Awright awright, I know I’m overdue for an update. It’s just that, this blog is boring. I like all yours’ much better. Seriously, I think I only come to this place for the links.

Preparations are underway for our visit to the States, and boy are they ever. After a year of practically buying NO CLOTHES (a conscious effort - thank you, thank you) I suddenly find myself in dire need of an appropriate and presentable wardrobe for my trip that does all the following things

1. Won’t cost me an arm, a leg and my left ear. If you aren’t a clotheshorse, then forking over your measly little paycheck for clothing that you care not for can hurt. My mean tailor though won’t be reasoned with, and continues to demand the big bucks for stuff that I could replicate, albeit with much artistic interpretation (er, what two head holes?). Though I have in the past been known to venture into the land of sartorial self-help, my mom - a trained seamstress- has warned me that she won’t let me out of the house in my own misshapen creations. Her good name is at stake. Back to the tailor I go. Maybe if I wear a homemade jilb he'll take pity on me and bring down his fees.

2. Is Islamically acceptable. Hello, lawn, which is Pakistani voile, is not really all that halal. It sticks to you, it’s see-throughish, and it makes me think hateful and unholy thoughts. Then there is this funny stuff called ‘chicken’ - eyelet in English. It’s embroidered cotton that’s got all these holes in it that we’re supposed to pretend DON’T show little patches of skin. And whoever invented darts and back-zippers for women’s kameezes is probably burning in a very tight and uncomfortable place in Hades. Who’da thunk conforming to the Islamic mandates of modesty would be so dang hard in the Islamic Republic of the Pure.

3. Won’t make me look like the world’s first backwards fob – Aniraz the American-born girl who migrated to the third world dressed in monotone clothing in all shades of decay, now returned in iridescent kurta-pajama and high-heeled flipflops. Er, no I don’t dress like that, but I am geographically and genetically at risk. After perusing a dozen shops in a dozen markets, I seem condemned to look like I’ve been hit by a bowl of toxic fruit salad. The men’s fabric though, that stuff is nice and neutral. I think I’ll stick to that.

4. Somewhat conforms to what is considered stylish. Not that I’ve ever been particularly stylish. My only claim to fashionability is being the first idiot with a long-sleeved T-shirt under a short-sleeved one. It had nothing to do with the grunge music scene, and everything to do with the fact that all the nifty T-shirts with the awesome pictures and writing didn’t cover to my wrist, as needed. And then there as my urban camouflage hijab. Now I gotta find stuff that doesn't lend credence to the accusation that I'm a hermit living in the past, running around in habit and hair-shirt.

5. Won’t ruin my reputation of a girl-in-denial. Yes, though I’m a bit of a domesticated tomboy, that doesn’t mean I dress like Malibu Barbie. Plus, the sight of me in pink would be too much of a shock to my friends in the US, who never knew me to step outside the camo-color palette. I gotta keep their delicate constitutions in mind. I think grey is a good half-way point between lavender and black.

6. Won’t break my brain. I usually don’t think this hard about clothes. Work is always a jalb, usually black, gray, navy or green. Hijab and shoes are typically black. I like things simple. If only they were though.

Ei cheese. I just blogged about clothing. *hangs head in shame*

(Tired, distracted, and tired. Here are some bits and pieces. Put 'em together and mayhap they're a blog. Or mayhap not.)

* I had my first “Oh my God, you’re Owl?” moment. Yeah, I’ve met people through my blog before but this was the first time though I met someone totally unrelated to that where they made the connection. They mentioned Pakistani blogs, and specifically, “that Owl one,” to which my friend Iman offered “Oh, that’s her.”

*que looks of shock and doubt*

She was expecting something different. *shrugs*

It’s ok Rabia, I forgive you. :)

* I finally hit my elusive, frustrating and exasperating weight target. It only took one day of fasting in a hot Pakistani summer to deplete me of five pounds. Course, it was probably all water, but it aint good to look a gift weight loss in the mouth. Or something like that. So now I weigh as much as I did when I was 12. Woo hoo. And no this doesn’t make me a stick. I was a healthy 12 year old and now I’m a healthy 21 year old.

* Have you thanked your lord today? You should. He’s been especially kind to you, and me too. We owe Him some major thanks and obedience. So yeah, go pray, and do dua for me too.

* I’ve hit a new level of Pakistani-ness. The other day a cockroach jumped out of a bag I was holding, inches away from my hand, and took off towards Abez. Within a second, I’d bent over, whipped off my shoe, and made a paste of it before I knew what was happening. I’ve killed also more crickets and spiders this week than I have in my entire life, and for once, it hasn’t given me the heebejeebees or sent me running out of the room. I just grab my trusty Bata chappal, take aim, and whack.

* The world keeps spinning, and it just keeps getting uglier. This is a merry-go-round I want off of already.

* My lil bro is coming home. He just won’t tell us when. You know what that means? He’s either gonna a reaaaaaly stale welcome home cake complete with the mandatory insane colored frosting, or he’s gonna get none. It all depends on when he chooses to surprise us with his gigantor presence. So Maaniboy, wanna give me a hint?

After last week’s shocking revelation that Owl, the former angry-feminazi blader-girl, actually likes cooking, I must tell you about an adventure in culinary madness I recently had.

Last night as I sat writing Abez called out, “Mayday! Mayday! There’s nothing to eat, no groceries, dad’s gone with the car and it’ll be dinner time in half an hour!” Understanding the urgency of her statement (not that there isn’t a restaurant owned by my dad a little walk away), I quickly went to the kitchen ready to do my job as The Last-Minute-Any-Ingredient-Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell Chef.

My specialty? Making something from nothing. I opened the fridge, and as Abez said, there was nothing in it aside from two shriveled carrots, eggs, some chicken broth, yogurt and a loaf of whole wheat bread. I went to the pantry, where the odd potato and onion were keeping the regular assortment of spices and dried goods company. What can I say? My dad is the chief shopper, but he sometimes accidentally leaves our groceries at the restaurant, where they’re promptly turned into handi.

Getting a good idea of what we had to work with, I then opened the recipe cabinet and dug out a couple of cookbooks. After flipping through Casual Suppers, Weeknight Pasta and an ancient Betty Crocker collection, I realized that these books demanded exotic ingredients (like say, milk and flour) that I didn’t have on hand. I was still without a recipe that used only the odds and ends available in the house.

Not ready to throw in the towel, I brought out the big guns – cookbooks so basic, so rustic and so odd, that the stuff we had would do rather nicely for what they had in mind. A quick perusal through Naturally It’s Better (written by a new-agey Mormon woman who claims her organic way of cooking has cured her of piles), I decided that my family would probably rather go without food than be fed fried gluten with tofu dipping sauce (complete with recipe on how to make your own soy curd). Make A Mix Cookery wasn’t much of a help either. I didn’t need 10 gallons of homemade Bisquick with accompanying recipes. I needed an idea and quick.

At the bottom of my pile lay The Vegetarian Epicure, a blast from the 70’s past that my American mom bought soon after marrying my Pakistani dad. Her desperate hope was to find some recipes that she could feed to her non-pork eating, picky Asian husband back at time when halal meat was hard to come by.

I cracked open the book and my eyes fell upon a line on entertaining parties- “If you have passed a joint around before dinner to sharpen gustatory perceptions, you most likely will pass another one after dinner, and everyone knows what that will do – the blind munchies can strike at any time.”

Whoa. Now if I was smart, that weird statement shoulda warned me against trying anything our Mary Jane-smoking writer could recommend. But as I’ve told ye before – I’m not smart. So, consequently, I have no one to blame for the weird dinner we ended up with but myself.

As we did have a loaf of fresh bread, I thought a soup would go well with it, and wouldn’t require the ingredients I didn’t have. I found the chapter on soups and chose something that I nearly had all the components for – Dill Soup. Of course, I’d never made it before, but that wasn’t going to stop me.

The Dill Soup called for potato skin broth. In the vegetable bin were three lil spuds, more skin than anything else, that would do rather nicely for that. It also called for some carrots and onions. Check. I was supposed to make a base with that and run them through a sieve. Psh, sieves are for wusses. Blender it is. So they all got boiled and blended together.

Then it called for sour cream. We had a problem there – as Pakistan doesn’t make sour cream. We did, however, have a good amount of asli dahi made from 100% bhans ka dood (yougurt made from buffalo milk), and in times of madness, it can be used as a substitution. So that got added in, along with dried dill, salt and spice.

The crowning weirdness was two eggs. The only soup I’d ever eaten with live eggs dropped in like bombs was Egg Drop Soup – a horrid snotty thing that turns my stomach. But the recipe said I should mix them in custard-style, which should prevent them from going all yucky and stringy – should being the operative word. It didn’t.

In the end I had a goodly sized pot of a very colorful, strange smelling and weirdly textured soup. I put it on the table, sliced up some bread and called everyone for dinner. Abez came up and looked at it cautiously. She smiled hopefully at me and said “Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” Mom soon joined us and sat down. Last came dad, sniffing all the way with a look of suspicion writ large on his face. Bowls of soup were handed out.

I watched Abez as she had her first spoonful. She swallowed it thoughtfully, saying nothing, but I noticed she was slow to follow it up with a second. Strike one. Then I turned to my mom. After her first taste and declaration of “Too salty” she helped herself to a meal of cold bread and butter. Strike two. My dad, the pickiest person in the family, was handed his bowl with a warning – “Um, it’s kinda weird.” He nodded in understanding, and gestured for his own backup – the tub of crushed red pepper. He dumped some on, broke bread into it and gave it a stir. Even that could not redeem it. He too abandoned his bowl a few bites in, with the suggestion “Feed it to the dog.” Strike three.

You can’t say I didn’t try.

There were lessons to be learnt from this. The first was to never use recipes from a cookbook that talks about psychedelic mushrooms as being the best vegetable in the world. The second is that there’s only so much a woman can do with two shriveled carrots, ancient potatoes, eggs, yogurt and broth - and it shouldn’t be done. I also realized that the best reminder you can give your dad to buy the groceries you need it so make him horrible food. The last and most important lesson? There are some things even a dog won’t eat.

Who did you used to be?

I’m planning to visit my old crew in the city I grew up in after being AWOL for four years. One of them has warned me to expect some changes in the neighborhood I once knew so well, strip-malls where there used to be derelict motels, storefronts in place of the old nursing home, free-range nekkid people, etc. No prob, I tell her. I can handle it. But I’m wondering if I should warn her to expect to see some changes in me.

You have to expect to change after four years. That’s inevitable. No 21 year old is the same person they were at 17. But the past four years of my life have wrought more than the usual evolution that college, work, and the acceptance of adulthood would bring. Forcing myself to live in a foreign culture, speak a different language, to laugh at new social quirks and learn about another world has left only a little of what I was before. So little that I wonder sometimes if I’m even the same person any more.

What was I when I came here? An angry, difficult, bigheaded, reclusive, overly-intellectual, self-righteous little American teenage tomboy of not very evident Pakistani descent who thought they knew everything that was wrong with the world and could change it for the better if only by scowling at everything.

What am I now? Still difficult, still a bit withdrawn, still wishing for the world I could find a game of basketball and still bookish, though prone to vacuous and unashamed statements like “chickens deserve to be eaten cuz they aren’t smart enough to revolt.” But not as caustic, a little more patient, a lot more humble, willing to smile and laugh at myself, and not so sure if I’m cut out for my own plans of global domination.

Some of these changes were accidental and others incidental. You can’t live in a country like Pakistan, seeing firsthand how very imperfect the ‘Muslim world’ is, and not wonder at your share of the self-inflicted wounds that the Ummah bears. And though this is the self-proclaimed ‘Land of the Pure’ - working with apostates (journalism in Pakistan– “the profession of choice for drunkards and Commies”), being judged as wanting by ‘real true believers,’ and often being the odd man out in matters of sect - I’ve had to learn more tolerance here than I ever needed in the US.

Having to live at times with intermittent water and electricity teaches you right quick that being pissed and indignant won’t fix things, and it’s better just not to let it bother you. Rather than sit around and moan about what you don’t have and what you used to enjoy, you search out ways to stay productive and fulfilled with what you have on hand. Contentment doesn’t come from the latest gadgets, best sellers, parties and clothes – it is a decision you make. Bloom where you’re planted, that’s what my grandmother always told me. I once found that too trite, placating and spineless, but now I see its wisdom.

Going without all the junk you once cluttered your life with – friends, freedom, activity – leaves you in a terrifyingly silent void alone with yourself and those thoughts you always tried to drown out. With nowhere to run and all the time in the world, you finally get to know that elusive individual you always seem to be passing in the night – yourself. And if you don’t like what you see, then you set about fixing it. After all, you haven’t anything better to do.

So many things were learned the hard way – the way I always try to avoid – me the girl who’d rather not try something than fail, or even not do it exceedingly well. About the social machinations, the history, the politics, the culture and the reality – to admit ignorance, to sit quietly and listen, to think and reconsider. And when you’re sure you’ve learned it all and are ready, to try and yet miss the mark. For things that matter, you steel yourself for another go. For things that don’t, you allow that unblemished track record to be brought down yet another notch. Very little really matters anyways.

And they say I’ve loosened up. That I am no longer as bottled and so methodically measured when I am finally poured. That I have more than once thrown my hands in the air and admitted “I don’t know” rather than ruin my health wondering. That I am not as hard and driven as I once was. That my humanity is peeking through. That I own pink clothes. That I’d rather have a children’s book than popular fiction. That I admit to enjoying cooking. That I have run out of things to say. That I am broken, reformed and grown.

That I can honestly praise God for all that I am, that I've been through, and that I've learned. Alhamdullilah.

I want to blog something. Really I do. I’ve started many entries over the past month, only to abandon them a few paragraphs in. There is too much to consider, too many things pull at my attention and consume my thoughts so that I’m left with little energy for more than a few lines.

I want to write about how strange it is to once again be my mother’s daughter after being an independent, automated adult for the past year. How odd it is to be told to go to bed, clean my room and straighten my twisted posture. How wonderful it is to have someone to talk to, ask questions of and see me as all I’ve been and all I can be despite age and my airs of adulthood. You are always your mother’s child.

I want to write about the issue of apostasy. How those who left the fold of Islam once unnerved me, worried me that they held a forbidden knowledge of something that if confronted, would shake me of my hard-won faith. How I warily faced the ones I knew, questioned, debated, and considered, only to thankfully find that my belief still held firm and their weakness was all too apparent. Certainty means nothing, another’s failure need not be mine, and we are all fallible.

I want to write about family – that strange conglomeration of people that we belong to by the happenstance of birth. How it can be a wonderful thing, an eclectic group of individuals that together form a small nation sharing a collective history, foundation and love. But how it tends to be overlooked. How sad it is that the ones we love are often the ones who hurt us most. And how often its ties are irreparably broken by pride, greed and impatience. Family is what you make of it, and yet we often make it little.

I want to write about this strange feeling I’ve had for the past few weeks, that I’m standing at some sort of crossroads. I feel as if I’m ready to say goodbye to the world I’ve known and the life I’ve been leading for something else. I don’t know what, and it’s so rare a feeling that I have nothing to reference it to. And yet it’s still there, unsettling and exciting at the back of my mind. I wonder at it, and my options and where I will be in five years.

But this is all I can get out of myself right now. It's fragmented and incomplete. How fitting.

I don’t want to go to work. I don’t want to write no damn stinking articles. I don’t want to take interviews. I don’t want to have to say “uh huh” for two hours while some lonely official tells me his life story over the phone when all I wanted was a short quote. I don’t want to edit crap writing any more. Mine, or anyone else’s. I don’t want to blog.

*breathes*

I need a vacation.