rocker boy extraordinaire
I know everyone gets all excited (you do! just admit it!) whenever I talk about my brother’s hair. So this is just to let you know that the spiky orange mohawk is back. You read that right. And, yes, you know you wish you had a spiky orange mohawk, too. You do! Just admit it!
the earth is his canvas
it’s a jungle out there.
but look what you get out of it: tomatoes, jalapenos, and basil.
someone needs to make pasta, and soon.
It’s 9 a.m. on Wednesday morning and the brother and I are sitting in his dentist’s office. I’m poring through National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, shivering from time to time because I’m sitting right beneath the air-conditioning vent. (Who in their right freakin’ mind turns on the AC at 9 a.m.?) He’s sitting next to me, scribbling down notes for…what? a short story? a film script? This boy never goes anywhere without pen and paper. When inspiration strikes, he’s always prepared. These days, I’m finding we have a lot more in common than I would have ever imagined.
From time to time, we glance over at each other and crinkle our noses or shrug our shoulders in response to the silence in the waiting room. The only other people there are a middle-aged couple sitting across from us and an old lady a few seats down, all of them staring intently either at magazines or the ground, as if making eye contact with strangers would kill them.
The door is opened, the brother’s name finally called. “Good luck, buddy,” I say, patting him on the back. He stuffs his pen and scraps of paper in his pockets, his tall frame crossing the room to where the dentist’s assistant stands waiting with her clipboard and professionally solemn expression.
At the door, he stops abruptly and turns back to me. “If I don’t come back,” he drawls gruffly, his arms spread out theatrically, “…SELL THE DOG!” The couple across from me start guffawing. Even the little old lady cracks a smile. I slump in my chair, giggling uncontrollably. “Don’t worry,” I manage to gasp, “I’ll make sure to properly dispense of your possessions.”
“And…and…!” he continues dramatically, still in character, “Tell everyone I love ’em!” I shake my head, still giggling, as the door closes behind him.
“Is he getting his wisdom teeth pulled?” asks the man across from me knowingly. I nod. For the next several minutes, the waiting room is filled with laughing glances and barely suppressed grins and chuckles.
It’s a gift he has, making strangers smile.
Afterwards, his mouth stuffed with gauze so that he can barely speak coherently, he turns to pen and paper once again. “Did they laugh?” he scribbles, then shoves the paper across the table at me. I grin and recount, with sufficient glee, all the reactions he missed. He mumbles disdainfully, “The assistant actually asked me, ‘Are you really selling your dog?'” I laugh harder.
Later in the morning, I introduce him to Switchfoot, whom he finds intriguing. During the afternoon, he urges me watch the music video for Junoon’s Ghoom Tana and patiently helps out with Windows Media Player’s issues. This is my spiky-orange-haired brother we’re talking about, the one who absolutely loves the Pixies and tells me about random, obscure bands I’ve never heard of before, so I’m amazed at this newfound “ethnically aware” side to him. I counter that the music video for Fuzon’s Khamaj is cooler, “cooler” being Yasmine-speak for “this is the only other desi music video I’ve voluntarily watched in the past five years even though I have absolutely no idea who Fuzon is,” so we check out that one in turn. Since it’s shot in black-and-white, and the video concept has to do with auditions, directors, and films, he’s suitably impressed. I tease him for stealing the daddy-o’s old “Best of Muhammad Rafi” cassettes. He shares his pudding and cinnamon applesauce and mint ‘n’ chip ice cream with us.
A good time is had by all.
Things that made my day:
One: Getting a road trip mix CD in the mail from Baji, who’s over there in DC, all the way across the country. I swear I don’t recognize half these artist names, but that doesn’t mean I’m enjoying the CD any less. After all, I blasted it all the way to the local grocery store and back, didn’t I? (Total trip time required, one way: 4 minutes exactly.) Don’t worry, I’ll be putting it to good use tomorrow morning as we make our way up north to visit the crazy-awesome college people I’ve been missing. Did I mention she included a handwritten note, and that the CD is autographed along with an order to Rock on, Rockstar! Blogistan is such a beautiful thing. Baji: Thank you again!
Two: Discovering this evening that the daddy-o filled up my gas tank when he borrowed my car yesterday morning. (I haven’t even driven my car anywhere in two days. Clearly, all I’ve been doing is sitting around the house and sleeping my life away.) But – I HAVE A WHOLE ENTIRE FULL TANK OF GAS! Yes!
Three: Running into my spiky-orange-haired brother at the grocery store. Did I ever mention that he gives really nice (bone-crushing) bear hugs? He’s auditioning for a play tomorrow evening, so keep your fingers crossed and send some prayers and/or good vibes his way. Much appreciated.
Less than two weeks ago, we drove up to Sacramento to visit our relatives when we heard the news of our bhabi‘s sister’s death.
Towards the afternoon, I took the opportunity to escape the endless crying and sad, drawn faces by ushering my niece, three-year-old Zaynam, and her one-year-old sister – my cousin and bhabi‘s daughters – out the back door. We sat cross-legged on the lawn as Zaynam drew small gifts out of the goody bag we had brought her, while her sister sat silently in her usual huge-eyed, doll-like stillness. The common consensus in our family regarding Zaynam is that “she’s cute and she knows it,” but we can’t seem to resist granting her endless attention regardless. So I spent a lot of time exclaiming over the contents of the goody bag: a dinosaur, matchbox car, plastic palm tree, sparkly noisemaker, a bubble bottle, and various other odd and ends. I’m a big kid, too, you know.
Zaynam must have noticed my special affinity for the bubble bottle, because she thrust it at me with an order to twist the cap off for her. While I removed the cap and then fumbled with the aluminum covering, she cocked her head to the side and exclaimed, “Oh!”
I looked over questioningly. “Someone must have gotten hurt,” she explained. I squinted and turned my head, thinking she had perhaps heard a police car or ambulance siren nearby. It took me an extra second to realize that she was actually commenting on the loud weeping that had resumed from inside the house as soon as new guests walked in to pay their condolences to the family.
“My ummy cries a lot. Someone must have died,” she continued matter-of-factly, her eyes on the bubble bottle in my hands, and while I sat there in shock at the casual ease at which she made her comments, she added, “Give it to me!” and snatched the bottle out of my hands. We spent the rest of the afternoon blowing bubbles at each other, pushing the matchbox car along the concrete patio, and trying to learn how to play croquet. I stayed outdoors as much as I could that day.
But then just when we thought we could breathe freely, wipe the tears, remove the sadness from the back of our minds and guiltily try to move on with our lives, it hit again. Death is sly like that, you know. Only a week later, we were back in Sacramento, shocked beyond words, descending on the same household of relatives. It took massive effort for me to look my bhabi – Zaynam’s mother – in the face, to see the blank despair in her eyes. What could I say – “I’m sorry…again”? Instead, we asked each other helplessly, “How does she handle it?”
“Dado!” Zaynam shouted to my mother. My mother turned her head with a small smile, and Zaynam, clever child that she is, waited until everyone was silent and she had gotten the attention of the entire room to announce: “My nano died.”
Sometimes one can’t help but be amazed at the extent of childish innocence and understanding. And sometimes the human spirit is so resilient and able to withstand any number of blows, that one can’t but help being awed beyond words.
[I’ve had the pieces of this post composed in my head for days. It took my breath away then, last night, to come across a short story passage that epitomized something of what I was trying to say:
Her skeletal body was exhausted by its slow descent through limitless suffering, and her eyes stared up from the pit. But her spirit came up through her eyes in full force. Her spirit was soft and it was powerful, and it could hold her suffering, and it would stay with her until she fell into darkness.
– A Bestial Noise, Mary Gaitskill]
May we be blessed with all the strength, courage, and patience we could ever need, insha’Allah. Ameen.
So I’m sitting at my dad’s computer, plugging entries into Quickbook in an effort to reconcile my checkbook. Bored out of my mind, I decide that downloading sample biology midterms must be far more thrilling. Along comes my cousin, Ahbid, equally bored out of his mind after having spent the entire evening helping out with the yardwork, at my dad’s command, of course.
“Whatchu doin’?” he asks, flopping onto the daddy-o’s bed.
“Downloading biology exams. Exciting, ain’t it?”
He groans. “Why are you taking a biology class? What’s wrong with you? I took one of those in high school. We had to dissect a frog, so I picked the nerdiest kid in the class. I pointed at him, and was like, ‘Hey, you, you’re my partner.’ So he did all the work, and every time the teacher came around to our table, I just kinda poked at the frog, to look like I was busy. She was like, ‘Wow, Ahbid, good job, you’re showing wonderful improvement!'”
Ahbid just graduated from high school in June. At his graduation ceremony, it took us seemingly forever to find him amongst the sea of graduating faces in the stands. After all, his graduation was held at the freakin’ baseball stadium. Imagine that. But his cocky walk down to receive his diploma was distinctively him, as were the smug grins he flashed at all our cameras afterwards. After his two-hour session of endless, although stomach-crampingly hilarious, stories the other night, I’m starting to wonder how this boy even managed to graduate in the first place. I wish I had tape-recorded the entire conversation, because he’s a damn funny storyteller and this post isn’t going to do him justice.
A few of the highlights:
– On biology:
“So we had this student teacher for biology. This was sophomore year. He was a college student. His last name was Stauffer, so we were supposed to call him Mr. Stauffer, but someone decided to call him ‘Stopper,’ and it stuck. [I raise an eyebrow.] Uh uh, not me. I didn’t come up with the ‘Stopper’ thing. I just harassed him about the whole backpack issue.
“I used to get kicked out of classes all the time, so one day I came in and it was his first day. I figured I was ’bout to get kicked out soon anyway, so why even bother taking off my backpack. So I sat at my desk with my backpack on, and he goes, ‘Take off your backpack.’ I was like, ‘No.’ He was like, ‘Take off your backpack. I was like, ‘Why does it bother you so much, huh?’ He was like, ‘Take it OFF. NOW.’ ‘No.’ ‘Get out. GO.’ He had this one vein from the top of his forehead to his eyebrow, and whenever I pissed him off, his face would get all red and the vein would start pounding. It looked like a worm.
“He used to come in right from class, so he’d always have his own backpack on, too. So I was like, ‘You take off your backpack, Stopper.’ He be like, ‘No. I don’t want to.’ Sometimes, when I really wanted to piss him off, I’d be like, ‘Okay, Stopper, I’m putting my backpack back on now!’ The other kids in the class started doing it, too, leaving their backpacks on.
“Oh, and the shoes. My shoelaces would get untied, so I’d sit there moving my feet around, banging my shoes against the floor, making all this noise, and it’d drive Stopper crazy. He’d be like, ‘Mr. Khan, tie your shoelaces.’ I’d be like, ‘No.’ ‘GET OUT!'” He started watching me all the damn time. It got to the point where if I so much as sneezed, he thought I was ’bout to make a smartass comment, so he’d be like, ‘GET OUT!’ and kick me out of class.
“I was doing hella bad in that class. I failed all the tests, cuz I never knew the answers, so I’d sit there and color in the bubbles to form diamond patterns. Or I’d make a cartoon out of the bubbles. Stopper hated it. When I walked in to take the final exam, he was like, ‘Why don’t you just turn around and go back home, Mister.’ I was like, ‘No, I’m here to take the final, man.’ He was all pissed: ‘This is a waste of a perfectly good scantron! I catch you making any diamonds, and you’re out of here!’ I aced the final and got a C in the class.”
– On French:
“The student teacher for my French class, she was really young, like 26 or something, but from her face she looked like the mom from the Brady Bunch. The first day, she sat down and was like, ‘Hi, so I’m from New Jersey, and…’ I was like, ‘Get on with it. We don’t need to hear your whole life story. Aren’t you supposed to be teaching us, or something?’ She gave me a big ol’ dirty look.
“Okay, so we had this thing called ‘pay moi,’ which means, ‘pay me.’ Basically, the teacher would take away five points from a student if we were misbehaving or something. So, on the second day, the student teacher went around to check off the homework. I mean, who the hell assigns homework on the first day of school?! So I didn’t do it. And she was like, ‘One pay moi.’ I was like, ‘WHAT? You don’t get a pay moi for homework!’ She goes, ‘There’s a second pay moi.’ I was like, ‘What the HELL?’ She goes, ‘Third pay moi.’ ‘Sh*t.‘ ‘Fourth pay moi.’ ‘Oh my God….’ ‘Fifth pay moi.’ ‘Argggghhhhhhh….’ ‘Sixth…’ It just went on like that. The next day, she called me in at lunchtime and started crying about it, cuz she felt bad or something, I guess. I was like, ‘First of all, I’m at like negative forty points in this class, for no reason, and it’s only the third day. Second, you make me come in on my lunch break. And now, you’re crying. What’s wrong with you? I’m leaving.”
– On English:
“My English teacher was short and round. I used to call her ‘Oompa Loompa.’ Once, I kept asking her how long she was gonna keep teaching at the school for. She wouldn’t answer the question. She was just like, ‘Oh, I don’t know…’ Finally, she got all nervous and goes, ‘Wait, you’re not planning on having children, are you, Ahbid?'”
– On his infamous reputation, part I:
“We weren’t allowed to wear hats and hoods at school. It was a security measure, cuz they wanted to make sure no strangers were wandering around campus. Even if they didn’t know all our names, they knew us all by face, so as long as they could see our faces, it was cool. One day, I was walking around with my jacket hood on, and this guy came up to me and was like, ‘Okay, Ahbid, I need you to remove your hood. It’s against school policy.’ I was like, ‘Man, it’s raining, I’m not ’bout to take off my hood. And who are you anyway, and how do you know my name?’ He ended up walking me straight to the office because I wouldn’t take off the hood.
“I asked the lady at the office, ‘Who was that, and how does he know my name?’ She was like, ‘Oh, that’s Mr. _____.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, but how does he know me?’ She just looks at me and goes, ‘Students like you are the main focal point of teacher meetings.’ I was like, ‘WHAT? You mean, you have teacher meetings and buy fifty dollars worth of food because you need to be entertained, and then you talk about me, instead of talking about school supplies or the size of the hallway or how ugly the school is? You guys talk about ME? What’s wrong with you people?'”
– On his infamous reputation, part II:
“We had to check in with our counselors towards the end of senior year, so I went in to see mine. At the end of the meeting, she looked at me all serious and goes, ‘Ahbid, ninety-nine percent of the teachers here are glad to hear you’re leaving. I just thought I’d let you know.’ I was like, ‘WHAT? They SAID that?’ She was like, “Yes. Just like that.’ ‘BACKSTABBERS!’ So at graduation, every teacher that looked over at me, I gave ’em a dirty look back, like, ‘I know it, you’re one of those ninety-nine percent, aren’t you?'”
– On unsuccessful guilt trips:
“You and Yaser lalaji though…” he says, referring to Somayya‘s older brother, “You two never helped me with anything! Some cousins you are. Ruthless, both of you.” Obviously he has forgotten the many times he instant-messaged me, using me for my math tutoring skills, asking, “Hey, do you know how to find the surface area of a rectangle?” And the time I sat there at Somayya’s kitchen table, laying out the entire plot summary of To Kill a Mockingbird for him. And the time I was supposed to tutor him back when I was in sixth grade, but instead we all sat around watching cartoons and he and my brother gulped down pancakes as their after-school snack of choice. Yeah.
What else to say about a cousin with whom one used to have AIM conversations like the following:
A: I’m just playin’ around, don’t cry
A: just kidding
Yasmine: uh, the yaz doesn’t cry
A: the yaz?
A: well the bob doesn’t either
A: or the ahaabieb
A: or the abied
A: or the albert
A: we all don’t cry
A: hahahahahahahahaha
I love this kid. What a smartass.
Daddy-o: Yasminay, you want to see a rainbow?
Yasmine: Sure. Where’s it at?
Daddy-o: Look in that direction, over by that tree. ::sprays the hose so that the water catches the sunlight:: Do you see it??
Yasmine: aww, that’s beautiful, Daddy. Thank you.
Daddy-o: You’re very welcome. ::sniffs:: Why do you smell like cigarettes?
Yasmine: Uhh, I was smoking it up while you all were busy gardening out here.
Daddy-o: ::narrows his eyes, whether as a threat or in confusion, I don’t know::
Yasmine: ::hastily backtracks:: Just kidding. Actually, I left the English muffins in the toaster for too long. As in, way, way too long.
_________________
Yasmine: I can’t believe you two have been married for thirty years.
Daddy-o: It’s because your mother makes better coffee than anyone.
Yasmine: Mm-hmm. I think Ummy married you just ’cause you plant pretty flowers.
Daddy-o: Oh, of course. And I plant them all for her, you know.
_________________
Daddy-o: ::waves a snail back-and-forth in front of my face:: Ooooooh…
Yasmine: Uh, Daddy, I’m not the screaming kind, you know.
Daddy-o: ::visibly disappointed:: You think maybe it’ll work on [the sister] instead?
Yasmine: Hey, it’s always worth a try.
_________________
Daddy-o: I think your mother and I should move back to Vancouver when I retire. We’ll live there for a while, and then move back to the village.
Yasmine: Oh yeah? Sounds like a pretty good plan to me.
Daddy-o: Yasminay, you guys should look into getting Canadian citizenship again.
Yasmine: Yeah, I checked it out last summer, but then I got all confused and let it go.
Daddy-o: Americans are so stuffy. Not the people – the people are wonderful – but the government. Canada is more progressive and multicultural.
Yasmine: Mm-hmm.
Daddy-o: And, plus, Canada has a prettier flag. With a maple leaf. Get it? Leaves? Gardening?
Yasmine: Ohh, Daddy.
conversations with (and documented by) my brother the artist
post-its are the funniest way to document a conversation, really.
DISCLAIMER, AGAIN: Please note that I am not as shallow as this exchange makes me out to be. But, really, look at the heavy-duty bags under that first guy’s eyes. Workaholics or drug-addicts need not apply. It’s all tongue-in-cheek anyway. Just deal.
i’m free/free fallin’
Tonight I will be up the entire night, fighting sleep and the usual distractions (AIM, weblogs, and midnight snacks), and tomorrow I need to make sure I make it on time to my 8:30 a.m. class. Tomorrow I also need to go in to see one of my professors during her office hours. God only knows why she asked me to stop by, although I suspect it may have something to do with the Research Paper From Hell that I decided not to turn in two weeks ago when it was actually due. I damn well better finish this paper tonight. If I don’t, I’ve already given Somayya explicit instructions to just get it over with and shoot me if I show up at school tomorrow with nothing to show for this allnighter.
This paper has been haunting me for a month, and the thought of tomorrow makes me anxious and depressed. So I’m better off just dwelling on today for now.
Today I woke up at 10 a.m., having deliberately (although sadly and slightly guiltily) skipped halaqa, Islamic Sunday school with my favorite 5-7 year-olds, and a Zaytuna-sponsored hike with Zaid Shakir. I had a leisurely breakfast of waffles while poring over the latest glossy issue of Diablo Magazine (and thought of Mossy, who once averred, “I think there are waffles in heaven. Many waffles.”).
I took a long shower (lots of hot water, for once), didn’t comb my hair (no surprise there), checked emails, made phone calls, hugged my brother, and watched my father plant our new apricot and nectarine trees behind the house.
At noon, the daddy-o and I munched on English toffee from the market, speculated on the possible recipe, laughed at the ingredients list (“Yasminay, what’s ‘inverted sugar’?”), and decided that our next-door neighbor still makes the best English toffee we’ve ever tasted. My mother packed me oranges from our tree, my dad handed me chocolate candy he had brought from his office, I grabbed my cranberry juice from the fridge and was ready to drive up to school to hunt for some research articles for the aforementioned Paper From Hell. Daddy advised, “Take some tangerines, too,” so I stepped over the low brick wall and picked a few tangerines off the tree after starting my car.
I got in my car, and it was so nice and warm inside that I nearly clapped my hands in glee. It was almost 75-degrees-Fahrenheit today, my dream temperature. I wondered about what music to listen to, and the immediate thought that came to mind was, “Something happy and loud.” It came down to a choice between Matchbox Twenty, Goo Goo Dolls, and Maroon 5, all loud, but none of whom are exactly happy.
Scrabbling through the center console, I came across my “Mix CD Extraordinaire 1,” something I had forgotten about. “Mix CDs Extraordinaire 1-3” are seventy-five songs I downloaded almost three years ago – the extent of all my music downloads – and didn’t burn onto CDs until last December. This one included Savage Garden b-sides, Brian McKnight, Freddie Jackson, Better Than Ezra, Naked Eyes, Leigh Nash, Afghan Whigs, Patti Smith, Third Eye Blind, Tom Petty, Blessid Union of Souls, among others. Because I had no idea what was specifically on this CD, each track was an absolutely perfect gift in randomness.
I slipped on my yellow sunglasses, the ones that make the world a happy place, and away we went. One block before the main road, I whizzed by three children at a lemonade stand. It took me a couple of extra seconds to process that information, and I almost continued on my way. But then I remembered how I always tell everyone, “I think you should always make a point to stop and buy whatever it is that kids happen to be selling at their makeshift lemonade stands at the side of the road. Not only because it will make their day, but also because it’ll brighten yours as well. Trust me,” and I knew that I’d never forgive myself if I passed up this opportunity. So I made a U-turn and went back and parked across the street from the lemonade kids. I had a mere total of eighty-five cents on me, and I prayed that that would be enough as the children watched me inquisitively from across the street.
Their names were Wendy, Lisa, and Michael. They greeted me with pleased smiles, then gravely rattled off the prices. Twenty-five cents for a small lemonade, fifty cents for a large one, and twenty-five cents for a doughnut of my choice. I picked a large lemonade and a powdered doughnut, and gave them the rest of my change, too, “because you guys are cool.” They grinned delightedly and said thank you and told me to have a nice day. The lemonade was a bit too watery and not as sour as I would have liked (please note my newfound obsession with cranberry juice), but it was ice-cold and refreshing, and I gulped it down quickly.
“And all I gotta say, yeah,/is your love’s extraordinary/You’re extraordinary, baby.”
– Better Than Ezra, Extraordinary
After the bridge, I decided to bypass the next fifteen miles of traffic by driving along the road I once used last summer. I drove with my window down and the moonroof open, and stopped three times to take photographs of the mountainsides.
“People tell me that I feel too much/But I don’t care, no I don’t care/People tell me that I need too much/Well I don’t care, no just I don’t care anymore.” – Savage Garden, I Don’t Care
I replayed the Afghan Whig’s song, “66,” multiple times, thinking about the friend I introduced the band to, who used to laugh with me at the lyrics for this song (“Come on/Come on/Come on, little rabbit/Show me where you got it/’Cause I know you got a habit”). I miss what that friendship used to be, and it’s interesting to note that I of all people, usually so terrible at staying in touch with friends old and new and current, am willing to constantly make seemingly one-sided efforts to revitalize this specific friendship.
At school, I ate candy in the library, read weblogs on the “research-only!” computers, found some electronic journal articles, and gave my oranges and tangerines away to my friend, Jason, a smart boy who gladly accepts gifts instead of hemming and hawing and pretending to refuse things he really wants. Everyone should be like him. Take notes.
In the evening, for dinner, Somayya and I went down to Dos Coyotes, where I ordered the salmon burrito I’ve been craving for weeks. We spent almost an hour eating and laughing about you people (notice I did not say, “at you people”) and talking about how much we love weblogging and what awesome fun it would be to meet all you cool bloggers in real life. Quite obviously, we are far too addicted to weblogs for our own good, we’ve decided, but we really wouldn’t have it any other way.
The moon looked odd this evening, a red-orange globe hanging low in the sky. I took photos of that, too.
The drive home to the Bay was lovely, and went by faster than usual, it seemed. At the first stoplight in my hometown, I glanced absently at the car in the lane next to me, while the guy in the car carelessly looked over as well. I looked away, then out of the corner of my eye noticed him actually reversing his car a little so that he could get a better look at me. I rolled my eyes, shook my head, hit the accelerator as soon as the light turned green, and laughed the rest of the way home. The remaining eight stoplights were all green. This never happens.
Tomorrow will come far, far sooner than I like. I’d cancel tomorrow if I could.
But days like today are the kind of days I live for.
nothing witty, urbane, erudite, or even coherent – just a disjointed attempt to put my typing skills back in practice
On my bed is a thick knitted blanket. It’s just over five feet long, and narrow, the perfect length and width for my 5’1″ frame. My mother knitted it during the first year after I was born, using excess yarn she received from a friend and whatever extra yarn she had lying around the house. I’ve loved this blanket ever since. It has a golden-orange scalloped edge on one end, green scallops at the other end. In between is five feet of colors in no particular order, a riotous surge of unchecked shades alternating without pattern. Every few inches, there is a row in a new color.
The first two feet go like this: orange, white, purple, pink, gray, turquoise, brown, gray, bright red, yellow, green, gray… It’s not beautiful in the traditional sense. Some of the colors even look ugly next to each other. But I love this blanket. I love its warmth, and extra thickness, and how it’s sometimes almost suffocating in its heaviness. It makes me smile, and makes me want to learn how to knit. These days, I’d like to learn how to knit a nice, warm beanie for myself. Then perhaps I could stop wandering around the house with my hooded jacket, looking for all the world like a wannabe big bad Artic explorer.
Yesterday morning, finding the bathroom too warm after my shower, I raised the window and pressed my face against the screen, inhaling deep breaths of the cold air outside as my eyes wandered over the concrete wall and grape vines and geraniums running along the back of the house. I was struck by a sense of déjà vu – the last time I remember doing that, I was 12 years old, we were preparing to leave for Pakistan, and it was a different version of myself that looked out a different window-screen at a backyard scene from a different house in another city. That was ten years ago.
They say an individual’s sickness serves as expiation for his sins. I wonder if the past six days of illness have made me a different person, but really, I don’t feel any changes, nor did I even think to pray for any. They say a sick person’s prayers are granted, so I prayed some extra, and prayed that He would accept peoples’ prayers and supplications on my behalf, but other than that the days and nights were blurred into an continuous stream of fever and chills and restless sleep and gulping down soup and swallowing back endless pills and sleeping some more.
This is how not to be stupid like Yasminay: Don’t pull allnighters. Don’t pull almost-allnighters. Try try try to get work done ahead of schedule. And when your barely-started 6-page paper nearly brings you to tears on Tuesday morning, remember the fact that you never cry over academic assignments, no matter how frustrating, and that your tears must be related to other things. Like the fact that you have an excruciatingly-painful backache and a throbbing headache and, for God’s sake, a 104-degree fever. Why oh why are you even sitting here pretending to get anything done? The problem is, I don’t get sick often enough to recognize the symptoms well. But I was smart enough to take two Tylenols and crawl into bed with a relieved sigh.
Tuesday evening’s visit to the doctor reinforced my view that they never have anything new or interesting to tell me. Or maybe it’s just because my primary doctor, a young, curly-haired, fashionably-dressed Egyptian lady with pretty earrings, was out and so I had to make do with a substitute doctor who seemed a bit confused: “You may have holes in your eardrums,” she remarked.
I flinched. “I would hope not.” And, no, as a matter of fact, I didn’t have holes in my eardrums, thank you very much. I’m used to first-class treatment from my long-time ear specialist at the California Ear Institute (affiliated with Stanford University), an otolaryngologist with decades of experience who knows what he’s doing and constantly renews his offer of a post-graduation job at his practice (if I stick with audiology) and doesn’t scare me to death with stupid offhand remarks about my precious eardrums.
When I relayed my symptoms from earlier in the day to the doctor, she raised her eyebrows and stared me down. “A hundred and four degrees? Why didn’t you come in to see a doctor earlier?” I just shrugged, and waited for her verdict, the diagnosis, though she never did give me one, instead sending me away with a prescription for amoxicillin. Lord knows what I even had. Probably the flu. Truth is, I don’t really have much experience with being ill, so usually I’m very nonchalant about it.
I feel like such a druggie, a pill-popper or something. Right now I’m hooked on amoxicillin, cough syrup, and Sudafed. The amoxicillin is interesting. They’re huge pills, hollow capsules, half brown, half yellow. After days of swallowing them absently, I got a bit curious and took one apart today to see what’s inside the plastic capsule. Nothing but white powder. So boring. I had been hoping for some exciting colors. Sudafed is my favorite – teeny-tiny little red pills that look like cinnamon candy. Don’t try this at home, kids.
I tried venturing out on Thursday. The sister was my chauffeur for the day, first to a meeting, then later to a (post-)Eid banquet, both in Sacramento. The latter event just made me irritable. One, I understand it’s nearly-impossible to expect Muslim people to start things on time, but can we at least try? Two, I start feeling claustrophobic in a roomful of South Asian people – yes, I know they’re my people, but really, I can handle them only in limited quantities. Like, say, one at a time. Three, why the hell can’t people learn how to park correctly? I was tired and ready to leave by nine. But, oops, we couldn’t, because three cars were parked in a nice perpendicular row behind our parking spot. Slick, real slick. So I stomped back inside and fumed and tried listening to Imam Suhaib Webb’s speech while I coughed and coughed and my eyes watered with fatigue.
“I think I know who those cars belong to,” said a friend of mine at the end of the program.
“Good,” I snapped. “Can you please tell them to move their damn cars already, because I’m really starting to get pissed off.”
She went to see what she could do, while her friend peered at me with slight amusement. “Are you mad?” she asked.
Now there’s a question I dislike, right along with “Are you mad at me?” Depending what mood I’m in, I find them a cross between condescending and naïve. And really, they’re just stupid questions.
“Oh, I’m not mad,” I said. “I’m exhausted and sick and I would have been almost home by now, except for damn people who don’t know how to park. I’m not mad, I’m straight pissed off.”
“Aww, you’re sick? I hope you feel better soon.”
“Yeah, me, too,” I said curtly.
I came home and crawled back into bed and decided to spend the remaining few days at home with my family, people I’m mainly nice to, people who love me and make me soup even when I’m cross and childish.
The brother has visited everyday this week, a new record for him. I like to believe I’m special enough to merit that sort of solicitousness. Don’t burst my bubble, or I’ll hurt you. He regaled me with stories of his mini-road-trip down to Santa Cruz, while I entertained him with my numerous voice changes and mock-threats of, “Shut up, or I’ll cough on you.”
The flu is over, praise the Lord. All that’s left now is what sounds like a smoker’s hacking cough. Sometimes it nearly brings me to my knees. Usually I’m just bent over double, breathless with the pain of incessant coughing, assailed by a crazy dizzy fear that it won’t ever stop. At least the changes it’s wrought in my voice are amusing. Most days I sound like an 80-year-old man – when I’m not sounding like a boy who’s going through puberty.
I spent part of today lying in a pool of sunshine on the living room floor, right under the main windows, reading Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Arranged Marriage, a collection of mainly profoundly sad short stories. I borrowed it from the library simply because the title made me raise my eyebrow, like, Oh Lord, here we go again with that subject. I’m not much into South Asian writers, and honestly, I prefer stories where everyone lives happily ever after. But she writes well. Good stories. Go read. Or don’t. Last night I lay in bed reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. Another good one.
The daddy-o made me take a walk around the yard with him today, while he showed off the six new fruit trees he has planted over the last few days: orange, pear, pomegranate, persimmon, fig, apple. Very nice. I told him that, next up, we need a nectarine or peach tree. He’s already decided it’s going to be planted diagonally across from the apricot tree. I feel useful in the garden, all of a sudden. I’m terrible at volunteering to help, but at least I give valuable advice.
But the days and nights of sleeping are over. Tomorrow I’m returning to school after a week off, and the sheer amount of work waiting for me is frightening. I still have to finish writing that damn paper, and study for a midterm I’ve gotten an extension on, and read some research articles for one internship and present a workshop for my other internship on Wednesday to a group of freshman who’ll likely be fidgety and suffering from A.D.D., just my luck. And then more midterms and projects and workshops, seemingly back-to-back. O my Lord, grant me strength strength strength.
Sometime on Tuesday, after I had emailed a professor asking for an extension on my paper, she sent back a reply that began: Relax, it’s going to be okay.
I laughed. It must have been a really frantic email I sent her.
Breeeeathe, Yasminay, it’s going to be okay.