Months ago, when Maryam headed off to Egypt to study Arabic for a year at the AUC, we promised her we’d go stalk her in Cairo. She taunted us with “Maryam is in Cairo” gstatus messages (this screenshot is from late September), and finally, around October or so, Aisha and I decided we needed to get serious about this. “How’s the job hunt going?” Aisha kept asking me. “Don’t forget, you need money so we can go to Cairo in December or January!”
I emailed Maryam: “Please for to arrange a camel to pick me up from the airport, thanks.”
Her reply: “I’ve got a caravan of camels booked to pick you all up from the airport at 6pm, don’t be late.”
Jokes notwithstanding, I never expected any of this would really happen until the afternoon - a mere 2.5 weeks ago - when Aisha took my breath away by delivering the following late-breaking news, completely out of the blue, “Yasmine, Maryam’s actually going to be traveling around North Africa and Portugal and Spain during her winter break. Let’s go to Spain.” I stared at her, wide-eyed, at a loss for words. At random moments throughout the rest of the day, I just kept jumping up and down and shaking my fists in the air in a gesture of SUCCESS!
So. Spain it is. There will be four of us, and we will fly into and out of Madrid. In between, there’s a week in Spain (Madrid, Cordoba, Seville, Granada) and another week in Morocco (Tangier, Casablanca, Fez, Marrakesh). Beautiful Barcelona that I keep hearing so much about deserves another trip of its own, another time.
I’ve wanted to go to Spain ever since I was 13-14 years old, when I used to sit around in the behtuk reading Naseem Hijazi’s overly romanticized historical fiction in Urdu - re-reading the books so many times that the delicate pages would fall away from the spine and I’d have to continually glue them back in. To say I’m excited is a bit of an understatement. The only reason I’ve barely even talked about it to friends and family is because I still can’t believe it’s happening.
“But why would anyone want to go to Spain?” asks my father incredulously.
“For the history and culture!” I shoot back.
“History and culture? Why don’t you go to Saudi Arabia, then?”
And: “Why Morocco? It looks just like Rawalpindi, of all places.”
And then there’s my sweet mother, to whom I explained that Spain is in Europe.
“Europe,” she said slowly. “Are you going to be near London? You should stop by and visit [the relatives] in Bradford, too.”
“Ummy, I’m not going to England. I’m going to Spain. It’s a completely different country.”
She continued anxiously: “They’re going to be so upset that you didn’t stop by. Maybe you should fly into the Manchester airport.”
“But I’m not going to Manchester or Bradford! I’m going to SPAIN AND MOROCCO.”
Because I myself really know nothing about Spain and Morocco, I turned to the rockstars who do. Zana, Shaista, Lil Baji, and and A proved to be rocking in that department. Brimful directed me to her lovely musings on three weeks in Spain last year, and Baji re-posted her travelogue for me. Between the two of them, I had enough articulate, amusing, and invaluable writing to occupy my train commute for a day.
And an email that should have been a part of that exuberant ‘We’re from Barcelona’-subjectlined GMail thread:
Dear Imran,
I’m going to Spain! I never would have thought it’d actually happen so soon. If you were around, you probably would have been the first person I’d have emailed for recommendations. Like, where’s a good spot to sit and write in silence? And how can I ensure that my attempts at photography even do justice to the country and its beauty? And where can I find the best tortilla espanola? Someday, we shall compare notes.
fi amanillah,
-yasmine
H requested I remain on the lookout for hot Spanish and Moroccan men for her. Somayya demanded presents. The sister asked if she could sleep in my room while I’m away. And J offered nothing but flattery:
Don’t fall in love and get married to some bali star over there in the Mediterranean, okay!
Also, avoid natives who propose in the first 3 minutes of meeting you, because there will be many!
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So, my internetS buddies, I shall eat bajillions of tortilla espanolas for you all. Meanwhile, you can help me out with a couple of questions I’ve been taking a poll on:
1. Laptop or no laptop? (Carrying around a laptop would be annoying, and worrying about it getting lost or stolen would be nerve-wracking, but the idea of no regular access to GMail - and okay, okay, flickr - for two weeks is already making me twitchy.)
2. Carry-on or check-in? (I hate the idea of checking-in my bag and having the airlines potentially lose it. But carry-ons come with TSA liquid restrictions and drama. I shake my fist!)
I leave this Monday morning, by the way. It shall be grand.
So, frankly I use Yasmine with an E’s blog as a way to procrastinate. I’d much rather read about the crazy happenings in Yasmine’s life than read about immunoglobulins. Or about the contents of the carotid sheath (though I now a know a good way to kill somebody now involving said contents…that’s probably the most useful thing I have learned in medical school so far). I have gotten tired of waiting for her to update her blog or randomly going to her website during the day in vain hopes of seeing a glorious new post. And yes, I guess I can get those RSS feeds to actually know when she has updated, but I figure it is futile. I threatened to inflict bodily harm due to the lack of updates, but I had already told her the method of killing somebody (really, the most useful thing I have learned in medical school.) And given her penchant for all things stabbing, I didn’t want to risk inciting true rage. Knowledge is a dangerous, dangerous thing. As a result, I have taken matters into my own hands, and have decided to post for her.
Alas, there are no crazy happenings in Yasmin without an E’s life that can compare with Yasmine with an E. I do have amusing stories about pre-meds who made it to med school and didn’t leave their pre-med tendencies behind. A particular one involves the blunt edge of a scalpel… And I can compile a correlating list about how medical school is not like Grey’s Anatomy and other such lies (I’m still waiting for my scrubs to look that good). But before I do that, hopefully this will get Yasmine with an E to update as soon as possible.
So, I entreat you, Yasmine with an E, please, please update this blog. I need to procrastinate some more.
I am humbled in this city
There seems to be an endless sea of people like us
Wakeful dreamers, I pass them on the sunlit streets
In our rooms filled with laughter
We make hope from every small disaster
-Painting by Chagall (The Weepies)
Conversations from the past week:
H: my English has emproved. Yasmine: ‘emproved,’ huh? H: as i spell ‘improve’ wrong.
Z: sigh
they’re saying that eating too fast can give you diabetes Yasmine: gross! people take the fun out of EVERYTHING Z: i KNOW
as my uncle used to say, TO HELL WITH THE SCIENTISTS
J: so how are you otherwise Yasmine: doing well! just stressed out these days, working on job applications J: yeye!
i love job apps!
especially not doing them!
that is my fav part of it Yasmine: hahaha!
i wish i could NOT do them, and still have a job and salary!
sigh
money doesn’t buy happiness, i know, but it sure does help J: but if you shop at the dollar store, you can get a better deal on cookies at least.
that is the secret to true happiness Yasmine: J, that’s GENIUS
H (again): eat eat!
eat mushrooms like me
you’ll grow taller like Mario
DAMMIT, VIDEO GAMES LIE TO US
Yasmine: Gossip Girl is drahhaaaaamaaa!
and i think this is only the second time i’m watching it
first time was at your place N: ya it is SOOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!!!!!! Yasmine: i want to STAB that Chuck boy
he keeps trying to do his smoldering model gaze or whatever
it’s ridiculous!
okay, never mind - maybeee he’s going to become a good person after all! N: noooooo i LOVE Chuck!!!
i find him so hot and badass Yasmine: HAHAHAHA
i thought he’s supposed to be the bad guy in this show! N: ya he is, i guess i love bad guys!
Re. the Dostana soundtrack - A: this one is a “pump it up in the car” song! Yasmine: oh, those are the BEST songs
music should be listened to loudly A: absolutely
“this should be played on high volume, preferably, in a residential area”
H (and yet again): omg, you and i should be one person
we would be soo rocking Yasmine: is the world ready for THIS?!
i do not think so H: oh yes!
we would be the most awesomeness
that awesome could ever have
THE END!
Yasmine: dude, speaking of amazing, wasn’t my cartwheeling wideo AMA-ZING?! H: no
that was BEYOND AMAZING
your butt must have had some padding Yasmine: hahaha my butt TOTALLY has lotsa padding, unfortunately!
Bean: it’s so cold and gloomy in SC today
freezing!
its 68 degreees! Yasmine: hahaha
it’s 67 degrees here, too, and so gray and gloomy looking!
god, we are SO spoiled! Bean: 66 now
In other news, today (because it’s so gray and gloomy), I wore the new boots I bought last week for $20. Knee-length black boots with enough straps and buckles to give ‘em a rockstar look. The problem was, it took me an extra few minutes to properly put them on today, confused as I was as to which boot belonged on my right foot and which on my left. (”Does the zipper go on the inside? Or the outside? Inside, I think.”) Clearly, it is sad that I’m 27 years old and spend most of my days feeling like I’m seven.
I realized the other day that I hadn’t talked to my buddy S in months - so many months that the last conversation I clearly remembered was back in January. Worse, he had left me a voicemail a couple of weeks ago, wishing me Eid mubarak, and I had never gotten around to returning his call. So, while aimlessly wandering around in downtown the other day, I settled myself on an empty bench, dug my phone out of my bag, and called S.
The details of the conversation aren’t that important; needless to say, I can always depend on S to deliver a good kick in the ass just when I need it. When I whined about how I “need to focus, and I just don’t seem to have any incentive to get my ass in gear and be productive,” I could almost see S rolling his eyes at the other end of the line.
“You need incentive?” he scoffed. “Why don’t you check your bank account. That should be all the incentive you need.”
“I know.” I started laughing. “You’re right. Thank you.”
The conversation continued, meandering through various topics - work and mutual friends and life updates and dramas and finances and family and academics. At one point, I went off on a bit of a rant about something, and S said forcefully, “See. You haven’t changed at all.”
“I haven’t changed? Is that a good thing?”
“Yes. You get it.”
Later, still smiling to myself about the conversation, I looked up the old post I had written about S. It made me even more grateful to have a friend like him - and his bluntness and sarcasm and generosity and text-messaged reminders about the moon - in my life. I think it deserves a re-read, so check it out:
I’m a bit out of the loop with Blogistan these days, which is why I was surprised to realize today is the deadline for submitting nominations for the fifth annual Brass Crescent Awards.
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Info:
The Brass Crescent Awards, a joint project of altmuslim and City of Brass, is an annual awards ceremony that honors the best writers and thinkers of the emerging Muslim blogosphere (aka the Islamsphere). Nominations are taken from blog readers, who then vote for the winners.
What are the Brass Crescent Awards? They are named for the Story of the City of Brass in the Thousand and One Nights. Today, the Islamsphere is forging a new synthesis of Islam and modernity, and is the intellectual heir to the traditions of philosophy and learning that was once the hallmark of Islamic civilization - a heritage scarcely recognizable today in the Islamic world after a century’s ravages of colonialism, tyrants, and religious fundamentalism. We believe that Islam transcends history, and we are forging history anew for tomorrow’s Islam. These awards are a means to honor ourselves and celebrate our nascent community, and promote its growth.
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Nominations close today, so go get some links in!
My favorite part of the Brass Crescent Awards every year is discovering new weblogs. More links to add to my ever-burgeoning GoogleReader list! (Dude, so much for trying to be productive.)
one. Went to the post office, and was surprised - in a delighted way - that the smile on the man at the post office reminds me of my friend A’s.
two. When it came time to pick up my drink order, the guy at the coffeeshop called me out by name, even though I’ve been there only once before in my life.
three. Also at the coffeeshop this afternoon, I made new friends with a woman who was working on a drawing. The conversation meandered through a series of topics that included bookstores, drawing and photography, theater, earrings, and our respective love-hate relationships with email and phone. I haven’t taken an art class or drawn anything in eight years, and yet, once upon a time, I wanted to be an illustrator of books. I’m grateful to that woman for inspiring me to sign up for a drawing class sometime soon.
four. Saw the full moon hanging breathtakingly large and low in the sky this evening, and was reminded of my rockstar buddy S, and how he once texted me with, “Look at the moon tonight. It looks hella beautiful.”
five. Composed a long, ramblingmonologue-style email to a friend who “listens well,” and felt so relaxed and happy after I pressed the Send button.
six. Emailed H about her friend who teaches swimming. This was supposed to be the summer I learned how to swim, but somehow that didn’t happen. (Even the yellow post-it on my laptop’s Dashboard says, in all-caps: LEARN HOW TO SWIM THIS YEAR. This is how strongly I felt about this goal, back in February.) It’s fall already now, but there’s still some sunshine I could make good use of. H, in turn, emailed her friend and cc:ed me on the note; I’m excited to see what comes of this. Finally, I will learn how to swim! And maybe dance! And cartwheel while fully extending my legs! [That video is finally up on facebook, for those of you who need to know such things.]
seven. The sister sent over a beautiful email that cheered me up so much and pretty much made my day.
eight. A tall stranger at the grocery store noticed me balefully eyeing boxes of cereal stacked all the way up on the top shelf. As I placed a foot on the bottom shelf and stretched up my arm, he reached up easily and pulled down a box for me. I laughed and thanked him, and thought to myself about how rocking it would be to have a tall personal assistant follow me around all day and pick up things that are placed above my eye-level.
It’s afternoon, and I’m sitting inside a coffeeshop, right beside the large window overlooking the street. I’ve been here for hours, watching the way the light shifts and feeling the sunshine and shadows spill across my table.
The two men sitting right outside my window seem to know nearly every other person who walks by, and I’m intrigued and a little bit jealous. It’s a mid-size city that they’ve managed to imbue with a small-town feel, just in the past couple of hours of sitting out at the sidewalk table. How do they know everyone, and seem to fit in here so seamlessly? Ten years back in this city (wow), and I have only one friend who lives here.
Note to self: Find some good food places around here, and stop hanging out in Berkeley so much.
Actually, ignore that part about Berkeley. Not happening.
I posted the following link/letter to tumblr a few days ago, via Anjum and Preeti. You should be adding our tumblr feeds to your RSS reader of choice (because we are awesome, clearly), but, in case you neglect to do so, here is the awesomest email ever, in its rocking entirety, written by Karion. All my Rockstar Links & Things are posted over to tumblr these days, but I feel this deserves to be shared here, too - and totally merits a smashing HIGHFIVE.
Some context: my mother forwarded an email that had the “Obama is a secret Muslim, look at all his Mulsim friends, also a terrorist in his spare time” type of crap. I kind of lost my shit and sent the following - as a reply all (everyone in her address book).
Maybe this is difficult to see from your perspective. Let me give it to you from your kids.
This email is bullshit - all of the claims are demonstrably false and all are just a thinly veiled racist slur against Obama. Fifteen minutes of independent research will tell you that. The argument that “this is the other side” is downright pathetic, for if this is what ‘the other side’ has to offer, it is nothing more than racist, hateful, fear-mongering bullshit.
But from our family’s perspective, it is much worse that you are passing this shit around. You and Dad have lived in Muslim countries for almost all of your 30 years abroad. In that time, you have not been persecuted, harassed, harmed or otherwise molested for being American or being Christian. To the contrary, you have prospered. You have been able to worship in countries that DON’T have a free exercise of religion clause, and you have been able to do that without any harassment. Do you not realize that you have been a foreigner in these countries and been permitted to live as Americans do? With little regard to the local culture and customs and laws?
So when you pass along these utterly bullshit, racist, fear-mongering emails, you are kind of thumbing your nose at all of that and playing into the worst part of our country. You are spreading the “fear the Muslim” thing, even though Obama isn’t Muslim and even if he was, you both know better. You have lived it. You have lived with Muslims for nearly three decades. You haven’t been burned at the stake for being Christian. Dad hasn’t lost his job because of an infidel. Your house wasn’t burned down for Christmas lights. You have been privileged to live a Christian life in some of the most Muslim countries in the world and no one has harassed you for it.
Why on earth you cannot take your “Christian” message of tolerance and your 30 years of experience and not call bullshit on this type of political rumor is completely beyond me. It is, quite frankly, horrifying. How did your four kids learn this and you didn’t? How did we all learn to independently research and inform ourselves while our parents forward these junk, bullshit emails? How is it that we can all see this for the ignorance that it is, and yet our parents, who are supposed to know better, don’t?
Look, I can understand Dad’s support for McCain, given the Naval Academy thing, although I suspect if Dad actually read about McCain’s time at the Naval Academy, he would be pretty disgusted. I see no similarities between McCain and Dad whatsoever, and I am really proud of that. I doubt you’ll read this, as it is longer than a People think piece, but you should read this article in Rolling Stone. It is remarkably well-sourced, but it is also ten pages. That is longer than the attention span of most people who forward these kinds of emails:
Mostly, I just wish the two of you would actually use some of your experiences over the past 30 years and speak up. I am not saying support Obama, but just think critically, and denounce the kind of bullshit that you are forwarding. Write an email denouncing Obama using objective facts if you are so inclined. But don’t be part of the ignorant class. Your kids expect so much more of you.
Just before Ramadan began, Anjum started a “Ramadan mubarak!” email thread. Hoda replied, “RAMADAN MUBARAK, EVERYBODY! I’m stoked!”, to which I added, “I’m kinda not stoked. Is that BLASPHEMY? (I think it kinda must be.)”
To which Anjum, being a smart one, had this to offer: “I think thats the point of getting stronger during Ramadan.. to get to the point (&beyond iA) where we are really *stoked* that it’s here and really *bummed* when its gone.”
The night before the first day of Ramadan, I wore my pirate t-shirt to first taraweeh, the nightly, congregational prayers held during the holy month. “Don’t you mean tarrrrrrrrrrrrrrraweeh?” queried Z via GChat, and I had to laugh and shake my head for not having thought of it myself.
The first day of Ramadan, A pointed out that I wouldn’t be getting lunch updates from him for a month. This is the guy who, all the way from Toronto, used to look up Zabihah.com links for me so that I could have lunch while working in Silicon Valley (”Did you have lunch yet? There’s a halal deli close to your work. Not sure if you know that”), and who IMs me almost daily with messages like, “I had chicken teriyaki and sushi for lunch today” or “I had seafood fettuccine. Where are you going today?” or “Chicken shawarma platter! Halal!”
I spent a lot of time sitting in cafes and coffeeshops during Ramadan, working on getting things done. Who knew that fasting during the day - and, thus, not constantly contemplating what to eat next - would open up so much free time for productive pursuits? Amazing! I also somehow managed to spend far too much time at the grocery store. And I am here to tell you that shopping to re-stock your refrigerator and pantry while fasting is never a good idea.
While at the grocery store during the first afternoon of Ramadan, the girl at the checkout counter kept glancing at my t-shirt. “The Kite Runner!” she finally exclaimed. “Did you like the movie?”
“I did,” I said. “Not as good as the book, of course, but I thought they did an amazing job with the casting.”
“Just like in The Notebook! Did you see The Notebook?”
“Mhmm,” I said noncommittally. (I hated that movie.)
“Wasn’t it so awesome?” And here, her excitement clearly knew no bounds. “They left out some scenes from the book, though. Remember that part where Noah and Allie…[blah blah blah…] …” I grabbed my groceries and hurried out of the store as soon as I could.
Later in the day, towards the end of a getting-things-done session at a local coffeeshop, the man across from me looked over as we both began gathering our possessions together, and said ruefully, “I hope you had a more productive afternoon than I had!”
“I wish,” I said, wincing. “I’m really too good at distracting myself.”
“Hey, The Kite Runner!” he exclaimed. “Nice t-shirt. Did you watch the movie? What’d you think?”
“Good movie,” I said. “Rocking job with the casting. I highly recommend you check it out, just for that.” Then, I ran away really quickly before he could begin talking about The Notebook.
If there was one single thing I learned over the course of the past month, it was this: How to bend my torso at a nintey-degree angle to the rest of my body. This was something I’d been meaning to perfect for a long time - not just half-heartedly hunching over during the bowing portion of the prayer-cycle, but actually bending in such a fashion, knees unbent and back completely parallel to the ground, so that one could, as is often said, rest a glass of water on one’s back without spilling the water. By the end of the month, I was so limber that I could almost touch my toes.
One thing I didn’t perfect, however, was how to gracefully rise up again from a sitting position without feeling wobbly or brushing my hand(s) against the ground for balance. Sometimes, it worked; sometimes, it didn’t. If you have any tips and tricks for this hands-free-return to the standing position, let me know. Really, I’m serious! Is it about rising up so quickly that you have no time to catch yourself off-balance? Is it about briefly rocking back and then up? Is it about bracing your hands on your knees or thighs on the way up? I must know. You. Tell me.
In Ramadan, my mom kept making chapli kabob and pakoriyaan to go with dinner at the end of the evening, and nothing makes me wrinkle my nose more than the thought of heading out to congregational prayers while smelling like spices. But then I would remember how much I love breaking up the chapli kabob into little pieces to go with my salad, and I would sigh and eat and eat and eat. One evening, I had an epiphany: “Where are those croutons I bought weeks ago? Do we still have them?”
My dad laughed. “They’re probably in a cabinet somewhere, with the bag knotted up and tied inside another bag and placed all the way in the back of the shelf where no one can find it until it’s past the expiration date. Isn’t that how it always is?” I laughed, too, while the ummy didn’t so much as crack a smile. (She doesn’t always think we’re funny. And making fun of anything related to how she runs the kitchen is never funny.) A few nights later, I did indeed find the croutons in the cabinet. Sea salt and garlic! O mein Gott!
During the course of Ramadan, I learned to recognize people in prayer by their feet. It got to the point where if, in the middle of prayer, my new favorite taraweeh-buddy, M, came to stand next to me, I knew it was she by the look of her toes, with the glimmer of a recently-scrubbed-off pedicure.
Another one of the things I loved the most about Ramadan was the synchronicity and unison I felt in the nightly congregational prayers: How everyone, men and women alike, would hum, “Ameeeeeen,” at the end of Surah Al-Fatihah, The Opening, recited during each of the twenty prayer-cycles. How we would all bow, then stand, and then hear everyone’s knees crack in unison as we fell into prostration.
One of the things I disliked (it must be said) about the congregational prayer was performing the taraweeh directly behind tall people who couldn’t seem to properly fall into line with rest of their own row. Instead, they’d stand enough inches behind their line that they’d hit me in the head with their bum every time we both rose from prostration. This aggravated me. A lot. Much inaudible sighing and gritting of teeth ensued.
All that said and done, the last day of Ramadan was about this prayer. As I told erstwhile blogger Faiza when she IMed me about the post, “I kept thinking to myself through Ramadan, ‘There’s something missing. I can’t put my finger on what I’m supposed to be asking for.’” The morning of the last day, I remembered that piece on “authentic prayer,” and scrambled to print it out, then spent a bit of the day sitting quietly and reading through it a couple of times. As a result of pasting that link into my GChat status message [”remembering some duas i could still be asking for while there’s this little sliver of ramadan left”], I ended up having at least half a dozen unexpected and beautiful conversations, regarding prayer and faith and that post, during the course of the very last day of the blessed month. I am humbled, and honored, that a prayer that is so deeply personal to me has managed to resonate with so many others as well.
One of my favorite professors in college, herself nonMuslim, once referred to Ramadan as a time of “witnessing without judging,” and a period of “heightened consciousness.” It took me until Ramadan was nearly over this year to realize that I’m too good at witnessing without doing much of anything, and that I spent the month talking about physical hunger but depriving myself of spiritual sustenance.
In re-uploading the above photo (of the Islamic Center of San Diego) to flickr just now, I found a post I had written during Ramadan five years ago, and felt an unexpected lump in my throat for the month I nearly wasted this year. How could I have forgotten all this that I was seeking? And how is it I’ve remembered all these longings and prayers only now that Ramadan is over?
I’m re-reading my favorite lines from Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day, as both consolation and a kick:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
This was originally posted to flickr, but, again, really belongs here, because Blogistan is where it started. Also, I need to stop blogging on flickr. It’s getting ridiculous.
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September 2008
2Scoops is one of my favorite crackstars in the entire world - and was, in fact, the one to initially come up with the ‘All-Star Crackstar Squad’ moniker for me and my rockstar entourage. [The story of his nickname, by the way, has been documented by Baji on flickr, here, in her inimitable story-telling way.]
I bought this card YEARS ago, soon after 2Scoops guest-posted an audioblog on Chai’s veblog. I wish I had saved that mp3 file, because it was brilliant. Years later, all I remember now is kung-fu references, and 2Scoops’ throwdown to his ‘ARCH-NEMESIS CHAI.’
Anyway, I came across the card years ago, laughed, bought it…and then never sent it to 2Scoops, because he’s slightly topsecret about sharing his birthday date. But I think it’s August. We haven’t played our usual phonetag/5minutevoicemails drama for a while, so I missed the crackhead and decided it was about time he finally got his card.
I didn’t get around to sending it out in August after all (surprise!), so mid-September had to do. And he got it!
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Upon finding out that 2Scoops’ birthday was actually more along the lines of late September (saved! whew!), I posted the following:
It appears to be "Celebrate 2Scoops" Week ’round here on flickr lately, so let’s carry on with this for a couple of more days.
[Preferable topics of rambling conversation include but are not limited to: Ice cream, shawarmas, swing-jump championships, the making-up-of words, Calvin&Hobbes, avocados vs. cucumbers, extolling the virtues of San Diego, explaining the concept of "quaint" in British accents in Berkeley bookstores (while getting yelled at by the saleswoman for videotaping the scene), apple pie a la mode, and the usage of "duu-huuu-huuude!" in any and all contexts.]
At the grocery store the other day (never a smart errand to run while fasting), I came across these cartons of strawberry cheesecake ice cream, and they made me laugh and think of 2Scoops. In college, I used to call him from campus and leave excited, 5-minute-long voicemails about the fact that, "They have strawberry cheesecake ice cream today - a whole cup for a dollar - and it’s AWESOME!" Last night, I had dreyer’s Apple Pie ice cream (yes! there is indeed such a flavor!), and it was just as SPECTACULARICIOUS as I had remembered.
Recently, I was cleaning out my room and came across a post-it, on which I had scribbled the following:
I don’t remember quite what this was about, but I guess I’d been taking notes while listening to 2Scoops’ rambling voicemail. This must have been around the time when I was going to Ottawa last December, and I’d asked him how (HOW!) the heck a guy from San Diego managed to survive DC winters. The convoluted explanation of an ‘electric-blue parka’ that zipped all the way up to his chin was part of his hilarious answer.
This was originally posted to flickr, but truly belongs here. Although Baji and I have both been hanging out a lot more on flickr these days, Blogistan is where it all started, after all.
Thank you, BajiBaj, for taking care of my friends, for busting out with inside jokes and witty repartee and banter at a moment’s notice, for making me mix CDs, for holding sunshine playlists in stock for me and gifting me NINETY Wilco songs, for chauffeuring my sorry ass around DC, even when I spent too long chitchatting with S at Mama Ayesha’s, the Lebanese restaurant, and you had to sleepily text-message me to sweetly ask if I would be done soon so you could pick me up before you went to bed. Also, for introducing me to the concept of both dagger chappals and cannoli - although I’ve yet to have any cannoli, besides in gelato form - and for never tiring of ice cream- and gelato-related conversations. And for so good-naturedly (and hilariously) sharing your rockstar family with us.
There are so many things I love about you. May this year bring you all that is good and beautiful and blessed, inshaAllah, and may you have bajillions of even more rocking rockstar years to come!
Smashing HIGHFIVE and squeezy, bone-crushing hugs!
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The t-shirt is from the pirate store in San Francisco, at 826 Valencia.
Just trying out the new flickr slideshow-embedding feature. This is my favorite building in the world, so far - the Commodore Stockton School (Chinatown, San Francisco) - which I serendipitously stumbled across one day.
In case you didn’t know, I’m obsessed with yellow, and with arches.
Sometimes, I run away and lie around in the park all afternoon, reading books and listening to music and taking photographs. Sometimes, I even skip around on my jump-rope (but I discovered early on that that works better on concrete than on grass), and my new goal in life is to buy hula-hoops. Somehow, I’ve convinced myself that if I could get back into hula-hooping - as I did when I was a kid - I’d be much more coordinated and comfortable in moving my body, and then I’d even learn how to dance. It’d be amazing!
Last week, I did cartwheels in the park for the first time since childhood. Needless to say, I completely sucked (that part about extending your legs in the air is kinda tricky), but I couldn’t stop laughing along with Princess Pretty Pants and Beanay, and I didn’t even feel ridiculous for attempting something at which I knew I would fail. That’s progress.
(PPP captured all the laughter and cheering and my attempted cartwheels on camera, and they just might be coming your way soon via facebook-video, if we’re friends over there on that addictive, timesuck of a social-networking site. Also, via wikipedia, I found a nice little tutorial on cartwheeling. You didn’t doubt me, did you, when I mentioned “reading something on wikipedia once”? I look up everything.)
Speaking of parks and lounging around and reading on the grass, I just posted this on flickr, and then I remember how much you Blogistan folks love books, too, so I’m sharing this here as well:
An Unexpected Light is poignant, and unexpectedly funny, and perceptive. There are lots of references to chapli kabob and chai and Pathans and Sufi parables and open-armed unconditional hospitality, for those of you who are fans of such things. (As well as an equal number of references to guns and landmines and destruction and the mujahideen and Taliban and meddling/useless foreign nations, for that matter.)
What struck me most as I was reading this was Elliot’s respect and compassion for the Afghans. "He just has so much love and compassion for the people," I told [K] recently. "I love how he writes about them. Everyone is handsome or beautiful to him, I noticed. He never mentions people being ugly." Yet the Afghans are never exoticized or Other-ized here. Elliot sees them as dignified and beautiful, inside and out, because, for him, they are first and foremost profoundly human.
I don’t often make book recommendations (to each his own, eh?), and I’m too lazy to write books reviews.
But you should read this one.
That is all.
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K and I had a lovely conversation about this book weeks (months?) ago, and it made me so happy to know someone else had read it. You can check out an excerpt of the Prologue on amazon.
(Also, don’t give me drama about those folded-over pages. I always dog-ear book pages while reading! Sacrilegious, I know.)
and i wonder if everything i do
i do instead
of something i want to do more
the question fills my head
i know that there’s no grand plan here
this is just the way it goes
and when everything else seems unclear
i guess at least i know
i do it for the joy it brings…
- Joyful Girl (Ani DiFranco)
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Last Friday through Sunday, I did the following (in no particular order):
1. Made new friends to love
2. Tried to calmly answer some rude man’s antagonistic question wherein he asked me for “statistics regarding Muslim women who are subjugated” while I was innocuously standing in line to order a grilled cheese sandwich with a side of french fries. One of the new friends asked me later, “Do you get that a lot?”
3. Went to Baker Beach with the new friends, and walked in the waves and the sand
4. Realized that one end of Baker Beach has nudists - and not just any end, but the end closest to the most gorgeous views of the Golden Gate bridge, dammit!
5. Remembered that this is the year I was supposed to learn how to swim. (There are still a few months left to summer! I can do it!)
6. Moderated the opening plenary at a conference in San Francisco, and realized how much I missed the work I used to do (although not the workplace itself)
7. Magically, did not trip in my high heels at said conference
8. Unleashed The Yasmine vocabulary (”Stalking, stabbing, & crack”) on a few unsuspecting conference-goers
9. Referenced biking-related videos in conversation, and made folks laugh: 1 - 2 - 3
10. Took photos of San Francisco’s gorgeous St. Ignatius Church. Then, my camera battery suddenly died on me, and I decided it was a sign to sit down and meditate and converse with God for a bit
11. Scraped a few layers of skin off the sides of my thumbs, and now I can’t bend them enough to text-message properly. This is blasphemy.
12. Listened to the rockstar T tease me about my lack of timeliness in replying to emails, and laughed when he added, “If I had sent a text message, you probably would have replied immediately!”
14. Realized while looking in the mirror that I inadvertently give the wrong answer when asked about the length of my hair. It’s not almost to my elbows; it’s actually just past my shoulders.
15. Watched one of my new friends shuffle through the CDs in my car and pronounce them quite an eclectic mix
16. Had gelato in Berkeley with My Favorite & Most Rockstarish Married Couple ever, Ayesha and Faraz (okay, actually, they totally tie with Baji and TP), and discovered my new favorite flavor: Lemon Creme. And my other new favorite flavor: Milk & Honey. (”Look, Ayesha!” I crowed. “We can get a free preview of heaven!”) The latter flavor is in honor of the upcoming San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
17. Reunited with several friends; one of them, much to my amusement, acted as “my one-man cheering squad” whenever I walked into a room - “Yaz-MEEEEEEEN!” - which totally made me feel like a rockstar. (I have a feeling we need to work on his pronunciation, though.)
18. Took photos at a tiny beach I randomly stumbled upon in Emeryville:
19. Also unleashed my fake Desi [South Asian] accent on unsuspecting non-Desi folks who weren’t sure quite what hit ‘em - and who then asked me to explain the intricacies of Desi accents and give a few examples (which I did later in the afternoon when one man mentioned he’d be flying back out of the Bay that evening for work, and I queried, “Vat is dis vork of vich you esspeak?! Ve are ROCKSTARS!”, resulting in much laughter from the rest of the group)
20. Smiled when a friend slung his arm across my shoulders and said to me, “I am so glad that you’re here.”
I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten how to blog - or, at least, how to write in general. This is a sad state of affairs. And if that’s not bad enough, Adnan has gone and deleted all RSS feeds from his GoogleReader.
“But how you vill follow veblogs now?!” I exclaimed [mentally, it came out in a Desi accent]. “Back to the pre-googlereader days of opening a page and hoping the blogger has updated?”
“You guys rarely update anyway!” came the rejoinder. Can’t argue with that one. Besides, maybe Adnan’s right in attempting to simplify his blog-reading habits through un-following feeds. After all, I just spent an entire afternoon+evening whittling down my GoogleReader unread-posts count from 1,000+ to 689. Also, I’ve just realized I subscribe to 263 feeds. This is slightly ridiculous. Just slightly.
Anyway, in lieu of a real post, I present to you my latest “fake update” (highfive to Ayan!), a recently rediscovered .txt file on my harddrive. I’m not sure anymore what the context was behind half of these, but it’s all bullet points (from the last few months) that were meant to be GMail or facebook status messages, I think, and were used as such in many cases.
Lists and bullet points! We haven’t done those in a while.
crackfiendserene: Don’t come to California unless you know how to SPELL! Because CALIFORNIA is a BIG WORD, I know. (What kinda Desi are you? I need spelling-bee champs!)
“Apply the quadratic equation to your life.” - Conversation with the halaqafools
Favorite words today:
1. Doppelgaenger
2. Zeitgeist
It’s settled. I need to have CUPCAKES at my wedding.
Duaiyaan ne thyaareh shuruuh ho gaey
“I don’t know what ‘melodramatic’ means… but you’ll be removed.” - Enchanted, again
My eating habits are best described as,
“Yes, please.”
I lowve Juno, because she’s OBSESSED with blue slurpees. Why did you all fail to tell me that THIS was the one reason why I should watch the filum?!
“Have your stabbing pen ready. You’re gonna hide it in the headwrap, right?” - Z
I am not aloof. I am aloo, without an F. [Epiphany resulting from a conversation with a smart friend, who came up with that statement. Aloo=potatoes, the single food item, in any form, with which I am highly obsessed.]
“It would be lovely if what we loved to do also made enough money for us.
It would be lovelier if we knew what we loved to do.” - N bhaiyya
reeshtiya
Somayya: “Yazzo, you get addicted to things too easily. I don’t think you should ever try drugs.”
“What about crack?”
“You won’t really get addicted to crack. Now, HEROIN, on the other hand…!”
I want a vespa the color of tangerines. [Like maybe this one that Hashim pointed me towards.]
“I love when you stay people need to be stabbed. I can just hear you saying, ‘I will cut youuuuu.’ ” - Dina
I keep dreaming I’m taking photos.
“Yes, I think I read that on wikipedia once.”
“You go, cracker! The daily waffles make it work.” - A, trying to wheedle me into being productive.
I wear glasses. My eyes are great.
Dishoom! Ka-pow! Zabardast!
Who the hell pays $4 for a salad with no tomatoes? - @ Library cafe
Holy hell, who pays over $7 for a salad!? - @ Hipster cafe
Shit, I just did. And it’s a Mediterranean one with tomatoes and avocado and capers and olives and pepperoncini and artichoke and cucumbers. And it comes with bread and butter.
![[Read the front of the card in large-size.]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3049/2884856856_93da118bf9_b.jpg){kind=link}