Month: April 2010

Sweeping the Clouds

/ Surina Khan / 2 Comments

My father asked me to get each of us a broom. “Look,” he said in Urdu pointing to the sky. “The clouds are coming in.”

We were in Nathiagali, probably in 1970 or 1971 when I was about three or four years old. My parents had purchased the Nathiagali house in the 1960s as a summer home. Nathiagali is a mountain resort town, one of many hill stations in the foothills of the Himalayas. Our house, named Miranjani House because it looks out on Miranjani Mountain, was among my favorite places in the world.

Miranjani Mountain, standing at almost 10,000 feet is the highest peak in the Abbottabad District of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Our house was a large rustic cabin with a blue tin roof, wood floors and a square fireplace in the living room, which we would all gather around in the evenings. The bedrooms were full of bunk beds, and in the summer the house was teeming with kids. The dining room table was long and easily sat thirty or forty people.

Mimo reading in the livingroom of the Nathiagali house. The square fireplace is in the background on the right.

In the summer when the house would be full of kids, my father craved peace and quiet. We would tumble out of bed in search of breakfast which would usually be laid out on the kids dining table. “Breakfast is up there this morning,” my father said on more than one occasion, pointing to Miranjani Mountain. Picnic baskets were packed in advance and we kids would go off hiking up the mountain munching on fruit and snacks until we got to the top, a beautiful open meadow where we would have our picnic.

Miranjani Mountain

When they purchased the house, my mother did not like the layout. “The kitchen had the best views,” she would say. So she hired a carpenter, and the two of them went about remodeling the house so that the living room had the view of Miranjani Mountain. “Architects always marvel,” my mother would say, “that the house is standing on three beams.”

Miranjani House

The house was about seven or eight thousand feet high. We would be short of breath when we first arrived, needing to adjust to the altitude. We would sit in the garden looking out on the forests of cedar and pine trees. In July and August the fog would roll in. “Come,” my father would beckon me. “It’s time to sweep the clouds out of the house.” We would each take our broom and sweep at the fog that would make its way into the house. It was our own little magical ritual.

Sweeping the clouds in Nathiagali

Cattle Call

/ Surina Khan / 1 Comment

One of my uncles writes regular commentary for the Pakistani newspapers. Once in a while he will forward his articles and other noteworthy pieces to family and friends. For some reason, I am not on his email list, but Jenny is.

She showed me an email he sent the other day. Apparently it is an actual essay written by a candidate applying to the Pakistani Civil Service (CSS). Although upon further internet research, I noticed that a Bihari candidate applying to the Indian Civil Service supposedly wrote the same essay for his exam. And they say Indians and Pakistanis can’t agree. Or maybe it is a case of plagiarism. Who knows? Maybe it isn’t even real, but it is entertaining. Apparently the Pakistani and Indian candidates, if this is to be believed, wrote their civil service essay exams on the Cow.

Titled simply, “Cow,” it begins, “He is the cow. The cow is a successful animal. Also he is 4 footed. And because he is female, he gives milks, [but will do so when he is got child.].” After reading this first part of the essay, I started giggling. I wonder if the writer meant to make the Cow transgender.

“He is same like-God, sacred to Hindus and useful to man. But he has got four legs together. Two are forward and two are afterwards.” Afterwards?

“His whole body can be utilized for use. More so the milk. Milk comes from 4 taps attached to his basement. [horses don’t have any such attachment].” The taps are attached to his basement? This made me think how my taps are not attached to my basement.

“What can it do? Various ghee, butter, cream, curd, why and the condensed milk and so forth.” I think he meant to write whey, not why.

“Also he is useful to cobbler, water mans and mankind generally. His motion is slow only because he is of lazy species. Also his other motion. {gober} is much useful to trees, plants as well as for making flat cakes [like Pizza], in hand, and drying in the sun.” The flatcakes he refers to are dung patties, which are used for fuel for heating and cooking.

“Cow is the only animal that extricates his feeding after eating,” Really? What do the other animals do after they eat?

“Then afterwards he chews with his teeth that are situated in the inside of the mouth.” Good to know. What else would the Cow chew with? The writer may be interested to know that I also chew with the teeth inside my mouth.

“He is incessantly in the meadows in the grass,” True enough. The Cows are always in the meadows and the grass.

“His only attacking and defending organ is the horns, specially so when he is got child.” Is he referring to the transgender Cow again? “This is done by knowing his head whereby he causes the weapons to be paralleled to the ground of the earth and instantly proceed with great velocity forwards,” if I were an editor, I might suggest he rewrite that last sentence.

“He has got tails also, situated in the backyard, but not like similar animals. It has hairs on the other end of the other side. This is done to frighten away the flies which alight on his cohesive body here upon he gives hit with it.” Okay seriously. Is this for real?

“The palms of his feet are soft unto the touch. So the grasses head is not crushed. At night time have poses by looking down on the ground and he shouts. His eyes and nose are like his other relatives. This is the cow.”

The cow. His four taps in his basement are showing.

Clearly, I need to get on my uncle’s mailing list. In the meantime, I decided to check out the CSS website as well as the Indian Civil Services exam requirements.

The Indian essay exam has five general topics that applicants are required to choose from including, “Good fences make good neighbors,” and “Are our traditional handicrafts doomed to a slow death?” Applicants can also choose to write about “Globalism vs. Nationalism,” or “Are we a ‘soft’ state?”

The Pakistani CSS exam offers many more options for essay topics, which include, “Man is Condemned to be Free,” or “Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child,” or “Not Everyone in Chains is Subdued.” Here’s one the makes no sense, “One Today is Worth Two Tomorrows.” The options also include an essay on, “A Living Dog is Better Than a Dead Lion.” My personal favorite topic might be, “All that Glitters is not Gold.” But then I saw an option to write about “Frailty thy Name is Woman.”

This one threw me for a bit of a loop, “There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” I have no idea what this means.

One can also write about “Weather Forecasting,” or “Table Manners,” or ‘Sports for Women–Suitable and Unsuitable.” And here’s a particularly appropriate one for many a nation state, “Is Democracy Out of Date?”

Another option is to write about the “Theater of the Absurd,” which is what I feel like I am doing right now.

Airmail

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My father suggested we write letters to each other every week since we were often apart. He was in Pakistan running his poultry breeding business, and I was in Connecticut attending boarding school, and then New Orleans for college. We wrote to each other on aerogrammes, the thin blue paper with postage included that functioned as letter-writing paper and an envelope when folded into thirds.

letters from my father

We mainly corresponded about grades, money and weight. “Things are going pretty well here,” I wrote from college, in October of 1985. “I’m working hard, but my grades aren’t where I want them to be yet, so I guess I’ll just keep working until my brain falls out.”

The letters are mostly boring. In November of 1985 I wrote, “There really isn’t much going on here. I’m keeping up with my studies. I really don’t have much more to say. I’m going to continue this tomorrow.” The next day I wrote, “Nothing happened since last night. So you get a pretty boring weekly letter. But don’t blame me it was your idea.” I think the weekly letter writing was getting on my nerves.

My father was very focused on my weight which seemed odd since he had not seen me in more than a year. I was a healthy size 10 and could sometimes even fit into an 8, which seemed respectable, especially now since I would love to be a size 10 again. Nevertheless a size 10 could easily become a 12 or (gasp!) a 14. Dieting was encouraged from the time you could understand language in my family. I went on my first diet at the age of eight. It didn’t help that my nickname was Fatty. Which thankfully turned into Fatty Foo, and eventually I had the courage to insist that everyone drop the Fatty and just call me Foo.

“I understand from Nafisa and Lalarukh that you are making every effort to put on more weight. This is the time in life you have to be careful and watch what you eat. Best way is to write down everything you eat and convert it to calories. At your age you have to watch it now otherwise you will become like Mimo. Basically everything is 100 calories like a cookie, an apple, or another fruit.”

I responded, “As for my weight, let’s not be sarcastic. It’s a pretty touchy subject.”

That didn’t stop him. “Dear Fatty,” my father wrote later that same November. “Received your letter and I’m glad your grades are going up and your weight (?) going down. I am confident that you will do well in your grades once you get used to the system.” This was encouraging, but then came the dieting diatribe.

“For your weight, the main problem is mental attitude and will power. If you make up your mind to bring it down, it is then easy, but lot of will power is needed to keep it down at the right level.” I was beginning to think this was more about his weight than mine.

“You should go on a zero carbohydrate diet to bring it down and then keep track of the total calories you consume. About 1500 calories a day should keep you trim. Write down what you eat daily and add up the calories. This way the stomach also shrinks and one does not feel hungry.” Really? Writing down what you eat makes your stomach shrink? I should have listened to him years ago.

“If it is any help,” he continued, offering me his daily regimen. “Breakfast: 1/2 glass of juice (anar) these days.” Anar is Pomegranate which I gather was in season in November. For breakfast, he also had green tea. “No sugar,” he was careful to emphasize any chance he got. And he had “one toast with malai and honey.” Malai is the clotted cream that rises to the surface of milk before it is skimmed off. It looks like a thick yellowish layer of fat. The sight of it made me gag. I already had a deep aversion to milk, and in my world malai was in its own special category of disgusting, right next to mayonnaise. Sometimes, a little speck of the malai would make its way into my tea, not having been skimmed properly from the milk. “Eeew!” I would shriek dropping my tea cup. “There’s malai in the milk!”

My father’s diet tips were not making sense. Malai is full of fat. So basically he was telling me he put a layer of fat on his toast and then covered it with honey. I wonder how many calories he allotted to this coveted morning ritual?

“Lunch,” he continued, “is meat cooked without any oil and also vegetable or daal without any oil. And one chapati.” I’m pretty sure chapati, which is made with wheat flour, is full of carbohydrates, but I didn’t want to point out this contradiction either.

For evening tea he had, “Two cups of green tea without sugar and no cookies or biscuits.” In case I was not paying attention, in the following week’s letter he wrote, “I lost two pounds in the last two weeks by cutting out United Bakery cookies at evening tea time and switching to green tea without sugar.”

His advice for dinner was not helpful. “Dinner,” he wrote, followed by all caps. “NO dinner. At night I have some fruit, an apple, or grapes and that’s it.” I was beginning to think the man had an eating disorder.

Gay Gay Gay

/ Surina Khan / 2 Comments

Mimo offered to host a tea party for me when I visited Pakistan in 2001. “If everyone comes here for tea,” she explained, “It will save us time calling on all the relatives.” Ever the strategic thinker, Mimo was conscious of the limited time I had. I was only in Islamabad for a few days, stopping on my way back to the US from a work trip that took me to India and Sri Lanka.

Shortly before my trip, I received an invitation from a policy research institute based in Islamabad to give a talk on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. Puchi was living in Hawaii by now, but she had been a journalist in Pakistan, so I mentioned the invitation to her, asking if she had ever heard of this particular Institute. “Yes,” she said. “It’s one of the leading policy institutes in the country.” But then she discouraged me from giving the talk, saying that it would put our extended family in a very uncomfortable position. “You have to consider how it will affect the family,” she said.

“Okay,” I said. “I wont do it.” I was clear that the primary purpose of my trip to Pakistan was to visit my family and if it made them uncomfortable, I would decline the invitation. “But go ahead and do it,” Puchi then said. “It’s a reputable policy institute and it’s about time the family began to understand these issues.” So with her encouragement, I accepted the invitation, which to my knowledge may have been the first time a public conversation on LGBT issues was held in Pakistan.

When the guests started arriving for the tea party–various aunts, uncles and cousins– we entertained them in the proper fashion. My mother, who had died just over a year ago, would have been pleased. We served high tea with an assortment of pastries, biscuits and savory items. We dressed appropriately. I didn’t have a shalwar kameez, and didn’t like wearing the traditional outfit anyway, but I covered myself with a dupatta over my blouse and long pants. We poured the tea for our guests offering them chicken patties, cucumber sandwiches, samosas, pakoras, lemon tarts, and cakes from the tea trolley.

High Tea

The conversation inevitably turned to me. “What are you doing these days? Where are you working?” they would ask. I had just come from a large human rights conference in Pune, India where I gave a keynote address on the importance of integrating sexual rights and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues into the human rights movement in South Asia. At the time, I was the executive director of the International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission.

“You’re a professional lesbian,” my friends in the US would say to me. And it was true. I was always talking about gay this and lesbian that. And I got paid for it.

Most of my extended family knew that I was a lesbian. And if they didn’t, it was only a matter of time before I outed myself, usually in response to the question, “Where do you work?”

“The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission,” I would respond. This would leave some people stunned into silence. So I started saying vaguely, “I work for a human rights agency,” not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable or to force the homosexuality conversation.

But someone would inevitably ask, “Whose human rights are you working for?”

“Gays and lesbians,” I would respond “and bisexual and transgender people.”

Often the response would be, “Well then you must not do much work in Pakistan. We don’t have gays and lesbians.” Or, “I know gay and lesbian, but what is this bisexual? This is perversion. Bisexual. Liking sex with everyone?”

“If it makes you feel uncomfortable, we don’t have to talk about it, ” I offered.

And as soon as I said that, the flood gates opened. “It’s not uncomfortable. In our society we have people in the villages who do this sort of thing, but they are not gay and lesbian.” True that. No need to take on the identity, just go with the sex.

“I read your letter on the internet,” another cousin whispered to me. “I think it’s brave what you are doing.”

“What letter?” I asked. I wasn’t aware of writing a letter on the internet.

“You know the letter about…that.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, that. Well thank you.” I wasn’t sure what she was referring to exactly, but I took it as a compliment.

Later that year, an aunt and uncle were visiting their son, my cousin, in San Francisco, where I was also living. I had been invited to speak at an LGBT Muslim conference organized by the LGBT Muslim organization, Al-Fatiha.

“Your parents know I’m a lesbian, right?” I asked my cousin.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

“But they know I work for IGLHRC,” I said since they had been at the tea party in Islamabad earlier in the year.

“Yes, but I think that they think you are just being a good person, working for the rights of gays and lesbians because you feel sorry for them and want to help them. I don’t think they know you’re a lesbian.” This scenario had not occurred to me.

Both my aunt and uncle are avid newspaper readers. “Well, there’ll be an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the conference in tomorrow’s paper,” I said. “And they interviewed me for it. So if they don’t know I’m a lesbian, they will tomorrow.”

When my cousin came home from work the next day, my aunt showed him the newspaper. “Did you know,” she said with a smile, pointing to the article, “that Foo is a lesbian leader?”

Bee Positive

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I had only planned on staying in Pakistan for a few months. “I’m only staying two months,” I said to my mother the day I arrived in Islamabad from Connecticut. It was October of 1986. “I want to be back in Connecticut by New Year’s Eve,” I added.

Shortly after that I fractured my vertebrae in three places when Puchi insisted we go horse back riding. It took me several months to recover. (See Back in the Saddle, posted January 14, 2010 and Khanvalescense, posted February 8, 2010).

A month or two after my cast was removed, my father got sick. He started losing movement on the left side of his body during the course of one day, and we all thought he was having a stroke. There were no MRI machines in Islamabad so we flew him immediately to Karachi where the doctors discovered a collection of blood on the right side of his brain.

“They need to drill into his skull,” my mother told us. “To get the blood out.”

Ami, Puchi and I moved temporarily to Karachi and took up residence at our apartment at the Sind Club while Aba was hospitalized. Though I wasn’t too happy about extending my stay in Pakistan by what was sure to be another several months, I did love the Sind Club. Started as an exclusive European men’s residential club, the Sind Club was deluxe. In its early years though, women were not allowed in except to attend a ladies’ dinner held every two months and the celebrated Sind Club Ball organized once a year. Until 1950 when the Prime Minister of Pakistan lived across the road, the Sind Club was still used almost exclusively by Europeans.

The sign “Natives and dogs not allowed” was removed only a day after Mohammad Ali Jinnah took his oath as Governor-General of Pakistan on August 14th, 1947. I gather my mother’s family became members shortly after that because she always talked of going there as a young girl. After my parents married in 1955, they too became members and began maintaining an apartment there in the late 1960s.

For me, not knowing the history of the place until recently, it was a small slice of heaven. I learned to swim as a baby with my arm band floaties in the swimming pool. I ordered chicken patties and lemon tarts from the full service on-site bakery. I ordered Mulligatawny Soup in the fancy restaurant. At the snack bar by the swimming pool I would order fresh lime sodas or chicken masala or ice cream bars known to us as choc bars. The bearers or waiters all knew me by name and seemed never to move on to other jobs. They grew old as I grew up. There were lush gardens to be strolled around, as well as tennis courts, and room service in case I wanted to stay in. While my father was hospitalized, I took up tennis lessons.

The Southern Italian-style sandstone buildings of the Sind Club.

After Aba recovered from the first surgery, they discovered more blood, so they had to drill for a second time. And after that they discovered a blood clot on his brain, which meant they had to open up his skull and remove the clot.

“He needs a blood donor,” my mother informed us. “I don’t want him getting just anyone’s blood so we’ll have to see whether one of you can give him blood since I’m not a match.”

My blood was a match as was Puchi’s and we both went to the Blood Bank at P.N.S. Shifa, the Naval hospital where my father was being treated, to donate our blood.

The Blood Donation certificate, dated 10-5-87 or 10 May 1987, notes that my Blood Group and Type is “Bee Positive,” which did not give me much confidence in the hospital. “They can’t even spell it correctly,” I said to Puchi. “And they also spelled my name wrong,” I added for emphasis.

The certificate also notes, “Blood donation does not entitle a donor to any extra ration, nor is such recommended on Medical Grounds.” What ration, I wondered? I did get a stale cookie after donating my blood. I wondered if people asked for seconds claiming they felt dizzy from all the bloodletting just so they could get an “extra ration?”

My Blood Donation Certificate

In case I felt woozy afterward, the certificate assured me, “Blood donation has no ill effects what so ever on normal individuals. In case any after effects are noticed, he is advised to report to his Medical Officer or at this Blood Bank.” I pointed this out to Puchi as well, “What is a normal individual? Am I normal?”

Doesn’t matter, at least I am Bee Positive, which according to some medical professionals makes me “carry the genetic potential for great malleability and the ability to thrive in changeable conditions.”

Identity Theft

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Mimo was mad at me. “I can’t believe you stole my driver’s license!” she blurted when she found it amongst my things. She thought she had misplaced it which meant she had to go through the hassle of standing in line at DMV to replace her license.

“Sorry,” I offered. “I should have asked you.”

My own license had been suspended after some high school friends and I were shopping for alcohol. “Let’s try that liquor store,” one of my friends said as we were driving down Route 44 from Salisbury to West Hartford. One of us had a fake ID and we sent him in to make the purchase for our party weekend at my parent’s house while they were in Pakistan. He got a case of the nerves inside the store and returned with only a fifth of vodka. “That’s all you got?” the rest of us said in unison. “There’s six of us. That won’t even be enough for one drink a piece.”

So we stopped at the next liquor store and sent him back in with another friend for support. This time they came out with a case of beer and a large bottle of vodka. We put the unopened booze in the trunk of the car and continued on our way. We were on the road for less than a minute when we heard the sirens and noticed the flashing lights of the police car behind us.

I handed the officer my recently acquired license and registration. He asked to look in the trunk where he found our party supplies. We had to go to the police station where they detained our friends who had purchased the liquor, and allowed the rest of us to go.

I got a ticket for driving underage with alcohol in the car, albeit unopened and in the trunk where it was supposed to be. But I was sixteen and had no business driving with booze in the car.

Shortly after that I got a notice to appear in court. Puchi offered to come with me for moral support, and we agreed to keep this news from Ami and Aba who were still in Pakistan. The morning of the court date Puchi and I woke up and I said, “I’m scared. I don’t want to go to court.”

I had visions of a judge in a black robe. Admonishing me and judging me for my bad behavior. So we blew it off. Next came the notice that my license had been suspended for missing my court date and I was instructed to send it to DMV. “Driving in Connecticut is a privilege granted by the Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles. And, like all privileges, it can be taken away―temporarily or permanently―if you prove yourself unable to follow the rules under which it was granted. Once your license is suspended or revoked, you can face serious criminal penalties if you continue to drive,” the notice said.

Mimo and I look a lot alike, so I thought I could use her license until my suspension was over. And since she was six years older than me, her license also had the added benefit of functioning as a fake ID should I ever want to purchase alcohol again. When she discovered I had stolen it from her she demanded it back.

“But you have another license,” I said. “You don’t need two. I’ll just use it until I get my license back.”

“No way,” Mimo said, not even considering it for a moment.

Mimo

When we went to Mimo’s graduation from Ithaca College a few months later, Mimo and Puchi wanted to stay on in Ithaca for the graduation parties, and asked me to drive Ami back to Connecticut. Ami hated driving.

“But I don’t have a license,” I said looking at Mimo. “I wouldn’t want to risk getting stopped without a license,” I added, giving her a bitchy smile. So there, I thought to myself.

“Give Foo your license,” my mother suggested to Mimo, not knowing that I had stolen it a few months earlier and had recently returned it to Mimo.

“You know she can use it for other things than driving,” Mimo said. This from the sister who took me to a bar on my sixteenth birthday. The hypocrisy was confusing me.

“If she wanted to do those other things, she wouldn’t need your license,” Ami said. “She looks old enough.”

Mimo reluctantly handed me her license. This time I got to keep it, thanks to Ami.

Escape to Wisconsin

/ Surina Khan / 1 Comment

I wasn’t keen on going back to Tulane after a short spring break at home in Connecticut. “I’m going to Beloit to visit Sly for a few days before I go back to school,” I told Mimo and Puchi who were managing the Connecticut house while my parents were in Pakistan.

I had only planned to stay in Wisconsin to visit my high school friend for a few days. But then I extended the visit one day at a time without really notifying anyone.

I called my roommate at school and told her I would be back soon. “In the meantime, if anyone calls for me, like my sisters, just tell them I’m in the library.” One day turned into the next, and into another, until a month had passed.

My friend Sly and his girlfriend Ellen, had gone out to get some lunch when there was a knock on the door of their apartment where I had been staying.

I opened the door and saw a police officer. “Are you Surina Khan?” he asked.

How did a police officer in Beloit know my name? “Why do you want to know?” I responded.

“How old are you?” he said, asking for my identification.

I had recently turned eighteen. “Eighteen,” I responded nervously as I handed him my license.

“The New Orleans Police Department has an APB out on you,” he said looking over my driver’s license and confirming my date of birth. “Who do you think is looking for you? Your parents?” he asked, returning the license to me. I didn’t know what an APB was, but it did not sound good. I later learned it stands for an All Points Bulletin.

“No,” I said. “I don’t think it’s my parents. They’re out of the country. Maybe my sisters?”

“Can you give them a call?” he asked. “They’re probably worried about you. And since you’re eighteen, there’s nothing I can do.”

When I called Mimo and Puchi, they were not happy. “Where the hell are you?” Mimo berated me.

“I’m still in Wisconsin,” I said sheepishly.

“What are you still doing in Wisconsin? We thought you went back to school weeks ago.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well the school is looking for you. They called us asking where you were and we said you were back at school. Your roommate said you were in the library every time we called. Your professors thought you were dead in a gutter somewhere when you didn’t show up to your classes,” Mimo continued.

“I’m sorry,” I offered.

“Ami and Aba are going to be really upset,” she said.

“Maybe we don’t need to tell them,” I said. “No need to worry them,” I suggested.

Mimo did not agree. “They need to know what you’ve done,” she said. “And you should be the one to tell them. If you don’t, I will.”

“Okay,” I groaned. ‘You’re right.”

When I got back to school, I had to go see the Dean. “Do you have any idea what is going to happen to you?” he said.

“Actually, I was hoping you could tell me,” I replied.

“If you’re lucky you’ll get incompletes, but you’re likely to fail all your classes and will have to make-up your coursework in summer school.”

The thought of staying in New Orleans over the summer was unbearable. The heat and humidity in the spring was bad enough. It was ten days before final exams, but I decided to try and make-up the work.

I went to each of my professors and explained my situation. “I don’t feel comfortable talking to you about where I was or the reasons for my absence,” I said. “It’s personal. But before you make a decision about what to do with me, let me make-up the work and take the final, and then decide if you want to give me an incomplete, fail me or give me a grade,” I suggested. They each decided this was a fair request. And then I really did spend every waking hour in the library doing my best to make-up the work I had missed. In the end I did well, getting mostly A’s and B’s. My professors all decided to give me grades, and I successfully avoided summer school.

When my mother called I told her I needed to tell her something. “I went to visit Sly in Wisconsin and stayed longer than I planned,” I explained. “I missed almost a month of school, but I’ve made up the work and my grades are good. I’m not sure why I stayed away so long, but I think I was just trying to work some things out,” I said.

“Well good for you,” my mother responded.

“Good for me?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“You recognized you needed to take some time for yourself and you had the courage to do it. Good for you.”

My mother never ceased to surprise me. I called Mimo and Puchi. “Ami thinks I did the right thing by taking some time for myself,” I said feeling vindicated. “She wasn’t upset at all,” I added.

“Time for yourself?” Mimo said. “That’s really rich. I’m sure she doesn’t know the half of it.”

Anger Management

/ Surina Khan / 1 Comment

I needed more Valium. “Three boxes of Valium, please,” I said to the clerk behind the counter.

“5 or 10 milligrams?” he asked.

“10 please,” I responded.

After my back injury, the doctor said I should take Valium “as needed.” In Pakistan you didn’t need a prescription for most drugs so I purchased the Valium over the counter at the local drug store. More than anything, it was a muscle relaxer which helped with the back pain I was experiencing after my cast came off. The three vertebrae I had fractured had healed well, but the doctor said I might experience muscle spasms which the Valium would help with. I noticed the Valium was also good for my mood. Things just didn’t seem to bother me as much. I was calm, and generally content.

My mother, on the other hand seemed to be easily agitated. “Why don’t they listen?” she said upset with the house servants. “I told the bloody fools to set the table for the food on that end of the garden,” she hissed. Muna was hosting an afternoon luncheon and fashion show at the Islamabad house for the high school students from the school where she was teaching.

The house servant walked onto the veranda where we were sitting and offered my mother the fresh lime and water she had asked for. She took one sip and slammed it back down on the silver tray, spitting it out. “Saccharin, not sugar.”

“I’ll fix it,” I said, taking the tray and the fresh lime and water into the kitchen. I’m not sure whose idea it was, maybe Puchi and I thought about it at the same time.

“Let’s put half a Valium in her fresh lime,” one of us said. The label inside the box noted that Valium can also be used for the “treatment of anxiety, panic attacks, and states of agitation.”

“She seems really agitated,” I said. “Maybe this will help her relax,” I said, crushing half the blue pill along with the saccharin tablet and putting it into the fresh lime and water.

I walked back out to the veranda with the new fresh lime and water on a clean tray. “Here we are,” I said to my mother. “Just the way you like it.”

She sipped it slowly. By the time the party started, she was calm and relaxed.

The following week, when we noticed the rage coming on again, I asked my mother, “Can I get you a fresh lime and water?”

Wake and Bake

/ Surina Khan / Leave a comment

I needed to make some money. “I’m going to have a bake sale,” I declared to my mother. I felt I had the experience, having practiced baking quite a lot on my Betty Crocker Easy Bake Mini Oven which I got when I was about six. By the age of seven I had moved on to making a range of microwave recipes and had even used the real oven for the occasional cakes, cookies and brownies.

I went about planning my menu. An assortment of desserts. A chocolate cake. A no bake cheesecake. Brownies. Chocolate chip cookies. And a graham cracker chocolate specialty I had recently discovered.

I woke up early on a Saturday morning and went about my baking, preparing everything carefully. I cooled each batch of cookies on a rack. I carefully frosted the chocolate cake. I sliced all the dessert items in single serving pieces and made placards detailing their individual sale price. “Slice of chocolate cake: 75 cents,” or “Cheesecake Slice: 85 cents.” The cookies and brownies were each 25 cents. According to my business plan, if I sold all the items I would make approximately $20.

By 10 am, around the time my brothers and sisters began to open their eyes and contemplate getting out of bed, I had all my wares carefully displayed on the kitchen table, each one with its sale price. And a bigger sign with the words “Bake Sale.”

I pulled up a chair and awaited my customers.

“What’s all this?” Mimo said as she came into the kitchen, picking up a brownie and popping it into her mouth.

“I’m having a bake sale,” I said. “That will be 25 cents.”

“I’m not paying for that,” she said, as she picked up a cookie and took a bite.

“But I’m having a bake sale,” I said again. “These are for sale. I made them.”

“Did you buy all the ingredients?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “We already had all the ingredients in the house.”

“Then you can’t sell them,” she said. “All of this belongs to all of us. You can’t charge us for ingredients that belong to all of us,” she said, now sampling a slice of cheesecake.

“But I baked them,” I said, starting to sound a little desperate and possibly whiny. “They’re mine. I can sell them.”

“No you can’t,” she said picking up the entire chocolate cake and walking away. “But good job,” she said as she turned around looking back. “It all tastes great. You may have a future as a baker.”

Christmas Condolences

/ Surina Khan / 1 Comment

My mother called me from Pakistan to wish me a happy Thanksgiving. “Hello Foosie,” she said when I picked up the phone. “Happy Thanksgiving. We’re all here about to eat our turkey and we’re thinking of you.”

“You’re having Thanksgiving dinner in Islamabad?” I asked, a bit surprised that they would be celebrating Thanksgiving in Pakistan. “Do they even have turkeys there?”

“Well not exactly, but you know Mimo. She’s arranged the whole thing.” Mimo had moved back to Pakistan in the mid 1990s. “She found us a wild turkey and had it plucked and prepared to go in the oven. She’s even made stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and cranberry sauce!” my mother said happily. I couldn’t see her, but I could tell she was smiling.

My sister Mimo is trained in hotel and restaurant management. She loves cooking, planning, and all things entertaining. She will throw a party for just about any reason. In college she had monthly full moon parties. It was probably her enthusiasm that made my family embrace Thanksgiving as our favorite American holiday.

Mimo knows how to throw a good party.

When my mother died several years later in December of 1999, I immediately made arrangements to fly back to Islamabad from Boston where I was living. Ami had been sick for a while with another recurrence of cancer, so her death was not a surprise to any of us, even though she was a young sixty-four years old.

When she died, Mimo was in the middle of planning a Christmas celebration at her house. She put the planning on hold and we attended all the funeral services, which like Pakistani weddings, last several days. Men and women were segregated in different parts of the house. Women, dressed in white, were clutching prayer beads as they prayed and wailed in grief. I didn’t know who many of them were and took the greatest comfort when we would go back to Mimo’s house with some of our cousins and sit around the kitchen table, ordering in Chinese food and remembering the joyful times in our mother’s life. We had many good laughs in those moments, tender and poignant. We were not filled with grief, but rather the memories of our mother and how fully she embraced life.

After the services were over, Mimo went back to planning Christmas. Although we celebrated many American holidays, Christmas was not one of them. We were Muslim after all.

“I’m having a tree cut down and we’ll trim it with ornaments and lights,” Mimo was explaining.

The guest list included us four sisters, our brother Tito who was also in town for Ami’s funeral, our close friends and their children as well as Puchi’s boys. Our oldest brother, Baba, was not included since by now the relationship between the rest of us and him was deeply strained.

Mimo had arranged toys for all the kids, but before they could open their Christmas gifts they distributed flour, lentils, and sugar to communities living in deep poverty on the outskirts of the city. “That way they’ll learn the value of giving and receiving gifts,” Mimo said.

Her living room was going to be rearranged to accommodate a long table for the Christmas dinner and she was going to put a bar in the corner for the Christmas cocktails. It all sounded great to me, especially since I had left behind a series of holiday parties in Boston.

Meanwhile family and friends continued to call on us daily to condole the loss of our mother.

“Don’t you think it’s inappropriate to be having a Christmas party?” I asked.

“No, why?” Mimo said.

Did I really need to enumerate the reasons? “For starters, Ami just died and people are coming to your house every day to condole. And we’re Muslim. We’re not supposed to be celebrating Christmas,” I explained looking at her like I couldn’t believe she had not already thought of these things. “What if someone drops by on Christmas day to condole with us and they’ll see a Christmas tree with us celebrating Christmas, drinking cocktails and wine and otherwise being merry when we should be grieving the loss of our mother? I don’t think that will look good.”

“Good point,” she said. “We’ll have to move the party to Mona’s house. No one will come there to condole with us.”