family

I Can’t Eat That

/ Surina Khan / Leave a comment

I’m not a fan of the egg. I especially don’t like boiled eggs or fried eggs. If I’m going to eat an egg, the yolk and the whites have to be mixed together as in a scrambled egg. Or an omelet or fritatta is even better because it is more likely to have other things to mask the actual egg. The worst is a soft boiled egg, a poached egg or a fried egg over easy with the yolk all runny.

Given that my father was in the poultry breeding business, this was not a popular position in my family. We always had eggs. Often the eggs had double yolks, a great source of family pride since they came from my father’s chicken farms. In addition to grossing me out, the double-yolked eggs were also confusing to me, especially when it came to baking. If a recipe called for three eggs, how many was I supposed to put in if each egg had two yolks? One and a half? Or three? And how do you halve a raw egg anyway? I’m surprised I didn’t lose interest in baking at an early age.

As a child I was made to eat a concoction of eggs and milk. The egg would be dropped in a pot of boiling water for thirty seconds and then cracked open into a glass of milk and mixed together. “Nashta,” which means breakfast in English, one or another servant would say to me, following my mother’s instructions. I didn’t understand why I was being tortured like this. None of my other siblings was made to drink this horrific concoction.

As I grew up, I stayed away from anything to do with eggs and dairy which for some reason began to equal all white foods. Milk and mayonnaise were, and still are, the worst in my opinion. I can hardly watch someone eat a sandwich if it has mayonnaise creeping out the sides. Sometimes my friends will order fries and ask for a side of mayonnaise. This causes me anxiety since the thought of having to watch people willingly dip things in mayonnaise and then consume it is too much for me so I might say, “You’re going to dip your fries in mayonnaise? Why not try the ketchup? I hear it’s very good here.” And they might respond, “Oh no, it’s aioli,” as if I don’t know that aioli is just a fancy word for mayonnaise.

French fries served with mayonnaise is a problem in my world.

Milk is also in my “avoid white foods” category. I can’t drink it. I’ll take milk or cream in my coffee, but by the time it makes it into my coffee it turns a creamy chocolate brown, so that works for me. I like yogurt, but not plain (read: white) yogurt. If it’s berry flavored, preferably strawberry, I’ll eat it. I sometimes put coriander chutney in plain yogurt which causes it to turn green and then I am fine to eat it, usually with a samosa.

I like ice cream, but not vanilla. Chocolate is my favorite, but I’ll eat just about any kind as long as it is not white. I also don’t like whipped cream, unless it has been whipped with something to cause it to turn slightly off white, like chocolate or a little espresso. Malai, the clotted cream that rises to the top of milk, is in it’s on special category of disgusting as are all things related to it like Russ Malai. And no Kulfi or Lassi for me, please.

Rice is the exception. I’ll eat basmati rice, or jasmine rice and since it’s usually served with a masala of some kind or dal, it doesn’t stay white long anyway.

When I tell people about this strange behavior of mine related to white foods, they ask, “So you don’t like mashed potatoes?” And I say, “Oh, mashed potatoes are fine. Potatoes are off white, not white.” This causes them to look at me quizzically.

When Jenny and I first got together, she made one of her specialties, deviled eggs, which just about did me in. I looked at the platter of eggs, the hard boiled whites with a mixture of yolk and mayonnaise in the middle, and decided I had to tell her the truth. “I can’t eat that.”

I can't eat deviled eggs.

Fast Food

/ Surina Khan / 2 Comments

The driveway was full of school children. “What’s going on?” I asked Puchi.

“Ami’s been feeding school children everyday,” Puchi replied. I had recently arrived in Islamabad, in October of 1986.

My mother had noticed some local children passing by our house everyday on their way home from school. They looked malnourished, emaciated with runny noses and open sores on their tiny bodies. They were in elementary school and ranged in age from about five to nine years old.

Ami had the cook make a big pot of dal or masala and a stack of naans from the tandoori oven. He would put a scoop of dal or masala on the naan and offered it to the children. The first day one or two kids hesitantly took the food. And the next day a few more, and a few more after that until the driveway was full of forty or fifty children everyday. Within a couple of weeks they started looking healthier. The open sores went away and they put on a bit of weight looking bright-eyed and cheerful. “See how little it takes to give someone a chance in the world?” my mother would say.

Ami planned the menu so they would get all the basic food groups in a week. Naan or roti everyday, with a scoop of dal for protein, or vegetable masala another day, and meat the next day or maybe rice pudding with milk and fruit. “This way they get protein and carbohydrates,” Ami explained. “And we don’t need to use plates since we put the food right on the roti.” Eventually as the menus became more varied she purchased metal plates and cups.

The cook would put a scoop of food on top of the naan for the kids.

The kids were shy. At first they trickled in. Ami asked one of the household staff to stand at the gate to invite them for lunch but that wasn’t really working so she went out there herself and invited them to eat. Initially many brought their fathers so they could ask permission which helped. And then Ami asked Puchi to stand at the gate to invite the new kids. She had Puchi sit with the kids while they ate. “I don’t want them thinking we’re treating them like poor kids,” she said. “They should feel like they’re eating with a member of the family.”

“One boy used to stand outside the gate, too hesitant to come in when the servants invited him,” Puchi remembers. Ami asked Puchi to invite him in, and maybe because she was part of the family, he eventually came in. His father came to thank us later in the week. And some of the other parents would stand at the gate in a bit of shock that this was a daily event, moved by my mother’s generosity.

Ami knew that just feeding the kids wouldn’t solve the problem, so she formed a committee, deciding that working through the government-run schools would be the best way to help families living in poverty. The World Food Bank was giving nutritious food to Afghan children, and my mother thought they should expand the program for Pakistani school children as well. This never happened, but it was a good idea.

She worked with the village mothers as well, trying to get them involved in advocating for the schools to feed kids. “This will increase family income as well,” my mother explained, “because then families will spend less money on food.”

Ami had only one rule. The kids had to eat at the house. “No take aways,” she said. “I want to be sure that they eat the food.”

Zero Balance

/ Surina Khan / 4 Comments

I was shellacking pine cones. “What in the world are you doing?” my mother asked me, looking a bit bewildered. She was sick again with the cancer. I was visiting her in Pakistan and we were staying at Mimo’s house.

“I’m shellacking pine cones from Nathiagali,” I responded. “It’s probably the only piece of Nathiagali I’ll ever get to keep.”

I had picked up the pine cones the previous weekend when Puchi, her boys, Akber and Abbas, and I went up to the Nathiagali house for a few days.

“What are you doing?” I asked the boys as they played in the garden.

“We’re collecting pine cones,” they said in unison.

“Well that sounds like a good idea,” I said. “I’m going to collect some pine cones too.”

Because of the debt that my father left behind when he died, Baba convinced Ami to put the Nathiagali house in his wife’s name when she was in the last stages of her cancer diagnosis,  after the final payment on the house was made.

“I have the power of attorney on the house,” my mother told me. “I’ll make sure it reverts back to all you kids.” She died before that happened and since then Baba has insisted that the house belongs to his wife.

The Nathiagali house, named Miranjani House because it looks onto Miranjani Mountain in the foothills of the Himalayas, was my favorite house. An old, rustic place that my parents purchased in the 1960s from a man named Sheikh Iqbal. He was a tender old man who indulged me when I was a young girl with laddu’s, my favorite sweet. The final payment on the house was made in the early 1990s, after my father’s death.

After Aba died, the rest of us asked for financial statements for the real estate holdings and the companies. In September of 1993 Baba sent me, and I presume the others, financial statements for 1993.

The curious thing about these financial statements is that the revenue coming in and the expenses going out balance out exactly. In the income and expenditure statement for 1993 Rs. 2,823,584 is listed as revenue. And exactly Rs. 2,823,584 is listed in expenses. I’m not a trained financial analyst, though I have run a small business and I do oversee the programmatic budget for the Women’s Foundation of California so I know a thing or two about financial statements.

You don’t have to be a financial analyst to figure out that revenue coming in does not exactly match expenses going out. Anyone who has a bank account can tell you that. Or if you’ve managed a household budget you can probably attest to the fact that you don’t spend exactly what you bring home to the penny or paisa. There’s usually money left over, or you might overspend in any given month. But things don’t balance out exactly. This was my first indication that Baba was cooking the books.

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

Airmail

/ Surina Khan / Leave a comment

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

/ Surina Khan / Leave a comment

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

/ Surina Khan / Leave a comment

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?”