miss spontaneity

It had been a bizarre day. Two of my friends from the US were suddenly in Amman and, unwilling to choose between them, I chose them both.

Now we were assembled around a dinner table in the balad (downtown), with bowls of mansaf between us. Introductions had gone around and rounds of questions followed.

“I’m going to the West Bank tomorrow.” My Palestinian American friend N said. “Wanna come?”

Of course I wanted to come and of course I wouldn’t. Tomorrow? Please. Who do you think I am? Miss Spontaneity?

“Why not? You can come with us. A and I are going. Jerusalem. Bethlehem. Hebron. Come! You should totally come!”

“But I don’t even have a visa–”

“Do you have an American passport?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, then. You don’t need a visa. Just bring your passport. See! You can come.”

“My God. Maybe.”

I imagined Jerusalem — the historical, fictional city emblazoned in my memory. I imagined Palestine — a place I sometimes thought I could smell and see and remember. Could I visit this ethereal idea? This mirage of a place? Could I really walk among its villages? Touch its leaves and rocks? Could I really see its people — for the first time — in a land they call their own?

The blood rushed to my face and I took N in a hug. She had made it all seem so real, so possible, so easy. Yes, iA I could go. I would go. I will go.

I reined myself back in. I had galloped too far. There were still parents to talk to, bags to pack, an early alarm to set, and an aunt to bid goodbye before her own trip to the US.

I didn’t want my hopes to fly too high on faulty wings.

“I’ll call my parents and see. I’ll call you tonight,” I assured N.

That night, I called my dad. It was early morning there. Mama was still asleep. I told Baba about N’s invitation, that we’d be staying at her grandfather’s. He said he remembered that elderly amiable man; the grandfather had visited the US.

Ours was a five-minute conversation. He told me yes.

I left Mama a message. She called me back. I filled her in. She seconded Baba. Then, she warned me about Israeli soldiers and about entering a house without a gift in my hands.

I called N, packed a bag, set out my traveling clothes, made a midnight run to the bank, slept in spite of myself and woke up the next morning well before my alarm.

Good God. Today was the day I’d visit Palestine.

a perfect failure

I failed an exam today and the professor made me stand up in front of the class and read a part of it aloud. Mortifying, right? Not really. You see, it’s not what you think.

She threw me a curve-ball too when she began class with, “Your peer, Tamatim, took the makeup exam — there were three of you who did. Dhalamat nafsaha dhulman kabeeran (she oppressed herself big time) when she didn’t answer one of the test questions.”

As I tried to shrink into myself or render myself invisible, I realized that I had failed on another level.

Baba is renowned (among his children) for giving car quizzes. We’d be on our way to school and he’d ask us a fiqh (Islamic law) or ethics question. My sister usually gave a long-winded well-reasoned response, with nuances and caveats, then my brother and I simply added ditto marks. One of Baba’s most memorable (and frequent) retorts to my sister, though, was, “Jawbi ‘agaddissu’al. Answer to the extent of the question, not more, not less.”

Bass shool fayda. What’s the use? I went right on and omitted a question because I didn’t read the instructions carefully.

Well, to my surprise, the professor’s spiel about my self-oppression quickly turned into high praise for my work and then ire at the rest of the class.

“Even though your peer didn’t answer one of the questions, the question she did answer — that was the response I was looking for. Almost a perfect response. I’m going to make a copy of it and keep it as an example. And I want her to read it aloud so you can hear it.”

Pf, of course I was happy. I wanted to call Mama and say that the Arabic ta’beer (expression) she had taught me hadn’t evaporated after all. It was preserved like condensed milk somewhere amongst the cluttered bins in my brain. Just add water (i.e. an exam or deadline) and you can have a tolerable substitute for the real deal.

I wanted nothing more than to call Mama. This felt like her success, not mine, and I wanted her to know right now, right away. (I did call her as soon as I could, nine hours later. Thank you, time zones.)

Even as I did the happy dance inside myself, I thought how much I hated being used as a rolled newspaper to swat the rest of the class. I mean, why is it that, to build rapport with a professor I have to lose some with my peers? Why does it have to be a zero-sum game?

Anyway, the professor had me read my answer at the podium. Periodically, she’d interject: “Notice, not a summary. That’s literary analysis. That’s what I asked you to do. Not regurgitate facts, but to think critically. Continue.” And I would, wishing that she would let me.

After I finished, she gave them one last smack with the old newspaper. A dramatic pause, then she bit her lip and shook her head disapprovingly.

“And she does this all without grades. Learning for the sake of learning.” (Maybe I should tell her about the funds I get from Fulbright? That’d knock down the fancied altruism a notch.)

To my relief, the class wasn’t resentful, or at least they didn’t look it. What I did get were a lot of raised eyebrows and amused expressions.

I think it’s because the students here are inured to professorial ridicule. Arabs, like most other non-Americans, are notorious for treating teachers with near-parental reverence and so, like parents, instructors are allowed, even encouraged to spank the kids, albeit verbally. In fact, a teacher who doesn’t spank his kids is like a careless, ambivalent parent. In a strange way, to be hit is to be attended to, loved even, and these students, I assure you, were loved today.

So, I think either the professor was beating a hollow drum or many of them were simply tickled by the idea that I don’t abuse written Arabic so well as I do the spoken.

One girl was especially tickled, I think. M, my friend who, yesterday, took the makeup test with me in the same room. She tapped her listless pencil and stared long and hard at the walls as if some kind of wahyi (revelation via an archangel) were due to arrive any minute. When she bored of that, she made small talk with the secretary and, when the supervisor momentarily stepped out, she asked me how the test was going. It was ‘good,’ a smile and then back to the paper.

When the time was up, the supervisor (playfully?) asked M if there’d been any cheating. (No conflict of interest there.) M drew her head back indignantly, turned in her exam, interlaced her fingers and stretched her arms as if she’d completed a strenuous task. Then, she pointed her thumb over her shoulder at me and said, ”Her? She’s Amreekiya (American). She doesn’t know anything.” She flashed me an open-to-interpretation smile, habitually pulled her long sleeves over her knuckles, dug her hands into the pockets of her jilbab and was gone.

M was right. I am Amreekiya. And there are a hell of a lot of things I know nothing about. Among them is reading instructions.

things that don’t add up

Baba amusedly sits back in his seat when he can’t fit a commercial break anywhere in my feature presentation.

Then, when I finally roll the credits, he says with a mischievous smile, “Shinu, bal’a radio? What, have you swallowed a radio?”

Even though I have a weakness for radios, whenever I blunder, my appetite calls for a silent movie.

It’s always been hard for me to say, “I’m sorry.” For whom is it not? The mother-enforced words, not to mention the complimentary handshake and forehead-kiss, have always struck me as pathetic and humiliating, never heartfelt. For a person who loves words and makes lots of mistakes, my collection of “apology” words is embarrassingly small.

That’s why the day before I left for Jordan, I was washing dishes unasked. In my glossary, this was an expression of tongue-tied regret.

So, what had I done? Well, even though I had not yet departed, my mind had taken flight. As Mama put it, I was traveling from one place to another and most of me had already gone.

During the days leading up to my trip, I was anxious about a million and one things, and yet I pretended to be blase, as if my nine-month voyage was simply another stamp on a crowded page in a well-worn passport. (My passport is actually stiff as a cardboard and most of its pages are so blank you can’t help but notice the patriotic watermarks.)

It had been agonizingly difficult securing Baba’s permission in the first place, and I didn’t want my last-minute panic to engender second thoughts.

“I can handle this,” my attitude reassured everyone but me.

“Hell no you can’t,” my mind shot back.

I didn’t want to seem clingy, needy or vulnerable, so I’d acted indifferent, aloof, not nostalgic enough. This must have been especially painful to Mama, who’s always been expressive, emotional and generous with her affection.

As I watched the dishes, I hoped that Mama would notice, that she’d think kindly of me despite all my incivilities. I hoped that a little detergent-action might clean up a bit of the dirt trail I was leaving in my wake.

But Mama didn’t seem to follow my train of thought. Hers was choo-chooing in a different direction. She approached me with a broad smile, a cell phone in her outstretched hand.

“Listen to this,” she said as she put the phone to my ear.

What I heard on the other end of the line was my voice. It was from three months ago, on the day I’d received a manila envelope containing a letter from Fulbright. I’d been standing outside the mail room at Scripps College with the tangerine-colored letter in my hands when I’d left that message. She’d been at work, teaching math to a class of fourth graders when she saw the missed call. She figured it was urgent and immediately phoned me.

Just as I relayed the news to Mama, my sister was serendipitously coming towards me from the science department, and she heard it, too. While my sister and I were locked in a hug, I listened to my mom’s congratulations and her fourth-graders’ cheers. It was a moment I thought I’d always remember.

But I’d forgotten all about it. I looked at my mother astonished. It had been three months since–

“Every twenty-one days, it asks me if I want to delete it,” my mom explained. “And every time, I say no, because I like to listen to my baby’s voice.”

Sometimes, I wonder about mothers, if they’re all like mine. And sometimes I wonder about children, if they’re all like me.

I often think my mother calculates things the way I do, with paper and pencil, with attention to decimals and totals that have to add up. But there, I’m wrong.

Mama rounds up when it comes to me. She multiplies what little good I do exponentially and shrinks all my wrongs until, like a logarithmic function, they asymptotically approach zero. Hers is a brisk mental math, always a step ahead.

Before I apologize, Mama forgives me. Before I can say salam, she’s hugged and kiss-kiss-kissed me. And after I’ve hurt her, she steps on her pain and asks me if I’m okay.

trees and phd’s

The college town I come from calls itself the City of Trees and PhD’s. Well here are my top ten observations from another school that has its own generous supply of trees and PhD’s, the one and only University of Jordan.

10. Walking under UJ’s trees feels like a stroll through the set of a Turkish-dubbed-Arabic TV drama. The bottommost yard on these evergreens is painted white. I dismissed it as a traffic precaution (reflecting headlights) or as a quirky aesthetic touch. Wrong, and more wrong. It’s insect repellent.

9. The women far outnumber the men. Of forty-some students in my Sharia class, only two are men. (And that’s double the number of men in one of my upper division Arabic literature courses.) My empirical evidence is incomplete, however, until I step into the engineering lair, where I suspect all the men are hiding.

University statistics confirm that women outnumber men, 6 to 4, among the student population, while 7 out of every 10 professors is male. Maybe the graduation of more young women today will translate into more female professors tomorrow. Maybe not. But that still leaves us wondering: where are the young men at? I’m inclined to think that more young men than women have to drop out of school to support their families. But I could be wrong. They could just be decorating the hallways, smoking cigarettes and petting their heavily gelled hair.

8. In the College of Letters, there’s a handwritten sign on the bulletin board, offering condolences to a student whose father recently passed away. Also, outside, there’s a big banner commemorating the Jordanian military’s martyrs who passed while serving in Haiti. I didn’t even know Jordan was sending troops to Haiti.

Also, in morbid news, class was tearfully interrupted today when a niqab-wearing student requested that another leave the class with her. Their mutual friend had been in a week-long coma after a car accident and had just recently died.

To my surprise, the professor turned it into a teachable moment. She reminded us: Innassabra ‘indassadmatil ‘oola. Patience is at the first strike of calamity — a prophetic saying. She coupled that with a personal story — her brother withheld news of their father’s death a few hours, until after she turned in her Master’s dissertation. That, she said, required patience and restraint.

In a passionate speech, she suggested that we not look to society for our values and expect society to change. We are society. We should consciously choose our values and act upon them. A refreshing variation on the you-are-our-tomorrow speech.

7. When you’re a 5-times-a-day praying Muslim in America, you’re bound to have prayer stories. Like the time you prayed on the concrete in a gas station. Or on the side of the freeway. Or in the middle of the quad in high school. Here, of course, there are a thousand places to pray. They’re not all pretty or pristine. In fact, some are pretty discouraging. But they are everywhere.

Using another human compass — a Jordanian friend M — I also discovered a sisters-only lounge at the University. This has a lunch area, two disjointed prayer halls and a row of lockers smothered in safe political slogans and rainbow-colored stickers. A more austere black-and-white bumper sticker on one of the glass panes reads, “We love you for the sake of Allah.” I love you too, oh windows.

6. A spray-painted Israeli flag lies in lieu of a doormat outside some room in one of the Shariah buildings (there are two). The administration called it vandalism, the students freedom of expression.

Also, as you near the Sharia buildings, you notice that the number of boy-clusters around music-booming portable radios dwindle, while the jilbab- and niqab-clad girls multiply. Politics aside, there’s a sort of serenity about the place.

5. Here’s the breakdown on transportation to UJ from my home:

15 min.            taxi                                   JD 1

1 hour             3 buses + walking        JD 0.75

1 hour             walking                            Free

I’ve tried all three modes and, provided that the weather isn’t out to get me, I’ll probably take the road less traveled by (i.e. the sidewalk.)

4. If you’re into people-watching, be forewarned. There are a lot of people to watch, and a heck of a lot of people watching you. I don’t know if they’re lazing between classes or through classes, but there’s never a short supply of people on the benches lining the intra-college roads. After doing my fair share of walking, here’s a rule I’ve invented: When you see a couple glowing — impeccably dressed, walking together, but really wanting everyone to notice them — well, they’re probably engaged. When they’re crouching on the sidewalk between parked cars, however, they’re probably not.

3. Even though some students do mix and mingle at the U of J, the overwhelming majority do separate like oil and water. This blend of mixing and separating feels like a hybrid of my mosque and school environs in the U.S. While my transition to Jordan was arguably to a more conservative environment, a new friend E — a Palestinian living in Saudi Arabia — said her experience was the reverse. As we walked side-by-side through the campus, I couldn’t help but think that, for opposite reasons, we were each slightly awed by this new land, this middle ground.

2. I plan to perform hajj one day iA. As if it were aware of my intentions, UJ gave me a free preview. I had to jog laps between al-Safa (the College of Letters) and al-Marwa (the College of Foreign Languages) in hot pursuit of an elusive class. (Had I done it a few more times, perhaps Jordan’s water problem would be a thing of the past.) As it turns out, the class had been moved to yet a third building. That third building, of course, is casually referred to as the Old Technology Building, but all official maps deny its existence, as did several young ladies I asked. (Of course, the first young man we asked — one quietly studying from a dictionary-sized book on a staircase — he gave precise directions about not only the building, but also the exact room in question.)

Apparently, the long-sought-after building is known as the Political Science Department. A perfect place for a Contemporary Jordanian and Palestinian Literature class, right? Oh, whatever, I got there eventually, and that’s all that matters. Or is it? When I apologetically walked 20 minutes late into this 45-minute class, I found one of the only male students in the room standing at the podium. He paused in the middle of his report on a Jordanian poet named ‘Arar, and the professor turned to me, sarcastic.

- Are you in this class?

- Yes.

- And where, pray, have you been?

- I was lost.

- For a month? [Class laughs; I redden. Of course, the professor asks this because classes have been in session for a month, but I've been waiting long and hard for the necessary approval. So there.]

- I’m auditing.

- Oh! Then come on in!

That time, she mocked me before the class. Today, she mocked the class before me (and embarrassed me again in the process.) This is how she introduced me to her students, inserting pauses after every question for emphasis: “She’s an Arab American coming here to improve her Arabic. She doesn’t get grades. She doesn’t take tests. She doesn’t have to be here. Did you hear that? She studies because she wants to. Where are you from that? Where?” Hah. I’m sure my popularity skyrocketed after that speech.

1. The first time I entered his class, I almost immediately vetoed it. Gave it a double strike-through. But this was an unprecedented case of professor-redeems-himself-as-class-session-progresses. You can see the trajectory of my thoughts from my notes, which move from annoyed observations to (slightly) more content-based stuff:

“nasal voice, bald, white wreath of hair, charcoal eyebrows, thin gold-frame glasses, sitting and reading from his book, stopped in the middle of class for athan, boys in the front row, girls in next two rows, four rows empty, dust settles on everything not wiped by an arm, back or rear, floor pattern like Legos, went to Oxford (?), afandi was a person in Tripoli, Lebanon, Amina al-Saidiya + husband = democratic conversation.”

I called my mom last night, mentioned to her this class, this professor. She asks, “Does he have a longish nose? A sense of humor? Dr. So and So, yes that’s the one, I think. No, he wasn’t bald — but that was 25 years ago. He might be bald now.” Oh my God, I was hysterical. I knew this professor before I knew him. But then he was an idea, not flesh-and-blood. Can he really be the one who asked after Mama when she missed his class, 25 years ago? All the girls were abuzz about it, then. “You’re a favorite. That professor? Shoot, he doesn’t ask about anybody!”

I think every history makes its case, vies for legitimacy. The jury are always the living, and the evidence is usually extracted from the lifeless — fossils, monuments, manuscripts — things that survive the wear and tear of years better than the human body. But in this case, the human body had survived. To me, the professor was a living monument. A link in a chain that connects two college students — mother and daughter. He is now witness to my life and Mama’s.

I stayed after class today to ask him. He had shut down the student before me so curtly that I did a double-take. Was this the right time to ask? I didn’t want to wait two more days. Before my courage expired, I blurted: “Assalamu alaikum, doctor. Thanks for letting me audit your class! I have a question, if you have a moment?” No reply, so I went right to it. “My mom. She thinks she took a class with you. Years and years ago. Arabic Literature Appreciation?” I told him her full name. He looked like he was searching, searching, searching through yellowed mental files. I could tell he was trying in earnest. “I know, you probably don’t remember.” He asked about the year. A pause. He didn’t remember her, I could tell, but he smiled. “I may well have taught her.” He said it as if it were an important declaration. I beamed. “Thanks.” That was evidence enough for me.

good apples

Be careful, my sister used to warn me when she felt I was being too harsh on the world, One loud jerk can blast a thousand nice people to oblivion. There are good people out there, lots of them. You just don’t notice.

Today I met three of those good apples that could blast a lot of losers to oblivion. I don’t know their names, and even their faces will quickly melt away. They are strangers, and yet I want to remember them. Not them, per se, but what they did.

Apple #1: My aunt and I decided to break our fast at the mall and to do shopping at an adjacent grocery store thereafter. (For those of you wondering why we’re fasting post-Ramadan instead of stuffing our faces, we were working on the six days of Shawwal.)

In any case, there we were, in front of a (wannabe) Chinese eatery at the food court ordering chicken with cashew nuts. After a comically long ordering experience, we hit up the designated women’s prayer area — a dingy little closet-sized room on the first floor. The closet metaphor never seemed so literal. It actually made the most tight-fitting women’s facilities in the U.S. look like the Taj Mahal. Three rak’as (prayer segments) later, we returned to steaming plates of rice and savory-looking chicken.

A quick scan of the room, however, presented us with an itty bitty problem. At left, families waiting for their BBQ. At right, parents feeding their infants pizza. Everywhere in between, children popping open their McDonald’s happy meals. No where to sit, we concluded. With our less-than-happy meals in tow, my aunt and I returned to the vendor, an Egyptian man. “Could you pack these to go?” The breaking-fast would have to wait.

“Try the tables upstairs first. If there’s nothing, I’ll pack them up for you. Hey, and bring down the trays after you’re done.” As we moved dispiritedly towards the stairs, a father sitting nearby overheard and immediately gave up his table. He wasn’t even done eating.

Apple #2: There I am at the grocery store, bolting from aisle to aisle, snatching up items and crossing them out on my shopping list. (Crossing out comes with tremendous satisfaction, I assure you.) I’ve checked out all the aisles, and no corn syrup. (What on earth do I want with corn syrup? Well, it’s only an ingredient in chicken cream corn soup. Of course I need it! I guess Chinese food has been the salient motif today. Alas, there was no fortune cookie to act as a harbinger of my good fortune.) Refocus. So I’m on this hunt for corn syrup, and I’m trying to find someone who works at this godforsaken place to ask. There’s a guy with a necktie and a collared shirt who’s been arranging yogurts. Score.

“Do you work here?” I ask, confident of the answer.

“No, but I might be able to help. What are you looking for?”

Well shoot, I think, why not. “Corn syrup?”

“Like on pancakes?”

“Well, yeah. No, not really. Like –” My hands are not really helping to explain corn syrup. I turn to my aunt, who’s too distracted by the Cheetohs to help me out. “Khalti (aunt), how do I say ‘corn syrup’ in Arabic?”

The guy sort of waves my question away. “I’m from Canada.” Well, golly gee that’s convenient! “It’s sort of transparent, right?” He asks about the syrup.

“Right!”

“If I find it, I’ll let you know.”

Well it’s nice of him to try, I tell myself. I go on searching and crossing out things when, moments later, two different corn syrups are in my hands. “They’re in that aisle.”

Apple #3: For the carless in Amman, shopping involves asking my aunt to wait by the cart while I walk to the street to hail a taxi. I find one, and get him to drive to the place where my aunt is waiting. I’m clumsy with directions and he’s irascible. We load up the taxi and, as with all taxi drivers, I feel like I’ve inconvenienced him, as if he were doing me a favor. Back in my apartment, I realize that the vanilla extract and canned hummus are missing. I feel bad. Did the bagging guys forget them? They were hasty and ill-tempered. Or was it the taxi. It had to have been the taxi. Or they might have fallen out on the short walk from taxi to home. Oh what the heck. They’re gone. Kismet ‘u naseeb. I wasn’t meant to have them.

The circumstances are complicated and irrelevant, but a quarter hour later, I’m outside the house with my aunt, and there’s the cab driver, calling out “Ya hajji!” — a sort of respectful word used for older ladies who, presumably, have had plenty of time to perform the hajj. I’d like to think he wasn’t calling me a hajji, but I clearly digress. Long story short, he gives me my bag, tells me he rang the house three times, circled around in his cab a bunch and waited outside a few minutes in an effort to give us back our lost amanah (trust). I offered a dinar, which he refused as he made his way to his cab.

So that was my back-to-back-to-back awesome-people-while-shopping experience. I never felt warmer on a colder night.

Note: I learned afterwards from my aunt that corn syrup is indeed served with pancakes. I’m still not sure if that’s just a Amman thing or if Mama discreetly bequeathed her maple-syrup favoritism to us, her brood. Whatevs. Now you know — said in the Bill Nye the Science Guy tone, of course.

like the pyramids

I could be telling you about every detail of my life in Jordan, but instead I shall tell you about a (wonderfully depressing) poem I came across in cyberspace. It’s one that my Sido used to sporadically recite from memory as he lounged on his blue La-Z boy chair. A poem written by an eighty-some year-old man and recited by another eighty-some year old man 15 centuries later.

According to this (shady) online encyclopedia, the poet Zuhair ibn abi-Sulma was one of the six great Arabian pre-Islamic poets. So great, in fact, that some of his poetry was included among the Mu’allaqat (prize-poems draped on the Kaaba in pre-Islamic times). His sister is the eminent poet al-Khansaa, who practically wrote a whole diwan (book of poetry) eulogizing her beloved brother Sakhr. Zuhair ibn abi-Sulma is said to have lived long and, as his poem suggests, sort of outlived life.

Now, before I get to the poem, I’d like to alert you to the fact that this fool here is from the 6th century. That’s right, 6th. That’s like 500 A.D.

Keep in mind that I’m an English major who thought Beowulf (8th – 11th century) and the Canterbury Tales (14 century) were archaic and required translation. But Zuhair ibn abi-Sulma’s poem is comprehensible without any footnotes or glossary. And believe me when I tell you that I’m no Sibawayh by any stretch of the imagination, and I do have a pretty elastic imagination.

It’s hard for me to think of this poem’s age without feeling a swell of pride in being an inheritor of the Arabic language. I love the fact that Arabic (unlike many of its ancient sisters) has not passed on, but aged gracefully.

In a way, I can see Arabic as a great-grandmother sitting by the fireside (in genetics: P generation) who still communicates with the plethora of munchkins sitting at her feet (the F2 and F3 generations, although F15 generation is more like it).

(On the note of loving Arabic, man oh man, I have to share with you Hafez Ibraheem’s poetic personification of the Arabic language at some point. It’s one of Mama’s favorites, and especially appropriate in Jordan where English competes for billboard space with Arabic.)

[Refocus] To the poem, then, without further ado! An aging Zuhair ibn abi-Sulma slams life and living. Hurrah! Here it is in Arabic:

زهير بن أبي سلمى

سئمت تكاليف الحياة ومن يعش
ثمانين حولاً، لا أبالك، يسأم
واعلم ما في اليوم، والأمس قبله
ولكنني عن علم ما في غد عمي
رأيت المنايا خبط عشواء من تصب
تمته، ومن تخطئ يعمِّر فيهرم

And for my anglophone pals, it goes more or less like this:

I’ve grown bored of the requisites of living, for he who lives/ eighty years, [insert your favorite oath for emphasis], gets bored./ I know what is here today and what was yesterday/ but I am as to what comes in the future blind./ I saw death coming randomly so that whomever it hits,/ it kills and whomever it misses lives long and gets old [and dilapidated.]

Optimistic, no? Makes you feel like a trooper for chugging along anyway. Ah, but despair not. Until dilapidation and/or death do us part from our self-esteem, we may enjoy poetry.

One word that I’ve come to fall in love with is haram (not to be mistaken with its English name-twin haram, which means Islamically prohibited). In Arabic, harama the three-letter verb origin means to grow old. The pyramids, consequently, are referred to as al-ahram (the old things).

As a mnemonic device, let me tell you a little story. When Baba’s on the phone and someone (presumably) asks him, “Shoul akhbar? How are the news?” Baba’s comical reply is, “Zay al-ahram. Like the pyramids.”

So, the next time someone asks you about the news, tell them they’re old Egyptian triangles.

on soles and souls

Mama was relishing memories of a childhood vacation in the Levant. She mentioned that Tata and Sido passed a shoe shiner once and treated their brood of six children (and a dozen leather shoes) to a spanking-new shine. “It feels so good,” Mama reminisced “to have someone take care of you that way, do something for you. You know that feeling you get when you’re at a salon and someone is doing something with your hair. It’s the same feeling.”

But I couldn’t derive pleasure from the thought of it.

I was repulsed by the image of an adult kneeling at children’s feet. “The shoe shiners are usually children,” was Mama’s defense. “And it’s honest work.”

That sparked a long debate about what honest work means and whether or not honest work can still be humbling.

“Someone has to do it, after all. He may be doing it as a side job. A way for him to get ahead.” Still, I wasn’t buying it. I couldn’t explain my irritation then, not even to myself. But today I found someone who could.

Tenessee Williams, author of The Glass Menagerie (which I just read) and A Streetcar Named Desire (which I have yet to read), explained it so well in an essay for The New York Times. “The Catastrophe of Success” discusses the unexpected negative consequences of Williams’ meteoric ascent to stardom.

But life should require a certain minimal effort. You should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. Hotel service is embarrassing. Maids, waiters, bellhops, porters and so forth are the most embarrassing people in the world for they continually remind you of inequities which we accept as the proper thing. The sight of an ancient woman, gasping and wheezing as she drags a heavy pail fo water down a hotel corridor to mop up the mess of some drunken overprivileged guest, is one that sickens and weighs upon the heart and withers it with shame for this world in which it is not only tolerated but regarded as proof positive that the wheels of Democracy are functioning as they should without interference from above or below. Nobody should have to clean up anybody else’s mess in this world. It is terribly bad for both parties, but probably worse for the one receiving the service.

As a former college resident advisor, I’ve seen too often that “ancient woman” mopping “up the mess of some drunken overprivileged guest.”

And yet I understand that the housekeeper who did the mopping enjoyed a salary. I understand that the concierge who pointed me to the National Mall and the bellhop who gallantly toted my bags in D.C. are not slaves or indentured servants. They do earn a paycheck. I understand that the nine year-old girl in Egypt who carried my watermelon to the third-story appreciated the tip, and that the immigrant in Jordan who waited on us unnecessarily at a fast-food restaurant — that he too was trying to earn his livelihood by the sweat of his brow.

They and the shoe shiner are free men, honorable men. And yet I cannot help but feel that in poverty is a serfdom of sorts. He who cannot choose where to work, how to work, when to work and what to work is economically shackled and, consequently, shackled in every other respect.

A citizen who depends on a dole can hardly open his mouth to keep his government in check, lest the dole be suspended. A hard-laboring worker cannot unionize for fear that the pittance on which her family subsists may be terminated.

The posture of the (imagined) shoe shiner provides a strong juxtaposition between two relative levels of privilege. It is not the shoe shiner’s position that is disgraceful. What is disgraceful is the ease with which such evident and persistent inequities are accepted without a blush of shame.

Like a worshipper’s prostration, the act of polishing itself is hardly blameworthy. But to whom does one offer his services? Before whom does the worshipper bow? The unsympathetic, unmoved privileged, I think, is like a hollow deity, unresponsive, aloof, irresponsible. Thus, the shoe shiner lavishes his attentions on a fraud. And that, as Tenessee Williams put it, is “terribly bad for both parties, but probably worse for the one receiving the service.”

home run

In three consecutive days three different azaa’s (memorial services).

The first for a friend’s grandfather. The next for my grandfather. And the third for a friend’s brother-in-law.  May Allah have mercy on them all.

Yesterday a sister gave a khatira (reminder) to a room chock full of women, mostly dressed in black. She described us all as travelers. What we prepare in this life, she said, is all we take with us to our next stop. Our baggage, then, is a metaphor for our (presumably good) deeds. The heavier our bags, she explained, the better off we are (not to mention, the more we are charged at the airport.) Despite the general exhaustion of giving and receiving condolences, her reminder was well-given and well-taken.

On our way back from the azaa, my brother reflected on verses he had listened to — recited by none other than Abdul Basit Abdul Samad, arguably the man with the most beautiful Qur’anic recitation ever. In the verses, Allah cites two positive and negative examples of women.

To no one’s surprise, Mama instantly knew what surah (chapter) he was talking about and recited the verses right then and there, from memory.

One of the female role models described in the verses is Aasiya (Arabic for Asia), wife of Pharaoh. As Pharaoh persecutes her, Aasiya asks Allah to build for her baytan fil jannah (a house in Paradise).

I had always found this supplication fascinating because, in a Contemporary Women Writers class, my professor described houses as central motifs in women’s writing. Think Brown Girl, Brownstones, The Awakening and House on Mango Street.

My brother’s thoughts moved in a different direction.

“See Mama.” He teased, “Lady Aasiya asks for a house in Paradise. Not a house in Hisperia.” Believe it or not, we had been considering a move to a city that rhymes with hysteria.

“Why not a house in Hisperia and a house in jannah?” was Mama’s comeback.

My brother replied, “Forget Hisperia, Mama. Let’s get a house in Aasiya!”

Oh, brother. Every now and then your puns strike out, but dare I say that this one was a home run?

struck by lightning

Sometimes I live in a valley. I say ‘sometimes’ because I only see the mountains when the smog curtain lifts or parts — mountains that are less than a mile away, mind you. Even the ‘valley’ sounds like a misnomer. In my mind, ‘valley’ evokes a dip amidst mountains that is Ireland green, smothered in clean, cool morning mist, shrouded in a quiet only interrupted by sounds of wildlife and poetic reflections, and a landscape  sparsely sprinkled with old, earnest, unfinished houses.  That is a valley.

What I live in, however — it doesn’t get rainfall all that often. So the green wonderland I just talked about is unsustainable and wishful at best. Apart from your classy smog air pollution, our valley features two inventive brands: noise and light pollutions (as if the stars weren’t small enough without my glasses). In short, this ain’t nothing out of Heidi or Anne of Green Gables (not that I read either of those books).

As any weather(wo)man or Southern California resident will tell you, the skies have been less than blue these days. It’s officially summer, and per usual the weather alternates between somber moodiness and belligerent heat. A couple days ago, gray mountains stacked on top of the usual brown ones. Heavenly wrath (or mercy, depending on the temperature of your optimism) was preparing to unleash itself.

I stood outside in the middle of my utterly neglected, nature-do-with-me-as-you-wish yard and watched. The mountains were unconscious and the skies worked to resuscitate them. The clouds clapped like hands onto the mountain’s chest and tried to force life back into that giant, still carcass — to no avail. The mountains shuddered but did not stir. The heart of stone deep within that range was stunned but not moved. It did not throb as one of flesh might. It did not pulse no matter how much voltage was applied. If anything, it grew more dead, more still after every strike.

As rain peppered the sky, it brought down with it the black particulate matter that otherwise might have planted itself in our collective lungs and (God forbid) mushroomed uncontrollably there. Although I stood squarely under the nose of that authoritative sky, it only brushed my shoulders and head with its wet hands — a surprisingly gentle gesture.

Then, a knock on the glass door. It was Mama. “Come inside. The lightning might strike you. It happens. I know, not likely, probably not, whatever. Come inside, anyway.” I went in, feeling that I’d be doubly cursed if I disobeyed my mom and was burnt to a crisp. (Two hells for the price of one!)

Although I took shelter, I was already struck by lightning.

flicker with an ‘e’

The lights in my house have been a-flicker lately.

A couple days ago, Mama smelled smoke coming from the laundry room and noticed that the dryer was spitting fire (sparks, really). My sister immediately did what most responsible adults do: dialed the police. I, on the other hand, hit up my brother, who had gone with my dad to pray at the mosque. To my confused listener, I explained the overzealous, potentially explosive dryer situation. ‘There’s a glow under the dyer,’ I told him, alarmed. He handed the phone to Baba. My dad’s reply: It’s supposed to have a fire underneath it. It’s a dryer.

‘But, Dad–’

‘Just unplug it.’

We mustered our collective courages and pulled the plug. We told the police that the threat of a fire had subsided (as far as we amateurs could tell). But the firefighters, like stereotypical generous Arabs who insist on buying you lunch even though you’ve packed a lunch, came anyway.

They offered the following diagnosis: there was lint collecting underneath the dryer. (Could the reason be more mundane?) They left the house, smiling like victors returned from battle.

Did my brother and dad call after that, just to check up on us and to make sure that the house hadn’t gone up in flames? No. Had they rushed back to our rescue? Don’t dream of it. When I called my brother back, ready to share with him my melodrama, he innocently asked me what on earth I was talking about. Instead of an explanation, therefore, he earned a rebuke, which he took goodhumoredly. (He’s a goodhumored kind of guy — even on those rare occasions where a fiery passion should be in order.)

Though the firefighters didn’t find  a flame to extinguish aA, the electricity in half the house was magically extinguished. (That, my brother, will tell you, was the most trying test of all. No internet. No Lakers. You might as well add No air.) The electrician blamed Edison and Edison replaced the wires, and, after all was said and done, the lights continue to flicker.

What did I learn, at the end of the day? 1. That my routine is precariously hinged on the presence of internet (shocking, I know). 2. That dryers do indeed have a fire within. 3. That the night is actually a pretty dark time if you don’t have a million watts going at the same time. 4. That lighting candles and hanging laundry evokes a surprisingly gratifying rustic feel. With darkness or light (or any combination thereof), home is home to me.