Pakistan

Lost Luggage

/ Surina Khan / Leave a comment

We were sitting in the back of the plane. “Make sure your father is on the plane,” Ami said to Tito.

Aba had died a few days earlier in London where he was being treated for a rare illness. Mimo, Tito, and I flew to London as soon as we got the news, to accompany Ami back to Pakistan with our father’s body. His body was placed in a coffin which had a square piece of glass over his head so that we could see his face, which seemed to be turning bluer with every passing day. “Why do they have a piece of glass there?” I asked Mimo when we went to view his body at the mortuary. “Probably because he died here and the family will want to view the body when we get back to Pakistan,” she responded.

Tito went to the front of the plane to speak with the airline staff to make sure Aba’s coffin was in the cargo section.

“They can’t find him,” he said when he returned.

“Oh good God,” Ami said. “We’ve lost your father.” For some reason this seemed funny to us and we all started giggling.

The coffin was located several minutes later. “He’s still up to his tricks,” Ami said about Aba as if, even in death, he was still playing pranks by making his own coffin disappear.

When we landed in Islamabad we were met at the airport by Puchi, Muna and Baba and my father’s brothers and sisters who took us to our family home in Abbottabad for the funeral services. Hundreds of family and friends gathered at our house to mourn the loss of our father. The men and women were segregated with the men sitting outside and the women, many of them on the floor, sitting around the coffin. Some of them held prayer beads as they wailed in grief.

“Who are all these people?” I asked my sisters. I didn’t know most of the people who had gathered, so I went up to my old bedroom. Puchi and Mimo joined me a few minutes later and we sat there sneaking cigarettes. Occasionally one of our young nephews would burst into the room.

“Where’s Dada?” Ali, the three-year old asked about Aba, calling him the Urdu term for grandfather.

We sisters looked at each other, not knowing how to respond. How do you tell a three-year old that his grandfather is dead?

“Where do you think he is?” we asked, thinking the question might buy us some time as we figured out how to tell him the truth.

Distracted by his older brother, Asif, the two boys went running from the room, continuing to play their games. They probably thought we were having a party, not realizing it was a funeral.

A few minutes later, they came back in the room. “We know where Dada is!” they said excitedly.

“You do?” we asked. “Where is he?”

“He’s in that box in the room with all the old biddies! We saw him! Through the glass.” And sure enough, that was the truth.

Aba with his first grandchild, Asif, about seven years before he died.

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

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.

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.”

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?”

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.”