Abez sez Assalamualaikum!

Author: Abez

  • Eat My Dust?

    Last night we had the first spring dust storm. I wish I could think of a word stronger than storm, because it doesn’t seem to fully describe the sight. The visibility is down to about 30 feet, the air is thick with gritty, yellow dirt, rising from the ground like smoke in 30-foot plumes and howling through the cracks in the window frames.

    Now you say: How ghetto is that? They have cracks in their window frames!

    Then I say: When the wind blows hard enough to tear our iron gate off its hinges (like it did last year) any window frame will suddenly have cracks through which the grit can come through.

    I went up on to the roof (because I am a genius, remember?) in this big ole storm and was happy. Leave it to me to be rejoicing in a blinding swirl of dirt, (“The symbolism is astounding,” thus sayeth Aniraz) with the wind blowing my scarf backwards over my face and my pants swelled with air like sails. And my teeth filling with dirt. And my eyebrows and eyelashes turning khaki. And my skin dusted over so that I look non-white for the first time, ever. And my clothes a filthy dirty-color, and I swear they were clean when I put them on, scout’s honor. :::snicker:::

    The sounds of a dust storm are quite interesting. You hear howl howl howl, crash, bang, bleat, crash, bang, howl. The wind howls, doors, gates and windows bang open and closed, sheep bleat in protest, medium-sized debris goes crashing all over the place. The dust storms always deposit the most interesting junk into our drive-way, cigarette boxes, feathers, straw, hats, handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, old hard bread, and millions upon millions of used plastic shopping bags. Once after a really nasty dust storm there was a prayer rug hanging from the electricity wires for three days, but I’m waiting for something really interesting to blow up onto our porch, like a small goat or a ufo.

    I also had a few random thoughts, one of which was that I think our prayer rugs are the original flying carpets. What do you guys think? It sounds plausible, no? I rather enjoy thinking about my prayer rug being capable of flight. Speaking of my prayer rug, the three year old snuck up on me again today. I was praying Asr and I heard him walking slowly up to the room I was in. He stuck his face in the door (which incidentally, was right in my qiblah) and when he saw I was praying, he stepped in front of the rug, right at the head, and stood there waiting for me, arms akimbo, not unlike Superman. He only had to wait for one and a half rakah, because then his mother came up the stairs, gasped when she saw him, grabbed him by the arm and took him back down. Boy was he upset about that. He he.

    What was the other thing I wanted to mention on my blog? Umm, I haven’t made the changes to my fly-trap because I was home today for a grand total of FIVE minutes. I left the house this morn, went to work, chilled with a friend of mine, picked my sister up from work, went home for five minutes and prayed, drove back to work with a sandwich in my hand. Then I worked, and came home two hours ago, and here I am. (it‘s 10pm)

    Btw, I award Aniraz 875974.4 Sugghar points for both my mobile sandwich and the baked chicken & potato planks that were awaiting me when I came home. Aniraz zindabad! Btw, The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of God be upon him, said: “Only an honorable man treats women with honor and integrity. And only a mean, deceitful and dishonest man humiliates and insults women.” Reported by Ibn Asaker.

    Ahh! I can’t believe I forgot to include this: The muffler/silencer on the family car is busted, so now my car sounds like it’s burning nitro. Well, I’m being kind when I say that. It actually sounds like a contestant from a monster truck rally. It’s so bizarre, and so loud that you have to suspend all conversation when you accelerate, because otherwise you can’t make out what the other people in the car are saying. So anyways, I’ve been zooming around town in a car that sounds like ten cars, and people have been trying to drag race with me! I swear, it’s so weird. I was stopped at a light, running (but NOT revving) the engine, when I heard someone revv theirs in reply. I turned and looked, and there was a greasy guy on a motorcycle, grinning at me and racing his engine. When the light changed he burned rubber and shot ahead, giving me a smug victory grin and then speeding off.

    Though I confess that I sometimes out-maneuver (but not necessarily *race*) other cars, I wasn’t even trying to race that time. What gives? There was one white car too, playing the creeping game with me. That’s where each car stopped at the red light creeps forward in turns, trying to get a lead on the other without actually braking the light. I was creeping independently of him, but the thunderous roar of my engine made it sound like I was revving again. He shot past the light when it changed and I’m sure he thought he was making me eat his dust. Sheesh. I hope the muffler’s fixed by tomorrow, any more of these bruises to my driving ego and I may have to take someone up on the challenge just to prove myself in the world of reckless (but not wreck-less) Pakistani driving. Peace!

    -Terror of the Tarmac, Sensei Speed Demon

  • Ha Ha! My little brother in the states is reading my blog! Hi sir! I so happy! I therefore dedicate this blog to him. AssalamuAlaikum Zaman!

    Well, I have distressing news to relate. You know that one fly trapped in my fly-trap? It escaped. :::drops head into hands and wails. Oh the agony!::: See, the fly got inside. And that’s great, but he was in there long enough to figure a way out. That’s because I forgot to poison him. A friend and anti-fly co-conspirator (Hi Maria!) told me that if you mix a little washing soap/powder in there then the flies will die in ecstasy.

    Now, I can’t vouch for the fact that the flies would be ecstatic to be poisoned, but I think the powder would probably kill them. I find dead spiders in the laundry soap all the time actually, which kinda makes me sad. (The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the spiders eat the flies, therefore the spiders and I are buddies.) It’s too dark to go poking about my fly-trap at the moment, so I’ll make the changes in the morning and keep y’all informed of my progress.

    My yesterday’s artsy-fartsy impulses manifested themselves not in painting, but in sewing a shirt. I’m wearing it now thank you very much. And, instead of rearranging the furniture, I busted out a hammer, a pencil, two screw drivers and no, I didn’t hurt myself. I repaired the shelf in my bathroom that fell down last week. It was quite an event when it happened actually. Aniraz came down the stairs and informed me that there was broken glass and the slime of mingled facial-maintenance products all over the bathroom, and a safety pin in the toilet. Since our bathroom had been in a *relatively* normal state when we left the house, it was kinda shocking to come home and find it in ruins.

    It turns out that the two screws holding the shelf in place had finally given up, and the shelf dropped off the wall and struck the sink with considerable violence. The glass that held our tooth brushes had gone airborne and shattered on the floor three feet away from the sink, and all the safety-pins and straight-pins that we keep for our scarves flew in a roughly north-east direction, landing in the vicinity of the toilet. That’s how one of them ended up sleeping with the fishes, or the alligators, or the roaches, or whichever foul beastie it is that lives in Pakistan‘s sewers.

    I, brandishing my trusty knife, tiptoed around the house checking to see if any of the windows were broken or the door left unlocked, or if anything expensive was missing, or if there had been safety pins thrown into any of the other toilets as the burglar’s calling card. We’re not paranoid, actually we’ve had our house burglarized before. Back in the US, we came home one day and there were muddy footprints on the sofa and my mom’s jewelry had been stolen, and lots of important papers torn into bits. I don’t know why the burglars ripped up my birth certificate and social security card, I know only that I had an existential crisis before I got new copies.

    The cops came and looked around, taking fingerprints. They came into our room (Aniraz’s and mine) and took it all in: the clothes strewn about the room, the drawers dumped out on the floor, the closet doors open, the books thrown from the shelves and lying open, and said, “So, the burglar did all this?”

    I cannot tell a lie. Especially when the truth is more amusing. I suppressed a smile and said, “No sir.“ The room looked exactly the same as we had left it. The cop was slightly repulsed. I don’t blame him, I doubt even the burglars set foot in it, they were probably too grossed out by the mess. I was actually kinda disappointed that they hadn’t carted some of it away. They could’ve saved us the trouble of cleaning up.

    But, back to the here and now, the bathroom shelf is restored and I am without mortal injury. I have to teach tomorrow, and have a lot of work to do before then. It’s Sunday again, and have you all memorized the Sunday-Night chant dutifully and in American accents? Yes? Excellent, then we shall recite it. All together now class, (raps desk with ruler and straightens horn-rimmed glasses).

    Eeek! Eeek! Eeek!

    The beginning of another week!

    I have to go back to doing work now, but I will leave you with what I think is one of the most beautiful passages of the Qur’an. It’s from Surah 5, ayah 6. I’ve broken it into lines to make it easier to read.

    “O ye whose hearts have been touched by the Divine Hand, when you intend to stand before God for performing your acts of worship, then ablution becomes a duty.

    Wash your faces, your hands and the forearms up to the elbows, and with your wet hands wipe over your heads, and then wash your feet to your ankles….

    …God does not intend to put you in difficulty, but only to make you sound-headed men of proper discipline and excellent mind, and to set you upon a course of purity of thought and action.

    For the actions of men are best interpreters of their thoughts, and He means to make all grace abound in you that you may hopefully actuate yourselves with the feeling of gratitude and gratefulness and lift to Him your inward sight.”

  • My second art gallery visit was much better than the first. I was quite impressed with the quality of the art there, and I came home thinking artsy thoughts…thinking about pulling out my sister’s water colors or finger-painting with food coloring if she won’t let me use her paint. I saw lots of things I liked, and though the prices were highly prohibitive (12,000 rupees for a painting= $200) I did get a lot of good decorating ideas. And I learned that the gallery also has pottery classes.

    I used to throw pottery (not on the floor, at least not often) on a wheel back in my college days (Ah…ancient history) and I really enjoyed it. I was thinking about taking the class, the price is pretty good, but it’s outdoors. The only benefit to having an outdoor pottery class in a Pakistani summer is that you won’t need the kiln to bake the pieces. Just leave them out in the sun, yeah right next to you, cuz it’s 45 C/ 110F with 70% humidity anyways. Contrary to common belief, I’m not crazy, and I’d prefer to bake pottery than my head. I’ll wait till fall, or until they move indoors where there’s an air-conditioner!

    So I came home after a lovely afternoon at the art gallery with two of my buddies (Hi Maria! Hi Sonia!) and was in the mood for doing some interior decorating. I periodically have these urges, and I usually satisfy them by rearranging all the furniture in the house. Maybe this time I’ll do some wishy-washy looking art, or sew a pair of pants. (sew a pair of pants?) Yes, pants. An ill-fitting pair that will tie with a string and be seen by no one but me and the family members who will ridicule me. And a shirt to go with it. It doesn’t matter what I wear around the house anyway. They all know I’m a bum. If they don’t by now, they’ll figure it all out by the time I’m done.

    So anyway, I was feeling artsy when I sat down to a plate of leftover carrot sticks and hummus, when suddenly I was :::queue heavenly music::: INSPIRED!!! So, with my trusty dull fruit knife in one hand, and a solitary carrot stick in the other, I made art.



    It was a difficult process.

    A journey of self-discovery.

    For what is art but a physical reflection of the soul?

    What is art but a carrot stick carved into a crocodile?

    It was an honest-to-goodness sculpture. I even feigned some angst while I was at it. If I hadn’t laughed hysterically at the finished croco-carrot and then popped it in my mouth, I might have been able to arrange an exhibit and sell it for at least 12,000 rupees. (see, this in itself is a testament to how hot the weather is already. I…feel…baked…) Eh.

    And here’s one of my favorite Hadith. The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of God be upon him, said: “By God Who owns my life, none of you can be completely faithful unless (and until) you like for your brother what you like for yourself.” (Bukhari and Muslim)

    But wait, still there’s more! I found my high-tech ankle brace, so I’ll be the bionic English teacher from now on. My students already knew I was kinda dull and robotic, now they’ll know I’m a cyborg, yikes! I also found my sunglasses. Both of them. They were trapped in display cases in a shop, and the shopkeeper was holding them for ransom. The nerve!

    I’m going to go see if my sunglasses need anything. They have been though a rather tough ordeal you know. Peace! -The Bionic Sensei

  • I May Not Know Art, But I Know What I Like!

    I get tired of mortally wounding myself, and yet I just can’t seem to stop. Ere go: How To Mortally Wound Yourself While Baking Crackers

    Don’t ask me why we’re baking crackers. Pakistan is a hands-on kinda place, and if you want your own saltines, you have to make them yourself. So anyways, roll out a batch of crackers and jab at them with a fork hurriedly because you’re on the internet and baking simultaneously and wasting time is wasting money. So, roll out your crackers, stab at them with a fork, limp to the oven (the ankle’s still purple) and throw open the oven door. Thrust the tray of crackers in, and then yelp out when the oven door rebounds (because you opened it too hard and it has sprung back) and bakes your knuckles. :: tsssssss::: Releasing your crackers into the bottom off the oven is optional.

    The anti-war art exhibit was fairly interesting. There were a few nice looking pieces, collages done with obvious skill and thought. Then there some really weird things….a piece of red fabric thrown on a box. I thought it was a stand for a sculpture, then I noticed that there was plaque with the artist’s name. This piece was titled, “Grief.” I think I would’ve called it, “Missed The Deadline For The Art Exhibit And Have No Sculpture To Put On The Stand.” Hmmm

    Two things I liked a lot: A painting of a pair of bloodied hands releasing a stained bird of peace. There was a Qur’anic verse next to it, which I can half-way remember in Arabic, but not where it’s from. It goes, And when it is said to them, spread no mischief in the earth, they answer, we are of those who do good! nay, they spread mischief, though they perceive it not. That’s just a paraphrase btw, can anyone gimme the actual quote?

    The second one was an oil barrel painted with the stars and stripes, surrounded by a bunch of lotas. Lemme tell you what a lota is if you don’t know. A lota is a round container with a spout and no handle, used for pouring water in the uh…bathroom. But in Pakistani politics, a lota is a person who swims with the political current, or turns his political stance to whichever way the wind is blowing. This is because real lotas aren’t very stable have a tendency to tip over (and soak your feet!). So anyways, all these lotas were painted with the flags of the various countries supporting the US, or at least not opposing it. And there was a star of David painted on the floor around the oil barrel, but since I’m not a very big Jewish Conspiracy theorist, I didn’t think it was too relevant. The way I see it, Zionists in Palestine are committing their atrocities openly, good grief, what need have they for secrecy? Now I know at least ten people are going to jump down my throat for this, but I’m going to put this up anyway. It’s a site belonging to a group of Orthodox Jews opposed the very creation of Israel. (Oh yeah, and not all Jews are Zionists, and they make Christian Zionists too)

    “… We also condemn the existence of the state of Israel forbidden to us by the Torah. Jews were not meant to be dispossessor of others’ property. Jews were not meant to wield tanks against children. Jews were not meant to wage war against any people on the face of the earth…” –Netureikarta.org

    Mostly-Christian Russia is the one killing us off in Chechnya, and Christian France wreaked havoc in Egypt and Algeria, and Christian Spaniards massacred the Moorish Muslims and turned our Masjids into museums, and last but not least, our Born-Again-Christian Bush is blasting the Muslim world to smithereens, one country at a time. He’s got his sights set on Syria and Iran now, and with no one to stop him, who knows how far it’ll go?

    What’s my point? Either we stop hating the Zionists or we start hating those Militant Christians (not all of em, just the militant ones) because we have a double standard. I think we should denounce whoever needs to be denounced, regardless of their religion. And I think I’ll start with Bush, and then my very own dictator Musharraf, and the bloody massacring pig Ariel Sharon (the only war criminal with not one, but TWO, count em, TWO girly names…) and the inept, oil-rich leaders of *some* countries in the Middle East. Aniraz sez wait, they’re not inept, just criminally negligent of the other Muslim countries. Nuts to all of them.

    Never mind. My sending nuts to them as a symbol of my angst doesn’t count for much. That’s what Judgment Day is for. 😉

    Signed,

    Your Cosmoplanetary Electronegative Jesmopolitain Leader,

    With a purple ankle and a baked knuckle. ( :: tsssss :: )

    -Sensei

  • I can’t believe how busy I’ve been this week. I, who usually do something fun roughly every six months, have been out almost every other day this week. Saturday: Lunch with friends, Tuesday: Dinner with Friends, Today: Book club with friends, Tomorrow: Anti-war art exhibit, This Saturday: Tea and then to an art gallery. I’m not bragging, I’m just kinda overwhelmed. Yeah, I’m having a blast, but having fun is hard work!

    Speaking of work, the most hysterical thing happened to me at work today. I was praying Maghrib in one of my student’s houses, when her absolutely precious, very serious, and very shy three-and-a-half year old son opened his bedroom door a crack and peeked at me with one eye. (He was supposed to be taking a nap, but he snuck out.) I could see him, though I wasn’t looking directly at him, as he opened the door and stood there uncertainly for a sec with a toy car in his hand. Then he started sneaking up on me, inching his feet forward in tiny little steps.

    You could tell he was not trying to make any noise. I, in the mean time, was trying not to burst out laughing in the middle of my prayer. He would sneak a little, and then stop, and then sneak a little, and stop. It took two rakahs, but he finally snuck all the way up to the prayer rug, where he lined his little toes up on the edge, and parked his toy car neatly next to them.

    When I went into Rukuh, he bent over and looked up at my face. When I went into sajdah, he squatted down and tried to see whatever it was I was looking at on the floor. I have never had such a difficult time praying, biting my lower lip hard to keep from laughing on loud, while he peered into my face with his very serious little eyes. When I finished my prayer and did dua, he sat down on the floor and very somberly put his toy car on the prayer rug. Then he went ‘pbbbbbb’ and pushed it to my knee. I took the car and pushed it back, and we played with his car for a few minutes on the prayer rug. Then I made a face at him, which he giggled at, then imitated, and I went back downstairs to finish teaching my lesson. He came down after me a few minutes later, bringing a lizard man and a Goku (from Dragon Ball Z) toy. While his mother was doing some class work, I got to be Goku and he got to be lizard man. Since he speaks mostly Turkish, our play consisted mostly of sound effects. I can honestly say I haven’t had so much fun in a long time.

    MashaAllah, kids are so amazing. I’m not gonna sit here gushing about it though. If you know little kids, then you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know yet, you’ll find out eventually. I have one nephew, my brother’s son, who I miss like crazy. He lived with us for six months, from when he was five months old, and it’s the most amazing thing to watch a kid come alive…to become interactive! He started out this pink, squishy little thing that just cooed and looked stunned all the time. But by the time he left, he was crawling around the house in fast-forward, blowing squishy, wet-sounding noises on your cheeks (that was his idea of a kiss) and giggling all the time. I miss him so much…

    The following verse from the Qur’an has little or nothing to do with children, but it’s a really good one, especially since some of my comrades in Blogistan have been feeling low lately (Serious Usman, Shad and a few others) and when people feel low, sometimes they become more susceptible to the suggestions Enemy Number One, Shaitan. Here we go: “If a suggestion from Satan assails thy mind, seek refuge with Allah, for He hears and knows all things.” Surah Al-Araf, ayah 200.

    It’s true you know, since Allah hears and knows all, He knows exactly what you’re dealing with and can help ya! 🙂 Peace!

  • Mosquito bites are back in fashion. That’s my excuse for having so many of them. Being a hijabi-jilbabi no one can see the ones on my arms that are as big as pennies, but my face is not so lucky. When the mosquitoes start biting my face (that part of me tastes the best, they say) I’ll look kind of pink and spotty, and very un-professional and very un-teacherish.

    Since the weather has just gotten warm, the mosquitoes are just beginning to amass their forces. Soon they will invade the house, using the dreaded whine-in-ear-while-I’m-sleeping attack and the equally annoying bite-every-knuckle-on-both-my-hands tactic. Both of these are marvelously effective at destroying my dignity. You can’t wander around scratching at yourself in public, otherwise people think you have nasty hygiene or something.

    You know, when my sister and I were little, we used to take our mattresses and fit them in the bed frames sideways, so that they curved up and made a tunnel. Then we would put a fan at the end of the tunnel, and sleep that way so the mosquitoes couldn’t get us. Later in my life, I got smarter and rigged up an entire tent around my bed, not for the mosquitoes, but for the centipedes that invaded my basement bedroom back in the states. They were nasty things those damn centipedes, like fake eyelashes zooming around the walls…shudders….it still grosses me out to think about them. They would fall off the ceiling into my bed and die there, and I would lay down and find dead centipedes on my pillow and then run screaming from my bedroom and go sleep on the sofa upstairs.

    When I lived in Karachi, cockroaches were the bane of my existence. One of them (the big ones, 2 inches long and one inch across) fell on me when I was showering and I nearly had a heart attack. Hordes of them would invade the house at night from the garden, and run around like they owned the place. That’s the problem with old houses in Karachi, they’re all built open, the living room in that house had only three walls. The fourth wall was a carved gate that opened up into the garden. It was very bizarre to be watching a TV that had trees just behind it.

    Hmmm, this blog is kinda pointless. Perhaps this story should have a plot, and eventually a moral. Ok, here it goes. So General Lal Baig of the Cockroach Command swung his forces down upon my house from the north. Little did I know that at the same time, Major Mooch-a-lot of the Mosquito Marines was leading a secretive thrust in through my screen door defenses in the south.

    I, Sensei, stood alone, grim resignation written over my battle-weary and itchy face. Would I be capable of fighting another battle in this never ending war? To my trusty sidekick I turned, my braided cap at a rakish tilt over one cold gray eye. Outside the noise of the new flame throwers went ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa…oops, wrong story. #

    But yeah, so I whip out a can of bug spray and take deliciously malicious pleasure in blasting all the little buggers to their dooms. The moral of this story is: Mortein high performance surface spray kills bugs fast.

    But the real moral is, “Let him who believes in Allah and the Last Day* either speak good or keep silent, and let him who believes in Allah and the Last Day be generous to his neighbor, and let him who believes in Allah and the Last Day be generous to his guest.” -The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him and all prophets. Hadith on the authority of Bukhari and Muslim.

    # Read The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, by James Thurber

    *Last Day = Day of Judgment

  • Here we go again: How to Mortally Wound Yourself While Trying to Answer the Phone

    In order to do this successfully, you must have only one phone, and it has to be downstairs. Now, go upstairs and wait for the phone to ring. When it does ring, run headlong down the stairs at break-neck speed. No, this isn’t where you mortally wound yourself. Once you get down the stairs, grab the banister and swing down the last few steps, planting your sandaled feet very infirmly on a slippery marble floor. Then slip ungracefully, toppling off your left shoe and twisting your ankle viciously. This alone may kill you. If it doesn’t, limp unsteadily to the phone, only to discover that is has already stopped ringing and then die of exasperation.

    My ankle is discolored and swollen and I’ve got it wrapped. I actually have a really cool ankle brace, but I can‘t find it. It’s all black, and the splints are full of hi-tech squishy gel and it straps on with velcro. I still have it from the last time I sprained my ankle at the Taste of Chicago Food Festival. I was crossing Lake Shore Drive in a hurry and tripped. I didn’t go down, but I did falter, and the traffic cop actually laughed at me! But then when he saw that my ankle had swollen to three times its normal size within about two seconds, he called me an ambulance. (You stupid ambulance!) It was my first and only ambulance ride, overall, it was fun. He he. But not at all like I imagined. You can’t see the flashing lights because you’re inside and they’re outside. And it’s all rather anticlimactic to be rushed to the hospital only to have to wait in the emergency room for 45 minutes.

    Then, when I was at the hospital waiting for my x-rays, I leaned over the bed to peek at all the levers and pulleys underneath, and an overactive intern (I learned it was his first day) rushed to my aid because he thought I had passed out and was toppling over. (Tiiimmmmberrrrrrr…) Well, that was my first ankle sprain. This is my second, and there were no flashing lights, no interns rushing to my rescue (handsome or otherwise) and no squishy, high-tech ankle brace. But then, I’m not on crutches this time, so it’s not all bad. I just limped to the car and went to work.

    You may ask, why does this moron keep spraining the same ankle? The answer is: Purple, Diana, because ice cream has no bones. Aniraz says it’s tartar sauce, the fish that doesn’t swim, but I cannot concur. I mean really, the actual is preexistent to the actual in potential, is it not? Any suggestions here people?

    My mom has gone out to Chez Daddy and I’m waiting for her to bring back something edible. Maybe even tasty. In the mean time, I think I’ll limp over to the kitchen for some random nibbling. Here, have a pearl of wisdom: “Don’t be silly by saying: If people do good, we will do good and if they do wrong then we will do wrong. Accustom yourselves to good if people do good, but do no wrong if they do wrong.” -Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of God be upon him and all Prophets. (Tirmithi)

  • If this blog is funny-lookin, sorry, we’re having technical difficulties. Anyone fluent in HTML: please email me! I need help!!!

    You guys…I’m at it again…sometimes I have mad inventive schemes. This week’s is a fly catcher. Yes, a device to catch flies. No, I’m not nuts, stop looking at me like that. Pakistan has BILIONS of flies, and at least half of them like to congregate around my washing machine when I’m trying to do the laundry. It’s really gross, they buzz around in your face and fall into the laundry. I shake out pants and somehow there are dead (but very clean) flies in them.

    I remember in the states, at the Lincoln Park Zoo, there was a fly-trap, it looked like a bottle hanging upside down. The entrance was funnel-shaped, and there was something (presumably) sweet and very appealing to flies inside the bottle. The flies would meander down the funnel-shaped entrance, just big enough for them to squeeze through at the end, and then get trapped in the bottle because…well…flies aren’t the brightest crayons in the box, ok?

    Since spring is here (and the flies that died with the winter cold have now been reincarnated…as flies again) I’ve been suggesting the idea to my mom and sis, and they both just gave me a look, with one eyebrow raised and the faintest smile playing about their lips, and said, “Un-hunh you do that, ok?”

    Being thus discouraged (and slightly ridiculed), I was ready to give up on the idea until I sheepishly told one of my friends about it, (Hi Maria!) and she thought it was a great idea. She hates flies and so wished me good luck. So I took a one-liter pop bottle and poured old jelly and rose essence and a little pop inside, and shook the bottle so the walls were coated in the gooey and fragrant slime. Then I taped a long funnel into the mouth of the bottle, and I’ve hung it upside down right above the washing machine.

    Now this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for…are there any flies trapped inside…(runs up the window to spy on flies, emphatically denies charges of mental instability)…ONE FLY!!!! Mwahahaa!!!! There is one fly in my fly trap! Oh Joy! Do you realize what this means? Based on the appalling rate at which flies reproduce, there are now roughly one thousand less flies in the world.

    :::a contented sigh::: Well I think that makes my work a success. I’m ready to patent it now…fame and fortune, here I come! And maybe when I get rich enough from this invention, I’ll buy a bigger house and move the washer/dryer inside. Which reminds me of a line from one of my old textbooks. It was a chapter explaining facetious tactics in logic and argument. It was pointing out the error of the ‘bandwagon approach,’ where you argue that your point is right based solely on the fact that many other people agree with you. For example: The theory of evolution must be correct because so many scientists believe in it. The book’s example was:

    ::drum roll please:::

    Seven billion flies can’t be wrong. Eat garbage.

    And on a much more sensible note, today’s Islamic quote is: “Modesty and faith are constant companions. When one of them is raised up, the other is also raised.” -Prophet Muhammad, (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), reported by Ibn Omar.

  • American Christian + Pakistani Muslim = FUNdamentalist Hijabi?

    In honor o’ Saint Patty’s day…oops…I mean cuz Yaz asked, here’s wassap with my family. My dad (a Pakistani Muslim) traveled all over the world (as a teacher, then a sailor, then a waiter, then a cook) and ended up in the US where he met my mom, an American Christian. Since they’re both optimists, they married, each thinking they were going to convert the other. And time has passed (as it is wont to do) and surprisingly, my dad’s still Muslim and my mom’s still Christian, and now they‘re both cynics. he he.

    My bros and sis and I are all Muslim. If you ask my mom why, she’ll say it’s because my dad forced us. That’s just because she’s sore about being the only Christian in the house. If you ask us why we‘re Muslim, we’ll say it’s because my mother’s church made no sense to us and Islam made all the sense in the world. I went to church as a child more often than I went to the masjid, cuz my dad worked very long, hard hours and we kids were with our mother all the time. I still know more about Christianity than many young Christians do, including the hymns.

    Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

    He is trampling on the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored

    He has loosed the fateful lightening of his terrible swift sword

    His truth is marching on!

    Glory, glory hallelujah… (Teacher hit me with a ruler. I hit her on the bean with a rotten tangerine and she won’t do it anymore!…Yikes, who said that?)

    And no, my parents are not divorced. The first thing I hear after I tell people about my parents is: so, how long have they been divorced? Which one do you live with? I think this is because the average person cannot fathom how my fundamentalist Christian mother and my practicing Muslim father have stayed married for over 25 years. It takes a lot of patience, and to be quite frank, that advice that I would give people is NEVER MARRY OUTSIDE YOUR FAITH!

    Believe me, my parents made it work, but they are the are the only inter-faith marriage I’ve seen succeed, and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of failures. The kids are usually really messed up, especially concerning religion. Come on, who are you to believe when both of your parents tells you that the other one is damned to hell? It’s really confusing, and religion remains of a bone of contention forever. There’s no solution, if the kids go with the father’s religion, the mother gets angry. If the kids go with the mother, the father gets cheesed. And when the parents fight about religion every Friday or Sunday, respectively, the kids get traumatized. I speak from experience. Now you guys know why I’m so weird.

    Hmmm, I think this started out as a story and has ended up as an earnest appeal to all the Muslim bros: NEVER MARRY OUTSIDE ISLAM! I’m deadly serious, please don’t do it. There’s a horrible chance that you’ll end up with kids with Muslim names and non-Muslim values, because the mother is always the primary educator. If you care about Islam, invest in a good religious instructor for your kids, viz- their mother!

    Now you ask, if an inter-faith marriage is so bad for the kids’ religion then how come you’re a gung-ho Islamic? How did your dad save you? Answer: My dad didn’t save me, my Lord did. I have no one to thank for my faith except God. Not even myself. I had nothing to do with it finding Islam. Islam found me and hit me over the head (with logic, not force) and was like, “You dummy, you know this makes perfect sense, quit avoiding it!” So I was forced to accept some painfully obvious truths and here I am, here we are, all of us sibs Muslim, by the Grace of Allah. (by the skin of our teeth, he he…Astaghfirullah)

    (Aniraz is trying juggle again and there are neon balls bouncing dangerously in my direction. Fire in the hole!)

    Our house maintains a tense religious cease-fire. I won’t call it peace, because like India and Pakistan, the two religious factions are always trading shots over the border. We take humorous, and sometimes not-so-humorous jabs at each other and sometimes it gets laughs, sometimes it draws blood. (figuratively, not literally, thank God) It’s not the best situation in the world, but Alhamdulillah, we’re dealing with it I ‘spose. But yeah, prayers on behalf of my inter-faith family are always welcome. Boy this has gotten really long. I’ll end it here. Gotta go make a cookie delivery. Peace!

    Your Jesmopolitain Cosmoplantery Leader,

    Sensei

  • Ho-hum, hymns.

    My mother has just cranked up some gospel rock and started a triple batch of peanut butter cookies. According to the angry Christian guy in the stereo:

    God’s got an army/not afraid to fight/soldiers of the cross/children of the light.

    Warriors of righteousness/with healing in their hands/God’s got an army/marching through the lands.

    Sounds like terrorism to me.  Funny how people think they can wander around fighting God’s battles for them, specially the Christians, thinking God needs them to establish His kingdom, cuz apparently He can‘t do it Himself. I can’t think of anything more conceited than thinking that God needs pitiful little YOU to do anything for All-Powerful HIM. He created the entire world but needs you to manage it? Please. Boy, talk about hubris.

    This is the point where an atheist reading my blog will go, “Well gee, if God’s so All-powerful, what’s He need you worshipping Him for?” Silly atheist. God doesn’t need worship, we need worship. To give props to where props are due, to put our stuck-up noses back in the humble dust where they belong, to meditate, to remind ourselves of higher responsibilities, to remember greater beauties, to avoid great uglinesses. It’s like giving your teacher homework. It isn‘t the teacher who needs it, it’s YOU who needs it, to help you learn.

    Ah, the tape has been switched. Thank God! Oh nuts, now it’s church hymns. I swear man, they really need some new lyricists. Their music hit a peak in the 18th century and nothing good has been written since then. Even Greensleeves was plagiarized you know, the original had nothing to do with the baby Jesus (Peace and blessings of Allah be upon Prophet Isa) it was a song of lost love.

    Alas my love/you have done me wrong/to have cast me out/so discourteously.

    And I had loved you for so long/Delighting in your company.

    Greensleeves was all my joy

    Greensleeves was my desire

    Greensleeves my heart of gold

    And who but my lady Greensleeves?

    I was talking with my dad last night about the general state of the world, he hasn’t read either Brave New World or 1984, but he agreed that the ignorance of the first world seems to be a combination of both ‘Big Brother is Watching’ and ‘A Gram is Better Than a Damn‘. I’m not saying the entire first world is on soma (the drug of choice in Brave New World) but they’re all high on comfort, ambition and freedom, and pliable to the manipulation of their minds through the media and government. Remember children,

    WAR IS PEACE

    FREEDOM IS SLAVERY

    IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

    -1984, George Orwell

  • Je-tu present: Dinner Theater Blog

    A one-act farce

    by Abez A. Rat

    Act one

    Garcon: Good evening Madame, welcome to Chez du Rat trop Paresseux pour Cuisiner. Ey-yam Guy de Maupassant, and I vill be your vaiter tonight. ‘ow may I be of service to you?

    Me: I’m hungry, you got eats?

    Garcon: (kissing his fingertips) Oh Madame! Tonight ve ‘ave ze chef speshal…le Boeuf de Stewed de Gelatinous Froid, served with le Morceau Singulier de Pain de France with a glass of our finest le Café de Tepid.

    Me: (grabs fork with one hand and spoon in the other, drools expectantly on table cloth) Uh, ok, whatever that means…I’m ready to punch a new hole in my belt…bring-it-on!

    (The three-course meal arrives, carried at shoulder-level by three French waiters in matching tuxedos. The table is laid before me with much pomp and ceremony.)

    Garcon: (Lifting the lids from the silver platters) Madame, bon appetit.

    Me: (sputters) But…but…this is…

    Garcon: Yesterday’s beef stew, ze last piece of ze French bread and a cup of cold caffe you left on ze table before you went to work?

    Me: Yeah! I had this for lunch too, what gives?

    Garcon: Madame, Chez du Rat trop Paresseux pour Cuisiner serves only what you have made. If you didn’t make it before you went to work, zen it won’t have appeared when you return. Surely Madame knew zis?

    Me: (dropping forehead into hands mournfully) I know, I know, I should’ve stopped by Chez Daddy on the way home and picked up a pizza.

    Garcon: Oui, do zat, and bring us one too, d’accord? Ve are ‘ongry too.

    (here the remaining tuxedoed waiters prod me with eating implements until I run screaming off the stage in the direction of my father’s restaurant. )

    (Curtain falls)

    Ok, I et my yesterday’s stew. Some things, like lentils, curry and haleem, improve with age. Stew is not one of them. But I digress. I’m back from work and happy to be home again. I don’t know why, but riding in a taxi is mentally…umm…taxing to me. You sit there for the whole trip saying nothing to the driver, and the tense silence is not unlike the uncomfortable pauses in conversation you have when there are relatives over that you don’t really want to talk to.

    I haven’t had too terribly fascinating a day, ergo this short and uninteresting blog. What can I say?

    Garcon: (elbowing his way into my soliloquy) You say, C’est La Vie!

    Me: (mashing his mustached face back under the stage curtain) Ukhruj min huna!

    (enter three French waiters brandishing baguettes)

    Waiter 1: You mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

    Waiter 2: Be gone filthy English pig-dog!

    Waiter 3: I blow my nose at you!

    Me: (Retreating under numerous baguette-blows) Run away! (I make it to the end of the stage, just out of reach of the flailing baguettes. Here I catch my breath and turn towards the camera for the last time.) And now (pant pant) the one and only thing of worth that you will read on my blog; the Islamic quote of the day, “Allah does not have mercy on that person who has no mercy on other people.” (takes stage bow)

    The End.

  • You know, sometimes I outdo even myself. Based on today’s experience, I present: How to Detonate Your Pressure Cooker.

    See, you wouldn’t normally consider a pressure cooker to be an explosive device, but with a little skill, some hungry impatience and instruction from yours truly, you too can endanger your very life. Simply ignore everything you know about safety and common sense, and twist the lid off the cooker after it’s been hissing for over twenty minutes. As soon as you have twisted the seal open, the lid will fly vertically off the pot and beef stew will explode all over the freshly scrubbed stove, go flying into the pot of milk you‘ve just boiled, and arrange itself artfully in your hair. Fortunately, the droplets of scalding broth that land on your feet will be adequately cooled by their descent to not prove lethal. What will kill you, however, are the hungry people who preferred their stew for dinner, not decoration. (I know not how much longer I shall tarry in this mortal sphere…)

    But since I’m still alive and there’s still exactly 23 minutes and 40 seconds until the bread is out of the oven, I’m free-bloggin, just typing whatever comes to mind. I would like people to think that I put alot of time and mental effort into my blog, but the truth is I go for quantity instead of quality, and I try to blog every day even if it’s just rubbish. tee hee

    Sixteen minutes till the bread’s out. Now what? I’ve already typed a paragraph of nonsense and then deleted it. It’s not that I can’t think on an empty stomach, it’s just that the bread smells so good that it’s very distracting. What’s left of my stew isn’t half-way bad either.

    Ten minutes left on the bread. The weather here is turning warm again, which means it’s time to put away my winter-weight jilbs. The summer temps in Islamabad are around 40 C, 110F, (sometimes higher, the highest last year was 46 C, that’s too much in Fahrenheit to count anymore without feeling woozy). After a few weeks of it you feel like you’ve been stewing in your own juices. We cope by drinking gallons of ice water, wearing frozen bandanas and wet scarves. Rats, now I’ve given away my summer secret. Yes, I dunk my scarf in cold water, give it a good squeeze and then pin it on. Keeps you mercifully cool for about half an hour before it dries out completely. Plus then I don’t have to iron it if it looks wrinkly. I must confess, I religiously avoid ironing anything from about May to October till the fall rains come.

    Four minutes on the bread! Monsoon season comes towards the end of summer. Boy I thought it rained hard in Chicago, but it was nothing compared to the tropical storms we get here, and they blow up out of nowhere sometimes, too. Last year my sister and I were standing on the balcony watching the lightening in the sky, and I asked her, “You think it’s gonna rain?” As soon as I had said that, suddenly a vertical sheet of water and wind hit us both in the face and pushed us backwards. Yes it rained, tons and tons of water like someone opened floodgates in the sky, and then closed them just as abruptly half an hour later.

    Bread’s done! Soup’s on!

    Aaaah…now dinner’s over and the world seems like a happier place 🙂 Alhamdulillahillazi ata’amana, wa saqana, wa ja’alana minal Muslimeen! (All Praise is due to Allah who fed us and gave us drink and made us of among the Muslims).

  • T’was the night before Monday

    And all through the house

    Not a creature was stirring

    Except this lazy bum here who can’t think of anything to rhyme with house, excluding mouse, grouse, souse and louse. Hmmmm.

    This blog is finally operational and pretty slick lookin if I may say so ;). It’s 3 am, and I’m full of Chinese food and 4 cups of green tea that I didn’t really wanna drink, but I did anyways and now the caffeine is keeping me up. Too much caffeine gives me an irregular heart-beat, so I’m sitting here hearing lub-dub, lub, lub, dub…dub? So now what? I have work in the morn (Eek! Eek! Eek! The beginning of another week!) and as usual, I haven’t done my work, and on top of that, I’m not sure how I’m getting there tomorrow morn. Hmmmm.

    The mortal wound on my thumb (incurred earlier this evening) hasn’t killed me yet, but it kept bleeding at dinner. This wouldn’t be a problem except that I was at a Chinese restaurant, and I don’t think they had Band-Aids on the menu, not even for the mortally wounded. So I confess, I used my posh cloth napkin as a posh cloth rag for dabbing at the blood.

    It’s ok, it was a terrible napkin, it had more starch in it than the white rice did. I tried to wipe my mouth with it and almost tore the skin right off my lips! Ok, I’m lying…but it was too scratchy and too hard to be of any use in any other way. If I was a smarter man, I might have kept my Band-Aid on, even when I went out for dinner. But you see, I’m not a smart man, or a man of any sort for that matter, so I just bled politely on the napkin, ok?

    Dinner was really good, the great thing about being in a Muslim country is that you can order anything you want from the menu and it’s always halal!!! Yay! The bad thing is, then you get all ambitious and eat out WAY too often for your own dietary good. I gotta get to bed, so I’ll just throw this post up and be gone. More tomorrow morn after work I guess. Zing!

  • Today we present: How To Mortally Wound Yourself While Doing Laundry

    It’s quite simple, really, you just turn your head while throwing clothes into the dryer and consequently rake your hand over the metal latch that makes the dryer close. Having done this, you will have torn a gash across your thumb, cross-wise. You may then proceed to bleed onto the clean laundry and expire after an elaborate death scene of some sort. The End. (gosh, it’s hard to type with a Band-Aid on your thumb)

    We forgot to present: How To Mortally Wound Yourself While Putting Oil in Your Car

    This is also very simple. Pit all of the strength you can muster against the oil cap in your car. Succeed in twisting it off at a very high velocity, while letting a pokey bit of metal near the cap slice through your knuckle, and then get motor oil in it. This will produce a lovely black scar that will still look gray four years later, IF the wound itself hasn’t already killed you. The End.

    Previous real-life episodes include: How to puncture your head on the corner of the microwave, how to skin your thumb using only a plastic measuring cup, how to singe the hair off your arms with a gas grill, how to fall UP the stairs, how to permanently dent your kneecap, and how to get second-degree burns on ten of your fingertips at once.

    And if the pain seems unbearable, remember, “Any trouble, any sickness or disease, any worry, any grief, any problem or anything sad or painful, even the prick of a thorn to a Muslim results in the forgiveness of his sins (due to his patience).” -Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him. Hadith on the authority by Bukhari and Muslim. So, endure everything with patience and sabr and you’ll pass the test with extra bonus points!

    Many, many thanks to Al-Mansurah who’s tolerated my status as a techno-twit and done my blogger HTML for me. JazakAllah!

  • Okie dokie people, I don’t know whether this is going to work or not, but I’ve moved my blog from xanga to blogger. My previous blogs (which I’m not smart enough to transfer over yet) are here.

    I’m still in the process of figuring all this out, which is especially difficult because I speak English, not HTML. So gimme a few days..