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Aaaaaaarrrhhhh…my hands are shaking. Not just my hands, my arms from the shoulder down are trembling in an embarrassingly old-lady kinda way. Why? Cuz I’ve been lifting weights. And do you know what the embarrassing part is? It’s the amount of weight I’ve been lifting. You really wanna know how many pounds/kilos it takes to make me sore and trembly? You really wanna know?

*drumroll please*

And the amount of weight that maxes out Sensei’s puny muscles is…

5 kilos. (…that’s 10.8 pounds for those who don’t think in metric)

Yeah yeah, I can see all you people out there rolling your eyes and going psshhh…five kilos. Whatta weakling! And me at home, you know what I’m doing? I’m rolling my eyes and going, psshhh…I am a weakling! I have no choice but to confess that I, Sensei, am a weak and puny mortal, and if my life were made into a superhero movie, I wouldn’t get the lead role. I’d be listed in the credits as ‘civilian destroyed by city-eating monster #2,’ right between ‘fleeing man’ and ‘dog killed in the beginning to wrench viewer heartstrings.’

I like to imagine myself as a rough & tough, butt-kicking ninja-type person, especially when I’m playing video games, but the truth is that I couldn’t even make a good video game character. They do all that running and jumping non-stop, and they never run out of breath or break a sweat. Take Gabe Logan for example, the ape-faced secret agent in Syphon Filter who sneaks, rolls, jumps, shimmies and sprints his way through sniper fire and explosions, all while carrying this really heavy gun. Does he ever get tired? No. Why I’ve run him through three levels straight without giving the poor man a breather, while I, on the other hand, can’t run down the block without stopping to clutch at my heart and wheeze like an octogenarian.

Then there’s Lara Croft, who has a vertical leap of what looks like seven feet and can push and pull blocks of solid stone the size of cars. And Samonosuke, the Samurai warrior from Onimusha, he whips around that big old sword like it’s made out of a TV antenna and manages to keep all his hair in place too. Now there’s a skill I’d like to master.

Speaking of Samurais, I shouldn’t even bother thinking I could be like Jack. Not only can the dude practically fly, but he drives his sword through steel like it’s made out of butter. I, on the other hand, can’t drive a knife through butter without wondering if it’s made of steel. To be fair though, as far as cartoons are concerned Jack is in a league of his own. Other cartoon characters are slightly less intimidating. In fact, there are a few that I could even liken myself to.

Specifically, Garfield.

Blogistani time-travel. We are moving backwards through history (woosh!), all the way back to July 17th, 2003. Note the following entry:

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 feathers into my room through the cracks, had finally pecked a large hole through the foam and forced a mess of feathers and straw through the hole.

(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)

Now fast-forward to today. (woosh!)

And que the theme from the Twilight Zone. (ne-no-ne-no-ne-no-ne-no…)

And altogether now…

They’re baaAAAAaaaack!

The sparrows are building a nest in the air conditioner again, and as I lay beneath it today trying to sleep and yet not think hateful thoughts about sparrows in general, I found myself inspired to rip off The Raven. So without any further ado, here O Tolerant of My Nonsense Blogistanis, is:

The Sparrow

(ne-no-ne-no-ne-no-ne-no…)

Once upon a noontime dearie, while I languished, tired but cheery,

Over many a quaint and fluffy pillow trying not to snore,

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my aircondition-or.

“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “at the aircondition-or –

Only this, and nothing more.”

Back into the pillow turning, all my dreams within me burning,

Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window, drat this:

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this tippy-tap explore –

Let my snores be still a moment and this mystery explore; –

‘Tis a bird and nothing more.”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flap and flutter,

In there stepped a naked sparrow of the mangy days, Core!

Not the least of cuteness had he; not a mite of charm (nay) had he;

But, with mien of lizard palely fell onto my chamber floor –

Fell upon a pile of laundry just upon my chamber floor –

Fell from yon aircondition-or.

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to wear no clothes so plainly,

Though its buffness little meaning, little relevancy bore.

For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being

Ever yet was blest with seeing bird fall upon one’s floor –

Bird or beast with naked flesh upon his chamber floor,

Which I crammed back into aircondition-or.

And the sparrow, never ceasing, still is pecking, still is peeping

From the nest of straw and wrappers in the aircondition-or;

And my sleep has all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,

As the scratch-scratch o’er me streaming throws my peace right out the door.

And my soul from out that shadow that lives in the aircondition-or

Shall be lifted – nevermore!

Hmm, is it Thursday already? Sheesh, time flies when you’re errr…bored. Yeah. Bored but busy.

Since we’ll be moving soon (‘nother house up the road) we’ve started delving into the closets and cabinets that haven’t been opened since the year 2001, when we moved in, shelved the boxes and threw away the keys on the storage. Now we have to go through all that junk. Sheesh.

Today Aniraz and I worked on the family room, dumping out drawers and crawling into cabinets. Aside from a head full of dust, we fond interesting things. Like my three-foot long purple flannel hat with a tassel on the end. I was missing that! And the left arm of one of my little brother’s old G. I. Joes. It may have been Sgt. Slaughter, I’m not sure. We also found:

Batteries. Dozens of them, and none of them work.

Rolls of film, all of them used and none of them developed. I’m afraid to turn them in, because I don’t remember taking them and some of the look very, very old. At 100 rupees per roll, I’m not about to take the risk of developing a roll that died sometime back in the seventies, or worse- was taken back in the seventies and will provide yet more pictures of my parents in loud polyester shirts with pointy collars.

Books we’ve never read and never wanted to. Sometimes when people move they go, “Hey! Abez and Aniraz like to read, and I can’t take my books with me, so why don’t I give my books to Abez and Aniraz!” That’s a brilliant idea, except that neither Aniraz nor I read crap, and so there’s a whole collection of books that have never been read past the cover. I know, I know, you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. But sometimes you can, for some books I don’t even need to read the titles, I can just look at the cover illustration and decide that I don’t want to read them. Books like ‘I Love You Mr. Pirate’, or the ‘Pouty Chick With Poufy Hair Giving Me a Saucy-Look’ book.

Dead dehydrated flies. I never thought it could happen, but apparently in my house, flies can die of starvation, and they sometimes choose the bookshelf as the place where they lay down to die, dry and crisp. *munch munch*

Oh well, on an unrelated note, Sensei is playing (but not necessarily enjoying) Syphon Filter II, only because it’s there. One game I’m finding surprisingly good is Bespelled, and I’m not normally a fan of online games. (I prefer the real deal, where you can actually cheat or throw pieces when you lose. :p )

I haven’t forgotten about typing a part II to the post I started a few days back (about growing up in a two-religion household), it’s just that I had to mention that we had two earthquakes today.

It was so amazing and scary at the same time, SubhanAllah. I felt the first one while I was praying, sitting between sajdas, and I got the distinct feeling that the floor beneath the prayer rug was undulating, like jello.

The second one was an hour or so after that, and as I was sitting on the sofa, I felt the legs begin to move back and forth and noticed that the chandelier was swaying a bit.

You know, you forget that the earth isn’t a solid, unmovable mass. I do anyway, and it’s a humbling reminder when part of it shudders and sets the tea-cups rattling in their saucers. This whole continent is just a crust of dirt floating on a sea of boiling-hot lava, and the sea of lava itself is the core of just one planet among billions in unimaginably large cosmos. And I, I am a trembling, mortal speck staring at the chandelier.

(which, incidentally, needs dusting.)

Alhamdulillah.

PS: A pox on valentine’s day.

(Hey Sensei, what’s up?)

1. I’m trying to brainwash one of my students, but it’s harder than I thought it would be. Hmmph. (mongrel)

2. I had such a big lunch today that it’s dinner-time and I’m STILL feeling full. *groan*

3. I’m wearing my father’s sweater and I’m sorry to say that it looks better on him than it does on me.

4. I’ve managed to distribute 4 dozen of the peanut-butter cookies.

5. My father managed to eat two dozen on his own.

6. I need a nap.

Zzzzz

Alright y’all, that there other comment box was a’running out of space. Here’s our spaghetti western so far.

A light breeze blew, stirring up the dust in front of the saloon and carrying it down to the stable where my horse stood. Good old Bullet, my trusty steed had carried me this far in my journey, through dry canyons, across roasting deserts, through Desi traffic, and now into Hell’s Teeth. Hell’s Teeth was one of the nicer names of this one-horse town, this out-of-the way den of crime and corruption they called Isloo. And they don’t even have a ice-skating rink.

I sat rocking on the porch of Ma’s General Store, cooling my heels and waiting. Ms.X could stomp all over the Mesa looking for me, but I was gonna be here waiting for her when she came back, and then. Well, then there would be some talking and maybe some fighting and maybe some shooting too, but one of us was going to lose. *queue rousing battle-score type music*

Two-fingers Mac came out of the saloon with his broom in his hand and started sweeping. He looked up at me mid-sweep and froze. He knew what was coming, so he took his broom and hurried back inside. Everyone knew, what with the way Ms. X had been a-talking up her outfit and riding roughshod over the locals, challenging them. And she had a-challenged me, but not afore trying to make me join her crew.

“Sensei,” she said with a chaw of tobacco in her cheek, “I reckon there’s room for a fast gun in my outfit. So long as you cut your allegiance to that other outfit, and stop wearing that there rag on your head. We pay better than ole Iz-laam any day now, don’t we boys.”

I rejected her outright. Told her where her outfit could go and what she could do with her pay. It weren’t pretty. But I wasn’t there to talk pretty, I was there to talk straight and shoot fast.

As I sat on the porch waiting, the bat-wing doors on the saloon opened and the sheriff stepped out. The sheriff, whose name was…

(Continued by Binje)

The sheriff, whose name was…

Ugly McPretty walked out in his usual outfit of black all over with the shinning silver badge which asserted his authority over the town. “I hear ya been waiting for Ms. X here Sensei, what in tarnation is all this about?”.

“Dont concern you sheriff, best you stay outta my way”. This comment from our hero took the sheriff back for a moment. With a stern look on his face, the sheriff walked over to Sensei and said, “y’all may have yer petty disputes, but dont ya have ’em none in my town. I’m the law here and everyone respects me fer it. I kept this town clean all this time and I aint about to derrrty up ma jailhouse over this”.

“I told ya before sheriff, and I aint gonna repeat myself… now let me be” came the reply….

The sheriff was just about to say something when all of a sudden….

(Continued by Baji)

The sheriff was just about to say something when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught Ms. X make a sudden movement. Time slowed. I saw her hand reach for a right-hand draw. Her lips twisted into a victorious sneer. My black scarf undulated in the wind. Dustballs rolled down the street coating vehicles, horses, camels, cows, and gawkers alike in a fine, thin layer of grit and grime. Before Ms. X could clear her weapon from its holster, I had already drawn, locked and loaded, and aimed.

“There may be room for a fast gun in your outfit, but is there room for a fast bullet in your slow brain?” I asked.

Ms. X froze. The only detecable movement was the angry tic at the edge of her beady little eye. Tobacco juice began to dribble down her chin but she made no move to wipe the spittle away. She knew she was just a hair’s breadth away from meeting her end.

*queue the theme music from ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly’ since blogistan has no regard for copyright infringments. ooeee ooeee oooooo…wah wah wahhhhh*

(Continued by Shady Wayne)

…The glint off my silver Peacemaker shone on Ms X’s face, as her shameful past slithered by in a flash. X knew her end was near but she loved her life just too much to let it get away.

“Your scarf’s off kid” she drawled and burst into a hissy laughter. Instinctively, my hand reached for my head and as I dropped guard for that split second, X jumped up and grabbed my gun. “Courage is being scared to death – but saddling up anyway,” she shrieked, and now it was my turn to stare down the barrel as a cowboy crooned in the distance…

“She found him with a sweet young filly

Makin’ calf eyes and layin’ it on thick

And before he knew what had happened

She stabbed him with a Texas toothpick”

(Continued by Abez)

“She found him with a sweet young filly

Makin’ calf eyes and layin’ it on thick

And before he knew what had happened

She stabbed him with a Texas toothpick”…

I lay on the ground humming this tune to myself. X looked at me like I was outta my blasted mind. And maybe I was, laying in the middle of the road with an enemy on my stomach and a gun in my face, singing.

Ms. X got a look in her eyes that I often a’seen in cattle when you cut them off. She was spooked. I smiled at her.

“I thought you was plannnin to shoot me Ms. X, not ride me.”

The people laughed. X swore and jumped off’a me, pointing her piece. I’m going to shoot you and I’m going to do it right,” she hissed, “So stand up and take the bullet like a man.”

“Very well then.” I got up slowly and made a big show of it, dusting off my chaps and straightening the scarf underneath’ma hat. As I stood I tipped my hat to Sheriff Ugly McPretty and he frowned at me. I turned and was about to drop a curtsey to the barber who was peering out of his shop windows when Ms. X fired.

She got me too, clipped my ribs and drew blood, but never more than than. Cuz I drew lead and took a shot off’m her that knocked the gun out of her hand. She was a-mighty mad, and she was clutching her bloody hand to her chest for dear life.

“Damn you Sensei!” she screamed, insulting me and turning tail at the same time. “The Boss is gonna hear about this, you can’t mess with our outfit and walk. You’re gonna get it bad!”

She said some more after that, ugly words as she ducked into a side-street and ran, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was busy being fuzzy-headed, and wondering why my side was hot and my shirt was red and why the ground seemed to be rising to meet my face.

They told me I passed out before my face even hit the dust…

(Continued by Mujahida)

They told me I passed out before my face even hit the dust…

During the following days I had only a few minutes of consciousness. Sheriff Ugly McPretty’s wife had taken me in and did her best in patching me all up. Unfortunately I was her first patient, her previous experience amounting to the healing of a paper cut on the Sheriffs thumb…

(Continued by Baji)

Unfortunately I was her first patient, her previous experience amounting to the healing of a paper cut on the Sheriffs thumb. My ribs still ached when the weather turned and I was going to have to work hard to get my left shooting arm back to its swiftness and stregth. But by the Grace of God and my own darn stubborness, I healed quickly and cleanly. Which is just the manner in which I hoped to dispatch of Ms. X the next time I clapped eyes on her.

I thanked Sheriff McPretty and his dainty lil’ wife for their hospitality and made tracks. Ms. X’s posse was surely on its way. I (somewhat less gracefully than usual) mounted my horse, tipped my hat to the McPrettys, and turned my face towards the blazing, setting sun. I was heading west. Right into Ms. X’s territory. If she wanted a fight, I was going to oblige and bring it to her…

(Continued by Momma!)

Suddenly out of the cornor of her eye, Sensei caught a streak of silver. She knew there was only one thing that traveled that fast in all the Wild Wakistani West. Her portable weapons of mass distruction she kept hidden under her hijab wouldn’t be able stop this!

She sensibly made for high ground and had just shimmied up Devil’s Chimney when the silver streak stopped with a screaching of brakes, and a curb jumping thud at the base. Out of her trusty steed, the Silver Bullet jumped the Indian Princess Grouchy Owl. Her kaajaled eyes and mehendied hands told Sensei she was on the war path again (or should I say as always?). Dictators and Potentates shuddered at the pass of her shadow.

She straightened her owl feather hijab, adjusted her silk sari(Hey, you asked for Indian, so you got an Indian-Indian) She extended her arm in the universal greeting of “Salam” to the starteled Sensei.

“I have news from the reservation.” she grunted.

(Continued by Shady Wayne)

“Fire away”, I said, although i knew what the owl had to say. She was my jumma woman, my faithful ally as I worked the daily grind in the Wild Wakistani West. Battle-scarred she wasn’t but I couldn’t do without her.

“Them cowboys sent you regards and a nod. They will be waitin’ at the usual place–the crooked tree by the ol’ wooden bridge.” I smiled and rode on as the Owl’s silver bullet burned rubber heading back to town. Just before I left ol’ McPretty’s house, I had sent word to my cowboy buddies. My adventures were a-lacking without them and I wouldn’t dream of hitting X’s territory if they not be ridin’ by muh side.

My silver Peacemaker, still smellin’ of a shootout, lay snug in its holster. And under my hijaab, I stacked them shiny throwing stars—a sensei special. I looked forward to seein’ mine buds; It was long since we had all saddled up.

A long, rough ride lay ahead o’ me and my faithful steed slowed to a canter as the crimson sun started to cast longish shadows.And as we rode into the desert, I hummed…

“And he rides the wild horses,

The same blood flows through their veins.

Yes he rides the wild horses,

Like the horses he’ll never be tamed.”

(Continued by Abez)

I was singing again, being in a singing mood. Things were looking up. My friends would be waiting for me and my side was healing up nice.

Of course, that meant that Ms. X’s hand must be healin up too, but that was something I could deal with. She couldn’t out-shoot me. She took a pot-shot off’me when I wasn’t looking, but I beat her to the draw.

Still, she would be mad, and mad people do stupid, violent things. I didn’t feel like singing no more. Nevermind. I changed my direction and started riding for the crooked tree and my friends. Some of them were excellent trackers, what with them being Indians- like Shady Wayne. He lived on the Hydro Reservation upcountry, where he…

(Continued by Christoph)

… had a cactus ranch. Shady Wayne bred the tallest, spikiest, cactusiest cactus herd this side of al Paso.

(Continued by Abez)

And maybe if his cactussy cacti gave him a spare moment, he and his guns could ride out to the crooked tree. I wasn’t sure if he was coming though. I wasn’t gonna force a body to take on another man’s fight. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to swing by the Hydro Reservation and say salaam.

It was a dry, lonely ride to the reservation, and my side ached and reminded me of how close I’d come to being a late-gunslinger, a Sensei deceased- an ex-parrot. All that reminding made me cranky, and when Bullet stopped at tiny oasis to refuel, I hopped off and kicked at the dust before I thought better of it. And then I heard a voice say, “What you got against that there dust?”

I was taken aback, I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from.

“Come out and show yourself,” I said irritably. Being caught off guard made me nervous and angry.

The voice came again and said…

(Continued by Shady Wayne)

“Lookie here kiddo; on yer left” I turned to look but I din’t see nobody ‘cept vast expands of sand and a dry shrub. Just as I turned to the other side, I heard a laugh and just then it struck me. It wasn’t an urban legend after all. There in front of me stood the folklore I had heard again and again right from the time I was knee high. “He he he”, said the talking shrub…

(Continued by Lil Baji)

I rubbed and blinked my eyes. My attention was directed to my left when I heard someone crooning “Rambling Man”. I whipped around, I saw a long, lean vampire playing a banjo. I scratched my right arm and tilted my head, trying to make sense of what my eyes were telling me. It wasn’t until I saw several squirrels dancing around in tutus that I figured something was seriously wrong.

I shook my head vigorously to clear it. Once. Twice. The hallucinations were gone. My right arm was itchin’ something fierce and when I finally gathered my thoughts and focused, I found a wee feather attached to a slender dart that was jammed directly into my arm. Uh oh.

(Continued by Baji)

“Well well well, lookee what we got here,” Mx. chortled, emerging from the shadows. “You ain’t so fast now, are ya?”

She was right. I tried to reach for my gun, to ball my hand into a fist, even to make some obscene gesture. Nothing. My arm would not obey.

“Looks like your trigger-happy hand is unhappy,” Mx. sneered.

“Least I got a hand,” I replied, looking pointedly at the stump at the end of her arm.

Her cruel smile wavered for an instant and then she really laid into me.

“Ya got yer hand, but you don’t got yer lil’ Princess Grouchy Owl no more. We do. And we got plans fer both of ya.”

Rage coursed through me. Instant, spontaneous, fierce. It cleared my mind for a moment, but I could feel the effects of whatever poison Mx. used on me begin to race through my body. Somewhat unsteady on my feet, I had just enough energy to glare at her.

“Why you low-down, lily-livered, yellow-bellied, good-fer-nuthin’. . . flea-bitten, card-cheatin’ . . . rassin’ . . . frassin’ . . . . . . ” My thoughts slowed and my anger melted into a sort of wavy, blissful feeling. My lips refused to form any more words. The world tilted. My vision wavered and dimmed. I could feel myself starting to fall.

“Not again,” I thought to myself. .

(Continued by Abez)

I can’t say it was unpleasant, being out cold. I remember a humming noise, and warmth, and the sensation of wanting to be left alone. But they wouldn’t leave me alone. There were snakes twisting around my ankles, holding them together. I could feel them growing tighter. I looked around and saw my hands in the jaws of a giant lizard, and felt myself being dragged along as it gnawed my wrists raw.

After a time the snakes calmed down and turned back into ropes and the lizard that drug me turned into a horse. I was still being a-drug though, hands-first behind a horse through the blistering sand.

At some point the dragging stopped and I felt myself being hauled to my feet. My hands were still tied, and so were my ankles. I was grabbed roughly under the shoulders and pulled towards a camp fire. I could hear its crackle, feel its heat, and I knew that alot of time had passed while I was unconscious. It might have been too much to hope for that someone would miss me and come looking. But still, a body could hope…

(Continued by Taha)

… with all the shadows leaping and dancing from the crackling fire I couldn’t be dead-on certain though normally only old Steady Hand Atticus could see better than me on any given day, matter of fact, as the story goes he once shot the head off a rattler 90 paces away just to impress a missus when the rest of us couldn’t even see it till we got closer. But ol Steady Hand Atticus is gettin on in years and his sight just ain’t what it used to be so that pretty much makes me number one…

…so when I tell you I thought ah saw a cowboy hat out there in the shadows well you can just take mah word to the bank but heck don’t take it to the one on Elm street ’cause one time ah found a gold nugget, OK well maybe I didn’t find it, maybe me and Shady captured it in one of our raids but Ahm tryin to tell a story here and if I says I found it then I found it…

(Continued by Raahil strong)

…and hope indeed, a body did have. Although hands and ankles still tied, sitting before that fire was soothing and reassuring in its own way. though, with daylight, even the strongest of camp fires would leave nothing but ash.

Time was running out, and something had to be done. For these hand and ankles were not bound by some ropes a mere mortal could remove.. for they had to burned off by the CINDERS OF ZAFA! Terror struck the hearts of commoners at the mention of its name. For it was a place, enshrouded by the jungle of Kanba, a place where only the lionheart dared to enter by night. But, there was something else… long ago, at the birth of I, a wise man had trekked the plains of south, only to arrive at the birth and give glad tiding of hope.

Still a little dazed and confused, I focused my eyes towards the one… the one who had rescued me.. Sayyidee, I feel as if i’ve known you all my days. Will you not make mention of your tale, will you not reveal yourself, my robed companion? Slowly before me, he pushed back the loose hood that had covered his head and had obstructed a view of his face…

Raised in the barren deserts of Namnor, Sayyid was a truth-seeker, a wise youth of noble lineage…

(Continued by Abez)

Or so I heard. Or maybe that’s what I thought I heard. I wasn’t even sure if that’s what I had seen, because I doubted my sanity when I started seeing hooded cowboys rising noiselessly from the desert sand. I told myself that it must have been them poisons that X shot me up with, but when the campfire suddenly went out and I found my hands free, I knew it had been more than a hallucination.

But I didn’t give it more thought than that. There was a whooping and a hollering in the dark, and it sounded like X and her crew were in for some trouble. I lit a shuck. I don’t care what some people say about the enemy of my enemy being my friend. Truth is, sometimes my enemy’s enemy hates me more than my enemy himself.

“Damn poison,” I muttered while dragging my boots through the cool, midnight sand. “Damn X,” I said when I realized that I left my horse back with X. I almost turned back for Bullet, but then I remembered that only the lowest, meanest varmint will hurt a good horse, and X may have been bad, but not that bad. Besides, Bullet was faster than sound and stronger than an ox. To shoot a horse like that would be a sorry waste, and I was counting on X’s greed to kick in where her compassion might leave off. I’d get bullet back later. For now, I was walking to the crooked tree with friends far ahead and enemies close behind.

I sat down on the sand just as the sun was beginning to peek over the dunes. I was dog-tired, my feet were chaffed from where sand had gotten into my boots and my lips were beginning to crack. I needed water, I needed shelter, and I needed them both fast. Once the sun came up I’d be a goner.

Once the sun came up I’d be a goner. I climbed to the top of the dune and tried to get my bearings. The Margalla Hills and Isloo were behind me, the ugly town of Pindi was to my left, and ahead of me lay an endless sea of white sand. I wanted to scream.

But I didn’t. I closed my eyes and sat down. That was a mistake right there. Never close your eyes and sit down. You might sit on a cactus, like I did. It was quite a cactussy cactus too. Tall and spiky, not at all a pleasant place to rest one’s laurels. I jumped up and whooped, and from somewhere in the sea of white sand someone whooped back. I knew that sound, and just then I knew them cactuses. I was on the Hydro Reservation, and here was a’coming Shady Wayne…

And now, Chapter Two…

It’s 1:30 am and everyone else is asleep. Whackos. They went to bed early on me. Hmmph! The night is young, I say! So here I am downstairs, on the computer, blogging in the dark. Hooray!

I was going to blog about Urdu expressions, specifically, one that I hear most often- Aap kiss matkay may say nikal kay aie ho? Literally meaning, What clay pot did you just crawl out of?

The proper time to use this expression on me seems to be the afternoon, when I have just changed out of my work clothes (jilbab) back into my house clothes (shalwar qameez.). As I walk down the stairs in the aforementioned house clothes, it is one’s duty to look up at the wrinkled qameez and the shalwar so creased that it hangs at the calves, and then say, “Aap kiss matkay may say nikal kay aie ho?” the implication being that until recently my clothes had been balled up inside a clay pot, and I inside of them.

Alright, so I don’t always iron my house clothes. I do sometimes, but to be honest, I boycott the iron from approximately June until September, when the weather is so hot that I don’t have to iron my clothes, they just wilt naturally in the 110+ degree heat. The weather right now is nice though, so how come I’m still being asked about clay pots? Well, the iron’s dead.

Deceased. It’s gone to meet its maker. (Black & Decker)

It hasn’t worked in nearly two weeks, and consequently my professional wardrobe has been reduced to only those things that are wrinkle-resistant. Or at least less wrinkly than other things. That leaves me with the black jilb, the red jilb, and the pinstrip jilb. I’m fortunate that some students only have class with me once a week, so with them I have two more jilbs and thus two more weeks before I have to fix the iron or begin the black-red-stripes cycle all over again. With other students I’m not so lucky. Some I have three times a week, and I’m running out of imaginative ways to bring variety to my wardrobe.

Week one:

Monday: Red jilb with paisley shawl.

Wednesday: Black jilb with silver pin.

Friday: Striped jilb with sandals.

Week two:

Monday: Black jilb with paisley shawl

Wednesday: Red jilb with sandals

Friday: Striped jilb with silver pin.

It’s only been two weeks, but if this keeps up any longer I’m going to get desperate.

Week three:

Monday: Red jilb with paisley shawl turban.

Wednesday: Striped jilb with necklace of sandals.

Friday: Black jilb with a delicate spray of toothpaste-fleck-flowers.

Week four:

Monday: Striped jilb with paper-clip necklace.

Wednesday: Red jilb with paisley shawl toga.

Friday: Black jilb with barrel on suspenders.

Week five:

Monday: Buy new iron. Wear its box to work with black jilb.

*Baked 8 dozen peanut butter cookies.

*Peeled an orange with a spoon.

*Began designing myself a new layout.

*Wore mismatched socks.

This is a sum total of noteworthy things I have done today. Somebody tell me how I could turn this into a blog.

While the action and adventure continues in our Blogistani Spaghetti Western (in the comments of the post prior to this one) I’ll get back to blogging.

I try not to be redundant and blog about the same topic twice in one week (I said ‘I try,’ not ‘I succeed’) but here’s another blog about traffic. I love Islamabad’s traffic. It’s not that we have so very much of it (except in Blue Area from noon to three) but what we lack in quantity we more than make up for in quality. Take, for example, our taxis. We may not have ten percent as many taxis as Karachi does, but we have one hundred percent of the taxi-induced mayhem. Just yesterday one of them drove through a red light and into oncoming traffic (me!!). And you know what the best part of that near-death experience was? That he was driving through the intersection backwards.

Our private cars are no less exciting. On the second day of Eid I found myself driving behind one of the thousands of white Corollas on our streets. There was nothing unusual about it except that the driver was going rather slow. And then he started to veer not-so-subtly to the right, directly for a grove of trees lovingly planted by Pakistan Tobacco Company Ltd. (Save the world, Kill those pesky humans) I pulled alongside of him and looked inside. The driver was asleep, hands on the wheel, chin on chest, foot on accelerator. I honked and he awoke with a start, swerving wildly. I sped out of the way.

Certain other parts of daily traffic here include neither cars nor pedestrians. Such as livestock. Incidentally, buffalos don’t know what it means when you honk. All you can do is roll up the windows and wait until the herd (and the smell) has passed you by.

I mentioned our suicidal pedestrians just a few days ago, but I forget to talk about the murderous ones. These aren’t the ones trying to kill themselves, they’re just trying to kill the others. And these would-be murderers are usually school-boys who think it’s funny to shove their friends off the curb just as a car is driving by. Their friends would fall directly into traffic if it were not for the fact that they are grabbed just in time. Ha ha.

Ha?

What can I say, pedestrians these days have a weird sense of humor.

Hey, on Saturday I actually met Ms. X, the proverbial Darth Vader from my January 13th blog about joining the dark side. I would like to have asked her about that job that was offered (on condition that I not wear a scarf) and whether it had been filled. I would also have liked to have asked her about what the heck she had against my scarf, but Alas, there was no time. The extent of our brief conversation ran like this:

Me: Ms. X, how are you. I haven’t seen you since that last National Day Party.

Ms. X: Oh fine, thanks. I-

Ms. Other: Oh Ms. X, come over here and…

There Ms. X is pulled away by a friend of hers and the conversation is cut short. The End. On asking around I found out that the job actually has been filled, and I have to say I’m disappointed. I was kind of hoping they’d ask me again so that I could have a second chance at that good old-fashioned show-down I’d been wanting with Ms. X. But since it hasn’t happened in real life, I’ve decided that it should at least happen in blogistan. So here, dear blogistanis, is the beginning of a classic spaghetti-western group blog. And remember, it MUST be read with a Western drawl.

A light breeze blew, stirring up the dust in front of the saloon and carrying it down to the stable where my horse stood. Good old Bullet, my trusty steed had carried me this far in my journey, through dry canyons, across roasting deserts, through Desi traffic, and now into Hell’s Teeth. Hell’s Teeth was one of the nicer names of this one-horse town, this out-of-the way den of crime and corruption they called Isloo. And they don’t even have a ice-skating rink.

I sat rocking on the porch of Ma’s General Store, cooling my heels and waiting. Ms.X could stomp all over the Mesa looking for me, but I was gonna be here waiting for her when she came back, and then. Well, then there would be some talking and maybe some fighting and maybe some shooting too, but one of us was going to lose. *queue rousing battle-score type music*

Two-fingers Mac came out of the saloon with his broom in his hand and started sweeping. He looked up at me mid-sweep and froze. He knew what was coming, so he took his broom and hurried back inside. Everyone knew, what with the way Ms. X had been a-talking up her outfit and riding roughshod over the locals, challenging them. And she had a-challenged me, but not afore trying to make me join her crew.

“Sensei,” she said with a chaw of tobacco in her cheek, “I reckon there’s room for a fast gun in my outfit. So long as you cut your allegiance to that other outfit, and stop wearing that there rag on your head. We pay better than ole Iz-laam any day now, don’t we boys.”

I rejected her outright. Told her where her outfit could go and what she could do with her pay. It weren’t pretty. But I wasn’t there to talk pretty, I was there to talk straight and shoot fast.

As I sat on the porch waiting, the bat-wing doors on the saloon opened and the sheriff stepped out. The sheriff, whose name was…

Since 10 this evening, I have:

Washed dishes

Made two coffee cakes

Baked bread

Burnt my thumb

Smashed my thumb

Dyed my thumb black

All I have left to do is:

Clean the house

Wash my baking pans

Press my Eid clothes with a non-functioning iron

Ice my thumb

Wash my thumb

Bandage my thumb

And it’s only midnight. And Eid prayer is only at 8 am tomorrow morning. And there are only 15 people coming over. So I only have enough time to say:

Eid Mubarak! 🙂

-Ring-

-Ring-

-Ring-

-Ring-

-click-

The blog you have dialed is not in service. Please try again later, once Sensei has finished the work she was supposed to do two hours ago when she was busy eating brownies and watching Samurai Jack. Thank you.

-click-

At

Seven in the morning there came

Six men to load innumerable boxes

Five laborers and a painter who asked for

Four cups of tea and carried

Three major appliances, filling the truck with

Two tons of weight resulting in

One cracked driveway

(wah wah wah)

I have a good excuse for not updating my blog on time. And the excuse in itself may even pass for a blog entry. Here I go. I could not update my blog because…my dog ate it. Whoops. Wrong excuse. Let me try again.

I could not update my blog because…my house was in a state of bedlam. Well, more specifically because of the way in which the furniture here in bedlam was moved to make way for boxes- the computer was unplugged. Now that the relatives have gone home, the house has been put back together, the floors have been mopped of giant, muddy manfootprints, and the layer of dust we disturbed has settled, I can blog properly again.

As I was blasting…errr..breezing down Jinnah road today I saw a hijabi standing in the median a few dozen meters away. I looked at her. She looked at me. Then she stepped directly out in front of my car. Tires squealed, the car swerved, and by the Grace of God she was spared from turning into an asphalt waffle.

Later today there was this man with the red sweater who made eye contact with me and then stepped jauntily off of the curb, nearly embedding himself in the front grill of my car. And then there was that cute kid near my house who stood patiently by the side of the road as I approached, and then just as I began to pass him, threw his ball in front of my tires and then ran after it.

The number of pedestrians I could’ve knocked the legs out from under staggers me each day. I’m shocked every time someone looks directly at my car and then steps out in front of it. I can’t explain it. It’s hard for me to accept that a large number of pedestrians have severe vision impairments. It’s even harder for me to assume that they’re all suicidal. I’ve tried to believe that they’re all suffering from delusions of immortality, but it just doesn’t work. The sanest, most logical explanation I can come up with is that there’s something wrong with my car. It must be invisible.

At first I didn’t think it was possible, since as far as I know, Suzuki doesn’t make a Mehran Stealth, but I have no choice but to believe it. The theory fits too, and very nicely explains why other cars, mostly gargantuan SUV’s, are always trying to merge into my lane even before I’m done using it. I know my car is small, but it’s not microscopic. It would show quite clearly in the SUV’s rear-view mirror. It would, that is, if it weren’t invisible.

And you know, the problem with owning an invisible car is that sometimes I can’t find where I’ve parked it. I come out of a shop and wander around the parking lot, trying to find a car that can’t be found. I check and double-check the place that I was sure of, and can’t find it. I peer uncertainly into other silver Mehrans, since there are always at least a dozen wherever I go, and head dejectedly back towards the shop once I’ve confirmed that none of them are mine. (Sometimes I peer into BMW’s too. You can’t stop a body from hoping…) Then, when I get back to the shop, Lo and Behold, there’s my car, and it’s visible again, right where I left it.

The other day I was standing in a line waiting for my turn at the supermarket counter when a man stepped in front of me and plunked his purchases down. After everything had been rung up and he was being handed his receipt, he turned around and said , “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there!” This leads me to wonder if the car’s invisibility isn’t contagious. Aniraz seems to be catching it too. Today we were standing in a bakery when a woman began walking straight for the bakery counter, the one that Aniraz was standing in front of. Luckily, Aniraz leapt out of the way, otherwise there might have been a head-on collision. The woman’s young son followed, and brushed past Aniraz so closely that he passed under one of her arms and came out by way of the other.

But this invisibility thing could be useful. Next time I’m in the bakery, I’m going to sneak behind the counter and help myself to some cookies.

Not only do we have relatives over, but we also have a painter and about a hundred boxes of various sizes strewn all over the house. This is the precurser to moving. No big change, we’re just moving up the road. But anyway, no time to blog right now. Have some shameless self-promotion instead. :p

oooh, aaaah, Mystery Link!

(be patient, it might take a few minutes to load)

Eeek! Eeek! Eeek! The beginning of another week!

In exactly 30 minutes, it will be Monday again. I’m pretending to be dealing with it rationally, but sometimes Mondays just catch you off guard. Everything’s going all nice and smooth, you haven’t changed out of your pajamas since Saturday morning and then –BAM!- Monday hits you in the side of the head like a fast-flying chapal. And then you go to work rubbing your head all the way till Friday.

Ok, maybe that’s not you, maybe it’s just me. But this Monday ambushed me and I’m not ready for it. My lesson plans aren’t done, I have appointments that need to be made and clothes that have to be washed before I can even think about wearing them out of the house, let alone to class. *sniff sniff* Okay, so they don’t smell, it’s just that the ice-cream in the lap of one of my favorite jilbs isn’t the most professional of accessories on an English teacher. But then, I’m not the most professional of English teachers, so maybe I won’t have to wash it after all…

I should just stop griping and do what I need to do, specifically- print out my lessons and lick errr…wash the ice-cream off of my jilb. I also have to drag my sorry self to bed and manage to brush my teeth at some point on the way there. Well, at least I’ve already prayed Isha.

Who knew English teachers could be such losers. :p

Fingers recovered, blogs away!

Yasmine asked me about the book I had listed in the column to the left, Peace Like a River. In case you’re still wondering Yasmine, it’s a really nice book. It has an intelligent plot, a satisfying even if tragic conclusion, and best of all, it’s got a G rating. I don’t know if movies all over the world are rated the same way, but a G rating means that a movie is suitable for all viewing ages. Either way, I really enjoyed Peace Like a River and I highly recommend it. I also highly thank Chai and Apple Pie (who’s no longer blogging) who gave me the book to begin with.

Surprisingly, there are very few good books that would get a G rating if they were turned into movies, and you have no idea how hard that makes my job as an English teacher. I try to select books that are interesting, preferably classics, for my students. Any book I select has to be proper too, because I take responsibility for what I recommend to my students. There can be no vulgarity and no obscenity, because we read all the books out loud and define any new words and discuss what things mean.

Diplomat: And then Mr. Smith umm, Miss Khan, what is this word? (pointing to word on page)

Sensei: That word? Oh, uh… it’s means, uh…(starts sweating) hey look, a spy! (yanks book out of hand and runs out of room)

I can’t tell you guys how many awkward situations I’ve really been in while trying to answer my student’s innocent vocabulary questions. One of my Irani students very innocently asked me one day: “What is the meaning of the word hoar, h-o-a-r?”

“Hoar?” I asked her, confused. “It’s an old word for mold, that stuff that sometimes grows on old bread. And hoary means grayish or whitish. Why do you ask? Where did you read that word?”

“I know mold, but are you sure that is the meaning, or maybe I am spelling it wrong.” my student said, “Because that seems very strange.”

“Was it in a book?” I asked, trying to figure out where she had read it.

“No, I was watching a show, I can’t remember the name, and one woman said to another, You hoar. Ah yes,” my student said brightening, “The show was called, “Jerry Springer!”

We cleared that one up shortly. I’ve also been in weird situations where students have told me that their handwriting was illicit, when they meant illegible. One student told me he liked bees in his tea. He meant honey. It takes everything I’ve got to keep a straight face sometimes, and I don’t always succeed. I’m trying though, honest I am.

Who said teaching wasn’t a high-stress job? Hmmph.

I was offered a job today. (Never mind that I already have one, that ruins the story.) Anyway, a friend of mine informed me that a foreign NGO was looking for administrative personnel, and she knew the woman (we’ll call her Ms. X) who was hiring. The position came with room for promotion, a dynamic and challenging work environment and, most importantly, a very good salary- 35,000 rupees just to start.

$-chaching!-$

With a 6,000 rupee bonus every three months.

But the job came with a catch. Since the position was in a foreign NGO dedicated to establishing freedom and democracy in Pakistan (this is a nice name for regime change) it would require a bit of confidentiality on my part. But that wasn’t the catch though. Nope, the catch was: I couldn’t wear my scarf.

(This is where Sensei’s eyebrow raised in polite amusement.)

I asked how my scarf could possibly interfere with my ability to work. My friend said she didn’t know, but was told that the job required a lot of going out and meeting and greeting people, and that somehow it didn’t seem to go with the job. She I had a good laugh though, over the irony of said NGO (struggling to establish freedom and democracy and liberty and justice for all) refusing to allow a scarf in the workplace. This, dear blogistanis, is good old-fashioned irony, and please make note of it.

I would like to report Ms. X to the Society for Prevention of Cruelty Against Hijabis (if any), or maybe the Anti-Hypocrisy Squad or anyone who can see that a piece of cloth on my head doesn’t impair my work ethic, my social skills, or my brain. Not unless I’ve pinned it too tight or poked one of the straight pins into my scalp. Which I usually don’t. But I sometimes do. But anyway.

I remember this Ms. X, I met her last year at a national-day party, and as we stood around the tables shmoozing, the discussion inevitably came to my scarf, and what modesty meant, and what the whole point was. I came away from that conversation with the distinct impression that Ms. X did not like my scarf, not in the least.

I wish I could meet her again, and tell her that I already have a job (even in spite of my scarf!) and point to my head and clarify that it does not actually cut off blood circulation up there. I would like to show her how a little extra effort can put people at ease and help dispel any awkwardness they may feel when meeting you for the first time. This extra effort can even make valuable friends, because the discussions begun by the conversation piece on your head (ie: scarf) are a deeper level of interaction than you would ordinarily have with a colleague or business contact.

I would also like to ask Ms. X whether she actually expected me to accept the position in exchange for giving up my scarf. Yeah, the salary was good, but you’d have to tack on a helluva lot more zeros before I would even jokingly consider trading my morals for it. I don’t want to be melodramatic and talk about selling my soul for a monthly salary, but I do want to say that this is the equivalent of Darth Vader telling Luke to join the dark side.

Ok, so that analogy wasn’t melodramatic, just dorky. You know what I mean though. I’m not going to sell my modesty. God forbid that I should ever have to trade it for my life, or worse- have it taken from me, but I would not give it up freely. Not for any price. Some people sneer that hijab takes away a woman’s self-worth, but you know what? Right now I have 35,000 rupees a month worth of it.

$-chaching!-$

With a 6,000 rupee bonus every three months. :p

The quest to fix Aniraz’s layout is still ongoing. For those of you who are interested, the template at www.degrouchyowl.blogspot.com and www.abeztestblog.blogspot.com are one and the same. However, the template at the test blog is fine, where the template at Aniraz’s blog is wonky. Or manky. Or whatever the British would say on such an occasion. A lot of very kind people have volunteered their help, but so far, no solution has been reached. If anyone else is interested in trying their hand at this template, they are most welcome to, I can be emailed and the html can be obtained. We now return you to your normally scheduled blog.

***

I’m going to make myself stand in the corner. Right after I finish typing this blog anyway. I’ve been bad. I’ve been a lazy but happy bum in a dirty room who’s running out of clean laundry. :p (Hi Mom! Have I mentioned lately how much I miss you? And not just because you used to do the laundry?)

Speaking of mommas, Yasmine had a lovely post on her blog the other day about why she loved her momma. I think my momma is splendiferous enough to deserve one too (even though she hasn’t updated her blog in forever!) so here I go, Sensei Presents:

Why I love my Momma

I love my mother immensely, and appreciate that when we were growing up she took us to the museum, to the library, to the beach, and then took us home and made us write up what we saw. My mother read to us when we were children, not See Spot Run, but the entire series of the Chronicles of Narnia. She gave us paper and crayons too, to put pictures into a book that didn’t have nearly enough.

My mother was a teacher, and when we were children she taught us the read and write and imagine, and when we got older, she taught us to cook and sew. She made fudge, we rolled cookies, she sent us sledding with a thermos of hot chocolate and had more of it waiting for us when we got back.

I love my mother because she has always cared, and she has always showed love through service. A few years ago I had my appendix out, and my momma stayed with me in the hospital the whole time. She snuck in chocolates, kept me company and ignored the aghast nurses who saw us both crowded into the same bed watching cartoons and eating contraband. We split the hospital meals, I drank the tea and she ate the desserts. Nothing else was worth consuming. She read to me and put my hair in two braids so that I would still look like a well-kept human being even with tubes in my arms and blood on my sheets from where the nurses frequently had to search for my veins. (they’re notoriously sneaky and difficult to pin down)

She kissed me good-bye when I went into surgery, and when I came out and woke up, the first thing I remember was my mother gently removing the tape that was left on my face from the breathing tube. It doesn’t sound very sweet, but seeing my mother’s tender, smiling face leaning over me and realizing that she was taking care of me even when I was unconscious was something that will stay with me forever.

Momma Zindabad!

3 am, it’s that time again. What time would that be? To sleep? Nope. 3 am is the time to eat a tangerine, write a letter to my grandmother, tip-toe around the house and then hog the computer. As my momma can testify, I’ve always been a nocturnal beastie, even as a wee babe my mother found me sitting up in my crib in the middle of the night, playing by myself. When I learned how to walk, I often wandered the house in the dark and scared my mother to death.

It used to be that at times like this, I could grab my older brother, who was nocturnal too, and we’d sneak out of the house and drive down to 7-11 for slurpees and junk food at 2:30 am. Then when I got my own car, I’d grab my little brother or sister and we’d go out for the same, sometimes donuts. (mom, don’t read this) In the summer, we’d sit on the front porch all night and just revel in the sneakiness of being out of the house (but not technically OUT of the house) in the middle of the night.

I don’t know why the middle of the night is so magical, why the emptiness that would be called loneliness in the daytime is suddenly transformed into something deliciously sneaky once night falls. When the lights go out, when more sensible people go to bed, then the world and all that’s in it is mine. There’s no one else on the computer, it’s mine. The whole street is empty, I own that too. I stand on the balcony by myself and assert my ownership of the night sky. Of course, Allah is the true owner of everything, but as far as the human concept of ownership is concerned, with no one to contest it, my 3 am rights stand unchallenged. And they don’t just extend to the road and the sky, my rights also extend over the refrigerator, and the half-empty bag of chips that’s sitting on top of it. I couldn’t eaten the chips at any other time today, but you know what? They just taste better at 3 am.

I’m just a weird one I guess, because as much as I love people, and laughing with my family and coffee in crowded booth with too many friends, I love the peace and the simplicity of a world asleep while I alone dance quietly on the rooftop.

You guys, I have a confession to make, I’ve become…a layout junkie! *sob* Seriously, I’ve been spending more time on FrontPage than is healthy, and as Binje, Sahar and Ahmed can testify, I’m probably going to give myself an aneurysm, and them too.

Though I’m not very good at the HTML’ing, I am quite good at making messes, like with Aniraz’s most recent template. I haven’t a CLUE why the columns are all crazy, and I’m just so original with creating previously unheard-of HTML problems that no one’s been able to solve them yet.

Well, I made my momma a layout, and a new url too. She’s now at www.da-momma-blog.blogspot.com. Which I think may be news to her as well.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

__________________________________________________________

It’s funny how time can change a landscape. Forests become fields, fields become farms, a group of farms becomes a village, a hillside becomes the village graveyard and then the Capital Development Authority comes along and the graveyard is paved over and becomes a road.

I learned a long time ago, actually, that the dead aren’t given much consideration when it comes to property rights. The Chicago Historical society was built over a graveyard, a fact eerily told to me as I sat picnicking in the lush green grass one day. I wouldn’t have known except that had I turned and noticed a small stone building on the premises- a large mausoleum that was on the grounds but not in the way of the building itself. “But they moved all the coffins, right?,” I asked queasily with a bite of sandwich turning dry in my mouth.

No, they didn’t move the coffins. Just the gravestones. It occurred to me that I was sitting on someone’s grave, on the dirt over someone’s face, and we moved the picnic. I remembered that picnic as I was driving through town today, and noticed two small marble platforms in the median in the center of a road. They were graves, not more than thirty years old, and they are all that’s left of the village graveyard that was once here. A man we know from the village across the street has told us that this was once a large graveyard, but the stones were removed, a road was laid on the faces of the dead and the rest of it was divided up into housing plots.

I wonder, when I die, and I am buried in a cemetery, how long will it be before they lay tarmac and cars begin driving over me? How long before my stone is knocked down and my resting place is demeaned with a house or a store- like the strip-mall in front of Rosehill cemetery near my old house in Chicago. That whole area was once a graveyard, now it’s a K-Mart and a Payless shoes.

I’m sure that the whole earth is packed with the bones of the dead, that there isn’t a place anywhere where someone fell and died a long time ago. This whole planet is a giant graveyard. But that’s different. We can’t account for what we don’t know, we can’t respect resting places that we don’t know exist. We can, however, do our best to respect the limits of the graveyards we DO know about. I think we should at least avoid bulldozing them and building houses on top of them.

I don’t care what people say about the city expanding and there being a lack of space. The earth is a big place. It’s not that we’re overcrowded, it’s just that we’re crowding together too densely, and the property values of these graveyards in prime real-estate locations are the real excuses behind these desecrations.

I know this is a weird blog, and I know that it’s morbid and pointless at the same time. But I can’t get over those two lonely graves in the median of the road, turning grey from traffic exhaust. I’m thinking about those graves that are under the road, and it makes me shudder to think of being buried there, not even getting ‘AssalamuAlaikum Ya Ahlal’Quboor’ because no one knows you’re even there. And I think of myself, driving, living, and sitting on the faces of the dead, and I wonder what kind of monumental insult I’m doing to my brothers and sisters who have passed before me.

Astaghfirullah

Alright you guys, here’s what’s new in Abezistan.

First of all, props and thanks to JazakAllah’s to Ahmed and Serenity who helped me with my new layout. 🙂

Second: I’m looking for someone who knows CSS and can help me tweak my tagboard into something that matches this layout more reasonably. Help?

Third: And now, the results of the poultry…errr…poetry competition!

In the category of Best Limerick with a Pakistani Flavor (specifically salan), the award goes to…Arshad! For “Gobi and Aloo!” :::applause:::

My friends call me bhaloo,

I eat gobi and aloo,

l like to blog,

even in the fog

and that’s what i do, yahoo!

In the category of Best Poem Remotely Related to Nature and Ennui, the award goes to….Uzer! For ‘God, I wish it would snow’ :::applause:::

This night I see,

with boredom and malarky,

lack of imagination,

and a distinctly silly word situation,

for what I write, I do not know,

Still you read? God I wish it would snow…

The winner for the Best Poem Related to Abez was a very, very tough decision between Bushra and BAQ, but in the end, the award went to….Bushra! Regardless of the fact that the engagement mentioned in the poem has been broken, you can’t deny that it’s good verse. :::applause:::

When Abez opened an account with blogspot

Did anyone forsee the hotshot?

She wrote, she scribbled, she dazzled them all

They’d check her blog in the cafe, the PC, the mall!

She wrote a few lines,

Wondering if it’d do,

But lets see what happened?

Did she mean to woo?

Oh of course she had fans

she blew them off their feet

But to the heart of one, she stuck…

and how she stuck, let us see.

He spent many a sleepless night

This girl,I cannot let go

A wonder! A miracle! A joy to behold,

This species of female I cannot let go

He approached her family with a proposal to make

And what a proposal! So much was at stake

But when he saw Abez, all fears washed away

Abez, Abez… I feel I’ve known you for all my days.

The rest, as they say, is history you know

Times go on, people come and go

The Abezminator as we know him has made his mark

And the couple wait their lives together, happy as larks.

And now, the award for the Best Overall Poem goes to… -click link for result!-

Aniraz and I were watching BBC today. Or rather, we were trying to watch BBC, but the program kept getting interrupted with a commercial that was rather carelessly thrown in, the same one every time. In it, a man and a woman walked purposefully closer and closer to the camera as they extolled the virtues of said cable provider.

They didn’t even wait for the commercial breaks, they just threw their poor-quality, badly-scripted commercial right into a perfectly good episode of Top Gear. And they did it precisely every five minutes.

“And the Lamborghini doesn’t at all compare to the…:::static::: Now! New cable service, 50 channels…:::static:::…car is an absolute beast, uglier than a camel with gingivitis and…:::static:::…First time, for you. Music, entertainment, and much more…:::static:::…But at only 75,000 pounds, is this car not a bargain?””

We patiently glared at the TV the first time it happened.

The second time it happened, Aniraz said, “Boy, that’s irritating.”

The third time it happened, I said, “I don’t care how many channels this cable company has, I’m going to boycott it.”

The fourth time it happened, Aniraz and I looked at each other and unanimously decided that if we ever met the people in the commercial, we were going to kick them. Really. Right in the teeth. And when we were done kicking them, we were going to kick whoever had hired them, and when that said kicking was done, we were going to kick the cameraman over and call it a day.

Then, somewhere in Islamabad, lightning flashed, a black-cat yowled, someone walked under a ladder and our doorbell rang. And the woman from the commercial appeared in our living room.

I am not joking. I am not even artfully fibbing. I went down the stairs to see who my father had let in, and it was the same woman that I had just vowed to kick. I bit my lip, stifled my heart attack and served tea and pleasantries. When I slunk back into the kitchen for teaspoons, I heard my father call Aniraz downstairs. From my vantage point behind the kitchen door, I saw Aniraz come down the stairs with hand extended and ready for a shake, and then go pale and wide-eyed as she shook the woman’s hand, the same woman’s hand from the same commercial that had been irritating the holy-heck out of us for the last half hour. (“I thought the people from the commercial heard us through the TV, and they were coming to get us!” she told me fearfully in the kitchen.)

I cautiously introduced the subject of the commercial, asking her whether she had cable tv? If so, had she seen the commercial? Yes. Was that her? Yes. It was. I swallowed my tea and nervously asked if the other person in the commercial, the man in the suit with the excessive hand-motions who seemed so disturbingly enthusiastic about digital cable, could he be the husband of hers that was standing outside of our gate at that very second? *gasp!* No. Thank God, it wasn’t. I breathed a sigh of relief. I might have been able to take her, her being petite and not so brawny looking, but that other guy, I wouldn’t want to try kicking him. You never know if all that hand-waving in the commercial was the product of years of King-Fu training.

As it turns out, she’s our next-door neighbor. She’s a legal consultant in the cable company, and when they decided to do the commercial, they just grabbed her and a man from a department downstairs and told her to say her lines and walk towards the camera. And unlike her TV persona, she doesn’t interrupt you every five minutes and talk about cable. Which is a pleasant. And she’s a very sweet lady, and not at all as seen on TV. I must shamefully admit that when Aniraz and I grew tired of seeing her face every five minutes, we started saying un-nice things about it. Which is back-biting, but we tend to forget that the people inside that little electronic box are actually people. (What can I say, we’re too stupid to handle home electronics.)

Seeing as how she’s just left, and I’ve given myself a severe headache from suppressing tears of laughter, amazement, and disbelief, I’m going to wind this up with a moral. Be careful who you vow to kick on TV. They may actually be nice people, they could even be your next-door neighbors. Or even worse, they could hear you through the TV, and then they’d come to get you!

The comments that people have been leaving for yesterday’s post have brought up some interesting questions and ideas, and one thing that’s come up several times is Shariah. I’m all for it, btw. Why? Man’s proven that he’s a loser, that the he doesn’t know best, and that the systems he invents are flawed. Just look at Communism, at Socialism, at Dictatorship (waves in the direction Parliament building). Read up on Anarchy, Monarchy, Plutocracy, Oligarchy and all the other crazy systems that man has tried to govern society with. They all have their pros, and they all have cons too, and some of them have holes in their logic that you could drive a semi through. Take, for example, my favorite form of government. I call it Populocracy.

In Populocracy, the laws of society are not decided by the society’s educated or qualified, or by people of understanding, they are decided on according to popular support. What this means is that if 80% of the common citizens were in favor of legalizing something like, say…child molestation, it would happen. In countries where Populocracy is practiced, child-murder (abortion), pornography and homosexuality are already legal, and it’s assumed that drugs will soon be too. After all, anything with enough popular support goes, regardless of whether it’s a benefit or a detriment to the society. Similarly, a law that is of obvious benefit to a society, like many conservation and environmental acts, will go unpassed simply due to lack of popular support. There is no right or wrong, there is only popular and unpopular.

Leaders in the populocratic system are picked very much the same way. Instead of putting the question of leadership to who is most qualified, or most experienced, or brilliant enough to be in a position of office, it is put to who is most popular. In some populocratic countries, actors and actresses with no previous experience in civil administration or even leadership are put into positions of power and great responsibility. Just this year, an actor, Arnold Schwarzenegar, was elected to govern millions of people in the fifth largest economy in the world, California.

It’s interesting that populocratic principles apply not only to law, but to justice as well. Innocence or guilt in a populocratic court are not decided by a panel of judges trained in criminology and judicial proceedings, rather, the trial is decided by a group of the defendant’s peers, while a single judge plays the role of referee. Regardless of whether these peers have any knowledge of pathology, or criminal psychology, or any field of knowledge that would help them make the best decision possible, they are still given the task of deciding a defendant’s guilt. In their uninformed, inexperienced hands, they hold the power of life and death. Cases have shown that results can vary when a single case is given two trials (OJ Simpson: Acquitted in a criminal court and guilty in a civil court), and sometimes, the group of peers can be emotionally swayed to make decisions that go against evidence, and sometimes against the very grain of logic. It’s interesting to note that this panel of peers is picked at random, and ones with any prior knowledge of the case are exempted from taking in part of it.

What country of fools, you would ask, what kind of morons would put their country into the hands of mob mentality when popular opinion is by no means a valid indicator of the rightness or wrongness of an action or a law? Were Jim-Crow laws in the southern US not put in place by popular opinion? Never mind that the enlightened, the brilliant, the men of understanding of the time knew that racial discrimination and segregation were baseless and inexcusable, because they had no power. In a Populocracy, there is no power except in numbers, and the might of these superior numbers means right.

It is often minorities who suffer the most in a Populocracy, because they simply lack the numbers it would take to swing laws in their favor. In some populocratic countries, religious groups are marginalized and their religious practices banned by a hostile majority, regardless of the fact that religious discrimination of any sort is inexcusable. There have been instances in populocratic history where ethnic and religious minorities have lost their properties, their civil rights, even their human rights legally and with the government’s blessing, because popular opinion at the time was in favor of such laws and the government acted accordingly.

And you know what’s sad? This illogical system is one of the most popular in the world, and there are people and governments who are currently in the process of waging war and placing embargoes on non-populocratic countries simply because they refuse to implement Populocracy. And this isn’t the first time, in the 1960’s a militant Populocracy invaded Vietnam for the sole purpose of installing a populocratic government to prevent the spread of Communism, a system highly opposed to Populocracy while simultaneously being just as foolish. This same country also staged a failed invasion of Cuba and a half-takeover in Korea that has split the country between populocratic and non-populocratic governments in a bloody civil war, solely for the purpose of spreading Populocracy in the world, even if by force.

In case no one’s noticed yet, Democr- err, Populocracy is nothing but mob mentality loosely housed within an administrative structure. And people wonder why I, born, raised, and college-educated in a populocratic country (though currently living in a dictatorship) am so in favor of Shariah.

I don’t know who nominated me, and even more mysteriously, who even voted for me? Whackos. But I do know this, I NEED MORE VOTES! MWAHAAAAAAHAAA!

(“now there’s a shameless self-promotion if I ever saw one“- Aniraz)