Fragments of History

When I was about ten years old, I saw my father hunched over an old black-and-white photograph of a woman with a solemn face. Her eyes were downcast in concentration. In her hands was a large pot. A trickle of water was running from the faucet. She had a striking nose, smooth and pointed. Her arms were slender. She wore three bangles.
“Whose picture is that, Papa?” I asked.
“My mother’s,” he said without looking up. I could hear the tears in his voice.

I started to collect pieces of Sughra Begum’s life from stories her children told me. Slowly, I started to reach out to my father’s extended family.

When I first met Sughra Begum’s brother, Maama Jeera as he is called by his nieces and nephews (and their children), he was living in a small brick house in Samanabad, Lahore. He had seven daughters, no sons. His wife believed it was black magic. He took it for the will of God.

Maama Jeera told me other stories about my grandmother. He gave me small snapshots of  her life, a window into the past of my father, uncle, and aunts. “My sister was the most harmless creature that ever lived,” he said. “Maybe that’s why she died so young.”

Sughra Begum was plucked from a partition camp set up on the outskirts of Lahore by my grandfather. He was already middle-aged, had buried a barren wife, and was volunteering in the camp, disillusioned and broken-spirited from his day job working the ticket counter of a local Lakshmi Chowk cinema. She became the child-bride of the eldest son in a conservative Sunni family and had three strikes against her: she was beautiful, she was an immigrant, she was Shia.

My father, Sughra Begum’s first-born came after five years of marriage. Maama Jeera said that she stood on one leg all night on the night of 10th Muharram the year before she conceived. “She would not take no for an answer,” he told me. “She begged for your father, and even God couldn’t refuse my sister.”

When her son grew up, he would leave little notes to his mother inside her Singer sewing machine. “Meri pyaari ammi,” or “my beautiful mother,” the notes would say. After she died, they found the inner compartment of her sewing machine full of small scraps of paper from her son.

Sughra Begum’s daughter keeps two of her trunks in her home. One summer, I helped my aunt clean up the contents of the two metal trunks. There was a set of six silver bowls, darkened with age and oxidation, a few yards of silk, cotton doilies with embroidered flowers, some pots and pans, a few chipped clay matkas, and a Singer sewing machine. With my heart racing, I rested my hands on the cool black surface of the machine. Sughra Begum touched this machine, sewed clothes for her children, mended kurtas and shawls, and I was about to find a thin slice of her history and that of my father in its womb. I lifted the body of the machine slowly. It resisted my pull, creaked on its hinges. There was nothing but a dust cloud inside. The history I was after was gone. Years after the death of Sughra Begum had left a gaping hole between tangible reminders of her life and her granddaughter’s hunger for getting acquainted with the past.

Because Sughra Begum was beautiful, an immigrant, and a Shia woman, she was denied burial in my Sunni grandfather’s family plot. Sughra Begum’s body was left in the verandah of her home for hours before a kindly neighbor came forward and offered a burial space in the detached storeroom of his house. Her husband ran frantically to various family members, begging them to let his wife be buried next to other women in his family. Maama Jeera, held his 2-year-old niece as she tried to climb into the charpoy with her dead mother. Her other children, older and cognizant of their loss, sat in corners of the house, hid behind curtains, cried.
“Why did you bury her in a storeroom?” I asked Maama Jeera.
“In those times, our women were not supposed to be buried in strange graveyards,” he said simply.

As a child, I visited the storeroom grave of my grandmother once a year with my father. He would unlock a small blue metal door, open the musty room, dust the space around the grave with a broom, and change the sheet on top of it. There is no stone that marks Sughra Begum’s grave, no epitaph, only a cement slab. If there were no sheets on it with Quranic verses, one wouldn’t know there is a woman buried under the concrete.

Years ago, I made a copy of the picture I found of Sughra Begum when I intruded on my father’s vulnerable moment of thinking about his mother. Upon our annual pilgrimage, I put the picture in a frame and placed it next to her grave.

I wonder if it is still there.

Thanksgiving in Pictures

This year's Thanksgiving was once again a huge success with Rebecca at the helm of the kitchen! My only role in this year's Thanksgiving was to enjoy her delicious cooking. It was a perfectly relaxed evening with great company. Good friends are the solution to life's little (and big) problems. Pictures of our wonderful evening below.

Our Thanksgiving table (drinks on Jahan's highchair)

Mashed potatoes with herb compound butter.

Creamed corn and string beans with sliced almond and sauteed onions.

Stuffing, steamed squash, cranberry sauce.

Rebecca carving the golden brown, perfect turkey!

The turkey!

My turkey on Turkey Day.

How I Learned About Love

When I was 9 or 10 years old, and quite precocious I might add, I confided in my sister that I was in love with a boy of 12 or 13 who was a friend of the family. This imagined love lasted for a summer during which I read and wrote a lot of poetry. The poems I read didn't make sense to me. The ones I wrote didn't make sense, period. At some point over the summer, my sister and I had a huge fight, probably because I stole her erasers or didn't lend her my puzzle book or something equally mundane. My passive-aggressive sister proceeded to yell at the top of her lungs with my mother present in the room "Noor wants to marry X," X being the pre-pubescent boy who was the object of my affection. My mother pulled me into the restroom and the first thing she said was "It's OK." It was the best thing she could have said to me in that moment when I was feeling so...ashamed. She elaborated "It's OK to like someone, but make sure you tell an adult next time. Maybe you will tell me? I promise to be a good friend." She left it at that. She wasn't pushy, didn't seem shocked, and let me figure out what she meant. Did she mean she would keep my secret? Or was she trying to tell me that from now on we would convene in the bathroom for chats like this? In retrospect, she made our exchange seem perfectly natural, and I am thankful to her for that. There was no way for this crush to last beyond the summer, and the way she handled it gave me the confidence to confide in her many years later when I actually was serious about marrying someone. 

A few years later when I was an awkward teenager, another boy who will go unnamed professed his undying love for me. I immediately went to my mother who was removing her makeup in the bathroom and said incredulously "I told him to never talk to me. How dare he?" My mother thought about it for a few seconds, tut-tutted, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Do you really think you did the right thing?" she asked me. "What do you mean? Of course I did. I am a good girl. I am not to talk to boys until I am grown up!" (I credit my Catholic school upbringing for this definition of being "good.") She thought about it some more. Maybe she was weighing her choices: Do I tell my daughter it's OK to talk to boys and risk being censured by the school when she tells her friends "My mom said boys can be your friends, too, there is nothing wrong with that;" or do I make her more self-absorbed and egotistical by endorsing her actions? Finally she said "You know, there will be other boys who will tell you they like you. Some may even tell you they love you. And one day you may fall in love with someone, too. And when you do, how will you feel if he rejects you this way?" I was quiet. The conversation was no longer in my control. Somehow, I had ended up in the same place (bathroom) with the same problem (love) and in the same emotional state (embarrassed). I also had the nagging feeling that I had broken someone's heart and that certainly wasn't good. "So, if you can't reciprocate someone's feelings, turn them down gently. And always say 'Thank you, I am flattered, but my answer is no.' Do you understand? Be grateful, and firmly say no. Never send mixed messages! Never say 'I'll think about being your friend' if you know you will never be their friend." She tried to mix infatuation and friendship and love to somehow communicate the etiquette of rejection. Also, I think she couldn't bring herself to say "boyfriend." At the end of the day, she was still a Pakistani mom of three girls. In any case, it worked. She taught me to appreciate attention, value affection, understand that when you love someone, you make yourself vulnerable, and to scorn someone's love is most cruel. She taught me to assert my preferences and choices while respecting those of others. 

I will never forget those two conversations with my mother. I have used her reactions on both occasions to dictate my actions in stressful situations. When I walk into a chaos of emotions, I always say "It's OK," and more often than not, it is OK or not too far from it at any rate. My mother's predictions did come true, and I had to say "No, thank you," but I would never have had the same degree of sensitivity for the person I was addressing if it were not for her wisdom. Over the years, I also learned (by way of pondering and experience) that the most successful kind of love demands mutual respect and more importantly a forgiving attitude that resembles a strong friendship. In fact, I recently told someone who is about to get married "The one thing I can tell you is that any relationship is much more dependable if its foundation lies in friendship. I hope he is a good friend to you - to me this is the best prayer."

Now that I finally am grown up, and my mother's own love story has not had a happy ending, I have seen the lessons she taught me being implemented in her choices. She always acted with a certain decorum when it came to matters of the heart. When I expected her to react passionately, she maintained her composure. When I thought she ought to focus on herself rather than others, she made sure she didn't betray anyone's confidence even if she suffered in the process. I have learned that love is a messy business, and there are no guarantees for lifelong happiness, but respect and friendship are absolutely indispensable in any relationship.  Her own love story was particularly burdensome, but she made sure to never break anyone's heart. I wish the same could have been true for hers. 

Centerpiece in a Pinch

View from the hill.

The rosemary bush.

Yesterday I was in the mood for a thorough and therapeutic cleaning session. I started doing laundry as soon as I woke up and spent the rest of the morning scrubbing the stove, cleaning counter-tops, mopping floors, vacuuming, and rearranging furniture. By early afternoon, the house sparkled, and I felt the kind of contentment only a day well-spent in Fall cleaning can bring. The only thing missing was a centerpiece for the dining table, but I told myself I would buy flowers on my way home from work.

Later in the afternoon, I took Jahan to the park. We have the good fortune of living in a beautiful community on a hill. The view cheers me up even when I am at my most morose. There is a mini vineyard in a small plot next to our townhouse, and rosemary, lavender, and redberry buckthorn grow alongside the pavement all the way to the park. While pushing Jahan in her stroller, I had the cleverest idea since deciding to start this blog. What if I didn’t need flowers for the centerpiece after all? What if I could cut some branches off of these gorgeous rosemary bushes and put them in a hurricane? It would smell amazing, look great, and cost nothing!

Well, I pulled off a few branches, and sure enough the smell was lovely! After I came home, I filled the bottom of a clear glass hurricane with pebbles and then put in the rosemary branches with a small piece of pine cone from my Fall potpourri box (bought last season from World Market). Voilà! A Fall themed centerpiece just in time for dinner.

The thrifty centerpiece!

Dancing is the Best Medicine

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once."

-Friedrich Nietzsche 

In the summer of 2010, I was shadowing one of the specialists associated with our Neuroscience and Pain Lab at the Stanford Pain Clinic. The Pain Clinic is a tertiary care center and has been awarded The Center of Excellence award by the American Pain Society twice in the last four years. Patients with some of the most complex chronic pain disorders come to seek help at the Stanford Pain Clinic - some even call it the Mecca of Pain Medicine. 

While I was able to see a lot of different forms of acute and chronic pain disorders at the clinic, there was one patient in particular I had the pleasure to observe with the attending physician that I continue to remember with fondest admiration. She had the kindest eyes. Her brown hair was beautifully styled in a long bob. She wore black pants, a white top, a bright red coat with a silver brooch, and low black heels. Her nails were meticulously manicured. There were two rings on her right hand and a thin gold bracelet around her wrist. Her makeup was flawless: some mascara and the most perfect red lipstick. Her chart said she was 81 years old, but she didn't look a day over 65.

She sat complacently on the patient bed, her black leather bag resting beside her, her feet hovering just above the floor on account of her short frame. A hardcover edition of Joyce Carol Oates's We Were The Mulvaneys sat next to her bag. Obviously, I took a liking to her immediately. 

After the fellow presented her history to the attending physician, he started to ask her some questions, to which she responded with a smile that revealed perfectly even teeth. I learned a lot about her in just a quarter of an hour. She lived in a retirement community alone since the death of her husband a few years ago. She enjoyed walking and reading. And dancing. And here's where the problem resided. 

"You know, we have a lot of community parties, especially in the summer. And lately, I have been walking less and dancing less," she said seriously, drawing her hands through the air firmly as she stressed on the word "less." She sometimes experienced a sharp, shooting pain from her heel to her calf while she walked and danced. At other times, she felt a tingling sensation in her toes. 

"I just wish I could dance more, you know. Sometimes, I have to stop in the middle of a song, and it's rather disheartening. I love dancing so much. It's just my feet - the right one more than the left. It starts to ache so, so much. If only I could curb this pain so I could go back to dancing! The summer is almost over, and there are so many events coming up around Labor Day."

Here was an 81-year-old woman in the best of health (and with perfect teeth). Really, her biggest complaint at the visit was that she was not able to dance as much as she used to. I will repeat. 81 years old. 

She walked out with a prescription for a few tests to diagnose the cause and medications to control the pain. I could tell she would be perfectly satisfied if the medication helped her enough to make the dancing possible. Her disposition and energy were absolutely inspiring. She had a generous smile, a confident manner, a strong step. And she pulled off red lipstick like no one else I've ever met. She commanded it. 

When I am completely exhausted from everyday tedium, when washing one more dish or playing one more game with Jahan or popping in the Zumba DVD one more time seems like a monumental, nay, unconquerable challenge, I think of the amazing old lady in red whose dance moves would likely put me to shame at my so-called prime. She is probably still dancing heartily at parties held in her retirement community. Her spirit didn't suffer because of loss or tragedy or age. She really lived. And what a way to do it!

Happiness Sits on an Empty Shelf

A little over a year ago, my friend Rebecca introduced me to  Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project. Since then, I have been focusing much of my energy on recognizing things that make me happy and trying to reframe negative emotions. It is an uphill struggle, especially for someone like me who feels much more comfortable being morose than upbeat.

The goal of my happiness project was not to change my personality, but to identify little things that I could do to boost my daily happiness. Counting one's blessings seems like such bad advice. Whenever someone says that to me, I feel like they are telling me I am being ungrateful and petulant. But I decided to do that consciously. When I am stuck in traffic and frustrated enough to cry, I try to remember the time when I didn't have a car. I try to recall the feeling of running after the train as it left the platform, the sting of tears, my thoughts berating me for hitting the snooze button. I take a deep breath. I am in my car. I will get there soon. I am listening to Jane Austen. It's really the best way to be stuck in traffic. This gives me the opportunity to acknowledge my negative feelings - so that I am not just shoving them deep inside without addressing them - and choose to focus on the positive aspects of the situation.

I should admit now that more often than not, I fail at being positive and resort to cursing like a sailor in the safety and silence of my car - but I promise I am getting better.

I started small. My first resolution for happiness was to wear earrings to work every day. It was a very tiny change. It worked. And it became bigger. Gradually, I expended this resolution to wearing make-up, carrying a nice bag, styling my hair. After Jahan, when I went back to work, I really didn't want to be there. I wanted to be home, cuddling with my baby and reading Bon Appetit all the time. On such days, when I fully resented my work desk, wearing earrings - and later styling my hair, choosing the right shade of blush, et cetera - put me in a good mood.

One of the best things I decided to change was to have breakfast every day. I know, I know, we've heard that a LOT, but it is the most important meal of the day. I keep a loaf of whole wheat bread and a pack of eggs at work now. I get there really early and am usually the first person in the office. I poach my eggs, heat up some toast, and brew a cup of Newman's Own with half and half and two Splendas - and then open my email. Nothing, absolutely nothing can dampen my spirit while having my morning cup of coffee.

These were small changes, but they made a big difference for my mood. When I saw how well my resolutions were working, I decided to change some things around the house, too. Gretchen Rubin tackled clutter in her home as one way of boosting happiness. She says in her book that she keeps one shelf of her closet empty to consciously stay clutter-free. A few weeks ago, when Jahan started to walk, she broke two dishes that were in my kitchen cabinets. This prompted me to try Rubin's strategy. I donated items I hadn't used in a while and moved others to the top-most shelves (so what if I'll need a footstool to reach them?). I have two completely empty cabinets now, and I am extremely pleased with my achievement. There is so much possibility in these empty shelves - they are benevolent and generous. Just the other day, I had an unexpected visitor with very little notice. These kind empty cabinets hid all signs of bad housekeeping in a flash. All of Jahan's little toys, books on toddler discipline, old magazines, a bag of recyclable items that I was too lazy to carry downstairs, unsorted mail, Usman's coat, my apron, everything went in there. I was a great host. My guest marveled at the lack of clutter in my house despite having a very active toddler. We had tea and biscuits while I resolutely kept Jahan away from my charitable cabinets.

If I have learned one thing in the past year, it is that happiness can come in unexpected ways and in all kinds of packages. I have my earrings for tomorrow morning picked out, my makeup is safely stowed in my handbag, and even though I don't want to go to work tomorrow, I know I will be ready to start my day when I smell fresh coffee. And now it's time to get some sleep (something else that makes me happy) - right after I clean out my two miracle cabinets. You never know when you might need an empty shelf.

Every Girl Deserves A Mister Darcy

You will be hard pressed to find someone these days who married without love. Not that such couples don't exist especially where I come from, but most marriages result from months (if not years) of courtship and a gradual growth of mutual affection. This is why the romance in Jane Austen's books gives me a little wishful heartache. Meeting eligible men at grand balls, getting to know them while dancing, showing in gestures rather than words your partiality towards a person, and most importantly, falling in love after a few most formal interactions - how impossible and absurd this sounds today. And how very simple at the same time. 

I started my Jane Austen journey with Mansfield Park last month after this article caught my attention, because 1. I needed an audiobook to listen to during my hour-long commute to and from work, and all of Jane Austen's books are available for free through the Audiobooks app for iPhone, and 2. I work in a Neuroscience lab at Stanford and many of my co-workers study the representation of pain in the brain. The article mentioned above studies Jane Austen in the brain - close enough, right? 

After reading Mansfield Park and Pride and Prejudice, I think I know what sort of man Jane Austen would have married had that been in the cards for her. Serious and reserved to the point of being withdrawn, but kind and gentle at the same time - a kind of Edmund Bertram and Fitzwillian Darcy hybrid. Edmund in Mansfield Park is a much more lovable character throughout than Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Edmund's gentleness and propriety are in perfect proportions. He is self-effacing, responsible, and the best part - he has a ready smile. He makes mistakes and isn't afraid to admit his flaws and weaknesses. Mr. Darcy is his opposite at the beginning of Pride and Prejudice. While striking in appearance and regal in countenance (and with pockets full of cash), his pride immediately makes him unpleasant company. 

It's the change in Mr. Darcy that interests me. It's the simple act of falling in love - and not just any love - such ardent love that money, connections, society, propriety be damned, he does not let anything stand in the way of his object, which is to be married to Elizabeth Bennet. A girl inferior to him in the ranks of society, described as pretty but not beautiful, opinionated, and independent. 

Ah, to have an attachment so fierce as to change one's character - replace pride with humility, adopt civility instead of haughtiness, compromise friendships and connections for one person - is that true love? Is the biggest achievement in love to change someone for the better, or does the true meaning of this king of emotions reside in accepting your significant other just the way they are, no questions, no arguments? Is it possible to be consumed with love for someone who is fundamentally flawed? 

Whatever the case, the pull of Mr. Darcy's character lies in his quest for Elizabeth. He fights for her. That's what every girl should have - a man who is so certain of his love for her that he doesn't give a damn about anything else. There is nothing more romantic than such a story. 

Yes, every girl deserves a Mr. Darcy, but then when the fight is over, and the woman is won, and the marriage is done - that's when the haze of new love evaporates and you realize you still have the rest of your life to live. What happens then? Is love ever enough? Or does the story circle back and end like Mr. and Mrs. Bennet who have known no affection in their long conjugal years, because the decision to marry was made as rash youngsters and Mrs. Bennet's mind was so different from Mr. Bennet's that the ferocity of youthful affection simply wasn't enough to sustain a healthy marriage? 

Such are my thoughts when I listen to Karen Savage narrating Jane Austen's texts in the most entrancing yet soothing tones. Yes, every girl deserves a Mr. Darcy...but what happens next?

Summarizing Motherhood

Jahanara was born on an overcast October afternoon after I had been in early labor for three days and active labor for about 8 hours. My first memory of her is her thick black hair as the nurse rocked her trying to gauge her weight. “Looks to me like six and a half pounds,” she said. They weighed her and announced “Seven pounds seven ounces.” I remember feeling faintly smug, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. Usman was hovering around me and the baby like an excited old lady. I have never seen him fluttering so much before or since. I would love to hear what exactly he was thinking, but he doesn't talk about emotions pleading plain forgetfulness.

Last night, over a year after the day that brought Jahan into my life, I was talking to my friend about those two nights in the hospital. On the first night I was so exhausted that I remember crying every time the baby cried. The second night, I sent her to the nursery just so I could sleep. They brought her back after two hours; I fed her, and sent her away again. The desire to sleep consumed me. Early in the morning, the pediatrician visited my room and told me she’d just been to the nursery and the baby was perfect, sleeping peacefully. I wanted to justify myself. “But she was crying a lot, doctor. She wasn't settling down. That’s why I sent her to the nursery.” Apparently, I just couldn't calm down my own baby. I felt utterly incapable of being a mother.

I still realize in fits and starts how wrong I was when I doubted myself. We learned to love each other in leaps. I memorized her face, the broad forehead, the wrinkle between her eyes, the long thick lashes, the perfect pout, and she squinted at mine with her marble eyes. We came home and became best friends forever. A few weeks ago, I wrote a guest post for Afia Aslam’s blog about our journey so far. In it I marveled at how much land we've covered in just a few months.

This morning when I was leaving for work, Jahan sat in her high-chair next to her nanny eating breakfast and watching Elmo. I climbed over the safety gate above the stairs cringing inwardly, preparing myself for her loud cry of distress. She looked at me and smiled. When I said “Bye, lovely miss, mama has to go now,” she gave a little cry. “It’s OK,” said her nanny. “She’ll be OK.” I walked downstairs waiting for her screams. They didn't come. A few seconds later, I heard her babbling to her nanny. She was fine. I felt a mixture of pride, pain, and joy. We’ll be OK. This realization strikes me often and with much vigor each time, and it fills me with wonder at this little person who thinks I am her whole world.

Being Jahan’s mother has made me a better me. And that’s really all there is to my motherhood story.

Goll Gappay are more than the perfect snack

My earliest memories of Pakistan are all about street food. My father, a street food enthusiast, used to take his three girls (and many years later he would do the same with his fourth-born boy) through narrow alleyways of old Lahore, tasting dahi-bhallay, seekh kebab, nihari, halwa poori, and often goll gappay. He would perch me on the bonnet of the car, which I have now started to call “hood,” and we would eat off of cheap plastic plates and drink cold frothy lassi out of tall steel glasses.

When I think back to my childhood and my history in Lahore, it is often represented in a mosaic of food: the variety of choices offered by street vendors in their rickety carts and portable barbecue pits, the challi-waala outside my school selling coal-roasted corn-on-the-cob with chili and lemon juice, Paradise ice-cream cones in Liberty market, chocolate mousse and chicken bread from Kitchen Cuisine bakery, family dinners at Salt and Pepper Village. It is difficult to encumber the ebb and flow of memories that come flooding back years after leaving the home that nurtured your formative years.

It has been 10 years since I left home – a long enough time that the definition of home has stretched, worn out, and become malleable in some ways, and has turned completely rigid, unrelenting, and obsessive in others. I left home, if I can still call it that, a fresh-faced, doe-eyed, teenager, and now I am a somewhat cynical, slightly cold, definitely opinionated, and satisfyingly successful wife, mother, chronic pain researcher, and poet.


Goll gappay are an amazing metaphor for the complexity of character that most of us possess. It is the rare person whose life is simple enough to not be encompassed by this little stretch of the imagination. Take for example your Average Joe. He is the crisp hollow shell of the round goll gappay. The delicious mixture of garbanzo beans, red onion, cilantro, and the amalgamation of spices that goes inside this shell is his life, his people, his triumphs and heartaches. Now for the tangy sauce that the goll gappay are dipped in before they burst into a million flavors in your mouth. That sauce is the best part. You could eat goll gappay without it, but you would be left unsatisfied and miss the slightly electric sensation of tart drops hitting your tongue. This watery goodness that completes the dish marries all the flavors and really makes goll gappay worth savoring is Average Joe’s happiness. Most of the time it comes in daily packages of mundane things: a comic strip, his child’s grin upon seeing Sesame Street, a long forgotten favorite song, a friend stopping  to ask how he’s really doing, trees turning deep red in the Fall, a plate of perfect golden goll gappay.

People everywhere have quests for greater happiness and hurdles that keep them from succeeding. I hope that in my frequent efforts to boost my happiness and count my blessings, I will reach some of you, and you’ll be able to share your own stories with me.