Mugambo?

There are just some things in Urdu/Hindi that I will never get. Sadly, many of them I won’t even notice because they are layered cultural references or belong to specific regional accents, and I don’t even catch them. So they are lost on me. Sometimes in a foreign language there is what you understand and there is what people are really saying…and you as a non-native speaker cannot judge the discrepancy between the two. This happens due to a simple lack of acuity with second language listening comprehension skills related to level and proficiency, but also due missed to cultural cues. Other times, you catch the cue and realize there is some deeper meaning at work, but don’t get the reference as a cultural oustider. Some cultural references crop up again and again. But I never ask about them or google them because it would be awkward to stop a group of people in the midst of their chuckle filled conversation just to ask “Who is Mugambo?” “Mugambo KYON itna khush hua?” And in my busy day filled with sporadic net surfing, the name Mugambo never pops into my brain. And so I don’t remember Mugambo until someone mentions this mysterious name again!

Still, I start to paste pictures together. Light bulbs go off months after I hear an expression or cultural reference because its meaning finally becomes clear to me by some uncanny incident or occurence. A realization sinks in. Silently, I will affirm to myself: “Oh, so that’s why he said so-and-so looks like a Pashtoon film star in that outfit.” “Ah hah! So this is a mutiaran!” I will know where someone is from when they say “Mereko udhar-ich mila.”

I become ‘in  the know’ in that ungainly way of a non-native speaker. It would be too silly for me to use such expressions myself…I would feel disingenuous. I am too much of an “FOB” so to speak. I would be like the guy who says “That is a sucks, yaar!” Instead of “that sucks.” How long would my husband have to live in Texas to be able to say y’all? My New York dialect speaking parents don’t say y’all after 30 years in Texas. Can a des-raised Pakistani say y’all if he has Pakistani-accented English? Is that okay? Does it sound phony? Do you see what I mean? Maybe my husband will love the Texan accent and go Southern all the way when we move there. Yee-haw.  He has a des-raised cousin in another Southern American state who has a very interesting convent educated Pakistani English-small town Southern American English accent combo. I think he says y’all.  Anyway, I still don’t feel proficient enough to actually use such references or special expressions unless there is some humor in the fact that a foreigner is saying them (maiN teri aisi ki taisi kar doongi!!!), but at at least I will know what the heck the references mean.

And so I keep building my repertoire.

Guess what? There is a blog post that explains  Mugambo! If only I had known before. But then I feel sheepish, googling up Mugambo, watching Mugambo youtube videos, just so next time I will ‘get it’ when someone says “Mugambo khush hua.”

 

Gharelu Talks

My mother in law is visiting right now. Her older sister is also here from Karachi on a long term visit to her son’s place. He  lives across town from us. Part of my MIL’s family lives in India and it is very hard for Indians to get visas to Pakistan and vice versa. So after trying unsuccessfully sometime for a visa, the elderly folk are having a meet-up here in Dubai. Her younger brother and his wife are here from Hyderabad Dakan. My MIL’s family is from Lucknow, but her brother married a Hyderabadi woman and settled there. There is a sort of rivalry between Indian Hyderabadis and Pakistanis, and in Pakistan between Lucknavis and other U.P. origin “pure Urdu speakers” and Hyderabad Dakan origin Pakistanis. Since we have a few Hyderabadi families as neighbors, I get to hear some really funny things as part of this rivalry. Somehow a lot of my husband’s U.P. born relatives who migrated to Pakistan ended up marrying Hyderabad born Pakistanis. It was a trend of that generation (I guess the families felt that these arranged matches were more appropriate than with the, ahem, Punjabis? Anyway, the younger generations have married with just about every community and even some foreigners like ME!) So the conflict is an ongoing source of jestful  contention for my ILs. Whose food is the best, which community has the worst slang and weakest Urdu, etc. My MIL says that her brother needs and escape from all of the Hyderabadi vegetables and is planning to cook him loads of meaty Lucknawi food, all of which he supposedly pines for in the culinarily tortuous landscape of Hyderabad. His Hyderabadi wife gets annoyed by this and says that the vegetable centered diet is not because of the Hyderabadi cuisine, it is because Little Brother has been diagnosed with high BP, high cholesterol, Type II diabetes, and so on! Could my MIL please not use so much oil! Since I am a foreigner, I stay on the middle path…I happen to LOVE hot, sour, and spicy Hyderabadi cuisine as well as the more delicately seasoned Lucknawi/U.P. fare of my husband’s family.  I am happy to be invited to dinner either way What time do we eat?

Several months ago, my husband’s elder brother went to the UK from Pakistan to find a job and eventually settle. After much hunting, mashallah, he finally landed a position. My BIL is very well educated (US degrees) and has a lot of work experience, but in this economy nothing is sure. It was by sheer coincidence that the employment agency BIL was using hooked him up as a financial consultant for a Pakistani-British company. No one at the agency has any Pakistan connection. It was just that the right position came up and the company owners happened to be Pakistani. Mashallah! I am so happy for him. Now, Inshallah his wife and three children will follow him to the UK very shortly. BIL had applied for UK immigration years ago, but decided to move now, because according to him, there are educational opportunities in the UK that wouldn’t be available to his 3 children in Pakistan. I know his kids will adjust quickly since they are all 10 and under. The move will most likely be the hardest on his wife. She is a professional yoga instructor, though. So, hopefully that will give her opportunities to meet people and keep busy. The move also means that my IL’s house will be empty. No children. They lived in a joint family before. But thus is the state of many of my husband’s older relatives’ homes: all of their children have migrated abroad.

 

Villagers on the wall

Sometimes our old housekeeper A. would tell me the details of the latest Indian serial she was watching. Or about the Pakistani version of Judge Judy, which she liked to watch for the mirch masala factor. Or maybe a movie she had seen. I would sometimes do the same, and tell her about some of the English language programming that I saw. My favorite series for a while was Prison Break, but I was never able to explain that one to her in an interesting and comprehensible way…imagine me fudging around in Urdu saying, “See, there are these two brothers, and one is on death row, and the other is a genius, and he gets this tattoo,”…somehow that was too hard to explain.

Last year, I went to our local film festival for a few screenings of international films. I saw a Vietnamese film, a Pakistani film, and an Iranian film. They were all great. I related the stories of all three films to A. later on. She listened intently to each story. The Iranian and Pakistani films both dealt with poor peoples’ stories.

After I told her about the Iranian film, she said, “That is so strange that the audience likes to watch films about poor people when you all have money.” I said, “That is true, I guess the stories are human interest stories, but somehow they are more ‘interesting’ to monied viewers if the protagonists are poor and struggling. I don’t know why that is.”

“Hah!” she sneered, “Indian people have pictures of villagers on their walls. They love to put pictures of villagers on their walls!” I knew she meant that in the upper class Indian homes where she worked, there must have been decorative art depicting village scenes. I had seen such art work myself in Indian and Pakistani homes. A group of women in a courtyard, one churning butter, another thrashing some grain in a basket, all in colorful clothes with large nose-hoops in their noses. Images like that.

She continued, “But those rich people would hate a real village. If they came near to a real village they would complain ‘this place smells like shit,’ and hold their noses. They would say ‘look at those disgusting children with dirty faces, keep them away, don’t let them touch me.’ They wouldn’t be able to stomach the flies everywhere.”

I said, it may be so, but I think a lot of modern Indians like the romantic ideal of supposedly ’simple’ village life. Or maybe the pictures are just beautiful.

“No, Indians would hate a village. They are such snobs. They would wave us villagers away and say we stink.” (Yes, I know that 70% of India’s population is rural…in this conversation, A. means upper class urban Indians like the people she worked for most of her life.)

I said, “White people (goray) like pictures of villagers, too. We even have calendars of villagers and poor people on our walls. Actually, a lady at my work is selling such a calendar like that for charity right now. There is a poor person for each month!” Come to think of it, the pictures were of poor children from developing countries.

“Hmmmph?” she snorted incredulously. It sounded inconceivable that someone might own such a thing. Why would someone want to look at a villager or a poor person, one for each month?

“No, I am serious!” I insisted. “We even take tours of different countries to go see villagers and take their pictures.”

“Hmmm,” she thought for a moment. “When I was a child in Nepal, white people would come through our village on the way to climb mountains. They sometimes brought us candies.”

“You see!” I said.

The conversation ended there, but it got me to thinking. Why do us ‘rich people’ (paisey walay—if you are computer literate, you are one of us, unlike a good chunk of the world) take interest in art movies about poor people? Why do we use poor people as decorations for our homes and offices? Actually, I like those rural scenes of women working in their village. I, too have been attracted to pictures of large eyed “ethnic” people in pictures. But it really is a ludicrous form of decoration if you think about it. A poor person staring at me from the wall, his or her ‘exotic looks’ and perhaps a cultural costume entertaining me. A person made into an object. An impoverished person objectified for the rich. Actually, that is pretty atrocious.

But what about the films? Everyone in the theatre was so enchanted by them.  I cried during them. They really were great films. They were Ramchand Pakistani and The Song of Sparrows.  I feel there is benefit from such films because the characters are not one-dimensional, flat people. And viewers learn a lot about other people from such films while being entertained. It is an issue of class privilege, though. White privilege, too, although not in the context of this particular film festival as 90% of the film goers were brown. But when these films are screened in the West and much of the audiences are white, there is that extra dimension of not just poor, but poor and brown. I had read about the issue of “ethnic” photography and art in anti-racism literature before. A. sharply articulated what she felt was wrong with such art, too.

When I read some critical reaction to the widespread acclaim of the Slum Dog Millionaire film, the words ‘poverty p*rn*graphy’ popped up. Somehow there is a voyeuristic element to watching a film about the lives of the ghareeb. Some of my favorite films would fall into that category in some ways. It is a hard thing to hash out. I always thought of such films in a positive light, exposing new perspectives, humanizing different lifestyles that ‘we’ might not know much about. But I can see A.’s point very clearly. Anyway, it is just something to think about.

 

Happy Eid al Fitr

Happy Eid al Fitr to you and your. Hope you achieved a lot during Ramadan, and that you have a blessed Eid!

 

A day in the life

What did I do today? Left work at 2 pm.  I went home. My two daughters were still asleep, as they sleep in the afternoon. I changed clothes, freshened my make up,  and waited for the girls to wake up. Prayed Asr. Then nanny came out and we both got the girls ready to go to The Plaza. Something about The plaza, that simple plaza with the rope climbing clown, draws me in with a magnetic pull. I packed the diaper bag. Everyone got in the car. We dropped the nanny off at her husband’s place for the weekend. Then off we headed to The Plaza. I had called my friend D. earlier in the week to tell her that as I often do, I would be bringing the girls to the indoor play area on Thurs. Be there or be square. Play date. I entered The Plaza. What a rush. Toddler D was so happy to see the plastic clown man climbing up and down his 4 storey length rope. I dropped off an old ring for sizing. I brought some receipts for some things I had purchased last week and showed them for coupons in a raffle. Maybe I’ll win? Then I walked the girls over to the play area. I paid a fee and we entered the beautiful play area. There is a tiny tots area and several other places inside, including a place for water play, a sand area, a fake store for kids to play shopkeeper, a library, and of course a foam covered jungle gym. D. is not there. Maybe she won’t come.  I sat there, just a few other moms are there. Mostly it is nannies watching the kids. There were some regulars there.  Those  two pretty French sisters. And this whole gang of Central Asian women meet there every Thursday for a playdate and let their kids run around. Once one of their nannies told me where they were from. Was it Kazakhstan? I can’t remember. The Central Asian kids recognized my baby and came to say hi to her. I sat and played in the baby area with BabyA. My friend D. showed up with her daughter. We chatted for sometime while our daughters crawl around and bang on plastic toys. Later my husband arrived. He played with Toddler D. and took Baby A. off of my hands. D. and I talked for a while more. The time flew by. It was nearing maghreb time…iftar time. I said my goodbyes to D. and my husband and I got the girls ready to walk across the parking lot to Desert restaurant. I put Toddler D.’s shoes on. I washed both girls’ hands with soap. Rubbidy dubbidy, washin the haathen. We walked across the lot and past the shisha coal fire of a coffee shop. Toddler D. is always fascinated by the fire. “Yeh to aag hai.” “Aag bahut garam hoti hai.” she says every time we pass it. “Ham aag ke upar khaana pakaate hain.” Baba must have said that to her once and in stuck in her head. On the other side of the fire is Desert. It isn’t fancy. It is a self-styled Pak-Indian buffet. The host knows us from before and pointed us towards our usual table. We haven’t been there often. Maybe four times. But I guess we are recognizable.  DH went to get some fresh pakoray and chutney. Other diners followed his lead. A waiter brought us sharbat. The azaan hadn’t sounded yet. We waited perched over our pakoray. I fed Baby A. fusilli pasta that I had stashed in the diaper bag. Toddler D. spilled sharbat on the table and the waiter saw it and said “Oh shit!” It wasn’t a big spill. I helped him wipe it up, but he was visibly annoyed. So sorry. The azaan sounded and we tucked into our crispy pakoray. Toddler D. had some, too. I gave potato pakoray to the baby, as well. I got up to get my plate of food before the stampede of the elephants happens. I was in luck, I filled my plate while everyone else in the restaurant was gorging on samosay and pakoray. Otherwise it would have been elbow kushti. I selected biriani and some other chicken dish for myself. I got some desi style chowmein, French fries, and Lahori fish fry for toddler D. I fed Chinese noodles to the baby to keep her busy as I scarfed down my food. DH went for his plate in the meanwhile. We wanted to finish quickly because DH wanted to get home relax for a while and then and head for taraweeh prayers. We ate up. I got a dessert of soggy, orange, sickly sweet shahi tukray. For some reason, I relish the stuff.  I know I wouldn’t touch the stuff if I weren’t fasting. The blood sugar roller coaster caused by fasting makes me lose all self control. So I ate the soggy fried milky bread with glee. It was time to go. DH drove towards home alone. I went back in to The Plaza to deposit my raffle coupons. Then I packed the girls into the car. I know it is taking me forever to get into the car…open door for Toddler D., let her climb into her car seat, put bags in passenger seat, put baby in car seat, fold stroller, put stroller in trunk. The parking lot was pretty full at this time and the shikaar was on. Drivers were hunting for an empty space. So I didn’t feel so bad that a family in an SUV was waiting behind me. I took out my parking meter coupon from my dashboard. It still had 40 minutes on it. I gave it to the SUV’s driver. He was so happy about that. Then I drove off into the night towards home. We listened to songs in the car and sang along heartily. I didn’t care that nosy buggers who glanced in my direction on the highway could possibly see me jamming out to Barney. We arrived home. DH has left already. I changed each girl, then put each one to sleep. I washed up, changed into pajamas, prayed, came down stairs, removed the baggies of half eaten snacks and empty bottles of milk from  the diaper bag, and then turned on the dishwasher.The nanny had pretty much straightened everything earlier in the day so that was all I had to do. Then I turned on my computer, connected to the net, checked my usual haunts, and then came here to tell you about my day. The girls are sleeping like babies, mashallah. I guess because they are babies. I am really exhausted because I didn’t sleep well the night before, and fasting makes me feel drained. I just want to veg out and I plan to head to sleep soon. So that was a day in my life. Or an afternoon and evening at the beginning of the weekend in Ramadan, I guess.

 

Stranger Afraad

I know three women dating PK men. Recently, each one of them talked to me about her love life and asked me for advice.  In all three cases, I clammed up. I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say. I just didn’t have the mental energy. I didn’t want to knock down all the dominoes, dissect the stereotypes, and pass the judgements.

Case 1: She is in her early 40s, divorced and has a kid. She is from Canada. She has been seeing a PK guy. He is in his late 20s. She said he is the nicest guy she has ever dated. So polite. So eager to be helpful in anyway. He does little things for her to make her feel special. He is so good with her kid. She wanted to know more about him and his culture. Could he be ‘the one’? How do I find being married to a Pakistani man? Is my husband very conservative? I told her that Pakistan is a pretty diverse place and there isn’t really one particular culture. So sorry, I really can’t answer that. But good luck. She told me she thinks he is from someplace…Pashmina…Pashmavaar? Have I heard of it? Sorry, I say. Don’t know much about that place. Most people there are pretty conservative, though. That’s all I know. Good luck with that.

Case 2: My friend is of Indian origin but from Africa. Her family went to the US when she was little, though. She said she has been dating a PK guy. He is from, uh, she thinks it sounds like Shaamaa…no Peshavabaar? She thinks. She likes him, and she thinks he might be the one. However, he keeps making all of these anti-India comments to her. And it is starting to bother her. Because she realized by seeing him that she is Indian. So it is getting on her nerves. What do I think about this? Are all Pakistanis really so anti-Indian? How should she deal with this? I actually could say a lot about this. But I didn’t say much. I say, just tell him to stop talking smack about India because you are an Indian. Bharat mata ki jai!

Case 3: This is a girl who works at a shop near my house. I don’t know her that well, but we always chat when I see her. I guess I have known her for a couple of years, though. She is from a South East Asian country. I know she has been dating a PK man for a while. She is also considering converting to Islam. Recently, she has discovered that her man, who she thinks is from Pasheewa, is married.  He has a family in…whatever city it is he comes from. But he wants to marry her. He isn’t in love with his wife. She is a cousin. It was an arranged marriage. He is so sorry he hid the truth. Please forgive him, he says. What would she do? Aren’t second wives allowed in Islam? I told her, well, you can think with your heart or with your head. How would your parents feel about you marrying a married man? This isn’t what Islam ‘permitting a second, third, or fourth’ is about. Imagine if you were his first wife in PK? How would you feel if you discovered that your husband had taken a second wife? I wanted to continue and give my full thoughts. But I left it at that.

Honestly, I have never dated a Pakistani guy. I only married one. I converted to Islam when I was 18, I don’t have adult dating experience at all. I can’t say I know what these women are going through. I am a conservative person, and I am left shaking my head at these Muslim guys who are off bonking around like this. (what’s up with them all being from Shampeshaawam…and why couldn’t any of these 3 women say that city’s name? ) Yet how can I really give input to these women without knowing these men? By delving into the murky waters of pretending that I can know what an individual is up to just based on his or her gender and nationality and background? Just cuz I married a Pakistani doesn’t necessarily give me any insight, really. Or does it? Maybe it isn’t about nationality at all, some people just need a pinch of common sense. I bet you know what I wanted to tell these women. Or maybe I am second guessing you, too.

 

Now it’s okay?

When I first started blogging, it was rare for Muslimahs, specifically hijabis to show images of themselves on their blogs. I recall a sister-blogger with whom I occasionally talked to on the phone telling me that she had actually gotten chastized by some fellow Muslims for putting a painted image of herself on her blog and allowing some online publication which had published some stuff of her’s to post a real pic of her. That was like four years ago or so. Now, a lot of Muslimahs have their own images on their blogs or as avatars or gravatars or what have you. Niqabis, too with full-face covered, eye-only images. Although hehehehe for whatever reason it seems to me the niqabis always liked to have that two eye image popping out in their blogs, not unlike my header above, like “hey, salaam y’all! I am a niqaabi, just FYI!” I am all into anonymity (though I am not so strict about it), but I think it is good that sisters who are freer with their real-life identities are okay with posting their pics. I mean, what is the point of having the hijab on if no one is supposed to see you at all? I thought that one aspect of  traditional understandings of the purpose of covering and hijab was that it fully legitimized public visibility and so I don’t know why people would have a problem with a covered up pic.

I know in some Muslim cultures pictures of women are really frowned upon. That is the case where I live. I could write a really long post about that issue. But that is cultural. Not religious.

So I was happy today when I noticed on a favorite blogger’s blog, who happens to be on blogspot, a whole gaggle of hijabi followers, bright faces peeping out it tiny images in her sidebar.

Times have changed, I guess.

 

Have a blessed Ramadan!

 

Five Things About Me Tag

Hajar Zamzam Ismail   has tagged me. I know, you tagged me, too. I didn’t do it, did I?  I am sorry. I felt really bad and sheepish when it happened. I just didn’t have time to do it, although I had planned to…thanks for tagging me anyway. It made me feel speshul that you thought of me. So now I will do this tag because I can sneak a few minutes to write it.

1.  I like to write stories but I haven’t written a short story in a very long time. I get inspired to write and even think in story narrative sometimes. But I just haven’t had a chunk of time to sit down and write, rewrite, and rewrite stories like before.

2. I have never lost a close friend through a falling out, but one drifted away a few years ago. She is not into computers so I won’t find her on facebook or myspace. She and I went in different directions, but we used to party together. (Not that I was some big party animal, it was just teenage stuff) We had known each other since we were 11 or so though. She went through a really wild phase and in the meanwhile I converted to Islam. Her sister also converted to Islam, incidentally, mashallah, sort of around the same time I had. Her sister pretty much rejected her because of her wayward lifestyle, so she figured that I would reject her, too. She just sort of faded out of my life. She had a son out of wedlock. The last I saw her was when she brought her son over to meet me when I came home one summer from Oman.  She had gotten into some weird stuff including escorting. So I was kind of relieved to not be privy to that drama. Last I heard of her was two years ago when my sister ran into her. My sister reported that she was still up to the same ‘ole same ‘ole, meaning weed and partying and nothing good.  At least she hadn’t gotten into more hardcore drugs and become some lost addict, I guess. Maybe I should be glad she is out of my life, but I still feel for her and think of the crazy stuff we went through as kids and teenagers. She had the most amazing singing voice and also had a radio-DJ quality spoken voice and she was really witty and funny, so she could have/should have become a DJ or recorded radio ads or something. I also liked her family a lot. I wonder how her Muslim sister is doing and if they have reconciled.

3. I sometimes think that I am an exact mix between my mom and my dad. Some angles of my face are even more like one or the other. Half of my bad habits seem to be from one, and half from the other. My talents come from them half and half, too.

4. I feel sick from low blood sugar if I don’t eat immediately when I wake up from a night’s sleep. Some people can’t eat right away when they wake up, the thought of eating makes them nauseous. But I am the opposite. I feel very weak and shaky and must have something right away. My something is usually oatmeal microwaved with milk or soy milk.

5. I tried sua dau nanh, or the oh-so trendy soybean milk, when I was a kid at some Vietnamese friends’ houses. I usually loved to eat Vietnamese foods and snacks as a kid, and would devour anything I was offered; xi mui, flavored beef jerky, dried squid shreds, tamarind candy, and stuff. So people always offered me sua dau nanh to try. It was just too weird or foreign for me, even though it was sweet. But since the soy milk craze, I have given soy milk another chance as an adult and now I like it.

 

No difference

So we set out for Dallas on Thursday evening. The drive went smoothly alhamdulillah. I know I am in Dallas when I see that big giraffe with his tongue sticking out. It is a roadside statue, someone’s idea of public art, I guess.

The purpose of our trip was to check out the North West Dallas and suburb area for possible relocation there, eventually. We have a few locales in mind, and that area is one of them. My best friend came along because her sisters live in the vicinity and so she knows where everything is, with the help of a GPS system at least.

We arrived at around 9:30 and went straight to Bistro B of Paris By Night fame. We had shrimp cake (chao tom) goi cuon, bo tai chanh, and pho ap chao thap cam. Everything was great, but Bistro B is renouned for good food and horrible service, and we found the rumors to be true. The chao tom goi cuon was amazing though. Instead of bun it had this radical cigar-roll deep fried eggroll wrapper as the inner carb. With the dipping sauce it was crunchy and AMAZING! The pho ap chao was good, and I loved the bo tai chanh…it was light and refreshing.

After our meal, we went to the hotel to sleep. The next day we drove around. I really liked what I saw. Lots of Muslims, lots of Muslim oriented shops and groceries, lots of Vietnamese and Chinese restaurants, lots of mosques, everything looked green, the streets were wide, and it was very developed and nice. The residential neighborhoods that we were looking at had really small driveways and yards though. My husband thinks much of America looks like a strip mall. He is right, commercialization has taken over the character of many towns and we all have the same stores and fast food places. But I can still see unique character in different places. He says there is not much difference between places though.

We wanted to check out the main mosque so we went for salaatul Juma’a. I was not praying so I chilled out on a couch in the women’s area. I went to the prayer area to hear the khutbah. Disappointingly, the sound system sucked so everyone was talking, and that particular imam talked in a low voice, so I have no clue what the khutbah was about. I met some nice people there and chatted a bit. My best friend dropped us off and picked us up afterwards. I had wanted her to come in and check out how we worship. I had been to church with her a million times as a child, so I didn’t think she would mind. She opted not to come at the last minute. After I saw that the sound system didn’t work for the women’s area for the khutbah, I was relieved that she hadn’t come. You know, it would look so disorganized and like they don’t value women and women’s worship and all…and we Muslims are very concerned with how things look.

After the prayer, we went to a Bangladeshi restaurant for lunch. My friend wanted some “chicken curry” and I was craving biriani, so we just chose a random desi place. Right when we walked in I knew the place was Bengali owned because of the paabda maach and rizala on the menu board above the cash register. I knew my husband wouldn’t like it because he has a certain idea of how qorma and biriani are supposed to be and I knew he wouldn’t like the Bengali style. He is open to different international cuisines, but is picky about desi foods. Basically he is pretty prejudiced against anything that doesn’t taste like home. I didn’t say anything, so we just sat down. There were a lot of different people eating there, kind of like in my home town. There, you will see the Pakistani place and the pho house filled with not just members of those communities, but a lot of different types of people. I thought that was a good sign that the Bengali place in Dallas was the same way because it means the various types of locals are open and like to try different things in North Dallas area, kind of like my home town. The qorma tasted like butter chicken. It wasn’t a Bangladeshi recipe, it was more restaurant faux Mughlai style typical fare. The biriani was Bangladeshi style and had shorter rice. It needed salt. I liked it but as I predicted, my husband didn’t. My best friend really liked the butter chicken style qorma, though.

We crossed the street after lunch and went to check out and Indo-Pak grocery nearby. Though the name was Indo-Pak, the grocery was also run by Bangladeshis. I was kind of interested in what kind of products they had, so I looked around. I was happy that I would be able to get some things I like to cook like kalmi saag and so forth if we lived here. I checked out what they had and saw that much of what I can get in Dubai is there. They even had fresh ghee and also khashkhaash seeds, or posto, which are not allowed in Dubai just in case we make drugs out of them instead of using them to scent our meatballs. We bought some shaami sweets there which were fresh from a nearby bakery. They were good, too.

Later, we went to check out a shopping mall. Toddler D hit the play area with Baba, and best friend and I walked around and shopped.

In the evening we ate canh chua do bien at one of the restaurants in Saigon Mall.

The next day we went to check out more neighborhoods. Then we drove home.

DH said the area was nice, but every place in America looks alike. There was just like anywhere else.

He didn’t like my hometown cuz it looks very run down and urban. I told him that this is just my neighborhood, but there are some rich neighborhoods in my town. I just don’t know where they are. I researched and asked around a bit. They are all North West. So yesterday my best friend and I went driving through nice neighborhoods, the kind my DH wants to buy a house in.

In Dubai I feel rich, I guess. But at home, everything around me is very run down, broken, seedy looking with dangerous looking people lurking everywhere. The truth is that they just look dangerous but they mostly mind their own business. I walk around my own neighborhood and go to shops and restaurants and the park and all and ain’t nobody never said nothing to me, even with hijab. It is in the snooty neighborhoods where people have more of a staring problem. They somehow feel very entitled to stare. Like when I go to a nicer area to a book store, or to a more yuppy-ish affluent place.

But I guess I don’t want to raise my own kids in my seedy run down side of town. They would have to fend off pressures that I did, like temptations to drop out of school, pressure to go into a life of pot smoking and not much else, and the like. Maybe rich places are like that, too. I have no idea. Maybe pot is for poor people and the rich people have worse, more expensive drugs. I dunno. But the rich people have nicer schools with better classes and better technological education and all that. I want my girls to be sheltered, not rough inside like me. Like some parts of me, at least.

Last time my husband came, he told my brother he wanted to see the rich neighborhood. My brother used to do electrical and construction work in rich peoples’ houses, so he took us to see their houses. He drove us around these million dollar houses. This was not at all what my husband had in mind. He wanted to see upper middle class places, new construction of cookie cutter floor plans, suburbia. Not mansions on the lake. So he got the impression that my hometown was just my tired area and the mansions on the lake, plus some hippy places near to the university. Finally, this time, my best friend showed us where the upper middle class people lived. Such beautiful houses, mashallah. I saw so many houses that I would LOVE to live in. It is in my dreams now. I feel greedy for a nice house in a nice neighborhood.

Let’s see what actually happens. When we relocate to the US, we are gonna struggle a lot. Inshallah we will land on our feet. Luckily, we have my parents who are helping us out a lot. And DH and I are well educated and employable and all. So things should work out. I have so much to be nervous about. Lots of duas to make, I suppose.

But anyhow, DH saw the upper middle class areas in my own town and in suburbs outside of  town. He was impressed. I am so glad. Because I secretly always wanted to live here. The Muslim community is smaller than the one in Dallas. There is a mix of different types of people, both the professional type and the small business owner type. Most of my friends’ parents are small business owner types, and actually one of my best friends here, her husband is a small business owner. So my husband’s snootyness comes out because when we hooked up, her husband only talked about discounts the whole time. He is kind of a comical guy. As in “Touch this coat! Do you think it’s leather?” he will ask. “This guy came in my store and sold it to me real cheap! You can’t even tell it isn’t leather. Look, I can light it on fire and the pleather doesn’t even burn!” So my husband got the impression that everyone in the Muslim community here is that type. But there are so many tech companies and big businesses and all, and so there are those edumacated types of people, too. The kind my husband wants for friends, I guess. But my girl friends whose parents were small business owners have all gone to university and are edumacated. So see, it works out in the end. He shouldn’t be such a snob. If we live here and become active in the Muslim community, he will meet all kinds of people. Not just small business owning uncles who talk about discounts. So that is my next task, taking him to salaatul Juma’a here this week. Let’s see how that goes. If there is no difference between places to him, here should be just as good as anywhere else, anyway, right?