Stanford, Tokyo, London

Stanford, California, USA - 12:38PM

I am eating my lunch outside the office, where a bee is incessantly interrupting me as I finish my salad. Maybe it is the Japanese Cherry Blossom perfume I am wearing that's attracting this annoyance. It has been an exceptionally humid two days (for the Bay Area). It reminds me achingly of Lahore. This weather is comforting and disconcerting at the same time. It is comforting because my skin has memory of it. As the moist air touches me, my body remembers feeling a sensation akin to this years ago in more humid and much warmer climate. I almost expect large salty raindrops to fall on me and a wind to give the rain direction and force. The humidity is disconcerting because it seems out of place here in the bay area, and also because it only feels like a half-memory, a half-shadow of what I left behind in Lahore. The day doesn't have the same heavy, overbearing blanket of moisture that made my hair curl and chest tight back in my home city. It doesn't have the same smells, flowers blooming, pakoras frying in recycled oil of questionable origins on street corners, little boys and girls jumping in puddles on the street, smiling gleefully, cars filling up with water on roads, and always the rain, the relentless monsoon rain, which caused rivers to swell and crops to die and villages to flood. It feels wrong here, this humidity, but also like a small, unassuming gift. Like someone up there saying, "Here, have a piece of the past; a diluted, pencil-tracing-as-opposed-to-water-color-type piece, but a gift nonetheless to feed your senses." It's much appreciated.

Tokyo, Japan - 4:38AM

My middle sister, Qurat Noor, sleeps in her tiny studio apartment in the heart of Tokyo. She only just went to sleep. The Fajr (dawn) prayer happens at 2:30AM in Tokyo these days. She either stays awake for the prayer or sets an alarm to wake up at that time. We chat after she prays usually. We tell each other things about our day, which are not really that important or exciting, but we listen anyway because we are sisters. Often, I whine, and she commiserates. A few hours from now, she will wake up and get ready for work. Her husband will have left already. Qurat will lay out her clothes in her usual habit, neatly ironed, and in order. A pair of pants, a long shirt, shoes and socks, scarf and coat. Check, check, check, and check. She will make herself a small breakfast. Maybe she will walk to her balcony and look at the cherry blossom tree. Maybe she will think of me as she sips her chai or of our baby sister as she puts on the scarf they bought together in London a few years ago, without me. She will walk out and catch a train to her office where she gives English language lessons to locals. Will she notice the weather? Will the air that tingled my arms reach her in a few hours? Will she breathe it in and be surprised because it smells like Japanese Cherry Blossom perfume, or will it just mingle with the fresh fragrance of the gorgeous blooms all around her? Will she instinctively reach into her handbag for her phone to find the screen blinking, telling her that there is a new message from one of her sisters in our WhatsApp group chat (titled, very unoriginally and rather aptly, Noor Ladies Only)?

London, UK - 8:38PM

Mahey Noor, "the fairest and youngest of them all," sits dejectedly in a small room in London. Most of her packing is done. Her suitcase lies closed but unzipped in a corner, the top flap resting like a parted lip, surly, angry. Mahey's 3-week vacation was simply not enough for her to absorb London through her skin until the next time she can visit this city that seems to thrum through her body. If she could live in this city, she would probably never miss Lahore. She has visited all the landmarks and tourist attractions. She has gone shopping, had fish and chips while traveling, and watched a Bollywood blockbuster in the theater. She was almost blown away at one of the beaches, the wind whipping her around, taking hold of her hair and her coat, making her buckle down, brace herself. She has gotten to know the London underground better than the roads of Lahore. She has also spent a lot of time just sitting in her room, sometimes writing, sometimes not, mostly just feeling  at peace with the city sprawling around her, realizing that this is where her home should be. She has loved London for years and planned this trip to revive herself, collect her thoughts and energies, detox in a more granular way than of the emotional or physical variety. She looks at her ticket and passport slipped into a red Stanford folder I sent her. Does she register the fact that I, too, touched the same piece of laminated cardboard that she has in her possession, or does she only concentrate on the sad, heavy feeling of the looming goodbye, much like the weather I am experiencing, but more like the one I am remembering, the kind we loved and lived through, all three of us, together?

The summer monsoons were important to us when we were little girls. They stood for buying new notebooks, large hardcover wide-ruled journals we called "registers," A-4 papers, folders and binders, textbooks and brown paper sheets to cover them. They made it possible to have long afternoons to read Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Woods series. They signaled the time for our mother to spend several evenings wrapping our books for the coming school year and slapping a sticker on the front, on which I used to write the owner’s name in my neat cursive hand. "Noorulain Noor, 3-C," "Quratulain Noor, 1-B," "Mahey Noor, Prep-A." They gave us lots of time to play "teacher-teacher," in which we took turns for the role of "Miss Noor," writing on our small chalkboard, marking our pretend assignments with swooping checks or crosses and adding comments in the margins, "Good," "Excellent," "Poor," "Improvement needed." The monsoons also gave us a reason to sneak up to the roof in our sundresses and run in the rain, our mother coming upstairs with towels, wrapping us in them, our hair wet and flying every which way, our fingertips wrinkly, teeth chattering, lips blue. They meant sleeping in every day, all three of us, tiny forms huddled on the same bed, the middle sister appropriately sleeping in the middle - birth order was ever so important back then.

The summer monsoons meant so much more, too, though – mostly that we would be together all day, every day, for the next three months. Twelve weeks that almost felt like a lifetime to us. They seemed endless. Little did we know that by the time the oldest one of us turned 18, we’d be separated, our childhoods nothing more than wavering shadows in our lives.

Murree, Pakistan. 1999.

I come inside after lunch, and a wonderful thing happens. I check my phone and there are messages from both my sisters. Tokyo can’t sleep and London is still packing. I join in and type, “Hi girls!” All of us are in this virtual space together at the same time in different parts of the world. This has not happened in months. It feels almost magical. Usually we respond to each other, our messages separated by hours, sometimes days. “All three Noor sisters present! Hurray!” says Qurat. “Let’s take a picture just as we are right now and send it, OK?” This from Mahey, always wanting to hold memories and immortalize them somehow. We send our selfies: Me at my desk, Qurat standing in front of a full-length mirror, Mahey sitting on her bed. For a few minutes, we are together again, little girls in different time zones, possessing small reminders of each other, my Japanese Cherry Blossom perfume, Qurat’s scarf - the one she bought in London with Mahey, and Mahey’s red Stanford folder. We are somehow encapsulated into a long panoramic shot, spanning continents and oceans. We are three sisters in three countries, yet in one place somehow. Together. Harmonized. Synchronous.

Simple Transformations - Tomato, Corn, and Avocado Salsa

In one of the episodes of short Sesame Street videos titled Food for Thought, Elmo looks at a fuzzy round thing lying on a table outside Hooper's Store and wonders what it is. A group of Super Foods, "foods, who are also heroes" comes to enlighten him. "It's a kiwi!" says a Banana. They encourage Elmo to try it. "You want Elmo to try this kiwi?" Elmo asks plaintively. "But it's so fuzzy!" The yellow Cheese Wedge laughs and her red cape shivers a little. "That's only the outside peel. Inside, the kiwi is a juicy and delicious fruit!" One wave of her cape and the fuzzy kiwi transforms into wonderful green slices of one of my favorite fruits. In the background, Grover exclaims with a mixture of awe and envy, "They have got some serious superpowers!"

I agree with Grover. It takes serious superpowers to transform something so completely, render it inside out, succulent and sweet instead of hard and fuzzy. This is a reality. But it is also a reality that you simply need a knife, a little skill, and some time to achieve the same transformation. Both are true - one is more likely to happen than the other. Do people transform, like foods? Can we slice through someone's nature and turn them over, discard their abrasive exterior and somehow touch the tenderness within, because I refuse to believe that they are entirely devoid of any vulnerability at all? I refuse to believe that I am only hard and fuzzy, all angles, rough edges, sandpaper-like frictional, grating. Can I, too, take a knife to this exterior (or acquire a magic cape) in order to transform? Do I wish to? Sometimes, I do. Sometimes I wish to have a happier disposition, more optimistic, less exhausted, more attached, less distant - because I remember being that way. I remember expressing love - and I still do in my own way - but that old way was different.  Sometimes I covet it.

A few weeks ago, I was trying to clean out the garage. In one of my old boxes with term papers and blue books, I found my journal dated 2006-2008. That notebook bound with faux-leather, bought in bulk from a sale at Borders, was privy to so much of me that has changed. Pages upon pages of ramblings. Two pages on the image of a flower. Another on strangers in the bus. Five pages on the idea of a story, dialogue, uncomfortable exchanges between characters, because I was holding honesty back. I was trying to hold on to things back then, things I have since let go. Several pages on planning a wedding that never happened. The sketch of a dress. Music. Food. Invitations. I felt bitterness seep into my body from the dank air around me as if by osmosis. It swelled inside me until I could feel it thrumming into the tips of my fingers. I tore up the pages and receded - shook myself away from that girl with plans and her ability to see happiness even on a mid-day bus among strangers. If I were to take that bus today, would I see the same things and think the same things, or would I roll my eyes and look away, stare at the landscape running past my vision, time flying, places, too?

So, no, it is not easy to transform people like that kiwi. There is no superhero to put a salve on old hurts. Nevertheless, people do transform at their own pace. My contrast from the girl who lived in the pages of that journal is, in itself, a transformation. It took years, but it happened. A transformation towards more honesty, the willingness to remain steadfast in what I want rather than what others want for me, and new loves - this blog, cooking, my baby, meaningful relationships, little matters, nothing more. 

And it pleases me to see this transformation, simple, yet profound, agreeable - it gives me a certain kind of peace, almost. So, that lingering sense of coveting what is lost diminishes further. It pleases me to transform things, too, particularly food. On Monday afternoons, even if I am bone-tired, I go into my kitchen and start lining up ingredients for my weekly forays into the world of Bon Appetit recipes. Rebecca arrives and starts setting up her camera equipment. She photographs ingredients whole, like each part of the Bon Appetit Tomato, Corn, and Avocado Salsa above, and then transformed, combined together for a wonderful and refreshing snack. No superpowers here, I do not possess any - just a knife and a cutting board, some skill taught me by a wonderful woman who loves me far more than I deserve, and time invested with care and concentration. Does this transformation please me, too? Well, the pictures speak for themselves.

Photos by Rebecca McCue

To Bottle Up Some Happiness

It was about two months ago. I came to work really early in my exercise clothes and went out for a walk soon after my cup of coffee. Even now, as I attempt to reconstruct the feeling I had on that morning - of pure, reckless joy, a perfect abandonment of all negativity that so often permeates through and out of my body, the wind slapping me across the face, not harshly, but playfully, like a jab in response to a joke, not a rebuke, the tall weeds of the Matadero Creek Trail brushing against my legs making me only peripherally aware of the presence of critters or ticks around me - it's all completely diluted. It is not possible to capture everything I felt on that morning, the rush from being on my feet, walking up the trail with breathtaking views around me, as a reconstruction. Margaret Atwood says it best in The Handmaid's Tale, "It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many."
 
What I can reconstruct with reasonable assurance that I am in fact describing the very heart of everything I felt that morning is in one simple, unassuming word: happiness. Two months later, I continue to sit at my desk every morning, enjoying my cup of dark roast coffee and my solitude. In the quiet lull of this office with glass walls and sharp white light, before footsteps and voices and keyboards begin to register on my consciousness, I try to conjure the feelings of that morning. I try to will myself to wear my hiking shoes, rise from my desk, feel the breeze of the peninsula before this summer's solstice, but all I get in return from myself is a rigid kind of complacency. Sitting still in this stillness is oddly satisfying, but it never evokes the unadulterated happiness I felt on the trail. Yet, I stay here, morning after morning, simply thinking about happiness and not actually doing anything to feel it again. 

If only there were a way to bottle up happiness. Then I would grab some from the air, pluck small droplets of it, gingerly, and pour them in a bottle. I would take a whiff of it every morning or drink it like Harry's Felix Felicis for luck. And then I would go out on the trail again, fueled by this happiness - a gold elixir, the consistency of molten metal - to collect more, always, always, more, more, more. I would have all kinds of bottles containing all kinds of happiness then. The happiness of walking barefoot on a beach at Half Moon Bay, far enough from the icy water of the Pacific that it doesn't touch my feet, but close enough to smell the ocean. The happiness of jasmines blooming on ordinary streets of Lahore, full-mouthed, drooping, their fragrance almost tangible. The happiness of the cool stone floors of the Lahore Fort and that of taking my shoes off and feeling it strong and stoic under my feet. The happiness of running across the roof-top in fierce monsoon downpours in the summers of my childhood and that of eating sliced oranges on the same roof-top on dry, sunny winter afternoons. The happiness of looking at the Golden Gate Bridge from a distance, the topmost spires hiding behind floating clouds that sometimes look like scattered petals of a jasmine plucked from Lahore. The happiness of having looked at the Badshahi mosque, no clouds covering its minarets, but majestic all the same. The happiness of my baby's untamed giggle and mother's startling poetry. The happiness of holding a fountain pen for the first time in Class 4B and graduating from using lead pencils. The happiness of walking on stage after working harder than ever before in my life, in my cap and gown, and graduating from UC Davis. The happiness of new, forbidden, precocious love in the corridors of high-ceilinged houses in Lahore. The happiness of old, trusting, giving love in the look exchanged over my glass-top dining table in San Jose surrounded by people yet solitary in the confines of this moment. The happiness of having true, lasting friendships on both sides of an ocean. The happiness of being a hybrid, of being here and there, of loving California and Lahore, of belonging to both places in some ways, and belonging nowhere in others, of being a mother and a daughter, of endless possibilities. And of the ability to choose.

If only there were a way, I would bottle it all up to remind myself on the bleakest of days that even when I write in one of my poems, "I am not made of permanence," that is a certain kind of happiness, too. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

The closer you pull me, the farther I run

When you have lived alone for a long time, it is the little things in the company of family or visitors that make you realize how obsessively you guard your independence. You want your spice jars lined a certain way, but every time you open the cabinet, something is misplaced. It's not wrong, and everything is still there, but you know that the large jar with cinnamon sticks and black cardamom is supposed to be in the left corner, and the small bottle of thyme should be in front of it. It isn't annoying that they are all in the wrong place, just disconcerting, like someone else lived your life for a second and changed things around on you. 

You look up from what you're doing and are momentarily surprised by things that are not familiar to you: a ring on the table, argyle socks on the floor, small colored bottles of medicine arranged on the kitchen counter, a dupatta draped around a chair, wallets lining a ledge in the living room. It is especially disorienting in the morning when you realize there is activity in the house, people moving around, doors closing, water running, pot clanking, kettle whistling. You lie in bed for a few seconds and try to assess how you feel, really feel. You have forgotten what it is like to have people around you - people you love. It is a strange state of mind you are in - unsettled, continually surprised by the realization of being once again with...family.

You try to be careful in conversations, but you fail. Invariably, you are abrasive and harsh. Sometimes even critical. Your baby brother marches out of the room because you try to correct his behavior. Your mother mutters that you need to ease up under her breath. Your sister-in-law drags you aside and asks you, "Are you nuts?" She is floundering to help you, and you are floundering, period. 

One morning you realize you have not had a meaningful conversation with your husband in over a week. You roll this fact around in your mouth like candy, taste it, decide you will deal with it later, and swallow without biting into it. 

Your father calls you five times in the space of 48 hours. That number is higher than the frequency of you finding his voice at the other end of the line in the last 10 years put together. You observe this distantly, scientifically, and decide not to be upset about it. He is calling for mundane things - to ask your brother how his visit is going, to talk to your mother so he can find keys or cameras or something equally unimportant to you, he says things like "Where are you lost?" You smile into the phone, make sure he can hear it in your voice, and tell him about his granddaughter whom he has never met. You pretend that he loves you and you him. 

You realize that your mother has aged and your brother is on the cusp of adulthood. When you left him behind, he was only five years old. When you close your eyes, you see him standing at the airport, waving, smiling, you hear your sob catching in your throat, you feel your heart tightening, breaking, in that moment when you left the one person who meant the world to you - your baby brother. Now, when he talks about girls, casually, as expected by his age, you physically shake yourself out of the shock, take a few moments to respond, try to adjust to the fact that he is a teenager. 

You try to find dark corners of the house and quiet ones, too. You carry your daughter there. For a few moments, it's just you and her. She looks up at you with her shining eyes and plops down into your lap, or rises up and gives you a kiss. You cover your face with your hands and say in a sing-song way, "Where's Mommy?" After a few seconds you move your hands away and say, "Here she is!" She cackles with delight and you laugh with her. She is so tiny, but she personifies the monumental change you have gone through. You are not the eighteen year old girl who flew from Lahore International Airport on the surprisingly wet afternoon of February 1, 2003, wearing a navy blue shalwar kameez, with tearful goodbyes and hugs and promises to come back soon. You don't even like navy blue anymore. And you hate crying. You tense up when people hug you. You like matter-of-fact, no-nonsense greetings. Maybe you have become cold and distant, but you like it this way.

Here, in this semi-lit room, with your baby and her kisses, you feel like you're home. She loves her mama, you, now, here, as you are. Everywhere else, you find reminders of the person you were, the daughter your mother is still searching for when she looks into your face, the sister your brother waved goodbye to ten years ago, the best friend your sister-in-law had when she sat with you for hours in your room and you planned to be together for the rest of your lives no matter what - promises of childhood and naivete that destiny has in fact brought to fruition. But you are not that girl anymore. And you don't know where she went and how to get her back. You have decided already that you don't even want her back. She weakens you. She feels too much.

You love all of them fiercely. But they loved her and still do. In her place, you feel like an imposter. And so, you run away, and keep running and running and running and running.

What Fish Fillets Teach Us

This week's Bon Appetit recipe is Fish Fillets. (I used thyme as I did not have basil on hand.)

When I was making this dish, which took a half hour at most, I was struck by the simplicity of it. I am used to whipping out my tall mason jars full of whole black cardamom, cinnamon sticks, coriander seeds, cumin, star anise, et cetera, that I measure and pour into my spice grinder or a marble mortar to crush. I am familiar with taking upwards of 20 minutes to get onions just the right shade of golden brown. When I cook, the whole house needs to be aired for I fear that the aromas of garlic sputtering in hot oil, spices sizzling upon meat, and rich gravies shining with a touch of butter and/or ghee, will seep into the walls, furniture, clothes, even my pores! 

When I started this blog (and frequently since), I treated food as a malleable metaphor spanning a medley of emotions, representing life, love, families, relationships. It works for me. I am able to reflect on and understand the tangled mess of questions, insecurities, and fears I struggle with when I am cooking. The act of concentrating on combinations of flavors, focusing on creating something delicious from humble ingredients is both gratifying and therapeutic. 

Admittedly, the period of reflection while making this particular dish was rather short. Simple in preparation, it was anything but when it came to presentation and flavor. We focus so much on the details every day, on all that goes wrong, on disappointments, entanglements, losses, and heartaches. I think we lose sight of things that actually work perfectly, like all sections of the orchestra coming alive together and creating a symphony. Life, always, presents us with small blessings that are taken for granted or overlooked entirely because negativity is enticing - juicier, more exotic. 

When I was preparing these fish fillets, I was humbled by them, surprised by them. Packaged in pieces of parchment, with the most basic of ingredients to impart flavor to this dish, it turned out to be delicious and refreshing. That was unexpected. I am used to thinking that complication equals better. This dish completely debunked that theory of mine. Sometimes simple things are all you need. Sometimes going back to the basics is good. 
 
It is true for food. And it is true for life. Go back to the beginning of beautiful things with this dish. Appreciate the simple things in life, and remind yourself, "Yes, they are worth it."

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Finding your way back

How does one begin to scale the distance covered in over ten years? It is the difference between eighteen and twenty-eight. It is the time it takes you to find your first grey hair, thicker than the rest of it, and crinkly like it carries static electricity. It is the transformation of your body from taut to loose after stretching and growing to carry your baby. It is the realization that you and your sisters have grown up to be fundamentally different people. It is the knowledge that your almost 16-year-old brother, who was 5 when you left, is essentially a stranger to you. It is the fact that back home you waited for the boy you loved, and now, being married to him, you wait to "get a break" from him. It is the feeling of dishonesty that creeps up your throat as you voice the words, "I am from Lahore." It is a distance between places, but it is also deeper than that. It is the distance between people, between values, between philosophies and ideologies, between calling a place home and feeling that it is home, between the eighteen-year-old you and the twenty-eight-year-old you, and those two, they are not alike at all. This is a steep mountain of change. You fear that you will fall to your death if you begin to climb up the slope.

So, how do you find your way back? Well, sometimes you don't. Sometimes, you just have to stop and give up. You have to stop breaking yourself apart and others with you, because you know you have been doing it, like taking one end of a split-ended hair and ripping it into two strands, neatly, with just your index finger and thumb. You have to stop looking for that bright and shiny person you were ten years ago and accept the rough edges of the present you. You just have to borrow your thoughts from the past. You try to think it's like plucking strawberries in a farm, like filling a basket full of strawberry flavored memories. Maybe you'll turn them into preserves and jams and store them in large mason jars. Perhaps you'll label them - "Childhood," "Love," "Happy Days," "Sad Days," "Things Left Behind," et cetera. 

Maybe, maybe if you do that, you will stop being so abrasive. You will stop feeling like your bones are sliding against each other and eroding. Maybe you'll be OK with ten years of change and distance. Maybe you'll start to believe that you don't really need to find your way back. 

You're fine. Just fine. 

Chocolate Sponge Cake

I am still keeping up with my planned 1 recipe per week from Bon Appetit, but did not blog about it last week. I cook every Monday night, so I hope to have the associated entry up the following week. 

Two weeks ago, I baked Chocolate Sponge Cake, which turned out great! I took it to work and asked people to give feedback. "Is there anything I should change?" I asked. One of my co-workers said "No, just keep bringing it in!"

This cake was more challenging than Fallen Chocolate Cake. One little hiccup was that I didn't have a 9x13 baking pan, so I ended up using two 9'' round pans and layered them. The icing was rich and glossy. I served the cake at room temperature. 

I am having a wonderful experience with all these Bon Appetit recipes. We will be taking a break from dessert for a while, though, and the next couple of food-related entries will be savory. 

The reality of the BA 1-recipe/week entries is that they are more visually appealing because of the pictures rather than intellectually stimulating because of the content. Enjoy Rebecca's amazing photography of my successful Chocolate Sponge Cake. Try the Bon Appetit recipe, and don't forget to let me know how much you love the cake once you polish off a few slices. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Writing Matters

When I grow up, I want to be a writer. 

When I grow up, I want to be a writer. 

When I grow up, I want to be a writer. 

Sometimes, I feel that if I say it loudly and clearly enough, it will actually come to pass. 

Several years ago, I attended an all-day publication workshop organized by Stanford. After breakfast and registration, we were shepherded into an auditorium. Joyce Maynard addressed the crowd of people hoping to make it in the writing business. I am going to paraphrase because I don't remember exactly what she said, but her message has stayed with me all these years. I often remind myself of what she said that morning. "Many of you say that you want to be a writer, or you are an aspiring writer, or a struggling writer. I would argue that if you are here in this room on a sunny day in California, you are a writer, so don't be afraid to call yourself that."

Recently, I attended another information session at Stanford - not writing related - in which the question posed to the crowd was "What matters most to you, and why?" Family, I thought. Jahan. Research. Poetry. Cooking good food. Little matters that matter.

"please know
old towns we loved in matter, lovers matter, playmates, toys,
and we take from our lives those days when everything moved,
tree, cloud, water, sun, blue between two clouds, and moon,
days that danced, vibrating days, chance poem." 
-Richard Hugo in Letter to Kathy from Wisdom

In an academic, professional, creative, or goal-oriented setting, what is the one thing I can say with absolute sincerity that matters to me? It is my writing; both the lack of it, because I sense its absence like the phantom feeling left by a piece of jewelry one wore for years before deciding to remove it; and the presence of it when it arrives, in broken phrases at first, and long, winding sentences, later, like a spigot in village fields hiccuping water out in bursts before a steady stream rushes forth. I feel gratitude and relief and happiness surging through me when I am finally able to write. "It's not my best writing," I say. "But it has given me peace."  

Kind friends ask me "Have you started to write again?" Of course they mean the more disciplined kind of writing. The "staying awake after everyone is asleep so you can develop a character" kind of writing. The "write a story a week" kind of writing. Or the "write a thousand words a day" kind of writing. And I, very simply, say "No." Yes, this is the thing that matters most to me, but in this particular time in my life, there are other things that matter, too. And so, I look at the situation differently. Rather than thinking I have pushed my writing into a corner to accommodate other things, I choose to focus on the fact that I prioritize my writing as I am able to, despite all other demands on my time. Sometimes, I am not able to meet my goals of a poem every two weeks, two blog posts a week at a minimum, or timed writing exercises. But I try not to beat myself up over it. Writing matters to me because it gives me a sense of letting go, a feeling of serenity. I plan to keep it that way.

So, for now, I write to find order in an otherwise chaotic life. I write to ground myself. I write about the things that matter. The rest? Well, it can wait. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Davis After 5 Years

Becoming an immigrant means you have to compartmentalize your heart. After I moved to California, the first place where I truly began to believe that in some small way I belong here was Davis, CA, where I went to college. It was also where I started to discover my strengths and identify my weaknesses. After graduating in 2008, I never went back until last week. 

I was invited by students and staff who work closely with my undergraduate major Adviser to give a talk on my career journey. It was an exciting opportunity that I readily accepted. Rebecca and I drove to Davis last Friday morning, May 17th. Only in California will you have a day in May marked by dazzling sunshine and a cool steady breeze. Davis was just the same. And in many ways, it was not at all how I remembered it. Of particular and immediate note, many of the students I observed walking around us still had their baby fat, whereas I have not only shed mine, but also acquired the opposite of it - residual fat from having a baby.

When I walked through different campus buildings, I felt a strange mixture of nostalgia and regret. Maybe I shouldn't have been in such a hurry to leave this place and go out into the real world for a real job, I thought. Davis, on Friday afternoon, was in a lull. The distinct red color of Unitrans buses looked brilliant in the soft light. There were very few bicyclists on campus. From a distance, I could see that the Memorial Union, a campus hotspot, was nearly deserted. After giving two talks to eager, bright, and surprisingly attentive undergrads, we went to Downtown Davis.

Let me take a step back and orient you. Davis is the quintessential college town. It's small, charming, and bright. It is bicycle friendly - no, that is inaccurate - bicyclists own that town; they always have the right-of-way. I never owned a bicycle in Davis. Instead, I used to walk everywhere. It is where I first enjoyed this simple, solitary, and reflective act of taking a long walk. It was customary for me to walk 10 miles a day back when I was an undergrad. 

Downtown Davis inspired me to write many stories and poems. I used to sit at Ciocolat for hours, sipping my iced coffee, eating a Caesar salad, writing, studying, writing again - to procrastinate sometimes, and sometimes simply because the words flowed so easily and freely that there was no stopping them. As I walked away from campus last week, I remembered those streets when I felt like I belonged to them and they belonged to me. I remembered walking on them on freezing mornings, rushing to make it to molecular biology lab, munching on an apple, downing the chai in my travel mug. I remembered walking home from campus, all the way to N Street, on sweltering July afternoons, the very air buzzing around me, mimicking the song I was humming. I remembered walking through the streets of Davis at night with my friends, the best friends anyone could ask for. I remembered telling them about night-blooming jasmine and how it smelled just like the garlands sold at intersections of large roads in Lahore. I remembered everything, even the stronger flavor with which I missed Lahore when I was in Davis.

I felt in some ways as though time had not passed at all. I was here, in the place I first began to call home in this country, I was here and I had never left. If I just walked a little farther, cut through the Amtrak station, past the homemade chocolate shop, through the plot with small gardens and arrived at the yellow house on N Street, everything would be just the same. Haena would be cooking in the kitchen, Bibi would be barking at the door, maybe Sharon would be watching Friends in my room, Inki would be playing the guitar. Maybe Haena would tell me we were having some friends over for dinner. She might say, "I cooked you bulgogi for dinner!" Everything would be just the same. 

"It seems so strange to be here this way," I said to Rebecca. "You know how you associate places with people? I feel so disoriented seeing new faces here. I feel like a familiar face will turn the corner and I will greet an old friend."

So, becoming an immigrant means that you have to compartmentalize your heart. I realized last Friday that Davis is still home to me. I will never forget the kind of freedom it gave me. The freedom to like and dislike. The freedom to agree and disagree. The freedom to simply be, and in many ways the freedom, permission, and confidence to be better, aim higher, achieve more, make a home there with three wonderful people and a golden Pomeranian in a yellow house on N Street, and then here in the Bay Area, while never forgetting the home I left across the ocean. 

Photos by Rebecca McCue

Fallen Chococolate Cake, A Sick Baby, And Solace in Baking

Last week, Jahan came down with a terrible cold. She had a high fever, which probably persisted for a day longer than it should have because I was fretting as mothers are wont to do. On Monday afternoon, haggard after taking care of a sick baby, carting her to the pediatrician's office, pleading with her to eat something, anything, even fries, for god's sake, I heaved a sigh of relief when Rebecca came over. With Jahan fitfully napping, I began to bake Fallen Chocolate Cake featured in Bon Appetit. Slowly, as the day wore on and the cake took shape, I began to feel better. The sense of being overwhelmed began to recede. "Babies gets sick all the time, right? She's just fine. It's just a fever. We're fine," I kept saying to myself (and to Rebecca, who good-naturedly agreed with my ramblings, validating and encouraging me by turns).


This new-found passion for baking came on rather strongly, I must admit. One day, I baked banana bread and blogged about it, and almost immediately afterwards, I was drawn to baking, which I previously detested. Part of the reason may be that I have found I am not dreadful at it, which is to say I am a better baker than I had previously anticipated. The other, and I suspect the more pertinent reason may be that I have discovered baking to be a stress-reliever for me, much like cooking (and writing). It is the distraction it provides from the rest of the day, from the daily pressures of being...well, me...paired with the tangible results I see in the form of a rising cake, thickening heavy cream, the happy faces of the people I love when they taste it, which makes it so rewarding. It allows me to forget about everything else and devote my attention completely to a piece of paper with just a few different ingredients whose chemistry upon combining together creates delicious results. And this is why I feel rested despite being on my feet stirring, chopping, frosting, et cetera, while cooking and baking.

The cake turned out great - you all must try it. It is rich and smooth and creamy. The chocolate melts in your mouth. The whipped cream frosting is a wonderful accompaniment to the richness of the chocolate. And it's beautiful to look at. 

Before I could serve dessert, however, there was that little matter of cooking dinner.  So I cheated and served something that required minimal preparation - shami kebabs with roti (ah, the hardy roti - it requires a post of its own) and a cucumber and red onion salad. Jahan woke up, ate a little, and even had some dessert. We were fine. Just fine.    

Photos by Rebecca McCue