How to convince your co-workers that you’re nuts.

1. Have your sister bring you two heart-shaped helium balloons tied to a breadstick and a half-eaten cupcake. Eat the breadstick, feed her the cupcake, leave with balloons tied to briefcase.

2. Make phone calls in the public office in code (Don’t forget to overthrow the emperor of Dogonia).

3.Loudly and vocally berate your computer for presuming to know more.

4. Call in sick, but then show up an hour later in the best of health.

5. Sing nonsense to yourself while editing.

6. Variously be able to speak fluent Urdu, and then not.

7. Drive to work in a car filled with fruit, piles of sugar and stray lentils (they don’t know the Silver Bullet is moonlighting as the pick and drop vehicle at your dad’s restaurant).

8. Prepare 20 news articles with the wrong dateline. (You mean it’s not 1997?)

9. Atleast twice a week ask, “What’s my home phone number again?”

10. Work till the usual hour, close up shop, say goodbye and leave, return five minutes later and fire up the machines again. After ten minutes, leave again, come back one hour later, ask to borrow a prayer rug from surprised building maintenance staff, and then finally, leave for good.

11. Regularly, even after working there for two years, forget the office address, phone number and email addresses.

12. Be heard battling sticky desk drawer, complete with loud pounding and Chicago-style expletives, only to be found sitting calmly at desk, a picture of propriety and goodness, two minutes later.

I’ve got good news! I finally figured out what to do with my long-standing and unwanted friend. I know, I know, you weren’t introduced. Sorry about that. I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

*ahem*

“My dear blogistani, I’d like you to meet someone who’s practically a member of the family.”
“Oh really?” you would reply.
“Yes, they’ve been with us for what feels like forever. They’ve been living in our very home for years in fact.”
“How do you know them?” you would ask.
“It all happened many summers ago. One day, as we were shopping in a local grocery store my mother stumbled across them and invited them home. They’ve been with us ever since.”
“That’s nice,” you would nod and smile, looking a bit confused. “And why did she do that?”
“Well that day, my mom, in a fit of fancy, decided that a certain void in her life could only be filled with …. A 16 ounce can of artichoke hearts.”

And then the confusion would begin. So thus, I never mentioned the fact that we’ve had a lovely, but now aging, can of artichoke hearts in our cabinet for many years. You weren’t told of how it had an esteemed place among the other preserved vegetables. It and the five year old can of sardines and the twin tins of cat food that outlasted three kittens, are the elders in the pantry, and have seen many a jar of mayonnaise and bottle of mustard come and go while they stood firm.

It’d go on like that and you’d grow ever more sure that I was off my rocker. So I never bothered to introduce you to it and now it’s too late. As of the last fluffy-old-lady-tea-party I attended, this family fixture was turned into “Baked Cheesy Artichoke Dip.” Sounds hokey, but you have no idea how long it took me to find a reasonably edible-sounding recipe that included such a weird ingredient.

You see, the reason why we had kept this can of strange vegetables for so long was not due to misplaced sentimentality, insanity, or an unnatural affection towards canned vegetable matter, but rather due to sheer ignorance. I mean, really, what DO you do with 145 rupees worth of preserved artichoke hearts? Do people even eat them? I never had. I can’t imagine any use for the stuff, aside from giving a wobbly table a prop. I suppose my mom might somewhere, in the dark recesses of her domestic mind, know a recipe for them, but I don’t, or at least, I didn’t for a long time.

Last month I decided that I absolutely had to get rid of them. My decision was prompted by the sudden and unexpected suicide of an ancient can of mango pulp. I don’t know how long we’d had that either, but one day it decided it couldn’t face the pain of this world any longer and it exploded, complete with shocking report, and turned the inside of the china hutch a horrible shade of greyish orangish purple. Fearing the same fate for the artichoke hearts, I decided then and there to put them out of their misery.

That set me off on an epic journey to find a recipe for my dear friends, the pickled residents of the “American Garden” brand can barcode 9834511. I got out our huge pile of cookbooks and set to it. Some were recent and new agey, full of weird suggestions for the ruination of perfectly good ingredients and there were many more recipes for tofu than a person would ever need. Others were old, relics of the 1950’s when women wore flawless make-up, big hair, high heels and lacy aprons while butchering turkeys and wrangling legs of mutton. We had American, Pakistani, Chinese, Mexican, Vegetarian and Lean, but none of them, mind you, NONE knew any edible use for canned artichoke hearts.

I then took my search to the wide expanse of the world wide web. If there is something to be found, some information to be discovered, a recipe somewhere for the viable cooking of my artichoke hearts, it would be on the Internet. For days I sat and sifted through recipe after recipe, most too strange or too exotic for my needs. One suggested frying them with seasoned lamb cubes. No one in my family likes lamb. Next please. Another involved stuffing the hollowed-out hearts with sausage and shrimp. Er… artichoke hearts on their own sound weird enough, cramming them with beef and seafood didn’t seem like an improvement. Lots seemed as if the artichokes were an after thought, like a perfectly normal casserole with ‘pile-o-hearts’ in the center. Sounds like something I’d come up with if I didn’t find a recipe and soon (artichoke milkshake anyone?). Strangely I did find lots of Arab recipes for them. I wasn’t aware that artichokes grew out there in the deserts of Arabia, but I guess do. Anyways though, as much as I’m a fundu Muzlamic in pseudo Arab garb, I really don’t like Arab food.

So I had to concede defeat for a while. I just couldn’t find what I needed, which was a viable, edible-sounding recipe that didn’t involve things like wine (soak something in alcohol and who cares what it tastes like anyways?), honey baked ham (oink) or fish eyes (I don’t do organs). The can of artichokes hearts, which we’d pulled out and set on the counter like a hopeful trophy, was again crammed into the pantry.

I’d nearly forgotten about them when late one evening a few days back, Abez suddenly remembered that she had a potluck tea party the next day. We were in a pickle. You can’t go grocery shopping late at night here (in Islamabad, the city dies at sundown) and there wasn’t very much on hand. We did a quick inventory of the fridge, cabinets, pantry and china hutch and came back with, among other things, the can of artichoke hearts. Oh yeah, and those two cans of cat food, but I didn’t think it’d be nice to serve roadkill pâté to my mom’s friends. I did consider it though.

One more time I did a recipe search, but added the word “cheese,” as we had a few varieties on hand. The results yielded a few dozen varieties of a traditional American party food (that of course I’d never heard of) the “Baked Cheesy Artichoke Dip.” It looked simple enough, cheese, mayonnaise, onions, spice and artichokes, all ground up, baked and served with crackers and bread. In the US mayonnaise is an ultimate good and you can’t go wrong with cheese, so it had our vote.

With some ceremony the can of artichoke hearts was brought out, kind words spoken over it, a viewing was held, some tears shed, and then it met its doom at the can opener. It was mashed together, thrown in a dish and baked. The next morning it was taken to the tea party where a few dozen voracious old bridge, bingo and Scrabble sharks in the deceiving get-up of white-haired old biddies, piled it onto crackers and spread it on French bread, scarfed it down and scraped the dish clean. I guess that would be a success then.

Yay! Mission accomplished. Now I have to find a use for a huge tub of baking cocoa, 40lbs of green sprinkles, a pint of lemon extract and a gunny sack of chickpeas. Any takers?

Last night I was suddenly awoken from my sleep by a window-rattling boom that I was sure was an explosion. Hey, when you live in Pakistan, in the stinking capital, bombings are a realistic possibility. It took a few tense minutes of me sitting up in bed, peering out into the dark room, heart racing, fuddled mind worrying through the possibilities before the room lit briefly with lightning. It was a storm and the bang was just thunder. Subhanallah. That was the first time in my life I was scared by the weather.

When I was younger and scared of nothing I was always thumbing my nose at the kids who hid in their closets and under their beds when it stormed. I couldn’t understand how that kind of stuff was frightening. Where I grew up we had big storms every spring and fall, and thunder and lightning was just a matter of course. If it was raining, chances are I’d be outside with one of my mom’s best umbrellas trying to pull a Merry Poppins and doing my darndest to turn the umbrella inside-out in the wind. When we stayed at my grandmother’s house in rural Indiana I’d go hiking or take off on long bike rides when it stormed. In Karachi, the occasional gales would be welcomed by us kids as we ran to our roofs to play slip and slide and to hell with the risk of being hit by lightning or breaking your head on the stone floor.

Kids are just fearless I guess. When I was little I blanched at nothing - snakes, spiders, dogs, the dark, heights, deep water, sickness, bugs, dares - purely due to my own foolish delusions of immortality. There’s no concept of dying when you’re a kid. Only old people die. When you’re little, you are the main character in your own adventure story (me, a mix of Dorothy Gale and Huck Finn) and never do you halt your own missions and mighty plans to contemplate things like the miracle of rain or the awesome power of nature. You take the world you live in for granted.

I guess maybe cuz I’m wiser now or maybe just cuz I’ve gone soft, but I was actually nearly terrified when I heard that soul-shaking rumble last night. It was as if someone snuck up behind me and said “boo!” and scared the puffed up certainty and dissatisfaction right out of me. Nothing rids you of a disregard for your own life quite so much as the possibility of it being taken. Thunder rolls and suddenly you remember that you’re small fish in the grand scheme of things and your life is just one in a sea of candles that will eventually be snuffed out.

And with age has come *some* smarts. Feeling the deep roll of thunder displays the sheer unending power of God and the system of nature He has put into place. It’s no wonder I thought “bomb!” when I heard the thunder last night. Thunder is the explosive sound produced by an ordinary lightning discharge. The lightning bolt heats the air around it so quickly (within a few millionths of a second) and to such a high temperature (about 10,000° C, or about 18,000° F) that the air molecules are pushed apart with great force, much like in an explosion. A wave of compressed air (a sound wave) moves out from the lightning bolt, so sayeth my Encarta.

Lightning, the sight of atmospheric electricity being discharged into the earth and sky, is awe-inspiring. Imagine just how many light bulbs it would take to turn the dark night as bright as day for as far as the eye can see? That power, usually over 10,000 volts per centimetre, is blind and without purpose. It is never diminished from its source. God doesn’t run out of lightning bolts and there’s no shortage of static to make more. And to remember that lightning can fry a person within seconds and claims thousands of lives a year, but usually only gives its viewers a lovely light show, is amazing.

“It is He who doth show you the lightening by way of both fear and hope. It is He Who doth raise up the clouds, heavy with (fertilising) rain! The thunder repeateth his praises, and so do the angels, with awe. He flingeth the loud-voiced thunderbolts and therewith he striketh whomsoever he will. Yet these are men the whole they are disputing about Allah, He is mighty in power.” 12-13, Surat Al-Ra’d, The Holy Qur’an

I think I’ve finally figured out why I don’t feel like typing nuttin these days. It’s the cold. I’ve been in a continual state of near- thaw and mainly freezer burnt since October. Abez and I have taken to greeting each other with “F’rizANG?� “f’RRriZaANG!!!� (home slang for “I’m freezing�) instead of the old “Wassap.� She’s frozen, I’m frozen but everyone else is having a ball.

As I sit here, dully picking at the keyboard with frozen fingers I keep thinking to myself “Dang it, this is supposed to be a tropical country!� I’ve more than once yelled the very same thing at the wind as it cut through my many sweaters and made mincemeat of my socks and boots. If any of ya’ll see an irritated looking Muslimah of indeterminate origin wandering around Islamabad yelling at the over-cast sky and shaking her fist at the passing breezes, that’ll be me.

Ok, I admit, Pakistan isn’t truly a ‘tropical country.’ We’ve got deserts but we’ve also got the Himalayas. I gotta admit though, in my head, any land where camels walk the streets, palm trees grow of their own volition and there is sand away from the shore, is a tropical country gosh darnit! And don’t try and prove me wrong! Remember, I’m half-American, and them yanks aren’t too well known for their sense of geography and general knowledge of the world outside of the contiguous states. I’m lucky I even know where Pakistan IS, let alone what kind of temperature category it falls into.

It really confuses most folks here that I find the Pakistani winter cold. They see me, a kid born and raised in the American Mid-West, who’s lived through at least three blizzards and has had their fair share of sledding, ice skating and snow balling and they figure I should be like the Abominable Snowman or something. But, um, you know, back in the US we had central heating. And when we went outdoors we wore jackets, parkas, snowsuits, hat, scarves, facemasks, insulated underclothes, boots and gloves. Once the mercury fell past 60 Fahrenheit we’d crank up our heating systems and be toasty. I don’t think our house back in the States ever got colder than 65 degrees, no matter what was raging out of doors. Here folks just make do with little gas heaters in their huge spacious cement rooms and sweaters over their summer clothes. Oh yeah, and they eat a lot of roasted peanuts and stuff. Apparently they’re good to fight the chill.

When I visit my relatives in Karachi I’m automatically assumed to be weatherproof, or at least, cold-proof. The realization that I’m not, and that I’m not braving the city’s temperate winters as well as the natives, is greatly amusing to them. After all, I grew up with white winters and they didn't. Shouldn’t I then be impervious to Karachi’s few frigid breezes? Judging by my shivering and my clattering teeth, apparently not. If I’m seen wearing a sweater, they smirk. When I hide my numb feet in oversized furry socks, they ask me with a knowing smile, “what, cold?� I remember once an elder girl cousin saw my naturally purple fingernails and very jovially asked me what made them that color. “Is it a new polish?� "Nope, I’m just freezing to death is all.� She laughed like mad and said she wished hers did that when she had a purple outfit to wear. Year round ladies down there wear ‘lawn suits,’ which are practically like cheese cloth they’re so thin, and when I come for a visit my suitcase is packed with wool, acrylic and fleece. Everywhere I go, my outfits are a riot and there’s always something to talk about.

Even my dad is put out by the fact that his daughter Aniraz, who supposedly has a large part Germanic and British blood running through her veins, is unable to handle his home country’s cold. The sight of me burrowing under a pile of blankets at the computer or reading a book while practically perched on the space heater makes my dear old dad sigh and look grim. I’m wearing two pairs of pants, three shirts, a knit cap, socks and closed shoes sipping on heated water and he’s in a t-shirt and tahmad eating ice cream, I kid you not. I guess I should be puttering around the house in a Hawaiian shirt, sunglasses and flip-flops while drinking iced-tea and sticking it to Old Jack Frost. My dad has already decided that I’m made out of second rate materials and kids today just aren’t what they used to be. I’m a huge disappointment you know.

The dudes at my office have come to regard me as some pathetic little creature. They’ve given me the biggest heater in the building, which is nearly half the size of my desk, while the rest of them do with one that’s a fourth the size. It’s been pulled up to within a foot of my chair and is fired up the moment I pull into the driveway. They look saddened and perplexed when they pop into my office and find me frantically blowing on my fingers or sitting on one hand as I feebly type with the other. I wore gloves once and it made them all look so pained and depressed I quickly put them away. If I resort to bringing extra sweaters or shawls to the office, they offer to find me another heater, or suggest that maybe I should work from home, where it is ideally warmer, rather than put up with the extreme weather conditions at the office. I’m hopeless ya’ll. Just buy me one of those big barbeque pits and throw me in. At least I’ll die warm.

By the way, it’s about 50 degrees here.

Such is sibling rivalry. Abez is kicking my butt so what do I do? I pull some shameless self promotion of my own. Sigh. :D *teeth*

After days of feeling absolutely uninspired to write a dang blog entry I now find myself partially blinded by some migraine static in my vision. Everything is zinging and fluctuating and I can't see through this irritating circle of distortion over my left eye.

They say when it rains, it pours. That it does.

Here ya'll, have some poetry, on the house.

How Did You Die?

Did you tackle that trouble that came your way
With a resolute heart and cheerful?

Or hide your face from the light of day
With a craven soul and fearful?

Oh, trouble's a ton, or trouble's an ounce,
Or a trouble is what you make it.

And it isn't the fact that you're hurt that counts,
But only how did you take it?


You are beaten to earth? Well, well, what's that?
Come up with a smiling face.

It's nothing against you to fall down flat,
But to lie there - that's disgrace.

The harder you're thrown, why the higher you bounce;
Be proud of your blackened eye!

It isn't the fact that you're licked that counts;
It's how did you fight and why?


And though you be done to death, what then?
If you battled the best you could;

If you played your part in the world of men,
Why, the critic will call it good.

Death comes with a crawl, or comes with a pounce,
And whether he's slow or spry,

It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?

- Edmund Vance Cooke

That lamp, painstakingly polished in the month of Ramadan, is losing its shine. Its wick, so carefully set alight, burns down. Distracted by the happenings outside, we turn our away from its flickering flame. The hands that cupped its illumination and gathered round its warmth have found other occupations. The shoulder that blocked the wind - hunkered down and turned towards the cold - is leaning elsewhere. The light, fed with the fuel of faith, grows dim again.

The well of patience so recently filled to overflowing is running dry. Its cold sweet water slowly is laced by the frustration and irritation that seeps in at the walls. Acid anger eats at its base, draining away the fluid that we dug so deep to find. Though its contents still quench thirst, its purpose is forgotten and to wet our throats we look elsewhere. To put out flames we instead grab at oil, blindly pushing past the thing best made to extinguish unwanted fire.

The fort is crumbling. Its walls shudder in storms and splinter when the firmament quakes. The rocks of discipline and restraint, that we broke our backs to break, sit idly at the quarry. The mortar mixed to hold them in place, powdered pride and crushed conceit, has turned to chalk in wait. Walls built high in weeks of toil, packed in place with prayer and tears, face the grating wind unfinished. Its hard-packed base is all that keeps the battlements in place until the negligent bricklayer returns next year to start up where left off.

The powder kegs, diligently emptied of their destructive sands, have been slowly filled. Each day that passes finds them fuller, at greater danger of being set off. Each spark that chances by fizzles bright and dances near before being idly stamped out. Hot words are barely swallowed, hateful answers just bitten back, poisonous glances only faintly lidded. There is little buffer left and the embers from the close-burning fires fall ever closer. It will not take much to blow it wide and lay low all that was carefully gathered in the holy month.

We have sent our sentinels away, released from the restrictions of Ramadan. Freed of his yearly caging, The Whisperer returns and walks past the unmanned gates. An unwelcome but unhindered advisor, he stands just away and quietly hints, offers and tempts. Our tired beings, relaxing from one trial passed, lend an indulgent ear to that ancient pest. At his suggestions first we laugh, then we smile, then we nod, then we consider and soon we taste.

Man is forgetful. He forgets what he has learned. He forgets what he knows. He forgets his promises. He forgets The Truth.

It has only been two weeks and already I have forgotten.

Tomorrow I fast again.

Today around noonish Abez calls me up at my office and tells me that unless I’d like to give the two-day-old vegetable soup another try, then I should pick up something for lunch on the way home from work. I give her my usual answer, “Royalty never carries money,” which is code for “I’m broker than a joke yo, and even if I wasn’t, my briefcase is just for show. The money is in my purse at home.” She laughs, “Oh yeah, I forgot, your highness. Fine, soup it is, again.”

I ring off. Three hours later I finish my editing and check out. When trying to find my car keys my fingers run across a crumpled 500 rupee note crammed in a forgotten recess of my brief case. In Pakistani terms, that’s more than enough for a couple lunches’ worth of grocery shopping, so I make a note to stop at the market on the way home and buy some food fixings. I mentally do an inventory of the cabinets at home and decide to buy some oatmeal, sandwich buns, spices, tomatoes, apples and some luncheon meat - useful stuff that should last us a couple days.

When I drive though, I kinda zone out. I’m paying more attention to swerving, speeding, passing and dodging and not so much on where I’m going. I had already driven past all the good bakeries and grocery stores by the time I remembered I had errands to run. The only big shop left on my route was the general store a couple miles from my house. It would do. I zoom past a taxi, go a bit too fast over two unnecessary and unsuccessful speed bumps and sharply turn into the parking lot.

Back in the old days, when I lived in the US, I was the one who did most of the grocery shopping. Or rather, the parental units would always bring me along cuz I was like a living grocery list. I knew what we were out of and what we didn’t need for a couple months (Khan family rule of thumb- never buy applesauce. We still have enough jars of the stuff left from my preschool days to feed a toddler army. Nobody eats it anyways). I also ran a pretty good mental calculator back then, handy for staying within budget and getting the best buys. And my niftiest feature was that I would stealthily put the gratuitous junk back on the shelves that had somehow made it into the cart. But that was a long time ago, and since then, I think I’ve only regressed and de-evolved.

Yeah, so today me shopping by myself, without my Abez or my parental unit, I was reminded how NOT an adult I am. Pay no attention to the car, office and serious-sounding job. I’m really just a 9-years-stale 12 year old.

Today, after idly wandering the aisles for a couple minutes, maturely comparing prices and eyeing canned vegetables I left the store with this:

A bag of caramel corn
Three chocolate hearts
A bag of barbeque chips
Minty chap-stick
A big box of apple juice
A bag of dill chips.
A bottle of pomegranate squash
And…….. (drum roll please)……
……….Two tooth brushes

There, so I’m not a complete idiot. I bought toothbrushes. Ours didn’t make it back from Karachi in the best of health. They turned an unhealthy shade of pestilence after being soaked in some iodine that leaked out and contaminated our stuff. You know you need new oral hygiene implements when yours have turned orange, albeit, due to unnatural causes.

I got home and proudly handed the bags to a waiting Abez. “Oh, so you did have some cash on you after all?” she murmured, rummaging through the sacks. Before I could answer she starts laughing. ”Hah hah, I’m not sending you shopping any more you bum.”

What’s wrong with potatoes (chips), corn (the popped and caramel coated variety), fruit (well, what remains after you squeeze it to death and add sugar), milk (milk chocolate, milk, who’s paying that much attention anyways) and… herbs? Mint (chapstick) is an herb and so is dill (dilly chips), right? My mom says herbs are good for you. All my menu lacks is some protein and I figure barbeque flavoured chips fill that slot nicely. Abez wasn’t buying it though. Apparently, this isn’t the lunch she had in mind.

So soup it was.

Inventory: Stuff at home that you forgot you missed while away in Karachi for three weeks

Item 1. Your own bed. It’s soft, it’s lovely, and though you have a hate-hate relationship with sleep, you realize that the bed isn’t to blame. It’s a far cry from the past few weeks of furniture-induced insomnia you’ve had. Unlike the bed lent to you in Karachi, yours has no evil springs that refuse to lay flat and no Abez in it to elbow you in the ear. Your bed has been molded to fit you specifically and it’s all yours.

Item 2. Pillows. Wondrous pillows that don’t feel like they’re made out of old cement sponges or are just for show. Yours are squashy, and they don’t break your head or give you a daily neck ache. There are plenty to throw about, and are soft enough to whomp your roomie without causing death or dismemberment, in case you feel like keeping her on her toes.

Item 3. Black coffee. Worry not that folks will think you a snooty weirdo for insisting that your coffee (Maxwell House and not the horrid Nescafe) be black, low on sugar and high on the grinds. Get your caffeine fix with two cups of rich and concentrated black gold and forget there was ever such a thing as chai, chai and chai.

Item 4. The Silver Bullet, your personal travel pod, aka The Car. You have wheels. You can tear up this one horse town and give the tainga to gawking paindoos. You’re the one causing the cringing and flinching with your mad driving, not the great cousins and uncles who did the driving for you back in Karachi. No waiting patiently to be driven around town by relations. Freedom. Awwww yeaaaaahh…

Item 5. Unlimited internet access. Need I say w00t!? The phone line is yours, all yours, and to hell with incoming calls. Feel the wasteful extravagance of replying to emails online and blogging for the first time in three weeks. Laugh maniacally when your sibling tells you to get off the line and stop wasting time. Try not to get drunk on the power.

Item 6. Food that you actually want to eat. Fret no more about deadly indigestion and caustic heartburn. Sigh not in sadness at the pots of food made in a style you’re unused to. No need to live on tea and fruit alone. Graduate yourself back up from one fourth of a roti per meal to a half. Wander around your own kitchen, cook, bake, eat bland western food and smile.

Item 7. Hijab-free-ness. The ears can breath. The scalp gets air. You rediscover your forehead.

Item 8. House clothes. Yep, you can drop the farce. You aren’t really a well-dressed and carefully groomed adult. You’re just a grown-up bum who putters about in unfashionable clothing that your housekeeper claims looks like upholstery fabric that was officially “expired” last season. No need to be ready to entertain and meet unexpected guests. Dig out your pajamas, find a furry hat and slide across the floor in your socks.

Item 9. The dog. After being looked down on for three weeks by a snotty house-cat at the uncle’s, you realize why there are dog people in the world. Your silly mangy mutt makes it very clear, *jump, boing, yip, tail wag,* that she missed you like the dickens. You don’t have to wait for her to make time for you so she can barely tolerate a few pats on the head. Walk out the door to the courtyard and she’s always a willing audience. Yeah, she’s a dirty old dog, but heck, she loves you.

Item 10: Islamabad. The streets that were too empty before you left now seem quaint. The traffic you thought was impossible, in comparison to Karachi, is a cakewalk. The silence and the stillness you found stifling is now tranquillity. Nothing makes a person appreciate boring old Islamabad quite so much as the pandemonium that is Karachi.

Item 11: Just being home. ‘Tis a lovely feeling.

I am home.

I’m always ready to visit Karachi, and never ready to leave. It seems too soon, but work calls and my own life, away from this borrowed one I’ve gathered round me, claims my attention. I can only hope I’ve soaked up enough Karachi to last me until my next holiday. After years of visiting back and forth, I’ve learnt to take in as much of this city as possible and to savor its moments.

You can find Karachi in the smell of a sliced guava, and taste it in a kinoo sprinkled with black pepper and salt. Only in Karachi do the chutney-filled gol guppay break in your mouth the way they should and only in Karachi is haleem good enough to make your nose run and your eyes water. Remember Karachi when you hear the slap of flatbread being made in mud ovens, the clang of the kulfi sellers and metallic clatter of bun kabob and katakat sellers. Feel it when the charcoal smoke of the barbeque restaurants burn your eyes and wake up your stomach. It is inhaled in the mingled steam of boiling tea and milk that bubbles at the stove. The feel of Karachi is warm grainy flour between your fingers as you tear fresh chapatti bread, perfectly shaped by a cousin with years of round-roti experience. Karachi can be heard in the roaring sizzle of onions and cumin being thrown into hot oil for a bhagar to be added to a pot of lentils. Even the simplest foods seem to have that magic amount of spice.

To know Karachi, one must come here and feel the anonymity it lends. In a city of 15m, we are all just another body in the crush. You are never alone. The bazaars are always busy, sidewalks full, restaurants crowded and buses jam-packed. It is people as far as the eye can see, and in every size and variety found in this country, a mix of colors and cultures. Here, no one is special. Try to shop, hail a cab or flag down a waiter and find yourself unimportant, one among many with one equalizing measure – money. The note of a foreigner is worth the same as the note of a farmer. Fortunes change hands every day, and to the hawker, you are just another face he will not recognize again. Drive Karachi’s long roads at night and find other cars full of would-be loners, watching the passing neon signs and ever-present store lights lull a disturbed mind to restfulness. At home, every evening is a party as relatives and family friends drop by regularly, unexpected but always welcomed. Privacy is rare and something few feel the need for here.

What makes this city is the canvas it is painted on. To see it, climb dark stairs and head to the roof to see the night sky. Spread out a mat and lay back to see the whole picture. It is framed by the straight lines of ghostly roof walls and the palm, date and papaya trees looming to the sides. Here the stars seem to hang lower and shine more clearly. Stretching out to trace the shape of Orion, find Beetlejuice, locate the dippers or search the constellations and you almost expect to catch the sharp point of a star. The space above is not a dull grey or blackened mauve, it is a deep dark blue, as if untouched by the city’s millions of lights. Loose grey clouds beard the round face of the white moon before they move on, racing each other across the expanse. Late in the night, while the home beneath you sleeps and the city around hums quietly, in that dark stillness you can almost feel the distant orbiting of the world you left behind. Aside from the odd bat careening by, the Karachi roof top at night is silent and solitary.

In the day, the constant glare of the sun is regularly speckled with hawks circling over head, making their dominion of the skies known with unchallenged shrill cries. Even in the shade of a cool drawing room, you can see their slight shadows passing over windows as they dive and soar. Their piercing shrieks are followed by the dull flutter and flap of soft flocks of frightened pigeons, trying to lose themselves in the brightness of the stark canopy overhead. To hear Karachi, listen for the contented gurgle of a resting dove and the rapid greetings of escaped parrots. It hangs in the thick smell of exhaust and broken sewer-lines that wafts over the boundary walls. It passes with the cool westerly breezes that dip down in the courtyards and carry off the smog. Karachi echoes in the muffled call of the cart-walas and the roar of the rickshaws that pass outside. It jingles in the bells of the donkey carts and wails in the ever-presence of music that seeps out of homes, stores and cars.

Here, we are all family. Karachi is full of all types, a patchwork population drawn from the Subcontinent over the past 57 years, and yet still there is room for this wanderer to stand in. Even in its hugeness there is belonging. It is a feeling that is refreshed each year when I’m squeezed by the encompassing hugs of my lovely aunts. I see it in the kind eyes of uncles as they awkwardly touch my head in salutation and ask me how I’ve been. It lives in the warm smiles of distant relations, who despite all the years, seem to remember my every silly habit when I was a kid and will happily remind me of them. It humbles you when venerable elder cousins offer to run errands or buy you ice cream if you’re feeling like some. I find it in the graciousness of my once little nieces and nephews, now gangly teenagers, when they seek me out for a game of badminton, homework help or to talk. Family is even in the chiding and prying questions of relations curious of my uncultured and avara ways, who mutter that even now she is yet not tame. Each visit we are welcomed back as if away for a century and are seen off as if we are again flying across the oceans to our once-home in the West.

It is a thousand feelings and a million pictures that I could never begin to tabulate. I’ve stuffed my pockets with as much as I can, I can only hope it’s enough to tide me over in the long dull days of home.

On the second day of Eid I nearly got myself bludgeoned to death by a group of poisonous looking midgeteers and preteens. I was sitting there in the parlor, trying to manage some of that idiotic shallow socialization that is known as ‘small talk’ with a distant relation when the topic of Eidi came up.

Eidi, by the way, is the gift of money that Muslims give those younger than them on the Eid holidays (we have two a year). It goes like this, on Eid, we all get dressed up in the morning go and pray a special Eid prayer. After it finishes, while still on the prayer mat you turn and do this triple hug thing to those you know nearby -right-left-right- over each shoulder. When you get home, your relations start pouring in, who you will also meet with the triple hug. Those elder than you, generally the wives of the couples, will then give you a gift of money, which you’re supposed to take while saying Assalamu Alaikum (peace be upon you) or touching your forehead.

Once a person marries, they fall into the Eidi-giving group and they’ll be expected to give the money gifts to anyone and everyone younger or unmarried. Yep, that means I got Eidi this year from girls years younger than me, cuz they were Mrs’s and I was just an unsalaried Ms. Of course, I didn’t correct that misassumption. *teeth* The Eidi chain of command falls heaviest on the eldest couples, who will give Eidi to everyone younger or lower in the familial pecking order. Even my white-haired abbu had to take Eidi from his equally white-haired elder brothers and aunts.

The amount of money that changes hands during this holiday is insane. Typically, a middle-class kid this Eid received about Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,500, which is a lot considering that a living wage here is considered about Rs 6,000 a month. My dad told me that by cautious estimates he parted with over Rs 4,000 this year, and he didn’t even meet all that many relations. Parents across the country dish out the money to disperse among their families, and while they get Eidi too from their elders, between adults it’s always just an exchange. I give you Eidi, you give me Eidi, and in the end, we still have roughly the same amount of money. Adults incur huge losses, young adults use their Eidi to buy gifts for friends, kids are handed small fortunes, and in the end, the only one who immediately benefits are the corner candy shops and toy stores, where all the tykes run down to cash in.

For kids, Eidi is the absolute best part of Eid. Forget the holiness, new clothes, fancy shoes, bracelets, special sweet dishes and meeting of cousins, -cough- it is all about the Benjamins baby-cough-. Everyone under the age of 14 hides their growing Eidi in some secret place and will keep a running tally on the haul. When you meet other little monsters, you compare your stashes to see who has more and exchange info (“Shama aunty is giving big this year! Don’t forget to meet her!”).

Weeks before Eid they’ve made plans for how they’re going to spend their money. Some have toys to buy, others games, and the more thrifty will go for quantity and not quality and instead decide to use their money to buy a soda-pop and an ice-lolly every day for as long as possible.

Back when I was a wee lil brat, compared to the full-sized one I am now, on Eid I’d join my cousins at Mamoo’s, the local general store. Mamoo, a smart businessman, would have set up a tent with chairs for all the little kids to come and recline beneath while drinking insane amounts of pop and eating toxic fried snacks and candies away from their mothers’ eyes. We’d then rush off, a tiny tribe of moneyed people, down to the toy store, the arcade and the bakery. On the way we’d find the air-gun-wala, who let us shoot balloons and little plastic men with his pellet rifle for a couple of rupees. We’d buy noise makers and balloons from the sellers canvassing the neighborhood. We’d get sick on the rickety wooden carnival rides wheeled over to the nearby maidan (playing field). Some of us would waste our money on stupid postcards with the pictures of favorite actors, actresses and cartoons on them. Girls would buy dolls and plastic dishes and boys would get toy swords and figurines. After buying firecrackers and plastic balls, knee-high Aniraz would set the rest of her Eidi stock aside for something grand like a jetpack or, more realistically, a bike.

Anyways, the way I see it, the Eidi giving has gone a bit overboard. Yeah, a gift is nice and in order on holidays, but when parents have to tighten their belts, rebalance their budgets months in advance or take loans just to keep up with tradition, then it’s out of control. And as a former kidling, I must admit that we really never needed that much money to waste. It’s not as if we aren’t given toys and candies throughout the year, cuz we are. And we really don’t need to have ice cream and chips every day for six months afterwards. It just seems sorta silly that parents are undertaking so much hardship and difficulty just so their kids can have a small fortune to spend like water as they wish.

My thought was instead of making Rs 20 the standard, why not Rs 5, and instead of Rs 500 being the high point, why not Rs 50? Why do parents have to go for max joy when a little joy is enough? In midget math a total of 500 rupees should be as good as a total of 1,500 rupees. Both amounts are more than they’ll spend in one place.

I’m not actually sure whether Eidi is even a valid Islamic tradition. My interneting is very much limited so I can’t log on and check and I’m away from home so I don’t have any Hadith books handy. But what I can say for sure is that wasteful spending in the name of tradition is looked down upon in Islam. We’re told to be generous with those younger and those of lesser means, within the bounds of sanity, without having to borrow or put ourselves in great difficultly to do so. And Eidi isn’t really charity anyways, so it doesn’t get the same rewards or follow the same criteria. You’re not giving to the poor so they can purchase basic amenities, you’re giving cash to your over-fed little relations so they can buy junk upon junk.

That’s what I was telling my dad’s mom’s half-sister’s son’s wife (who by Pakistani standards is practically my aunt) that evening on the second day of Eid when I nearly met my doom. As I was going on about my revolutionary social idea, the room grew still and all the usual chattering and whooping little kids running about slowed in their places and listened. Needless to say, they weren’t too hot about the idea. You could see it as their beady little eyes hardened and focussed on me and I could feel the pricks of their rage. Under their angry gazes, I let my sermon quietly drop off into uncertain mutterings. Somehow I imagine being beaten to death by tiny little fists wouldn’t be too pleasant an experience.

And I still love kids, I just don't underestimate them.
*grins*
*shudders*
*runs away*