Author: Abez

It’s the (takes a deep breath) WEEEEEEEEEEK EEEENNNNNNNNNNND! (dances around chair, hugs refrigerator, rejoices)

Well, I’m well on my way to completing everything that’s on my weekend to-do list. So far I’ve already slept in, had a leisurely breakfast and managed to not change out of my pajamas, so I’m off to a good start! Now all I have to do is catch up with my email and sally forth into blogistan.

(Later today I will clean the house and go swimming, and later this evening I will groan about tomorrow being Monday. Then my weekend ritual will have reached completion.)

I have bits and pieces for today’s blog. Just bits and pieces.

Bit Number One: Words that should be words, but aren’t words, but should be, so there.

Anemies -any of an order (Actinarea) of flower-like Anthozoan sea polyps having a firm, often large, gelatinous body as well as a hostile disposition and a tendency towards enmity.

Calcurat- any of numerous long-tailed rodents of various families (esp. Muridae and Circetidae) with exceptional mathematical skills or the innate ability to do long division. See also Ratador.

Canamel- a camel that practices cannibalism. – vt.- to canamelize.

Ratador- any of numerous long-tailed rodents of various families (esp. Muridae and Circetidae) whose specialty is killing the bull with a sword thrust at the end of a bullfight after performing a series of formalized actions with a cape to anger and tire the animal.

(what, me cheat at Scrabble? He he…)



Bit Number 2: The ISI and I

Oh yeah, and I was tailed by the ISI. I can’t remember what ISI stands for, but it’s the Pakistani CIA, or M-16 or whatever gov’t bureau is supposed to play spy games and do sneaky stuff in really sneaky ways. I left one of the embassies after teaching a class one day and a man walked up to the car window just I was buckling up. He knocked on the glass and I cautiously opened it an inch and said “What?”

He very politely (and even simperingly) asked me what my name was and what I was doing at the Embassy of (insert name of former Soviet-Bloc nation). I told him it was none of his business, since my coming and going at the embassy was already cleared and he (for all I knew) wasn’t connected to the embassy. He wasn’t wearing any uniform, he was just some guy who, up until two minutes ago, had been sitting on the curb outside the embassy gate.

He mumbled something that sounded like “ghar ki” (the house’s) and I was like “ghar ki what?.” He said it again and the phrase turned out to be “sekur-ti” (as in, “a matter of SECURITY”). I told him I was an English teacher and then I drove off.

I didn’t hear anything from him, or see him for a few weeks, but then one evening, as I’m getting ready to go to a reception hosted by the very same embassy, Aniraz comes into the room and says with the weirdest look on her face, “Hey Abez, there’s someone here to see you.”

I was like, who? I never get visitors. She said, “It’s the ISI.” I was like oh come on, don’t be silly. Who’s downstairs? “Really, it’s the ISI,” she said, “What have you been up to?” We had a nervous laugh over that and I went downstairs where I saw…the same guy. It turns out that he traced my license plate number and was here to get my passport number and my ID and stuff like that, and to ask me what I was doing, coming and going from the embassy all the time.

To make a long story short, he couldn’t show me any ID, so I wouldn’t show him mine. (not to be snooty, but American passports sell for around a million (ten lakh) rupees here. I would know, we’ve had offers.) I don’t care where the guy said he was from, a weirdo at my gate with no ID does NOT get my passport number. He confessed that he didn’t know I was a foreign national, if he had known, he would’ve come with ID. (Officer Friendly says: never open your door unless the police office shows his badge, kids.)

Finally, he gave me his name and phone number at the ISI office to verify that he worked there, and once I was satisfied, I was supposed to give my passport number. Before leaving he swore me to secrecy, and told me that no one at the embassy was supposed to know that the embassy was being watched, because he was an undercover operative. (oooh, aaah) After he left I called the American Embassy instead and they sorted it all out for me.

I guarded my ISI secret very carefully and a little nervously, I was good too, I never told anyone, until one day, I was on the phone with another English teacher who worked at the embassy before I did. She was telling me how glad she was to no longer be working there.

“So many times my student would be out of the country but he wouldn’t even have told me so I would show up for class and he wouldn’t be there,” she said, “And on top of that, that silly ISI man followed me around until he figured out where I lived.”

I laughed out loud and said, “Oh no, you too!”

“Yes, and of course I complained to the ambassador,” she said, “And he apologized but what can you do?”

Once I realized that the embassy knew it was being watched by the ISI, I told my student, not about myself, but about the other English teacher being followed by the ISI. “Oh that guy,” he laughed, “We know about him. He’s always sitting outside the gate.”

And that is the end of my adventures in the sneaky and *cough cough* dangerous world of diplomacy and political intrigue.

Bit Number 3: More bits.

Let the newts have a proper education! –Karel Copek., War With The Newts

But I was thinking of a plan

To dye one’s whisker’s green

And always use so large a fan

That they could not be seen. –Lewis Carrol, The White Knight’s Song

“Ale man, ale’s the stuff to drink

For fellows whom it hurts to think..” -A.E.Houseman. From “Terrence, This is Stupid Stuff.”

Tell me, O Octopus, I begs,

Is those things arms, or is they legs?

I marvel at thee, Octopus:

If I were thou, I’d call me Us.” –Ogden Nash, The Octopus.

Bit Number 4: Links

Mysterious link number 1. oooohhh

Mysterious link number 2, scary…

Ok, before I post nonsense as usual, I would like to make mention of something related to how much corruption there is in Pakistan, something that my Mother Dearest (da momma) mentioned in the comments of my last blog.

On paper, police officers earn 3,000 rupees a month, which is roughly 45 dollars. Additionally, on paper, anyone who earns only 3,000 rupees a month is eligible to receive zakat (charity/state support). You see how little police officers earn? And you see how hard it would be for them NOT to start taking bribes. 3,000 rupees won’t even rent you a small apartment, for that much money you’d be renting a single room in someone else’s apartment, and still you’d have zero money left over for food, utilities, medical bills, and God forbid you should have children (whose school fees would be 1,500 a month minimum) or a wife, and God forbid they should want to EAT or anything… 3,000 rupees is only enough money for a bachelor to live in a closet and eat lentils (20 rupees a plate) once a day, every third day and wear absolutely nothing. I’m not joking. It’s a ridiculously small amount of money. Government school teachers earn about the same, sometimes more, sometimes less. Low-level clerks, the ones who do most of the bribe-demanding (second to cops anyway) earn 2,500 rupees.

That’s like trying to live on a hundred dollars a month in the US in a big city. Maybe if you lived in a log cabin in the middle nowhere and grew your own food and had no electricity or utilities, you could get by on a hundred dollars, the same way you could live in a village here in a mud building on your family land and work on the family farm.

Although the pathetically low pay of policemen doesn’t relieve them of accountability, it sure shifts much of its weight onto the government’s shoulders. You see why it’s so common here? Most government employees, when faced with the choice of starving honestly or surviving dishonestly, choose the latter and not the former.

But anyway, back to nonsense. I brought half of the swimming pool home with me the other day. I was keeping it in my left ear. It’s all part of a devious plan to steal the swimming pool, one earful at a time, not unlike Radar and the jeep he was sending home in pieces. There was a difficulty with the plan though, I didn’t realize that having an earful of water would affect my hearing so badly, or that I would be unable to get the water out when I got it home. So I spent half of my day with my hand cupped around my ear and the other half of it going, Wha?

There are two morals to this story. The first one is, Thank Allah for your health, well-bring, and senses. Don’t take them for granted, you’ll never know what you had till they’re gone. The second moral is, Don’t steal swimming pools. They’re too much trouble. Steal the lifeguard instead.

What was the other nonsense I wanted to mention? I know there was something…nuts. Can’t remember. Wait, how silly of me to forget. Here we go.

It is said that all good things come to an end. I suppose this is the reason why our phone line (being a good thing and all) has once again come to an end. I feel like a broken record saying this, but the phone line is down. How long was it functioning? Two days, two hectic days in which I typed replies to the backlog of emails in my box that was a mile deep. I just sent the last of them off this morning, and this afternoon the phone line is gone again. Wow. Excuse me one moment.

(solemnly dons camo jacket, hunting hat and boots. picks up turkey rifle and resumes place in front of keyboard.)

Oh great, it’s back again now. But it’s too late. Phone line or no, I’ve made up my mind.

-ahem- Open season is hereby announced on all PTCL turkeys. Gentleman, happy hunting.

No more phone line. On top of that I have a dentist appointment cuz wisdom tooth #4 is disturbing the peace. Damn rabble-rouser.

Have a joke instead.

Life (www.funnycleanjokes.com)

Multilingual

A Swiss guy visiting Sydney, Australia, pulls up at a bus stop where two locals are waiting.

“Entschuldigung, koennen Sie Deutsch sprechen?” he asks.

The two Aussies just stare at him.

“Excusez-moi, parlez vous Francais?” he tries. The two continue to stare.

“Parlare Italiano?”

No response.

“Hablan ustedes Espanol?”

Still nothing.

The Swiss guy drives off, extremely disgusted. The first Aussie turns to the second and says, “Y’know, maybe we should learn a foreign language.”

“Why?” says the other. “That guy knew four languages, and it didn’t do him any good.”

the phone line is BACK!!!!!!!!!and I have a whole file of backed-up blogs to post. Here’s number one. 🙂

It’s 1:32 am and I’m supposed to be doing my class work for tomorrow, but I’m blogging instead. Don’t ask me why I’m blogging when I don’t even have a phone line. I don’t know why. All I can say is there’s no one else awake to make me do my homework, so nya.

I could’ve fallen down and killed myself today. It would’ve been totally self-infected though not entirely my fault. I blame the giant cockroach. At work this morning, I was sitting in the chair next to one of my Irani students, helping him out with the class work, when a cockroach deemed it fit to interrupt by climbing up my student’s foot. At this point, I went, Aak! Cockroach!

In response to this outburst, my student gave me the same uncertain look that all elementary ESL students have when you use a word they don’t understand, and he began opening his dictionary to the ‘C’ section. I stood up (and here’s where I nearly fell and died) way too fast and took a step backward and pointed to his foot. “By your foot!” I said, and he looked down and realized what I was talking about.

“Ah,” he said, with the imaginary light bulb over his head turning on. He then smiled and very casually put his foot down on top of the roach, and left it there. When the class ended an hour later, and the principal/headmaster/owner of the language institute came in to speak to me, the Irani got his attention and then very politely passed him the squashed roach that he had been storing under his foot the whole time. The headmaster sheepishly accepted it and then kicked it out the door. Such is life in Pakistan.

The other way I nearly wounded myself was slightly more serious. I say slightly because I mean slightly, it wasn’t so very dangerous, but it was scary, ok? I put my fingers on the line in the dramatic life-or-death rescue of…an ornamental pigeon.

I had just done wudu and I was about to hop on the prayer rug for some Muslim Macarena (oops, I mean Maghrib) when the doorbell rang. I went to check who was at the gate. On my way there, I noticed that the guard-dog seemed pretty interested in something, but I had to check the door first. I peeked through the gate and saw one of the villagers from across the street standing there. I said, Ji? (what/yes/hunh?) And the guy said, Baji, my pigeon…

It took a few seconds for it to click. My first thought was, What about your pigeon? The second thought was, I wonder what the dog’s up to, and my third thought was, Oh my God! Save the pigeon!

I ran over to where the dog was so happily employed in gnawing on an ornamental white pigeon, and I tried to take the pigeon out of the dog’s mouth. People, let me tell you this, never try to take food from an animal, even if it’s your animal, boy does it make them mad. The dog took the pigeon back from me (just jumped up and snapped it back) and started to make off with it. I had to chase the dog and wrestle the bird back, and by that time the dog had succeeded in worrying off a bunch of its feathers…It was still alive though. I held the pigeon over my head (height is one of my few pathetic advantages over the dog) and went back to the gate with the dog following me and doing her best impersonation of a snarling kangaroo, trying to leap up and steal the bird back. And of course, the dog was furious and the man was very grateful to have his lovely white pigeon back, even without some feathers.

I’m glad that the pigeon’s story had a happy ending. Unfortunately our guard dog, being the ferocious man-eating beastie that she is, regularly catches birds and eats them in the driveway, leaving nothing but feathers. (cue rousing musical score) Where dozens of bul-bul have perished, THE PIGEON SURVIVED! Ooooh, aaah. Gripping. Dramatic. An emotional tour-de-force. I expect that Paramount Pictures will be along shortly to buy the rights to the pigeon’s harrowing tale. The End.

The phone line hasn’t worked for days, and there’s no guarantee that it will work tomorrow, and yet, I cling to hope, futile though it may be, that mayhap one day there SHALL be a phone line, whose clarion dial tone shall be to mine ear as water is to the throat of one who is parched for long and many days. (Sensei is reading Ivanhoe, can ye tell?)

But yeah, so there’s no phone line. There may not be one tomorrow, so I’m actually typing this at an internet cafe. Here I go. Pardon the typos, there will probably be thousands.

I have a new student, which, in accordance to tradition, makes me nervous and causes me to dread every day that bring me closer to the first class. Sense confesses, Sensei isn’t really an adult, she’s just a kid who’s infiltrated their world and is afeared of being found out. Really, it’s intimidating trying to teach someone double your age and twice as important as you’ll ever be.

“Uh, look here, Mr. Diplomat, sir…” Sensei sez, trying to be respectful and stern at the same time, “This is the third time this week you’ve neglected your homework. What’s the point of moving on to next week’s lesson if you haven’t bothered to learn this weeks, sir.”

At this point I’m worried that Mr.Diplomat will thunder back, “Silence, Upstart American!” I’ve been busy with a delegation all this week and I have better things to do than your insipid vocabulary lessons!”

*screams*

*dies*

I know, I know, none of my students would ever say anything like that. They’re all very nice, in fact, all of the diplomatic-type people I’ve met have seemed like very nice guys. Of course, I’m sure it’s part of the job to seem like a nice guy, it’s only when you turn your back that they bust out all the devious spy vs. spy stuff, he he. I like to imagine that at least one of the students I teach from one of the embassies I teach at is a spy. It makes my life more interesting. Aniraz thinks it might be the security officer, based on the fact that he seems the least likely, and that’s probably his cover. I think it’s the third secretary, anyone who smiles that much must be hiding something…

And speaking of sneaky things, I was tailed by the ISI once. The ISI is the Pakistani CIA or FBI or M-16, or whatever gov’t department it is whose job involves doing really sneaky things in really sneaky ways. But that, dear blogistanis, is a story for another day. My net cafe time is up. Read my momma’s blog instead. 🙂

A thousand pardons fellow blogistanis, we haven’t had a phone line for the last week, and though I’ve typed numerous blogs since then, I can’t really post them. 🙁 I so sorry. (sniff sniff)

But don’t worry, my Mother Dearest is back to blogging again! Also known as Da Momma or, the Rockingest Momma in all Worlds, here she is, click here to visit my momma’s blog

Enjoy

Oh, and if her comments aren’t working, just meander back this way and leave one here. 🙂

I don’t know that my question about hijab yielded any useful answers, just wild theories about aerodynamics and tea cozies. Not that tea cozies are a bad thing. I’m sure that if I had a tea pot (that we actually used) I’d want it to be stylishly dressed. Yes. Of course. Excuse me while I tie a ribbon around the saucepan we boil chai in…

Well, I have about fifteen minutes to blog before I’m off to the swimming pool. Ah, quick, type something!

Oops, I wasted all my time munching dinosaur cake. And a sandwich pickle. Quite delicious. I’ve heard you’re not supposed to swim on a full stomach, but it’s ok. If I drown Aniraz can rescue me. Or if she doesn’t, I’ll take her down with me! Mwahahaaa! (splash)

****

I return, largely undrowned but very waterlogged. You know, I have one of those silly nose-clips, but that doesn’t stop me from inhaling water through my mouth. This often happens when I’m pretending to be the man from Atlantis, trying to see how long I can swim underneath the water, and I push myself to stay under as long as I can. Inevitably I panic at the last moment and start breathing before I even reach the surface. Needless to say, I am NOT a good swimmer. I’m not even a decent swimmer. To be honest, I don’t know whether you could call what I do ‘swimming’. It’s more like aquatic thrashing.

I know I need swimming lessons, maybe I need goggles too. At least then I could see underwater, and that might give my ‘Man from Atlantis’ act some credibility, or at least visibility. Goggles wouldn’t stop me from inhaling water though. What I really need is scuba gear. Or gills.

Aniraz just scolded me and told me to quit slacking off and write a decent blog. Oooohhh…(whine whine whine)…I’m sore from swimming, there’s a ketchup stain on my lap (don’t ask) and I just got home. I don’t know that I’ve done anything in like, a week that I could write a decent blog about, though I have seen four other taxis with TV antennae. (he he) I also saw a taxi with the word ‘JESUS’ stenciled on it in big, red capitals. This is compared to other taxis, which usually say things like ‘N+S,’ ‘Prince’ or ‘Game of Death.’ I have a few theories about the JESUS taxi. They are as follows.

Theory Number One: The taxi driver is a Christian. This theory is unlikely because unfortunately, Christians here face quite a bit of discrimination. A Christian would never advertise, not unless they were looking to run their taxi at a loss. I feel sorry that this kind of discrimination exists in Pakistan, holding someone’s religion against them isn’t kosher. It’s bad when people do that to Muslims, it’s worse when we pass it on to other people.



Theory Number Two: The taxi itself is Christian. Not possible. Everything Allah created submits to His will without question (except men and jinns, what losers we are), and though man may have ASSEMBLED the taxi, it is Allah who created the basic materials and they obey Him and the laws of nature that He’s laid out for them. Based on this theory, I would say that taxis are better Muslims than humans are, but I think this might get me in trouble with someone, somewhere. Somehow. I don’t know. Next theory please.

Theory Number Three: The taxi driver is angling for the Messiah’s business when the Messiah returns (the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and all of Allah’s apostles.) What better way to get Prophet Jesus’ attention than to write the name in big red letters? Everyone’s attention is piqued when they see their own name in print, yes? Hey man, I know if I saw a taxi that said ‘ABEZ’ I’d hail it sooner than one that said ‘BUTT’S TAXI.’ (actual taxi, BUTT is a last name. It would more properly be spelled as BHATT, but since most people aren’t Gora Saabs like me, they don’t care what the name spells in Angraizi)

And the last theory is, the taxi driver is suffering from delusions and thinks that he IS the Messiah. Shame on him. I’m going to tattle on him to someone, somewhere. Somehow. So there.

The phone line at home is flooded again, and here I am at my favorite net cafe, poking away on the ghetto keyboard and maliciously deleting all the porn that someone has taken the trouble to download. (MWAHAHAAAAA!) Just kidding. There isn’t any on my computer, but Aniraz is on the computer next to me deleting such things with righteous indignation.

So I’m counting down the days and weeks till I get to go to Umrah (InshaAllah, InshaAllah) and I’m all excited. EEEeeeeEEE! (bounces up and down in chair) I’m really looking foward to getting the nearest thing to a clean slate. If I perform Umrah correctly (InshaAllah, InshaAllah) then I get a whole mess of sins forgiven. 😀

Je sui beaucoup happy!

It’s hard to think what to type while sitting in the internet cafe. Time is money, money is time, etc. And it usually takes me a long time to type a blog. Therefore this one is short, and I will end it with a joke. 🙂

Ready for Society?

A man who had been in a mental institution for some years finally improved to the point where it was thought he might be released. The psychiatrist that ran the institution decided it was better to proceed with caution, and chose to interview him first.

“Tell me,” said the doctor, “if we release you, as we are considering, what do you plan to do with your life?”

The inmate said, “It would be wonderful to get back to real life, and if I do, I will certainly refrain from making my former mistake. I was a nuclear physicist, you see, and it was the stress of my work in weapons research that helped to put me here. If I am released, I shall limit myself to work in pure theory, where I believe the situation will be less difficult and stressful.”

“Wonderful,” said the psychiatrist.

“Or else,” continued the patient, “I might teach. There is something to be said for dedicating your life to expanding the knowledge of young people.”

“Definitely,” said the psychiatrist.

“Then again, I might write. There is always a need for books on science, or I may even write a novel based on my experiences in the psychiatric institution.”

“Another interesting possibility,” agreed the doctor.

“And finally, if none of these things works out, I can always be a fire engine.”

Yay! Alhamdulillah, I finally managed to post the supremely beautiful layout that Excalibur made me. Excalibur rules!

-ahem- But I’ve made a boo-boo, and I can’t find the comments box anymore. Somebody…help?

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog…

At least three or four times a week I kick myself for not taking the digital camera with me everywhere I go. Today alone I kicked myself twice.

The first time was for the photo opportunity I missed at the intersection of Margalla Road and uh…I forget the name of the other street. But right in the middle of the intersection was an accident. A Honda Civic broadsided a Pajero (luxury SUV) and you know what? The front end of the Civic (called an Accord in the States I think) was crumpled, and the Pajero wasn’t even dented! The driver of the civic was crouching down and trying to extricate his bumper from inside of the Pajero’s wheel casing but the Pajero was unscathed. That’s what I wanted to show in the picture. It was really amazing. (No, I’m not totally callus, Alhamdulillah, both parties from the accident were ok. They were all standing around and glaring at each other in the presence of a cop when I got there.)

When I told Aniraz of what I saw, she laughed and said, ‘Are you sure that wasn’t (name censored)’s SUV? Mr.Name Censored, we will call him Joe, is a friend of the family who works for the Embassy of (Name of country withheld). Oh wait, Joe is from uh…Transylvania. Yes. Anyway, Transylvanian Joe’s SUV is armor-plated and the glass is bullet proof. When we saw it for the first time we were like, Hey Joe, nice SUV! And Joe said, “Yeah, it’s nice to look at, but hell to drive. It weighs over a ton with the armor plating and it’s got no pick-up. And once it gets started, I have to floor the brakes half a kilometer in advance if I want it to stop. It’s like driving a semi.”

Transylvanian Joe is a healthy guy, and he says even he can barely pull the door open, and woe to whoever leaves a finger or hand in the way when it slams shut! An armor-plated SUV is not a family vehicle, not unless your family has fingers to spare. I’m content with my silly pop-can-on-wheels compact car. It zips! It zooms! It out-maneuvers Pajeros! (It has a superiority complex! It thinks it’s a formula one racer! Mwahaha!!!)

What was I saying? Oh yeah, I pity the fool who crashes into Transylvanian Joe’s car. They should aim for something softer, like a brick wall.

What was the other photo I missed? Oh yeah, an old chawkidar (security guard) in uniform, with a white beard, praying barefoot in the grass beneath a red hibiscus tree with his shotgun laying neatly at the head of his prayer rug. I love that about Pakistan, when it’s time for prayer (Maghrib especially) you see people praying all over the place, on the side of the road, in cricket fields, in small groups outside of shopping plazas…It’s nice.

You know back in the States, one semester I had an evening class in college that started ten minutes after Maghrib began. So I would sneak around the halls looking for an empty room to pray in before class. Once I was praying in an empty room (the Qiblah faced the door) and just as I said Takbeer, a Sudani man from my class (who I didn’t even know to be Muslim) walked in with a prayer rug on his arm, saw me, made a nervous squeaky noise, and then walked out of the room backwards.

He always gave me salaams after that. 🙂 A nice brother, MashaAllah. And now, an informal poll: What’s the weirdest place you ever prayed in? Or the weirdest experience you’ve had with praying in a public place?

When I think of every path

Where I’ve ever trod

I laugh at all the crazy spots

I stopped to worship God…

-Dawud Wharnsby Ali

Elf Ears and Evil-Eyed Safety Pins

In case you’ve ever wondered whether elf-ears (cute little pointy ones) are ever naturally occurring in the human race, then I am pleased to inform you that they do. One of my new students, a woman, has the epitome of elf-ish ears. They form a definite point, they’re not at all rounded at the top, they’re sloped and pointy. Very cute, and very interesting. It’s a pity that I can’t take a picture. She really just has the most interesting ears. She also has very interesting safety pins.

I confess, I failed to live up to my duties as a hijabi and be in possession of at least three safety pins and two straight pins at any given point in time (in the event of just such an emergency), so when I lost a straight pin the other day, I was in trouble. I made it to my class with my scarf slipping backwards and asked my student if she had a straight pin. She did a little searching around her house, and came back and handed me…a tiny blue eyeball. It was attached to a tiny gold safety pin, to ward off evil I suppose.

I’ve noticed that all of my Turkish students have blue eye-balls hanging on things, in all their cars, above their front doors, hundreds of tiny ones in a bowl on the dining table. It’s not such a leap to suppose they’d have one on a safety pin, though I’m not sure whether the eye was there to protect the pin or whether the pin was there to secure the eye.

In either case, I had to use the tiny safety pin with its glaring blue eye-ball to pin the main fold of my scarf down. The safety pin laid flat, but being round, the eyeball didn’t and it sat primly and conspicuously on the very top of my head. I thanked her and then went off to pick Aniraz up from her office, from where we were supposed to go off and run some errands after work.

“Don’t worry about the eyeball,” Aniraz told me, “It’s not like anyone we meet can even see over the top of your head.”

Good point. A funny point though, considering that in the US, Aniraz and I are just average height, but here we’re the first and second tallest women (respectively) in our entire Khandaan. (extended family) It’s really a kick, going from being an almost-short person to an almost tall one. The average height in the US for women is about 5’6 I think. Here it’s 5 foot one or two. The younger generation is coming out taller though, but without hormone-enhanced food (like they have in the US) they have a long way to grow…err…go.

There’s a new pic on the fotolog, but it’s not the one I wanted to post. I wanted to post a picture of the evil-eye safety pin, but I forgot, and posted a pic of…of…well go see the pic and try to guess what it is before you read the caption.

I’m posting from an internet cafe with a sticky keyboard (ewwww) so I gotta be brief. Life is good, the weather is humind, and I have a question.

Q: Do I seem like the type of person that you would gift with a bottle of wine?

No? Does it seem to go against the very grain of my (attempted) Islamicness? Could you ever see me (hijabi) swirling liquor around in a fluted wineglass? No? That’s what I thought too. But then a lunch guest brought me a bottle of wine and was very surprised that I would refuse it.

“And your father doesn’t drink either?” they asked incredulously.

“No, my father doesn’t drink.”

“Then keep it for your mother,” they say, holding the bottle out towards me, “Isn’t she a Christian?”

“Yes,” I sez, stepping back and trying not to look to terribly repulsed, “But she’s the really strict kind. She doesn’t drink or smoke, she won’t even drink coffee.”

Oh well then. The bottle went home with the guests. Silly me. And to think that all this time I was wearing my religious inclinations on my sleeve (or head) and no one would even notice. Sheesh.

And am I living in a Muslim country? Yes, but here the moronical gov’t has liquor legal for foreigners and non-Muslims, and of course, it filters into the general populace from that point.

Aniraz thinks I should’ve accepted the bottle just to be able to smash it against something, or maybe launched it off the roof. Our most popular way of disposing unwanted comestibles (things that are edible, not that alcohol is edible but you know what I mean) is to give them a running launch off of the roof-top. We disposed of about a hundred rotten hamburgers (the freezer quit on us) that way in the wee-hours of one morning, frisbeeing them at the wild dogs who were roaming the streets as usual. Boy were they some happy dogs…

But I digress, yeah, we shoulda taken the bottle and launched it off the roof and watched it smash into a million pieces in the street below. That would’ve been fun. Irresponsible (someone could’ve got cut on all the broken glass) but fun.

Fortunately, the guests brought a back-up gift, some imported coffee (YAY!)which more than made up for the wine fiasco.

Ok, I’m running out of time and this chair is REALLY uncomfortable. I’ve taken my computer into the shop, and it’ll be back soon, InshaAllah. Then I can go back to posting longer and more absurd things.

Peace! -Sensei

Sensei has written a new blog, but Sensei is out of internet hours at home so it’s stuck there till more can be purchased. In the mean time, Sensei has written a short story, her very first short story to be published (online or otherwise) and is eagerly awaiting your critique.

Nervously Yours-

Sensei

(New pic on the fotolog. 🙂 )

Another rarity: competent computer dudes. In my part of the city at least. A month ago I sent my computer in because it kept freezing and it was running slowly. It came back and ran ok for a day, and after that it’s been complete chaos. Not only does it freeze, but it no longer acknowledges either of the CD drives (reader or burner), won’t run certain programs without going into a frenzy of error messages, and files corrupt themselves on a daily basis. I’ve had to reinstall my anti-virus program three times because I get on and find it is no longer functioning. “McAfee’s files have been tampered with and the program can no longer run. Please reinstall…”

The obvious problem would be that I have a nasty virus, right? Well, apparently this is beyond my computer dude to fix. He’s even reformatted my PC, and the virus stayed. Well, I think the thing to do would be to scan DOS for viruses, right? But the computer guy thinks I’m nuts for suggesting this, and he won’t even tell me why the idea is so crazy! Sheesh! So maybe I’m not a computer whiz, but I can’t learn if no one will teach me!

:::huff huff huff:::

So yeah, does anyone know of a GOOD computer repair guy in Islamabad? Someone who won’t cheat me or try to steal the computer’s components when I’m not looking? Don’t laugh, I sent a laptop in for repair and it came back with the motherboard missing. (!!! I think that’s what my brother called it) I was an inexperienced non-techie then, because I didn’t have a complete mental list of everything that the laptop had to begin with to compare what it came back with. So I had no way of knowing or proving things had been taken except that my computer then took ten minutes to open a single screen. It got very, very, very frustrating, so I sent it back to the US where my big brother is a computer dude. He sent me an email basically laughing his head off. Hey man, it’s not my fault that the computer dude was crooked. (loser)

My new computer dudes aren’t crooked, I think they’re just incompetent. I sent the computer in with one problem and it came back with ten. I don’t think they’re trying to cheat me, because every time I bring the computer back they “fix” it for free, and I now know what my computer has in its guts (Pentium III, DVD Rom, CD Burner, Lucent Modem…) so they can’t really steal it. I even get to write my name on the print cartridge when I send my printer in so that I know I’m getting the same one back. Ok, they did fix the printer, and they also fixed the digital camera. You’d think that the digital camera would be more difficult to fix than a simple pc problem.

I complain to my brother via IM and he says to me, look, you can replace the modem yourself, just take the cover off and unscrew the… That’s when I run screaming away from the computer. I’m not sticking my hand into the computer’s guts. That way if it breaks they can’t blame me. I know that my brother was a self-taught techie before he went and got all his certifications, but I also know that he broke more computers than he fixed for a long time. I also know that he lost dozens of files I could never replace and caused me illimitable anguish for the same reason. I could sue him for emotional distress, but I’m not going to because he sends me video games 😀

Me and technology. We just don’t get along. This is another reason why you need brothers. Sometimes they pick useful jobs and then their services are free. Plus, they make excellent garbage disposal units. The cons of having brothers are overweighed by the pros they bring when they get older. Oh, and best of all, they beat people up for you. Once I had my brother pull a loser into the boys bathroom and pound some sense into him. And then there was the time my brother trashed a drunk guy who took a swing at my father. Ah, memories…

Sensei is melting. Semi-solid even under the best of circumstances, Sensei is now reduced to a gelatinous slime due to heat and sleep deprivation. There she goes. She’s trickled out of her chair and onto the floor. She went to bed at 5 am last night/morning after Fajr and woke up at 9 am and went to work. She’s just come home at 4 and can’t think of what to write as she lays collecting in a puddle on the floor. She would like to write something that is at least amusing. She could tell you guys about the taxi with tv antennas she saw today. She often kicks herself for not taking the digital camera with her everywhere she goes.

But wait, she’s not staying to type. The gooey puddle on the floor is oozing towards the sofa where it plans to spend the next week in stasis. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

1:45 am. Ok, I’m extremely awake now, which I don’t suppose is a good thing based on what time it is. (Work in the morning? What work? Where am I?) I feel like bouncing up and down in my chair and going YAY!!! But there’s no one to bounce with me because (duh) it’s almost two in the morning and everyone else is asleep. Hmmph.

Tomorrow/today is the last day of the semester at the school where I’m teaching English, and I think I’m giddier than my students are. I’m not going to give that away by losing control and racing around my desk in circles (as one of my more energetic students is apt to do both before and after class) but I do want to do something nice for my students. In my house, the family tradition has always been ice-cream on the first and last days of school. Not grocery-store ice cream from a bucket, but real ice-cream, as many scoops as you wanted on your waffle cone with one topping from Baskin Robbins. We weren’t loaded growing up, so Baskin Robbins was a big treat.

Ooops, I’ve been caught. My dad just got up and asked me if I was crazy, and now he’s told me to turn the computer off and go to bed. Nuts.

4:30 pm: Yay! Work was fun. I figured out what to get my students. I got them neat pens that each had a 3-D maze built inside of it. You turn the pen and try to get the little metal balls through the maze from one end of the pen to the other. I myself have several of these pens, lemme tell you it’s not easy. You have to work with all three of the little metal balls at once. Will wonders of modern technology never cease!

Oh yeah, yesterday I walked into my room and noticed that there was a shaft of light shining through the packing between the air conditioner and the wall. Did I say packing? I meant Styrofoam, there’s Styrofoam crammed into the space to close it off, and behind the Styrofoam is a bird’s nest. So yesterday I noticed that the birds, who had steadily been poking feathering into my room through the cracks, had finally pecked a large hole through the foam and forced a mess of feathers and straw through it. (Tweet tweet. Hey honey, did you know this nest had an attached bed and bath?)

So I went downstairs and grabbed a roll of duct tape (nothing a roll of duct tape can’t fix) and a cutting blade and came back up with the intention of closing the hole. I climbed the bookshelf (thank God for sturdy carpentry!) with tape in my hand and the blade between my teeth and was highly shocked to hear the top of the bookshelf chirping. Turns out a baby bird had climbed through the hole and fallen a foot to the top of the bookshelf. So I carefully scooped the bird up and nearly gave myself an aneurysm trying to put it back into the hole using only one hand without hurting it. (the other hand was holding me to the bookshelf!) What can I say? Baby birds are very uncooperative. I had to double the size of the hole before I could get the bird back in and then tape the hole over.

That was yesterday. Today the dirty laundry was chirping.

It was another baby bird, buried under a towel. I don’t know whether it fell down yesterday, same time as the other, and had been overlooked by me, or whether it was the same brilliant bird trying to commandeer my bedroom one dirty towel at a time. This time, I had the foresight to bring the digital camera up and take a pic before putting the bird back. I just finished gently cramming the bird back into its nest and taping the hole up again. If anyone thinks baby birds are cute, I invite them to look at the one that fell into my part of the house. (the birds only own the outside, the inside is mine)

I also have pictures of the storm that’s coming up on us right now, and a few other things I’ve snapped around Islamabad. I’ll put them up if fotolog lets me, if not I’ll just have to post them one a day. CHEEZE!

Sensei Presents: THE FASTEST BLOG IN THE WORLD!

Current time 11:20 am. Time of departure for work: 11:40. Time in which to blog? TEN MINUTES TOTAL!



(cue William Tell Overture)

The phone line was down for two days because it’s been rainy. Two of my students are going back to Turkey in a month, which means I get a little change of pace with some new students, InshaAllah. I spilled hot coffee on my foot in a most novel way which I don’t have time to type up at the moment. I have two bruises on my right knee, a Fajr bruise and an Asr bruise. At Fajr I (sleepily) banged my knee while bringing my foot UP to the sink for wudu. At Asr I (sleepily again) banged it on the way OUT of the sink. North and South bruises. All I need is East and West to complete the look.

Aaack! Five minutes left! What DOES one type in under five minutes? A vignette. Here I sit in a pastel green shalwar qameez (it was a gift, the khandaan is always gifting me with pastels…hmmph) drinking non-Turkish coffee. There are oly two kinds of coffee you know, Turkish and non-Turkish. To the North of me is the ironing board, to the East, a pile of books and CD’s I pretend to use (only the video games really are). To the south, a dirty dining table covered in grammar books and flash cards and lessons. Apparently my briefcase has suffered some sort of local explosion and its contents were scattered all over the place. Or maybe I’m just a slob. The world will never know. Quiet, Aniraz. To the West is the refrigerator. Lotta good that does me, it still has the same stuff in it it had two months ago, just condiments and 60 pounds of restaurant grade mozzarella cheese. They ran out of storage space at Chez Daddy. Time up! Here’s Thursday’s blog too.

***Thursday’s Blog***

For the first time in a long time I sat down and watched afternoon cartoons today on K-World (South African kid TV). All I can say is, cartoons ain’t what they used to be. Case in point:

The Miss Mallard Mysteries: A bunch of ducks with shirts and no pants solving mysteries. Miss Mallard appears to be an indirect rip-off of Ms.Marple, the famous fluffy old British lady detective by Agatha Christie. In today’s episode, Ms.Mallard and her nephew go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. While scuba diving, Ms.Mallard notices that an entire section of the coral reef is dead, and warm to the touch. She swims back up the boat (after narrowly escaping a shark) and tells her nephew of her findings. Together they go off to find their friend who’s a marine biologist, the duck-version of Jacque Cousteau (sp?). He brings his boat and crew, and they all dive down together to check it out.

While down there, they find a metal gear (hehe..Metal Gear. Snake? Snake? Snake!) with a company name on it and at this point in the episode, it is assumed [by unassuming viewers like me] that Ms.Mallard is an environmentally conscientious duck and this cartoon has an environmentally-friendly theme, not unlike Captain Planet. (the dweeb)

They swim back up to the boat to share their discovery, but while Ms.Mallard is climbing into the boat the gear is dropped back into the water. So she dives in by herself to retrieve it, and then the same shark chases her again. She doesn’t get the gear, but one of the shark’s teeth does fall out and Ms.Mallard brings that up with her instead. She hands it to her nephew and says, What do you think of this? And the nephew of course goes, Why, it’s plastic! (Duh, a plastic shark. Why didn’t I think of that?)

So the nephew is told to get on the internet to find whatever company in Australia makes…plastic sharks. (Boy, you can find anything on the internet these days!) In the mean time, Ms.Mallard and Duck Cousteau go down to the reef yet again, and while there, inexplicably get sucked into a vortex, which leads into an underground city, Duckopolis. It is learned (after about thirty seconds of investigation) that Duckopolis is ruled …not by an evil industrialist whose company is killing the reef with pollution, nor a profiteer who’s selling off the reef to tourists, but the evil Dr.Decoy whose plan is… drum roll please… to take over the world by destroying all the barrier reefs.

One thing leads to another, and Duckopolis collapses, everyone swims to safety where the police boats are waiting. The evil Dr.Decoy is arrested and we all live happily ever after. Yay.

I know that cartoons are made for children, I just wasn’t aware that they were also written by children. Sheesh. Now you say, Abez, you non-genius, if you want intelligent programming, why are you watching kid shows? You know, there are shows for really young kids that are done well enough for me to watch. Like Little Bill, and Sesame Street. They’re both meant for six-year olds, but at least they’re not an insult to your intelligence. (unlike Barney, :::shudders:::)

You know, back in my day, the ThunderCats and the SilverHawks and GI Joe and the Transformers battled absolute evil to save the world/galaxy/universe/dimension. And if I remember correctly, they were decently written and animated according to the standards of the time. Even before animation was good, there were still well-written cartoons like George of the Jungle and SuperChicken, even Bugs Bunny, cartoons that had the cheeky sense to poke fun at themselves and throw in some jokes that kids weren’t meant to get. (Gotta love the Biker Mice from Mars, hehe)

There are still good cartoons now, like the CGI Transformers Series (can’t remember what it’s called), Batman, Superman, and for comedy the Angry Beavers do a pretty good job. And Tick! How could I forget Tick? Nuts, even Spongebob Squarepants has more crea

tive writing put into his porous, yellow toe than all the cartoons I watched today: Kong (as in Kong, King Kong), Billy the Cat, Ms.Mallard Mysteries.

Now I’ve aired a bit of my brain that perhaps shouldn’t be aired.

Yeah, I’m a grown-up and teacher, but I still like my cartoons! (and video games, and novelty toys from gumball machines and sugary breakfast cereals…)

Hmmph!

Ps: One new pic on the fotolog.

(ThunderCats, HoooOOOOooooOOO!)

It rained! Alhamdulillah! The weather is like ten degrees cooler, and it feels loverly. Simply loverly…sigh.

The weather is so cool that I actually feel like doing stuff! (when it’s too hot, all you feel like doing is drinking and sleeping). So far I’ve cleaned off the dining table and computer table, and if I’m still feeling productive after typing this blog, I may sew a pair of pants or something. But not bake. No more baking. The coffee fudge cake I made last week is STILL there. I told my father to take it to Chez Daddy and feed it to the staff, and he’s consistently forgotten to do so for the last three days. So yesterday I had to check if it was still good, which of course involved eating a piece…

You know, on Friday morning I was talking to a friend of mine on IM, and she was like, so, what are you going to for today? I said have breakfast, go to work, come home, have lunch, clean house, play video games. What else?

And she was like, hello, don’t you know what the date is? I said yeah, It’s Friday. July 4th. So what? She was like yes, the fourth of July. I said yes, and the day after that is the fifth.

Then it hit me, ah, the FOURTH OF JULY, American Independence Day. He he. So then I changed my answer to include eating a burger and singing that Lee Greenwood song, ‘I’m Proud To Be An American.’ I don’t think she realized I wasn’t serious. I may be speeching here well American and having a blue passport, but I’m just as allergic to American patriotism as I am to Pakistan patriotism. Nationalism too. Patriotism and nationalism are both psuedo-religions, in the name of which anything goes, however contrary to logic and morality. But I’m not going to go off on a tangent about that, first of all, because not everyone is interested in reading it, and second of all, because it makes me sound like an anarchist.

ANARCHY!!!! :::sets curtains on fire, gnaws on table leg, rages against the establishment…:::

I think I’m gonna go have cup of coffee 3# and pray Zuhr and then do some sewing. Y’all may have noticed that my blogs are getting shorter. I think it’s because without my momma around, Aniraz and I don’t get out as much as we used to and therefore have less to blog about. We did get out yesterday, and I could blog about the twenty minutes we spent in Chez Daddy listening to a bunch of losers call each other on their cell phones and talk to each other even though they were sitting in the same booth. But that would be pointless, however amusing. Gotta go. Coffee’s calling.

Monsoon season is supposed to officially start sometime tonight, after which it is predicted to rain for three days straight. Yay! Man, if I had one of those weather-pixie things, mine would be melted. Today was 44 C (110-ish F) with nauseating humidity levels. The air is absolutely stagnant, there is no wind, nothing but a heavy, moist, heat sitting on the city. You know, I wouldn’t normally admit to sweating, but today it’s been pouring offa me like my skin has sprung a leak.

My daddy-dearest, who always seems to sweat enough for the rest of us combined, has been sopping wet all day. Poor him. And poor our dog! She’s been hiding in a shady corner in the driveway panting in fast forward and doing her best not to move a single inch. It’s tough enough having to wear a scarf in this weather, can’t imagine wearing a dog-skin coat while I’m at it…

So I’m hoping that this nasty, fermented atmosphere is the precursor to whopping storm, and yet I’m hoping that we won’t lose electricity. Ha ha. (Never hurts to hope, no matter how outlandish your hopes are.) That’s why I’m trying to blog before the storm hits and the power lines fall down and our phone line gets flooded and goes to sleep with the fishes and the autobots battle the deceptacons and some of the transformers get blown up. (Optimus, look out!)

Good News: the digital cam is back from Al-Mustashfa and pretty soon I’ll be posting tons of photos of tons of things you never wanted to see. Mwahahhahaaaaa! Don’t go to my fotolog yet though, I’ll let y’all know when I make an addition. In the mean time, please continue to let me know what you’d take with you to a desert island.

Abez Brain Sector A: Umm, a spoon?

Abez Brain Sector B: I desert, not dessert you moron!

Abez Brain A: (socks brain B in the cortex) Have at you!

Abez Brain B: Ouch! Just deserts!

Abez Brain A: Serves you right for not keeping the Sabbath holy…

Well, for the first time in three days, we’ve got both electricity and a phone line at the same time. Such is the precursor to monsoon season. We’ll have a few whopping storms that come a little early (they’re the pre-monsoon monsoon) that knock down electricity poles and make transformers blow up. (here’s a question, are they autobots or deceptacons?) We lost electricity even this morning, even though the storm was a few days ago because apparently it takes a few days to properly fix the bijli (electrixity!) in the far-out sectors like where we live.

Well, Aniraz and I are filling the void our momma left with baked goods. Lots of them. Just this week we’ve made Russian tea-cakes, chocolate-walnut torte, coffee-fudge cake and strawberries and cream pie. The worst thing about this is, there’s no one to eat this junk but us! WE ARE GOING TO GET FAT!!!!

Seriously, the cookies we made just before my mom left are still in the freezer, and we only finished one coffee-fudge cake by inviting guests over to eat it. (one down, one to go. I think I’ll send it to the staff at Chez Daddy)

Now I’m starting to miss my brothers. Aside from their value as humans, they also make great garbage-disposal units/food-processors. It used to be that a cake never saw the light of a second day in my house because we would all take a piece, and then give the rest of it to my little brother. He would take a fork after it and be done in under half an hour, he could eat a whole cake by himself. I’ve seen him. Same with ice-cream. He used to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner if we had it. If Aniraz or I wanted ice-cream, we had to take ours before he did, otherwise we wouldn’t get a second chance. It’s not like he was trying to eat us out of house and home, it’s just that big guys eat big amounts of food, it was his policy to begin at the beginning of something and not stop until the end.

I’m not going to rail against fate and genetics and the will of Allah for giving my brother the metabolism of a nuclear-powered submarine, I’m just going to marvel at it. Dude’s not even fat! Me, if I ate one fourth of the food he did I could run away to the circus and be the fat lady in their sideshow.

Well, what else is up? Flying ants are in fashion. They live for only a day after it rains, but they make up for their short lives by being very annoying in a very short amount of time. I’ve had to turn out the lights on the front of the house, otherwise they swarm around them by the thousands (party-sharty!) doing whatever it is that flying ants do.

Last year, when our dog was younger and stupid than she is now (yes! She can be stupider! He he…) she et them by the thousands and was a very happy puppy indeed. Of course, it made her sick. Dogs aren’t too bright. There’s a good reason why even in spite of their physical prowess and keen senses, dogs are not the dominant species of the earth. (yes, even aside from not having opposable thumbs)

Speaking of thumbs, do baboons have thumbs? I think so. I was watching a documentary on life in the deserts of Africa. One thing they showed (in the Kalahari) struck me as being particularly ingenious. When the bush-men go hunting in areas where water is scarce (that would be everywhere) they have a brilliant way of discovering where the secret water sources are. (Remember kids, don’t try this at home.)

Step 1. Carve a small hole into a termite mound, only about two inches across. You must do this in full view of a baboon.

Step 2: Stuff the hole with wild melon seeds and walk away, leaving the baboon burning with curiosity over what the heck you’ve stuffed in the hole.

Step 3: Wait. After a while, curiosity will get the best of it, and the baboon will run up to the hole, reach in, and close his fist around a handful of melon seeds. Now the baboon is stuck. Honestly. With its fingers closed around the seeds, the baboon’s hand is now too big to pull out of the hole. The baboon will go nuts, but still won’t let go of the seeds.

Step 4. Put a leash around the baboon’s neck and get its hand out of the hole. Then tie it to a tree.

Step 5. Give the baboon a handful of rock-salt! Go and relax. Compose a poem. Contemplate the sky. Wait for the baboon to eat all the salt and then get REALLY thirsty. This takes a whole night.

Step 6. Wake up and untie the frantically thirsty baboon. The baboon will run for water, and all you do is follow it. Amazing, hunh?

I’ve also learned how to make a monitor lizard trap just in case I’m ever shipwrecked on a desert island in the Phillipines. (Ray Mears Extreme Survival, BBC World. At least I think that’s his name) I must confess though, I’ve yet to learn why I would WANT to trap the oversized reptile to begin with. Surely not to eat! *dies*

Aniraz and I watched that show (how to survive!) and of course, the question came up, “If you were going to be shipwrecked on a desert island, and you could take one thing with you, what would it be?”

The typical corny answer is: a tall blonde.

Now my answer. At first I thought I’d take a machete. On second thought, I had a better idea. I’d take Ray Mears, and he could take a machete. He’s a useful fellow you know, he does this survival show, and he really just wanders off into the wilderness somewhere for days with nothing but the video camera and a machete. Dude’s got skills!

But it’s up to you, dear fellow Blogistanis, what one thing would you take with you on a desert island? Your answers are to exclude the following:

1. A boat upon which to leave.

2. A working radio with which to call for help.

3. Ray Mears

4. A tall blonde.

It’s been a lazy and yet productive Sunday today. I woke at one in the afternoon with Aniraz poking me and saying, ‘This is your one-o’clock poke-up call!” And my brain was like ‘zzzzzzzz….pppbbb?…rrrrr!’ (that’s the sound of the brain’s engine going from sleeping (0mph) to running (60mph)) and then I realized I had work in half an hour. (commute time: 20 min)

Don’t you just love it when that happens? There’s nothing like a bit of last-minute panic to keep you in good form. I now know that I am capable of getting dressed and leaving for work in ten minutes, with the help of Aniraz of course. It’s all a very precise, not unlike the work a pit-crew does in the Indi 500 or Grand Prix.

At exactly one, Aniraz pokes me and then rushes downstairs to make me a cup of coffee while I run into the bathroom to wash my face. I get out of the bathroom, throw on the first clean jilb I lay hands on and run down the stairs (thankfully without breaking my ankle this time). Aniraz is there at the bottom of the stairs with a cup of coffee. I grab it and skull it and then quickly pull up the documents I need printed on the computer. Aniraz prints them out while I go put on my scarf. My father has, in the mean time, set lunch out on the table and I rush to the table and eat standing up, run back to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and then grab the car keys, Aniraz tightens the bolts on my tires with a pneumatic drill and then I run out to the racetrack…errr…work.

Due to the dedicated and kind service of Aniraz, I made it to work with three minutes to spare! So three cheers for my pit crew, Hip! Hip! JazakAllah! Hip! Hip! JazakAllah!

I don’t normally work on Sunday, but today was the first class with a new student who couldn’t make it yesterday and so asked to reschedule for today. I may be Muslim (maybe? Definitely!) but after living with a Fundamentalist Christian mother (hi Mommy!) for all my life, I have a mental hang-up about working in Sundays. I almost said no to rescheduling on Sunday because my brain was like, ‘Nope, no work on Sunday. Gotta keep the Sabbath holy, you know.’ Then the other part of my brain (the one that makes sense) said, ‘Hey moron, your Sabbath is on Friday.’

So today I got a new student, and lost one at the same time. My oldest student (not in age, but duration of study) is discontinuing lessons and I’m actually rather sad. He was the most advanced, and we got to read all kinds of great things and have interesting discussions about politics and stuff. You can’t really do that with a student who is only intermediate, because although their vocabulary is pretty good for an ESL student, it’s not broad enough to include the words for concepts like duplicity, the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction and imperialism. It’s not that they don’t know them in their own languages, it’s just that the conversation is limited to the vocabulary they have in English.

I have that same problem speaking Urdu. Though my brain may be grown-up (or a least masquerading as an adult) my tongue in Urdu is still a kid’s tongue. I lived in Pakistan from when I was ten to when I was thirteen, and that’s when I learned Urdu, and my vocabulary is still stuck there. I can carry on a simple conversation, but my vocabulary is so limited that when it comes down to talking politics or religion or philosophy, I either call my dad in for translation or become so frustrated that I give up and start talking about the weather instead. You know, just last week I learned the Urdu words for repair, coalition, and con-artistry. (marammat, mahaz, nausarbaazi) Before that I would’ve said sahih karna, jamaat and chor. (correct, gathering, thief) They’re not really the same you know. You can repair a car, but not necessarily correct it.

What else is up? I dunno. Oh yeah, once I had my nose knocked crooked by a flying loaf of frozen raisin bread. My big brother and I were sword fighting in the kitchen. My sword was the knife sharpener (it’s a long, dull piece of stone with a handle, I wouldn’t DREAM of taking a knife to either of my brothers, oh no…mwahahaaaa) and his sword was a loaf of raisin bread from the deep freezer. (En guarde! Thrust! Parry! Ouch, Touché!) So we were sword fighting in the kitchen, which is fairly routine in my house, and then he lifted the bread above his head and started whipping it around in the air over his head like a battle axe. Well, the kitchen wasn’t very big, or maybe the bread wasn’t very small, but I got hit in the nose with a loaf of bread that was harder than a rock.

And the moral of this story?

Friends don’t let brothers wield raisin bread. Something like that anyway.

Instant English Instructor: Just add water.

Well, it was raining and pouring on my way to work today. That wouldn’t have been a problem except that I was going to work on my father’s motorcycle. (!!!!) My father and I were about halfway to the house where I was going to teach, when a drop of rain smacked me (when you’re going 60 kilometers an hour, the raindrops don’t land, they smack) in the face. I said, ‘Dad is it raining?’ He said, “Yes, but we’re almost there. We’ll make it, InshaAllah.”

InshaAllah, just in case you’ve forgotten, means ‘If Allah Wills’. We say that such-and-such a thing will happen, provided that Allah wills it. Well, Allah did not will for us to arrive before the storm began, and so we didn’t. So we got soaked instead. At first my sunglasses were acting as a windshield so I could still see, but after my scarf got soaked through, the water was just pouring down my face and into my eyes and with both my hands occupied (one holding bag, the other holding on to father) all I could do was ride through the rain with my eyes closed. It was actually fun, and I was cold for the first time in a month! Amazing!

The fun ended when I arrived at work, soaked to the skin. I got off my dad’s motorcycle and put both of my feet on the ground (squish squish) and rang the doorbell. The gate was opened, then I walked (squish squish squish squish) up to the door and knocked. The housekeeper opened it, took one shocked look at me, and started laughing. I was laughing too. It’s not everyday that you see someone dripping wet from head to toe in yards and yards of black fabric. (my scarf and jilb) I must’ve looked like a cat someone had tried to drown.

They let me in and I made a big puddle in the entryway waiting for us to figure out what to do for clothes. The lady of the house is an entire foot shorter than I am, so her clothes were ruled out. So were the clothes of my student, her nine-year old daughter. The only clothes that remotely fit me were the housekeeper’s, and I must say she has pretty good taste. She’s Afghani, so I got a huge, unbelted white shalwar (baggy pants) and a very long blue and white qameez (tunic) with no chalks and floral embroidery all the way from neck down to the hem. It was more like a dress with pants underneath than a shalwar-qameez.

I’m thinking of having something like her suit made. It was very comfy. So what if I’m not Afghani? I’m also not male and I’m not Bruce Lee, but I’m wearing one of my father’s old white kurtas left over from his university days with a pair of my little brother’s karate uniform pants. Nuts to conformity. If it’s comfortable, I’ll wear it! (Hmm, maybe that’s why my housekeeper is always laughing at me.)

My father (who got as wet as I did, but not wetter, because it’s impossible that either of us could get any wetter) didn’t have the luxury of wearing someone’s housekeeper’s clothes. He went to my sister’s office and dripped on her floor for a while, then decided to wring his clothes out in her bathroom. He was dry by the time he came back to pick me up again though, and you know what? I think he’s still wearing those same clothes now…

(Hey Yaz, does this count as tossing the football?)

Computer is fixed! Alhamdulillah! Finally! Now I can type a new blog to make up for the following substandard one.

Here’s yesterday’s post, today. I blame blogger.

Aaak! I can’t type while listening to music but I’m doing my best. Scout’s honor.

But on the day the scrolls are laid/

With every word and deed displayed/

When we read our account/

I know for one I’ll be afraid/

That day, I’ll be so afraid to read/

Every harsh word that I’ve spoken/

Every time that I have lied/

I’ll be obliged to admit/

I’ll be obliged to submit/

Will I have strength owning up to/

Each deed I’ve tried to hide?/

Allah, I’m so afraid to read/

These lines from Afraid to Read, The Prophet’s Hands by Dawud Wharnsby Ali, a beaucoup excellent Islamic music CD. It’s what I’m plugged up to at the moment, and I love this CD and I can’t get myself to put two sentences together in five minutes because I’m too busy enjoying myself. Forget this man, I’ll write after the CD is finished, in the mean time, I’m cranking it up. Enjoy a joke till I’m done.

This guy goes to a pet shop to buy a parrot.

He sees one on a perch with a red string tied to its left leg and a green string tied to its right leg. He asks the owner the significance of the strings.

“Well, this is a highly trained parrot,” the owner tells him. “If you pull the red string he speaks French; if you pull the green string he speaks German.”

“And what happens if I pull both the strings?” our curious shopper inquires.

“You goober,” screeches the parrot, “I fall off my perch!”

Ok, I can concentrate now. The computer was in the shop (and out, and then in again) all throughout this week and that makes is hard not only to keep in touch, but to print out class work! Additionally, since my momma is gone, I can’t find anything and I don’t know where she left any of her papers or files. Therefore, I have dubbed these last few days ‘The Week of Chaos.’ Things are just starting to get normal again. The school where I’m subbing for my mother is finally making me my own ID.

Last Monday I tried to get in with my mother’s ID and the fact that a scarf-wearing fundu-type (me) was trying to make it into the diplomatic enclave using the ID of a blonde American-type (my mother) aroused great suspicion. I was questioned by the guards at all three of the guard posts, and stopped at the bomb check, and then they had to call in before opening the gate for me. (Who are you? Whose ID is this? Where’s your ID? Where are you from? Where are you going?)Today they met me at the main gate of the diplomatic enclave with a driver though so I had no problem getting in. I was tempted to stick my tongue out at all the guards as we passed. >:p pbbt! Nya nya! They let me in!

What else? The weather is still disgustingly hot and humid. Electricity was in short supply today. I can’t think of much else. The next English Night has been postponed because the student who was supposed to be hosting it has flown suddenly out of the country on business. That’s the problem with diplomats, they always disappear on you. One of my mother’s students hired her for five classes a week and only made it to two of them in the entire month. I’ve been lucky that most of my students stay put, but still. A rolling stone and a diplomat, neither gathers moss.

I’ve also decided (after teaching my mother’s English class of ten year olds) that I prefer teaching adults. They’re more interesting, and plus you don’t have to play mind games with them to get them to pay attention during class. With kids, you’re lucky if you hold their undivided attention for the entire duration of the class let alone for five minutes. With adults it’s different, because they are taking the class voluntarily, (and since they’re paying for it too) they try to get the most out of it. If my adult students were anything like my kid students, then they’d be picking their noses and whining and looking everywhere around the room except the blackboard. He he…that’s a funny mental picture. Sorry, I’m just seeing the –name of position withheld- officer of the embassy of –name of country withheld- fidgeting in his seat with his fingers up his nose…he he

-ahem-

Alright, I’m just wasting space now, since I have nothing really interesting to say anyway. I’ll stop now.

(he he)

(you still here? Ok, then click this.)

The Lizard is Quicker than the Eye

Well, my momma’s arrived safely in the states, Alhamdulillah. Life is dull but going on. –sigh-

On a more entertaining note, we have a stalker! He’s got medium yellow skin, beady black eyes, four legs, a detachable tail and the cutetest little reptile face you ever saw! Yes, my stalker is a lizard. A teeny, tiny little thing, no long than an inch and a half. (four centimeters?) The first time I saw him, he was zipping across the floor so quickly, (and he was just so small and so dirt-colored) I though, boy that’s the straightest-flying dust bunny I’ve ever seen. That same evening, I was sitting on my bed reading and Aniraz was praying Isha. Suddenly I heard her say, “Look up slowly, and don’t move…”

Well those are distubing words no matter how you say them. I looked up slowly thinking I was going to see a man with a knife or a giant tarantula (in order of terrifying importance) and instead I saw…the mini-lizard. He had squeezed his itty-bitty body under the door and had been standing at the head of the prayer rug while Aniraz was praying. I looked up, saw him sighed in relief and said, “aw, how cute.” Then I blinked and he was gone. Aniraz (who hadn’t blinked) informed me that he didn’t just disappear into thin air. He just zipped back under the door again.

Next day, my dad finishes lunch and goes to get his shirt off the ‘recently accessed clothing’ hook and then does a little dance all of a sudden. Then he shakes out his shirt, puts it on, and very calmy says, “When you take your jilbab off the hook, be careful. There’s a little lizard on it. I just shook it out of my pocket.”

See? It’s stalking us. Or spying on us, or something. But it’s really cute so I don’t mind. I must make a disclaimer by the way, my computer is busted so I’m typing this blog in a net cafe, and for some reason, the spellcheck has been disabled. On top of that, the keyboard is stickier than a French cruller, so half the keys I hit don’t do anything. That’s why I may have an excess of goofy typing errors this time. A thousand pardons I beg of ye.

Well, I went and subbed for my mom today at the foreign school, and surprise surprise, they stopped me for not having an ID and I was fifteen minutes late for class by the time I got through the three guard posts and the bomb search. On a positive note, the school is finally going to make me my own ID…

The guests we had over Karachi (an aunt and uncle who came to see my mother off) were like the nicest, most low-maintanance guests I have ever had. Alhamdulillah, they were actually good to have around. I felt sad when they left. Nice people. 🙂

Well, my hiatus is up and I can go back to nonsense as usual. But now, it’s nonsense with a difference…it’s nonsense that my mother will read! Hi momma! This blog’s for you!

Chaos. My mother is leaving in two days. I have relatives from Karachi coming up in three hours, the house is not ready, the bedrooms are not guest-worthy. I actually missed a class today because I was so busy that I just forgot to go. (!!!!!!!) My student sat there twiddling her thumbs for an hour and a half waiting for me and I feel SO bad…I don’t have an ID yet for the school where I’ll be subbing for my mother, I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through the three guard posts and the bomb-check without one. (It’s in the diplomatic enclave and the security is tighter than tight.)

I have to go panic now. I’m on blogland hiatus till my mother is packed, the guests depart, and the madness subsides. Maybe I’ll be back by Sunday. Until then, talk amongst your selves and pray for my sanity.

Fretfully Yours,

-Sensei

My fifteen seconds of fame.

Yesterday, my mother, sister and I were out shopping at one of the larger, smellier, busier bazaars here in Islamabad. It was rush-hour (just afore Maghrib) and it was insanity in the parking lot. I was blocked in by a double-parked Hilux (big Toyota pick-up truck) whose driver was being harassed by the police for his license. Fine, I thought, let the police check his license, but let him move up two feet so I can get out of here! So I honked.

A big crowd had gathered around the Hilux and we were starting to wonder what was going on. Finally the Hilux pulled away, and I started to back out of the parking space. I was halfway out when the same cop then came over to me and asked to see my license. (what a great time to ask, eh, me halfway out of a parking space, with the tail-end of my car blocking traffic) I pulled it out and gave it to him. He looked at it and said in Urdu, Ok Madame, you’ve parked in a no parking zone. I’m just going to give you a ticket.

I gave him an incredulous look and asked him in English how a parking lot could be a no-parking zone. Now you wonder why I switched over to English. Frankly, the cops in Pakistan are crooked. It’s not uncommon to pull people over for imaginary violations and then demand a bribe if they don’t want a ticket. I switched over to English because the cops won’t do that to foreigners. (shame on them, you’d think they’d be nicer to their own people first and harass the foreigners instead!)

The cop then started stammering and told me in flustered English that there were no-parking signs every hundred feet. I told him to show me. Then I heard from the crowd, “Cut! Cut! Cut that out!” and a man with a video camera came up to the window and put the camera down. The cop said, Sorry Madame, we were just making a documentary. I told him he could’ve told me that before he tried to ticket me for parking in a parking lot. Some guy with big sunglasses then stuck his face in my window (probably the director, it was the guy who yelled ‘Cut’) and apologized to me. So, if any of you happen to be watching the Citi Channel or Geo or ARY Digital or PTV or something, and you happen to see a very annoyed, Arab-looking hijabi sassing a Pakistani traffic cop, that’ll be me.

Randomness:

The ice-hat. Soak a bandana and lay it open. Line up three or four ice cubes diagonally, and then fold in half, so you get a lumpy triangle. Then roll the bandana so the ice cubes are in the middle. Knot the two ends together and then lay the bandana in the freezer so that it freezes in a circular shape. After half an hour, take it out and presto! You have an ice-hat, a circular band of ice to place on your head and enjoy!

Khalid ibn El Waleed narrated the following hadith:

A Bedouin came one day to the Prophet (Peace & Upon Him) and said to

him,

“0, Messenger of Allah! I’ve come to ask you a few questions about the

affairs of this Life and the Here After.”

-Ask what you wish.

Q: I’d like to be the most learned of men.

A: Fear Allah, and you will be the most learned of men.

Q: I wish to be the richest man in the world.

A: Be contented, and you will be the richest man in the world.

Q: I’d like to be the most just man.

A: Desire for others what you desire for yourself, and you will be the

most just of men.

Q: I want to be the best of men.

A: Do good to others and you will be the best of men.

Q: I wish to be the most favored by Allah.

A: Engage much in Allah’s praise, and you will be most favored by Him.

Q: I’d like to complete my faith.

A: If you have good manners you will complete your faith

Q: I wish to be among those who do good.

A: Adore Allah as if you see Him. If you don ‘t see Him, He seeth you.

In this way you will be among those who do good.

Q: I wish to be obedient to Allah.

A: If you observe Allah’s commands you will be obedient.

Q: I’d like to be free from all sins.

A: Bathe yourself from impurities and you will be free from all sins.

Q: I’d like to be raised on the Day of Judgment in the light.

A: Don’t wrong yourself or any other creature, and you will be raised

on the Day of Judgment in the light.

Q: I’d like Allah to bestow His mercy on me.

A: If you have mercy on yourself and others, Allah will grant you mercy

on the Day of Judgment.

Q: I’d like my sins to be very few.

A: If you seek the forgiveness Allah as much as you can, your sins will

be very few.

Q: I’d like to be the most honorable man.

A: If you do not complain to any fellow creature, you will be the most

honorable of men.

Q: I’d like to be the strongest of men.

A: If you put your trust in Allah, you will be the strongest of men.

Q: I’d like to enlarge my provision.

A: If you keep yourself pure, Allah will enlarge your provision.

Q: I’d like to be loved by Allah and His messenger.

A: If you love what Allah and Him messenger love, you will be among

their beloved ones.

Q: I wish to be safe from Allah’s wrath on the Day of Judgment.

A: If you do not loose your temper with any of your fellow creatures,

you will be safe from the wrath of Allah on the Day of Judgment.

Q: I’d like my prayers to be responded to.

A: If you avoid forbidden actions, your prayers will he responded.

Q: I’d like Allah not to disgrace me on the Day of Judgment.

A: If you guard your chastity, Allah will not disgrace you on the Day

of Judgment.

Q: I’d like Allah to provide me with a protective covering on the Day

of Judgment.

A: Do not uncover your fellow creatures faults, and Allah will provide

you with a covering protection on the Day of Judgment.

Q: What will save me from sins?

A: Tears, humility and illness.

Q: What are the best deeds in the eyes of Allah?

A: Gentle manners, modesty and patience.

Q: What are the worst evils in the eyes of Allah?

A: Hot temper and miserliness.

Q: What assuages the wrath of Allah in this life and in the Hereafter?

A: Concealed charity and kindness to relatives.

Q: What extinguishes hell’s fires on the Day of Judgment?

A: Patience in adversity and misfortunes.

Related by Imam Ibn Hambal

We’re playing hide-and-seek with the electricity today, so I don’t know how successful I’ll be in getting this blog typed. (save) I’m afraid that anything I (save) type will be lost if the electricity (save) goes out again. So I’m (save) trying to (save) as often as possible. –phew-

I’m sitting at the computer, daintily chugging iced-coffee out of a 40oz peanut butter jar. I’d be drinking out of the mayonnaise jar, but Aniraz claimed it first. Sooooooo….it’s 2:30 in the afternoon and I just woke up. Frankly, I’m surprised I woke up this early considering that it’s Sunday. I try to ruin my schedule and be absolutely as un-productive as possible on my weekends. I consider it to be recovery from working all week. So last night I was playing video games till Fajr, then I prayed and went to bed just as the sun was rising.

You know, my life may be Islamically pointless (or unfruitful, or directionless or whatever) but I am sincerely thankful that it’s very uncomplicated. One of my friends called me last night with marital problems, and by the time I got off the phone like an hour later, I was depressed for her, but also relieved that I wasn’t in her shoes. InshaAllah things will work out for her though, InshaAllah. (Three cheers for ambiguity. Hip! Hip! Hooray!) Without belittling or insulting her, I can look to my own problems and see them as less severe, and therefore more manageable. Any time you feel down, it always helps to look at someone in a worse situation, because then you start to see the good things you DO have and the bad things you don’t.

I know that not everyone buys into the, “It could be worse, I could be YOU!” theory, but it does work. Two years back I had my appendix out (the other one, I still have on left that bursts when I don’t want to go to work) and I was lying the emergency room thinking I was the most miserable person in the world when I heard the following dialogue from behind the curtain next to me:

Man: (crying)What do you mean? He’s not dead, he can’t be dead, my son…my son…You’re lying he’s not dead….

At that point I thought God, I am so NOT the most miserable person in the world. That same night, I also saw another woman in the emergency room who was far worse off than me. She arrived wearing a sari-blouse and a man’s shawl wrapped around the lower half of her bleeding body. Turns out she was on her way to a party, wearing a sari and riding on the back of the motorcycle. Her sari got caught in the back wheel, and she lost her clothes as the motorcycle crashed and she had road-rash ALL over her body. Road-rash (where you skin is ground away when you skid over the road at high speed) is actually more painful than you would think. My little brother was in a motorcycle accident about a year and a half ago, he got road-rash bad, lost the skin off the top of his hand, off his shoulder, one of his arms, one leg. There’s a certain level of pain you feel sometimes, when it gets so bad that a wave of violent trembling goes through your whole body, all the way down from your neck to your toes. It was excruciating just watching him suffer, I can’t imagine having to go through it myself.

What was my point? Oh yes. In times of trouble or stress, remember the following things:

1. Look to someone worse off than yourself for a grim reminder of how nice your life actually is as compared to how bad it could be.

2. If you think that things can’t get any worse, then remember that they can only get better! When you’re all the way down at the bottom, the only way left is up.

3. And what’s the Alcoholic’s Anonymous prayer? (like I should know, but I know it anyway) God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.

Not that I’m very good at always telling the difference, or at taking my own advice. I seem to forget my own advice when I need it most. But hey, maybe if I post it I’ll read it some other time and make myself feel better (?).

I’m just bummed cuz my momma’s leaving. Nuts. I guess that falls into the third category of the Alcoholic’s prayer, knowing what I can’t change, just being at peace with it. It’s not like my momma’s leaving us, she’s just leaving and then coming back after a long time. Makes me sad anyway. So now, having established that I cannot prevent this from happening, I have to move on to damage control. How can I make myself less miserable when my momma is gone? Swim. Blog. Work. Write. Drown my woes in 40oz of peanut-butter flavored coffee.

I like swimming, but I don’t want to work!!!! AAAAaaaaargh! Boy, this blog started out in one direction and has ended up in another. I give up. The more I write the less sense I make. Nuts. The End.



“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” -Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five.

We’re fresh out of electricity more often than not these days, and that makes typing a blog hard. I’ve started two only to have the electriity go out and my documents get destroyed. Aaaargh! Here, have an article I wrote instead. It would’ve featured in the Sunday Times this February, but my view on love and Valentine’s day didn’t fit in well with their Valentine’s special. (Damn liberals) Oh well. Till I can write a real blog, read it anyway. -Abez

How I Own 1/7th of Riaz’s heart.

by Sensei

I don’t want to know the history of St. Valentine’s Day so much as I would like to know who started it in Pakistan. I do, after all, need someone to blame for the fact that I own exactly 1/7th of Riaz’s heart. It’s not a clerical error. He pledged it to me last year, the whole 1/7th, and I am still waiting for someone to stand accountable for such an absurdity.

Riaz didn’t exactly tell me he was only giving me 1/7th, he just showed up in front of my car, February 14th last year, where he’d been waiting for me. After an inarticulate speech about love and the destiny of our souls, he gave me a card and a rose and then mumbled something and rushed away as quickly as he appeared. Inside the card were the usual declarations of undying love and affection, and he pledged me his heart, the generous man.

The next day in college (you know how girls are) I did some asking around and it turned out that not only had Riaz pledged his heart to me, but to six other girls too. Three I already knew, three I got to know on a very friendly basis afterwards. There’s nothing that will bind people together quite like common ground, and in our case, we discovered we were all co-owners of Riaz’s heart. Since none of us wanted to bear the burden of ownership entirely, we decided to share, and that’s how I came to own exactly 1/7th.

I may be old fashioned, but where I come from, love has very little to do with cards and roses and a lot to do with dedication. Love isn’t a cheap show once a year, love isn’t about beautiful women and sighing in spring. It was a very wise man (whose name I don’t know) who said, “You don’t love a woman because she is beautiful, but a woman is beautiful because you love her.” That wise man, he was right. I think of that quote every time I think of my Nani and Nana. Even when they were both well into their seventies, sometimes when Nana thought there was no one looking, I would catch him giving Nani the soft kind of look that would melt a woman’s defenses in seconds. Anyone else who looked at Nani probably only saw a wrinkled old lady with and a crooked smile, but when Nana looked at her, he saw the gorgeous Houri he married fifty years ago. That’s love.

Speaking of years, that reminds me of another thing about love. It has nothing to do with one-day holidays. Love means dedication that lasts, five ten, fifty years later. What good was Riaz’s mumbled ‘I love you’ (and I think it was ‘I love you’ because he shouldn’t have said ‘I need glue‘ just then) when it lasts only as long as roses are on sale for Valentine’s day? If his love had lasted any longer, I probably would have run him over, but the point is, real love is long-term. Infatuation and obsession are temporary, but real love is a solidly grounded, conscious effort that people actively maintain for others. It’s not some sort of passing whim, or an effortless passion, it’s a willfully upheld emotion built on a foundation of trust, understanding, and mutual sacrifice.

Riaz can’t fool me. I know what dedicated love is about. I saw it once when my aunt became seriously ill one night. Her husband got up with her and guided her to the sink, and held her hair back when she was vomiting and supported her when she could no longer stand. Then he carried her gently to the car and drove her to the hospital. My cousins told me that he held her hand the whole time she was there, and he helped her go to the bathroom. That may sound disgusting, but it takes real love to get over your own fears and dislikes to help someone you care about.

I’ll tell you what else love is about; it’s about laughing at jokes that weren’t too terribly funny because someone else needs cheering up. It’s about saying sorry even when you know you were right, because you know that the person you argued with is far more important than what you argued about. Its about covering someone else up when you’re cold, it’s about giving someone else tea when you’re tired, it’s about giving up that part of you that screams ‘Me! Me! Me!’ and becoming the other half of another person. It’s about taking the brunt of something because you’d rather see yourself die than see the one you love being shamed. This kind of love may be hard to spot because it isn’t flashy and loud and covered in red glitter and white lace, but it’s out there. It’s quiet but powerful, it’s everyday but magical, it’s real, but apparently Riaz has no idea it exists.

I suppose you’re reading this and thinking that it’s the woman who’s doing all this, she’s practically worshipping her husband and the chauvinistic pig doesn’t even care. Well, in some cases that’s true, because women are more sentimental. I think it’s safe to say that some woman love their husbands more than their husbands love them, but I was speaking in terms of ideals, and ideally, they both love and sacrifice equally.

So there it is, Riaz darling. A pox on the kind of “love” that Valentine’s day promotes (btw, what the heck are we Muslims doing celebrating the holiday of a Christian saint?). I don’t need a sappy card and a wilted rose from a guy who has no real respect for me, who has no concept of my honor, who doesn’t even know what love is.

Guys like Riaz are using Valentine’s day as an excuse to act on their foolish impulses, and I don’t care what you call them – puppy love, lust, attraction, obsession, licentiousness, whatever. There’s no love involved there, just a shameless attempt to weasel me out of affections that I’m reserving for someone who deserves them. Someone who will love as one should, with dedication, with sacrifice, with a whole heart, as compared to 1/7th. Attention Riaz: If I see you again I may actually take up the offer of having your heart. And I may just carve my portion out with a spoon.

Randomness.

The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, said that Allah has said:

The first of his actions for which a servant of Allah will be held accountable for on the Day of Resurrection will be his prayers. If they are in order, then he will have prospered and succeeded; and if they are wanting, then he will have failed and lost. If there is something defective in his obligatory (fard) prayers, the Lord will say, ‘See if My servant has any supererogatory (sunnah/nafl) prayers with which may be completed that which was defective in his obligatory prayers.’ Then the rest of his actions will be judged in a like fashion.

Related by Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud, an-Nasa’i, Ibn Majah and Ahmad.

*****

I am pleased to inform y’all that I am now recovering from this season’s second case of food poisoning. This is due to the Grace of Allah, and also to a strict course of antibiotics, yogurt, chicken soup, and After Eight chocolate mints. Just what the doctor ordered!

I suppose to a first worlder (hey, I was one of those once) the idea of getting food poisoning twice in one summer, let alone in one lifetime, is bizarre. Well, food poisoning is kinda common in Pakistan because in the summer, it gets SO DANG HOT, AAAAAAARGH! (109 F /43 C for the last three days) that the freezers give up and stuff that should be frozen defrosts and grows bacteria. Like the salami I had the other day. It went straight from the grocery store freezer to my sandwich, but it had already been defrosted and refrosted God knows how many times in this last heat wave that it got all septic. Then I et it. Nasty.

****

“It’s bloody hot here, innit!” -Crayon

****

I was sitting in my dad’s restaurant today waiting for my order (Chez Daddy: Great Food, Terrible Service.) and watching the waiter rush around. I saw him take about a dozen bowls of ice-cream over to a large party in the corner, and then I heard some genius say, “Aray suno, yay ice-cream nahin, yay hot-cream hay! Issay wappas freezer may dalo!” Translation: Hey, this isn’t ice-cream, this is hot-cream. Put it back in the freezer!

(dweeb)

****

Well, here’s my two cents to add to the Bloggin Muslimz forum. Someone with technical skillz might want to start creating the cool-looking buttons (all of a uniform size, please) for the sites that people have mentioned in the thread. Or, you people with skillz can decide among yourselves what the size should be, and then start cranking out buttons. If you send me the links, I can try to come up with some cool slogans to go with them, InshaAllah.

Once we have a large collection of buttons, they could be uploaded to a page on the Bloggin Muslimz forum, and then people could then pick whichever ones they want on their site, download the html and presto! Well, in my case it wouldn’t be presto! it would be more like, Hello, can someone put these buttons into my html please? (Hi Tora! Hi Sahar! he he) Thank you. Sincerely, -TechnoTwit.

****

from wwww.funnycleanjokes.com.

Signs — Lost in the Translation

In a Bucharest hotel lobby:

The lift is being fixed for the day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.

In a Belgrade elevator:

To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.

In a Paris hotel elevator:

Please leave your values at the front desk.

In a hotel in Athens:

Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 & 11 am daily.

In a Yugoslavian hotel:

The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.

In the lobby of a Moscow hotel across from a Russian orthodox Monastery:

You are welcome to visit the cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists, and writers are buried daily except Thursday.

In an Austrian hotel for skiers:

Not to perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.

On a menu in a Swiss restaurant:

Our wines leave you nothing to hope for.

On a menu of a Polish hotel:

Salad a firm’s own make; limpid red beer soup with cheesy dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef rashers beaten up in the country people’s fashion.

In a Tokyo hotel:

Please take advantage of the chambermaids.

In a Hong Kong supermarket:

For your convenience we recommend courteous, efficient self-service.

In a Hong Kong dress shop:

Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.

From the Soviet weekly:

There will be a Moscow Exhibition of the Arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years.

In an East African newspaper:

A new swimming pool is rapidly taking shape since the contractors have thrown in the bulk of their workers.

In a Vienna hotel:

In case of fire, do your utmost to alarm the porter.

In Germany’s Black Forest:

It is strictly forbidden on our Black Forest camping site that people of different sex, for instance, men & women, live together in one tent unless they are married for that purpose.

An ad by a Hong Kong dentist:

Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists.

A Russian chess book:

A lot of water has been passed under the bridge since this variation has been played.

In the window of a Swedish furrier:

Fur coats made for the ladies from their own skin.

On a box of a clockwork toy in Hong Kong:

Guaranteed to work throughout its useful life.

Detour sign in Kyushu, Japan:

Stop—Drive sideways.

Swiss mountain inn:

Special today–no ice cream.

Copenhagen airline ticket office:

We take your bags and send them in all directions.

Moscow hotel room:

If this is your first visit to the USSR, you are welcome to it.

Norwegian cocktail lounge:

Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar.

Budapest zoo:

Please do not feed the animals. If you have any suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.

A notice in a Japanese hotel (ca. 1950):

Please not to steal towels. If you are not person to do such, please not to read notice.

Office of a Roman doctor:

Specialist in women and other diseases.

Acapulco hotel:

The manager has personally passed all the water served here.

Tokyo shop:

Our nylons cost more than common, but you’ll find that they are best in the long run.

Japanese instructions on an air conditioner:

Cooles & Heates: If you want just condition of warm in your room, please control yourself.

Car rental brochure in Tokyo:

When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.

Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:

English well talking. Here speeching American.

A sign on the lion cage at a zoo in the Czech Republic:

No smoothen the lion

A Finnish hotel’s instructions in case of fire:

If you are unable to leave your room, expose yourself in the window.

In a Japanese restaurant (ca. 1950):

We reserve the right to serve refuse to anyone.

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for, Usman has FINALLY sent his guest post! (and the audience goes wild!) Roll camera in five, four, three, two….action!

Are we live?? *spits in hand and straightens out hair* “Hi there, this is Aww Smfreek reporting to you live from Abezistan. I’ve been given an unusual assignment dear viewers, last nite i received a telephone call from an editor at large calling herself DeOwl. She asked me to get a scoop on the ruler of Abezistan, The Terror of the Tarmac, Abez herself. In return I have been promised a lifetime supply of juice at a Pehelvan Mango Juice stall. Hmmm.. hope they have good juice.

*cue 10 min later* I’m now hanging on for dear life on a branch across from Abez’s room waiting for her to be woken up. *Thinks to self, ‘I’m doing all this for juice?? Monkeys get paid better than me!’*. Ahhh.. I believe this is Abez’s sister Aniraz coming into the room now. Oh wait, *turns to cameraman.. keep rolling you moron!* I think Aniraz is making faces at Abez while she sleeps. Ahh.. she’s waking her up now… oh wowsers, it seemz as though Abez just threw a fit for being woken up and Aniraz has been knocked to the floor by the flailing hands of Sensei Speed Demon.

*cue 15 min later* Now we see Abez running into the kitchen with a purple Jilbab trailing behind heras she realizes she’s an hour late to work already! No Abez.. not that cup of coffee, it’s been there all nite and i’ve seen 2 cockroaches have a dip in it! *Without even looking, abez picks up the coffee and downs it* Oh well, at least i’ve heard in China they use cockroaches for some kinda medicine. Hopefully the crunchy goodness will come to good use later on.

Now dear viewers we see sensei speed demon tearing up the asphalt as she rushes to get to her first class. Oh no, it seems as though she’s juss been cut off by a greased up desi young dude type. Seeing this Abez floors it, comes up alongside the hoodlum…

*We interrupt this bulletin for some commercials.. “Are you tired? Do you feel you don’t have the energy?? The only way to freshen yourself up is Liptonite Yellow Label. Liptonite… Aaj peejiay.. fooran ulti keejiay!”* (Translation : Liptonite, drink today.. throw up straight away!)Then Abez lowers the window and drops the dreaded…. Banana peel… The greased up hoodlum skids and crashes to the side as Abez speeds away. <>

Abez has just finished teaching her last student and is sitting there while her student goes to get her some water. In comes a 3 yr old. Abez’s face lights up when she sees the three year old waddle up to her. *GASP* The child has just handed Abez a microfilm. Abez smiles and leaves the house. We’re trying to stay reasonably back ladies and gentleman as we dont wanna be detected. Darrnit she’s just turned off into that dark alley… *car turns into alley* Where’d she go??? It’s a dead end and her car’s gone.. literally vanished into thin air! Lemme just step outta the car here and… whooooops.. *splat* The old banana peel!!

*Abez and her sister walk up to the reporter*.

Aww Sumfreek : But how did you two know I was following you???

Aniraz *puts a weird electronic thingy to her throat which changes her voice* : I’m sorry Mr.Sumfreek, but it seems we wont be doing business after all!

Aww Sumfreek : *GASP* DEOWL???

Aniraz : Hahahha.. It was soo simple I’ll probably treat myself to some Mango juice!

Aww Sumfreek : But why did you do all this??

Abez : I was tired of reading the same old stories in the newspapers… I wanted something new! I am the ruler after all.

Aww Sumfreek : But how do you fit in Miss Aniraz?

Aniraz : Simple.. I’m an editor.. It’s my job to stir up news to sell papers!

Aww Sumfreek : Noooooooooooooo *dies*

The End

Moral Of the Story : Watch out for those banana peels and dont believe everything you read!!

This guest post could not have come at a better time, since all yesterday (and today too) I was down and out with food poisoning and any blog I wrote would been like: Gee I’m sick. I have a fever, and the land of Abezistan is in upheaval. My doctor says I can only eat yogurt. He made mention of white rice and bananas too, but since I can’t stand either of the two, I am limited to yogurt simply by process of elimination. So I promptly went out and bought myself a chocolate bar. Chocolate has wonderful curative properties. So do coffee-flavored cockroaches apparently. Hey, I feel better already. 🙂