Category Archives: Conversations and Encounters

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.

‘Cause while you wait inside, the days go by

(3)BeautifulThings, Conversations and Encounters

one.
I made a fruit smoothie (out of peach yoghurt, cherries, orange juice, and crushed ice; it was a’ight) and stood at the kitchen sink, drinking the excess straight out of the blender, and I felt like such a boy. It was fun.

two.
I stopped by the drugstore a couple days ago to drop off a disposable camera for photo processing. I don’t even remember what’s on there, but it’s been sitting on top of my bed’s headboard for the past two months or so. Super charismatically mysterious. But this is not the point. The point is that while I was filling out my photo envelope at the counter, the guy adjacent to me was loudly jabbering away on his cell phone. Actually, he had one of those hands-free headsets that I always laugh at because it makes people appear as if they’re talking to themselves. Which this guy may have been, for all I know. With his conveniently freed hands, he was sifting through a pile of photographs, some of them black and white. He was tall and blonde and looked normal enough, wearing slacks and a button-down shirt and shoes. His phone conversation sort of went as follows:

“Daniel, I told you, I’m at Longs, picking up pictures. I’m looking right at them right now. Daniel, I’m looking right at them. Here’s one of you in front of your great-grandfather’s house. Here’s one of an iguana and a giraffe sitting on a chair that’s at least two hundred years old. [Laughing.] Daniel, you have to see the iguana and the giraffe! What do you think of that! And here’s one of… [Mumbling indistinctly.] I’m looking right at the pictures, Daniel, what do you think of that! What do you think, huh? [Pauses, fiddles with his phone.] Sorry, Daniel, I was really focused on these pictures; I guess I cut you off. Okay, anyway. And here’s another picture of your great-grandfather’s house again. So this is what I need you to do, Daniel: I need you to bring a shovel and help me dig. There’s gold buried at your great-grandfather’s house in South Africa, Daniel, and you need to help me dig. Daniel, are you listening to me? Daniel, Daniel, Daniel… There’s gold there! What do you think of that! Oh, look, here’s the iguana and the giraffe again. [Laughing.] I’m looking right at them. You see that? [Holds the photos up so the photo center employee can see. She smiles.] Okay, so make sure you bring your shovel, Daniel.”

three.
I was discussing my career plans (or lack thereof) with my father the other night. “Make sure you get a happy job,” he advised me. Lately, he has been of the mindset that a “happy job” would involve a post-law school career. I’m pretty sure I disagree. More on this later. Happy jobs though, that’s something to keep in mind.

four.
I have spent the last two days trying to get ahold of my mother’s various medical records in preparation for an upcoming appointment she’s scheduled for, and people are driving me crazy. Today’s drama trauma: The doctor’s office assures me they will have the records available at the front desk for me to pick up, then they go and courier them somewhere else, they don’t know where, and I have to spend 45 minutes tracking them down. We need more rockstar (some soon-to-be) medical doctors like Chai, karrvakarela, Sri, Maria, and, hands down of course, Somayya AND THE BEAN! Everyone else is a stupid moron. Or maybe, in all fairness, the doctors are fine and it’s just the people who work for them who are morons. I don’t know, I’m just annoyed.

five.
I went out to lunch with a group of friends. A friend replied, “Yes, please,” when the server asked her, “Would you like a super salad with that?” and I started laughing because what the server had really asked was, “Would you like a soup or salad with that?” and at least one of my friends always gets it wrong whenever we eat at this place. And then I had to repeat it about seven times, mainly because that was such a Yasmine kind of misunderstanding, and so I take some sort of perverse pleasure in other people making the same mistake. Ah, me.

zayn z’al barr: fair is this land

Conversations and Encounters, Suckool

While studying inside Peet’s Coffee&Tea for the first time and loving their tall stools with the slightly-curved backs:

1.
Little Girl: Coffee!
Mother, firmly: No coffee.
Little Girl: Coffee beans!
Mother: No, honey.

A little, fluffy white dog paces to and fro outside in front of the door, wagging its tail. The mother and daughter step outside and the little girl stoops down to hug the dog. While the door is still closing behind them, I hear the little girl ask the dog, “You like coffee beans, don’t you?” The little white dog smiles [there is really no other word for it] and wags its tail, and the little girl looks accusingly at her mother. “See, Mommy! I told you so!”

2.
Page 45 of my NPB notes discusses the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is located in the anterior hypothalamus and is the dominant pacemaker. Something to do with circadian rhythms and internal clocks in one’s body. I cross out suprachiasmatic and write super charismatic above it. Who says neurobiology can’t be fun? I want to be super charismatic. Don’t you?

3.
Two women are sitting outside, at a table right next to the front window. One woman does most of the talking and gesturing, pointing to the stack of photographs at her elbow, picking them out carefully, laying them in rows in front of her, pointing at details, passing them one-by-one to the woman sitting across to her. The other woman nods frequently, taking each photo as it is handed to her, smiling widely in response and asking questions interestedly, while the first lady gives elaborate explanations.

I understand some of what they are saying by watching their lips move in conversation, but mostly I spy on their body language and facial expressions and what I can see of the glossy photographs in their hands. There are imposing cathedrals and ivy-covered brick buildings, seascapes and sandy beaches, and cobblestoned streets, wide and elegant. I wonder if she had traveled to Italy or England, to Boston or DC. Maybe it was Zanzibar. But, somehow, I don’t think Zanzibar has cobblestones. But what do I know?

4.
I go up to the counter to order a slice of cake to go with my blended mocha thingamajig.
“Would you like a broken slice of marble fudge cake for free?” asks the girl at the counter.
I must have hesitated (the idea that anyone could want to give me something for free must have been mind-boggling), because she reassures me, “It’s a whole piece. Just broken up a bit.”
“Sure! Thank you.”

5.
Every time I look up from my notes and directly out the window, I see two men standing outside, just a few feet away from the aforementioned two women. One is middle-aged, the other looks about eighteen or in his early twenties. It’s hard to tell: close-cropped blonde hair, a couple of earrings, t-shirt and cords, an unremarkable face. They’ve been standing there for an hour. I assume they are father and son. The older guy does most of the talking, and very emphatically at that, his words frequently punctuated with forward thrusts of his head. The boy is quieter; he looks steadily at the other man and calmly adds a sentence here and there, but remains impassive for the most part. I recognize that expressionless gaze, because I myself use it quite often whenever I’m being lectured by my father. It’s my “heartless bastard” look, as my friend D calls it, because it conveys an unflinching lack of emotion. It’s the one I use when I really have nothing to say in my defense, or – as usually happens – when I know that saying something is only going to make the whole situation worse.

I feel extremely nosy and embarrassed about continually glancing over them through the window, but I’m a fidgety studier and I have to look around frequently, and they are directly in my line of vision. The photograph ladies are long gone, customers glance momentarily at them while stepping in and out of the coffee shop, and passersby weave their way around them on the sidewalk. Once, I glance up and inadvertently catch the older man’s mouth moving to say, “It’s not gonna happen.”

Finally, they enter the coffee shop, with a minute’s delay in between their entrances. I feel hopeful that everything is alright and perhaps what I misunderstood as an argument was just a heated discussion about sports or politics or the new gym that recently opened next door. The boy approaches the older gentleman, but the latter abruptly turns away. “Have a nice life,” says the older man coldly. He grabs his coffee, shoves his sunglasses down over his eyes, turns on his heel, and harshly adds the painful parting shot while striding away: “Without your daughter.”

The boy sits down at a table, coffee in hand, and picks up the newspaper.

Well, I walked over the bridge into the city where I live

Bibliothek, Conversations and Encounters, NineToFive outside the 925

Last week, I went to Borders to study for my neurobiology and my molecular & cellular bio final exams.

(As an aside, nothing has made me mentally curse over the past few weeks as much as thoughts of neurobiology do: Friggin’ hell! I understand that NPB stands for Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, but, friggin’ hell, maybe I’d actually understand it if it were less physiology and more behavior. So, once again, friggin’ hell, man! Alright, I’ll stop. Moving along now.)

I walk into the Borders cafe, a bit chagrined to find all the tiny, individual tables taken. The only one that looks nearly empty is the long, rectangular table in the center of the cafe, occupied only at one corner by a mother and her small daughter. I approach them from the opposite end of the table and smile. “Mind if I sit here?”
The mother shakes her head. “It’s a bit too big for just us.” The daughter, sitting in her mother’s lap, regards me wide-eyed.
I smile my thanks and drop my messenger bag on the floor, place my discman and headphones a bit more carefully atop the table, and pull out a chair at the corner diagonally across from them.

“I saw my daddy today!” the little girl tells me as I sit down. “And he brought me this juice!”
The little girl is Asian, although her mother apparently is not. The daughter has lots of shiny black hair and huge, dark eyes, and she’s gulping down an Odwalla Superfood beverage, holding the opening of the plastic bottle right up against her mouth in the manner that little kids are wont to do, so that her mouth is totally surrounded by a large green-black ring. In a word: Adorable. I suppress a smile.
“Is the juice good?” I ask with genuine interest, since it looks really…well, greenish-black, and I’m trying not to wince at the color. She nods enthusiastically.

She points outside in the direction of the parking garage. “We came down here in the elevator!” And then, with characteristic forthrightness: “How old are you?”
“I’m 24. How old are you?”
“Four. No, four and a half.”
“Not yet,” laughs her mother.
A stranger sits down across from me, smiling politely at us before delving into his book.
The little girl watches him curiously “Do you know him?” she asks me. “Does he know you?”
I shake my head, while her mother speaks softly into her ear.
“How old is he?”
“Maybe not everyone wants to say how old they are,” says her mother.

I take my books out of my bag and spread them out in front of me while the little girl watches. “How did you tie up your hair?” she asks, pointing at my headwrap.
“Well,” I say, accustomed to hearing this question often, “I doubled my hair up in a pony-tail, and then I tied a bandanna around it, and then I just wrapped this other big scarf around my head.”
“Can you show me?”
Her mother tries to shush her. “It probably takes a lot of time, and I don’t think she would want to take off her scarf and re-do it all here.”
“I can tie up my hair,” the little girl murmurs. “I can tie my hair around my hair, too.” She gathers her hair in front of her and starts braiding it. I’m smiling to myself, because this is the most talkative, articulate four year old I have ever met. And also because she is sitting in her mother’s lap with her back against her mother’s stomach, and her mother seems to have no idea of the large black ring around her daughter’s mouth.

As I pick my sweater off the table and drape it across the back of my chair (never underestimate the speed with which my fingernails turn blue in air conditioned environments), the little girl remarks, “You look different without your coat.”
“I do? How?”
She shrugs. Her mother smiles and correctly points out, “She wasn’t wearing her coat when she came in.”
“Yes, she was!”
As they get up to leave (the mother finally noticing and trying in vain to wipe the black circle off her daughter’s mouth), I turn around in my chair to say goodbye. While passing by my chair, the little girl gravely sticks out her hand, and I shake it just as solemnly. “I’m Yasmine. What’s your name?”
“Lily.”
“Bye, Lily! It was nice talking to you.”

Only after she is out the door do I realize I could have added, “We both have flower names!” But maybe that would have been overdoing it. After all, I do laughingly refer to my own as a “generic flower name” often enough.

I find a small table of my own and move my stuff over, but now that Lily and her entertaining chatter are gone, I’m bored already. I watch everyone else around me, in an effort to distract myself from studying, and cringe at the too many girls under twelve who sashay about in their ruffled mini skirts. My blend of pity and irritation is soon alleviated by my amusement at the old man gravely reading “eBay for Dummies” across the room, and the South Asian boys next to me fervently discussing the merits of “Nintendo Power.”

I look up for a split second, and the woman sitting with her back to me at the next table is perusing a book whose pages address concerns such as “Flaking Eyeshadow” and “Bleeding Lipstick.” I want to say, “Buddy, eyeshadow is fun, but seriously, makeup is not worth all that drama if you have to read a whole book about it,” but decide to leave her to her reading.

When I get bored of biology in all its various forms, I wander over to check out the real books, because we all know textbooks don’t count. The Calvin and Hobbes compilations hold my interest the longest. I stand there and laugh, speedily flipping through the pages – like I used to with those mini animation booklets we made in elementary school – then drag the books back to my table, against my better academic-oriented judgment. “I’ve got nothing but consonants!” continuously exclaims Calvin in outrage, spelling three-letter words as Hobbes condescendingly put far more elaborate tongue-twisters. It reminds me of all the times I’ve played Literati over at Yahoo! games with Chai & Co., and whined about not having any vowels at my disposal.

A middle-aged gentleman leans over my table on his way out and says, “Thank you for brightening my lunch,” then turns and scuttles away before I can even think to formulate a proper reply. I don’t know why exactly he was thanking me, unless, knowing me, I had probably smiled absently in his direction whenever I turned my head to scrutinize the local Persian artist’s paintings hanging on the wall just behind his table. I laugh silently at how I am The Most Oblivious Person In The World™ (yes, it merits capital letters and a trademark symbol, it’s that bad), and am reminded of H#3 and his habit of shamelessly flirting with every girl at our workplace. One morning, I walked over to his cubicle to grab some paperwork and greeted him with my standard, “How goes it, buddy?”
“Better now,” he said smoothly.
“Oh,” I said with concern. “Were you not feeling well?”
His winsome smile slipped away, replaced by a wide-eyed, incredulous, “ohmygod she totally didn’t get it” look. Meanwhile, I wandered off obliviously, and then laughed out loud when it finally hit me while I was sitting at my desk, a good hour or so later.

I listen to Amos Lee on my headphones while consuming ice-blended chocolate drinks and a raspberry latte. Two years later, and I sadly still don’t know the difference between espressos and mochas and lattes and whatnot.

As I am leaving Borders at the end of the day, I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and turn to see a little boy running by, exclaiming in wide-eyed awe, “Dad, I SAW BUTTERFLIES!” My wide grin comes naturally, as does the irrepressible laugh that follows. The other cafe people look up with vague interest, then return to their magazines and coffees and books and muted conversations.

Those were the best parts of my day: Lily and Calvin and The Butterfly Boy.

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.”

"autochthonous" looks like a reptile, and "schwarm…

Conversations and Encounters, Suckool

“autochthonous” looks like a reptile, and “schwarmerei” sounds like shawarma.

So I’m sitting here in the computer lab at school, because this is where I spend my days ostensibly writing papers when I’m not skipping class and sleeping out in the university library courtyard or up on the third floor in what I call “the wine room” or on the comfy couch upstairs in the Graduate School of Management or in the study lounge or in my (parked) car. Or, basically, when I’m not sleeping anywhere and everywhere. You get the idea, I’m sure.

Anyway, the guy at the computer next to me just leaned over and asked – while I was typing out my last post, imagine that – “How do you spell ‘professor’?”

“P-r-o-f-e-s-s-o-r,” I rattled off without missing a beat. Hey, I was in the spelling bee in the third, fourth, and fifth grades, okay.

“Thanks,” he said, visibly relieved. “I wasn’t sure if there were two Rs or one.”

He printed his paper and left, but I’m still scratching my head over that one.

no pain, no political gain. A few weeks ago, I we…

Conversations and Encounters

no pain, no political gain.

A few weeks ago, I went in to see my dentist for one of those every-6-months check-ups. He asked the usual grown-up questions about school and exams and my future career goals after graduation (“Sleeping,” I said shortly). “So I hear you’re going to become a politician,” he said, as he began preparing for my tooth examination and cleaning.

“No,” I said, baffled. “That’s never been one of my choices.”

“I see. Alright then.”

“Wait. Have you been talking to my father?” I asked suspiciously.

He shrugged lightly. “Well, yes, that’s what your baba said. He said you’ve been hanging out with a lot of politicians lately.”

I laughed. “They’re not politicians, they’re university administrators. My baba likes exaggerating because he says he’ll never understand what I’m studying.”

“Well, make sure you get your wisdom teeth pulled before you become a politician though,” he deadpanned, “because you’ll need to prepare for the future.”

On my way out the door, after we had established that my teeth were looking mighty grand, I stopped by the receptionist’s counter to make an appointment for an upcoming wisdom tooth extraction. Having taken care of that, I said to her, “Alright then, have a beautiful day, and I’ll see you in a couple weeks!”

She leaned over the counter towards me, widening her eyes and stifling a burst of laughter. “Did you hear about the two men in Los Angeles who were cleaning windows and the scaffolding broke?”

I stared. “Oh man, that’s terrible.”

“I mean, it’s not funny, but better them than me, right?”

At a loss for words, I continued staring at her unsuccessful attempt to suppress a smirk, then fled out the door before I did something like hit her over the head with…umm…my messenger bag? my flip-flops? the latest copy of TIME magazine? her thick appointment book?

The rest of that morning went somewhat like this:

– I bought a $5 pair of pants and $7 pair of boots from the Goodwill store down the street. (This is why the majority of my paycheck always goes towards food and not towards clothes.)
– I literally almost got my sorry self run over because I thought I was too cool to look both ways while crossing said 4-laned street. Clearly I’m getting cocky from spending way too much time in downtown Sacramento, where jay-walking is normal for me.
– I stopped by another store with the intention of buying hearing aid batteries and walked out with two pairs of flip-flops for $10.
– To celebrate my nice, shiny, newly-cleaned teeth, I ate doughnuts and candy all the way to Berkeley.

Anyway, that was then.

I was back at the dentist’s this morning to get my wisdom tooth pulled. The receptionist prepared me quite nicely for that by giving me a headache when she presented me with change in $2 bills for a $20 bill and then proceeded to confuse both herself and me while counting out said change. $2 bills? I had forgotten those even existed.

So the wisdom tooth extraction was not as much drama as I had been expecting. I walked out of the place half an hour after I walked in. My sister (here on out referred to as “Chauffeur Extraordinaire”) and I celebrated by going to the grocery store and spending tons of money on my prescriptions (for penicillin and ibuprofen. Where’s my vicodin, huh huh huh?), yoghurt smoothies, instant custard, peach-and-mango-flavored applesauce, ice cream, and fruit popsicles. I’m all set for the long haul. Hey, I’m an invalid; I’m entitled.

Then I came home and sprawled on the couch and watched Donnie Darko and Traffic, which were damn depressing. I think I need to watch The Goonies and The Princess Bride to cheer myself up instead.

I also:

– ate a heaping bowlful of custard
– munched on one fruit popsicle (cherry-flavored)
– applied an ice pack to my cheek/jaw 598905839587 times for fifteen minutes at a times
– tried the mango-peach applesauce, which was surprisingly yummy
– spit out and replaced the blood-soaked gauze pads and cottonballs in my mouth 493874902740274 times (you know you’re dying to hear all the gory details, just admit it)

Anyway, the damn bleeding still hasn’t stopped, so I’m stuck on soft, cold food for now and I had to sit at the dinner table and watch everyone eat meatballs and hot roti while I spooned applesauce into my mouth around the cottonballs, because did I mention it’s still bleeding? I mean, I know my favorite color is red and all. But still. Geez louise.

I’m getting (slightly) tired of being all bitter and using the word “damn” multiple times in this post though. So, My Stupid Gum From Which That Damn Wisdom Tooth Was Extracted, can you please hurry up and stop bleeding so I can start eating some real food already? Because I seriously think meatballs taste better than cotton balls, I’m sure you agree, and, besides, I’m on spring break now and I would like to make it revolve around food and not around how loudly my tummy will continue growling before I give up and grab another one of those applesauce containers, because that’s just no fun.

Thanks, much appreciated.

Knowing that life is life, not mood

Bibliothek, Conversations and Encounters, Rhymes and unrhymed lines

I’m not too easily embarrassed. But I don’t need the drama of trying to use a credit card when I know perfectly well that there is no money available there for me to use, and I’m not the type of person who’s so mortified that I will offer the cashier, my companion, and the other customers in the line behind me an explanation as to why my credit card was declined.

So when, on my way out a bookstore the other morning, I swiped my debit card to pay for a pile of books and found it declined, I didn’t turn red or shuffle my feet apologetically or stammer a possible explanation for that unexpected turn of events. But I did raise an eyebrow and say confusedly, “That’s so weird. I know my deposit cleared,” because a quick phone call just five minutes beforehand had confirmed that I did indeed have money available in my bank account.

I was in the bookstore because I can never pass up the chance to duck inside one. And because I love bookstores and their wide floor-plans, comfy armchairs, café tables, window seats, and, of course, the endless array of bookshelves to wander through, fingers trailing along the books’ spines as I hold my head to the side to read the titles.

I really wasn’t expecting to buy anything, until I came across Tamim Ansary’s West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story, a memoir that my father had loved and made the entire family read and had raved about to friends and strangers for weeks afterwards. Turning it over in my hands to skim the back cover, I smiled to myself, remembering an email I had written to a friend in July 2002, soon after reading the book myself:

There is a passage in the book, where the author is talking about Pashto, and I was remembering your IM to me the other day that your friend dictated in Pashto. (Pashto is a kickass language, for reals.) I thought you and your friend might find this amusing:

“Pashto was the language of the ruling clan and the official language of Afghanistan, and no one was allowed to make fun of it or insult it. My father infuriated the authorities by going the other way. He championed Pashto too much, loudly proclaiming it ‘the mother of all the languages.’ He drew up lexicons of words in Pashto and other languages that sounded similar, and drew forced etymological connections. The name Mexico, he claimed, derived from the Pashto phrase ‘Maka sikaway’. Pashtuns, he explained, had discovered Mexico but didn’t like it, and when they came home, they told their friends, ‘Maka sikaway’, which means, ‘What are you doing? Don’t do that.’”

Isn’t that hilarious? I think the Afghani Pashto is a little bit different from the one we speak at home, because we would say it as, Muku sukaway. Or actually, in the real order, it would be, “Sukaway? Muku!” But that whole thing about “Mexico” being derived from Pashto just totally made me laugh, though.

I switched Ansari’s book to one hand, knowing that I wanted my own copy. Continuing through the bookstore, I stopped eventually at a table where books were selling for a fraction of their usual prices. I found a 2003 collection of Alice Walker’s poetry, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, and flipped through the pages for a few minutes:

Loss of vitality
Is a sign
That
Things have gone
Wrong.

It is like
Sitting on
A sunny pier
Wondering whether
To swing
Your feet.

A time of dullness
Deadness
Sodden enthusiasm
When
This exists
At all.
Decay.

The sticker on the back said it cost $5. I held onto both books and continued down the table, breathless with surprise and delight when I came across Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Fifth Book of Peace. Four hundred pages, hard-covered, for $5 again. Months ago, I had stood in a different bookstore as rays of late afternoon sunshine drifted across the carpet, having just picked out a card for HijabMan, and reading the first twenty pages of Kingston’s desperate rush into the Oakland-Berkeley hills in a failed attempt to save her home and her material possessions. Everything she owed, including the manuscript of her novel-in-progress, was lost as the hills were ravaged by fire in October 1991 just as she was driving home from her father’s funeral. I remember driving up through those winding roads with my own father soon afterward, on one of our endless trips to the Children’s Hospital Oakland, as he gravely explained to me about the fire, while I, ten years old and terrified of losing my home, gazed out the car window at the blackened hills I loved even then.

I had been sorely tempted to buy Kington’s book that first day I came across it, but I had had only enough money for one book, and that had to be The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, as edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, for which I had been searching for days and had finally found on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, somewhere in my bookstore journey between the revolving card-stand at the window and Kingston’s book on the table in the back. So Rilke it was, an identical copy of the book I love, true to the original German and beautifully rendered into English with both languages displayed on facing pages, clean and smooth compared to my own mercilessly dog-eared copy, the perfect gift for a new friend who possesses amazing wisdom and clarity of vision and who was about to leave on an inspiring journey. And I don’t even give books as gifts. But that’s how perfectly fitting Rilke’s book was.

So that was all a few months ago. On this day, then, I had three new books picked out, which is usually enough to make me giddy, because that’s just how much a nerd I am. To celebrate yet further, I scooped up a few Lindor truffles from the little bowl at the end of the register counter while waiting in line behind a lady with two young children.

When it was my turn to pay, I piled the books onto the counter and laid my truffles next to them. I chatted with the girl at the register as she rang up and bagged my purchases, she asking about my headwrap and I smiling a lot because it turned out she was Pakistani and her name was the same as that of one of my aunts. And then, as mentioned before, my debit card was declined, much to my confusion. “That’s so weird though.” I swiped it again, and again the same. The girl looked apologetic. I shrugged unconcernedly. “Can I put these on hold and come back for them in the afternoon?”

“Sure,” she said. She grabbed a pad and pen to take down my name.

From behind me, I heard a voice say, “I could pay for those.”

I turned in surprise. The man behind me in line was perhaps in his thirties, and so completely nondescript that I cannot now remember anything about his appearance, except how very grim and solemn he looked.

“I can pay,” he offered again.

“Oh no,” I said. “I couldn’t let you do that.”

“I’m paying for my stuff anyway,” he pointed out. “I can just add yours to it.”

“No, really,” I protested, “Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged, still unsmiling, and I looked at him and the counter girl helplessly, torn between laughter and awkwardness and pure amazement at his generosity.

The girl stepped back from the counter, throwing up her hands in surrender. “I’ll let you two fight this out,” she said in amusement.

“Look, it’s okay, it’s not like it’s a hardship for me,” he said, holding up his hand, “I have a gift card, see?”

Oh yeah, I thought, I have one of those, too, suddenly remembering that the university’s Women’s Resources & Research Center had given me one the other day as a thank-you for designing and facilitating the women of color discussion circles this quarter. Flattered and touched at the gesture, I had slipped the gift card somewhere in my messenger bag and then promptly forgotten all about it.

I smiled and said out loud, “I really appreciate the offer, but don’t worry about it, I’ll be back later for all this.”

He stared at me for a second, and I was disconcerted by the juxtaposition of his gruff demeanor and generous offer.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” I said firmly. “But thanks so much for the offer. I do appreciate it.”

He shrugged expressionlessly, holding his hands palms-up in what could be construed as a gesture of defeat. Or an unsaid, Your loss.

“Have a beautiful day!” I said, moving away from the counter.

He nodded brusquely and turned away to place his books next to the register.

For a split second, on my way out the door, still moved by this unexpected kindness from a veritable stranger, I looked back to see him standing at the counter, face blank and eyes shuttered, and wished I had let him pay after all, if it meant he would have smiled.

the eye of the storm meets the eye of the mind, se…

Conversations and Encounters, Salaam Namaste

the eye of the storm meets the eye of the mind, sending it spinning

At the gas station late this afternoon, I swiped my debit card at the gas pump and shoved the nozzle into my car to fill up the tank. I was in the process of unlocking the doors to wait inside my car, out of the rain, while the gas finished pumping, when I heard a tentative voice behind me say, “Ma’am?”

I turned, already amused. Recent conversations with my co-workers have enlightened me to the fact that I get mistaken for seventeen more often than not, and no one calls me “Ma’am,” except sometimes the boy around my own age who bags my groceries at the local Safeway, something that never fails to make me laugh. Perhaps its the hijab, or the fact that too much of my wardrobe consists of black.

I looked expectantly at the boys in the small, shabby car parked on the other side of my gas pump, stepping across the divider as they leaned out their windows towards me. They couldn’t have been much older than me. “We were wondering if you could help us out with gas,” they said. “We’ve been waiting here for a long time.”

I had just driven over from the post office, where I had made out a money order for $165 and mailed it out. Yes, it had put a big, fat dent in my paycheck, but the very fact I could afford to do so spoke volumes about the difference between me and these boys.

“Our car got stolen on Christmas, and we just got it back.” They pointed out the cracks in the windshield, now covered with pieces of tape, tracing the lines with their fingers. I nodded, reminded of the Ray Bradbury short story I had lain in bed reading until late last night, entitled “The Beggar on O’Connell Bridge,” which everyone should read, by the way.

“Hang on a sec,” I said, and stepped back to my own car, where I flipped through my wallet for cash. Returning to their car, I handed the bills through the window. “Is that going to be enough? Are you traveling to somewhere?”

“Chico,” said one of them. “We’re supposed to meet family there.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, wincing slightly. I remember Chico from when I was little: Butte County, cliffs, red rocks and bluffs. Just past a small town called Paradise.

They peered at me anxiously. “Is that far?”

“It’s up north,” I replied. “I’m not sure exactly how far, but it’s a few hours away, I think.”

They glanced at each other, and their faces fell.

“Okay,” they said. “Thank you.”

“Drive carefully,” I said. “Be safe.” The mantra my friends have unanimously adopted from one another, words they always say to me when they know I’m about to hit the road.

My pump clicked, releasing the automatic catch on the nozzle, the gas tank now full. It was my cue to go. I didn’t notice until I had almost turned back to my own pump that there was a young woman also in the car with them, wrapped in blankets in the backseat, staring expressionlessly out the window.

I ended up spending $31.57 on just over fifteen gallons of gas for my car. The guys in the next car smiled and raised their hands in thanks as I drove away from the pump.

I furiously calculated it in my head while driving away: My car does about 25 miles/gallon so, if I used that as a standard and gas was selling at $2.01/gallon today, I had given them enough for several gallons, but was it enough to get them to where they needed to go? Halfway to the grocery store (yes, again), I realized Chico was about 150 miles north, and they would have needed at least half a tank to get there. I cursed myself for not having given them more. In my rush to be helpful, to give them something, anything, I hadn’t given them nearly enough.

For godssake, I’ve been driving around town with my gas needle pointing to “Empty” for an entire week, the orange light flashing in warning every few minutes. It’s been my own personal form of amusement, since I’ve been on break from school for a week now, to see how long I could go without filling my car up with gas. With all the gas I saved on my own car during the week, I could have just used my debit card to fill up their tank instead.

I wandered through the produce section of my local grocery store, bantering with the young clerk who asked me, by name, how I was doing that day. “I love how everyone knows my name around here!” I laughed, and he joked, “Yes, well, you’ve made VIP status, you know.” They know me because they know my brother, who works there as well, but his comment was a startling, sobering reminder of the Zaytuna dinner I attended in the South Bay last week, where one of the speakers asked us to re-think the weight of material possessions and social hierarchies in our daily lives. Do we work only so that one day we, too, can achieve VIP status? So that we, too, can buy luxury cars and large houses and be photographed in the company of rich and powerful people?

Who do we want to be, and who are the people we are standing next to? And are we standing next to the right people?

There was a feeling of déjà vu as I walked out of the grocery store with my $35 worth of purchases, sighing inwardly at the nonstop torrents of rain. Only as I was placing the bags of groceries in the trunk of my car did I remember the Salvation Army man from this time last year.

“We’ve been waiting here for a long time.”

I wondered how long exactly they had been waiting, the desperately polite boys and the silent girl with the blanket in their dilapidated car in a gas station where I had been parked in front of a Mercedes SUV and right across from a freakin’ Jaguar. Down the street from the post office where I had had to outmaneuver Porsches and Hummers in a cutthroat search for a parking spot. A few blocks down again from the bustling downtown area that boasts a Tiffany&Co. jewelry store. For godssake, there’s a freakin’ Tiffany store in my hometown now (the height of ostentation, if you ask me), and yet, if you make the effort to look, you can still find homeless people that talk to themselves on the street corners here, and boys that beg for gas money because the gas-guzzling SUV and sports car owners are too preoccupied with their own VIP status and shiny automobiles.

But only if you make the effort to look.

Would it have hurt the people in this city to have looked? They could well afford to.

But what am I doing, how much am I doing, am I myself doing enough?

I drove slowly through the curving, winding roads to my home on the hill, in a quiet, beautiful neighborhood where it is not uncommon to find houses selling for anywhere from $700,000 to $1 million. I often fail to notice the affluence in the neighborhood itself because I spent the naive years of my childhood here, in our comparatively modest house, and then returned to the same neighborhood after several years away. Six years later, my eyes are still clouded by my childhood memories here. It’s difficult for me to understand how these simple ranch houses, built in the 1950s, are worth so much now, and even harder yet to acknowledge that I’ve learned to accept the wealth in this city, even if I do roll my eyes at it continually.

I may be annoyed at the people of my hometown right now, but I’ve always tried to be harsher with myself, because at least I know the context and blessings of my own life, even if I can only speculate at other peoples’. This evening, my father bought me an absolutely gorgeous desk for my room because he feels I spend too many late nights studying on campus and driving home exhausted. I came home again and ate a hot dinner with my family, people I am blessed to have in my life even though they drive me insane. Tomorrow I go back to work in downtown Sacramento, earning a relatively competitive paycheck for a college student, filling up my gas tank whenever I need.

I thought of yesterday, stopping for dinner in the wine country of Napa Valley, in Calistoga, CA, to be exact – home to mineral water, spas, mud baths, and, yes, lots of rich people – on the last leg of our roadtrip while heading back home to the Bay. I absently munched on french fries, absorbed in the flashing headlines on the television across the room as the grim-faced news anchors discussed the heartbreaking casualties as a result of the earthquake and tsunami in South and Southeast Asia. Someone working there saw the dismayed expressions on our faces and turned up the volume on the TV so that we could better hear the news. I translated for my mother (“Thousands of people died, Ummy. In Indonesia and Sri Lanka and India and Thailand and even Somalia and…”), giving her specific numbers as they flashed across the screen. “Ten thousand people, Ummy!”

The death toll is at over fifty thousand now.

I watched the faces of the people on the television screen. They looked dazed and broken, shell-shocked and shattered. What do you do when your world literally falls down in ruins around you?

And what am I doing, how much am I doing, am I myself doing enough?

Borders, boundaries, blockades

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Conversations and Encounters, Rockstar and Crescent, Salaam Namaste

and it’s the way that we will forgive ourselves
and it’s the way that we will for no one else
– Josh Kelly, Amen

I call my friend Z one morning to tell her that I am skipping all my classes and instead studying at the cafe of her favorite Borders bookstore here in the East Bay, and that she is more than welcome to join me any time during the day. She shows up half an hour later with some apples and carrot sticks for us to munch on – I peer ambivalently at her choice of food, having already started on a candy bar – and greetings of, “Heyy, beautiful lady!”

“Okay, stop,” I mutter, and hug her tightly. Z graduated from our university in June, and I’ve barely seen her since. When I last saw her at the end of Ramadan, she urged me to call her up to hang out sometime. “I’m in the Bay all the time now!” she said excitedly. “Alright, will do,” I replied, but, later, thinking about the conversation, I realized, Wait, but I’m never there. Even though I live in the Bay, yes I know. But I’ve known Z since our second year of college, and there are very few people I make an active effort to stay in touch with. Z is one of those rare friends, and I had immediately thought of her when I planned my stakeout at Borders the evening before.

She has her laptop, envelopes and manila folders, and paperwork related to her ongoing graduate school admissions process. I’ve got my pile of books, lecture notes, and the only CD I ever listen to whenever I’m studying, Norah Jones’ Come Away With Me, because that’s really the only non-distracting, background-sort-of-music I own.

An hour or so into our study session, as we shift around in our chairs and start becoming distracted by book posters and the cafe menu, Z looks across the table at me and says with practiced casualness, “So Yasmine, I have a question for you. We never have this conversation, you know, so I figured I should ask today.” I squint suspiciously. “What conversation?”

She smiles knowingly, and I suddenly occupy myself with flipping through the pages of my book in exaggerated concentration. “Okay. So I have reading to do. Thomas More and the Utopians and their attitude towards boundless human happiness. And religion. Dude, this book is hella cool. I wonder if More was an undercover Muslim, you think?”

She is undeterred by my attempts at intellectual distraction. “Fine, here, I’ll write it down for you,” she says, smirking while I shake my head and go back to my notes. She hastily scribbles down a few lines and shoves the slip of paper across the table. I glance at it and roll my eyes. “God, why are you so predictable? Why do we need to talk about boys? Do you know how gorgeously simple and drama-free my life is just because I can’t be bothered to have conversations like this?”

“Come on,” she presses. “Let’s talk. Not like any of them are worthy of you anyway, but what are you looking for in a guy?”

“Um,” I say. “The guy version of me?” We both burst out laughing, and I explain, “No, wait, I have to tell you this story—” So I tell her about the morning Somayya and I were driving somewhere, having a conversation slightly similar to this one, and Somayya looked across at me and said, “You know what, Yazzo, I’ve decided what I need is a boy version of you.” “Me, too!” I exclaimed, but she corrected me: “No, what you need is a boy version of me,” whereupon we giggled hysterically the rest of the way to our destination.

Z laughs at our collective epiphany, but I can tell I won’t get away with any more delaying tactics. I sigh. “Okay. Someone who’s Muslim, obviously, because that’s very important to me. And I guess, basically, someone who’s a student of knowledge.” I laugh at the expression on her face, knowing instinctively that she’s thinking of mullahs and madrassahs. “No, nothing hardcore, don’t worry. I mean… Okay, it’s kinda like this: Someone who’s constantly trying to figure out who he is and how to improve himself and what the hell he’s supposed to be doing with his life, and how God fits into all that. That’s all part of the process of seeking knowledge too, right there. Just a certain, active way of looking at the world. Oh, and of course he has to be insanely weird and crackheaded like me, otherwise it’s never gonna work out. Does that all kinda make sense?”

“Of course it does. See, that wasn’t very painful, was it?” She pauses for a moment, ignoring me as I belligerently retort, “Yes, it was!”

“It’s funny,” she says. “You’re looking for someone who very much identifies as Muslim, and I’m looking for someone who’s not practicing at all. Maybe not even Muslim at all.”

“Why’s that?” I ask, somewhat stunned.

We sit there at Borders while she tells me her stories, much of which I knew already, but not the painful depth of it. Her hands are cold, so very cold, so I cover them with my own, and we sit there across from one another with our hands bent together and piled in the middle of the table. Her voice is casual and straightforward – deliberately so, I know – but her eyes are overly bright with pain and unshed tears.

She tells me what it has been like for her, growing up as the only child of a Bengali Christian mother and a Pakistani Muslim father. A mother who swallowed her own pain and taught her daughter the steps of making ablution, explained the intricacies of Muslim prayer, guided her through fasting during Ramadan, and drove her to and from Arabic lessons so Z could read the Quran on her own. And a father who, when Z asked, “Don’t we as Muslims have a responsibility and obligation to learn about other religious traditions so we can better understand and explain our own?” sternly, expressly forbade her to do so, yet neither practiced himself nor made any basic effort to teach her about Islam either.

Knowing that her culture is important to her, I ask whether she feels more of a connection to South Asian Christians rather than to South Asian Muslims. She shrugs slightly. “Maybe a little bit, but it’s always the same thing: the Christians don’t understand the Muslim side of me, and the Muslims don’t understand the Christian influence in my life.”

“Look at it this way,” she says. “Look at yourself, for example. You come across as very confident. You walk into a room knowing exactly who you are. You’re Yasmine, and you’re Muslim and Pakistani and American. I, on the other hand, can’t say any of that so easily. All I know is, I’m Z, and…and that’s all.”

“You know my car, right?” she asks. I nod. “That car used to be my mother’s, and she gave it to me when I started college. She had a bumper sticker on the back that said, in big letters, FEAR GOD, and a short, relevant verse from the Bible underneath. That’s all, nothing more.” She tells me about the time she rounded the corner into a university parking lot one day, only to find a group of Muslim male acquaintances gathered around her car, examining the bumper sticker and asking one another, “Hey, whose car is that?” “Wait, that belongs to Z, right?” “Oh yeah, her mom’s a kaffir, isn’t she?”

I flinch.

Z, to give her inner strength due credit, choked back her hurt, smiled coldly at the students and made the requisite small talk while pretending she hadn’t heard any of the previous comments. “But, Yasmine,” she says now, her hands still cold under mine, “I wanted to fit in so badly that as soon as they turned and left, I ripped off that bumper sticker and I broke my mother’s heart that day.”

There were raised eyebrows and whispers within their Muslim community when Z’s mother recently gathered up her faith and courage and once more began attending church regularly, after so many years of not doing so. At social gatherings, the Muslim women politely ask one another, “Where is Z’s mother?” and the answers will range from “Oh, she had a prior commitment,” to “Oh, she wasn’t feeling very well today,” but what no one will admit is that she was not invited in the first place.

And then, as Z reminds me, there was the Muslim graduation picnic held this past June, co-sponsored by the Muslim Students Association from the university and the Muslim community members within the city itself. It was an event well attended not only by Muslims, but also by many non-Muslim university officials and administrators, community leaders including those involved in city council and interfaith activities, and community members including passersby who randomly decided to stop by on the spur of the moment. I was humbled and honored to see such amazing, supportive presence from the non-Muslim community, especially when several of them stood up to warmly proclaim that they were there to show solidarity with us Muslims.

I thought everything was going well, until a former MSA president reached the part in his speech where he began firmly cautioning the Muslim students present against “emulating the kuffar.”

I learned later that evening that Z left the picnic soon afterward, in tears, hurt beyond words to hear such harsh condemnation of the so-called “kuffar,” a category which obviously includes her own mother, the woman who, while admittedly non-Muslim, had raised Z to be far more aware of Islam and its religious traditions than her Muslim father ever had. Sick and disheartened, Somayya and I repeatedly asked each other, “What the hell was he thinking?” for days afterward as well. It was painful and disappointing to hear such rhetoric from someone I had held in such high esteem as an exemplary brother in Islam, and I lost a massive amount of respect that day for, ironically, someone whose work on interfaith councils I had always very much admired.

“It comes back to the conversation we started with,” Z says. “I refuse to marry anyone who disrespects my mother simply because she’s not Muslim. Who’s to say that non-Muslim men aren’t more tolerant and open-hearted than any of the narrow-minded Muslim men I’ve met so far? Why wouldn’t I want to emulate my mother? How would you feel, Yasmine, if you were married to a non-Muslim man and you had to teach your children about his religion at the expense of your own?”

“I think it would break my heart everyday,” I say in a small voice.

Sitting as we are with our piled hands and miserable faces in the middle of the Borders cafe, we probably incite some curious glances from fellow cafe patrons, but I don’t know, because all I can see is through the tears in my eyes is the sadness on her face. “I can’t even begin to imagine,” I say, “what a huge heart your mother must have.”

And there is more, but I think this is already more than enough. I hesitate to post even this, mainly because Z doesn’t know about my weblog, and her stories are not mine to tell and share. And also because I feel I may just be preaching to the choir, so to speak, because as bloggers most of us are already in the habit of choosing our words carefully, painstakingly.

But I write this because I hate the word “kaffir,” and I hate how it comes so easily to some Muslims even as it makes me flinch, and I hate that we contemptuously turn away the very same people we accuse of not understanding us, without giving them a fair chance to know who we are, without granting them credit for making the beautiful effort of shared human spirit and outreach that we ourselves as Muslims rarely make a point of with other communities. Who the hell are we to be critical then, when we accuse others of stereotyping us and disliking us and being ignorant of who we are, of the vastness of our humanity and traditions, and of what Islam in its pure beauty truly stands for? And I guess what I’m really just trying to figure out is –

When did we ourselves become so damn self-righteous and judgmental?