What does ‘desi’ mean?

A question from a friend: She is white American Muslim and lived in Pakistan and India as a student and professionally while working in the development sector, and she hadn’t heard the term ‘desi’ until coming back to the US recently. She now hears it used frequently among American Muslims of South Asian decent as well as from other Muslims when referring to South Asian origin community members. She asked me what it meant. I thought I would use the opportunity to make this into a blog post because I have been asked on occasion what it means. Desi is one of the first Hindi/Urdu words I ever learned when I first started interacting with friends of various backgrounds from the South Asian American community as a new Muslim. It sounded like daisy to me, but with an /s/ instead of a /z/ sound in the middle. What was this word? Over the years the word has become a very normal term for me to use, so let me put this out there for anyone interested in the word. White girl hashes out her take on desi:

Desi is very much used all over the des (South Asia) where Indic languages are spoken. However, outside of S. Asia, it is used in a very different way than what one may have heard before, prompting the question.

Des/desh and the adjective desi/deshi have roots in Sanskrit (desh). Des and desi would be preferred in Urdu and Western dialects of Punjabi, going into India and further East and on South it becomes deshi/desh, depending on how the s/sh is pronounced in the local languages. It essentially means homeland, or something of the home, something domestic, or native. It also takes on the meaning of the Indic homeland. So you have a desi, a native, and a pardesi, a non-native. Foreigners are pardesis in the des. And you have terms like swadesh (homeland). In Hindi, a more formal term for pardesi is videshi.

Pardesi also means anyone who is not local, without the implication of Indic versus non-Indic. In wedding songs (in Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, etc), the bride who leaves her native village to marry a person from a different village calls that man a pardesi, he is not native to her village. In other usage in songs, a man who leaves his village for travel, perhaps for economic migration, can become pardesi to his wife/love-interest by going to the pardes.

Desi is also use regularly all over to mean sort of like “organic” or grown/raised in purity in the countryside—so you have desi murghi (sort of like free range hen), desi anday (organic, natural eggs), desi ghee (pure ghee just like what is made in the village which has does not have adulteration or hydrogenated oils in it (opposite would be vanaspati ghee or adulterated ghee made with transfats). This particular usage would probably be the way that ‘desi’ is most frequently used within the des.

These are the main ways that desi/deshi is used within India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh by peoples whose languages include this terminology. (Bangladesh…the desh or homeland of the Bangaal people). However, the word desi has taken on a life of its own outside of the des among the South Asian diaspora. Probably coined by South Asians in the UK, desi has become shorthand for South Asia/South Asian and is used just to mean Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Nepalese. Rather than say that whole mouthful, one can just say desi.

Desi has even been used in diasporic academic writing (though the term has been deemed problematic) and very much widely used in common speech among diasporic desis. Desi aunties, desi foods, desi dinner party, desi clothes, etc. It isn’t used so much in this manner within the des because there is no need for contrasting, but saying desi in the diaspora highlights the contrast between desi versus the non-desi majority community, so it marks insiderness. Interestingly, in very recent times, this usage has spread back to Pakistan-India-Bangladesh, and now one can hear it used this way more and more in popular culture. So you have the word appearing in Hindi film songs.

I use the word desi frequently, and pretty much everyone I know does, too. It’s just easy. However, in the diaspora the word is not without controversy. Who counts as a desi both popularly and also by self-designation? What about Afghans? Bhutanese? Maldivians? Where do desis from places like Kenya, Guyana, or Trinidad fit into this picture? Some diasporic Nepalese say that they are desis, some don’t. Also, some Nepali cultures are very Indic, others are very Sino-Tibetan in culture and language, and hence more clearly non-desi. The term also has some particular ethno-political implications within Nepal. Some diasporic Pakistani Pashtoons are completely fine with being called and self-labeling as “desi,” while others see themselves as more Afghan oriented in terms of language and culture view desi as meaning Indic, in contrast to themselves. A friend tells me that Pashto only uses ‘desi’ in the pure organic food sense, but that within Pashtoonistan the term does not exist meaning homeland or native place the way it does in the Indic languages, so these factors give it a twist in the diaspora. Also for Kashmiris, in my observations and interactions, I’ve come across Kashmiri Muslims in India or from India who look down on the Gangetic Plains people (or in modern times, feel marginalized by them) and see themselves as more Central Asian-Persian than desi, and I have had convos with Koshurs who insist that they are not desi, while others I know wouldn’t think twice about identifying as desi and most certainly use the term themselves. I haven’t encountered a diasporic person who is of Pahaari Kashmiri origin who questions association with desi-ness, though.  There are hairy identity politics at play when it comes to using and applying the term in the diaspora. There are also many who don’t like the cultural lumping and erasure of distinctness that comes with such a blanket term. Obviously as a non-desi, it is in no way up to me to define who is and who isn’t desi, and I do respect that there are diverging views on the term and its usage.

Here in Amreeka, the term is used with impunity and definitely serves its purpose, though. For example, I might ask a Bangladeshi American friend “Should I wear desi clothes to your party?” I don’t want to be exclusive and say “Pakistani clothes” or “Indian clothes”  since that implies that one nation owns the clothes, South Asian sounds too formal…so I just say desi, she gets it, it’s fast and she lets me know what will be appropriate.

We all “get it” when a desi American person says “Oh that’s such a desi uncle thing to say,” or “She has such thick desi type hair, mashallah,” it shows cohesion and a common experience of such disparate groups as Hindu Gujaratis, Hindkowan Pakistani Muslims, and Bangladeshi Muslims in the US who up close in the des would find it strange that anyone thought that they had so much in common, but in the diaspora, share some common experiences as South Asian origin people with hyphenated identities. The term bridges religious and national divides, too.

Desi also evokes a longing for homeland, a longing for des…desis are such a global people now due to migration, they are of the des and in the pardes. There is actually a lot of media within South Asia and the global diaspora produced on the des-pardes migration issue, including a publication, and I think in the 90s, an Urdu drama of that name (Des-Pardes), a Hindi film with that name, and the issue crops up in Hindi films a lot, too. So many South Asian families have become des-pardes families.

So you have a word with deep roots that functions in distinct ways within and outside of the des.

 

Cunning Linguist

Last night I went with a Jewish-Muslim interfaith group to view the excellent film, Besa: The Promise.

The film opens as a grey-haired American-Jewish photographer, Norman Gershman, is discovering this forgotten legacy and sets out on a mission to interview and take pictures of elderly Albanians who hid Jews and their wartimes wards—if they still live. This quest takes him to Rexhep Hoxha, where the heart of the film begins. Gershman is as dogged as he is dazzled by documenting Albania’s forgotten history of Muslims saving Jews.

It was a very moving and powerful film—cliche to say, I know. But really, it was. I don’t know much about Albania at all, but Albanians were portrayed as a very warm and noble people. Watching the film really made me want to visit Albania.

After the film, I was standing in the lobby of the theatre and some random woman came up to me and asked me what language is spoken in Albania. I was utterly perplexed by why would feel that I might have the answer to that. I did happen to know, though. I said “Albanian.” She screwed her face. “I read that Albania shares a long border with Italy and that lots of Albanians speak Italian.” she said. “I don’t know much about that region at all.” I responded, shrugging. I had a general idea of where Albania was on the map, and knew that a lot of Albanian migrants went to Italy, but not much more than that. I am ashamed to say that I had no idea of with which particular nations Albania share a border. Balkan country, that’s all I knew. I said, “I am pretty sure that Albanians speak Albanian. From the film, it sounded like an Indo-European language to me, with lots of Latinate and Turkic vocabulary.” She widened her eyes, which were enlarged with special glasses, and nodded her head up and down at that. (I could have been wrong about that, but later I googled and saw that I was correct.) If she’s going to ask a stranger such question, she should be prepared for any type of answer. At that moment, my friend came out of the theatre and we left. I wonder why that woman asked me about Albanian. Maybe it says cunning linguist on my forehead.

 

It’s not like they just order a pizza

On Monday my parents are having a Passover seder at my house. (We are still living with my parents, FYI) I didn’t let my kids celebrate Christmas and I don’t plan on doing anything for Easter, and I don’t want them to have to sit there for the seder, either. (We did Halloween, but I consider that a secular American cultural holiday despite it’s pagan roots.) I told my husband that we should plan to go out that evening so that we won’t disturb my family. He was like “What’s a seder?” I had no way to describe it. “Um, they just sit there at the dinner table and read prayers and eat stuff.” I said. Husband looked perplexed. My family seems to be very focused on eating stuff. All of our social activities are about food. I want to tell him that the seder is a religious thing, not just like a regular meal. We don’t have any similar concept in Muslim worship, so I can’t think of a parallel to use to describe it.  ”I mean, it is the celebration of Moses liberating the enslaved Jews from Pharaoh and leading them out of Egypt to Israel. Each food has a significance. It’s not like they just order a pizza or something.”  ”There is unleavened bread (matzah) because the Jews had very short notice that they would be leaving Egypt the night they left and they had no time to wait to bake bread that would rise, so they had to take unleavened bread with them. So observant Jews don’t eat leavened bread during the Passover period. And there will be a chicken bone, hard boiled eggs, salt water, parsley, charoset (walnuts, apples, and cinnamon sweet stuff), and maybe some other stuff. The salt water is the tears of the Jews and they will dip stuff into it.” (Husband is just listening.)  ”It’s gonna take a really long time. So we should be gone for like 3-4 hours.” (That may be an exaggeration.) My husband likes long boring orthodox religious stuff. He finds Jewish rituals very fascinating, too. My dad has a lot of books on Jewish life and Jewish history, and my husband spends time reading them. He’s not really interested in Christian holidays or Christianity. Anyway, now he wants to attend the seder. Maybe I will help my mom out and cook everything for the seder since she will be working that day. I dunno. It’s so fun and multi-culti living in and interfaith family. Well, anyway,  I’ll be having some matzah ball soup. I haven’t eaten that in like over a decade. During my childhood my dad always made matzah eggs when we had matzah in the house, too. It is like migas with matzah instead of totopos. I can’t wait for that, either.

 

Jesus and Jerry Garcia: Childhood Adventures in Multiculturalism and Identity Development

It is Easter Sunday and Nami and I are walking together in the humid Texan Spring heat on a busy road towards the Sun Mart where we will use our pocket money to buy snacks. All of our other friends are doing Easter things, but neither Nami nor I are Christians, so we are the only ones able to come hang out on this day. We walk in our black and white Adidas, our heads crunchy and curly with mousse and our bangs standing up with lots of hairspray as if we have been electrocuted. Our mouths are painted dark fuchsia, our eyes outlined in black. We are only 13 or 14. Nami is wearing a large oxidized metallic cross on a long black string. He parents don’t care about that. Her mother faithfully places oranges and cups of alcohol in front of that weird red Chinese looking statue and altar thingy in their living room everyday, but she doesn’t mind the cross. Nami’s family is just weird. Everyone, all of our friends, ignores Nami’s weird cooked jasmine rice smelling apartment in the Santa Maria projects. Nami isn’t even her name. It is our version of her Vietnamese name. Only her family ever calls her by her real name. We don’t really know what religion Nami is, Buddhist, we guess. Nami knows her religion as good luck and bad luck and different types of ghosts. At least that’s how it seems when she explains anything about it to us. There are lots of girls like Nami in Santa Maria. Lots of Vietnamese Buddhist girls with different versions of their names for different people, and with gangster hair and crosses hanging around their necks.

My father would NEVER allow me to wear a cross. I had one once. I stole it from my mother’s jewelry box. It was silver with marcasite. I wanted to wear it because it was pretty. I knew it wasn’t meant for me, but I didn’t care. It made my father so angry. “Take that off!” he had yelled. “Don’t you know who you are?” He later gave me a Star of David with a turquoise stone in the center. I never wore it. Didn’t he know that wearing it would make me weird? As weird as Nami’s family altar made her. I didn’t want that on my neck with all the questions it would bring, and all the suspicion from my friends’ parents. I wanted a cross because crosses were pretty. My friends had pictures of black or white Jesuses on their walls, depending on which type of Baptists they were. Mexican friends also had candles with robed saints on them. I wanted an votive candle like my friends had in their living rooms. In my living room there was a giant polished ram’s horn on the mantle. A shofar. That and a Hebrew inscribed hand washing goblet. Judaica. By our door there was a mezzuzzah like the blood of the lamb so that the Angel of Death might know our house. I would bet a million dollars that we had the only mezzuzzah in our whole zip code. Nami’s parents let her have a Mexican votive candle. She got it at the 99 Cents Store.

We are snacking on Lucas sour chili salt, a habit we have both picked up from our circle of friends. We didn’t put it on fruit, we just ate it straight. Nami licks her fingers and hands me the little yellow Lucas dispenser. “What is Easter?” she asks. I furrow my brows and step over a crack in the sidewalk. Don’t step on a crack or you’ll break your mother’s back. Is Nami retarded? How could she not know what Easter was? I open my mouth to give her an answer, but then I realize something…I don’t know what Easter is either. I know about all the eggs, the Easter egg hunts and the confetti filled cascarones. Some years my mother was allowed to do eggs with us. But Nami knows about eggs, too. That wasn’t what she meant. What was Easter, really? Why was it a holiday? “I don’t know,” I say, shrugging my shoulders. I sprinkle some more Lucas in my palm, my tongue itching for more hot and sour, then lick it away.

When I come home I see that my father has done the shopping for Passover and there is an open container of Manischewitz macaroons on the dinner table. Passover meant matzah eggs with lots of cracked black pepper, which I loved. It also meant the dreaded seder. It meant I had to help my mom all day cooking Jewish foods, something she was never good at, and then we would spend all night sitting at the dinner table reading from little blue booklets. Haggadahs. This was another reason that my family was a bunch of freaks. No one in my universe of crosses and crunchy gangster hair has a seder. Looking back, of course I realize that I gave my parents hell and that I was just being a brat in all of my confusion. But this is how I felt about it. Pharoah let my people go, and now I had to sit there for hours with kiddushes and kadishes and hamotzis and maztahs dipping things in kosher wine and salted water while my friends were hanging out at the mall checking out guys. “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I would read with a purposefully long face when my turn came.

That night I pose the Easter question to Dad-who-knows-everything. I suppose I should have asked Mom because she was a Catholic. But any Christian influence from her at home, being in a Christian majority society, was a threat to my dad. I knew better than to talk to Mom about Easter. Some years we were allowed star-less Christmas trees and we even had Easter eggs, both celebrations totally Christ-free of course. But those holidays were filled with tension in the home because what my mom wanted to celebrate, her own traditions, seemed like an affront to the Jewishness of the house. We were certainly not allowed these celebrations during my dad’s occasional religious phases. No way.

“Dad, what is Easter?”

His answer is something like this:

“Easter is a pagan spring festival disguised as a Christian holiday. The Christians believe that after Jesus, who they made into a God, but who was a man, was crucified by the Romans, not by Jews, he rose up from the dead. But rising from the dead truly symbolizes the end of the dead winter and the birth of spring, which was celebrated by the pre-Christian pagans. They use spring colors and celebrate the spring births in nature. That’s why they use those eggs—they symbolize the new life of the season. The Europeans were pagans before they were Christians, so even modern Christianity is filled with ancient pagan rituals.”

“Ummm, okay.” I say. He carries on about pre-Christian pagans some more while I hook up the Nintendo and start playing Super Mario Brothers.

The day after Easter I go to hang out at Melanie’s house. I walk through the living room passing the pictures of white Jesus, then up the stairs to her bedroom. Another of the diatribes of my dad-who-knows-everything echoes through my head:

“Jesus wasn’t blonde and blue-eyed. He was a Jew. The Europeans made him blonde in their artwork so he would look like them. In pre-Christian European culture, the Gods also looked like their worshippers. Jesus was a Jew and he came from Israel, not Europe. He had darker skin and dark woolen hair. He probably looked more like you and me than he looked anything like that Nordic looking image of him in pictures.”

My dad looks like Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. I mean exactly, a carbon copy, feature for feature, of Jerry Garcia—fat belly, wild wooly silver hair, small eyes, big nose under giant glasses and all. I can’t say for sure, but I seriously doubt Jesus looked very much like Jerry Garcia.

As I enter her room, Melanie is smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke out from the window. Liza is with her. They are talking about Easter. I just listen. What the hell is Easter? Liza got a new dress. Melanie had gone to visit her Mema and Pepa, which is hick language for grandma and grandpa, out in Wimberly. I can’t ask them about Easter. I know better than to talk about my weirdness to Baptists and Mexicans. After sleepovers and midnight house parties, I had accompanied certain friends with their families to church the next Sunday morning. Some friends had even told me that their parents invited me in particular. They knew my background and hoped to save my soul. With my groggy head and sleepy eyes, I sat through sermons about the errant Jee-yooz. That even happened with Melanie once. Afterwards my friends would say, embarrassed, that they didn’t usually say things like that in church, I don’t know why they did today, the day that you came here. So sorry, don’t feel bad.

I didn’t feel comfortable talking about Jewishness with friends’ Mexican families either. When my background would come up, a friend’s mom or dad might examine my eyes and face for a while, looking for something familiar. Even if they looked like Mayans, they would say to me, we heard, it is a family story, that our ancestors were Jews from Spain who were forced to convert to Christianity. So many Jews in Mexico? I asked my dad-who-knows-everything about them. He laughed. Yes, los marranos, Crypto-Jews or conversos, it is not impossible. Many did go to Mexico. Maybe such and such friend is our cousin! My dad always makes himself laugh. “What is a marrano?” I ask my dad. “It means a pig.”

After enough incidents like that, hearing the words Jew or Jewish outside of my family home made me tingle with some sort of discomfort. I stopped going to churches and talking to friends about anything Jewish. At least going to English church, and talking to Baptist, non-denominational, or Mexican Catholic friends. Still, sometimes I went to Vietnamese mass with my bestest friend Linda because I spent the night at her house a lot. Her family was Catholic. I couldn’t understand what the heck they were saying at Vietnamese church so it didn’t matter. Xinh Chua something something Me Maria. Stand up, sit down, up again, down again. Then afterwards her family would go out to eat at a wonderful Vietnamese or Chinese-Vietnamese restaurant. That was the boon of going to church-the lunch that followed the service. I recall that I went to Vietnamese church during Easter time one year. There was a lot of singing and they brought out a Vietnamese Jesus effigy lying in a glass case filled with popcorn. Then they chanted, which Linda called “ngam-ing,” as it was her habit to create Anglo-Vietnamese words by adding -ing to Vietnamese verbs.

After I leave Melanie’s, I walk to Linda’s. I walk through her house with a Vietnamese Mary and Holy Infant on the wall. That and a giant lacquer crawfish, which her dad put up because he used to be a fisherman. We sit on her bed munching Whoppers and Cool Ranch Doritos, washing it down with Dr. Pepper. Eating loads and loads, not worrying about calories or weight. Afterwards, we will surely walk to Champ’s Burger Stand for a 99 cent “ghetto” burger meal. Champ’s was so good because they didn’t hold back on the mayonnaise and they had spicy curly fries. Ah, those days. We were so damned skinny.

“Linda, what’s Easter?, I ask. She thinks about it for a long time. “I am not sure. It is the day God died.” She told me she didn’t know because she couldn’t really understand the Vietnamese sermons. She had a lot of questions herself, but she didn’t know who to ask. “In Vietnamese church do they say that The Jews killed Jesus?” I ask, trying to pretend I am just curious, the answer doesn’t mean anything to me. It wouldn’t matter. “I don’t know how to say Jew in Vietnamese, why do you wanna know anyway?” “Just curious.” I say, hoping to change the subject. I don’t want to know the answer now. We start watching Ricky Lake. Stupid fat Ricky. Out of nowhere Linda says, “The Viet Chua killed Jesus.” “Viet Chua?” I ask. After years of knowing Linda’s family, and having an ear for language, I can actually understand and speak a little Vietnamese. I know that Chua means God for Catholics. “What does Viet Chua mean?”  Vietnamese? Vietnamese people are Viet people. I stay quiet. “I don’t know, but my dad calls those Iranians who own the hair salon next to our restaurant Viet Chua. I think maybe it means the Romans. It means God Killers.” Ah yes, viet means kill. Different diacritics mark tones that make the difference in the meanings of words. This viet means kill. I knew that. Yes. “Okay,” I say. “Man! Ricky’s face looks like a German Shepard face today, she gets on my damn nerves!” I try to switch the subject. Ricky is moralizing to her guests. That distracts Linda. I stop listening to Ricky, though I stare at the screen. I am sure I know exactly who the Viet Chua are. Those fucking Frenchmen bringing Catholicism to Vietnam wouldn’t have left out that little piece of Christianity. That’s funny that Linda’s dad thinks those Iranians are Viet Chua.

I see Nami at school after Easter break and we stand together by the cafeteria waiting for the first period bell to ring. One chubby faced girl offers us a peep, those little marshmallow yellow Easter chicks. I squish the peep head between my fingers. It contains pork gelatin—I am not supposed to eat this, I think as I scarf it down. I had some Skittles last week, too. And Oreos. And chicharrones. And Elgin spicy sausage at Melanie’s house. As long as my dad doesn’t know, I don’t care. He eats pork sometimes, too. And shrimp. When he is not in one of his religious phases.

Someone asks Nami if she got new clothes for Easter. “No, my family doesn’t celebrate Easter,” she says so confidently, either not noticing or ignoring the puzzled look of the inquirer when she gives her response. Where does Nami get her confidence? Where can I get some? Thank God that girl doesn’t ask me. I would have lied. Yes, and I got a pair of shoes, too. And in my family we hunt pink and yellow eggs, not afikomen. After that girl walks a few feet away I tell Nami: She wanted to know what Easter was. I tried my best, I asked everyone I could. But I didn’t find out what Easter was. She flares her nostrils and her eyes narrow into some look of irritated, defensive confusion. “I know what Easter is!” she says really loudly. She’s forgotten that she’d even asked me about Easter. Had what I said come out wrong? I didn’t mean what I think she thought I meant. Her volume shatters the peaceful drone of noise in the cafeteria hallway. The group of people standing next to us stare in our direction, the Peep Girl smack in the middle, raising her precociously thinned and pencilled eyebrows. We both walk away together, embarrassed.

Man, I hate Easter. But you should hear my Christmas stories.

 

Spanish up to speed

My Spanish has gotten a lot better since I’ve been back in Texas. I never lost the ability to understand, but I was having a hard time communicating everything I wanted to say at first. I used to speak fairly fluently when I was younger, so it was frustrating to feel so clumsy when speaking. When I first came back, I was talking to a lady and she told me that her mother got attacked by bees. I could understand everything she was saying, that her mother (who lives back in her home country) was going out from a beach house towards the sea and went into a little cabana and disturbed a hive and suddenly the bees swarmed her and there was a pool nearby so she jumped in the pool and the bees kept on attacking her when she would come up for air. Her poor mother was hospitalized and kept developing bumps on her skin for weeks after the attack because the bee venom was coming out of her system through her skin. Her mother is elderly and it was a very traumatic experience for her to say the least. Anyhow, so the lady is telling me this, and I am listening and stunned by the terrible story, but I was unable to articulate anything appropriate to say back to her. Obviously it was a sensitive situation and all I could muster was “Oh, that’s terrible.” “Oh, and how is she now?” I talked to this other friend and told her that while the lady was telling me the story, I was just shaking my head up and down and couldn’t think of anything to say. My friend told me that when she came to the US she noticed that when English speakers had conversations with her, they always interjected to show that they were listening and following along. She says that in Mexico people don’t interrupt as much. I was like, okay, if that is the case, then that’s good for me so that I can think of something useful to say if someone is telling me something sensitive about a problem or ill health or whatever. Anyway, I still make a lot of mistakes when I speak, but I have a very good (Mexican!) accent and I feel a lot more comfortable communicating now. Recently, a neighbor was telling me that she had been married three times and that people were always shocked by that, but it wasn’t her fault. Her first husband turned out to be gay. Oh, I had A LOT to say about that situation! Women always suffer so much! I feel sorry for him, too because he probably didn’t want to acknowledge his feelings or didn’t understand them or just wanted to conform to avoid prejudice, but your life was ruined due to all of this. I just blabbed on en español like a motormouth. Anyway, her second husband had some emotional problems and became physically abusive, so she left him. But she has been married to #3 for nearly a decade and he is a great guy. So good for her.

Where I live, Spanish is very useful. As a teen, when I worked in food shops, customers would just start out speaking in Spanish sometimes, never asking if I could understand or not. Now, even with hijab on, people sometimes still start out in Spanish with me or comfortably switch to Spanish with me without asking about my hijab or acting like it is weird if I switch into Spanish (I only switch if I notice that their English is far worse than my Spanish, just to facilitate ease in the communication). Once, in the Walmart, I asked an employee where the shampoo was. She looked at me and I could see her eyes on my hijab, but she just said to me in Spanish “Over there near to the pharmacy.” Sometimes, I can understand people who are talking about me in Spanish. Once these two ladies were standing near to me and said that I looked like a nun and started laughing. At one of the taco trucks near to my house, the owner has called me Mother Superior because of my headscarf, ribbing me in that Mexican Uncle sort of teasing way.

Sometimes people do ask about my origins and my religion. “No, I am not Mexican, I am Anglo. I just speak Spanish cuz I grew up here, I did study it in high school also. Why am I wearing this? Oh, because I am a Muslim and it is in our faith. No, my husband isn’t Arab, he is Pakistani. No, well, I converted out of conviction, not for my husband. I was a Muslim before I met my husband.” That’s how it goes. I have had a lot of hispanohablantes ask me much more sophisticated questions about my faith than the English speaking strangers do, for whatever reason. Mostly other Anglos stick to hijab questions. I have tried to analyze why that might be, but haven’t come to any conclusion.

In addition to talking to people, I have been watching Spanish language TV (A guilty pleasure is Caso Cerrado) and also reading Spanish language magazines which I pick up in the check out aisle at the grocery store. I usually go for People En Español, but once I got this cheap tabloid magazine and in the back of it there were ads for psychics and healers and you will never guess what I saw. Among the pictures of Indigenous or Afro-Latino curanderos, there were ads that contained pictures of Sultan Qaboos (the ruler of Oman) and Madhuri Dixit (famous Indian actress). Since they look exotic, Gypsy, Eastern, or whatever, someone had just probably taken them from the internet and put them in their cheesy ads!

Anyway, it is good to be home and to slip back into the Texan life with our diverse population and bilingual English/Spanish atmosphere.

 

Considerations

We are still in Texas at my parents house. Still just relaxing. My husband got a job offer in a major city but he felt the salary was too low considering the cost of living there. He turned it down. He currently has another offer in a Great Lakes state. The salary and benefits are awesome and the town looks very nice. But it is freezing cold there for like 6 months. 100 inches of snow and lots of below zero days. Frozen lakes. That sort of thing. We are worried about how we will do there in the chilly climate. Both of us grew up with mild winters and hot summers. One shouldn’t underestimate the profound effect of a lengthy, frozen, and gray winter. All of the extra things to do…cleaning snow off of things outside, leaving the house those few extra minutes in the morning to warm up the car. Getting bundled up, bundling up the kids, keeping track of little kittens who lose their  mittens. It can be hard. Doable. But hard for people who are not used to it. Some would say that in this economy he should just take the position. But truthfully, my husband’s industry has not been affected by the economy. He has been having a lot of interviews. He is not guaranteed another offer any time soon should he turn down this Great Lakes job. But something else should, Inshallah, eventually come up. We are not desperate. Yet. My parents are advising us not to take the offer. They say we should wait for something in a more suitable climate. There is no rush. We are doing okay here, alhamdulillah. I agree, why rush? But the position is great for my husband, our health insurance would kick in right away, the salary is relatively high in a place with a low cost of living, the town is attractive and looks like a great place to raise a family…except for the weather. How important is weather? We could spend a few years there, it doesn’t mean we have to stay there forever and ever. Others are advising us to take the offer. The town is well known as a nice place, nice people, etc. More praying. Let’s see what happens.

 

Amreekan Things

I have been busy doing Amreekan things. I made turkey chili casserole, chicken stroganoff, and cauliflower mash this week. Some of the recipes actually involved opening a can of this and a can of that!  I am an Amreekan cook. I called to order this undershirt that is just a piece of cloth that attaches to your bra. No heat trapping or bulk like the typical undershirt. It is good for hijab-wear cuz it covers your cleavers. I saw it in an infomercial. When I called to order it, the automated message that took my order tried to sell me about 7 other products and some magazine subscriptions. I love Amreeka. Oh, and my phone…In Dubai, I had the idea that we would be leaving *soon* for several years, so once ‘smart phones’ became available there, I didn’t bother to purchase one because at least at the time it was a big mess to get forgen phones unlocked in Amreeka (it seems easier now, though) so I would have had to leave my phone behind. I actually had an old model Nokia. The kind with a black and white screen. I had phone shame. In the UAE, telecom is monopolized by the local company that will not do system upgrades so all forms of telecommunication are slow and they suck. Here in Amreeka, I can watch speed-of-light youtube videos, Netflix, and …I bought a smart phone. I got The Smartest Phone. I have an HTC Evo. It is freaking amazing.  (Mashallah, Mashallah, spit on the floor over shoulder, ptooh ptooh). I have also been ordering shtuff online. And it comes. Fast. It actually gives me a huge thrill to receive my orders…it makes me want to order more and more and more. And I have been catching up on my Food Television. Before I only had Fatafeet: Al Haya Hilwa, with which I couldn’t understand kul shay. Magar here I have Bourdain Saheb. How I do love him. And I have been liking Andrew Zimmern much more this year than I did before (even when he went to that penis resto in Beijing). Next week Tony will be going to Hindustan, saray jahaan se accha. Cain’t wait! I have also been watching these bizarre Amreekan shows that seem to pull me in. They have names like: Monster Inside Me about regular Amreekans who got sick from parasites. And I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant about poor women who deliver suddenly without ever noticing any signs of pregnancy. Fascinating shtuff. It feels that I wasn’t really living life before I had all these shows. Amreeka zindabaad!

 

Break on through to the other side

I am here. I am home. I am in the house I grew up in. Right now, it feels like I am on my annual leave from Dubai. I am just relaxing, seeing old friends, and eating favorite foods that weren’t available in Dubai. I must have eaten about 75 tacos so far, each wrapped in a feather cloud puff of a soft corn tortilla. My husband spends a few hours everyday on the computer hunting for jobs. He’s had a handful of interviews. Nothing looks promising as of yet, though. Despite being in a lower middle-class neighborhood with our tiny 1970′s houses and 5 cars piled up in every driveway, spilling onto the lawns, life here looks so rich.  There is no dusty sand.  It has been raining on and off and the lushness of the verdant little lawns seems especially luxurious. I go for a morning walk everyday and peek into all of the neighbors’ lawns, admiring tiny gardens that people have tenderly designed with plants of choice. Texas hasn’t been having a hellish-hot summer thus far, and the break from the 110 degree weather I left in Dubai is alone reward enough for coming here.

The move was hectic. Every aspect of it was nerve wracking. During the move, I just kept reminding myself that soon all of the difficulties would seem irrelevant. And now they do. It all seems like a hazy dream. Dubai seems like a dream.

I had a Jordanian friend in Dubai who was also immigrating to the US at the same time we were leaving. She, her husband, and 12 year old daughter were planning to fall off of the plane and go to a hotel. No mama’s house. No room set up. So I am giving shukr for our blessings even though now we are in such a state of transition.

I have a lot to talk about, so Inshallah I plan on blogging more than I have been. There have been so many things I have wanted to say but have avoided mentioning because it wasn’t really safe to talk about such things where I was before. Inshallah khair.

 

62,000 Minutes

According to an online date calculator, it is around 62,000 minutes until we arrive in Amreeka. That’s about 43 days. So much is going on. I am in the middle of a term at school. I have students to prepare to teach everyday. That keeps me busy, busy, busy Thank God. That’s what I am here for, right? 

 We are settling on a shipper. We have been discarding unneeded clothes and other items. But aside from those few things, it is just sitting and waiting for this huge life change to come. The major tasks of the move don’t start until right before we go. I am staring into my crystal ball, wondering how things will work out, but everything is hazy. Do I see foreboding clouds? Do I see a few glimmering flashes of light? My husband has been sending out job applications online for a few months. He actually has a couple of places interested in interviewing him. He is on a third level interview with a prominent company in California (Silicon Valley). What if we moved to California? My girls would be California girls. He has also finally asked his current employer about possible transfer to any of their US branches. He hasn’t given proper notice yet, though. His employer told him that they would look into this and get back to him. Two of the companies that contacted him for a future interview are in Texas. Right now we have nothing, and I am counting my chickens before they hatch, so to speak. But what if it came down to a choice between a major city in Texas and California? There are positives and negatives to any place. And I am just making khayaali pullao in my head.  Heaps of pullao.

I told our housekeeper a few weeks back that we would be going. I actually found her a new sponsor before I told her. The future sponsor is a colleague and I have known her for a few years. As she will be going to her home country for the summer, she is actually okay with letting my housekeeper go home to visit her family this summer, too. Alhamdulillah, this has worked out. This was another thing that had been giving me knots in my stomach. You see, before I leave the country, I have to either cancel her visa or she must transfer to someone else’s sponsorship, or I cannot leave the country. That’s the way the rules work here. I knew that she would find another sponsor pretty easily, but she has some requirements, such as staying in our neighborhood, and having certain timings off. If she went with just anyone, she couldn’t be guaranteed to get what she wanted in an employer. So now, alhamdulillah, she will be going to someone who agrees to her requirements, but will also be cool with her going on vacation this summer. Yay! If she hadn’t gone on vacation, we would have owed her the ticket money anyway, but of course it’s not the same thing and she really wanted to go home. So, inshallah khair.

I try to absorb the sights of Dubai, just because sometimes they are so surreal to me, and also so I don’t forget them. You see, we live on the edge of a desert. There are sand storms, especially at this time of year. The whole sky blackens, as if it were going to rain. But there is no rain. Just tiny sand tornadoes whipping around, sending granules of sandy irritation into my eyes, sending sand and dust underneath the front door, choking me if I take a deep breath. And sometimes there is no sand storm, but the sky is just gray. There is no sun. It can go for weeks like this. No sun.

And then there are surreal moments. On my way to work, I drive through a stretch of desert. I see cars with Oman license plates. I miss Oman. I see giant water tankers with scenes of Northern Pakistan painted on them. I have always meant to take pictures of them, but never have. I’d probably get in trouble for doing that for some reason. You can’t just go do stuff like that here. In front of me is big truck and I squint to read the Urdu lines painted on the back as we are stopped at a light (or it could be Pashto or something). Above it says ‘Haripur.’ Near to the license plate, the Urdu is very squiggly and I struggle to read it. Kabhi…Kabhi…it then becomes clear. Kabhi Haripur Ao, Na. I had been straining to read something so simple. The light turns green and the truck speeds away. For some reason Haripur sounded like it should be in India to me because of the nomenclature, but I google it and find it to be in the Sarhad. It looks like a beautiful place. Some Haripurwalla really, really loves Haripur. That sticker was most definitely not meant for my eyes in particular, and I had taken note of it randomly. But somehow I found it to be very interesting. I should make a bumper sticker that says ‘Kabhi Texas Ao, Na’.

I will soon be having Dubai lasts. Last meetings with friends. Last meals at favorite haunts. Hmmm, my last dosa at Saravana Bhavan. That will be a sad feeling. I have had friends come and go here, as that is the nature of the city. And now it is me who is doing the ‘going.’  The mango season is on now, and although we do get Indian mangoes in the US, there are special suppliers here with really great mangoes. Hmmm, and the litchis are in. Also, here we get Pakistani mangoes, too, straight from Sindh. I know those are available in Canada, but not in the US. I have already had some lasts. Last autumn I was keenly aware that it was my last season of ratab, fresh, ripe dates. I have always loved the ratab season. Hmmm, California has good dates, I hear.

 

Reintegration

There is culture shock when you move to a new place. That goes without question. But what about when you have been away from home for a long time and then return to your native land? There is reintegration shock as well. Things change. The place you leave is not the place you come back to. I wonder how I will handle reintegration shock. That said, I think I have been away from home at the best possible era to be abroad yet. I mean that because of media and technology, I have been able to stay in touch with my home culture much more than I would have if I had been abroad at any other time period in history. Also, I come from The Global Super Power with its imperialistic tentacles everywhere, which is really a bad thing, but it means that the USA’s trends are known to the world through commercialized pop culture, which will ultimately lessen my culture shock. In the GCC countries, American TV series and music channels are on TV, US movies dominate the theatres, women keep up with American fashions, and even American food trends make their way here. That’s right, there are cupcake shops in Dubai. And we have a Bon Chon Korean style fried chicken, a trend that exploded in LA and NYC. Stuff like that. About the internet, I use social networking sites to stay in touch with family and friends. I know what they are all doing. I read news online. I read blogs. So I am aware. I am in touch. Anyway, one thing about Americans and news is that while Americans generally don’t know much about the goings on in other countries, EVERYONE knows American news. Well, not everyone. To tell you the truth, it is the educated elites in many countries who have access to global media sources. So while the masses in many countries wouldn’t know who Lady Gaga is, the youth of the elite classes in every country do. It is hard to explain. But it is just a fact of life. I see my husband and how he stays in touch with Pakistan, and while it is very easy for him to stay in touch from here in the Gulf, I know it won’t be quite so easy from the US. It will be different for him going West than it has been for me as an American going East.

I have also had the privilege of returning home every year for anywhere from a few weeks to up to two months every year for 8 years in a row. I lived in the atmosphere of my home country for that time. I spent time with family and friends. So the changes in my hometown don’t shock me.

One thing about staying in touch with home through blogs is that I visit a lot of progressive oriented, pro-woman type Muslim blogs and it feels like a lot of changes have taken place in the Muslim American community in the past 6 years or so from looking at blogland. But I realize when I go home that we are still having the same problems as when I left. Same ole segregation into unequal spaces in the masjid, same racism, same immigrant Muslim vs. American raised Muslim conflicts (Islam plus foreign cultural values that may include some misogynistic stuff vs. Islam plus American egalitarian values type stuff), and on and on. So online it seems like there has been a lot of progress but back home stuff is still moving along like trickling molasses. So I know the online progressive oriented Muslim blogging community will remain a haven for me in that respect.

I also spend a lot of time learning about anti-racism, and many of the non-Muslim Americans with whom I interact online are racially aware and savvy about that stuff. Since I gained a critical eye about racial issues while abroad, I know that I will have a lot of things to think about as I view my country through an anti-racist lense for the long term now up close and personal and not simply through the media outlets that I can see now. More trickling molasses.

Ah, and then there are other things. Like credit. I could have paid off a student loan many years ago, but I have kept it (luckily at a low interest rate) simply so that when I return home I will have a credit history. I had my mom use a credit card in my name for several years, too. (If you use US credit cards abroad they charge you 3% extra!). So I am doing my part to show The Powers That Be that I am a good obedient debtor *-* and therefore I am worthy of being able to rent an apartment in my own name and open a cell phone account in my name and Inshallah I won’t have to ask mama to co-sign everything. Ah, God Bless America. I know all of that red-tape financial stuff is a headache. I appreciate the benefits of it…in many countries without this whole ‘good debtor’ set up, people actually have to pay CASH for big ticket items including a house and a car which means that only very elite people can imagine owning something like a car or a house. So I just remind myself of all of that when I think about the whole debtor thing.

I used to speak Spanish very very well, but my Spanish has become choppy. I need to bring my Spanish up to speed. I have a kindly Mexican friend here who chats with me in Spanish (probably since she misses home, too and I am her vecina Tejana), but I need to read more in Spanish language stuff to improve, too. I love Spanish, Mexicanismos ease my heart, and I can’t wait to go home and mejorar mi espanyol con orgullo. I have been out of a Spanish speaking environment for a long time, so it will be nice to go home.

I go home during the summer. Texas is hot. Dubai doesn’t have a real winter either. My South-Central Texan climate is not as hot as Dubai and also has a chillier winter. Now, I had a touch of real winter when I studied for my MA up North. BRRRRR! Didn’t like that. But to tell you the truth, the coldest place I have been in 8 years has been Karachi! I am going to have to wear a coat and closed toed shoes! I am going to have to button my daughters up into coats and put cute little hats on them. It snowed this year in Texas, too. (some freak snow in early Spring, too!) Is it gonna snow during my first winter back home? The cold is gonna be a huge shock. Still, I can’t wait to have the crisp, mild Texas fall and short, fluctuating temperatures of winter (it can been hot enough for shorts in January, then freeze over the next week). And then there will be rain. It only rains a few times per year in Dubai. I love it when it rains when I go home to Texas in the summer. Summer rain. But I will definitely have to adjust to the weather.

Those are just some of the thoughts whirling through my mind. What’s it gonna be like when I actually get HOME?