Pardon my lateness in updating. I’m just kaput these days. The past few weeks have been eaten up in all sorts of junk – cleaning, packing, visiting warehouses, inspecting progress at the new house, work junk, social junk and just junk. And plus, my brain has been on hiatus. It hasn’t returned since I threatened it with a deadline. Every time I try I dial it up, all I get is holding music.

Yeah, as Abez has mentioned, we’re moving… AGAIN. We seem to do this a lot – say, every year or four or so. Despite the amazingly contrary differences in my parents – one a small town American uber Christian and the other a big town conservative Pakistani Muslim – they have one thing in common – they’re both nomads. They like moving. They get antsy staying anywhere too long.

In my short 21 years of life, I’ve been picked up and moved approximately eight times and this will be the ninth. They’re rarely drastic moves. They’ve all been within three cities – Chicago, Islamabad and Karachi – of which the instances of country-changing moves have only been three. The longest we ever stayed in one place was eight years at the house where I was born. I guess the shock of my birth was too much. Took some years to recover from it. After that, we haven’t stayed in the same place for more than four years at a time.

Yeah, so suddenly I find myself packing again. The house is full of boxes and everything is a wreck. Rooms have to be disassembled, their contents sorted, packaged, boxed and labeled. The home that we have spent the past three years trying to make look lived-in is again to be reduced to bare white walls and empty shelves. And strangely, as disconcerting as this used to be when I was younger, I really don’t mind it now.

I sorta like packing. I always begin feeling bogged down and burdened when I come to own too much junk, and moving gives me a guiltless opportunity to throw out anything that has little use in my daily life. It’s a strangely refreshing to reduce your life and your past to a few boxes worth of memories and a suitcase or two of apparel. To move often is to live like a snail, carrying your home on your back, and it’s worth your while to make sure that the burden you carry isn’t a backbreaking one.

Clothes and shoes are sorted into two piles: that which can be worn again without earning me the scorn of my mom and our housekeeper (my two unasked-for fashion advisors) and things too big, too old, too stained and too worn out to bother with. My overflowing bookshelves will also be sorted. Books of value, that still enrich, inform and entertain after continuous reads, will be kept while the piles of garbage writing that we’ve manage to accumulate over the years will be passed on to some other bored bums. A lot of my recent toys– hats, slingshots, figurines, novelty garbage – will probably be donated to some action group that sells used stuff for money. They say if you love something, you should set it free, and I do love me crazy junk, so I’m going to pass it on to the next weirdo to enjoy.

Even the keepsakes are slowly being weeded out. Things that were important to me two years ago – the napkin from my eighth grade graduation party, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle buttons, the blockhead-G bendy-man that used to live in the bridge of my cello – have seen their triviality grow and are unlikely to make another move. All the papers I kept from grammar school will also undergo some serious sorting. Really, there’s no point in me keeping memos full of biology notes. They didn’t help me then, chances are they won’t help me now. The malicious doodles though, they’re hilarious, so I’ll keep them and maybe my blockhead too. Who knows, years from now if I ever go back and attend my high school reunion, I’ll bring him along. He had a hecka following.

It’s such a blast from the past to find old folders and journals full of the ramblings of an immature Owl. I couldn’t help but cringe when I read my seventh-grade plans. Apparently, I wanted to be a pediatrician. Hell, I didn’t remember that. I was so sure I’d avoided that desi cliché of wanting to be a doctor when I grew up. I guess not. Not so surprisingly, perhaps, is right after I claim I want to study medicine, I add that it’s just a stepping stone for my real plans – which are to become the prime minister of Pakistan so I can save the world. Mwuhaha. Imagine, a 12 year old with plans for global domination. What a hoot. No wonder why Mrs Brown thought I was a nutter.

Even younger than that I apparently wished only to be a good little girl who made the honor-roll, got along with my sibthings, helped my mom in the kitchen and brought my dad tea when he came home. *stares* *blinks* *coughs* Yeah, doesn’t sound like the same hell-raiser I am today to me either. Looks like I up all my goody quota early. That explains so much.

Anyways, I must to return to my work. Here are my words of wisdom after sifting through mounds of pointless possessions: Junk is junk. You can’t take it with you to the grave. Owning things doesn’t change who you are. If you have money to burn, give it to me. :D

My dad came home in a huff the other day as I was enjoying a cup of tea after work with my sister.

“Beta, the car’s tire is flat. Did either of you hit another pothole?” he asked.

We were both equally culpable. Being a morning person, I drive the way down to work, and as I’m usually a doddering idiot after hours of mindless editing, my sister drives us back. We looked at each other over our cups of tea and nonchalantly shrugged. I answered, “The question dad, is what pothole DIDN’T we hit.”

Before you roll your eyes and laugh, let me assure you this isn’t a case of “woman drivers.” My sister and I are adept behind the wheel, neither of us has ever caused an accident and our car only has one scratch. I’m going to blame that on a very jealous and territorial wall at my office and leave it at that. The problem instead is, “hello, we live in Islamabad.”

Yes, this is a lovely country, and no I’m not one of those Pakistan-bashers. Or rather, I hate everything equally and I don’t dislike Pakistan anymore than I dislike my native United States. But you can’t deny that the surfaces upon which we drive aren’t ‘roads’ per se, they’re artfully joined holes, craters, ditches and caverns. It’s like driving on crocheted tar.

I know those who survive the Pindi roads, who manage Lahore’s thin gullies and sail through Karachi’s chaotic traffic are laughing to hear a spoiled resident of the capital complain about shoddy infrastructure. We get planned sectors, semi-reliable electricity, generally sewage-free streets and a bit of civic beauty, while the rest make do with infra-destructor. I admit, Islamabad isn’t all that bad. That’s why I’m here rather than toughing it out in a ‘real’ Pakistani city. It’s just the unexpectedness and contrast that gets to me.

I think I might be able to better handle bad roads if they were all bad. When I left the house every morning, I would know what to expect. The roads all over the city would be the same, pocketed and scarred like the face of an unhappy teenager. My car would never know the feeling of fourth and fifth gear. Automobiles in the city would no longer come equipped with shocks or suspension systems at all. They’d just get ruined anyways. As they say here, “bachat ho gi” (we’ll save in the long run). We’d take life slow, preferably in second gear, and simply learn to deal with whiplash and being shell-shocked.

You see, sometimes the streets in this city are wonderful and level – the sort that can easily pass as a road in any first world country – but they go craggy within the blink of an eye. There are some spots in Islamabad that have lovely, smooth blacktop that your car can glide across. You’ll find those bits in downtown, Blue Area, the ‘elegant sectors,’ the Diplomatic Enclave and of course, all around government offices. Elsewhere, there are short patches of unblemished road outside the homes of CDA officials, untouchable bureaucrats, hell-raising journalists, and other unsavory sorts. The rest of us make do with tarmac Swiss cheese.

It’s ironic that those who would actually have the sort of vehicle equipped to handle the substandard motorways – the Pajeros, Prados, Hummers and Jeeps - are the ones who insist on the smooth-as-glass roads. You think they’d want to get their money’s worth out of those off-road-ready automobiles. But they don’t, or maybe they’re saving them for a special occasion, say, Armageddon. They’re kind enough to let we sad, ground-hugging hatchback drivers break in the pre-broken roads for them

Like other wary drivers, I’ve managed to thread a path through the city that avoids the nastiest of roads. It’s a bit of a wandering route – a kilometer east on Parliament Avenue, two blocks west on street 21, doubling back on Faisal Road, a couple yards of driving backwards down Iqbal Road, here, there, and eventually, I’m home. My dad should stop being shocked at how yearly petrol expenses are near equal to PIA’s jet-fuel consumption.

When you do have to get off the beaten path and go to the nether-regions of Islamabad - the G, I and H sectors - you’ve got to stay sharp. I do my damndest to maneuver my sad little Suzuki through the minefields. The trick is to aim for the shallow craters and avoid the ones that can eat your car whole. If you can’t see the bottom of the hole, avoid it, lest you fall through and end up in France. When the road is just too horrible, you’ll probably find the unpaved mountainous ground beside the road a better option. And some advice I’ve learned the hard way – don’t be fooled. Just when you think you’ve found a lovely stretch of street *BAM* you hit a small concave mountain that cracks your car’s axel and flattens not only your tires, but your ego and pneumatic pieces as well.

Little do most know, Islamabad has mirages. Like a dehydrated desert wanderer, after miles devoid of smoothness, the mind begins to hallucinate and imagine what it wants most – a flat surface. Perhaps it is the heat playing tricks on you, or maybe it’s just the brain damage incurred from bouncing your head up into the roof of your car one too many times. In either case, after miles of bumping along, you suddenly see a clear road before you. In giddy insanity you gun your engine to make the most of this marvel, to skate your car across the rare rink before your eyes, to float it across that dance floor. *THWOMP* But alas, it was just a dream, and your broken chassis is tangible evidence of that.

But living in Pakistan, you take the good with the bad and learn how to manage. Substandard roads aren’t fatal (er, well, they aren’t necessarily anyways), and remember, it could always be worse. We could be living on the surface of the moon.

What is it about a deadline that scatters all my semi-intelligent thought like so many airborne bowling pins? How is it that the presence of a deadline looming above my head causes my brain to retract into its shell like a started turtle? Why do I go pedantic and Minglishly whenever I have to write for my bread? Where do my seemingly never-ending weird observations go when I need to prepare an article?

I’ve been talking to the editors at a magazine here about starting a column, and ever since they gave me the go-ahead, I haven’t been able to string to sentences together. It’s funny cuz, that is exactly why I started blogging last year.

I used to have, and apparently still do, a major problem in expressing myself personally. I started blogging to, I dunno, loosen my mental dam, break the floodgates, or something along those metaphoric lines. I hoped that by doing so I would help me find my rhythm so I could one day have my editorials published instead of the usual news and features.

I hoped, I wanted, I thought. I still haven’t achieved.

Today I asked my dad if I could have a brain transplant. He said “sure”. There’s hope for me yet!

I’ve once again been given express instructions to ‘blog about something that makes you smile, like, you know, butterflies, or giving chocolate to children.’

Literal me, arguing that I don’t like bugs and if I had chocolate to spare, fo sho I’d have et it already, didn’t get me out of the chore. There’s to be no complaining, no joking and no preaching. I’m to blog some pleasantness and like it, damnit! (It’s alright B-ness, I suppose even grouchy owls need to lighten up sometimes.)

So here I go....

Happifying things:

1. Silly plastic hair clips
2. Silence, or the absence of civic noise
3. Candy
4. Road trips
5. Remembering to return a favor
6. Rediscovering the sky
7. Making something for someone I know they’d been wanting
8. Funny hats
9. Rudimentary weapons (sling shots, trebuchets, cannons, pea shooters)
10. Leafy trees
11. A good bakery
12. Letters from old friends
13. Manic roller blading in traffic
14. A good game of basketball
15. Fresh flowers
16. Learning something
17. Sloppy little kid smiles
18. Being pleasantly surprised
19. Finding the perfect gift for someone
20. Toothy grins
21. The sound of my dad snoring
22. Kittens
23. Puppies (From a distance. I like the idea of them anyways.)
24. Rodents (Hamsters, mice, guinea pigs, rabbits, gerbils, you name ‘em, I’ve owned ‘em.)
25. My grandma and all her accompanying magic
26. Helium-filled balloons
27. A good pair of sneakers
28. The smell of grandma’s house
29. Crazy socks (I got some with googly-eyed frogs on them)
30. A round of Ping-Pong or Twisted Metal with my lil bro
31. Long bike rides
32. Cartoons (the good ones though, no Chicken and Cow, thankee very much)
33. Laughing so hard my cheeks hurt
34. Getting something right the first time
35. Grannysmith apples
36. Korean stationary and other Engrish masterpieces
37. The sound of my mom’s bangles clinking together
38. Rain, storms and clouds
39. The smell of fresh gingerbread cookies
40. Playing blind-tag at the park
41. Genuine people
42. A good book, or a good few dozen books if I can get them
43. Getting where I’m going
44. Hanging with my lil nieces and nephews
45. Quiet early mornings

There ye go, lots of things that make me smile. And yes, I DO smile, sometimes.

Remember our friend, the ancient can of artichoke hearts? Well, he wasn’t alone in the cabinet. There was also that gastronomic marvel known as tinned corned beef (the halal variety).

Somehow or other we acquired a crate of canned beef a few years back. It was part of our “in-case of famine/general emergency/insanity/or-death-of-tongue” preparation package. It sat in our basement along with two-dozen jars of peanut butter, a sack of rice and a wall of pasta. The other things weren’t so bad, (you can never have too much peanut butter) but tinned meat is downright nasty, and when democracy and goodness prevails in the earth, it will probably be outlawed or sent to the moon along with communists and boy-bands.

When one has a teenaged brother, though, they don’t have to wait long before the processed, sodium-laden, instant cardiac arrest in a tin is scarfed down. With relish. My lil brother, bless him, was the only human being, nay scratch that, the only living being period that was willing to partake of the horror of the canned beef.

He would often come home after hours of basketball, wander into the kitchen, lift the lid of the pot on the stove, and screech out something like “Ew vegetables!” or maybe “What the hell?!?!” and leave the kitchen. He would then find his way to the basement storage area, silently remove one of the cans of beef, and return to the kitchen.

With much gusto, the key would be turned, the lid popped off, and the icky gelatinous mush would be glopped unceremoniously into a non-stick fry pan. Spatula in one hand, pan in the other, the lil bro would fry the daylights out of the stuff, though what good it did, I dunno. I have a feeling that neither snow, sleet, nuclear radiation or a good pan frying could make much of a difference to the recalcitrant pink mystery meat. There probably isn’t a bacterium alive that has the gall to attempt life in a tin of corned beef.

Satisfied that it was good and dead, he would then spread it between slices of toast or scramble it with a half dozen eggs. With his teenage stomach filled with food of no food content, all was then well in the land.

The lil bro has been away at college for the past year, so the tinned meat has been left untouched in the basement. Last week, during our hectic preparations for the arrival of guests, Abez retrieved a can of it to bake up a quick tray of mom’s much-loved ‘corned beef rolls.’ They’re actually pretty good, though I think that’s because the bread dough to corn beef ratio is something like 10-1. She made a half-batch and threw the rest of the meat in the fridge.

It sat there for days, forgotten. Actually, purposely ignored, since neither me nor Abez was keen on doing anything with it. We probably would have let it sit there until it became proper garbage and could then be thrown out. But does canned corned beef even go bad? It might have outlasted us all if I put it to the test. Like graft rejection of host. I felt bad though, since I was raised to never waste food. The sad little 1/4 full can of beef would be sitting there each time I opened the fridge, waiting to be put out of its misery and into ours.

I had to take action! *queue dramatic music* I had a lot of cooking to do over the next couple of days, as we were marooned without Chez Daddy (closed for the holiday). I decided that what Abez didn’t know and what I could conveniently forget, wouldn’t clog our arteries.

When I made chili, a bit of the corned beef jumped in with the ground variety. When I made chowder, the meat moonlighted as halal bacon. The wok of chicken-fried rice came complete with confusing non-poultry bits, just like authentic Chinese! And my crowning achievement - ratatouille with essence of unknown. Everything was eaten right up without notice or complaint.

I told Abez of my crime today. She firmly declared that I could never go near a can of corned beef again. Oh happy day!

(Say it with me now: I can't believe she just blogged about corned beef.)

I did a bad thing. I got older.

Yesterday my dad idly asked how old the elder bro was. As his birthday was just a week or so back, I quickly answered, “He’s 26.” My dad looked at me like I was nuts. “26? Don’t you mean 24?” “No dad, 2004 minus 1978 is 26.” He looked at me a little hard, squinting, as if his scrutinizing gaze would right my dubious math. “So you’re how old?” “I’m 21 dad," I answered, feeling all the world like I’d been caught with a hand in the cookie jar, “And I’ll be 22 this August.” For comparison I rattled off the rest of the ages of us kids and the years of birth. My dad mentally wrestled with them for a few seconds, and then sighed. “Yesterday I was 26,” he said.

I so understand dad. Yesterday I was 12. Today I’m an adult and no amount of whining can change it. No matter how many times I mentally dig my heels in the ground, time is still carrying me forward. Each second a grain of time is taken out of our reach and thrown to the pile of the past. The seconds clump together as minutes, minutes as hours, and suddenly whole years pass without much notice.

It’s not the aging that I mind so much as the expectations the ages bring with them. I could handle them when I was younger, just get good grades, do your chores and don’t argue so much and you’d be set. A little bit older, and the expectations grew heavier – you had to learn your place in the home, behave properly, take your share of responsibilities and your good grades weren’t enough unless they got you into a good college with a good scholarship. Now I’m a working unmarried adult and it’s a whole new ball game and the stakes are a lot higher. As stupid as it is for me to ask, can’t I just cash in my chips and go play in the park?

It’s weird though, because as much as I periodically mourn the passing of my childhood, I know it’ll just be another blink before I’m wishing I was a young adult again, then an adult, then a middle aged woman, then alive. Foresight says stop wasting your time complaining about what is gone and cannot be changed and live for the now before these years are racked up beside those you yearn for. But I’m dumb, and I don’t take advice from intangible concepts.

I feel older than I am, and it’s not a feeling I like. Times is weighing too heavy on me these days. It’s like a matka pot of water - best carried on the top of the head with the most upright of posture - that I’ve let slide down and throw me off balance. As much as I’d like to simply let it drop to hear the satisfying dull crack and see its cool dark contests rush out on the ground, time can’t be thrown off. It can only be readjusted for ease of movement. I need to go in for an adjustment.

This brings me back to the declaration I made today - I need an adventure! Yep. Something fun and uncertain, to be a sort of temporary weightless flight to lift the strain from my shoulders. I want to hop on a plane to a country that I haven’t got a clue of, or go on a road trip to some place horribly exotic, like - *snicker* - India. I want to dig out my hi-tech inline skates with removable wheels that I finally got just a month before moving to this unpaved country and hit the road flying. I want to get out of this city and not look back. Stop me if I say I want a sports car and a trophy husband, cuz this is definitely beginning to sound like a midlife crisis. Or an insane act of teenage rebellion.

My timing is forever off.

I made it to Eid prayer on Monday for the first time in nearly 3 years. It isn’t that I’m against Eid prayer in theory, as that would make me an improper sort of Saracen heathen, I just come from a people genetically disinclined to punctuality and morning awakeness. Yes I’m desi, and no I’m not in denial about desi-standard time. It’s about time the rest of ya’ll admitted we simply run two hours slower than the rest of the world. Or maybe we’re 22 hours faster, whatever floats your boat.

For the past six Eid-eves we have gone to bed in the wee hours of the morning after headless-chicken style holiday preparations with the firm intention of waking and attending prayer the next day. A few times we have woken on the dot, showered, changed, hurried out the door five minutes ahead of schedule and driven to Faisal Masjid at unholy speeds, only to pull into the parking lot to find prayer already discharged. That faux pas was blamed on faulty information and general cruelty on the part of the prayer leader, who didn’t have the kindness to check from among the hundreds of namazis, whether the Family Khan was in attendance that morning or not. The nerve.

Other times the only functioning alarm clock in the house – mine- which is known to be in league with the devil, has simply refused to go off. This further cements my theory about the demonic proclivities of electronic appliances. My iron burns my hijabs and singes my jalbabs, my toaster turns my breakfast to coal - completely ruining my sabr and gratitude for the day, the microwave never runs when I need it to - pushing me towards blasphemous profanity and I’m sure the washing machine’s glug-glug noises are satanic commandments played backwards. It’s the only explanation I can think of for the fact that my alarm is often mysteriously reset for hours after the time I need to be woken, and why it insists on doing so by releasing FM100 on my innocent ears. I’d rather hear the maddening “ang-ang-ang” buzzer in the morning than some dippy little DJ trying to sound suave in English.

The last couple of times we’ve stumbled out of bed on time, quickly gotten ready and rounded the turn to leave we simply deflated before even making it out the door. That would be due to the law of ‘once-bitten-twice-shy.’ We’ve been unsuccessful so many times before, even when everything seems to be on track, you just know you probably got the day wrong, or the clocks are all off, or they’ve moved the masjid on you, or our pocket-sized car was mistaken for a medium sized silver cow and put to the blade this morning. If we were smart, we’d realize that these strange doubts come from a bored and inventive Shaitan whispering in our ears, but when you’re sleep deprived and hopped up on sheer khorma your mental defenses are shot. So a couple of Eids my dad and my brothers have simply walked down to the little masjid nearby while we stayed home and cursed the stupid desi tradition that only allows space for women at larger houses of prayer.

This time we made it though. We checked and double checked the prayer time the day before. We didn’t let the ornery iron, evil alarm clock, finicky car or pesky devil get in our way. We made it to Faisal Mosque with minutes to spare, quickly found a place to park, joined the throng walking over the frozen ground to the masjid and stepped quickly over the frigid white marble to our separate prayer halls. We thawed in the warmth of a multi-colored Muslim crush, prayed as a nation, and left as Muslims renewed. It was wonderful.

As I sit
In a faded green shirt 10 sizes too big -
A blue sock on my right foot,
A green one on my left -
In a room spread wide with unfinished work,
I look at my un-hennaed hands
And remember
Tomorrow is Eid

Despite the near-constant distant bleating of sacrificial goats and the occasional discordant jangle of a cowbell, I did manage to forget one of the biggest Islamic holidays was just a day away. Sigh.

This has been one hellova helter-skelter week. I had dinners to attend, lunches to host, laundry to wash, boxes to pack and move, a cracked driveway to marvel at, shopping to take care of and five days worth of editing work to do in advance. Bleh bleh and bleh. So, incidentally, I have not made any Eid clothes, I am not wearing henna, I have not cooked any traditional dishes, I have not invited anyone over and the sad thing is, it doesn’t matter anyways.

This year my single parental unit, the only other monkey in my habitat –Abez- and myself are celebrating a hollow Eidul Adha while the other half of the family does the same in the US, temporarily separated by circumstance. Live apart for some time and you realize that without family, a holiday is just another day. As much as our parents and siblings can be exasperating and trying, they’re still a part of us. Your family is where you belong.

Without a mom, holidays have no heart. I don’t know what it is about moms that makes them so magical, but it’s there and it’s undeniable. When they’re around, a holiday is suddenly imbued warmth it otherwise would lack. Moms set the ball rolling for celebrations with their mad-dash cooking, cleaning and nagging, so that by the time the day finally comes, the ball’s momentum has built up to its peak and it crashes through the closed doors of even the most indifferent hearts.

This year there was no mother to lovingly remind Abez and I to take our lazy selves to the cloth shop to buy some fabric for Eid clothes. We missed her tasteful advice for style and color at the tailor. There was no Eid Eve baking of German chocolate cake and cookies by a flour-covered mommajaan, happily singing along with her Christian hymn tapes. No one made me sort chickpeas for cholay. Mom wasn’t here to accompany us girls to the market where we’d buy her – the only woman in our family with visible arms and hair - bracelets and hairclips to match her Eid suit. There were no familiar care-worn hands to practice my mehndi applying skills on and no fine blonde hair to style Eid morning. As we drive to the masjid tomorrow morning no one will remind us to say a quick prayer for our safety before we go. There will be no calming presence to soothe raw nerves and gently remind us that the day is meant to be holy.

Without my two brothers, Eid will definitely lack some kick. On holidays they’re known to be difficult, briefly stealing my title as the grouchiest family member, but they also make it more exciting. Without brothers would an Eid day tradition of wrestling ever have been instituted? Would I ever know exactly how many cows kicked over their keepers and rampaged through my neighborhood Eid day? They make us laugh, gross us out, eat most of the desserts and muck up the house. And in this divided society, they act as our connection to the male-dominated outside. My brothers tell us stories we’d never otherwise hear and with their words they paint pictures we’d never see if they weren’t there to walk between worlds.

This holiday there will be no huge monstrous sleeping lugs to pull out of bed and push into the shower five minutes before we have to leave for Eid prayer. There will be no sail-like shalwar kameez to find, wrangle and then iron for them. No death threats will be issued against unpolished shoes, unshaven faces and unbrushed hair. Our drive to Eid prayer will seem dull without a brother at the wheel, taking turns at break-neck speed, pushing our car to the limits and laughing as we wince and duck. The lil bro won’t be here to compare scars with the professional beggars at the masjid, and no one will genially shoot the breeze with the street urchins before handing out coins and cash. Later in the day we won’t be unwillingly regaled with gory sacrifice stories by a grinning brother – soon to be pelted with shoes and pushed out the door with the express instructions of ‘go spend your Eidhi you goon.’ There will be no Eid Day ping pong death match and no one to compare Eidhi hauls with.

So, to you - momma, Bananabrain and Boogerboy – I miss ya’ll.

Eid Mubarak everyone. Enjoy your families if you’ve got them.