The Perfect Metaphor

Biryani is a rice dish that is made with lots of delicious spices and with chicken, mutton, fish, or vegetables.

This past weekend, I decided to treat myself to biryani. It has been a great while since I cooked it, and while I usually make it with mutton, this time I decided to make it with chicken. In the last few years I have realized that the simple actions of cooking are very therapeutic for me. Knowing exactly where I keep my coriander seeds and reaching into the spice cabinet without looking, retrieving the bottle, and pouring out the seeds is oddly satisfying. I know where each jar is, what it holds, what the spices smell like. 

(Visitors who are cookery novices often ask me how I am able to differentiate the spices when they are similar in color. That's easy - smell. Another question I get is what quantity of a particular spice do I add to the dish. That's harder. I used to get frustrated when my mother told me a recipe over the phone and said, "And just enough cumin seeds." How much is enough? But that, in fact, is the perfect amount. I never measure my spices. I just eyeball them - now I know what my mother meant.)

As I was preparing this mouth-watering concoction on Saturday, I was also thinking about relationships. Parents, loved ones, siblings, old friends, acquaintances - all connections wax and wane like phases of the moon. There are highs and lows, dips and peaks, crests and troughs. And sometimes relationships just vanish - flatline. Time eats them up. Or circumstances do. I have some of those in one compartment of my heart. They may have ended up there because of my rather unforgiving nature, or a change in the tides of time, or because the other person had it coming. 

Biryani with cucumber salad and yogurt sauce

As I was stirring in the freshly ground spices, I thought, and isn't biryani the perfect metaphor for relationships. Good biryani is supposed to have rice, meat, and all other ingredients in a perfect marriage. The rice, almost always Basmati, is tender but not overly so. Each grain must remain intact during the precarious task of mixing in the seasoned meat. If you overcook the rice, much like beating up a relationship too much, it ends up breaking during the "mixing" phase of the dish, which begins to look like a casserole rather than biryani. 

Biryani is meant to be spicy, not I-just-burned-my-tongue spicy, but mmm-what-great-flavor-and-what-a-nice-kick spicy. You skew the balance and bang! clang! crash! goes your biryani. You know you've ruined it if it ends up being too bland or too spicy. If you really think about it, you want it very much like Goldilocks wanted everything - just right. It took me months to perfect this recipe with the exact combination of spices that would make it full of flavor with an overarching undertone of caliente. Who can tell me what this reminds you of when you juxtapose it with relationships? I think it is a very apt metaphor for finding that much-sought-after fine balance of absolute understanding. Hold back too much, and the bond fizzles out. Give in too much, and it's too burdensome to handle.

My final point is about what I call "the extras." The extras are exactly that - your biryani will still turn out alright without them, but I add them to my recipe for the added burst of aroma and flavor they promise. They bring the wow factor, the magic touch, the final flourish. Right before my biryani is ready to be mixed, I add saffron cream, butter, halved green chilies, and one ingredient that shall go unnamed. These final touches transform my biryani into Gourmet Biryani, jazz it up, make it unique - a dish that my family craves and requests for their birthday meals. In my extended metaphor, these extras represent the special things you do for the people who matter to you. You inconvenience yourself for them. You proofread your sister's paper in the middle of the night with no hope or desire for any kind of return. You surprise your wife with a clean kitchen when she wakes up in the morning because she was complaining of a sore back. You send your mom a first-edition of her favorite book after months of loitering about in second-hand bookstores. You give your best friend the confidence to call you at any time of day or night if she is going through a crisis. These are the "extras," the finer things, the ones that make all the difference. They are what make everyone remember you - just like the perfect plate of biryani.

Little Matters

I catch myself humming songs my mother wrote for my father - songs that belong to a different lifetime and two people who are no longer in love with each other. I realize I am singing a particularly beautiful verse as I stand in front of the coffee-maker at work, staring at the thin stream of dark roast brew dripping steadily into my cup, and I stop. It seems like I have stolen someone else's love song and demeaned it while waiting for my morning cup of coffee. 

The new dish I created

In the afternoon, I hum and sing and sing and hum while creating a new recipe. I sing as I crush all the spices old-style - with mortar and pestle: black cardamom, a stick of cinnamon, whole dried red chilies, bay leaves, black peppercorns, coriander and cumin seeds. I sing as I grate a piece of ginger and 5 cloves of garlic. I sing while mincing green chilies into a small bowl of yogurt. I sing while copping cilantro and plucking mint from my small window-sill herb garden. And I don't stop because if I don't sing, I will forget the song forever. And that would be a shame.

Sometimes, it is indeed the little matters that matter. On days like today, an inexplicable happiness can be achieved from the simple act of recalling the lyrics of a long-forgotten favorite song - by sheer force of will and the resolve to not give up.

My parents don't have the best love story, but by god, they've immortalized it with poetry and music.

One day, I'd like to look back and find tangible reminders of love in my story, too. 

Resolve: Must write more poetry.

Meeting Myself Today

My friend, Rebecca, who has been featured more-or-less consistently in my blog posts read the last one and asked me to look at my carefully constructed (and rather morose) picture of childhood vs. adulthood from a different angle - so that the setting, people, colors, mood - all remain constant, but my perception shifts, just slightly. 

The evening we picked for our involved discussion on this topic could not convince me that there can be equal romance in adulthood as in its younger counterpart. Maybe it is possible to have more independence in adulthood, but that is also arguable in my opinion. We decided to take our debate to Iberia Restaurant, our chosen haunt to talk endlessly about Life over delicious tapas.

How did I think my life would turn out at 28 when I was 8? I can't say that I remember with clarity, but I am certain that like many others in that awkward age group of 8-12 (who have crossed the safe years of looking cute all the time and have embarked on the interminable journey of their "invisible years"), I was in a hurry to be done with the whole business of being a child and coveted the glamor of  adulthood.

And now, here I am. At 28, I am wistful for the seasons of yesteryear. Rebecca argues that when we were children, we wished to grow up, so now, having entered the world as its adult citizen, we should enjoy it, relish the independence that comes with being an adult. When I imagined myself as a grown-up all those years ago, the salient things in my vision were very material. Clothes, makeup, jewelry, books - possessions, really, nothing more. Since I was not lacking satisfaction, or should I say, I was most satisfied with my life only as a child, I was not compelled to imagine a sense of contentment for my future self. And this sense of absolute fulfillment is the main thing that is taken away when you become an adult. Isn't that why we long to sleep like a baby?

There is also too much drama is one's adult years. Gossip, pseudo-friendships, family quarrels, work deadlines, general dissatisfaction with what you've got, taxes (!), and simply too many responsibilities, actually make one's adulthood far less romantic than one imagined it to be on relatively carefree days of one's childhood. Since most of my reveries of adulthood took place on lazy summer afternoons in makeshift hammocks on my family's farmhouse with the lulling noise of water pouring from a spout into an over-flowing tube-well, crows belting out their maniacal reprimands, saag cooking on a hearth in the ground, I find it ironic that in those moments of perfect serenity, I wished for this mixed-bag of untidy emotions that I am master of now. As night began to fall on those days, I would curl up on a charpoy, put aside my Enid Blyton books, and stare at the gathering dusk and the lightening bugs dancing around the cotton crops. I would think about growing up then, but with no concrete visions. I defined adulthood vaguely back then, I suppose: a state of being that comes when you graduate from the listless and unremarkable period of your life that's called childhood. I was so wrong. 

Yes, being an adult is great. I am doing what I love. And I am loving what is true to me. The dinners at Iberia Restaurant are fantastic - see pictures of food for proof and take my word that our conversations are more restorative than a day at the spa. I can take the liberty to shun pseudo-friends (though I do keep some around from time to time for variety and entertainment) and cherish real friends. And while indulging in tiresome adult activities like gossip is taxing, at times it is also rejuvenating. Wait, what? I am listing negative things about being an adult, you say? Yes, yes, no need to be so sanctimonious. You know you are guilty of all this, too. And don't get so impatient...I am coming to the positive aspects, too. I do love my life, I really do. I have the power to be myself, develop philosophies and values that I want to live by, and stay true to them. Being an adult isn't bad. It has its merits. But I can't shake off this feeling of "something lost" when I sit down to take measure of these days and years. I still have the freedom to imagine, to run wildly in the rain, to create wishing dust from sand and glitter, to claim ice-cream has healing powers, but time has swallowed up the belief I had in all that magic. 

 Now, at 28, when I stand at my kitchen window just before nightfall and see the rolling hills of my city, Spring having ignited the landscape with blossoms and foliage, I think of that 8-year-old girl that's still somewhere within me, but dormant now. I think of everything she wanted to be and all she wanted to do when she looked at her city in Spring. I picture the wonder in her eyes when Lahore seemed to yawn its way out of Winter and propel towards the festival of Spring with kites in the sun-lit sky and tiny bobbing lanterns all along the canal at night. I recall the poetry she tried so hard to write (I am eating a bun/under the sun/the sun shines brightly/I can't sit quietly). I marvel at her confidence, her faith in herself, her conviction that great things were waiting for her on the other side of childhood. I miss her.   

If I could meet myself again one day

Childhood is the most fleeting state of pure romance in a person's life. But when do you grow up? What is the distinction between a child and a no-longer-child? When I close my eyes and think about the time when I was a girl, and I have been doing that a lot lately, I think of days that should have no significance, but they keep resurfacing in my memories like plain paper boats bobbing up and down on the calm waves of a quiet lake. 

- Returning from our farmhouse on the outskirts of Lahore and asking Papa to stop somewhere for barbecue. Papa tying a scarf over my eyes. "You'll be so surprised when you see where we go." The car stopping. My sisters chattering away. My mother telling them to be quiet. Papa carrying me in his arms and depositing me on a table. "Are you ready to see your surprise?" Someone untying the scarf. I am sitting on our dining table at home. Glee and disappointment impossibly swirled together. 

- Walking down the long winding path from the school gate to kindergarten assembly. I am in class 3C. I am holding my middle sister's pudgy hand on her first day of school. She is wearing the red woolen pants of our school uniform just like me. "These pants are itchy," she says. "I will come find you at break time," I say. We never used to say "I love you." It was always just...understood.

- We are vacationing in Murree. It's summer, so I have only packed skirts and shorts. Murree is too cold for these clothes at night. Every evening, I order cream of chicken soup from The Cecil's room service menu. "Uncle can you send cream of chicken soup to our room, please," I say into the phone. It's a simpler time. Every adult is "Uncle" or "Auntie." "Jee, beta," he says. One night I walk with Papa and my sisters down the hill to buy more films for the camera and to drop off the finished rolls for development. A stranger starts talking to Papa. "Why don't you make a film like Sholay?" he asks. "We must watch Sholay," I tell my sister. "Remember that name." I would watch Sholay years later and dub it an epic. I wonder if my sisters have seen it. 

- I am sixteen or seventeen. Am I still a child? We are all at the farmhouse, our last holiday as a family, but we don't know this yet. Blissful oblivion. My sisters and brother are in the tube-well, floating, throwing water at each other. I am reading a book at the edge of the well with my feet making lazy circles in the water. I am too old for this silliness. "Get in there," says Papa clicking his camera. "I am reading," I say. "I don't want to." At a distance, Mama is cooking something with a village woman on a hearth dug up in the ground. "Go on," she yells at me. I just ignore her. Papa comes behind me under the pretense of taking pictures from that angle and pushes me in. Cold water seeps through my clothes and I take huge gulps of air. Everyone laughs. Even me. Those pictures are irreplaceable.  

Those days...they just flew past me so quickly. I am surprised I even remember them. Have I changed? Maybe. Would I still hold my sister's hand when she is embarking on a new adventure? Yes. Would I still pretend to be too old for silly things and have my nose in a book instead? Yes. Would I still beg for barbecue on the way home from anywhere? Of course! But there is something fundamentally different in me. Maybe it's age, maybe it's distance, maybe it's time, or maybe I have just forgotten something I used to know.  

A Daughter is Love

Noor Sisters - 1999

Before my brother's birth when I was 12 years old, we were three sisters, the three sides of a scalene triangle, none of us equal. Yet somehow we were able to hold each other together and present ourselves hesitantly to the world. The Noor Sisters - different, yes, but miraculously joined in a way that made us a unit, an identifiable shape. 

The middle sister and me - 1988

Growing up in Pakistan, even in the relatively developed, metropolitan city of Lahore, we were often objects of other people's pity. "What? No brother? Oh, you poor dears." And to my parents, "What a waste. No one to carry on the family name. You still have time. Why don't you try again?" I didn't understand these comments when I was younger. Not fully. I felt sorry that we didn't have a brother. I felt ashamed that I was the eldest...daughter...an existence that would have been valued much more if only I had been born with the right sex. The middle sister, as children of that birth order are wont to, suffers from the Middle Child Syndrome (I say that only half in jest). She internalized her grief at being brother-less. She was meek like a house mouse, hiding away from people, apologizing profusely for mistakes she hadn't made, assuming herself to be unloved by her sisters. (She was wrong, obviously.) The sense of being incomplete that we all felt, like a void existed among us, a black hole of bad luck and despair, was embodied in my little sister's insistence that her stuffed Pink Panther was in fact her brother. His name was Littloo Bittloo, and he had to endure everything from diaper changes to bottles to afternoon naps in a "hammock" that she created by tying a dupatta between two adjacent door-knobs.  

My parents discouraged these behaviors as much as they could. I remember my father flying into a rage more than once and booming at his guests that his daughters were ten times better than a son could be. When I was 8 or 9, he mounted a plaque in the drawing room that said "A Daughter is Love." I can vaguely recall a few instances when my mother fumed behind closed doors because she had overheard some elder relatives of my father's asking him to think about marrying again. "She has given you no sons." The best thing I love about my father is that he always put a stop to all such nonsense by saying, "You watch. My daughters will be better than your sons." (Well done, Papa!)

My brother and me - 2009

When our brother was born, we were obviously beside ourselves with joy. He was raised by four mothers instead of one. When we came home from school, we'd fight over who would hold him first. He was and still remains the apple of my eye. In the first few weeks of his life, my father took extra care to spend time with his three daughters. He said over and over, "I love my daughters more." I finally had to stop him one day because I knew what he was doing. "It's OK to love him, too, you know. I know you never thought we weren't enough." We understood each other perfectly in that moment, and there haven't been too many of those in my life. 

When I was pregnant with Jahan, I got calls from well-meaning relatives asking after my health. "I am hoping it's a boy," they'd say. I was horrified by those remarks. I couldn't believe that in 2011, people still cared whether you were about to give birth to a baby that you would have to prepare a dowry for, or one that would bring home the proverbial bacon. On ultrasound day, I was abuzz with all these thoughts, fuming at another recent conversation with a well-wisher. "Baby looks fine, but you will get detailed reports from your doctor," the tech said. "Do you want to know the sex?" 
"Yes," I said. 
A long pause. 
"We can't be 100% sure, but it looks to be a girl."
"Check again," I blurted out. 
WHAT?!?! Sirens, wails, gongs, fire alerts, shrill rings of all kinds of alarm started sounding in my ears. What had I just done? What had I just asked this man to do? I was having a girl. That's good, right? RIGHT? 
"I mean, thank you!" I said and smiled weakly at my husband who was looking at me like I had two horns coming out of my forehead.

"What the hell was that?" He hissed at me as we walked to the car.
"I don't know. All these phone calls are getting to me. I swear I am happy! We can start shopping now!" I said, still a little shell-shocked at what had taken place inadvertently in the small exam room.

When we reached the car, and it seemed like we had both calmed down, it was obvious that my husband could hardly contain his excitement. We both simultaneously dialed our mothers in Pakistan. My mother-in-law answered first. "It's a girl," we told her. Silence. After a few seconds, she said, "I prayed so hard for a boy," before recovering herself and congratulating us joyfully. When we shared the same news with my mother, she said, "Oh, it's alright," consolingly. My (middle) sister, quite out of character, shrieked from the background, "Mama, are you honestly condoling with her because she is having a girl? For God's sake!" At this my mother snapped into action and said all the right things. By this time, bursting with hormones, I had dissolved into tears due to these twin reactions, and Usman was left on his own to say good bye to both mothers and drive us to a nearby restaurant for lunch.

Lesson: We, as a culture, are still hanging on to the notion that girls are bad news. Contrary to popular belief, it is not just men who perpetuate this idea. All the men in our families had immediate reactions of profuse joy, whereas the women had to shake off their depression before expressing their happiness. 

(Both of Jahan's grandmothers love her immeasurably, but they have both expressed interest in suggesting home remedies or totkay to ensure that my next child is a boy.)

My Jahan.

And what do I think as the mother of the gorgeous, curly-haired, mild-mannered, smiling baby girl? I think we have a long way to go. There is much more work to be done for the acceptance and respect of women everywhere - not just in the workforce, but at home, too.  And not just among the men at home, but also the women. I am still shocked at my response to the ultrasound tech when he told me my baby was a girl. There is some kind of identity complex so deep-rooted in women (at least in my neck of the woods, if not globally, and I am inclined to think that at some level this is a pervasive phenomenon) that it elicits a response holding a strong semblance to the one I mentioned above even from someone like me: educated, successful, happy, well-situated in one of the best academic centers in the world…and I am still apologetic for being the eldest girl in my family. I am still, in some hidden crevice of my being, repenting for not being a son. And that is a hard realization to come to terms with, especially if you are proud of the legacy of your family, your situation in life, your personal journey. It is a hard truth to digest indeed.

When I imagine a future for Jahan, I see many things. I see her pursuing her dreams unhindered, a privilege I was given by my parents, something that has made me the person I am today. One is nothing without one’s dreams. Dream big, baby girl. I could never wish for a better child. I also see her telling me one day, if life is on my side, that she is having a girl. And I see myself being viscerally happy – not in my latent reaction, but in my immediate one.

Some day the world will believe that A Daughter is Love, but until then, we just have to keep on saying it, believing it, and showing it. A Daughter is Love.

Happy International Women’s Day!
            

Identity: Sunni, Shia, Pakistani

Read my piece for Desi Writers Lounge's (DWL) Write for Justice - Creative Responses to the Hazara Conflict here.

A sickness is consuming Pakistan from the inside out. Every day, the country bleeds afresh. 

Edited March 5, 2013: The article I wrote for DWL is posted below. 

Identity: Sunni, Shia, Pakistani

My grandmother, a Shia, migrated to Lahore from Amritsar in 1947. At a refugee camp in the newly created Pakistan, she met my grandfather, a Sunni man, broken after the death of his first wife. He married her against the wishes of his family and brought her to his ancestral home in Old City Lahore.

I would like to think that when my grandparents met, they did not ask each other whether they were Sunni or Shia. I would like to think that it simply did not matter. But it did. It mattered to the point that when my grandmother died after 15 years of marriage, my grandfather was forbidden from burying her in the family plot. Since my grandfather’s family was influential in the city, every graveyard in the immediate vicinity refused to accommodate a Shia immigrant’s dead body. Her children cried next to her corpse on a charpoy for hours until a kindly neighbor offered a burial spot in his cellar. And so a neighbor’s house became my grandmother’s final resting place.

My father was raised Sunni by my grandfather, but a son is always partial to what his mother teaches him. A few years ago he put up the Alam on the rooftop of his office building. A report of this recent development reached my husband, who asked me about it. His extended family began to wonder whether I was Shia. I found out that at one point, I was scrutinized by someone who will go unnamed while offering my prayer to glean more information about my religious inclination. The fact that my father wore black all the time and had displayed the Alam openly made some people in my family uneasy.

I decided to have a chat with my father about this. I was furious with him because of several other things that a father and daughter are bound to disagree on, and so I introduced this topic as a way to fuel the raging fire.

“So, are you going around as Shia now?” I barked.

“What? Where is this coming from?” He asked.

“Well, I am told you have the Alam at your office now.”

“I do. And what I practice is none of your damn business.”

He slammed the phone down. I deserved that and more. I cannot believe that I had the audacity to ask him this question just to hurt him, even though I have always identified myself as both Shia and Sunni because of my grandparents, technicalities and subdivisions and religious decrees be damned.

This is the extent to which sectarian discrimination is ingrained into the hearts and minds of Muslims in Pakistan. I am admitting my weakness in that moment. I am deeply, nay, horrifically ashamed of the question I asked my father and the way in which it came out – accusatory – as if he had committed a sin.

Today, I am proud of my heritage as I have always been. I am both Sunni and Shia. I am Muslim. I am human. For god’s sake we are all human. And I am afraid for my friends and family in Pakistan. I am afraid for my father who still has the Alam perched on his office building. I am afraid for my friends whose names identify them as Shias, easy targets for a fanatic’s bullet.

But I will not let my fear silence me. I am Shia and Sunni and Pakistani. And I am standing alongside the families of all those who were massacred. The demands of the nation are simple: The culprits must be punished; they must be brought to justice; sectarian violence must have serious consequences; Shia murders must be stopped. Now.  

Fundamental Differences

Pleaser [pleez-err] - noun - Pleasers are people who want to keep everyone in their lives happy. They want everyone to like them, get along with them, and most importantly, praise them. Because of this difficult trait in their character, they often get dragged into and through unseemly situations. 

Take me for instance - mmm, about 5 years ago, give or take a year. Meet Noor, college student, workaholic, health nut, and...drumroll please...yes, ladies and gentlemen, Pleaser. I used to do a few things rather excessively back then: apologize for no reason, take the fall for other people, go completely out of my way for friends (which is fine) and non-friends (not so fine), ponder the meaning of things people said to me, resuscitate relationships that someone needed to call a time-of-death for. A difficult existence indeed. 

Let me tell all you Pleasers out there - It Is Not Worth It. Every time I was disappointed after demonstrating my Pleasing Character, I thought of words like dishrag, area rug, dirty washcloth, leftover lunch, to describe the way I thought I had been treated. What I didn't realize was that I caused that treatment to be extended towards me by offering myself as a bali ka bakra (sacrificial goat) in my desperate endeavor to be The Best Pleaser That Ever Existed. In short, (ironically) I had been the catalyst for my disgrace, or more simply, I asked for it.

Now for the fun part. 

At some point during those Formidable Years, the Pleaser-Hater in me rebelled. Now, envision Noor in a split-personality scene from a B-class horror flick. Noor standing in front of the mirror says, "But I must do xyz to please abc or my world as I know it will cease to exist!" Noor's reflection physically reaches out from the mirror, takes hold of her collar and shakes her. Incensed, Noor has the good sense to remain silent. Noor's reflection smiles evilly and says, "You listen to me, young lady" - no that doesn't sound evil, does it? Scratch that. The reflection says, "They don't deserve you. You must not please anymore. Come over to the dark side. Coooommmeee oooovvverrrr to the daaaarrrkkkk siiiiiidddeeeeeee!"

Well, that's not exactly how it happened, but it's the more entertaining version anyway. Clearly, I was not meant to carry the family torch when it comes to the entertainment business (some of you will get this).

And so, The New Noor emerged. I like this version. Noor 2.0, if you will, does not care about anyone except those who care about her. Nice upgrade. This version has also learned how to say the all-important NO. Among other attributes, The New Noor does not smile-and-nod if someone pisses her off. No, sirree. Please, if you are reading this, whoever you are, and you are thinking of saying something to me that you shouldn't, a word of caution: Don't Do It. You see, there is an art to what I call "the grand insult," and I have proudly mastered it. If you dish it out, please be prepared to stomach it ten times over. There are no languishing friendships in my bank. Those stocks are sold, baby. Traded, gone, and consider all of them to be profitable transactions. I don't try to "save" relationships anymore. In fact, I think it is much more useful to get out and shut the door on people who simply don't deserve you, your time, your energy, your love, your friendship, your thoughts, and your feelings. It is such a freeing experience. "You are not worth my time. Good bye." Or "Life is short. This isn't working out because you are selfish and annoying. Good day." Or The Golden Silence.  

Listen to me, Pleasers of the world. I have been there - on the very top of the ladder, in fact (I would have been crowned the Queen of Pleasers if there had been such a thing as Pleaser Acknowledgment). Distance yourselves! Just become silent and walk away. You will thank yourself later. Stop the fanatic cycle of reviving old hurts, and embrace those who value you. Collect your energy and spend it on those who matter. Shun those who don't.

The New Noor aka Noor 2.0 signing off.

Loving Lahore/Loving California

The cover of my chapbook.

When I moved to California from Lahore and settled in the arid Central Valley with its flat landscape and hot summers, I was filled with such a strong yearning for my home city that I produced some of my best poetry. Desi WritersLounge is displaying a chapbook of my 10 best poems written for my home city at the Lahore Literary Festival tonight (Saturday, Feb 23rd and Sunday, Feb 24th in Pakistan). 


After graduating from Davis (another city that I came to love, but that's another blog post!), I moved to the Bay Area. Suddenly I was able to see hills from my balcony, I was able to reach the Golden Gate Bridge in under an hour, and I could drive to Monterey to eat the best clam chowder.


There has been a more salient change in me in the last 5 years. I have started to belong to this place. When I close my eyes now, I have to will myself to conjure up images of Lahore. The almost tangible memories I had of the city are disappearing. The smells, the textures, the voices, are all slowly fading away, burrowing themselves deeper under the onslaught of sensations that this beautiful new place brings. 


Sometimes when I am sitting on the balcony with a mug of chai, I look at the city stretching in front of me and the hills at a distance. It still feels so new. I close my eyes then to remember what it felt like to wake up in my parents’ tiny house in Lahore. On weekends, I would wake up because the sabzi-walla – a man who sold fresh produce on a donkey-driven cart – yelled out the prices of onions and tomatoes at the top of his lungs. I am told he still comes around. My old neighborhood is yet to succumb to chain grocery stores. I try to remember what the crisp cotton sheets felt like on my skin, what I used to do when I woke up, how many steps it took to reach the bathroom from my match-box sized bedroom. I try to smell the breakfast my mother ordered from the street-side halwa-poori stand for me. Freshly fried golden pooris, steaming sweet halwa, and a generous helping of chick-pea and potato curry. I try to remember the conversations we used to have over the breakfast table. What did we talk about? I come up with nothing. 


Along with the voice of the sabzi-walla, there is another thing I recall with clarity. Every night a neighborhood watchman would make his rounds on the street. He would ride his bicycle from one corner of the block to the other blowing a whistle at intervals of a minute or so, letting the residents know that he was keeping his eye out for robbers, thieves, maybe even lovers meeting in the covert of the night. It was such a shrill sound, but we all slept through it, peacefully. 


Those are the things I remember about my childhood in that house. Eighteen years and all I can hold on to are the sounds strangers made on the street. Pity. 

The Golden Gate Bridge

But it’s strange, isn’t it, that I can think of the clouds that hang over the Golden Gate Bridge without any effort at all. The music played on the streets of Sausalito on weekends rings as clear as a bell in my ears. The feeling of wet sand under my feet at Half Moon Bay, the smell of seals lying lazily under the sun at Pier 39, the taste of clam chowder in a bread-bowl in Monterey, each curve on I-280 from San Jose to Palo Alto and back, it’s all so familiar to me. If you visit California and ask me where to go, I would be the perfect tour guide. I do think I belong here, yes, but somehow I feel like it does not belong to me. I cannot call these streets and landmarks my own. I simply did not grow up with them. 



I grew up in a city rich with literature, littered with waste, fractured with a class divide holding a strong semblance to Victorian England; a city of summer monsoons, a long muddy canal, a spring festival of kites, and the best street food you can possibly imagine. But I will feel utterly displaced in Lahore now. Even the money has changed back home, they tell me. I will land at the airport and wrinkle my nose at the flood of people around me, yelling, grabbing for their bags, no queue to speak of. I will look at the paper money in my hands, unable to tell which note is which. I will be full of distress, thinking I have made a mistake. I must go back. I must not exit the airport. But I will breathe deeply, I will gather my wits, I will hold my baby girl’s hand, and we will walk out. In the space of time that lies between the moment I see my family smiling in the crowd and the moment I come out of the arrival lounge at Allama Iqbal International Airport, maybe I will see the clear blue sky of Lahore, maybe it will ground me, maybe it will hold me steady, and say, “Welcome home.”

The city I left, the city I love

Read about LOVE on Goll Gappay this month and relate incidents where you have witnessed or experienced it.

If you were the only girl in the world, and I were the only boy

Downton Abbey is my new addiction.

I hate to admit it, but I have cried while watching the show, and I have also laughed. A particular scene in the show made me tear up. This was in the second season which takes place during World War 1. Downtown Abbey has been converted to a convalescent home in this scene and the Crawley sisters are putting up a concert for the soldiers. Matthew Crawley (heir of Grantham) and William (second footman turned soldier) are missing in action. While the sisters perform the song "If you were the only girl (in the world)," Matthew and William come home (this part is unfortunately missing from the link above, but it's the most poignant moment). Something about this scene made me hold my breath. Not to sound like I am listing cliches, but I felt a knot in my chest and a lump in my throat and a smile on my face.  It is the best representation of love and relief and heartache that I have seen in a long while. If you can somehow find the complete scene, please do watch it. Better yet, watch the show - it is a masterpiece!

I have been listening to the Frankie Avalon version of this song all day today. And it's just not getting old.

Read about LOVE on Goll Gappay this month and relate incidents where you have witnessed or experienced it.

Love In A Name

My name is old-fashioned for my generation. I remember many instances of older ladies back home, who asked me my name and exclaimed how beautiful they thought it was when I answered with "Noorulain." Even people who were familiar with names like mine thought it was funny to have so much similarity between the first and last names. Noorulain Noor. It was always unique - I have never met another with the same name. 

There is a story behind my name. Everyone should have a "name" story. Parents often have reasons for giving a certain name to their child. Maybe they are naming the baby after someone, maybe after a character in a favorite book, perhaps after a city or a cricketer or an actor. In my freshman year of college, my cultural anthropology instructor must have thought the same thing, because on our first day of class, we were supposed to turn to the person next to us and exchange our "name stories." 

I can't remember what my neighbor's name story was. He was a John or a Jack - I feel a little guilty for not remembering now. But he was fascinated by my name story. When the discussion ended, the instructor asked if there was anyone brave enough to share their neighbor's story with the class. A couple of people raised their hands and related the usual stories - named after the mother's grandmother, or the father's dead sister, et cetera, et cetera. 
"Anyone else?" asked the instructor taking a sip of her coffee. 
Please don't do it, please don't do it, please don't do it, I thought fiercely, willing John or Jack to not say anything about my name. I could feel him staring at me. Damn, he was going to do it. 
"I've got an interesting one here," he said. 
Idiot, I thought. He began to tell it, but he was getting it all wrong. Story aside, he couldn't even pronounce my name correctly. 
"I can tell the story if you don't mind," I said. The lecture hall with about eighty students was completely quiet. I took a deep breath and began to tell it. 
"My name is Noorulain Noor - that's noor-u-lane-noor, but you all can call me Noor, it's shorter and easier. Everyone calls me Noor anyway. Noorulain is an Arabic name. Noor means "light" in Arabic and Noorulain means "the light of eyes." You'll notice that my first name - Noorulain - and my last name - Noor - are very similar. That's because Noor is my family name. You see, my parents were being poetic when they named me. I am their first child, so my dad wanted me to have a name that was similar to his, but also had a wonderful meaning. He named me Noorulain - the light of eyes - with the idea that I was the light of his eyes, and I also ended up with Noor in my surname."
They were quiet. So, so quiet. Then they began shifting in their seats. "How cool" a couple of them said. "Interesting," said the girl behind me. John or Jack smiled at me and nodded his head.
"What a great story, Nor," said the instructor. 
"It's Noor, actually, but Nor is fine, too," I said. 
"I see that you spell it N-O-O-R," she said holding up the roster. 
"Yes, that's correct," I said. 
"Well, then Nor like door, right?" she asked. 
Damn this language. "Sure, let's go with that."
And so I became Nor like door, but I loved it anyway. For those of you who don't know the difference, it's subtle, but Noor is supposed to be pronounced Nuur - actually somewhat like "tour."

Usman mentioned the other day that I should switch to my married name soon, that is, take up the name Saeed and drop Noor from my last name. I told him I would think about it. The fact is I won't think about it. Not at all. I am not changing my name. My name has a history and a story - a mighty good one at that. Nope, sorry, not going to happen. Sorry you have to find out like this, darling, but I will always be Noorulain Noor. You can take comfort in the fact that I chose to be Mrs. Usman Saeed. 

What are your name stories? Tell me, tell me. I am aflutter with excitement.

Read about LOVE on Goll Gappay this month and relate incidents where you have witnessed or experienced it.