never have been granted that position, and how come I have a faculty advisor I never even knew about? No one tells me these things. Also, people who are getting paid to supposedly make my life easier should be doing exactly that. But, no, I am surrounded by morons.

Yes, I’m kind of bitter. I’m almost over it, don’t worry. Like I said, it’s been a long few weeks.

– H#4 (I have too many friends with “H” and “S” names. I swear I’m going to start numbering them like this) tried to talk me out of skipping class one day by grimly informing me that, based on her calculations, each time I skip one lecture, I am wasting $25 of that quarter’s tuition. My friends are such engineering nerds, can you tell?

– My new favorite word to use in everyday conversation is “periodically.” I do a lot of things periodically. Like skip breakfast, skip class, and not study.

– The last two movies I watched were Fida and The Notebook. I know, I know, I can’t believe I watched the latter either. If I could, I would surgically remove the memory from my mind. The best part about both movies was that everyone dies in the end. There, I gave it all away. Anyway, The Notebook was horrifically sleep-inducing, and I can’t believe all the girls I know kept recommending it to me. Geez louise. My sister and I were not impressed. Bean summed up our disappointment and disgust by pointing out, “Maybe it’s just that we’ve lost our sense of subtle details. We’ve gotten so used to the desi films that we can’t handle stuff like The Notebook anymore, because we’re just waiting for a full-out brawl.” Besides, that night I had a nightmare related to the movie. I swear. And I don’t usually even have nightmares.

– Somayya and I saw a Hummer limousine in Sacramento a couple of weeks ago.

– The first day of NPB lecture, having come to class unprepared, I asked the girl next to me, “Can I borrow a coupla sheets of paper off you?” Yeah, I know, how do you borrow paper? I guess I should have said, “Would you mind if I asked you for a few sheets of paper?” Not that it matters anyway, because I only took about two lines worth of notes and then ended up sleeping through most of the lecture, and the girl gave me a cold stare on my way out. I’m sorry I wasted your paper that I borrowed, geez freakin’ louise. Would you like it back now that I’m done borrowing it?

– My new favorite poem is T.S. Eliot’s Ash Wednesday. Deja vu when I got to the lines, Teach us to care and not to care/Teach us to sit still. I have read those somewhere before, a decade ago in a book I can’t recall.

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

[…]

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.

– I am taking two science courses this quarter – NPB (neurobiology, physiology, and behavior) and MCB (molecular and cellular biology). Yes, gross, I know. God knows why I felt the need to put these off until now, seeing as how I’m not a science person, except for the fact that I used to be really good at physics. But as long as they don’t start talking about cellular respiration and the Krebs Cycle and all that drama, I should be okay. Taking classes with freshmen and sophomores is always amusing, though. They’re the ones who show up to line outside the lecture hall twenty minutes before class even begins. But it’s okay, because I keep getting mistaken for a seventeen year old anyway, so I blend in just fine. Plus, I’m still perpetually dazed and confused all the time, and I rarely look both ways before crossing the street.

– The first day of class, a guy in my MCB lecture leaned over to ask, “Excuse me, you’re not Fatima, are you?”
Who is Fatima and why does she look like me, is what I want to know.

– I’m officially losing my mind. The following three conversations are all the proof you need:

1) In a phone conversation a couple of weeks ago, Somayya and I were bemoaning the fact that we rarely see each other this quarter. “I know!” I said, “and we don’t even do our regular family weekend visits to see you all anymore.” Except I accidentally said “weekend wisits,” and Somayya and I both dissolved in laughter. It’s over, kids. I am officially a fob.

2) Last week at work, my co-worker K kept urging me to hurry up and finish the stuff I was working on, so that we could have our meeting. “We need to meet before 12!” he kept repeating, “because at 12, I’m leaving to go skiing in Lake Tahoe.”
“Stop trying to rush me,” I finally snapped. “Just because you’re going snowing does not mean our work schedules have to revolve around you and your stupid Lake Tahoe trip.”
“Snowing?” asked Somayya innocently. “What’s that?”
“I meant, skiiing. Or snowboarding. Or whatever the hell he’s planning on doing up there.”

3) “Tuesday Morning’s having a sale,” remarked my dad over dinner the other night. We love Tuesday Morning. How can you not be in love with a place that has everything 50-80% off?
We peered at the ads together.
“I don’t get this one,” I said. “They’re selling watches. Why are there random sunflowers in the picture?”
“You know,” said my dad. “Sunflowers? The sun? Time? Watches? See?”
I continued looking blank. “I still don’t get it.”
My dad gave me a pitying look and rolled his eyes, which is always hilarious to watch, because he absolutely does not know how to roll his eyes, so he always rolls his head around instead. “Okay,” he said. “You know how you can tell the time based on the position of the sun?”
“Ohh…” [pause] “Wait, why are the sunflowers there though?”
“Because sunflowers always face in the direction of the sun. Duh.” Except my dad doesn’t know how to say “duh” either, so it always comes out sounding like “daa.”
“Oh yeah. I think I used to know this, a long time ago.”
In the next life, I am going to be blonde.

– My NPB teaching assistant pronounces the word “iron” exactly the way it’s spelled: eye-ron. [I say “eye-yern.” How do you pronounce “iron”?] This was in reference to the structure of hemoglobin, or something. Clearly, I do not know anything about hemoglobin. Or anything about science at all, for that matter. Biology is bidah. The end.

That was a joke, by the way. I mentioned in an email to a friend the other day: “As one of my favorite Bay Area scholars/students of knowledge said in a speech recently, re. the Muslim community’s tendency to point fingers at one another and obsessively label things as haraam/bidah: ‘Well, you know what, YOU’RE HARAAM!’ “

– I’ve also recently realized that I never pronounce the “d” in “fundraiser”: Funraiser.

– Halaqa outing: As we were driving up Mt. Diablo, I remarked in reference to the hardcore bicyclists who were pedaling up the mountain: “Man, that’s hella exertion.”
My sister: “You just used ‘hella’ and ‘exertion’ in the same sentence. There’s something wrong with you.”
Me: “Hey, I’m a California girl with vocabulary, what can I say.”

– Yesterday, my right eye finally stopped twitching after three weeks. That’s an indicator of stress and exhaustion, someone once told me during freshman year. Some things just never change.

– Not to say that there weren’t good things about the past few weeks either. Like the Friday that was filled with rockstar friends, two (count ’em, TWO!) real meals, ice cream, offers to race down the stairs, jokes about the FBI watch list, and hilarious white-girl renditions of “I love you, 50 Cent! Holler!” And the officially labeled Tuesday From Hell, when I decided to “screw it all” (one of many such decisions in recent history) and finally escaped to the public park and sat on a sunny hill, eating french fries and watching the elementary school team play softball. And…well, I know there have been more memorable (in a good way) moments like that. It’s just difficult to be suitably grateful sometimes, and to keep track adequately. I think this post is an attempt at that. Sort of.

– The funniest thing to happen this week was when I set off the alarm at work. Apparently, you still need to have the security guard swipe you on your way out the main doors after 6pm, regardless of whether you have your employee ID card on you. I, inefficient multitasker that I am, dialed a friend’s number on my cell phone just as I was about to leave the building. At the exit doors, I swiped my ID card, heard a beep, and watched the little red light turn to green. At the exact moment my friend answered the phone, I pushed open the door and the alarms started blaring. It was great stuff, and I think the friend at the other end of the line was just as amused by the whole thing as I was. Luckily, the security guard was, too.

– Does your father call you on his rainy drive home to leave voicemessages in which he sings, “Raindrops are falling on my head! La la la la la lalala”? No? I thought not.

– I’m not a big fan of grape-flavored anything. Except real grapes, and sour green ones at that. But someone’s gotta finish all the popsicles I bought back when I was getting my wisdom teeth pulled. All those mornings of grabbing a red/green/orange popsicle out of the freezer for breakfast on my way out the door to school are over, and the purples ones are the only ones left. Six whole purple popsicles. Not so bad after all, actually, although I’m still not really a fan. But it leaves your tongue looking so dark purple, it’s almost black, which is pretty slick.

– I attended the Birth of a Prophet event at UC Berkeley a couple of weeks ago. It was even more beautiful and spiritually uplifting than I had hoped it would be, and you can keep your outcries of “Bidah!” to yourself, please. Amusingly enough, the event coincided with Cal Day, so I was bombarded with ads and posters and pamphlets and “Hi, do you have any questions?” while making my way through Sproul Plaza. Listen, I know I look like a seventeen year old, but no, I’m not a prospective incoming freshman, okay? I have enough issues being a prospective graduating senior, as it is, thanks.

– Every morning on my way to school, about forty miles from home, I pass a huge yellow/orange billboard advertisement for San Diego, advising, “CHANGE VIEWS, NOT CHANNELS.” 2Scoops, I’m looking right at you: Stop trying to infiltrate Northern California.

– The best way to make yourself feel better about an MCB midterm you more likely failed the hell out of is to sit in the sunshine and drink a medium-size hot chocolate with whipped cream. When the girl making your drink notices your drawn face and bleary eyes and turns around from the machine to ask kindly, “Would you like extra whipped cream on that?” just answer, “Yes, please.” There are few things in life that sunshine, hot chocolate, and extra whipped cream cannot make you feel better about.

– Also, strawberry ice cream with chunks of cheesecake is hella good stuff. Add that to the list. And blue raspberry jolly ranchers, especially when they’re vindictively grabbed by the handful from the candy jar of my major advisor who is a moron.

– As of yesterday, I have officially canceled my minor. Indecisions and revisions indeed. I thought it was going to hurt – and it did hurt for the past three weeks I spent agonizing over it – but, surprisingly, I’m more at peace with the final decision than I thought I would be. So, instead of seven classes (yes, I was somehow registered for seven classes, the seventh one being a microbiology class my advisor thought I needed – which I didn’t, but she’s a moron, as we have already established – and which I had forgotten I was even enrolled in) and twenty-seven units, which is absolutely insane for a quarter system (nine weeks of instruction, tenth week is final exams) if not even otherwise, I am now down to four classes and sixteen units. Much more manageable.

“Pay attention!” I crowed yesterday afternoon to my office colleagues at large, whatever of them remained past 5pm. “This is a monumental occasion!” I typed the “permission to drop” numbers that the Dean’s Office had given me into their respective fields on the computer, then theatrically wiggled my fingers above the keyboard in my best “spirit fingers” imitation.

“What are you doing?” asked K, looking up from his computer.
“I’m saying ‘eff it all’ to the program.”
“What program?”
“The ‘Yasmine wants to graduate with this Social & Ethnic Relations minor that she’s absolutely in love with’ program.”
“Oh.”

Thank you to all you rockstars who offered their input in regards to my “How useful/useless/irrelevant is a minor?” questions. If I didn’t ask you, I’m sorry, I love you, I was lazy, and you’re a rockstar, too.

– That said, this “screw the minor” deal only serves to reinforce my feeling that I’m one of those total slackers who diligently pursues something almost to the end, only to give it up in the last five seconds. This is a recurring theme in my life. Like last week, when I was up until 3am studying for an MCB quiz, only to be late to class the next morning because I couldn’t find parking. So, instead, I skipped class (and the quiz) and slept in my car for an hour, then woke up and, instead of heading over to my next class, I walked over to the student union and took another 2-hour nap in the study lounge. This nap-taking business is outta control.

– This morning, I used the carpool lane to pass a slow bus. I’m pretty sure this is highly illegal maneuver, but, what can I say, I love living life on the edge.

– I’m typing this out at work. K just stalked past me to get to his desk, a grim expression on his face. He pulled out his top desk drawer with a deafening bang, muttering, “I’m so hungry!”
“Yeah, me too,” I said sympathetically.
“And there’s nothing to eat around here,” he continued, fishing around in the drawer.
“Are you looking for your topsecret candy stash?”
“No,” he replied, pulling out a handful of what looked like condiment packets.
“Is that mustard?” I asked, spying a yellow packet.
“No, this calls for honey.”
“Dude. Are you seriously going to eat honey out of the packet like that?”
“Yeah. It’s soo good. See?”
“Good lord. Here, eat some Reese’s,” I offered, shoving my bag of miniature peanut butter cups his way.
“No way, honey is so much healthier.”

– My co-worker B just walked by. He stopped long enough to ask, “Have you ever seen a chicken with its head cut off?”
“Yes,” I replied, “several times,” thinking of all those months in Pakistan.
“Oh. Well, I never have.”
“It’s okay, you’re not really missing out.”
“Oh, okay. Just making sure.”

Why do I work with the weirdest people in the world?

– Yes, I still like Maroon 5, but I have a short attention span and I get highly annoyed when songs I once liked are constantly played over and over on the radio. Therefore, Maroon 5 is not as cool as Keane, whom no one except I seems to have heard of. Besides, how could you not like a band who’s British and therefore sings “cahn’t stop now,” which, to my ears, accustomed as they are to American pronunciation, sounds absolutely hilarious and cool. My lovely L lady, after looking at the cover of Keane’s album, wondered quite disparagingly why rock musicians never have much in the way of looks. Somayya and I contended that it’s because rockstars are more concerned with how good their music is rather than with how good they themselves look. So there, take that!

Yes, I admit it, I have fairly mainstream taste in music. I don’t really know obscure bands. All the obscure bands I do know start becoming rich and famous and everyone else knows who they are, too, and that just ruins the whole thing.

Speaking of music, no song has ever made me grin so widely as Coldplay’s “Yellow.” Perhaps I haven’t heard it often enough, so that explains why I’m not tired of it yet. Which reminds me – Gavin DeGraw, you’re a hella slick singer/songwriter/pianist/guitarist and all that, but I enjoy your music more when I’m listening to it off my discman and less when it plays on repeat on the radio. Stop it. Also, new favorite musicians, discovered while browsing at Borders when I should have been in class, include: Amos Lee, Ari Hest, Joss Stone, and Rachel Yamagata. I think. I’m not sure, since I haven’t listened to everything yet. But still, links are fun. Go explore.

– I need to edit my template. I need to edit the sidebar with the Gavin DeGraw lyrics, because I love that song but not when it plays on the radio. I need to edit my blogroll. I need to edit my life. Lemme know if you have any suggestions. Meanwhile, much love, have beautiful days, all that good stuff.

>continue reading

Corners which seem familiar, leading to unimagined, pebble-dashed estates

Casa420 and Familia

Dinner took almost an hour this evening. We sat at the table, passing around brochures of all the houses that are selling or have recently been sold in our neighborhood and general area. The pile of thick, glossy real estate cards and advertisements thrown across our dining room table grows by the day. Not only are the houses priced at $900,000-$1.2million, they are actually selling for close to their respective asking prices. Next to shopping at Costco, my dad’s new favorite weekend activity for the past month has consisted of him stopping by all the “open houses” held at each home for sale, during which prospective buyers drop in to check out the place. Apparently there have been endless reunions going on around here, since all the neighbors have slyly been stopping by to gauge how their own homes compare in terms of design, layout, construction, aesthetics, value, etc. Especially value.

Like everyone else, my family’s dinnertime discussions periodically flow back and forth between square footage, lot size, layout, decks and patios, yards and gardens, kitchen amenities, skylights and french doors, and, of course, potential renovations in mind for our own home. My father missed his true calling: landscape designer, architect, chef extraordinaire. Every day, he comes home to give us an update: “The house with all the skylights has a ‘Sale Pending’ sign,” he remarked this evening. “But that one at the corner is still not sold. I think they’re asking too much. $1.1 million? It doesn’t even have a yard, and it’s only one thousand square feet!”

“I wonder how much our home will sell for,” he mused at dinner’s conclusion.

“No,” I said sharply, getting up to clear off the table. “We’re not selling it.”

“We’re not?” he asked innocently, trying rather unsuccessfully to bite a grin. He loves baiting us like this.

“No. We’re not. The end.”

The daddy-o fixed me with a stare. “So, then, anyone who doesn’t want to move should help pull some weeds around here this weekend.”

Score –> Daddy-o: 43748587, Yasminay: 0

orange you glad you tower over everyone? HAPPY 22…

Casa420 and Familia

orange you glad you tower over everyone?

HAPPY 22nd BIRTHDAY to my big little brother, he of the spiky orange mohawk fame, also known as the radio station intern, artist, writer, fellow leftie, and future actor, filmmaker, and dramatic voice-over dude extraordinaire for movie trailers. Forgive me for forcing you to sit next to me in all those photographs, for almost pushing you down the porch steps in your baby carriage, for trying to choke you every chance I got, and for endlessly referring to you as Mr. Potato Head. Stop calling me “bro,” sheriff.

happy birthday! HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY to my beauti…

Casa420 and Familia

happy birthday!

HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY to my beautiful, brilliant Bean: student of knowledge, unrepentant chocoholic, and cookie monster extraordinaire. May every day bring you moments of grace and beauty, always. (p.s. Thanks for baking all those endless chocolate chip cookies, and for chauffering me everywhere without complaining. Someday, I will be as cool, organized, on top of things, and “with it” as you are. You rock das Haus. “MashaAllah! MashaAllah!”)

and who is he, mr. rand mcnally? About a week aft…

Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road

and who is he, mr. rand mcnally?

About a week after we returned from our Thanksgiving break roadtrip to Santa Barbara, my father remarked, “You know, I think we should go on a trip again soon.”

“Oh?” I said. “Are the nomadic tendencies kicking in again?”

“Not really,” he admitted sheepishly, “It’s just that I kinda liked your guys’ music.” I let out a shout of laughter and yelled into our bedroom, “Bean, did you hear that?!”

On Christmas day, we packed the car again and headed back out to Highway 1 along the coast, but northward this time. We passed creeks and lakes and drove along the ocean itself, endless water that looked like sheets of glass tinted by a vast expanse of sky.

The daddy-o gave us the hysterical inside scoop on many of the small hill towns we passed by. Apparently, many of these are hippie towns that songwriters referenced in songs back in the day (“Hippie from Olema” – the tongue-in-cheek take on “Okie from Muskogee” – anyone?) where people supposedly used to grow marijuana. Passing by a horse ranch in the hills, the daddy-o said confidentially, “That’s how he got rich, you know. Selling horses. It’s all a front. His real business is drugs.” Daddy translated Farsi songs for us, while we all made smartass comments about the towns we passed.

Re. “Olema – Population: 55”:

Me: “Get ready, you guys. Population in the double digits!”
Daddy-o: “This is the one town where the elevation is higher than the population.”

Re. the cow attempting to chew its way through a wire fence:

Daddy-o (suffering from caffeine withdrawals): “Well, he must have found some coffee on the other side of the fence.”
Bean, jokingly: “Or marijuana!”

Later, my father looked down at the ocean to his left. “My bebe,” he murmured, “used to say to me when I was little, ‘At this time of evening, even the oceans come to a standstill, and yet you are still working.'”

I was reminded of a line from my Muir Woods post from last year: Miles out from the cliff, the clear bay met the unclouded sky, and it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

The mountains and ocean stayed consistent, while the eucalyptus tress were eventually replaced by redwoods, majestic in their own right, but my childhood – and the lines of trees behind my house – taught me to love the eucalyptus ones above all.

We stopped in Gualala for the night (the daddy-o kept referring to it as Gul-i-Lala, with the Pukhtu accent on the very last syllable: Lala, we kept repeating in amusement. At the hotel that night, we turned on the wall heater (yes!) and settled down on the beds to channel surf, because this, of course, is apparently what children who were denied adequate access to television while growing up do when they go on roadtrips through the northern portion of the state. They watch cable TV to make up for all those empty, traumatic years. Right.

Horror of horrors, we got caught up on the Lifetime channel and three movies that were each two hours long, and didn’t go to sleep til 1 a.m. “Keep your eyes glued to the screen!” the daddy-o kept sarcastically instructing us. “Forget ‘glued,’ I’m keeping my eyes rolled,” I said dryly the first time around, but by the time he repeated it for the tenth time, my response had upgraded to, “Oh, I am!” Oh, the depths to which I have sunk! Disgustingly fascinating, what can I say.

So what did the Lifetime channel teach me? Babies can get switched at birth in hospitals in a case of “Mistaken Identity.” And being too nonchalant and trusting with your social security number and credit card information will likely lead to “Identity Theft.” (I’m paranoid now, thankyouverymuch.) And not only that! But even poor, downtrodden, disadvantaged teenagers can go from “Homeless to Harvard”! The end.

The next morning, we stopped at Café LaLa for some quick breakfast munchies before we hit the road again. How could I not fall in love with a café that had comfortable armchairs and bookshelves with a sign instructing, “BRING US MORE BOOKS! TRADE OR BORROW”? And how could I not love the girl at the counter, Laurel, who asked me, “Would you like extra chocolate in your hot chocolate?”

She was so helpful and good-humored that when I introduced myself and she said in response to my name, “I’m sorry, say that again. Is it like ‘Jasmin’?”, I didn’t roll my eyes or do my infamous “evil death glare” with one raised eyebrow like I normally do, but only laughed and replied, “Yes, but with the ethnic twist.” She gave us coffee on the house – “It’s on me,” she winked, gesturing towards the coffeepot – and did an excited little dance around the counter as she told us about her sister who works at the Whale Watch Inn in Anchor Bay and will be expecting a baby in May.

The rest of the day was endless rain and curving roads. As official navigator once again, I snuggled on the passenger seat with the thick fuzzy blanket, ate apple pie with my fingers, congratulated myself on learning to read the highway maps, and watched the roads, slick with rain.

On the way home, I mispronounced all the French names of the wineries throughout the Napa Valley. Where’s my lovely L lady when I need her? Pinot, pinwa, what?

the open road for the travelers’ souls I fell a…

Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road

the open road for the travelers’ souls

I fell asleep last Wednesday night to the sound of my father asking, “Who wants to go to Santa Barbara tomorrow?” When we woke up the next morning, it was Thanksgiving Day and Santa Barbara was almost four hundred miles to the south. We showered, dressed, and packed in record time, far more efficiently than we’ve ever prepared for any visit to the relatives’ in Sacramento, and that’s only an hour away.

I will be the first to admit that I have an obsession with mountains, but this time even I couldn’t help but keep my face practically glued to the car window mainly in the direction of the ocean instead. Following the twists and turns of Highway 1 as we made our way down the California coast, mountains to our left and vast expanse of water to our right, we took endless photos and filmed the sea and otherwise thoroughly behaved like giddy, overawed tourists. Something in the (salt)water, I guess.

I was somehow accorded the position of official navigator, which brought back some déjà vu feelings of the summer when I was nine and we drove from California to Toronto, Canada, me reading The Wizard of Oz while propped up on pillows on the backseat as we laughingly renamed obscure Midwestern towns after imaginary relatives of the infamous Oz. Then, as now, I stared in bewilderment at the map, tracing my finger along the red, yellow, and blue lines, trying to unravel the junctions and interchanges with the tip of my finger, squinting at highways and interstates and the point at which one would meet another. This time, at least, all we had to do was follow all the signs labeled “South” (and, on the way home, those labeled “North”), so thankfully I didn’t make any damaging navigational suggestions or decisions.

In the hotel room the first night, I made a predictable beeline straight for the wall heater, where I stood for several minutes gleefully warming up my hands, and was finally dragged away only to watch Spiderman on TV. Later, I lay on the couch, reading Ray Bradbury’s short stories, while Bean listened to Josh Kelly and studiously flipped through her two-feet-thick, bajillion-pound biology textbook.

In San Simeon, our father kept raising his eyebrows at the hordes of tourists there to check out Hearst Castle, muttering, “Foreigners!” under his breath with mock superiority and outrage, while we laughed and retorted, “Look who’s talking, Daddy!”

Roadside billboard advertisements that made me laugh:

(1) “Big Bubba’s Bad BBQ”

and

(2) “BUELLERTON: HOME OF SPLIT PEA SOUP – Everything For the Traveler”

I hope the humor in these is self-explanatory. Or maybe I’m just far too easily amused.

I had a cough and cold, so I spent much of the trip listening to my father say things like, “Yasminay, did you take your Vitamin C tablets? Take two right now. Right NOW. And this is YOUR water bottle, okay? The one with the blue label. I’m putting it in THIS cup-holder. Make sure you don’t drink from mine. Don’t make me sick. What about Sudafed? Have you been taking Sudafed? Take two right now. When’s the last time you took some Vitamin C? THIS one is YOUR water bottle, Yasminay, don’t forget now.” I’m five years old, in case you ever doubted it, really.

Bean filmed me singing the chorus lines to various songs, including Jagjit and Chitra Singh’s Kaghaz Ki Kashti, Sardar Ali Takar’s La Kha Wakhte De, and random songs from the Beatles (like Hey, Jude). And, just to clarify, this portion of the family video is not available for public perusal, sorry. Actually, even I haven’t seen it yet either, come to think of it. Sadly, the Haroon Bacha tape is currently down, so we missed out on old family favorites such as O Zarojaanay and Bibi Shirinay. We all agreed that our father’s version of Yellow Submarine is better.

The best part, hands down, was praying on the beach, and later on one of the turnoffs for a narrow mountain road where you could look down over the side of the cliff and see the beach and the ocean below. Gorgeous.

Our father translated the Pukhtu lyrics for us while singing along to all the songs, and approvingly drummed his fingers against the steering wheel when Bean played her sitar fusion CD. He also became suitably enthusiastic at our suggestion of listening to the Beatles. In the late evening of the second day, highly bitter at the fact that he couldn’t find an NPR station signal along the coast, the Daddy-o finally resorted to singing along with the oldies station on the radio. “Don’t you know who this is?” he bellowed towards the backseat where I was laughing at him. “This is Bob Dylan!” “Bean!” I hissed at my drowsy sister, as our father continued loudly accompanying other artists on the radio, “Is this normal?”

And, of course, no discussion of my Thanksgiving weekend is complete without mentioning missed connections with 2Scoops, Audioblogger Extraordinaire [link is from the November 23, 2004 audiopost on Chai’s blog] from Southern California, who was in the SF Bay Area this weekend. On Friday, we were still driving down to Santa Barbara while he left me a voicemessage saying he was going to Jummah (congregational prayer) at SRVIC. Bean and I just stared at each other and moaned, “That’s our masjid!” Yeah, so the one day we’re not there. Geez louise. The next day, Bean and I were at a Unity Halaqa in San Jose while 2Scoops was also in the city, but we couldn’t coordinate a meeting because of our convoluted scheduling conflicts and stuff. So hey, next time you’re in the Bay, 2Scoops, we need to grab some ice cream and continue that list of all our mutual friends and acquaintances. Small world, man. It’s amazing.

Also, I ate a lot of french fries over break. And cranberry juice. And ice cream, too, of course (two scoops of double fudge chocolate in Santa Barabara, yeeeuhhh boyyeee). I knew you all would be proud.

miseducation 1. I got home from school late l…

Casa420 and Familia, NineToFive outside the 925, Suckool

miseducation

1.

I got home from school late last night, walking into the house with my new messenger bag slung diagonally from shoulder to hip. This bag rocks das Haus – it’s khaki-colored canvas, with five or six pockets just on the outside, Velcro straps and random buttons everywhere. And I love messenger bags, in case you didn’t know. My father peered up at me from his armchair, brushing his hand across my bag as I leaned over him to give him a hug.

Daddy-o: What’s this?

Yasmine: *shrugging* I got tired of my backpack, so I bought this instead.

Daddy-o: *winces* Couldn’t you have bought something a little more professional looking?

Yasmine: I don’t need something pretty or professional. I need a bag I can kick around when I get frustrated with school.

Daddy-o: Instead of this one, you could have gotten a nice little portfolio, or a bag to hold your laptop.

Yasmine: What laptop?

Daddy-o: It looks like a mailman bag!

Yasmine: No, it doesn’t!

Daddy-o: *shakes his head* Why do you always have to be so difficult? And different?

Somayya’s older brother, trying to be the voice of reason: It’s okay, there’s always one extremist in every family.

Daddy-o: Hippie! She’s a hippie!

Yasmine: *walks away laughing*

2.

The night before that, I helped facilitate a workshop for the university’s Student Housing division, at one of the first-year multicultural dorms. I’m starting to think I really shouldn’t be unleashed on large groups of people, because I just don’t know when to stop talking. But maybe that’s a good thing, and, besides, my colleagues kept assuring me that, No, I didn’t ramble or go off on tangents or whatever else I shouldn’t have been doing. And I appreciated the fact that the freshmen had lots of questions to direct my way.

‘Twas much fun. Here’s how my intro ended up going:

Yasmine: Hi, I’m Yasmine, and I’m a fifth year Human Dev –

*students start murmuring*

Yasmine: Thanks a lot, you guys, I really like how you did that collective gasp. Anyway, I’m majoring in Human Development and minoring in Social & Ethnic Relations. And, don’t worry, I promise I’m graduating in June.

*laughter*

Freshman boy #1: *whispers loudly to friend* She’s a fifth year? Dude, she must hella be a party girl!

Freshman boy #2: SHE’S SO COOL!

Fill the spaces with wood in places to make it feel like home

Casa420 and Familia, Salaam Namaste

Last Saturday, while I was volunteering at a painting competition at the art center and drawing henna designs on little kids’ hands, the father of one of the children leaned over and asked curiously, “Where were you born?” I smiled sweetly and answered, “Berkeley.” And while it was the truth, it was quite obvious that that wasn’t the answer he had been expecting to hear.

With friends, I always laughingly append the answer with, “And that just explains everything, doesn’t it?”

I love Berkeley. I’m not there very often and, admittedly, I’m still not an expert at figuring out my way around, but if you leave me at the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph, I’m all set to go. From there, I can navigate my way to anywhere. There is only a small, select group of people I can tolerate shopping with, yet I’m content browsing for hours on my own and Berkeley is optimal for such an experience. I’ve bought candy from small corner shops and eaten it all while walking down the street. I’ve sat in cafes while drinking hot chocolate, watching the world walk by my windows, waving at people I happened to recognize. I’ve conversed with sidewalk vendors and returned the genuine, crinkly-eyed smiles of homeless people at the corners and tried on flip-flops and handled dangly earrings and slathered on lotion at the Bath & Body that’s now gone. I’ve taken my sweet time walking slowly from the BART station to the campus, inadvertently eavesdropping on people’s conversations, inwardly amused at the juxtaposition of buildings.

“Telegraph is overrated,” a girl said dismissively to me recently. I remember raising an eyebrow and making a curt, snappish remark in response. Perhaps my Berkeley experiences are not truly indicative of what it’s like to actually live in the town and know the place like the back of one’s hand, but the very fact that I don’t live there makes me appreciate it more, maybe. Berkeley is weird and wonderful and whack, and the fact that everything there is all slightly shabby and imperfect, eccentric and unexpectedly out-of-place, is what makes it all the more appealing.

I can see myself living in Berkeley.

I was in Berkeley recently to have lunch with a friend. Walking back to our car afterwards, I stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk, hands on my hips, craning my neck upwards, and exclaimed loudly at no one in particular, “I love those bay windows!” It was a three-story house, two of the levels made up of the wide bay windows I couldn’t help marveling at. My friend, who had obliviously continued walking ahead without me, stopped and turned back, a bit disconcerted by my sudden display of enthusiasm. I suppose she didn’t know that it’s a habit I have, this stopping dead in my tracks whenever something captures my interest.

The Berkeley building reminded me of how much I miss our old Victorian home with the bay windows and soaring rooflines – the tall, dilapidated house we spent over a year taking apart and rebuilding, knocking down walls and taking out excess doors, retaining the old moldings and doorway carvings, polishing the hardwood floors until they gleamed, reveling in the sheer glory of the house, a vast expanse of space and light. We remained there for only two more years after the year of renovation.

There are college students living there now, and a Volkswagen Jetta parked in the driveway. They sprawl on sagging couches on the wide front porch, littering it with six-packs, and the elegant bay windows sport posters of rockstars. My father’s geranium plots and brick borders, once intricately laid out and lovingly tended, are long gone, replaced by a patch of grass and nothing else. I miss the ingenious placement of those red geraniums, so vivid against the gray and white of the house.

I also miss our behtuk in the village, and the way the multicolored shutters shimmered in the afternoon sunlight. I miss the smell of rain, and the indescribably peaceful feeling of sitting on the rooftop and gazing down on the village. And my bebe and how she refused to acknowledge me as “Yasmine” and stubbornly persisted in calling me by my middle name, always.

I miss the miniature rose bushes from the house we lived in before that, and the level, green lawn. I miss watching the sunset from the laundry room window, and standing on the back porch to gaze at the stars, and reading so many more books in one year than I have collectively since then.

And before that – well, before that, there was this, and I came back, didn’t I?

They say you leave behind pieces of yourself, too, in every place that you live in and leave. I, of all people, know how true this is, having abandoned bits of myself everywhere, gradually shrugging off the qualities and habits and personality traits I found lacking, ill-fitting, awkward, unnecessary, or even, yes, embarrassing. But I also think one learns to pick up pieces, too, and so it becomes not just a matter of leaving behind pieces, but of learning to resourcefully substitute new ones for every bit you discard.

The individual self is a jigsaw puzzle.

Or maybe I’m just a sentimental fool.

This city’s made us crazy and we must get out

Casa420 and Familia

Yesterday, I:

One. Used the “PowerPoint elastomeric acrylic latex caulk with silicone” caulking gun to grout the cracks along the living room walls and ceiling. Doesn’t that make me sound smart? Hi, my name is Bob Villa. Actually, no, I’d much rather be MacGuyver instead. Anyway, I finally understand what all the hype about being tall is. Nice view up there. My 5’1″ self really appreciated towering all the way up there by the ceiling. I got to stand on a shaky, nine-foot ladder, invite cobwebs in my hair, and pretend I knew what I was doing wielding a gun – okay, a handyman’s tool, but whatever, the end result is looking good. The sad part is, I got so used to being tall that I kept missing steps while gingerly making my way down to solid ground. I won’t even tell you how many times I almost fell off the ladder. My mother is sworn to secrecy, too, so don’t even try.

Two. Started re-reading Ray Bradbury novels I haven’t touched since high school. (I’m back in my one-book-a-day phase and loving every minute of it.) Make sure you at least read Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man, The October Country, and The Golden Apples of the Sun. Especially Fahrenheit 451. Don’t say I never recommended any books to you. If you need more books, plow through this post.

Three. Spent about an hour in the evening at the California State Fair in Sacramento, listening to Maroon 5 perform live. “Listening” being the key word here, since everyone and their mother seems to be taller than me. (Remember that note about me being short?) They performed practically all the tracks off their Songs About Jane album, and managed to sound just as good (if not better) live. That takes some damn good skill, I say. Although we finally weaseled our way into a good enough spot that we could kinda sorta see the group, most of the time was still spent craning my neck and balancing on my tip-toes. Not only did Goth Girl in front of me keep turning her head to throw sneers and evil death glares my way, but then she would also comb her fingers through her hair or twist her head so as to deliberately block my view of the stage. I’ve decided that, next time, I should invest in a pair of 4-inch spike heels. That way, not only will I be taller, but I could also prepare for future encounters with Goth Girl by using the shoes to stab her if she continues to annoy me. Didn’t I say I wanted to be MacGuyver? S’all about using mundane, everyday tools in creative ways. Thank you, thank you. Hold the applause until the end, please.

Four. Vented off any lingering irritation with Goth Girl by returning to the relatives’ and spending half-an-hour twirling around my aunt’s living room with my niece, Zaynam. “Boboji!” she kept pleading, “aik aur [one more]!” I kept getting up to oblige her, spinning ’round and ’round and ’round while she clapped her hands, scrunched up her face, and giggled gleefully. At the end of it, my vision blurred and my head circling, I was beginning to doubt whether I’d be able to make the drive home. The best part was when Zaynam would stand in the middle of the room, chant, “One! Seven! Five!” and I’d yell out, “Go!” and she would twirl, arms outstretched, eyes tightly shut, only to trip over her feet and land on her face, still giggling. Word of advice to those of you who are interested in attempting this in your own living rooms: Maximize the fun of blurring colors and minimize potential injuries by keeping your eyes open while twirling.