huda kazi in the big city

In anticipating of dropping my landline, I am looking for a hands-free headset for my cell phone, preferrably one that doesn’t make me look like a Borg. I am notorious for calling people while I am doing housework, but it’s much harder to do that with a cell, so… suggestions, please?

When the new Mac ads first came out, I kind of agreed with Seth Stevenson’s opinion that they’re on the obnoxious side, but I think the new one about Vista is hilarious.

“You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?” There’s just no way that’s not funny!

Y’all.

Do you hear that?

It’s the sound of… nothing.

No weddings to work on. No dinners to plan. No parties to throw, no decorating to do. Nothing to cook, nothing to clean, nothing to buy.

I haven’t had nothing since… July.

It’s unnerving.

There is the house crumbling down around my ears, but I’m trying not to think about that. (Hole in roof? Meet hole in downstairs bathroom ceiling! Y’all chat while I sing loudly to myself and pretend you don’t exist.)

And there is the hajj planning I have to do, both spiritually and practically, as that unscented shampoo doesn’t just order itself from the Publix pharmacy, but I don’t have to rush it all in TOMORROW. I can pace myself.

It’s refreshing, too.

Alhumdulillah.

(Except for those holes… they’re a little ulcer-inducing. But we’re not thinking about them! La la la la la!)

IT IS RAINING, AND THERE IS A LEAK IN THE CEILING OF MY GUEST BATHROOM, THE ONE I DON’T GO INTO MUCH SO I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG THERE’S BEEN A LEAK EXCEPT IT CAN’T HAVE BEEN THERE WHILE MANSOOR LIVED HERE, SO AT MOST SINCE JULY. THERE IS A LEAK IN MY ROOF! A LEAK! IN MY ROOF!

I have a bucket to catch the water. It’s like the Augusta mosque in here. Seriously, if it’s not one water problem, it’s another.

I need an umbrella for the guest bathroom. Also, please don’t have a hissyfit about at the lack of hijab on the woman in the picture.

I went into the guest room this morning to check my work email (because that’s where my work laptop is currently set up) and heard a drippy noise coming from the bathroom, so I turned on the light to see where it was coming from. Turned out it was coming from the light fixture, but it didn’t occur to me until five minutes into my frantic consultation with Ken that perhaps I should turn the lights off. I blame the hyperventilating.

I hopped on Kudzu to find a handyman who would be willing to come out in the rain and put a tarp on the roof to hold the leak until such time as it could be repaired. The first company looked extremely promising but didn’t answer, so I left a message. The second guy said he was in Stockbridge for the day and couldn’t make it up here, but I should try a third company and tell them he recommended me. I did, and they were very nice, but they said the earliest they could come would be tomorrow, at an emergency rate, and it didn’t sound like I necessarily needed to pay through the nose to get this fixed right now. (Except that I kept envisioning the entire ceiling come crashing down on my head, so perhaps I did, or perhaps I just needed some Valium.) The fourth guy said his insurance didn’t cover roof work and recommended a fifth guy, so I called him.

He was perfectly willing to come out and tarp my roof, immediately, even, but he couldn’t give me a quote. He asked for my name, and I said, “Huda.” There was a pause, and he said, “Did you say, ‘Christian’?” Um, no, I did not. I did not say anything remotely resembling “Christian.” He kept talking, and his voice was so wobbly and infirm I began to worry he would fall off the ladder as he was climbing onto my roof that is three stories high. However. He was the first person in five phone calls who was even willing to come out today, and Kudzu was rapidly running out of options, so I gave him my address, and he’s headed over. He didn’t ask for directions though, so I’m not completely sure he’s going to show up.

In the meantime, I’m going to pretend the constant drip-drip-drip isn’t bothering me one tiny bit. And I’m going to get some faux Cocoa Puffs for breakfast because if a day that begins with holes in your roof isn’t a prime candidate for chocolate, I don’t know what is.

They say the only thing ruder than rudeness is pointing out said rudeness. You’re supposed to smile and pretend Rude Person is in fact the epitome of politeness.

So hypothetically speaking (of course), is it rude to extricate yourself from a rude situation? As in, if someone you know does something you find to be incredibly rude, and you choose not to partake in the something, does that make you ruder than the rude person? What if your lack of participation hurts Rude Person’s feelings? How many times do you smile and pretend before you transition from Polite Person to Pushover?

I honestly cannot decide. On a related note, I’m curious how many emails/phone calls this post is going to net me from people who think I’m referring to them when really, I’m just being hypothetical.

On an unrelated note, why do Ken and Ivan insist on continuing to mock my Cocoa Puffs?

Except running through my pipes, that is.

Shortly after 5 p.m. last night, the water to my end of the complex was cut off. I still don’t know the details, except that the guy who just moved in was washing his car immediately before it happened. I know New Guy isn’t responsible, but by the way he won’t stop hovering over the increasingly large hole across the street, I think he feels a little guilty anyway.

(As I type this, I’m watching the series premiere of the new Fox show Vanished. I hadn’t planned on it, but they started off by panning over Atlanta (the “vanished” is the wife of a Georgia senator), and I was all, awww, the Nations Bank building! So here I am with Vanished playing in the background, although it’s pretty obvious the show is shot in L.A. because y’all, the Biltmore doesn’t look like that and doesn’t have fancy script lettering on shiny glass doors. But I digress.)

I was in the middle of making dinner when it happened. One minute, I’m rinsing out my measuring cup, and the next, I have no water to wash a bowl. One of my hands was covered in oil from punching down my focaccia dough, but the other was clean enough to get to a stopping point. The dishes are still piled up in the sink (no water!) and the countertops are crumb-free but a little stained (no water!). Let us not even begin to speak of the toilets (NO WATER!).

(Okay, now I’m just confused. Some of these scenes in Vanished are obviously in Atlanta, but others I can’t place at all, even though they’ve got trademark buildings looming in the background. Are the buildings CGI’d in, or do I just not know my city? And why can’t I remember whether MLK intersects Pryor?)

Actually, the water came back sometime while I was at work (unshowered because… no water!), but I haven’t gotten a chance to clean up yet. All last night I kept expecting the electricity to go out too because that’s what’s supposed to happen when you don’t have water. I honestly didn’t realize how much I took water (running or piled up in tubs) for granted until I didn’t have it anymore.

(This show is kind of boring.)

It used to be Superman’s motto. In the new movie, however, the “American way” part has been replaced by “all that stuff”, purportedly to make the movie more palatable to foreign audiences since the modern Hollywood exec thinks beyond just sea to shining (or, these days, steaming) sea. Liberal as Hollywood is, though, I have to wonder if there’s more to it than that. Perhaps they’re opining that the American way isn’t quite the gleaming ideal it used to be. Perhaps.

Around the Fourth of July, I had a post percolating in my head about what the holiday meant to me and how that meaning has changed over the years. I never wrote it because I couldn’t put into words what I wanted to say, but here we are again, just over two weeks later, and I’m thinking the same thoughts.

Boys wounded in an Israeli warplane missile attack in Srifa, Lebanon, sit on hospital beds.

It’s been seven days since Israel fired on Lebanon in retaliation for the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers by radical militant group Hezbollah. I’ve wanted to discuss it here because I certainly can’t stop talking about it anywhere else, but I am just incapable of being objective about the whole mess (semi-affectionately referred to in my office as The Apocalypse).

I’m not objective. I think Hezbollah was stupid and irresponsible, but I also think Israel threw “proportionate response” out the window when they retaliated. It’s like cutting off somebody’s arm because they poked you in the stomach. I think the longer this goes on, the higher the likelihood of a destabalized Lebanon, which in turn will lead to an even more tumultuous region. I think Hezbollah will never release the kidnapped soldiers unless Israel gives them something in return, and I think every missle fired at Lebanon gives the already unbalanced people in Iran even more of a reason to get involved and start their own missile-launching.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked President Bush to use his influence with Israel to orchestrate a cease-fire that would bring both parties to the negotiating table, but the President declined, saying Israel had a right to defend its borders. Be that as it may, I see no logical reason for Bush to eschew diplomacy in favor of continued violence or to decline to use his influence for good, especially when all of Europe and even his own Secretary of State believe such an action would be prudent.

All of which brings us back to the Fourth of July and the American way. As a child, the Fourth was nothing more than a day that ended in fireworks. We did not do any kind of celebrating. The Fourth of July was a holiday for Those American People, and we, we were Indian. It started that way because we were too young to think any differently, and it continued that way because we didn’t want to hurt our parents by telling them that we were Americans of Indian heritage, not Indians of American residence.

That influence continued through college even those summers when there were no parents to offend. I’d celebrate a little — barbeque here, summer concert there — but it’s never been my style to wrap myself in a flag. Still, it was comforting to know that for the most part, my government made good decisions, and I was grateful and happy to live here.

Today, we’re at a time when our foreign policy turns my stomach and being American no longer feels synonomous with being free and encouraging freedoms. It matters not that cowboy diplomacy is on its way out; it matters that cowboy diplomacy ever existed, that we the American people, so wrapped up in jingoism, flag-waving, and our desire to have our world exactly how it suits us best and damn the consequences for others, have cemented our global status as the boorish bully on the block.

It’s not a pleasant feeling. Not for me.

Please don’t tell me that if I don’t like it here, I don’t have to stay here. I love living here. I am still grateful every day that I live here instead of anywhere else in the world. What I would like, though, is to be able to believe that as the planet’s strongest, most influential nation, we are doing a credible job of leading the world into the future. I would like to believe that we are hearing all sides of the story and trying to help rather than jumping in with eyes closed and guns blazing. I would like us to uphold our own standards of guilt and innocence and to regain the trust of the rest of the world. I would like the nation of the free and equal to remember always the sovereignty of other countries. I would like America once again to be the inspirational leader that has grace and knows humility, whose people who come to help and not to hurt.

At the memorial service for the Oklahoma City bombings, President Clinton said, “When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life.” Right now, for want of two soldiers, there are three hundred dead in Lebanon, yet the only governments talking against the violence are in Europe and Asia. Right now, on the basis of fabricated evidence, there are over 50,000 dead in Iraq, and it’s going to get so much worse before it gets better.

“You must tell the world we do not support Hezbollah,” a Lebanese woman tells CNN’s Hala Gorani. “We do not support anyone. But my country is being destroyed by people using it as a battleground.”

Somebody needs to be a leader and guide both parties towards a fair resolution. If I had my druthers, that someone would be us. And then maybe Superman could stand for the American way again because it would be worth standing for.

I got a ticket today for “not obeying traffic laws” when I turned from Baker St. onto Centennial Olympic Park Dr. It’s an odd intersection in that Baker is one-way, and COP is one-way, but the other side of Baker is two-way, which means they have a sign posted to clarify that you cannot take a left turn on a red light like you normally can when turning from a one-way onto a one-way.

The officer said the light was red when I turned. I know it wasn’t. It had just turned yellow as I hit the intersection, which means it was almost definitely still yellow when I cleared the intersection. As I turned, I saw the two cops on their bikes sitting in the shadow of the Inforum building. I saw one of them turn to look at the light, but by that time, I was well clear of the intersection.

My problem isn’t so much that I got a ticket. I’m not thrilled about it, but it’s not the kind of thing that typically stays with me all day. My problem isn’t really that the cop lied (repeatedly, and through his teeth) either because that says more about him than it does about me.

My problem is that the cop accused me of lying.

I wasn’t. I don’t appreciate being made to feel like I was. If he’d claimed the light changed while I was in the intersection, I’d know he was lying to me, but again, that would say more about him than it did about me, and I’d get over it. Instead, he described the incident as though I’d deliberately turned on a red.

I know why he did it, and I know it still says more about him than it does about me. But I do not lie. His insinuation that I do, or that I was, makes me feel angry and dirty all at the same time. Just because the Atlanta Police Department has problems with honesty (and, from what I hear from “the inside”, racism) doesn’t mean they should be treating me as though I’m one of them.

I can’t wait until the next time a telemarketer calls asking for a donation on behalf of the APD.

That’s when you blog because you can’t sleep anyway, even though you should be since you spent the majority of the day walking around like the sludge at the bottom of somebody’s coffee pot and since you’re supposed to get up early tomorrow to run a few miles — because you haven’t in a few days and because you feel like a walking tub o’ lard since you’ve spent the weekend chowing down on chocolate pot de creme and fish biryani and plum crisp and cheeseburgers — and also wash your hair before work.

It’s hard to sleep when your brain won’t shut off, but it gets plain ridiculous when it’s full of frivolous things, like how you like Tuesdays because that’s when the new movies and music gets released, or how mortified you were that time at work when one of your managers asked you what you planned to shop for in India, and you said, “Oh, the usual: shoes, clothes, handbags, jewelry,” and one of your teammates said, “Husbands,” and for once in your life you couldn’t think of a thing to say because your brain decided the middle of a launch was a perfectly acceptable time to shut off.

When you close your eyes, and your eyes go, “Ahhh, refreshing,” you’d think your brain would get the hint instead of creating an Excel sheet in your head for how to best consume all of the extra food in your refrigerator and on what days to do it. Or trying to figure out where to look to replace your Superman pajamas when they finally break down; the man may be of steel, but the pj’s bearing his insignia are of mere cloth.

Sometimes you just have to break out the Big Girl Voice that lectured yourself out of bed that morning and MAKE yourself go to sleep because you just can’t spend another day overusing the word “literally” while spelling it “literarly.” After all, kids don’t just discipline themselves.

Really, truly, madly, deeply.

I think it’s botox. I’m pretty sure it’s botox, actually. You have to wonder at the irony of the picture they chose to go with that quote. Either the editor hates Sharon Stone, or he has a wicked sense of humor, because, seriously, the BOTOX. She looks like smiling is incredibly painful.

It could be worse. They could have put this photo with it instead.