‘Cause if you’re not trying to make something better/then as far as I can tell you are just in the way

Links to love, Salaam Namaste

Hey, kids, how goes it? I’m still around, just trying to find things to do with myself besides chase the sunshine around the house. Somedays, it’s just so much easier to uploads photos to Flickr and deal with brusque titles/captions (or none at all) than it is to compose coherent pieces of writing for this joint. But I’m getting to it, don’t worry.

Meanwhile, for your personal amusement, I’ve found an index of mp3s of old TV theme songs [via Kottke]. I haven’t listened to them yet – I’ve just been scrolling through and giggling at the list – but Knight Rider and He-Man are on there, so what more can I say? Let me know how it goes.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I’ve got two important things I need you to pay attention to (and I know you will, because you are rockstars):

ONE.
Wednesday, October 26, 2005 is Blog Quake Day [via Baraka at Truth & Beauty]. DesiPundit explains:

We request each of you to make a small post about the earthquake, and direct your readers to a suitable avenue for donating to the relief efforts.

Every single dollar contributed, multiplied by the vast numbers of bloggers, will go a long way in helping these people rebuild their lives. Our experience of the last few weeks showed us that, no matter how small our blogs, and no matter how few our readers, the words we write and the way we use our blogs can have far-reaching consequences. We learnt not to underestimate our powers. Let’s now use our powers for good.

A small list of relief organizations is available in DesiPundit’s post. You can also directly help relief efforts by buying hella slick tshirts through Chapati Mystery.

Please, please contribute, whether through weblog posts or direct donations or whatever you can do. It would be gorgeously rockstarish of you.

TWO.
A business associate of my father’s sent me the following email a couple days ago:

Your father gave me your email address. I spoke with him earlier today about an idea that my women friends & I have been kicking around. We’ve been noticing and discussing how pervasive fear and hatred (especially of other ethnic groups) have become in our society again in the last few years, and how many of the politicians have fed this fear to promote their own agendas. We’d like to do something at least on a local level in our community to stem this tide & help people of all ethnicities to relate to each other as people. Our thought is to start with a group of women in Sacramento. We’d like to invite women from most of the major ethnic groups represented in this area to start a multi-ethnic women’s group. Would you be interested in helping us form such a group?

I know you graduated recently (congratulations, by the way!) and are not up here on a regular basis, but if you’re in the area for other things we can arrange a time to get together that fits your schedule.

I am humbled by the ladies’ compassion and decision to engage in some form of active change, and am honored to have been asked to help in any way I can. I replied back with some thoughts, but I’m feeling a distinctive lack of ideas at the moment, mainly because I haven’t really sat down and brainstormed yet. I’ve had plenty of experience with women of color discussion circles and intercultural dialogue and alliance in college, but it’s been a few months and I’m worried I may have lost so much of what I learned through such experiences over the past few years.

So I need your help in brainstorming concrete thoughts and ideas regarding mission statement/goals/problem areas or issues that you feel a group such as this must focus on addressing. Anything and everything regarding intercommunity/intercultural relations and dialogue and safe spaces and women and diversity and all that fun stuff. I’m looking at all of you: Guys and girls, Muslims and non-Muslims, and whether or not you identify as “ethnic.” Apparently my comment box is seriously on crack, so drop me an email whenever you have any ideas. Help a kid out. I promise I’ll write back.

p.s. Once more, don’t forget: Blog Quake Day! on the 26th!

EDIT: Looks like my comments work again. I think. Otherwise, try the email. Thanks much.

The foundations are canyoning

Loss and laments and letting go, Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Salaam Namaste

Nightly, I dream of rain and hail and snow-covered mountains, when in reality my local mountains are gorgeously goldenbrown and I daily chase patches of sunshine all over the house so I can gleefully warm up my fuzzy-socked feet.

The past few days, I’ve been reading countless news articles about rescue workers tentatively forging into mountainous areas, into villages that have been cut off from any sort of relief for days following the earthquake, hoping to ease the suffering of those who have survived but being confronted only with devastating destruction and the sickly sweet stench of rotting corpses. I’ve read about villages that are eerily empty of children, about feeble elderly people who – in a cruel twist of fate – outlived the earthquake even as their children and grandchildren perished, about angry survivors who feel betrayed by the lack of aid in their areas. Survivors who’ve been sleeping outdoors for days, who can already see the snow on their mountains as winter begins to set in. I obsessively hit refresh on news websites throughout the day, checking for updates about the aftermath of the earthquake. I’ve watched dozens of sobering video clips. The photographs just get worse.

Every afternoon, my mother asks me, “Is there any news?” and I know instinctively what she is referring to, because, let’s face it, most of the time we don’t really care about the news unless it affects us directly, unless it is about people from our motherland, unless the reporters interview and the photographs depict people who look like us. Yesterday, I went to the grocery store, and, just before I walked in, I made a sudden beeline for the shopping carts by the newstands, even though I needed only a few items and a basket procured from inside would have been enough. What I really wanted to see was if there were any above-the-fold articles about the South Asian earthquake at the newstands. Of course there were, enough headlines to get me sufficiently teary-eyed before I continued indoors to finish shopping for groceries and supplies I’ve never had to beg for.

While Pakistan childishly bickers over whether or not India has really been crossing over the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir to provide relief and aid (God forbid that the two nations should even think of helping one another), there are still remote mountainous areas that are cut off from aid, forgotten villages whose remaining inhabitants have been left to fend for themselves, and survivors who “take their quota of relief rice to a wet rocky patch wondering where to cook it” because they have no fire or utensils at their disposal.

I am reminded of part of a piece I wrote in January, in response to the Asian tsunami:

.
.
.
Like you, I watched the aftermath of
That tsunami thing on television.
Like you, I watched the faces of the people
Left behind,
Dazed and broken,
Shell-shocked and shattered.
What do you do when your world
Literally falls down in ruins
Around you?

What you do is this:
You scrabble in the cold, hard ground
And lift out chunks of dirt
To dig graves with your hands
To bury your children.
You pray that the vast world beyond your boundaries
Will be watchful and compassionate enough
To ensure that you receive
Clean water and medicine.
And food, too, yes, food.
But you can’t help but weep
In irony, in frustration,
When they send you endless bags of rice
And you have no clean water with which
To wash and boil the rice in.

And what you do is this:
You close the gaping eyes of your loved ones
And cover their faces with shrouds
And step back to watch as they
Fill the mass graves of victims of
That tsunami thing.
And you whisper fervent prayers over the bodies
Because you so desperately want to believe
That there was a reason for all this,
That God was not absent
From the world the day
The waters rose up in walls,
Only to leave behind the horror and stench of decaying bodies
And vestiges of colorful rags
And empty, flattened villages
In the wake of that tsunami thing.
.
.
.

It’s all heartbreaking, but, really, the earthquake survivors don’t need my tears. Lord knows they must have more than enough of their own. What they do need is food and shelter and medical supplies, and money to ensure that they get all those things. News sources talk about compassion fatigue and donor fatigue. I hope this is not true of all you people reading this, because we don’t have jack to be fatigued about. So scroll down and check the links below. As Hemlock said, “For those of us who can turn to our beds and sleep in comfort, I want to know how we can look ourselves in the eye.”

Again, RESOURCES & things to read:

Quake survivors answer BBC readers’ questions

Hemlock has posted a list of supplies that the NGOs are specifically asking for.

Baji has the following post for October 12, 2005 [The donations through APPNA are indeed tax deductible]:

The Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America, APPNA, has set up an emergency disaster relief fund for the victims of the earthquake. You can call in your donation by credit card or send in your checks to their office. If you want to fax, you can use this donation form. APPNA is 501 C3 organizations. All donations may be tax deductible as permitted by law.

A P P N A
6414 S. Cass Avenue
Westmont, IL 60559
Phone: 630-968-8585 or 630-968-8606
Fax: 630-968-8677
Email: appna@appna.org

Danial, a reader of this weblog, emailed me with the following info [Thank you]:

“I just wanted to bring to your attention the need for tents in the earthquake hit areas. We are not able to purchase tents here in Lahore anymore and there is still a dire need for them. So please get people to ship tents over to Pakistan. Apparently, PIA is willing to ship donated goods over to Pakistan free of cost.”

The document Danial attached explains that “3-5 million people have been left homeless and at least 200,000 tents are required, there ARE NO MORE TENTS IN PAKISTAN, ALL THAT WERE AVAILABLE HAVE BEEN SHIPPED TO NORTH. Please send as many tents (preferably waterproof, winterized) as you can. People abroad don’t even know that Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has decided to carry all donations from any of its stations wordwide for free.”

I know you like the word “free.” Find your nearest PIA station on the list of PIA’s worldwide Stations by Countries, and here is the list of PIA’s booking offices around the world, alphabetized by cities (see N for New York, C for Chicago, F for Frankfurt, D for Dusseldorf etc.). For more info, please contact Waqas Usman: waqasusman AT gmail DOT com, (Mobile) 92-321-4060186.

avari/nameh has also posted several links for relief and aid.

And, again, Chai is collecting donations for blankets and tents. Every little bit counts, especially considering that one American dollar is worth so many Pakistani rupees.

Blogistan’s very own lovely GrouchyOwl is in Pakistan, covering the aftermath of the earthquake for her newspaper. Wishing her much strength, steadiness, and safety.

[I know I’ve been going massively link-crazy lately, but this is the only way I can remind myself, and make it personal for myself. Add thoughts and ideas and links to the comment box if I’m missing anything. Thanks much.]

When the earth is shaken to her (utmost) convulsion/and the earth throws up her burdens (from within)

Loss and laments and letting go, Salaam Namaste

My eyes, and my heart, ache from three days of reading about the earthquake in South Asia. For most of Saturday, I sat at my father’s computer, alternately updating Excel/QuickBooks spreadsheets, downloading mp3s of Quran chapters for my father (I prefer Sa’ad al-Ghamidi; he wanted Abdul Rahman al-Sudais), and compulsively hitting “refresh” on news websites for the latest coverage of the earthquake. With a sobering magnitude of 7.6, the earthquake’s estimated death toll has climbed from a few hundred to over 30,000 in the course of three days. The ever-increasing numbers, and especially the stories of people digging through rubble with their bare hands, bring back the heartbreak of the Asian tsunami last December.

Early Saturday morning, when we woke up for the pre-sunrise breakfast to prepare for our fast, my father mentioned in passing, “There’s been an earthquake in Kashmir. A whole village was wiped out.”
At noon, Somayya’s father called, inquiring, “Have you called Rawalpindi?”
“Yes, last week,” I said.
“You haven’t called today? There’s been an earthquake near Islamabad.”
“What? I thought it was in Kashmir.”

Every news website we skimmed mentioned Kashmir and Islamabad. We panicked, thinking of my mother’s family in Rawalpindi, not too far from Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. I hunted for every map I could find; most did not list smaller towns and villages.

“Ummy, you need to call ‘Pindi.”
“It’s one a.m. there right now. They’ll be sleeping” she said uncertainly.
I almost snapped back, “Maybe you should be worried about whether or not they’re still alive,” before considering that that was the last thing she needed to hear at a time like this. But my father was home a few minutes later, and his urging did the trick. They managed to get through to Rawalpindi, and alhamdulillah, everyone is fine, although the aftershocks continued even while my relatives were on the phone with my parents. Some, I read later, were up to 6.3 in intensity.

I read temors reached as far as Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India, my friend D’s hometown. I called her. “D, I was just reading about the earthquake. Is your family in India safe?”
There was a long pause. “I thought that was in Pakistan.”
“Well, mainly Kashmir. But I read they felt it in Ahmedabad, too.”
“Hold on, let me check with my mother.”
She called me back a minute later, with news that everyone was okay.

Mansehra is near Abbottabad, which is near Attock and Hazro, which are part of the same district as my own village in Pakistan. In 1995, we stopped for ice cream in Abbottabad, and I was wide-eyed at the wide orderly town, having been a village girl for a year by then. Mansehra is not far; it’s painful to read stories of the hundreds of children who died there (as well as the 400 schoolchildren in Balakot) when their school buildings collapsed on top of them. They’re already being referred to as the “lost generation.” Every place is connected somehow to yet another place; the world feels smaller every day, everything hits a bit closer to home every time I turn on the radio or surf news websites. This was never more apparent to us than now.

Disaster coverage tends to focus on urban areas, and I felt selfish for resenting it on Saturday when all we heard was “Islamabad and the upscale residential Margalla Towers” nonstop and kept asking our friends and family, “But what about the village? Hazro? Attock?” But it’s natural to think of our own homes at a time like this, and necessary to remember that those who were poor and lacking before the earthquake are even more so now. If the earthquake had shattered District Attock, we would have been devastated. It is unsettling to read Chai’s notes about lack of proper rescue efforts in Islamabad, and I think of how much more complicated such attempts must be in rural areas, in villages similar to my own, where streets and alleyways were so narrow that even taxis had difficulty maneuvering through, much less emergency vehicles and equipment. The logistical problems of getting food and medical supplies to villages in the mountains must be especially difficult. And winter is already setting in, in some areas.

Our television is limited to about two (static-prone) local channels, so most of the news we’ve been receiving has been through family and online news sources. This has been especially difficult for my mother, who wishes we had cable channels so she could see and understand the effects of the earthquake with her own eyes. Photographs, though distressing, have been more helpful in conveying the impact.

Living in California, and especially in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’ve gotten used to the idea of earthquakes. After all, we’re sitting right on top of the fault lines. Friends in other areas shake their heads at the thought of us living right smack in the earthquake zones, but we laugh back and continue on. In the aftermath of this recent South Asian earthquake, local news stations have been emphasizing that the Bay Area has a 62% chance of experiencing a catastrophic quake like the 1989 Loma Prieta temblor. I still remember the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 1989, which memorably collapsed the upper level of portions of the Bay Bridge and the 880 freeway, crushing cars on the lower levels. My father was working in San Francisco at the time, in one of those tall clusters of skyscrapers you see as you cross the Bay Bridge into the City, even though I could never figure out which one was his. When the earthquake hit, his building shook madly from side to side. Somehow he made it down several flights of stairs and twenty miles south to his friend Mr. R’s home in Belmont, where he stayed overnight. We at home in the East Bay, having felt minor tremors ourselves, watched television footage of flames and smashed concrete for hours, waiting to hear he was safe.

The Gujarat earthquake of 2001 hit close, too. I remember we had just walked out of chemistry lecture and were standing on the lawn outside, Somayya and D and our friend A and I, when someone absently questioned D about whether her family was safe in the aftermath of the Gujarat earthquake that had occurred a day or two before. She paled. “What earthquake?”
We mumbled something about 20,000 people dead. A thrust his cell phone at her. “Here, use this.”
D was dazed with worry, yet protested, “It’s long distance.”
He almost shouted at her: “I don’t care if you call India. Take the damn phone and call your parents.”

And then there was the minor earthquake back when I was living in Pakistan. Drowsy with my afternoon nap, I thought my mother was sitting at the edge of my bed, shaking it with her laughter. I’ve always liked telling this story. But what was only minor tremors at my end must have been more forceful somewhere else.

The stories of grief and loss coming out of the earthquake are heartbreaking. As Hemlock commented the other day on Monologist’s weblog, “Everyone is somebody’s someone.”

To those from Kashmir, Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan – I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well inshaAllah. Much strength and peace and ease. And relief, especially relief.

RESOURCES

Knicq has an extremely well-written and thought provoking post, as does avari/nameh. Go read.

BBC reporters’ logs are here.

South Asia Quake Help contains “news and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts” [via Sister-Scorpion].

Karrvakarela also has a list of several organizations we can donate to for relief work.

Chai’s family is collecting donations for blankets and tents (about Rs. 270/$5 and Rs. 7000/$120, respectively) for those who have lost their homes. Please contact her for more information.

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness

Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Rockstar and Crescent

In characteristic Yasmine-is-a-Lazy-Bum fashion, I’m a few days late in posting this update. Here’s wishing you much ease and discipline in your fasting, whether it’s for Ramadan, Navratri, or the ten days from Rosh Hashana until Yom Kippur for the Jewish New Year. Abhi has a lovely post over at Sepia Mutiny entitled My first Ramadan, and Monologist’s post, My Navaratri, reflects many of my own goals and longings for this Ramadan.

The first night of Taraweeh – the nightly congregational prayers offered during Ramadan – the imam announced that the masjid would be holding a food drive during this upcoming month and everyone should donate as much canned food as possible so the masjid could pass it along to the local food bank. He added that when he contacted the head of the food bank, the man there said in relief, “Thank you, I don’t know what we would have done otherwise; our shelves are almost empty.” The imam paused while the congregation mulled this over, then pointed out, “Most of us, on the other hand, don’t even know anything about that sort of hunger. We may be fasting during Ramadan, but we still spend twelve hours everyday thinking about what types of food we will prepare for iftar [the breaking of the fast at sunset].” We all laughed self-consciously, because we knew how correct he was.

Sure, we who have bewildering arrays of food to choose from at sunset are privileged; but maybe, in the long run, we’re also the ones that God rolls His eyes and shakes His head at. You know? All I know is, in our relative wealth, we often forget to be thankful for what we have, and to show active compassion towards those who lack the same.

Here’s Rumi on food, fasting, and faith:

BREAD – Rumi

A sheikh and a disciple are walking quickly toward a town
where it’s known there is very little to eat. The disciple
says nothing, but he is constantly afraid of going hungry.

The sheikh knows what the disciple thinks. How long
will you be frightened of the future
because you love food? You have closed the eye
of self-denial and forgotten who provides.

Don’t worry. You’ll have your walnuts and raisins and special desserts.
Only the true favorites get hunger for their daily bread.
You’re not one of those. Whoever loves the belly
is brought bowl after bowl from the kitchen.

When such a person dies, bread itself comes to the funeral
and makes a speech: “O corpse, you almost killed yourself
with worrying about food. Now you’re gone and food
is still here, more than enough. Have some free bread.”

Bread is more in love with you than you with it.
It sits and waits for days. It knows you have no will.
If you could fast, bread would jump into your lap
as lovers do with each other.

Be full with trusting,
not with these childish fears of famine.

Heedlessly disregarding warnings at muslimunityday

Rockstar and Crescent

.flickr-photo { border: solid 1px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 0px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }


Well, eff you too, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Ramadan is any day now and I’ll need to get started on Project Personal Betterment v.3957975, so now would be a good time to admit that my first reaction upon seeing this sign was to mutter, “Well, eff you too, buddy.” The second was to smirk and take a photograph. The third was to defiantly go on the ride even though my sister looked questioningly, concernedly at me after seeing the sign herself.

Okay, so I did turn off my hearing aids though, so maybe that undermines the rebellious factor a bit. These digital babies cost thousands of dollars, buddy.

You can see other (non-profane, don’t worry) Muslim Unity Day photos here.

All credits for this Flickr endeavor and reviving the account I’ve had since June go to Elysium, whose every conversation contains lines like, “You need to get Flickr!” and “Why are you discriminating against Flickr?” and “Flickr is the best!” Just kidding, he is good people. And he takes amazing photographs.

The ties that bind

Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swing-set superstars

Casa420 and Familia, Glorious mundanity

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

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

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

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

Na laram gham

(3)BeautifulThings, All-Star Crackstar Squad, Hit the Road

Driving back to my corner of the Bay Area this afternoon after dropping HijabMan off at the Oakland Airport, I merged onto the familiar Hwy-24 from 880, and, as the road curved down and then up again, the fog and gloom suddenly gave way to sunshine, and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud in my car. I turned up the volume on my Red Hot Chili Peppers CD, pushed the button to slide open the sunroof, and held my right hand out through the sunroof for the next two miles. I hadn’t done that for a while. It was the kind of perfect moment that you may not necessarily remember later, but you realize how beautifully, simply perfect it is at the time.

I remembered a moment like this from last winter – a different CD and a different car (my father’s SUV), but the sunroof had been open then, too, the stereo had been turned high and I had smiled widely at the unexpected sunshine and fellow drivers stuck in afternoon traffic beside me, and the thought that had come unbidden to mind then, as now, was in Pukhtu: Na laram gham. I have no worries. Because the things I really need in order to be happy are simple, I suppose, as they were today: sunshine and warmth, loud music, the taste of mid-morning ice cream still fresh on my tongue, an encompassing view of the mountains I love, and laughter echoing in my ears from a few hours spent in Berkeley with friends, in this case, Somayya and HijabMan.

Last November, I had been driving home after dropping my father off at the Oakland Airport, and, while I’m usually his chauffeur of choice when he leaves on/returns from business trips through Oakland, that had been no business trip. That time, he had been flying down to Southern California for his former colleague and longtime friend Mr. R’s wedding in Long Beach.

My father had driven to the airport while I lounged in the passenger seat and kept a watchful eye on the speedometer. “Daddy, you’re going ninety miles per hour!” I exclaimed at one point, whereupon he slowed down and joking replied, “Now, wouldn’t that be some way for me to go and die? Ninety miles per hour in a freeway smash-up!”

“That’s not funny,” I had snapped. “Bean and I spend just as much time on the road as you do, and we probably have the same chance of getting into a car accident. I don’t think that’s amusing; do you?” He was suitably chastened, and I felt bad for my snappishness, so I changed the subject and we spent the rest of the drive reminiscing about my father’s friendship with Mr. R.

Mr. R is Hungarian-American, and we all loved him as children, even though he had a tendency to mistake my voice for my brother’s whenever I answered his phone calls. He had an old, wise, and complacent cat named Heidi, and a dog named Lampoush. When my family moved back to the Bay Area several years ago and we children reunited with Mr. R, we were heartbroken to learn that Lampoush was gone, replaced by another, albeit just as friendly, dog named Bundi. But we recovered soon enough, after Bundi came to dinner with Mr. R one evening. The dog’s high spirits had us in gales of laughter as he ran in lively circles throughout our dining room and courtyard, his tail wagging incessantly behind him.

My childhood memories, which revolve mainly around frisbee and table soccer, are filled with images of Mr. R hunched over the foosball table, trying to maneuver the ball without spinning the handles, even though spinning was shamelessly allowed in my family. He would follow a particularly intent shot with an “aieee!”-sounding grunt, and we kids would giggle and chorus, “‘Aieee!’ means ‘ouch!’ in our language!” In the summer, he would invite friends to his home in Belmont and we would tag along with our father. While the men played softball, we three would munch on pizza and occupy ourselves with the exuberant Lampoush and unruffled Heidi.

The fall that we returned from our eighteen months in Pakistan, we kids sat disconsolately on the sidewalk in front of our school one afternoon after our father had apparently forgotten to pick us up. Close to an hour after school had let out, an unfamiliar long, shiny black SUV pulled into the parking lot with Mr. R at the wheel and our father waving out the passenger-side window, and we jumped up in delight, all resentfulness abandoned. My father and Mr. R were laughing like gleeful kids themselves, and I remember envying their easy banter. They looked so physically different – my father with his slight stature and his dark hair and beard, and the ruddy-complexioned, reddishbrown-haired Mr. R who looks like he was probably a football jock in his younger days – but their ease and camaraderie with one another highlighted a deep, long-lasting friendship that has spanned decades.

When Mr. R called to invite my father to his wedding last winter, my father had been characteristically silent about his decision for a few days. And while I had been admittedly surprised that he would consider flying down solo to Southern California for a wedding that the rest of the family couldn’t accompany him to, there had really been no question of his not going. It was obvious that he would go. To do otherwise would be unthinkable.

Driving home in last November’s sunshine in my father’s SUV after dropping him off at the airport, I realized that that’s the kind of friends I want – the kind who, if they were to say, “Come visit, even though you’re a bajillion miles away and I know you have a life and all,” I’d think nothing of promptly saying, “Hell yeah!” and dropping everything and going.

Which, come to think of it, is exactly what HijabMan recently did for Somayya and me. Thanks, buddy. It was good times.

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.

Hurricane Katrina and disaster relief

Links to love

My thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by Hurrican Katrina, those who, like cncz and Maitri, are worried for the safety of their family and friends, and for their loved ones’ homes and jobs utterly destroyed in the wake of the hurricane.

Maitri, especially, has been writing much about Louisiana, although she has safely evacuated to Houston, from where she has turned her weblog into a “Katrina resource full of neighborhood information, updates from the ground and opinion.”

Michael in New Orleans “is providing posts from his refuge in a highrise in the CBD. He has diesel-fueled generators and, amazingly enough, Internet connectivity” [via Anne Central and Looka].

Sunni Sister has some thoughts on both Hurricane Katrina and the nearly 1,000 Shia Muslim pilgrims who died in a stampede in Baghdad just a couple of days ago [via Sister Scorpion].

And wicked_wish has composed an extremely thought-provoking essay entitled “Disjointed thoughts on the socio-economics of disaster” [EDIT: via Saurav at Dark Days Ahead]. Go read.

When you are done, help somehow, if you can. Here is a good place to start.