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In the murky waters of a troubled human mind

A certain image swirling up turbidity and fear

Clouds the thoughts and darkens them with worry and regret

How it pains my heart when I think of you my dear.

-abez

It’s weird how the human mind works. You can forget things, even people sometimes, so completely that you forget they exist. You can’t remember that they were a part of your life, that is, unless you type in the letter ‘Z’ and see their email address appear automatically when you’re composing an email.

It’s amazing how intensely you can miss someone.

It was a little difficult fitting seven people into one Corolla, but in the end we managed alright. The person on the left is Homeee 1 of 3, I’m on the right with the granite head.

The roads were wet, slippery, and foggy. Higher up there were freezing, gale-force winds. Or so it felt.

It was, in fact, so cold and so freezing that we had to stop by the roadside for a cup of tea. I mean the roadside literally. This picture was taken on the shoulder. I’m on the left, Owlie is on the right. Notice the family resemblance.

– Went to Murree and got cold, wet, and freezing. Piled seven people into one Corolla for the trip and had an AWESOME time. I don’t often type awesome in caps lock. Consider this particular use of the adjective to be especially powerful.

– My homeez brought a 12-inch Galaxy chocolate bar. Eight inches are gone. I may or may not be responsible for six of them, depending on who’s asking and who’s answering with melted chocolate on their face.

– Saw feet with red manicured toenails in purple rhinestone stilettos. I was scared.

– Drove into a pile of rocks and narrowly avoided hitting a median and another car on the way back from Murree (dad was driving, you guys can’t blame me). That was exciting in an adrenaline flavored, sick to your stomach kind of way.

– Happily paid a nice man at the bathrooms in Murree who gave me hot water to do wudu with. Bless him. And his lota.

Yesterday: Friends over from the states.

Today: Sugar cookies for breakfast at 1pm.

WheeeEEEeeeeE!

(I’m too dog tired and run-ragged from having fun to explain anything else. Tomorrow we leave for Murree at 8 am. It’s ten and I’m going to bed. G’nite! )

So it’s 3:25 am and I’m awake and feeling kind of…ill. At three am (25 minutes ago) Owlie and I both sat up in our respective beds when we heard the sound of what seemed like a woman shrieking. We ran upstairs, (I stubbed my toe on the way) to investigate. The dog was alert and growling, but the screaming had stopped. We waited a few more minutes in tense silence and this time the woman, for it was definitely a woman, screamed again. Then two of the neighborhood chawkidaars (night watchmen) drove past the house in a hurry.

I went out and walked down the driveway, hoping to catch another night watchman and tell him what we were pretty sure we had heard, but no one else came by. It was cold on the driveway, and silent, and scary in that I was standing utterly alone on the street. It gave me a horrible creeping sort of fear, what if it had been me screaming? What if had only gotten the chance to raise my voice once before it was stifled, and what if, in that moment, no one woke up? Or even if they woke up and ran up the stairs and stood on the end of their driveway, what could I hope of them? What help?

At this moment I feel like two people, the person screaming in fear and the person shivering uselessly at the end of the driveway. I can tell you that the other woman must have felt worse, but I tell you, not by much. I feel horrible.

I stood on the driveway for a while before Owlie called me back in. The woman hadn’t screamed again, and no night watchman had come by, and the stillness of the air was so complete that I had even started to wonder whether I had heard screaming at all. But I know I did, and Owlie did too.

Sometimes, when you stand beneath the vastness of the sky, or put your bare feet into the blueness of an ocean that curves away into the horizon, you remember your insignificance. Sometimes when you are sick, you are reminded of your own weakness. And sometimes, when your strength fails you, you look to strength greater than your own. Please take a moment to pray for the safety and well-being of the woman who was screaming in her distress. Being weak and alone and cold at 3 am on the driveway, I failed her.

La hawla wa la quwwata illa billahi ‘Ali-ul Azeem.

Sometimes my life is like a soap opera that no one would watch. Ok, maybe not a soap opera, but at least a bad sitcom. (That was my intro, now here’s the transition…) Someone has posted my email address, with a matrimonial ad, in a Bangladeshi newspaper. Apparently I, Mr.K, have a daughter for whom I am seeking a groom, or to put it in other words…

“a young girl suitable for my brother in Dhaka”

and

“I have noticed u_r ad that u need a male for u_r daughter.”

For the last week I’ve been receiving emails with photographs, resumes, and ‘biodata’ from:

“5 feet 7 inch tall with slim figure(66 Kg), weatish complexion, and reasonably good looking”

and

“a gentleman with no serious problem or burden in my life”

and

“I m interested.”

My only regret is that since I can’t read Bangla, I don’t know what ‘my’ ad in the Daily Prothom Alo says. You guys, if anyone here is fluent in Bangla, please track ‘my’ ad down for me. It’s under the email address of zhkhan at gmail dot com, and apparently I’m applying on behalf of my daughter. I don’t know where I live or which edition of the newspaper I advertised in, but it can’t be more than a week old.

One of the people who emailed me has very kindly cautioned me that if I did not place this ad myself, then I should be careful because:

“I don’t think it was a mistake.Either your enemies or youe close ralative has made fun out of you.”

Alright you guys, I don’t have any family in Dhaka, so who in God’s green Bangladesh is mad at me?

Serious parties only may reply in confidence with photograph and biodata.

United Socks of Abezistan

Addendum:

Once upon a time, when I was a first-worlder with first-world fashion sense, I politely giggled at socks in sandals. Four years later, in a land where even mountain-climbing pathans on the snowy slopes of K-2 wear sandals all year-round, I am wearing my sandals with socks. The weather right now is pretty cold, in the evenings you can see your breath freeze and hang in the air.

See, you have to wear sandals, and because it’s cold, you have to wear socks. It’s that simple. You can’t wear sneakers, because only America-returned ex-pats with no local fashion sense wear big white sneakers, and boy do they look silly. After four years, even I laugh at a kid whose jeans are falling off the back of his knees and bunching up on a pair of big white shoes that look like they belong on an astronaut’s feet.

Note: if any of you guys come back to visit, leave your sneakers at home. If you wear them anywhere but a jogging track, you might as well wear a big sign on your back that sez ‘halo, I am from foreign!’

When I’m at work (when I have a job, unlike now, hehe) I can wear closed high-heels or boots with my socks hidden underneath, but for shopping or shlumping around the poorly paved sidewalks of Islamabad, it’s got to be sandals. And because it’s cold, there have to be socks.

Thank you and goodnight.

I have a dog. Rather, we have a guard-dog who happens to have made herself an outdoor member of the family. Once she ‘rescued’ my father from a lit firecracker that someone threw at his feet. She picked it up in her mouth and dropped it farther away where it exploded. Then she came back to attack the person who’d thrown the firecracker. (that would be where my father rescued the other guy)

Her job is to bark at whatever is out of the ordinary, which includes people prowling around the boundary wall as well as hawks soaring at altitudes of hundreds of feet in the air. She also barks at:

Flies

Wasps

Cats on the boundary wall

Ravens

Nothing

She can’t help it, really, and no matter how well trained, and no matter how dedicated she is to her work (barkbarkbark!) she hasn’t got any logic. It doesn’t matter how good a dog she is (good dog), cuz she’s still a dog.

A heart, no matter how good or how sincerely intentioned, is still just a heart. Its primary concern is feeling and emotion, and although feeling and emotion are parts of human life that make the world a beautiful and compassionate place, they cannot take the place of logic.

But what’s up with the brain? Some people use their brains as weapons, and some people can warp logic so totally that anything can be justified. Granted, they may still have hearts that shudder at what they’re doing and don’t believe the lies the brain is telling, but their hearts may have been subjugated like the cringing, miserable puppy that’s been kicked too many times and follows reluctantly with its tailed tucked between its legs.

Because neither the heart nor mind are perfect, they are supposed to operate as a team. Neither one is meant to function wholly without the help of the other, but in this day and age, people are more likely to be told to ignore their thoughts and follow their feelings which is why I talked about the heart first. Few people these days are in danger of over or mis-using their logic. But it is possible. Logic is a sword with a double blade. A person of skill can swing it any way they want and it can cut through confusion, or take lows blows at sense and reason. This, in fact, is the very basis of most propaganda and the type of facetious logic that people use to justify actions that are wrong to everyone but themselves. The brain can be misused in the same way that the heart can, and a person can choose to justify whatever they want in the same way they can choose to act on whatever emotion suits them.

[I’m not using drugs, this is a prescription. It’s a halal drug, I just take ten a day…]

In the ideal situation, the brain is holding the leash to a well-trained seeing-eye dog. In reality, most of us are confused leash-holders who rely too much on under-trained dogs to guide us, and instead of taking a moment to reason things out and then run the suggestion by the heart, we follow the heart’s advice entirely and leave the brain on the backburner. It’s not a conscious decision, it’s just the effect of being told that religion, love, and sincerity are all matters of the heart.

Life, and everything in it, is a matter of both heart and mind, and the idea is to get them to function as a lean, mean, intelligent, compassionate human machine who reasons things through the lens of kindness and faith. Nothing can be left to one or the other entirely, because religion without heart is cold, and God has told us to be kind and act with mercy and compassion. On the other hand, religion based entirely on emotion may lead us in illogical directions (i.e. The Church of Elvis) that fulfill our emotional voids but do no favors to the search for truth and guidance.

Love based entirely on emotion will fade when the fireworks have faded and the conscious effort to invest in a person is missing, and love based only on logic lacks warmth. (I’m a man, you’re a woman. I’ll bring home bacon and you cook it.)

Like the well-trained dog (no insult to hearts or dogs intended) the heart can be a guide, a warning system, and a valuable informant, but it’s not perfect and it simply cannot reason. When your heart looks at something it wants, the fact that you can’t have it doesn’t make it want any less. It’s your brain’s job to gently pull the heart away and keep walking.

The heart barks at flies, and without the brain to hold on to the leash, it tends to run in any direction it wants. Hold on to that leash. Let’s not forget who’s master.

The discussion on the heart (bad heart, no muddy paws on the sofa!) will continue after I’ve woken up. It’s 5pm and the sum total of what I’ve eaten all day is:

Two gingerbread men

One Banana

Two cups of tea

I woke up at eleven and later I had a two hour nap. I think I’m coming down with something. blah

I give up on my digicam. This is a webcam shot of the fuzzy, fleece robe with duckies on it that Chai gave me, and it is also the reason why I have decided to love her forever. Mwuahz!

I don’t like my new layout, but at least it’s new, and it’s a layout, yay! I’ll probably get tired of looking at it in a few days and stay up all night making something else, and at the very least, it’ll give me something to do during those quiet, peaceful hours when normal people are sleeping and strange ones are playing with their HTML.

It’s only 12:30, and the night is relatively young, but I feel kinda tired. I think I’m coming down with a cold. A cold what? A cold ice-cream would be nice. I had one yesterday. And now I have a cold.

(Round and round and round she goes, when she’ll stop, Lord only knows…)

As lame as this entry is, I think this is all I can think of at the moment. Except for the bucket of gingerbread upstairs, and the illegal fudge cake in the fridge out of which I have already consumed an illegal slice. It was criminally delicious, though not necessarily sinful, because in this day and age, not everything that’s illegal is immoral, and so my cake was criminal and not sinful.

By Abez, the end.

You know you guys missed this madness. It barely missed me, I almost got hit in the head…

I have no idea what time we woke up… I think it was 10:00? In either case, we made a phone call to Ushiville to book a later appointment and found they were free to play immediately. So Hemmie dropped us off on her way to class and we had a lovely time reminiscing and rather unexpectedly watching a good twenty minutes of Ma Shakti. Ah, good times.

It turns out that Ushi & Co. are actually connected with Hemmie and Co., and it’s first degree too! Hemmie went to school with Maichoo, and Maichoo knows and remembers Hemmie Bro too. As Hemmie and Maichoo sat comparing notes on who was now married to whom or working for what company, I felt I could finally relate to Chai who complains that we’ve moved in on her family. It’s true, she has an awesome family. We can’t help but do things like say… drive up to Lahore and visit her cousins without her, he he.

(Ushi & Co are cousins of Chai.)

After coming back home to Hemmie-ville it was time for a power nap, and by power nap I mean one mighty powerful nap where I closed my eyes and opened them instantly two hours later. By then Chij, Niqabified and Sister S. were on their way and I had about half an hour to look presentable. Which I wasted entirely, so I met them in the same jilbab I had spent the day in.

To be fair, I did bring a somewhat nice looking shalwar qameez to Lahore for the express purpose of pretending to be a decently-dressed person. I wasn’t trying to impress Hemmie (too late, she’s seen my clothes, both of them) but Chij, Niqabified & Sister S., meeting them for the first time I should have been better dressed. Should have. But wasn’t. The shalwar qameez I brought never saw use. This was because we were either out of the house (jilbab) or asleep (pajamas.) Yes folks, it was that much fun.

After a rocking good time with Chij & Co. and chocolate cupcakes I couldn’t eat, we drove them home to an area of Lahore that Hemmie was unfamiliar with. Getting lost seemed like an adventuresome prospect, but unfortunately Hemmie found her way back to the road and we got home again.

At about 11 o’clock we decided to zoom by food street. I could tell you how it went, but I’ll let Hemmie tell you.

“They looked at food street and food street looked at them. I don’t know who had more fun.”

To be fair, Lahoris don’t stare more than Karachites do, but they can both be equally bad. At one point it was infuriating, now it’s just irritating, and since I’m fulfilling my responsibility of being fully dressed, I’m pretty sure the na-jaiz fun of staring at me is comparable to the excitement of staring at six and a half yards of black georgette- one and a half for the scarf, five for the jilb.

We did eventually get to bed. Hemmie we packed off around 1:30 am, Owlie and I were up until about 4 am, allowing for about 2 hours of sleep before it was time to zoom back to Isloo the next morn. Over-stimulation can do that to a body.

Tomorrow: Canal Road closed for construction, Momma, Owlie and Abez running amok in Lahore! Mwahahaaa! (I saved this secret for last Luv)

Today: You know how sometimes you love something so much you want to squeeze the person who gave it to you to the point where their ribs crack, but refrain because you don’t want to hurt them or freak them out? This would be one of those times. I have Chai back. And she is the reason why I’m sitting here in fleece pajamas and a blue robe with yellow duckies on it. I wish the digicam were working. The whole world needs to see these. I believe that joy should be shared.

Baji is the expert travelogue writer, not Abez, and with that disclaimer out of the way, here’s the Lahore Weekend Log!

Saturday: We were supposed to be on the motorway by 2pm, but it was actually closer to 3pm by the time we got ourselves out of the house. Having gotten onto the motorway, we were supposed to have maintained a speed of about 120kmh, but no one told our car this, and it protested by shaking so hard it sounded like it was going to fall into tiny pieces (Suzuki, by Mattel). So what would normally have been a four hour drive was actually six, and by the time we got to Lahore and called Hemmie from the Daewoo station, we had sufficiently worried her for me to get scolded, hehe.

After we got to Hemmie’s house we were dined & dined (not wined, just deliciously over-fed, hehe) on Nihari and Aloo Gobi and chicken in black pepper and Saag which was really, really good. Then for some reason we went to Hot Spot (or is it Hot Shots? Can never remember…) for desert. At midnight it was packed, which could either say a lot about their deserts or a little about how bored Lahoris are, but I’ll leave the conclusion up to you because other Hemmie might vanquish me, he he.

But yes, for whatever reason, the place was packed, and I should have had the sense to realize that I was not unseen and unheard as a happily slid into the booth with a very audible ‘woosh!,’ and hands in the air. Sleep deprivation is a funny thing.

Realizing what I had done, I looked around. The people in the nearby booths were busy with their ice-cream. No prob there, but the people on the other side of the huge glass window were highly amused. I had a small audience in the parking lot. I picked my purse up and found a table downstairs. There was no one else there.

Woosh!

Demi-Hemmie (the lil sister) had a peach sorbet and Hemmie had a little of what everyone else was having, which is brilliant because the deserts are too big anyway. I had strawberry frozen yogurt and Owlie nearly killed herself trying to finish a piece of cheesecake by herself. I would have helped her, honest, but I’m being a good patient and cheese is on the list of ‘Abez’s favorite things that the Tabib has forbidden.’ There are other things on the list that I simply forgot about though. I spent the weekend drinking contraband pop. Or soft-drinks as non-Chicagoans say. This is soft drinks as compared to hard drinks, like vodka, which aren’t on the do-not-consume list, but hey, I think I’ll pass anyway.

Chocolate and nuts were on the list too, but I honestly forgot and had a mini-Snickers. I’m going to blame Owlie for this because she realized I was eating forbidden fruit but didn’t say anything. She wanted to see what would happen and has actually been taking bets on how long it would take me to break my parhaizi. (parhaizi: Tabib sez no good eats) It’s not cruel of her, it’s just realistic. I get gastroenteritis from eating stuff like pani poori and limka from thela-walas in the summer, and in addition to the usual course of antibiotics, the Tabib always tells me that I’m not allowed to have anything but yogurt, white rice and bananas. I go home and try. I get bored after one meal and move on to lasagna. Parhaizi is hard for me.

We also got a whirlwind tour of LUMS, complete with a visit to Hemmie’s dorm to find her pajamas and meet her room mate, who looked rather like a pile of blue comforters. I think it was about 1:30 am. I don’t blame her, I was jealous to not be a big pile of happily snoring blankets myself.

Back to Hemmie-land, we laughed and guffawed over old pictures and made merciless fun of each other in the way that only real friends can.

Dear Lord… you were fat.

And you looked like a desiccated mouse.

I don’t know what time we eventually got to bed. It was all a happy blur.

Tomorrow: Hum Hay Blogistani; Hanging with Ushi & Co., meeting Chij & Niqabified & Chij’s sister.

Just got home.

Need shower.

Blog later.

*collapse*

– Leaving for Lahore and Hemmie and Chij and good times in fifteen minutes.

– With Crayon and Chai on my mind.

– And tuna salad on my nose. Heh. 🙂

Sometimes it’s enough just to have a good rage-against-the-machine session. And sometimes it’s just nice to have a hug from your momma. 🙂

AAAAAAARGH! @$^!(*&#$!!$@

This morning I saw Tabib #2 about my badly-behaved head. He said (after the mandatory toothpick) that he thought I was having varient migraines. Then he starting naming things like mint and chocolate and coffee and cheese and I became overjoyed in the false hope that he was giving me a prescription but Alas! he was telling me what I must not eat.

Crayon was asking me whether I was happy with this diagnosis. I think I am. Short of being able to trade your diseases in (I don’t like this illness, can I have a different one please?) this is the closest thing I can get to a downgrade. Migraines, no prob. Take two of these, take a nap, and take a tissue to wipe away the tears as you stare longingly at the chocolate. :p

I don’t know if I’m convinced of the diagnosis so much as I just want to be convinced of it. Either way, I’ll be a good and dutiful patient for a week before going back to Tabib #2 and I hope InshaAllah that parhaizi (Urdu word meaning: no good eats) will be enough to fix things.

Gots to go bake stuff. Abezistan is descending upon Lahore this weekend and this calls for cookies.

I can remember, when I was little, sitting in on a Sunday School class in my mother’s church and being amused at how they prayed; the churchgoers were seated on folding metal chairs that were arranged in a loose semi-circle. Some of them were half-way turned around for people who had been sharing their Bibles and needed to face another person. When it came time to pray, all of these people facing all different ways folded their arms over their stomachs and bowed their heads. It looked half-way between a traffic jam and a communal stomach-ache.

I suppose that Muslim prayer must look as unusual to a Christian as a Christian prayer looked unusual to me, but the direction we face does have a purpose. We’re praying to God and we face the Kabah as a point of unity. No matter what kind of Muslim you are, no matter where in the world you pray, you and millions of others are facing the same direction.

(What happens if you accidentally get turned around hunh? What if you have a horrible sense of direction and pray towards Australia instead. Do your prayers go to the wrong place?)

If our prayers shot out like bullets, they would go right past Australia and then circle around the world endlessly. The same would happen to the prayers of people in multi-story buildings because they were offered at the wrong altitude. That is, if our prayers were headed to some destination here on Earth. They’re not though, our prayers go to God regardless of our religious navigation skills. One simple example of this is the area around the Kabah itself where two or three balconies rise above it. At this altitude, the worshippers’ prayers miss the Kabah entirely, but fortunately, prayers don’t go forward, they go Superman. Up, up and away!

Dear Blogistan

Well, it’s 7 o’clock and there’s no food in the house. I don’t mean that there isn’t anything edible at all, I just mean that there’s nothing that would be appropriate for an meal. The fridge is full to bursting with things like sheer khurma, cake, dahi baray and various other crunchy-munchy snack foods and sweets that you serve for Eid. No food food though, nothing that I could fill a plate with and call dinner.

I could just serve myself a little of everything and call it the variety platter, but considering that I already had sheer khurma for breakfast and a piece of cake for lunch, I think I’m ready for something like… spaghetti? Mmmm… Owlie, though, is not a big fan of spaghetti, unlike both myself and Sofia Loren who owe everything we are to pasta.

Alright, so I’m hungry and there’s no real dinner. There wasn’t any yesterday either, and I made do on salad for breakfast, sweets for lunch and a bowl of jello at midnight. I think we’re all out of the habit of cooking. Mealtimes in Ramadan were 5:10 (tea, fruit and snacks) dinner at 7:30 (leftovers from Sehri) and Sehri at 4:30 (leftovers from Iftar).

Someone, email me some food before I fall into the sheer khurma again. I think I’m getting saffron poisoning…

Pining for Pasta,

-abeZ

But with commercials. he he

Guess who was a call-in guest on Radio Islam, and guess who sounds much girlier on the air than they do in their own heads. *sigh* But at least I still look scary? Where’s Crayon, she knows how terrifying I am…and Owlie, look! *grimaces*

Lissen or click here and select

November 10, 2004:

Host:Samira Said and Imran Husain

Topic: Eid Around the World

I come in just after the news (4min) and am around till they tell me bye-bye. (23 min) And in the middle there’s actually a caller from Kalamazoo. And I thought Islamabad was an exotic location, hmmph!

And uh… some of you may figure out that they’re not calling me Abez. I know this might be hard to swallow, but uh…Abez is my real name. That other one? That’s the name I tell other people to protect my secret superhero identity. You know, just like Superman goes around telling people his name is Clark Kent even though his real name is really and truly Superman. Yep.

Up, up and away!

*flies out of window*

O Friend! we are near you in friendship,

Wherever you set foot, we prostrate ourselves like earth.

How is it permissible, in the religion of love,

That we should see your Creation and neglect to see You?

That Friend brought me up with great care and attention;

He sewed me a garment from skin and veins.

The body is like a cloak and my heart in it like a mystic,

The world is like a monastery and He is my Guide.

Seek knowledge which unravels mysteries

Before your life comes to close

Give up that non-existence which looks like existence,

Seek that Existence which looks like non-existence!

There is a world outside Islam and Disbelief,

We are enamoured of the atmosphere therein.

The mystic lays down his head when he reaches there.

There is neither Islam nor Disbelief in this place.

Whenever I prostrate my head He is the one to whom I bow;

In six directions or outside the six, he is the one I worship.

The garden, the rose, the nightingale, music and the beauteous maiden

Are a mere excuse and He alone is the real object.

-Rumi

www.khamush.com

Imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang around 10 pm and when I went to answer it, I found Poppie on the other side of the gate. My surprise is very toothy, and it looks like the kind of grin on a three-year old discovering mud pies for the first time. It was a blogging hit & run, we had a whirlwind meet & greet in the dirty, post-Iftar party mess of my house late at night while Poppie’s family waited outside in the car. Poppie was quickly hugged, plied with cookies, hugged again and sent on her way. By this time tomorrow she’ll be back home in England.

Ah, Blogistan, I love this country. 🙂

Dear Blogistan, AssalamuAlaikum

I’m slightly delayed in updating because I’m thinking thoughts. Maybe not thinking so much as sorting, here’s what I have.

The state of my head:

-Day one off of medication was fine. A few jabs in the ear but I made a point to relax and breathe and ignore it. Alhamdulillah, no problema.

– Day Two: Better than day one, no pain. All good. Smooth sailing. Until Abez becomes severely but quietly mad about something and within an hour develops what feels like a blow to the right side of the head and throat. Bang!

– Day Three: (today) Woke up and felt fine. No pain, but within ten minutes of waking up I was again faced with what had made me mad the day before, and my ear/face/head (right side as usual) have hurt all day since. It’s 11:55 pm right now.

Mind over Body, Body vs. Mind?

Everything happens for a reason, bi-Iznillah, and I find it an interesting coincidence that at the zenith of my anger and headache an interesting documentary came BBC World about the effect of stress on the human body. Living on stress is the equivalent of pushing the brake and the accelerator at the same time, and although you can mentally adjust yourself to it, that doesn’t stop you from damaging the engine.

The extent of the engine damage varies from one person to another, and basically there are a whole slew of things that stress can do to you simply based on the fact that it’s too much for your body to be running on ‘ARGH!’ mode all the time. And I don’t mean the mind is in a state of Argh, it’s the body that’s in a state of Argh, doing all sorts of slowly deteriorating damage. Could this directly account for me having a head-ache on the right side of my head? I don’t know, because that’s not what a tension head-ache is, but the effects of living under stress for long periods of time do cause damage to the body over time.

I’m hoping some med-savvy blogger will jump in and explain this more clearly, but basically stress races your heart, breaks down your arteries, raises your cholesterol, lowers your immunity, raises blood pressure, scatters your brains (come back here!) and accelerates general unhealthiness by diverting powering from the main thrusters to the forward shields instead. (More power Scotty, we need more Power! I cannae do it Captain! She cannae take the strain!)

Although this may seem somewhat connected to what the neurologist said about me seeing a psychiatrist, it actually isn’t. The gist of what he said was: The pain’s all in your head, (imaginary) see a psychiatrist. The gist of what I’m considering is: Stress has taken its toll on my poor unsuspecting head.

I’m willing to consider the stress theory because my second-rate stomach tried to digest itself (chronic gastritis) for the first time when Aniraz and I were living in Karachi away from the family, which was actually a very mentally taxing time. The second time the stomach tried to digest itself (the sequel, with a vengeance!) was the day after my engagement broke off. Ten months and hundreds of bottles of Gaviscon later my stomach is finally healed Alhamdulillah and I am happily indulging in the occasional nihari without consequence. I’m also drinking tea and coffee again (-zing-), something that was too painful to do when my stomach lining was inflamed.

I was discussing this with, or rather, at Crayon, who’s a saint to let me talk her ear off on the phone, and she mentioned how this might be an effect of me not venting stress. Strange thing is, I never feel the need to vent. I don’t feel the need to shout or swear, I’m not holding anything back. And that doesn’t mean that I’m a saint and never say anything out of anger, it just means that certain comments can be equally barbed at conversational volume levels.

So what am I going to do about my head? Well, I’m going to go with anti-stress first, because stress relief has no chemical side effects and can only do a body good. Although I’m interested, of course, in knowing what exactly is causing my lopsided headache, it’s my fervent hope that teaching my body to relax will help it to slow down and let it heal some of the damage that stress may have caused. At least that way it won’t involve any more drugs, doctors or toothpicks poking me in the face. 😀

If, even after taking chillaxation to the next level (I wanna take Tai-chi!) I’m still having one-sided headaches, then my Abbu basically insists that I head down to AKU and see another tabib, Insha’Allah. Am I averse to herbal medicine or alternative therapies? I don’t think so, but those are treatments, and a diagnosis would be nice too. 🙂 I need to know where I stand before I pick a direction to head in.

A heart-felt and huge JazakAllah for all the helpful suggestions that people have made, believe me, I’m making a list of them, and although I haven’t made a final decision on how to treat my head yet, I am keeping them in mind. 🙂

Love, Peace and Nihari Grease,

-Abez

xi-

They told me to count my blessings

I told them I hadn’t the time

My body hadn’t the breath

My language hadn’t the words

-Abez

good day today. time to go wash the dishes. 😀

Today has been a very hectic day. I woke up and went to the Tabib. To make a long story short, the Tabib has decided that although my pain has responded to the traditional treatment for trigeminal neuralgia, it was all in my head (ya’ani politely I’m nuts) and I should see a psychiatrist. That’s the abbreviated version. The unabbreviated version took twenty minutes and cost five hundred rupees. You don’t want that one.

He told me that I have stress that I’m not telling him about and that I’m having tension headaches. Right. Tension headaches. In my teeth on the right side of my mouth. And my right eye. And in my right ear. But it still responds to both Neurontin and Topamax.

*polite nod and smile*

I would like to have told el-Tabib that I have had my share of stress in life and that I deal with it through prayer, through writing, through raiding the bag of jelly beans in the deep freezer (oops, did I type that out loud?) but not by getting tense on one side of my face. It just doesn’t seem very me she said with an almondy sweetness faintly akin to cyanide.

I developed the one-sided face-ache after a week-long fun-fest in Lahore, the great vacation that followed a vacation to the States before that, both of these set in six months of vacation where I haven’t been working this year.

If I have stress, it must be the kind you get from having too much fun and too little hard work, and the over-exertion of enjoying yourself has to be interrupted by nice, long naps in between. Lest you hurt yourself. Or maybe even get a face-ache apparently.

Maybe my ex-Tabib is used to dealing with people who suffer from what I call ‘creeping hypochondria,’ a mild disease that seems to migrate from one body part to another depending on what aches and how serious it could be and whose uncle had it once and had to have the leg cut off and Hai Allah mai margai! Someone get me an ambulance! Maybe I should’ve taken a whole slew of friends into the neurology ward to vouch for me: Abez is not a hypochondriac.

Abez is not a stresser either. Nothing is a life or death situation unless it’s really a life or death situation, and so far that’s never happened. I’m not a keeper of secret stress, and that doesn’t mean that life doesn’t offer me any stress, it just means that I won’t have any of it. And that doesn’t mean I’m in denial, that means I’m in refusal. Denial and refusal are two totally different things. Case in point:

Denial: Are you ok? You don’t look ok, you look all grouchy.

Go away, I’m fine. Just leave me alone, my head hurts.

Ok your head hurts, I’m sorry, but you don’t have to be so mean about it.

Well you don’t have to be so annoying, just go away.

-VS.-

Refusal: Are you alright?

I have a headache but I’m fine. How are you?

Pretty good, what’s for lunch?

So what’s the plan? Well, plan A. was to bonk ex-Tabib on the head with the rubber hammer that he bonked me with on the first visit to check my reflexes. Ah, irony.

Plan B. was to poke him in the face with a toothpick a lot and ask if it hurt. Which he also did on the first visit, which would not only be irony, but would also be stress-relief. For me and my secret stress, he he. Ahem, ok, pardon me.

Plan C: Refusal. (as compared to denial) I’m quitting Topamax cold turkey. The dose I missed was a few hours ago and aside from some twitching in the bridge of my nose (and the sudden hankering for a carrot?) I feel alright. Does my head hurt? Yes. But I refuse to be badly effected. I’m fine.

I think I’m doing this to push the reset button. I’m going to start over with a new headache (or hopefully no headache) and go from there. If it’s too much to deal with (through prayer and jelly beans) then I’ll get a new Tabib.

I can’t remember where I was going with the conclusion. Oh yes. I’m looking forward to having 100% of brain at my disposal again. I was running at about an 80-90% on good days with Topamax. On bad days it was a foggy 60%. Maybe I should forget about treating the nerve and focus on raising my tolerance for pain? Maybe I can finally convince my dad to pay for martial arts classes!!!!! Ok, I know it’s a stretch, but I’ve always wanted them, and don’t master martial artists break cement blocks and wooden boards and other martial artists into small pieces without even wincing? See, that’s pain management. 🙂

It’s T-minus 30 minutes until Iftar and there are too many yummy smells upstairs. Which is why I’m hiding downstairs. My head feels soupy today, soupy in the sense that if you take a bowl of soup and turn it, the bowl goes one direction but the soup will go another. I’m sure you could try it with a cup of tea too. But don’t try it for another half hour, because we’re still fasting.

My lovely Owlie-Bird has been surfing online for useful information related to the Hippoconvention on my face, and we’ve turned up all sorts of interesting cures, including one lady who swears by Vodka. Well yes, a shot of Vodka every time your head hurt would probably take an egde off the pain, but I don’t know about the side-effects.

Another woman swears my rubbing cayenne (that’s red hot chilli peppers for ya folks, the ones that burn, not sing) lotion on her face every three hours. Yet another woman took this advice and applied it (literally) to her backside, and then wrote a scathing letter (yet again, literally!) about how her derrier got burnt.

A man in the US swears by foot-massage, and his wife explains how the little toe is connected to pains in the abdomen. An elderly couple extolls the virtues of quitting sugars, glutens, and processed foods and ‘living as close to nature’ as possible. That reminds me of a joke that one of my students told me. He was from one of those former Russian-Bloc communistans. The joke goes like this.

A bum goes into a Communist Party rally and gets in line thinking he’ll get a hand out. The line moves up and he finds himself at the front, facing a brown-shirted Comrade with a huge ledger and a pen. The Comrade hands the bum the pen.

“Do you swear to give up gambling for The Party!”

The bum looks around nervously and shrugs. Ok, fine.

“Do you swear to give up drinking for The Party!”

The bum’s lower lip quivers and he gives a slight nod.

“Do you swear to give up women for The Party!”

The bum nearly faints. The crowd props him up and somehow he is seen nodding.

The Comrade’s face turns a pssionate shade of purple and he bursts, “Do you swear to give your LIFE for the Communist party!”

The poor man leaps three feet into the air and shouts, YES!!! He grabs the pen and signs his name on the ledger with a flourish. Someone in the crowd elbows him and asks why the sudden enthusiasm. The poor man says, ‘Without gambling, drinking, or women, what’s my life worth anyway?”

-rimshot-

So yeah, without sugar, gluten or processed foods, what would my life be worth anyway? he he. Alright, this is the height of randomness. I have to go upstairs and help with the Iftar and try not to drool on things.