one more day til d-day Wish you all lived in th…

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one more day til d-day

Wish you all lived in the Bay.

Website’s still pretty rough, but at this point I don’t think it really matters. Read the bios. Interesting stuff.

Did I realize the overwhelming amount of work this was going to be when I agreed, months back, to help organize this? I don’t think so. But alhamdulillah, I’m flattered I got to help out, and it’s been rewarding so far, despite the constant stress. Seher, you have my massive respect for pulling this off last year, woman. And I owe you emails. Good Lord, I owe everyone and their momma emails. Starting next week, insha’Allah.

Please make du’a for us, that we pull this off with the best of intentions, that all we do is for the sake of Allah swt, that we fulfull our goals for this event, insha’Allah. May Allah bless us all with knowledge of the deen, purify our intentions, and guide us in all actions, so that everything we do is for Him alone. Ameen.

And here we go again

Bibliothek, Casa420 and Familia

I was still eleven years old when we moved away from the Bay Area, and I promised myself that when I grew up and had children of my own, we’d always live in one place. I promised myself that they wouldn’t have to deal with the self-consciousness, the uncertainties, the resentment that constant moving presented, all those things that I struggled with during those years away.

I remember that, for my twelfth birthday, three weeks later and in our new house, I received a copy of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! from Somayya, a comic book from her brother, and a dollar bill from a younger cousin. A whole entire dollar seemed so much back in those days, when we siblings used to pool all our change together to buy Snickers bars and acidly sour, mouth burning Goosebump gumballs from the little market on the corner. Even a mere dollar was enough to make us feel wealthy.

But what I remember most about that first year away from the Bay Area is how bitter and resentful I was. It’s not that I appreciated the Bay Area and my hometown for what they were. The “big picture” was of no concern to me. I was far too busy being heartbroken over the fact that I was leaving behind my childhood home, the half-acre yard and winding brick walkways, the prickly rosebushes and a fig tree with comforting branches that enveloped, the lines of silvery smooth eucalyptus trees soaring to huge heights. My brother and sister and I used to roll down the lawn, hold mock sword-fights, push one another along the walkways in a wheelbarrow, and preside over picnics consisting of chunks of cheese and unripe fruit. We built tree houses, foot-raced across the lawn, ran away from home more times than we can recall, and between us went through more broken bones, concussions, and bruises than an entire football team. And this was long before my father’s geranium madness started; back then, he focused mainly on the roses.

I hated leaving my home, and I hated my new house, too. But just when I learned to reconcile myself, to accept the new place as “home,” to at first grudgingly and then more readily appreciate the sparks of beauty I found even there, we moved again. And again. And a couple times more.

Five moves in five years, and we ultimately came full circle, back to my childhood home and the memories it cradled. And once I was back, I recalled all those years of fervent late-night prayers to God, all those years of pleas that seemed to fall on deaf ears, if God has ears, that is. And I promised myself that I wouldn’t take this place for granted again. In the past five years I’ve been back, though, I’ve taken it for granted time and again. You’d think I would know better by now. Sometimes I think of those old “MY-children-will-never-EVER-have-to-move” promises and smile indulgently, because the truth is that all those moves were good for me. I like the person I’ve become since then, and so I refuse to think of them as lost years. Change is good. So is progress. But the thing is, I can afford to be philosophical about it now. After all, I moved back, didn’t I? If I hadn’t, some part of me would have remained bitter and resentful.

Which is why it still surprises me that I can so easily take all this for granted.

Last Friday, I drove around town and asked for boxes from various stores and shops. My dad picked up some more on his way home from work. I stared at those piles of boxes stacked in the entryway, and felt the familiar sense of panic. One of those oh my God, here we go again feelings. And on Saturday, the packing started all over again.

The books were the first to go. I packed them slowly, carefully, gently, like fragile objects that merit special treatment. There were the five shelves worth of books from the bookcase itself, then the piles of more books along the floor and underneath my bed and even inside the dresser drawers. Down came the artwork, the posters, the paintings, the framed photographs. The garbage bag kept growing. You’d think that, after so many experiences with moving, I’d have toned down my possessions to only those which are the most important. But no, I’m still a pack-rat. A sentimental and nostalgic fool, that’s me. I found empty moving boxes, stashed away in some storage space, labeled Yasmine’s box in my fourteen-year-old handwriting, and more labeled the same from the year I was seventeen. I used them again, and the feeling of déjà vu increased steadily. I discovered the identification tags at the bottom of my hearing aid containers are still labeled with my address from eight years ago. Mind boggling, indeed.

What made it all bearable was the presence of the relatives who came to help out. Especially the cousins. Not only did these three crazy teenage boys strip the walls bare, shove the furniture around, and affably carry boxes at my brusque command, they also gobbled down endless platefuls of pasta, platters of sourdough bread, hunks of chocolate fudge cake, and cans of Pepsi as if there were no tomorrow. And they made me laugh. When I asked one of them to carry a box for me, he leaned close into my face and crowed, “How ‘bout noo, you dirty Dutch bastard?” in perfect Austin Powers imitation. I couldn’t help but crack up. Needless to say, he took advantage of my amusement to repeat the same line about a bajillion more times at random intervals throughout the day. And like the easily amused crackhead that I am, I laughed every time. Later, I asked them to move my mattress and bed frame, and returned to find them wrestling across the mattress, pummeling the bejesus out of each other with taunts of “What now? What now, huh?” Craziness galore.

And I guess it’s telling that I’ve been sleeping on bare mattresses for the past four nights, yet my books were the first things unpacked. I walked into this unfamiliar new room and saw all the boxes stacked haphazardly, and my heart did this nervous little trippy dance, you know the kind I mean? But then my gaze zoomed in on the boxes of books, and I thought, Okay, I can do this after all. Because, more than anything, it’s the books that have always remained familiar to me, wherever I moved. Therein lies my stability. As long as I have those, I’m all set. After all, I was the eleven-year-old kid who showed up at her new school lugging around a one-thousand-page hard-cover copy of David Copperfield, still on loan from my Bay Area library. My new sixth-grade teacher was so intrigued that she piled on the books, mainly the classics, but others as well. George Orwell’s Animal Farm was one of ‘em, I recall.

So I sat there on the ground, facing an empty bookcase, and tried to make sense of all my books. There’s so damn many of them, especially since I went through so many different phases in terms of reading. There’s the novels and poetry anthologies and short story collections, all in Urdu and German, from back in the day when I read those languages as fluently and voraciously as I read English. There’s at least a dozen more anthologies and poetry collections in English. There’s authors I have multiple books of: Robert Fulghum, Daphne du Maurier, M.M. Kaye, J.D. Salinger, Franz Kafka, Anne Rivers Siddons, Nathaniel Hawthorne and more. Tennesee Williams’s plays and Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories lumped right in there with Anne of Green Gables and the Bronte sisters. Kipling next to Jane Austen, Rainer Maria Rilke (in German and English) next to various Norton Anthologies, Emily Dickinson next to Homer’s The Odyssey. Shakespeare and Nancy Drew, Hemingway and Melville, Sinclair Lewis and Oscar Wilde, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From the Sea. Chicken Soup books, Maya Angelou, and books that were required reading for various university classes, on multiculturalism and gender and selfhood, which I found too interesting to sell back. And biographies and autobiographies, and books underscoring my long-ago fascination with the Jewish Holocaust, Anne Boleyn, and the American Civil War. And dozens more, probably, but I really should stop cataloguing.

Such an insane mix, which is why I sat there the first day and blankly stared at all the books, not sure where to start. Help came in the form of Shereen, who advised me to shelve all the books alphabetically (alphabetically! good Lord), and laughed, “You know what, your dream house is going to have a library.” “No,” I corrected, “my dream house is going to BE a library.” “With an internet connection,” she added. Of course, of course. But seriously, I’m so attached to all these books that I almost protested when Shereen made off with my German dictionary and determinedly shelved it into the reference bookcase. I did follow her orders though and shelved the rest of ‘em alphabetically, but it looks all wrong. It’s impossible to fit them all in one bookcase anyway, which is why they’re currently stacked not only vertically, but also horizontally along the shelves. As soon as I get another bookcase, I’m dumping them all out and starting all over.

And for godssake, it’s just that I’ve moved into a brand-new room we’ve just added on to our existing home, down the hall and across to the other end of the house, a room almost twice as large as my old one, and the hustle and bustle over the weekend was because we decided to repaint the entire house while we were at it. No big deal, right? It’s not a new house. It’s the same home I grew up in. But every morning I wake up with the panicked oh my God, not again feeling, my eyes straining to trace familiar patterns on the ceiling. Instead of a window that looks out to the sky and the lemon tree, I now have two windows, one looking onto the beautifully-stained red-orange fence, the other with an unobstructed view of the orange tree in the courtyard, the one that grows so quickly and hugely that it must be on steroids.

And the boxes. Good Lord, the boxes are still here and there and everywhere, and seeing them doesn’t help one bit, but I’m just too damn lazy to clear ‘em out, not to mention the fact that all the other rooms are still half empty because most of their corresponding furniture is in my new room. Déjà vu mostly sucks, and you heard it here first. Although my clothes are hung in the closet, for the most part I’m still literally living out of boxes. I still don’t know where most of my things are. Everything is a guessing game, sort of a moving-day version of the annoying cell phone Can you hear me now? repetition, only this version is more like, Is it in this one? or in this one? or this one? or maybe not? dammit, where’s my miracle-bubble bottle? But at least I don’t have to look for my toothbrush.

And everyday brings a repeat of the same gut-wrenching test: Can I make it from here to there without tripping? Can I make it across the whole entire room without falling flat on my face? Is it possible to remove one box without bringing down an avalanche of five more?

The answer, of course, is, No.
If I could, then I would.

But because I can’t make it to my German dictionary without scraping my knuckles and bruising my shins, I shall have to give up that attempt in favor of freetranslation.com, which tells me that the correct way to authoritatively call out, “Release my camel!” auf Deutsch is, Geb mein Kamel frei!

So there you have it.

The road goes ever on and on/down from the door where it began

Hit the Road

Once in a while, I feel like doing something random. As the family’s resident Rebel Child Extraordinaire, I do have an image to uphold, ya know. So today, because I had somehow managed to leave home earlier than usual, I decided to kill time by exiting the freeway about fifteen miles into my drive. I stopped at a drive-thru and ordered french fries and a drink (it was only 8 a.m., and I doubt fries constitute regular breakfast fare for many people—including myself—yet the girl at the drive-thru didn’t so much as blink when she passed me my order), then impulsively turned onto the road running parallel to the freeway, instead of hitting the freeway itself.

One of the things I love most about the Bay Area is our hills and mountains. And although most peoples’ jaws literally drop in shock when they learn that I commute 120 miles a day, I love the drive simply because of the scenery. Three years worth of commuting to and from college haven’t even come close to killing my appreciation for the Bay Area’s winding roads and rolling hills, and there have been many days when I’ve wished I could just get off the freeway and drive along the roads parallel to the freeway instead.

So I did that today. The two lanes that comprise what is known as Lopes Road are narrow, and although they flow in the general direction of north and south, just as Interstate-680 does, they are situated in the hills themselves, high above the freeway, twisting and turning far more than the freeway does. I steered my car along the meandering road, one hand on the steering wheel, the other anchoring my drink (I had ordered a medium, and was surprised to get one that looked like a large; it refused to fit in my cup-holder. At this rate, I’m scared to envision what an extra-large must look like). After a few minutes, I removed my sunglasses and tossed them onto the passenger seat, because, as Waleed once wisely commented, “the world is dazzling enough.” And indeed it is. The skies were clear blue, and sunshine danced across the hills and spilled in through my car’s open moonroof. A couple times, I turned off the main road to check out the lanes curving further into the hills, laughing inwardly at my deliberate refusal to acknowledge the “Private Property; No Trespassing” and “Beware of Dog” signs.

I didn’t see more than three cars on the road the entire time, two whizzing by in the opposite direction and one speeding down the road far ahead of me. I stopped the car once to take a photograph of my favorite curve of hillside (yes, I have a favorite. shut up), leaving the car door open and the car idling as I got out and aimed my camera. I stood ankle-deep amongst the golden California poppies at the side of the road, squinting, turning the camera this way and that, zooming in and out, while an apt Switchfoot song blasted from my speakers (It’s a long way from the moon up to the sun/It’s a longer ahead of me, the road that I’ve begun/Stop to think of all the time I’ve lost/Start to think of all the bridges that I’ve burned, that must be crossed…). I paused once more at the top of a rise to take a photo of the marshland, dotted with red and yellow and green, at the other side of the freeway. Lord knows how they turned out. I should probably invest in a digital camera.

Although I amusedly, self-deprecatingly, refer to my commute as my “thinking time,” it is just that. It’s my chance to get away from the world for a bit, to daily analyze my goals and priorities. When it comes to life, I have tendencies to just “go with the flow,” and that’s not necessarily a good thing, simply because going with the flow sometimes results in merely standing still. Lately, I feel as if I’ve been stuck in what I call a “limbo stage,” those intermediate states of uncertainty that everyone finds exasperating, frustrating. But it’s all good, because all my limbo stages in the past have always resulted in some form of personal growth. And that’s all I ultimately need.

I have 200 pages of reading to finish by tonight, a paper due Wednesday, final exams on Thursday. I should be researching grad schools, filling out applications, preparing for the GRE…and fiddling around with my fall quarter schedule, because I’m a genius and I’ve somehow managed to register for classes conducted at the same time as both my internships.

But it’s good to get away once in a while. So here’s to limbo stages and random drives, California poppies and Bay Area mountains, sunshine and french fries.

[Yes, I’m in love with mountains. Here’s some photographs from the East Bay, where I live—no, I didn’t take them, though. Beautiful, see? Alhamdulillah.]

my daddy, the geranium man J: come back!!! —…

Casa420 and Familia

my daddy, the geranium man

J: come back!!!

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Auto response from Yasmine: i say everyone should have a cool father who has awesome ideas like, “Let’s go have a picnic on the lawn!” ;-)

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J: oh man, that dad is cool

J: is he yours?

Surah Yaseen days

Glorious mundanity, Loss and laments and letting go, Rockstar and Crescent

I know you probably have a “Surah Ya-Seen day” once in a while, too. You may call it something else, but I bet it’s still comparable to mine. Perhaps yours is known as “The Day from Hell” instead. I’ve always called mine “Surah Ya-Seen days” simply because it makes me feel less pissed off that way.

Surah Ya-Seen days usually occur the day after an all-nighter. The level of stress and annoyance varies, depending on whether I have a paper due that day, or a midterm or final exam to take.

Yesterday was a great example of a Surah Ya-Seen day: I was up the night before, skimming through three cultural anthro books in preparation for a seven-page paper due yesterday (which, incidentally, I hadn’t started at the time), and racking my brain for the perfect thesis sentence. I had great quotes, a reference sheet in progress, a slick intro, and a very nice conclusion to boot, but did I have a thesis? Of course not. Come seven a.m., I tried to eat breakfast, and discovered that chewing took far too much effort. Sat there in exhaustion and stared at the sister and our ummy for a bit, before deciding I had better get a move on. Running late, needed gas, and thus gave myself an annoyed lecture for not stopping to fill up my tank the night before, when I had had plenty of time. (I talk to myself a lot, in case you didn’t know. No, I don’t move my lips.) And still no thesis.

Once in the car, I listened to two tracks of my favorite mix CD, then impatiently stabbed at the “on” button for the radio. Listening to Michelle Branch scream out, “Are You Happy Now?” irritated me yet further, because I had already pretty much figured out I wasn’t happy at the moment, thank you very much. And I generally like cloudy days in September. But not on Surah Ya-Seen days, which is why I narrowed my eyes up at the sky in my best impression of a “Don’t you dare” look. I was actually talking to the sky, but God ultimately took pity on me and decided rain wasn’t a good idea that day after all. And I realized that my latest favorite juice (strawberry-raspberry) tastes like medicine if you drink it right after brushing your teeth. Wonderful. And everyone and their momma was driving much too slowly for my taste.

So yeah, music never works for me on Surah Ya-Seen days. Instead, I scrabbled around and came up with my favorite Surah Ya-Seen tape (recited by Shaykh Ali Abdur-Rahman Al-Hudhaify—masha’Allah, the most beautiful recitation I’ve heard so far), and turned it up real loud. I turned it down real quick though, as soon as I remembered I still needed to brainstorm a thesis sentence. But it was good background sound while I struggled to concentrate and mentally string together the perfect set of words.

The computer labs on campus were already full, but I finally found myself a computer. My finger raced to type up the sentences I dimly remembered from my drive. I was abrupt and visibly impatient with the guy from my anthro class who asked to borrow my mini-stapler. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was printing out his anthro paper while I was still barely had a thesis. Plus, he almost stole my reference sheet, which printed out at the same time as his paper. “Hey, that’s mine,” I said, while he backed up a step and stared at me warily. Somehow, I’m always mean to people on Surah Ya-Seen days. I should wear a bright “Stay Clear” warning sign, no?

I rushed to my first class, only to find that we were watching a video (something about the relationship between advertising and personhood) instead of having a lecture. Shoulda just stayed in the computer lab, dammit, I muttered (mentally), and settled down to writing transition sentences for each paragraph of my paper while the video played. (Did you know that “we value humans less if we’re surrounded by objective representations of them”? Yes, well, now you know.)

Rushed to another computer lab after class. Stood in line for almost fifteen minutes, wondering impatiently why everyone and their momma always seems to have papers due right about the same time I do. Finally, I was at the head of the line, and the girl behind me asked, “Do you want that computer over there?”, gesturing vaguely. I thought she was pointing at a Mac, so I declined. Only after she passed by me did I realize I had just turned down a PC. Thus followed yet another mental lecture, which was enough to keep me busy while I waited ten more minutes for a free computer. After typing up four pages, I had to switch labs, so I wandered all the way across campus. Logged into the computer, busted out with my disk, and realized I hadn’t saved my paper and related files onto the disk. I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing for a second. I stared at the screen in horror, then put my head down in my hands, scrubbed at my face, and mumbled, “What the hell is wrong with you?” (Only, I didn’t use “hell,” but a much more profane—and less profound—word. So much for that no-cussing rule I started last Ramadan. I was doing so well, too. Sort of.) So I had to run all the way across campus, figure out which computer I had been using, walk up to the girl there, and say, “Excuse me, I’m sorry, but…” She gave me a weird look (probably thinking, “What’s up with this freak?”), but let me take over her computer for a sec. And, yes, thank goodness, all my files were still there on the hard drive. Good one, genius. Ran back across campus. Skipped my second class and worked on the damn paper some more.

I was majorly hungry throughout the day, but I had to ignore that. I missed lunch with friends at the best sandwich place in the whole entire world (no, I’m serious. It’s that good).

What’s even sadder, I missed a chance to see Dennis again. (I hear he’s been asking about me.)

Emailed my paper out to the TA at exactly 4:50 p.m.

Then I stopped by a convenience store to pick up some juice before hitting the freeway to head home. On my way to the register, I found out that Pringles now come in colors like “Ragin’ Red” and “Electric Blue.” Not the canisters; the chips themselves. I stared. I blinked a few times. I stood in the aisle, and laughed and laughed. The owner/manager dude worriedly asked me if I was alright. “Yes, thank you,” I said, and grinned all the way up to the register.

I smirked all the way home. And even though I found out, halfway through my drive, that the screws on my favorite (and only) pair of sunglasses—yes, the little, rectangular, yellow-orange gradient ones—are loose, rendering them unfit to wear until I fix the problem, and even though that meant I had to drive the remaining thirty miles with the sun in my face, it was okay. Because I was listening to Surah Ya-Seen again, and laughing about those Pringles that somehow managed to make up for the whole jacked-up day.

Es ist die Wahrheit: Pringles rocken das Haus. And alhamdulillah for all the things that make us laugh, no matter how silly—especially on Surah Ya-Seen days.

i should write one of these Yes, I’ve been busy…

Links to love

i should write one of these

Yes, I’ve been busy sleeping my life away lately, and yes, my comments link is on crack. But it’s okay. We can deal, right? Here, read this…something I found off a cool website. A beautiful piece of writing that I wanted to share, and I have been granted kind permission to do so.

“Letter to God,” by Javed Memon, from www.hijabman.com:

Assalamu alaikum God. Ha, not that you need the peace, you already have infinite amounts. And a sense of humor that I probably couldn’t even comprehend.

Its about 2 am, Thursday night… there should be a lunar eclipse tonight. Unfortunately I can’t see it from my balcony anymore. The room is warm, the fan made this clicking sound… I turned it off. The room is warm, like I said, enough to make me feel like I need a cold shower– you know, where I just feel sticky all over.

I’m hungry, but not enough to warrant eating anything but some chocolate. Perhaps I’ll make some iced Turkish-apple-tea. That would definitely hit the spot, more so than this orange powder drink crap.

I just wanted to say thank you. Most of all, I would like to thank you for my ability to feel your presence. The feeling that I describe as the wind chimes… the feeling I talk and write about so much that people make fun of me for it. I still don’t feel like I’ve done it justice. The cool wind chimes tingling all through out my body, reminding me of my soul’s urge to return back to you after this is all over. The feeling of cold ginger ale being poured inside my body, reminding me of what I need to do in this life. That one feeling is the culmination.. that one sixth sense.. is where all of my emotions find their base.. or at least until my environment, or my own intellect twists them around.. I do admit that it happens at times.

I also wanted to say thank you for the people you have allowed me to meet in the past, in the present, and in the future. They will have all touched me in ways I cannot even begin to describe. From the one or two instant messages that people label as insignificant, to the all-night conversations about life. The man who sells me fuul and ta’amiya, the woman at the kushari place on Muhammad mahmoud street, [oh, there is that feeling…. Mmmm], the people who smile at me, who share with me parts of their life.. they are all there.. reminding me of You.

And my brain. And my circumstances, and the resources available at my disposal, and the music that inspires, and my ability to dance [even though it may not be pretty] to release all of this energy I have sometimes. And for the message. The simple, easy to understand message that blows my mind because it’s so simple. How I wish more of my fellow people realized its wisdom.

Haahahaha, and that feeling I get when I have my legs up like this while I’m typing up a letter…. The pins and needles.. letting me know that I need to unclamp my blood vessels and feed the cells down at the tips of my toes.

Oh God, help me and strengthen me—to be one of your beloved servants. I will begin to strive. I want to strive. I have been striving, but not nearly as hard as I should be. Please, continue to give me reminders. I know sometimes I can be a fool, and love what is not the best for me. But I know I am changing, and I know I can change more. And if You will, I will change the world.

So much more than Love [this aching in my chest can’t just be love],

Javed

Dennis the menace

Conversations and Encounters

I met a little boy yesterday. His name is Dennis, but he looks like a five-year-old version of the character Malcolm from the television series “Malcolm in the Middle.” Brown-haired and green-eyed, he earnestly wishes his father weren’t angry with him so often, and that his parents would get along better.

He’s only momentarily serious though.

Mostly, Dennis is a hyperactive child who just can’t keep still. He fiddles with his belt buckle, sniffs interestedly at his sneakers, and rocks back and forth in his chair so that the wooden legs stomp against the floor. He reaches out for my croissant, loudly asks for a sip of my dark chocolate frappuccino (I apologetically deny his request, explaining that I have a cold), and skips through the coffee shop on his way out the door. Out on the sidewalk, and later in the car, he engages in perfectly-timed hip-hop-like moves that he proudly calls his “robot dance,” and brings me to laughter with an impeccably-delivered imitation of his no-nonsense kindergarten teacher (“Time to clean up! NOW!”).

He professes that he’s a quiet kid while at school, but I have reservations about believing him. As his backseat companion during the drive, I am witness to his active nature. Dennis likes twisting his body in wild contortions and shaking spasmodically. Exaggerated facial expressions are his specialty. Time and again, he rolls his eyes, gestures fiercely, and clasps his own neck with both hands as if in the throes of death.

“Not that way, silly!” Dennis admonishes when I hold the baby’s pacifier upside-down. Leaning over, he exhorts the baby (a girl) to “Wake up, buddy boy!” and performs his infamous “robot dance” to make her smile.

Throughout the drive, he repeatedly informs me that we’re going to the park so that he can “teach me how to be hyper.” “I’m not hyper enough?” I ask. “No,” he retorts, and dramatically throws out his arms. “I’m hyper all the time!”

“I can tell,” I say dryly.

Once we reach the park, he unbuckles his seat belt in a rush, leaps out of the car, and unhesitatingly grabs my hand. “Let’s go be silly and hyper!” he suggests. We race hand-in-hand across the grass and along the concrete walkway leading up to the playground, even as I laughingly protest that my flimsy flip-flops weren’t made for such exertion.

We swing across the monkey bars and race down the slides. We climb up the slides too, something that always gives me inordinate pleasure simply because it was disallowed back when I was in elementary school. It probably still is, for all I know. Dennis stands at the top of the curving slide, puts his fingers to his mouth, and lets out an ear-piercing wolf whistle before sliding down. Suitably impressed, I make him repeat the whistle, but fail miserably at imitating it.

We head over to the swings. Dennis insists on pushing me, screaming, “Yaaaaaaaaah!” into my ear every time I swing back towards him. I poke his scrawny five-year-old arm and commend him on his muscles. Eventually, he scampers off towards the grass, intent on showing me the squirrels. Crouched low to the ground, he carefully places one foot in front of the other, fingers at his lips. But the squirrels are a no-show.

His next mission, seemingly, is to pick every single dandelion in the park. He hands me the short-stemmed ones, keeping the long ones for himself because “he has bigger wishes.” I lazily blow at each dandelion he brings me, watching the seeds float away, while Dennis turns his back to me and performs his dandelion rituals in a more secretive manner. I watch him surreptitiously. Depending on the nature of each wish, he either scrunches up his face earnestly or giggles uncontrollably before huffing and puffing at his dandelions.

On the drive back, I am subjected to Dennis’ nonstop, twenty-minute-long recitation of what he supposedly has for breakfast every morning (he starts out innocently enough with pizza, hot-dogs, and cheese, before segueing into eyeballs, stinky socks, stop lights “way out in Las Vegas,” car seats, telephones, stinky shoes, speakers, people’s brains, and on and on and on), refusing to admit what he really eats. “Well I usually eat waffles,” I interject loftily. “So!” he snaps, stung into telling the truth, “I eat coco-puffs cereal. And I drink all my milk, too! So I’m better than you!” “Gotcha!” I laugh, but Dennis is undeterred, continuing on with his recitation of ludicrous breakfast choices. The entire process is accompanied, of course, by dramatic eye-rolling, wild gestures, and further demonstrations of the “robot dance.”

I never learned how to whistle as well as Dennis does. But I did teach him how to snap his fingers. Lord knows, I just may regret it.

Another ditch in the road, you keep moving /Another stop sign, you keep moving on…

Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road, Loss and laments and letting go

I lean back into my seat in the university library’s 24-hour room, wince at the unrelenting hardness of my wooden chair, and ruefully wonder what possessed me to study here. I think longingly of the small, private, third-floor room where I usually study: broad tables with polished black surfaces, muted voices, chairs with cushioned seats. But the main library itself is closed for the night, and this is my last resort in studying for midterms I’ve given no thought to ’til now. The 24-hour room is long and narrow, harshly lit and crowded, filled with a cacophony of voices. Seats are scarce, stress levels are at their peak, and my innate need for personal space is regarded as inconsequential.

The lovey-dovey couple across from me can’t keep their damn hands off each other. I raise an eyebrow. They glance over, then look away, momentarily abashed. Less than two minutes later, they’re at it again. The girl next to me shifts in her seat, stretches, and tries to surreptitiously move my pile of books over with her elbow. I raise an eyebrow and shove them back into place as obviously as I can. She shrugs without looking at me. I sneer at her turned back and try to concentrate on the notes in front of me, but all the people at the next table reek of cigarette smoke, and this, now, I just can’t handle. I stand up, gather my stuff together, throw one last, collective glare at all offending parties, and wander out to my car.

Nothing beats driving home at nearly one a.m. on dark, empty freeways. Setting my cruise control, gulping down copious amounts of strawberry-raspberry juice, pressing the button to slide open the moon roof. Listening to the wind whistle through the inside of my car, marveling at the stars visible through my windshield. Comforted by Arabic nasheeds, words I don’t understand but which I’ve been playing over and over for the last week — because.

Because, these days, I feel guilty for switching on the radio. Because there are just some things that Matchbox Twenty and Third Eye Blind can’t help with, and my mother’s pain is one of those. Because I can speak of silly things and laugh at the mundane, yet tears have never come easily to me and neither has the ability to comfort those who cry, and so there eventually come moments when I find myself at a loss for words. Because just yesterday morning, rushing out the front door, not knowing where she was within the house, I called back easily, “Fi aman’Allah, Ummy; I love you!” but something made me turn back, and there she was, sitting there all along, weeping silently. “Oh, no,” I said, very quietly, in that initial moment of shock, then put down my books and bag and sank down beside her, holding her tightly, awkwardly smoothing back her hair, trying to murmur soothing things that probably made no sense, but what the hell anyway. And these days, when I come home and ask, “So how did your day go, Ummy?” she doesn’t smile and relate for me all the routine household news, but instead answers softly, resignedly, “It went.” And I lack the words to ease her pain and bewilderment, because I can’t even come close to understanding the magnitude of what she must feel.

And so, because of all these things, I drive home on dark roads, late at night, listening to Arabic nasheeds to calm my own heart instead. There’s just the star-studded sky, the hills I love — and me, contemplating the people I take for granted and the things I never expect.

the conversations i have

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Suckool

Somayya and I, wasting our lives away in anthro lab:

Somayya: What’s a lower molar cusp pattern? And a dental arcade?

Me: I have no idea, dude.

Somayya: Didn’t he just go over this in lecture today?

Me: Yeah, but I wasn’t paying attention. Or maybe I fell asleep at that part.

Somayya: Great, that helps.

Me: I think the dental arcade has to do with the shape. ::Picks up a fossilized jaw:: See, this is U-shaped. ::Inspects it further:: Wait, is this a V-shape?

Somayya: We’re so lame.

Me: Hmm.

Somayya: Actually, I’m the lamest one.

Me: I agree.

Somayya: You’re less lame than I am, but still lame.

Me: Great, thanks.

Somayya: Okay, so let’s move on to a different lab station. Do you want to go this way or that way?

Me: How ’bout we go this way? ::pointing at the door::

Somayya: Let’s go.

So yeah, we left anthro lab a mere ten minutes after we walked in. We just sauntered right out, looking straight ahead, as nonchalantly as we had entered. And heck, don’t tell me you could have sat there poking at Australopithecus anamensis and Sahelanthropus tchadensis fossils for an hour without getting bored out of your mind. But if you could have, more power to you.

As for Somayya and I, we went and slouched on a comfy sofa, sifted through an endless pile of childhood photos we had forgotten about, and laughed uproariously.

Good times.