apropos of anything

Happy birthday, Bhaijan.

I thought of him in taraweeh tonight, of how totally different things would have been if he had lived, and what he would be like today, and how next year we’d be planning his 4oth birthday party, and how the pictures of him at 3 or 4 look EXACTLY like the pictures of me when I was 3 or 4, which is something I can’t say for any of the other boys, and how life doesn’t end up the way we plan.

Do not have enough fingers and toes to count how many things I have to do, but… in the process of doing them, I think maybe, maybe, I found a picture for one of my blank 8×10 frames:

It’s from right before Aamir’s valima. This is what happens when I finally look at the pictures on my camera — I find one I love.

In Mumbai there is a hotel that sits on the water, near the financial district and the higher-end shopping, and as the Mumbaikers drive by they say proudly to the out-of-towners, that’s the Taj Hotel, it’s one of the highest-rated hotels in the world!

Tonight the Taj looked like this:

And I thought, oh no. Not again. Not my other city. Not the Taj, not the Oberoi, not Colaba where I go to buy shoes. I thought, I would like this to stop, please.

We called Mumbai, and they said they were fine. Holed up at home and not really wanting or allowed to leave, all the schools canceled and the majority of the businesses closed, but fine. And while I am so incredibly grateful that they are not hurt, and even more grateful that Mumbai is learning to keep its temper and no longer explodes in riots whenever something gets blown up, I still wish things did not blow up quite so often.

And really, I wish I could smash whatever gigantic chip these so-called Muslims have on their shoulders that they would hold a grudge for something, that while horrendous, happened in 1992. I am tired of Islam being the scapegoat for the actions of a handful of lunatics, and I resent those same lunatics for their continued insistence on upending lives and families for absolutely no reason at all. I want to line them all up and tell them, you’ve forgotten that God is watching because otherwise you would never have done this in His name, and how dare you. How dare you forget Him. How dare you do this.

Instead, I’m going to brace myself for the next time. And the next time. And to wonder, when I visit Mumbai again, how deep the scars from this latest bloodbath will be.

I signed up for the 3-Day.

Chicago, not Seattle, because Aasif is doing it in Chicago, and because Chicago’s closer and I’m just going to have to settle for lots of sunblock and even more water.

I’m nervous — about the fundraising, about getting into shape — but I’m also excited because it could potentially be so awesome.

THANK YOU to everyone who’s already donated. I really appreciate it, and the Komen Foundation appreciates it. I know the commercials are kind of dorky, but this is a community fight, and it’s so awesome of you to pitch in and help out. If you haven’t donated yet — you know you want to! Like AB says, giving makes you pretty! And smell good!

If you have a blog of your own, I’d love a link back to this post, please. The fundraising thing is part of the 3-Day, but just as important is the awareness thing. Plus, the more people who know, the more people who might be willing to contribute to the cause!

This is number 74… because everybody knows somebody who’s been affected by breast cancer.

I went to Seattle this weekend and rode a ferry boat. (Did you know McDreamy likes ferry boats? I do too; I think it’s my Arab sailor ancestors coming out in me.) Before that, I went to Sunset Memorial Gardens Cemetary in Richland, Washington, to visit my brother.

I don’t remember him at all. My parents don’t talk about him too much, and I was eighteen months old when he died. I had never before been to see him. I went now because I needed to know where he was.

I’ve always kind of known where he SHOULD be. When I was sixteen, in my senior year of high school, and I was the first one looking at leaving home, he should have been there, with nine years of experience in being independent. When I was born, he had wanted a brother; he should have known that he didn’t just get one, he got three. When Aasif was born, he should have been fifteen. Today, he should have had kids of his own.

And now I know where he is. I finally know his birthday. It’s not like I suddenly know HIM, but at least it’s more than a photograph.

I took him roses from my mother because that’s what she wanted, and I took him lilies from me because I like lilies better than roses. And I called my mother approximately eighteen times because she hadn’t been able to go. I know she wanted to, and every time I looked at the headstone, I thought about how hard it must have been for her to deal with a child dying and a child being born, all in one week, and that if I have a space where he should be, she must have an entire cavern.

I think the wireless part of my wireless router may be dead… and of course that means more computer problems at home, so if I owe you an email, my apologies, and I hope to get to it soon.

In the meantime, I know there’s a lot to pray about these days, between the Mumbai bombings and Israel bombing the hell out of Lebanon (if it weren’t for the computer problems, there’d be a whole thing about that in this space instead), but I’m going to ask for one more: it’s been a whole year already.

Last night, when I cut my nails, I removed the last bit of henna from my hands. Back in December, when my cousin’s daughter Saba first did them, my hands looked like this: (click on the image for the larger, uncropped photo that is less artistic because at the bottom you can see my shoes and unpedicured feet, but you can also see the complete mehndi design, so it’s kind of a trade-off)

Aasif took this photo at the wedding, one day after the henna was first applied.

I love henna. I love it so much that I can’t stand to have it done badly, which means I often go without since I can’t bear to shove the kids out of the way to get to the mehndi-walis who do it well. It’s okay, though, because again, I would rather not have it if I can’t have it well, and I love seeing the children so happy with their designs.

Whenever I go to India, Saba makes a point of doing my henna. Traffic in Mumbai is horrible, and my cousin’s family lives in the suburbs, but Saba always comes, first to visit, and then to do my henna. I am her youngest khala (mother’s sister), only a few years older than her, actually, and she knows good mehndhi is hard to find in America. This is something she does for me, without fail, and look at how beautifully she does it.

The trip before this one, over three years ago, she was seventeen years old, and as she did my hands, she said, “Khala, when you get married, I’m going to come to America to do your mehndi.”

She’s older now, and she knows better what that would entail, so she doesn’t say it anymore. Also, my Saba has grown up. She’s graduated from college and works a full-time job. I can see the changes in her so clearly, but then, it’s easy to notice changes when you only see a person once every few years.

As long as I had some of the henna on my hands, I was still “just returned” from India. I would see that bit of orange on my nails (because your nails never get any darker than deep orange), and it would remind me of Saba doing them, of Khalid talking to me while she did so I wouldn’t fall asleep (we landed in Mumbai two days before the wedding, one day before the women all had their henna done, so I was still a little jet-lagged), of Shakira hiding behind Khalid because she was too shy to talk to me herself, of the general chaos involved in making sure seven women and two girls got both their hands done, front and back. We’d hired two mehndi-walis, but neither had Saba’s speed, and Saba herself had committed to doing mine. And then there were my other cousin’s girls, who had to go to school the day after the wedding and couldn’t get their hands done because the school didn’t allow henna. They sat and watched and pretended they didn’t mind that they couldn’t do it as well.

Three months later, though, my henna is gone (and the parasites are DEAD), and I am one hundred percent home. It’s good to be home. It was also good to be in Mumbai, and I can’t wait until I get to go back.

So many of my recent posts have been in the this-time-last-year vein that I feel like 2005 must have been extraordinarily eventful. It’s probably more that the events hit me so much harder, absorbed my thoughts and emotions so completely, that they’ve left a mark I’ll revisit year after year.

This was me a year ago today.

Aasif took this photo of me and Amal the evening of Mumanijan’s funeral. We’re in Mumanijan’s room, which looked strangely bare, having been stripped of the bed and oxygen tanks it no longer needed. I wonder how big Amal’s gotten now.

The thing about Nishat Mumanijan was that she always got it, no matter what “it” was. She never judged you, not ever, and if she didn’t necessarily approve of what you were doing, she made it clear the disapproval didn’t extend to you as a person. She heard the things you said. She heard the things you didn’t say. And she definitely brought everybody together.

More and more people came to visit as she got sicker. For myself, it got to the point where I was spending four days a week in Chicago and only three in Atlanta, consecutive weeks at a time. I remember saying here that I pretty much felt one of the rooms in Naperville was mine, I was in it so much. Other people flew in from all over the country, or drove in from just down state, and we’d sit up and watch movies or have Scrabble competitions or just talk where Mumanijan could hear us and sometimes participate. Amal was a fixture; we loved her. Those are good memories for me. There’s a certain sadness to them, but when I look back, I think more about how we were all there, the entire family, and less about the reason why.

When he dropped me off at the airport the Tuesday after the funeral, Sami Mamujan told me not to stop visiting just because Mumanijan had died. I didn’t plan to, but things were already different. We’d packed up her room, her clothes. She wasn’t there anymore. It actually took me eight months to go back, and even then I had a hard time adjusting to having only one home in Chicago. To seeing the yellow vase in Naperville instead of Wheaton, where it belonged.

In the year that she’s been gone, I can’t even begin to count the number of times I thought, Mumanijan would have understood this. She would have.

As a child, I had a thing for big earrings. I was convinced there was no point in wearing earrings unless everyone could see them, and also, we were still sitting on the tail end of the 80s at the time.

I outgrew the phase, eventually coming to the conclusion that smaller was classier and it didn’t matter if nobody else could see my earrings so long as I knew they were there. Chandelier earrings are the rage now, but while I love seeing them on other people, I rarely wear any myself as the pretty-yet-dangly jewelry is not entirely conducive with hijab-wearing, particularly if you wrap your hijab tightly around your head the way I frequently do.

And then I went to India, where I am the youngest (the only exceptions being my three younger brothers) in a very large clan, which means that nobody really listens to my objections about there being no point in wearing large earrings under my hijab. I wore, under protest, the earrings that were handed to me and paid the price later as my tight hijab caused the earring posts to begin boring a second set of piercings into my neck. But I wore them because in India, that’s what you do.

The second set of earrings they wanted me to wear had a different type of post, one that would hold up well with all kinds of hijabs, so I just kept those on for fear that the next pair would not be so friendly. When it was time to go, I took them off and returned them to their owner… who promptly gave them back to me and told me to keep them. I don’t know if that kind of thing happens all the time in India, but it’s certainly a frequent event in my family. We’ve got the routine down pat now, the giver insisting, me refusing, the giver pulling the seniority card, me caving. It’s a dance we do.

I’m wearing them now. Of all the jewelry I brought back, these earrings that I didn’t really want to take are the ones I love the most. “They were mine, but now they’re yours because you’re my little sister.” Only in India am I anybody’s little sister.

I will likely keep wearing the earrings until I stop missing India quite so badly. Miss it badly I do, despite the horrible plane ride, despite having to watch everything I eat or drink, despite the crowds and the climatic changes, because there are so many people there who have a claim on me, and on whom I have a claim, and because everything is different, yet I still belong.