Author: Abez

sold on an as-is, where-is basis.  

Damaged goods for sale.

It’s 4:45 am and I’ve run out of rocks. I started out with exactly 28 of them, my first batch being 13 decently-sized chunks and the second being 15 lesser rocks and greater dirt crumbs that weren’t so ideal for throwing but they would have to do anyway. The distance was (and still is) 110 feet, a frustrating and infuriating 110 feet when there are 11 dogs communally howling behind your house at 4:45 am and you have no way of making them be quiet.

I did hit one. One. One dog got a glorified pebble in the flank and slunk away from the pack as my victory cry rose to the dawn sky. Two dogs learned from their comrade’s mistake (don’t stand within 90 feet of that crazy lady’s house, she has rocks…) and left along with him.

A few more dogs took offense at the bad vibes I directed towards them and trotted away towards the soccer field. Three other dogs got wet when I slung a water-bag (like a water balloon, but much more serious) at them and scored a hit at their feet. They backed away and disappeared into the creek behind our house. That’s when I ran out of ammunition. Two dogs remained- the Statue Dog, which sat unmoving in our back yard even under the occasional barrage of my badly-aimed projectiles, and the Mother of all Evils, a small white dog with three loud puppies who prides herself on being the metronome of the wild dog world. When she barks, it’s to a steady 3-3 time.

Bark two three

Bark two three

Bark two three

Bark two three

Though the dogs are over 100 feet away, their shrill cacophony carries far in the clear morning and reverberates in the cement basement where my bedroom is. By the time the sounds get to my sleeping ear they are a series of metallic scratching noises, or bursts of dog-themed noise often in a chorus of five or more. I would like to go back to bed, but the Mother of All Evils and the Statue Dog are still there, sitting and howling on the unfinished boundary wall that marks the end of our backyard. I’m out of rocks and they’re just out of my range for flying bags of water.

I figured something out this morning as I stood outside the backdoor in my pajamas throwing rocks in all the wrong directions, and it has nothing to do with patience. It has to do with aim. And choosing the right rocks. And finding Aniraz’s slingshot.

Aniraz & I are planning a trip back to the US for the first time in four years. We also have to get the camp book together. We also have to buy gifts & clothes. We also have to figure out who we’re staying with and for how long. I’m sure I’m forgetting something…. Ah yes, my pile of unanswered email is getting deeper and staler. I received an offer for a job that I’m not sure I want to take, and it’s been a week since that email arrived. I have started and not finished four different blog layouts for four different people, all of whom have been waiting entirely too long. And plus, the dishes are dirty.

Did you ever notice that the more you have to do, the less likely you are to do something? It’s the same way that too many people trying to fit through one doorway become stuck and then no one can get through. That’s how I feel right now. There were too many things trying to get through the door at once, so I closed it. Not that closing the door will make them go away, it will just make them grumble as they stand in line, occasionally looking at their watches and wondering if it looks like rain and whether they’ll get in before it starts.

If only I could get them to stand in line, and then let them in one at a time and deal with them in the order that they came, but no. They all came at the same time and they all demand attention now, they all share the same deadline and they must all be finished before the second week of July.

I’d like to believe that I handle stress well. I still think I do, because I have never lost control of myself or my life, even in stressful situations, but man…I just cannot deal with long to-do lists. I never learned how to juggle, and now I’ve gone and dropped everything on the floor.

*sigh*

bloggerbot test pic. Testing, testing, check Hammie, one two three.. 

Well, I’m being bad today. And there’s watermelon in my lap. It leapt off my fork. *geronimo!* After a long and boring wait for my mother at the dentist’s office this morning, I sped off to Chai’s house to chill with literaunty and ismo. (oh, and you too Chai). I came home at a reasonable time but I brought Ismo with me, and we played about two solid hours of video games while eating shameful amounts of gingersnaps. After dropping Ismo off, Aniraz and I went to the tailor and then went shopping, where we bought:

cloth

thread

a pair of shoes

No french fries (boy was I disappointed)

After coming home at 9:30 we had dinner and I have been lounging about the house ever since. Lounging isn’t a morally reprehensible act in and of itself, but when you consider how steeped I am in old emails, pressing housework and dirty laundry, such laziness could be counted as major domestic sin.

So I’ve done absolutely nothing productive today. Maybe I should take the watermelon out of my lap. Or maybe not.

Real-time in Abezistan

Me: answers doorbell

Man: Is your upper portion for rent?

Me: No, not at the moment, but it may be within two-three months.

Man: Oh, I heard it was going to be empty soon.

Me: It isn’t yet. (turning away from gate)

Man: Hey!

Me: Wha?

Man: (having a Eureka kinda moment) You’re not Pakistani, are you?

Scrabble-Babble

(the following are actual quotes from our nightly Scrabble Games. I’ve been collecting them on the score-sheets)

Mom, you know you’re just a trophy wife. –Aniraz

Arf arf arf, go eat dog barf. –Mom

The sanity train has left the station. –Aniraz

Dad, you are *such* a cheat. – Abez

Look, I made a seven-letter word, GGROCER. That’s a grocer with a stuttering problem, ha ha! -Dad

I almost made the mistake of putting the bag of chips next to mom, ha ha. -Abez

And I know, I know, this isn’t the bestest blog in the world, but man, first I ran out of DSL and now I’m out of brain power, and I have a list of emails a mile-high to reply to and this was the best I could come up with. Maybe tomorrow folks. Right now I’m gonna go crash.

My mommy’s home. Everybody dance. 🙂

It’s T-minus 11 hours till Momma arrives, and I’ve got a rather daunting to-do list to complete before she arrives.

-Make Haleem

-Buy Rasmalai

-Buy Flowers (necklaces as well as bouqet)

-Wash Dog (she jumped into the creek yesterday and came out a shade darker and twice as smelly)

-Clean Upstairs

-Clean Downstairs

-Clean all bathrooms

-Wash Car & Clean Inside

-Buy Bottled Water

-Write Blog (check!)

Well, at least one of these things is done. *sigh*

Men’s kurtas are among the most comfortable articles of clothing in the entire world. Chai knows this, she has a kurta that belonged to her grandfather. Kurtas are soft and baggy, and when they get old they only get softer and baggier. Kurtas are the ideal hot-weather clothes for me. My father agrees, but he doesn’t seem to appreciate it, especially since the kurtas I’m wearing are his.

You all know the shirts I’m talking about, sometime in the sixties (or maybe the 1860’s) the uniform of the Pakistani male was the white kurta-pajama, the kurta being the loose, white cotton tunic and the pajama being the bunchy, soft pants that fit your legs like corrugated stove pipes.

It’s been a long time since kurta-pajama was really in, and at some point between the sixties and this century all of my father’s pajamas were lost and only three or four of the kurtas remain. They’ve been living in my wardrobe for years, but it’s still a shock to my father every time.

“Beta, you’re wearing my shirt!” my father exclaims, looking confused. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

“Because it’s comfortable abbu,” I plead, holding the shirt out for him to feel the fine white cotton, washed hundreds of times into softness.

“I know it’s comfortable, it’s my shirt.”

“Abbu please?”

Here my father shakes his head and wanders off, muttering about my strange fashion sense. I steal his regular qameezes too, and that irritates him sometimes. But I only borrow the qameezes, not the pants, and so that means he’ll sometimes have three or four shalwars hanging in the closet without their matching shirts. This evening my father came home to see me wearing one of his old white kurtas and arched an eyebrow.

“You’re wearing my shirt again Beta.”

“Yes daddy, I know.”

A few seconds of silence pass. He gives an exasperated sigh. I wait for him to tell me that he can never find matching clothes any more. I wait for him to remind me that when you wash the shirt more often than the pants, they end up being two different colors after a while. I wait for him to tell me to hang the shirt back up.

“Beta?”

“Yes abbu?”

“Could you at least wear the matching pants?”

10 pm: It wasn’t enough today that I should clean out the refrigerator, do laundry, fit a mirror into an antique frame, make pizza dough, drive the dog to the vet, eat half of a samosa and give our neighbours a tour of the (quickly cleaned) house. I had to make a new layout too. And now that I’ve done that I’ve got to go make a cake. Oh my aching back.

There are certain time-honored traditions in every family. In ours, there’s the insult game. The rules are simple. The person who out-insults the other wins the respect and admiration of his peers as well as the right to dance around the room and yell “I win! You lose! I rule! You drool!” and such like.

It’s not as easy as it sounds though, there are certain rules. The most important of which being that all insults must rhyme. Take, for example, this specific insult duel between Aniraz and myself.

Me: You look like a bat.

Aniraz: You’re terribly fat.

Me: Does your mother know you’re such a brat?

Aniraz: You look like something that’s gone splat.

Me: Oh yeah? Well I’ve seen better faces in place I’ve spat!

The crowning insult of the duel had to be this one:

Your head fills nine gallons of a ten gallon hat.

I thought I had won the match after that gut-buster (it’s hard to duel when you’re laughing so hard you can’t even sit up straight) but as Aniraz retreated up the stairs giggling she yelled out, “You smell like a dead muskrat!”

Drat. I have to think up an insult that rhymes with ‘bat,’ otherwise I won’t be able to show my face in this one horse town again. Any suggestions, amigos?

JazakAllahuKheiran & Thanks to Ahmed who made me this layout. 🙂 Not only is it easy on the eyes, but it gives me more time to come up with the ultra-Spartan and yet ultra-cool layout that I’m hoping to build sometime in the near future. I’d build it in the immediate future except that I’ve got work to do, cuz my momma’s coming home!

So far we’ve washed:

-the table linens

-the porch

–the dog

And rearranged the kitchen shelves and starting unpacking her stuff. There’s a lot more left though, the least of which is the cleaning of my own room which happens to look rather slovenly at the moment. I thought about taking a picture of it and then realized we were in enough trouble already, what with momma noticing the beans in the computer desk and the bed-sheet that’s been doubling as a table cloth. Mommas notice these things. They have Mom-o-vision.

So now it’s time to go clean something. Oh, and by the way, I’ve decided that as the only teacher in this here Blog-o-sphere I get to assign everyone homework. Here it is folks: Your home work for this blog is to go and hug a parent. Then write about it. 🙂

You’re an Etch-a-Sketch!! You’re the creative,
artsy type who doesn’t need to actually utilize
a single muscle group in order to have fun.
Doesn’t matter though, you’re still cool.

What childhood toy from the 80s are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Every now and then I feel the need to get back to basics. Sometimes I’ll get tired of the extras in life and stop wearing my watch or any jewelry. Or I’ll get tired of cooking and eat veggies and yogurt for a few days in a row. When I get fed up with my high-heeled work shoes I’ll go teach in sandals. When I get really tired of things, I’ll go back to wearing the wrinkle-free, too-dark-to-stain ‘black default’ jilbab for a few days instead of ironing and maintaining any of the other ones.

I think it’s time to go Spartan again (ulta-simple, not battle-ready and buff). Bear that in mind when I finally post my new layout with links only for my daily/favorite blogs and my people. I couldn’t stand the visual clutter anymore.

Peace & Chikken Grease,

-Abez

Blog under construction. In the mean time, enjoy some Engrish. It’s on the house.

I’ve been home all day today with a miserable head-cold. No, the irony of having a cold when the weather is so very hot has not escaped me, but irony alone cannot save me from the sneezing, the runny nose, the blocked sinuses and the feelings of general malaise. I don’t need irony. I need a another box of tissues.

I also need some chicken soup. That thought occurred to me this morning as I wandered aimlessly about the empty house, wondering where everybody was even though I knew they had all gone to work. I meandered into the kitchen and tried to think through what it would take to make chicken soup. Chicken stock? None in the house. Chicken cubes would have to do. Noodles? No, only macaroni. I dumped that in too. Parsely? None available. I crushed a handful of dill into the pot instead and threw some garlic in for good measure. Garlic is supposed to be good for you when you’re sick. Or is that ginger? I wasn’t sure.

I let the pot boil for a while. Then I got bored and put my head down on the dining table. When I woke up a bit later my soup had turned into a pile of slimy, yellowish macaroni that smelled faintly of garlic but mostly of chicken cubes. It was also spicy. Apparently I had thrown in some paprika while I wasn’t looking.

I took my yellow slime down to the basement and brought along half a liter of Amrat Cola as an incentive to eat it. As irony would have it (“less irony, more tissues” –The Nose) I finished half a liter of pop before making myself finish my slimy macaroni. It’s not that I was eating slowly, it’s just that I was trying to rearrange my noodles into a tastier position since their current one was sort of bland. I piled them one on top of another and decorated them with salt. I knocked the pile down and stirred it around some more. I invented mashed macaroni. I drank more cola.

The rest of my day has passed somewhat similarly to my morning. I’ve sat around, I’ve napped, I’ve used up all the tissues in the house and I’ve moved on to the toilet paper. I’ve also created a new layout for my blog, but all the germs in my head have addled my brains and I can’t figure out how to make my columns line up without any seams. Helpful and benevolent people with helpful and benevolent suggestions may leave them here. Help!

I haven’t been wholly useless today though. I did manage to pulverize my father and sister in a game of Scrabble. I decided beforehand that if they beat me it would be because I was sick. Since I won, it’s because I can beat them even when I’m sick. Booya. I could beat them with both of my sinuses tied behind my back, which they might as well be for all the good they’re doing me. Whatever it is that sinuses are supposed to be doing, I’m pretty sure they’re not doing it.

And I wrote a blog. So there it is folks. I’m going back to bed and if this blog stinks it’s because I’m sick and if it’s great then that means I can blog even if I’m sick. Booya.

My father brought an expert home yesterday to fix our CD drive. I went to put a scarf on while my father led the man down to our computer. When I descended the stairs I saw the ‘expert’ staring confusedly at an error message on the screen that basically read “system file C:\windows\system\systemlog is missing or corrupt. Boy have you done it now.”

I estimate that I had been gone only a minute putting on my scarf, possibly even less- a minute in which the said expert broke our computer. You know, the dictionary defines an expert as such:

\Ex”pert\, n. 1. An expert or experienced person; one instructed by experience; one who has skill, experience, or extensive knowledge in his calling or in any special branch of learning.

I have to agree, because in all my years of using (and abusing) computers, never have I once managed the cause so major a problem in so little time. This man though, he managed to corrupt/destroy a vital system file in under a minute, and I would say that this was nothing less than the work of an expert. I’m still not sure how he did it. Neither is the man who usually fixes our computer.

As our computer repair dude slid the case back onto the CPU, he said to me, “You should be careful about who you let fix your computer.” I nodded emphatically.

He went on. “You should leave it to the experts.” I bit my tongue and carried the CPU back to the car. Leave it to the experts?

God forbid.

Love is realizing that who you’re arguing with may be more important than what you’re arguing about, and sometimes that means letting go.

It can be frustrating and sometimes the sacrifice can go unnoticed, but you know what? It’s not important that people love you so much as it’s important that you love them.

That’s love.

Sensei Presents:

A five minute blog.

(cue William Tell Overture)

My dad’s gone to bring the car, motorcycle and dog in for the night so I have a brief window of opportunity to steal the computer. Technically he already has dibs on it but he can’t claim it if he’s not here. Mwahahaa!

Yesterday I left my sunglasses in the car while at work. After I got off of work and started driving I decided that I wanted to wear my sunglasses. So I put them on. This would have been ok if the metal legs hadn’t been roasted to piping-hot perfection in the sun. Consequently I burned the sides of my head, complete with yelping and flinging the sunglasses off quickly. I’m sure I have brain-damage now, and the fact that there’s no perceptible difference in my brain function doesn’t mean anything. I started out on the loopier side of things.

Uh oh, time’s up and I have nothing to post. Well, I did type a letter to one of my friends. Maybe I can lazily, errr, conveniently post some of that. Here comes Dad, RUNNNNN!!!!

-Abez

Real-time quotes from Abezistan.

(at the kitchen sink)

Me: Excuse me sir, but I need the sink for a sec.

Aniraz: (steps aside) Oh?

Me: I have refried beans under my nails.

Aniraz: Could this have something to do with sticking your fingers in the refried beans?

Me: No comment.

(at student’s house)

Me: Hey, where’d your dog go?

Student: We sacrificed and ate him.

Me: Don’t be silly, Eid isn’t for months.

Student: Alright, he’s in the back then.

(in the middle of a game of Scrabble)

Dad: (gesturing with a mouth full of pie) Mmmph!

Me: You want the chips?

Dad: (Shakes head.)

Me: The dictionary?

Dad: (Shakes head emphatically.)

Me: A glass of water?

Dad: (Shakes head)

Me: Are you alright?

Aniraz: Oh come on, don’t you know dad well enough already? He wants ice-cream.

Dad: (nods.)

One of the joys of having a site meter is that you can see what search terms people enter to find your blog. Two of the more noteworthy ones for this week are:

flies bites pants

Islamic militant websites list

To which I answer: Whaaaa?

I had two hour nap today, and it’s all Sven’s fault. Sven is an 18-year old German boy, and if he hadn’t kept me up until three in the morning then I might not have crashed into bed at 4 pm today and woken just an hour before Maghrib. That was the nap I took to make up for the sleep that I missed last night due to the computer infected with the Sasser worm that Sven built.

This afternoon, my sleepy self and I sat with a computer guy for two and a half hours trying to undo the damage. The computer guy politely said, “You should be more careful about what you download, there are a lot of dangerous viruses and worms about these days.” I wanted to tell him that this was the worm that Sven built, not me, but I didn’t thing he’d buy it, so I hung my head in shame.

This evening my father walked into the dining room and said, “Beta, is this some new fashion to wear your clothes so wrinkled?” I wanted to say that was Sven’s fault too, because if he hadn’t created the worm that infected the computer that kept me up all night that made me sleep in and wake up a mess then I wouldn’t have been this wrinkly. I couldn’t say that, so I just said, “Sorry dad, I slept in my clothes.”

After lunch I made horrible coffee, and that too was Sven’s fault. If he hadn’t messed up my computer and stressed me out about all the files I hadn’t backed up then I wouldn’t be so preoccupied that I’d forget to put sugar in the cup. After I got home from work I parked the car crooked due to haste and frustration, and if someone hits the tail-end that’s poking out just slightly past the driveway then that will be Sven’s fault too. *nods* I know that no one understands how it’s all Sven’s fault, but I tell you, if I ever get my hands on Sven I’m gonna wring the skinny little neck attached to the malicious head that contained the brain that wrote the code for the worm that Sven built.

Changes made, html cleaned up just slightly. It’s a work in progress I spose. In the mean time, everybody go read wakeuppakistan’s most recent post. It’s better than mine. 🙂

We now have DSL. Please form a congo line on the left and everybody dance. Also in tech news, I’m looking for some way to streamline the html of my blog. Benevolent and helpful volunteers may leave suggestions at will. In the mean time, I’m going to go hog-wild with the bandwidth and do something really unheard-of, like check my email in under ten minutes. Fasten your seatbelts folks, this thing goes fast!

-twenty minutes later-

I think we’re cursed. Whatever evil spell someone cast on our phone line has migrated to the DSL line, so after fifteen minutes of confusing the tech-support guy on the phone (“you got it today? And already you’re having problems?”) it’s still not working. I’m waiting for them to call me back with some brilliant idea to explain why things aren’t working the way they’re supposed to be working. My guess is that they’ve convened a council of computer guys and where they’re all munching samosas and hoping I won’t call back.

Little do they know that I’m going to call them back, and I’m going to hope that the contagious curse from my phone line infects their phone line. Mwahahaaa…

Oh wait, luckily for them it’s working now. I guess I’ll just have to save my bad phone vibes for someone else. Like the cable guy.

Dear Blogistan, we’re all connected in the circle of errr…blogs. Which means I got this list of questions from Amir’s blog, and he in turn got it from Anju’s. And for that I thank Anju for this easy…err…interesting update. 🙂

Twentiesh Questions…

1. Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, find line 4. Write down what it says:

He liked the loyal capo Gotti and displayed his affection for him.

2. Stretch your left arm out as far as you can. What do you touch first?

The wall. But I don’t want to, it looks dirty.

3. What is the last thing you watched on TV?

A Playstation game, if that counts. We haven’t had tv in months.

4. WITHOUT LOOKING, guess what the time is.

2-ish

5. Now look at the clock, what is the actual time?

1:50

6. With the exception of the computer, what can you hear?

Nasheeds, the Hadi-Al-Ruh remix. 🙂

7. When did you last step outside? what were you doing?

An hour ago, coming home from work. I flagged down an ice-cream man and then took two popsicles to Aniraz’s office.

8. Before you came to this website, what did you look at?

Amir Brook’s blog.

9. What are you wearing?

Sandals, scarf, jilb. Moon & star ring, chap stick, cheesy grin.

10. Did you dream last night?

Yes, and it had something to do with my dog. Honest.

11. When did you last laugh?

Earlier this morning, reading Roald Dahl’s Matilda with one of my students.

12. What is on the walls of the room you are in?

a few world maps, some newspaper clippings, I’ve hijacked a computer in Aniraz’s office. 🙂

13. Seen anything weird lately?

My car was full of lentils the other day. I wish they had been in a bag, but as it were, they were free-range and travelled nomadically between the front seat and the back.

14. Last movie you saw?

Ice Age.

15. If you became a multi-millionaire overnight, what would you buy first?

Jannah. 🙂 Masjid anyone? Then another ice cream.

16. Tell me something about you that I don’t know.

I drive better backwards than I do forwards, and that doesn’t mean I drive badly, that just means I’m pretty damn good at backing up! :p

17. If you could change one thing about the world, regardless of guilt or politics, what would you do?

Khilafah! Visualize whirled peas!

18. Do you like to dance?

Does the pope wear a funny hat? No, I don’t think his hat is very funny.

19. George Bush: is he a power-crazy nutcase or someone who is finally doing something that has needed to be done for years?

I pick C. Brainless, power-hungry, oil-rich moral leper.

20. Imagine your first child is a girl, what do you call her?

Sabira. InnAllah ma’as-Sabireen.

21. [Same question for a boy]

Saabir.

22. Would you ever consider living abroad?

Dude, I AM living abroad.

There are two words for ant in Urdu, chunti and chuntaa. Chunti, with the cute little ‘i’ sound on the end of it means a little ant, an inconsequential and harmless little ant that sometimes floats to the top of your chai.

Chunta, with a big fat ‘AH’ sound on the end, is the kind of ant that carries your cup of chai away on its back and then comes back to tote off your biscuits. They’re the big black ants with the big black pincers. They’re not harmless. They bite, and having bitten, they latch on and refuse to let go.

The unassuming little chunti is most commonly seen in homes and kitchens, foraging for crumbs or sugar crystals on the floor at night. The chunta, however, is not usually seen in homes, so you can imagine my surprise when I found one in my fridge today. And he had brought along three of his friends.

I don’t know how the ants got inside of the fridge. Judging by their size, I’d say they stood on each other’s shoulders to reach the handle on the outside and just let themselves in. If they came seeking Nirvana then they may have found it in a way. If not, then I hope they get reincarnated as something nicer- something that I won’t have to chase out of the fridge and then dispatch with my sandal.

It’s amazing how this is not even unsettling to me. True, I am offended that the ants refused to honor the sacred precincts of the fridge, but I’m not paralyzed with the heebie-jeebies. Life in Pakistan does this to you, it teaches you to deal with things that you never thought were normal. When Aniraz and I came to Pakistan four years ago we had to reevaluate the way that things had been dealt with before. For example, in the US, if an ant had been in your food, you threw the food away. If you did that here you’d starve to death. So Aniraz and I came up with two golden rules of living in Pakistan, two ideals by which to live and coexist with our new surroundings- Rule number one: If it looks like an ant, don’t eat it. Rule number two: If it looks like a roach, run away.

Thank you and goodnight.

Ok folks, here’s the deal. In two or three days we’ll be getting DSL.

WHEEEEEEEE!!!

and Alhamdulillah.

But in the mean time, I’ve run out of internet hours and don’t want to buy any more. See my dilemma?

Alright, now that we’ve voted to vote on something, we’ve got to decide on something to vote for! Any suggestions? :p

I say we put something to a vote. All in favor say aye. All opposed say Nay.

I must be a sweet person.

I know, I know, it’s difficult to accept, and I always thought that I’d taste something like Iodine, but no, I must be sweet. How else would you explain why it is that the mosquitoes love (to eat) me so. Just yesterday they tasted both of my feet, and when I tucked them angrily underneath my legs, they bit both of my knees. Aniraz wasn’t bitten at all. Apparently she wasn’t on the menu.

When I lay down at night they sing me to bed and then bite me in my sleep. My roomie, however, goes untasted. While sitting at the dining table the mosquitoes nip and whine at my feet from beneath the cover of the table cloth, and Aniraz laughs at me when I groan and wrap myself in a shawl despite the heat. She’s not as sweet as I am apparently.

*flutters eyelashes*

She catches mosquitoes with her bare hands and then holds them out for me to see. I tell her than unless she catches them with chopsticks, Mr. Miaggi, I’m not impressed. I never crush mosquitoes with my bare hands. It’s uncouth, it’s not something that sweet people do.

We sweet people, we just sit and meekly take our licks, and then when the mosquitoes aren’t looking, we sweetly blast them out of the air with bug spray. And if we can’t find enough mosquitoes left in the house , we take the spray out to the back veranda where we know they are hiding in the cool, dark eaves, and we poison them by the hundreds and watch them float down through the air like sweet orange blossoms on a breezy spring day.

*GERONIMO!!!*

Sometimes we close mosquitoes in cabinets because the violence of a physical attack goes against our sweet nature. Sometimes we slap them across the room and watch them fall to the floor stunned where we hope they are having sweet dreams.

Revenge, it too is sweet. :p

Quick info on the minor changes made recently:

Links alphabetized

Stars added to ones that deserve stars

Red Crescents for Islamic Blogs

Green Crescents for blogs in Pakistan

Eyes for blogs that are eye-candy

Questions or comments?

I’m trying to write a blog, I really am. It’s just that my knee won’t stop bouncing and my head is going –zingzingzing- from the Turkish coffee that I just used to wash down a fudge-dipped oreo (singular).

Another English Night is coming up. That’s where I have all my students over to play madlibs and eat munchies and use their English skills on someone other than me. Depending on how many people there are I may have a game of Scrabble or two, and hopefully there will be a delectable slew of various ethnic dishes. I have high hopes for one of my Egyptian students- she’s already proven that she has delicious baklava and sinfully sweet Basboosa, who knows what she’ll come up with next? (hopefully kunafa)

Back when I had six or seven Turkish students, English nights were full of Lokum and samosa and hummus, and it was gooood. Wait, that’s not enough o’s. It was-

gooooooood.

There we go. This time around I have one Egyptian, 3 Kazakhs and hopefully one last Turkish student will be able to make it. I’m also inviting Chai over cuz she maintains she’s ESL too. I let her believe that and pretend like her Urdu’s not as bad as mine. She’s going to hit me the next time she sees me now.

Oh well, I have a house to clean and a menu to plan. (Btw Chingiz, any requests?) I also have Asr to pray and Aniraz to wake up. For what it’s worth I think this blog is done.

I had a great time yesterday evening, and I spent much of it in the company of Hindus .

I’m not saying that to be funny even, though my irreverent intention is to get a giggle out of a few of you. I did spend this evening chatting with a bunch of Hindus (and some Jains too) and just to shock you further, they were Indians. *gasp!* You know, those evil people from across the border that lurk in dark places waiting to sabotage our national interests and scare our children at night.

There weren’t any Sikhs though, that much they assured me of. But still. I hung out with Hindus. I have hung with Hindus before. My best friend in eight grade, Yama Patel was a Hindu, and she was one of the sweetest people I ever met. Then in ninth grade I met Priti, whose mother was always happy to have us over playing in the living room, who knew I was a Pakistani Muslim and loved to talk about the food that was similar between the two cultures. (A Common Ground for Interfaith Dialogue: Parathas)

In high school I met Nipun, who in spite of his cool-guy veneer, managed to be a genuinely nice and honorable person. This doesn’t sound very impressive as far as adults are concerned, but it’s different when you meet a teenager with a developed sense of chivalry, someone who will actually stand up for others even when they don’t have to.

The Hindus I hung out with last night were equally high on the ‘Genuinely Nice Human’ scale. They were part of the Cricket For Peace 2004 tour that’s currently being played in various cities of Pakistan, and unlike other cricket series played between India and Pakistan, they two teams were not divided along national lines (the teams were mixed), and more interestingly, they were composed of children rescued from the streets in both countries. The most interesting thing though, was what the Hindus looked like- Pakistanis.

I was reminded last night of what I sometimes forget, that all people come in only one model (human) with the occasional variations (male/female) and are basically the same, Muslim or Hindu, Christian or Jain, Pakistani or Indian. And though I may not agree with India’s stance on Kashmir (and pigs may not fly) there is no reason why I should hate an Indian solely for their nationality. And I may not believe in Hinduism, but I have no reason to hate all Hindus as a matter of principle. Religion and politics can sometimes make us enemies, but it was Allah who made us all human to begin with, and I think that as long as we remember that, we can save ourselves from spiraling into the type of hate that fuels ethnic cleansing and massacre, two acts that are morally reprehensible no matter religion or nationality.

Peace.