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.

birthday in berzerkeley.

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Suckool

birthday in berzerkeley.

[So this was almost a month ago. June 24th, to be exact. So? I’m trying to update you on my life here. Get used to it.]

When you’re a recent college graduate and you feel like you can finally start doing exactly what you used to brusquely tell people you’d be doing when they repeatedly inquired about your post-graduation plans (i.e. “Sleep”), it’s slightly annoying to be awoken at 8 a.m. every morning by your father shaking you and helping you up to a sitting position and telling you, with effusive cheerfulness, to “Look out the window, Yasmine! See my little fig tree in the courtyard? It’s growing up! And did you see those bushes I planted yesterday? You didn’t? Oh, you have to go take a walk outside and check them out. Come on, go wash your face.”

But then you realize your father and his good-intentioned wake-up endeavors are endearing in comparison to checking your emails and finding out that you actually didn’t pass your neurobiology, physiology, and behavior (NPB) class and guess who’s going to have to take summer school? (Yeah, just say it with me: Freakin’ hell.)

So you spend half the day exchanging emails with a multitude of advisors, and, if you weren’t so stressed and annoyed, you’d find the ever-lengthening subject line of the emails almost comical – Re: Re: FWD: Re: FWD: Re: HDE major requirement. The whole ordeal just reinforces your view that advisors are useless, which is, you tell yourself, exactly why you’ve never consulted people for advice and always went ahead and did things on your own. That way, if you mess everything up – which, let’s face it, you just did – then fine, at least it’s only your own fault.

(Little do you realize that this little drama is going to go on for the next three weeks, by the end of which time you’ve mentally cursed your multitude of advisors to no end, especially your useless faculty advisor who is on vacation and your master advisor who is currently conducting research in China but who honors your request for a meeting in person by asking about your availability and then never responds back. Why does he even bother to ask, if, as it turns out, he’s going to be in China for the rest of the summer? Good lord, what a waste of time.)

So what’s a girl to do?

The best option is to salvage the rest of a lovely day by driving to Berkeley and spending the afternoon with Somayya and the lovely L lady (Birthday Girl Extraordinaire), who is taking an Arabic course at Cal.

So, I did.

I got a phone call from my good ol’ ex-co-worker H#3 as I was passing through the Caldecott Tunnel. “So how’s work without me and Somayya around?” I asked. “I bet it’s all sad and boring, huh?”
“That’s what you think,” he replied smugly. “Actually, we’ve been getting a lot more work done without you guys here.”
“Right,” I said skeptically. “And that means, what? You now play online poker even more often than you ever did before?”

Somayya called me just as I walked down to the corner of Bancroft and Telegraph. “Where you at? W is here, too, but he’s about to leave.” My favorite Afghan!
“No! Tell him not to move! I’ll be right there in a second.”
“Alright, but hurry up.”

I reunited with W, Somayya, and L on the sidewalk in front of Amoeba Records, and the first thing on the list was to belatedly convey my condolences for W’s grandfather’s recent death. “Well, he lived a long and fulfilling life, and passed away in his sleep, you know. So, alhamdulillah,” said W.
“InshaAllah, may it be that easy for all of us, when our time comes” I said, and asked about his sister: “How’s F doing?”
“I guess she’s okay.”
I arched an eyebrow. “You only guess?”
“I don’t know, every time I see her, she’s annoying.”
“You’re annoying!” said Somayya, and tried to kick him in the shins, just as he deftly sidestepped.

W soon left, and, as Somayya, L, and I turned around to walk back towards campus, I recounted the AIM exchange I had had with H#3 earlier in the day:
“So I IMed him this morning and asked for K’s number, ’cause you know how I smashed my phone into pieces at Commencement and lost a bajillion numbers, right? Literally three hours later, he comes back with, ‘Hola, what you up to?’ and then disappears again. The kid never gives me the information I’m requesting. It’s so bothersome.”
“Wait, he said what?” asked Somayya.
“‘Hola.’ ”
Somayya started laughing, and L joined in. “It’s pronounced without the ‘h’: ola! You don’t say the ‘h’ part. Yazzo, I don’t ever want to hear you say ‘hola’ in public again.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know that? I took German, remember?”

I can use suitably impressive English words like juxtaposition and connoisseur and supercalifrajilisticexpialidocious, and I can rattle off the names of some of my favorite desserts at the Austrian bakery (topfenstrudel, palatschinken, zwetschgenflek) with an almost-straight face, thanks to six years of German education, but simple, four-letter Spanish words are beyond me. Clearly, I am not that smart, and it’s no wonder I failed NPB.

We sat on the steps outside the MLK building and gleefully presented L with her birthday gift: a new cell phone to replace the one she had lost a couple of weeks before. Although she had been temporarily using an extra phone of Somayya’s since, we were tired of waiting for her to replace her phone and knew the whole situation had been stressful on her as well. The expression on L’s face – a cross between surprise, gratitude, and outrage – was priceless. Especially when she realized it was the latest model, whereupon she tried to convince us that if she went into the store personally, she could get her phone replaced at a fraction of the amount we had spent.

“Exactly how much did this cost?” she kept demanding.
“We’re not telling you!”
She shook her head disapprovingly. “You kids are out of control. Out of CONTROL.“
“You know you love it!”
“This is the freakin’ latest model! I had insurance on mine, so I could have gotten a replacement for $30!”
“Well, you were taking your damn time about it,” I said snidely, “so we took care of it for you. Stop being a nerd about it.”
“I’m going to return this tomorrow, and you’re getting all your money back!”
“Nooo, you can’t do that!” I protested. “This is our present to you!”
“Fine, return it then!” said Somayya. “But you’re keeping all the damn money.”
“Fine. Give me the receipt.”
I took it out of my bag and handed it over. A split second later, I realized my mistake: “Wait, I don’t trust you. You’re going to look at the price and start screaming and then you’ll refuse to keep the money.”
Somayya wrestled the receipt out of L’s hand, L tried to grab it back, and I laughed hysterically while watching the entire tussle. “You don’t get the receipt until you sign a freakin’ contract! Hold on, I need some paper.” I felt around in my handbag for a piece of paper, but only managed to come up with my paycheck envelope. “Alright, hold on.” I scribbled a few lines on the back of the envelope and handed it over. “Sign it!”

I, LAR, do hereby agree to keep all the cash I get refunded from the returning of my birthday gift phone to T-Mobile and I cannot give the money back to any of my friends no matter how much it is because I have to keep it and spend it for my own upkeep and general happiness and birthday gratitude for as long as it takes to spend it all.

The end.

x _____________________________
24 June 2005
Berkeley/Davis, California

She frowned, shook her head, and signed, I laughed my head off, we duly handed the receipt over, she looked at the amount and shrieked, “I hate you!” as expected for a few minutes, then pocketed the receipt, and all was well with the world.

We wandered around Bancroft and took some hilarious photos at the photo booth (something we had been planning to do every time we were in Berkeley, but somehow never got around to doing). 2Scoops called, and we commiserated about stupid NPB (me) and the bar exam (him), and how driving one’s friends crazy is an essential part of every friendship (“Yeah, I think she totally hates us now,” I said, as L looked over and mouthed, “Out of control!”). We also discussed how cool Baji is, and L, overhearing this, remarked gleefully, “Baji sent me a postcard from Costa Rica!” We all agreed that Baji is a rockstar. I know you all know this already, but it must be said again.

Then we made a beeline for the elevators in the MLK lobby, only to encounter issues when we attempted to go up to the third floor. We pressed “3,” and the elevator kept opening and closing its doors on the first floor. I laughed, remembering the last time something like that had happened. (Is it just me, or does my life really go around in circles?) After the fifth or so try, we gave up and headed back outside, sitting on the grass bordering Sproul Plaza. L let me listen to HijabMan’s “happy birthday song” voicemail, and then I busied myself with re-acquiring lost phone numbers with Somayya’s help.

She scrolled through her entire cell phone, reading off names from A-Z, no less. “What about ___? How ’bout ___?”
“Nah, don’t need that one. I probably won’t ever call him/her.”
L laughed at my nonchalance, but I figured, there are very few people I actually make the effort to call semi-regularly, so why bother with everyone else? I’m not much of a phone person.

This reminded us that we missed our friend H, who is notorious for never returning phone calls.
“Let’s try a new strategy,” said Somayya dryly. She called him and left the following voicemessage: “H, this is Somayya. I’m dying. Call me back.”

We decided we were hungry, so we high-tailed it down to Naan ‘n’ Curry, where we scarfed down some aloo parathhas and chicken. Amazingly enough, H returned Somayya’s phone call, and good times were had by all as we mercilessly guilt-tripped him for “calling only when Somayya is dying.”

As I was walking back to my car, a grizzled old street vendor called out, “Assalamu alaikum!” Surprised, I grinned back and responded to his greeting.

On the way home, I stopped for gas. The turbaned Sikh gentleman at the gas station took one look at my jeans, hijab, and purple kameez and enquired, “Punjabi?”
I smiled. “No, Pukhtun.”
He looked confused, so I amended, “Pakistani.”
He smiled back. “Have a nice day.”
“Thank you, you too.”

Back home, I had to explain my NPB drama to the daddy-o. Surprisingly, he only laughed. “Didn’t you used to be an NPB major?”
“Yes,” I said wryly. “And I didn’t stick with it for obvious reasons.”

Later that evening, I stopped by his room. “Daddy khana, I need a check for my tuition and registration fees.”
“You know where the checkbook is.” [This is Daddy-o Speak for ‘Get the checkbook and make out the check yourself, you lazy bum.’]
I dutifully retrieved his checkbook and filled out the amount, then handed it to him to sign.
“How much is it for?” He glanced at it and sucked in a breath, then released it in a whoosh. “Yours is going to be the most expensive education ever.”
Before I even had time to wince, he added, “But it’s all worth it.”

I’m blessed to have a father who thinks money is never wasted if it’s spend on books and education. Alhamdulillah.

When I ran into my friend S a few days later, I apologized for forgetting to return his phone call from the week before.
“No,” he said, “you did call me back.”
“Oh, I did?” I said in surprise. “I totally don’t remember.”
“Yeah, you called me the same day. And you were hella pissed off.”
I laughed. “It was about having to retake that damn NPB class, I bet. Yeah, I was really annoyed about all that drama.”
He smirked knowingly. “It was all those naps you took last quarter, wasn’t it? Maybe you shouldn’t have slept so much.”
“Shut up.”

[Okay, the end. Really.]

i guess it’s possible that i have been a bit distracted/and the directions for me are a lot less in demand

Hit the Road

i guess it’s possible that i have been a bit distracted/and the directions for me are a lot less in demand.

Hi, is this thing still on?

Okay, so while I was drag-racing down the freeway in my car this morning [I mean, really, where else would you find me?], I was listening to that Barenaked Ladies song, This is Where it Ends, in which they sing,

I say I want someone else to stand behind me
And write it all down
‘Cause I can’t be bothered doing it myself.
And I don’t want the responsibility of
Proving its importance

and I couldn’t stop laughing for the next three miles, because I immediately thought of this weblog. And then I played the song on repeat about seven times.

I seriously need to hire someone to update this joint for me. Except I’m a broke kid, and I’d only be able to pay you in popsicles, blue raspberry slurpies, and – my new craze – dark chocolate Kit-Kats.

I’ve missed this place, and I’m grateful for your continued comments and tags and daily harassment on AIM about my slacker tendencies and pathetic lack of updates. Would you believe me if I told you that I think about updating this weblog an average of five times a day, but I’m always too lazy to get to it? It’s a sad state of affairs, kids. Elysium and I currently have a running competition on who is The Laziest Person Ever, and I’m winning, because I’m always right, and you all know it.

That said, let the writing commence!

(Soon, I promise. After I sleep.)

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.

A Riddle or Two for You…

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Guest Post

A Riddle or Two for You…

#1 (Easy): I am cool yet I love the sun, i wear flip flops in the rain and paint my toes blue even though im secretly obsessed with yellow cuz it’s HAPPY and i want my shades to be orange cuz it makes the world look happy and any boy who wants to win me over better not ever even think to buy me roses cuz real flowers are SUNFLOWERS…who am I?

HAHA…i told you it was easy!

ok…now a hard one…

#2 (slightly hard…probably wont be too hard considering i’m making it up haha):
I am blue and icy and i live in a dual world…what am i??

oooooooooh!!! you thought it was gonna be only SLIGHTLY HARD, but it’s REALLY HARD! i foooled you i fooooled you! hahahaha…so take a guess eh…let’s see who has really been paying attention!

this season is cold. I have to write one paper by…

Rhymes and unrhymed lines, Suckool

this season is cold.

I have to write one paper by 10 a.m. and edit a second one and finish writing a third one by 6 p.m. And in between all that, I need to figure out what the hell I’m supposed to be saying while MCing this little diversity program at noon. Why I agreed to do this is beyond me, except that when we realized we still needed an MC and the ensuing silence, hesitation, and lack of eye contact in the room became unbearable, I impatiently raised an eyebrow and snapped, “I’ll do it.” Not only that, I somehow agreed to present something of my own, in addition to doing the introductions for everyone else. Jesus Christ, peace be upon him. So now I have to go write a poem or flow or rhyme or spoken word piece or whatever you choose to call it, when really all I want to do is take a nap. Everything in my life is such a last-minute effort.

Also, I’ve got graduation on my mind, and I’m running low on sleep here, so the most amusing thing in the world to me at 3:30 a.m. is that “alma mater” sounds like “aloo tamatar.” Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all night.

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.”

of flip flops, feet, fuzzy socks, and small world …

Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs

of flip flops, feet, fuzzy socks, and small world friendships

Sometimes, in the middle of a hectic day, I’ll stop by a computer kiosk really quickly and check up on this here weblog, and after skimming over the same ol’ title and same ol’ opening line of the topmost post, I’ll think to myself, “Dude, people are hella slacking off. Why aren’t there any new posts up in this joint?” And then I remember, “Err, wait, yeah, I need to update this joint. Dude. Yeah.” And then I hit the refresh button just in case an update has magically traveled from my brain to blogger.com. “Direct connections,” as S and I used to call these brainwaves. Not S a.k.a. “the tight one”, but S a.k.a. my favorite freakazoidal maniac and fellow rebel child who is always missing in action.

(Speaking of Mr. Tight One, Najm‘s warning that he should loosen up or he might break himself seems to have been a rather timely one, seeing as how S was so busy being tight that he tore a ligament in his knee a few days ago while playing basketball. Not only that, he told me today that he removed his ankle-to-knee brace because it was “too ugly.” And not to mention the fact that he’s still been driving all over town and putting weight on his knee like nothing has happened. The kid is insane. Send some prayers and/or good vibes his way.)

I love what a small world it is out there. Only in such a small world would I have discovered just this evening that the “really good friend who’s Muslim” who was profiled by my classmate for an assignment is none other than my co-worker who attends a whole different university, and with whom I had lunch just this afternoon. “That was you?” laughed my classmate. “I talked to him earlier and he mentioned he had been in town to have lunch with some friends close to campus.” The mutual friend would be H#3, he of the orange juice fund fame and sundry workplace hilarities. What are the odds?

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the funniest part about this small world, so far, is that I recently discovered that H#3’s older sister was the girl who inspired my miniature rant against nosy girls and their stupid questions, back in the day. You should have seen the expression on my face the day she stopped by our office to visit her brother and I made the connection.

And speaking of small worlds (my mental tangents aren’t making for a very coherent, concise weblog post tonight, I’m sure), Blogistan rocks das Haus as well. After all, 2Scoops and I know surprisingly many of the same East Bay Area people. And Baji sends me crackheaded mix CDs from across the country. And Abez and Owl have sent Punjabi monkey cards with their own hilariously penned in cartoons, balloon conversations, and comments from all the way across the world. And, just recently, HijabMan mailed me a crazy cool mix CD, based around a – what else? – foot theme, because anyone who has been reading this weblog for any length of time knows that I have an obsession with flip flops and fuzzy socks.

As if I weren’t already an expert at singing along, off-key, to songs I pretend to know, I’m now consumed with singing off-key to songs I’ve never even heard of before in my life. (Not that my knowledge of music was ever that extensive to begin with.) It’s hella fun, though. Thanks, man; much appreciated.

The track listing is below, for all the rest of you who would appreciate some random, smile-inducing crackheadedness in your life:

1. Bubble Toes (Jack Johnson)
2. Head Over Feet (Alanis Morissette)
3. Walking in My Shoes (Depeche Mode)
4. Club Foot (Kasabian)
5. Trampled Underfoot (Led Zeppelin)
6. Walk On (U2)
7. The Walk (The Cure)
8. Dancing Barefoot (U2)
9. Walk This Way (Aerosmith)
10. God Shuffled His Feet (Crash Test Dummies)
11. I Would Walk 500 Miles (Pretenders)
12. Get on Your Feet (Gloria Estefan)
13. Canned Heat (in My Heels) (Jamiroquai)
14. *Bonus* The Kind of FUNK (Stone Soup)
15. *Extra Special Bonus* Big Yellow Taxi (Joni Mitchell)

why don’t the newscasters cry/when they read about people who die?

Uncategorized

Last night, on a whim, my sister and I rented and watched Promises, a powerful and compelling documentary that follows seven Palestinian and Israeli children over the course of several years, between 1995-2000. I’d heard about this documentary for years, but had somehow never gotten around to watching it until last night. In 2002 alone, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, and won Emmy Awards for Best Documentary and for Outstanding Background Analysis.

We meet Yarko and Daniel, twins who are secular Jews and more concerned with volleyball than politics; Shlomo, the ultra-Orthodox son of a rabbi, and Moishe, a militant denizen of the Jewish settlement of Beit El. We meet Mahmoud, a blue-eyed little boy whose angelic face darkens with hatred when he speaks of Jews; Sanabel, whose father, a Palestinian journalist, has been in an Israeli jail for two years without trial; and Faraj, a refugee who clutches the key to his ancestral home in Israel as if it were an existential totem. [Washington Post]

The interviewed children are between the ages of 9-12 in the documentary, living in and around Jerusalem, and their views on their world are breathtaking and, at times, even gut-wrenchingly disturbing, because, understandably, there is anger and intolerance at both ends. The children speak for themselves, but their words are a reflection of their turbulent times, just as their strong political statements and religious views (or lack thereof) reflect their own experiences and beliefs, and the hopes and fears of their families and friends. But they are all articulate and brutally honest. There’s both heartbreak and hope here, and, at the end of the film, I wasn’t sure which to give in to, because there is no such thing as an easy sentimental solution.

There are lighthearted, giggle-inducing moments, too, because children are children the world over, because whether they are Israeli or Palestinian, they all have issues taking apart stacked chairs and they hold impromptu burping contests and drink coffee when their mothers forbid them to and spritz on cologne like there’s no tomorrow. Because maybe there isn’t.

Wisdom does emerge from the mouths of these children, who are anything but innocent. “In war both sides suffer,” one of the twins says. “Maybe there’s a winner, but what is a winner?” [New York Times]

Rent the DVD and make sure you check out all the Extras, like the Summer 2004 update on the not-so-little-(or idealistic?)-anymore children who are actually now in their late teens.

I, in my self-absorbed life, need constant reminders like this documentary. Over the past year, it has admittedly become exceedingly easy for me to forget about Jenin, it has been easy to forget about Rachel Corrie, it has been easy to forget about everyday life in Palestine and Israel.

It has been shamefully far too easy for me to forget what I myself have never had to know.

"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.