The baby name issue

In the pardesi+desi and gora/gori+desi online community, baby names are always a fun topic. The baby name topic is also an issue for second generation desi Americans and Muslim Americans as well. I am very interested etymology and language, so it is a topic of interest for me.

Here is an excerpt from a convo with a friend-We were talking about class and baby names—like how upper middle class desis of various ethno-religious backgrounds have their preferred equivalents of names like Emma, Hannah, and Madison. For Americans, think of Gertrude, Mildred, Twyla Jean, Nakisha, or Starr, and how in the USA names carry some message of age, class, rural versus urban, or might be associated with a race or ethnic US subculture.

In convos with desi+pardesi couple friends, such issues come up- A white American Christian background friend married into a Jain Indian family says:

“…The class thing comes out in other ways too…for instance, I have a running “future baby name” list, and my husband nixed many of them because they sounded “like servants’ names” or “too old-fashioned.” I guess we’ll end up with the trendy babies’ names of India then…I wonder what the “Madison” and “Aidan” of India would be, heh.”

I said:

“Actually there absolutely are Madison and Aidan in both Hindu and Muslim desi flavor of the year names. I love names like Jahanara or Dilara but these sound like “servant names” or “old lady names” to people of my husband’s particular background. “

EASY-FOR-GORA NAMES: I have had this discussion online and ‘in real life’ with friends, too, but about Muslim names. We have our own considerations as individuals, and one in particular for me when I was pregnant and name-hunting was that I wanted something that wasn’t too hard for people unfamiliar with Muslim names to pronounce, but which had a good Arabic/Islamic meaning. (Being from Texas, the name had to sound okay in Spanish, too no Suda, no Maimona, etc. )

Are you in an interfaith relationship with a Muslim? Is your significant other trying to convince you to choose a “Muslim name” for your baby?  Technically, there is no such thing as a Muslim name. However, names carry the message of what community one belongs to, so people tend to like names that reflect their community. If you come from a mainstream or majority group in your society, you may have never thought much about it. But name choice is a very important identity marker and part of affirming and celebrating one’s identity for religious and ethnic minorities.  I said that there is no such thing as a Muslim name. What do I mean? By ‘no such thing as a Muslim name,’ I mean that many Christian Arabs have Arabic origin names, and people in many other countries from Iran to Indonesia have modern concocted names or names from other sources, like Adelina or Nurgeisha in Central Asia. Or pre-Islamic indigenous names like Bahram or Maneezheh in Iran, or Watri in Indonesia. These people are all Muslims. Dave Chappelle is a perfectly Muslim name. A name doesn’t have to be Arabic, Turkish, or Persian origin to be a “Muslim name,” although that is usually what is meant by “Muslim name.” And once again, Muslims don’t ‘own’ Persio-Arabic names. In India (and Pakistan, which also has a small Parsi community), Parsis have names which are Persian origin. Sometimes we know that a person is Parsi by seeing their full name, such as something plus-walla as a surname. (Some Muslims also have -walla surnames, too.) But often Parsi name choices overlap with Persian name choices of Muslims.  I have observed that some Sikhs also have Arabic or Persian origin names like Iqbal or Daler. So one will find Christian, Parsis, Sikhs, and others with names of  Arabic or Persian origin. Muslims don’t “own” these names.

Once, a friend and I were discussing Muslim baby name choices. She is white-Christian American and her husband is a Pakistani Muslim. She noted that to her ears, many of the Muslim male names she saw “sounded Black.”  We are socialized to read names as identity markers, as I discussed above with the examples of Gertrude and Twyla Jean. I have looked at boys’ Arabic names and it has occurred to me that a name “sounds Black” as well. This thought process led me to a quick check of white privilege and what a name “sounding black” means in my culture in terms of racism and intolerance coming from the mainstream white culture. Names are so rich in meaning, markedness, and connotation and a name “sounding black” or “seeming Muslim” has a lot of cultural implications, including many negative ones due to racism in our US culture. African American sounding names, as well as ‘foreign sounding’ names are stigmatized in mainstream white culture. That brings up the reality that what your name is does have an effect on your future. There are multiple studies that show that having a name associated with African Americans or which sounds Asian get less call backs for jobs in the US and Canada. See here and here for some support for that claim. I think it is sad that people should fear affirming their child’s ethnic, religious, or racial identity by giving them a distinct, non-white sounding name. We as parents make choices that will deeply affect our children’s lives, names being a major one. Some US communities of color have been compelled to have legal ‘American names’ in addition to ethnic names used at home. Many children of color with foreign sounding names elect to use shortened nick-names or select an ‘American name.’ For us white Americans, when considering these issues as a partner in a desi+pardesi relationship, it also becomes a question of white privilege and whether we will give in to structures of white privilege and avoid marked names. Are we hoping to perpetuate some form of white privilege for our multiracial children of color? It’s very complicated. If I give my child a ‘Muslim name’ that is more aesthetically pleasing for the mainstream white culture,  hence less likely to elicit grade-school teasing, am I still playing into the wrong side of things just the same as avoiding a Muslim name altogether and going for a mainstream “white name’? I realize that many of the Muslim names that I personally like sound better to me than others because I have been socialized in white American culture to find certain sounds more aesthetically pleasing, while others sound awkward to me even though they have beautiful Arabic meanings. Names are so very complex. I do feel that I have opted for names that are aesthetically pleasing in my native culture while simultaneously Muslim for a variety of complicated reasons.

Since we are talking about desi+pardesi couples and names, let’s look at Hindu names. It might be the same that desi-pardesi Hindu Indian affiliated couples would want a sound Sanskrit origin name that is ‘easy’ on the ears for non-desis so that  kids don’t get teased or have names that the non-desis can say.

Take note that just like it is problematic to say ‘American name’: George Joseph, Balbir Chauhan, Shehpar Humayun, and Jose D’ Souza are all equally Indian names. These are baby name quests for a Hindu name or Sanskrit origin name, not a Hindi name, and not an ‘Indian name’ as Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, and others are also legitimately Indians with Indian names, just not always necessarily Sanskrit origin or Hindu names, depending on the community. So you are looking for a Hindu Sanskrit origin name, not an Indian name. Your significant other is rejecting names for sounding like a maid’s name, or “old fashioned,” or too something or another. And beyond that, you get to know that some Hindu names sound very stereotypically Bengali or Gujarati or Tamil Brahmin or whatever. It is a lot to consider.

I can imagine some people might be confused as to why I would mix Sanskrit origin names and Muslim names in the same post, but all I can say is that in in my experience some of the same topics come up for all of us. Not to mention, that I have noticed that some Indian baby name books and websites have Hindu and Muslim baby names mixed together. A non-desi friend who is married to an Indian Hindu told me that all of the names she liked from one such baby name website were rejected by her husband because they were Muslim names. I suppose the website author just presumed that Hindu and Muslim Indians would know the difference automatically, but it wasn’t considered that some pardesi who is less familiar with such things might be perusing the site. I really don’t know that much about names from other religious communities but I wonder what issues come up for Sikh-American and also desi+pardesi Sikh affiliated American couples, though.

Desi American Muslim couples, as well as couples in interracial marriages where one parent is non-desi and non-Muslim, tend to all have some common names that they use: like Zain, Rayaan, Ayaan, and Adam for boys and Sara, Laila, Yasmine, and Aliya  for girls. I would bet a lot of money that there are similar issue for Hindu Americans and mixed Hindu desi+non-desi couples and there are probably some names that a lot of people in the US use. (Neel, Jay, Anjali, etc)

This website that mentions some popular US Hindu names.

http://hinduism.about.com/b/2005/06/05/most-popular-indian-baby-names-in-us.htm

This website that has it’s own filter for “easy-for-gora” names:

http://www.indiaparenting.com/names/homepage.htm

I can tell you some ‘trendy’ Hindu names after discussing with a friend: stuff with -aan in it is popular for boys and girls (interestingly also same in Pakistan these days) so for boys: Amaan, Yuvaan, Vivaan, Ayaan and also Aryan, Aman (short -a-, not aan), Saamir, Aditya. For girls: Anya (BIG trendy name) Aryana, (interestingly both Anya and Aryanah are trendy in Pakistan but with the Arabic and Persian meanings taken) Vivyah, Vanya, Riya, Siya, Diya, Rashi. You could have a look at some baby name websites to check the meaning of these names.

Friends, may I suggest that you purchase a comprehensive book of Hindu babynames, though, because one thing I have found about researching baby names online (I have had two kids in the past 3 years) is that there are a lot of mistakes in baby name website name meanings because they are made by non-specialists (no linguistic background), sometimes randomly user-added, and sometimes the same mistake is copied from website to website. If you are interested in a name you see online and want to confirm its Sanskrit meaning, you can aske here at the Word Reference forums Indo-Iranian language section or consult a Sanskrit dictionary or Hindu baby name book.

I have read multiple online discussions of non-desi partners who want a mainstream American name while their significant others want a Hindu or Muslim name. I understand why the significant others desire names from their own communities as religious minorities in the US, and how it represents their culture and background and re-affirms identity. No one should be *forced* to name their kid something when they don’t want to. I hope any couples going through this can reach a compromise.

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A list of Pakistani Muslim-American girls names beyond Leila and Yasmine:

A few words on Pakistani names-Pakistani Muslims tend to take names from Turkish, Persian, and Arabic (mainly the two latter). An exception to this would be Pashtoons who also use Pashto origin names. There is no such thing as a ‘Pakistani name,’ anymore than there is an American name or Indian name since Pakistan is also multi-ethnic and a home to people of diverse faiths. However, I have compiled this list and over the years I have shared it with a few friends who were either desi Muslim American or married to one and looking for a desirably sound  Muslim girl’s name that was ‘okay for the goras’ to pronounce:

All are Arabic unless indicated as other. You can leave the ‘h’ off of the ending of any of these names, it is just to be closer to the Arabic spelling that many people leave it on. Some of these names would have an -at ending in Urdu, while they have an -ah ending in Arabic (ta marboota). It is up to you which pronunciation to take, but it seems the -ah Arabic endings are more popular in Muslim-American communities.

There is no standardized way to transliterate Arabic or Persian into English orthography, so some variation on spelling is possible. In some cases, variation on pronunciation is also possible based on whether one takes the Arabic versus the desi pronunciation.

Meanings are confirmed from The Complete Book of Muslim and Parsi Names by Maneka Gandhi and Ozair Husain. (Don’t trust unsourced babyname website meanings!!!) Please let me know if you find an error in the meanings.

Aida: saffron
Aliyah: high, exalted, feminine of Ali, (my daughter is Alayah, the diminutive of this)
Amani : uh-maan-ee pl. of hope
Amara: uh-maa-ruh a sign
Amber/Ambreen/Ambreen: amber
Amina: trust worthy, one with iman
Ammara: uh-maa-ruh: tolerant
Anayah: uh-naa-yuh (in Urdu this becomes Inaayat, but you can use the Arabic pronunciation): help from God, grace, bounty from God. This is actually popular in Pakistan right now as a girl’s name.
Anisah: uh-nee-suh companion/friend

Aania /Anya(aahn-nee-yuh): She that has achieved her ambition/aspiration(the highest goal).

Ariana/Aryana: aa-ree-aa-nuh, (Farsi name) pure, it is related to the word Aryan, as in the nation of Iran and the root of the word Ireland, it is a proto-European word. This name is also popular in Pakistan right now. It is the name of the Afghan airlines. It sounds close to the word for naked in some dialects of Arabic, as some  Arabs will tell you, but the real Arabic word is ‘uryaanah, not Ariana anyway. The word Uryaan exists meaning ‘naked’ in litererary Urdu, too.

Dalia: dahlia the flower

Daniya: close or near (Arabic), giver (Old Persian)
Daria: daa-ree-yuh: learned, knowledgeable
Dara: daa-raa, halo (This is an Arabic meaning, but if you take the Persian meaning it becomes a boy’s name)
Farah: furr-uh, not Fae-ruh as in English: joy
Faria/Fariah: faa-ree-yuh: tall
Haniyah: haa-nee-yuh: a young maid
Hina: Hinn-nuh: henna, mehndi
Jennah: Paradise, Heaven. This is said as jinnat/jennut in Urdu, but you can just use the Arabic pronunciation which sounds like the English name Jenna.
Layla: night (this is considered a bad meaning by Pakistanis, though)
Linah: soft, gentle, also spelled Lena
Liyah: pure white, morning
Liyaan: lee-yawn: gentleness
LujaneLujain: loo-jane, silver
Marjaan/Marjaana: coral (I love this name, it is mentioned in the Quran, but it sounds like die-life or die in Urdu.
Maria/Maaria/Mariya/Mariah/Mariyah: maa-ri-uh (note the stress is on the first syllable, not as in Spanish): a type of bird, fair complexioned, the Christian wife of the Prophet pbuh. Popular in Pakistan right now, also sounds close to the Italian and Spanish names to Americans
Maya: means like wealth or capital in Farsi (and in Urdu, like sar-o-maya) it is also a note on the Persio-Arabic musical scale. (It has the Sanskrit meaning illusion, as well)
Mina: mee-nuh: Farsi. a type of enamel used to decorate gold. This is a well known style of desi gold design, you can google meena/mina meena kaam or meena kari for pictures.
Muna/Mona: muh-nuh: a wish or desire
Naila/Nayla: nigh-luh: a winner, achiever
Niyah: knee-yuh: vow, intention (this is niyyat in Urdu) It might be bothersome to some to not use double /y/ when spelling this name in English, but I could even see it as Nia.
Nolah/Naulah: Largesse, a gift, a kiss
Naurah: no-ruh: a blossom
Nura/Nora: Light, illumination
Rasinah: of good character
Razaan: ruh-zawn: a modest woman, calm, composed
Razeen/Razine: ruh-zeen: same meaning as above
Sabrine: suh-breen patient
Sabria/Sabriyya/Sabriya: suh-bree-yuh: patient
Sakeena: suh-kee-nuh: calm, peaceful
Samina: suh-mee-nuh valuable, expensive,another common mixed couple name
Samira: suh-mee-ruh one who converses by moonlight, another mixed couple name
Sara: saa-ruh, This one actually has multiple meanings-a shawl and a princess in Arabic, a star in Persian, another mixed couple common one; it means princess in Hebrew, too.
Soraya: the stars (the Pleides)
Tamara: tumm-aa-ruh, female date seller,
Talia: taa-lee-yuh: stress on first syllable, start, outset, beginning, like the Mexican singer
Tara: taa-ruh Persian and Urdu: star
Yasmin: yuss-meen: jasmine, always a crowd pleaser with the mixed couples
Zaina: zane-uh: beautiful
Zeenah/Zina: zee-nuh: adornment, this is zeenat in Urdu

For boys I have no list, but I like Aliyaan (twice sublime), Ayaan (leaders), Junaid (I know, so 80s, but it is a great name)…it is the diminutive of the Arabic for soldier), Firaas (horseman), Jaid (sounds like Jade and from the Arabic word for good) and then there are the mixed couple classics: Adam, Rayaan, Zain which are great!!! I also love Tai (obedient).

 

Next Goal: Telugu

WordPress tells me that it has been over three months since I last posted. I have been busy and in another transitional period with the Texas-Virginia move, so I haven’t felt like blogging.  I am just waiting right now for my pressure cooker lid to fall in, so I will try to write a post now as I sit in wait.

I didn’t feel much like blogging last year when we were getting ready to leave Dubai. Subhanallah, it has been well over a year that I have been back in the US. My husband left Texas for the DC area to start his new job in late June, and my daughters and I followed him in August. We would have joined him sooner, but we had to wait for the apartment we had selected to be ready. So, I got more play time with my family in Texas, alhamdulillah.

Now, I am in Novastan. I quite like it here, alhamdulillah. There is a huge and diverse Muslim community here. It is A LOT easier to be in public in hijab here, thank God. In Austin it was very challenging due to all of the stares. Here, there are many hijab wearing women everywhere, and they seem to be working in major stores like Walmart, Target, the grocery stores, and all. So it is a regular sight here and not something that draws too much attention. In Austin, it was also hard to go out with my parents because people would stare even harder at our interfaith family as if to say “Oh my, golly garsh, I would be so embarrassed if my daughter ever went and married one of them men and came home to me wearing that thing on her head…” but then again, maybe that is all in my own head and no one was really thinking that at all. Stares and visible discomfort, though mostly stiff uncomfortable friendliness and politeness, were a common reaction to me.  My whole family is great about it and it never bothered a single one of them at all to be out with me in public (well, except for my 90 year old grandmother, but hey, she’s 90 mashallah), and I realize that I am lucky that way because I have other friends who really get hell from their own relatives about hijab.

So, out here in Novastan I have a lot of options for Muslim worship, including a more progressive oriented community, which is refreshing coming from the Arabian Gulf where in order to be considered “religious,” you have to wear all black and cover everything but just one eye to see the way and pray in the darkest corner of your house. Any inclination to pray at mosques in a mixed gender musallah where you could actually SEE the imam or khateeb, while indisputably the Sunnah arrangement of a mosque, was just unthinkable. But here I have it much better. One of the many reasons I like being a practicing Muslim better in North America than in the Arabian Gulf.

There are also a lot of other things I like here: greenery (I like walking on trails), Muslim mommy meet ups, Hindi/Urdu language practice groups, and…I have an Andhra style dosa place right outside of our apartment complex where I can go and get my dosa fix. No, it isn’t my precious Saravana Bhavan by Lamcy Plaza, but it is crispy (though a bit oily), spicy, and good. Actually, my apartment complex is filled with Telugu speaking people. All my neighbors above and below are from Andhra/Telengana. It seems that there is quite a large Andhra community here. I should learn Telugu.

I also met a Sindhi Auntie who is visiting her daughter from Pune for a few months here in my apartment complex, and who I chit chat with while her grandchildren and my kids play on the apartment complex playground. She brought me a sample of some kind of Maharashtrian fresh green chile and garlic chutney that she made the other day. This place is really starting to feel like Dubai, all Indian neighbors and aunties bringing me samples of delicious things to eat!  I also met a white Australian lady who is married to a Bengali. She is a Hindu convert and she introduced herself with a Sanskrit name, and even though we have chosen different paths I feel we have quite a bit in common as someone who has changed my name to Fatima. When I talk to her about my life and travels, I don’t have to explain every single thing to her. Interestingly, she has a brother who converted to Islam. He is married to a Malay lady. For some reason, a lot of Western male converts seem to be married to Malay or Indonesian women, I have noticed. Last, I met an  Andhra lady from Hyderabad who is very nice to talk to. She told me “Oh, I have lots of Muslim friends back home, and when I talk to them,” …she points to the group of Andhra aunties standing nearby in a circle next to the play area… “they say, your Telugu is half Urdu!” I peeked at some online Telugu learning resources out of curiosity, and I saw that there were a lot of Sanskrit as well as Persio-Arabic words in it, so although it was Greek to me, I could pick out some words I recognized from the sample sentences…so I guess Hyderabadi Telugu is very Urdu-influenced??? She also told me her roommate in college was a girl named Ayesha who is still her best friend. I get it, she has to show me that she is friendly with Muslims and doesn’t have any issues with making a friendship with me. I held back from telling her the same thing back-”Oh, in Dubai I had sooo many Hindu friends, I lurve pure vegetarians and they lurve me back, yippee! Some of my best friends are…blah blah blah.” I did tell her that my husband has relatives living in Hyderabad and he has been there before, but let my actions and personality let her know that I am totally open to friendships with anyone and everyone. Anyway, I am an American, not an Indian Muslim, so I don’t count when it comes to these sensitive issues, and I have the option to brush this stuff off. She is very nice though and we have good conversations. I am thinking about asking her to take exercise walks with me, since she seems like she might be game. I walked almost every day for the whole year in Texas, but sadly have only been out walking one single time here.

We have settled into are apartment nicely, and we are just missing some pieces of furniture and some things that will finally make our new home complete, but mostly everything is set up. I still have to take care of some special vehicle registration stuff and get new license plates. I did get a new driving license, so one thing down, two more to go!

Well, *pop* there goes the lid to my handy old pressure cooker. Off I must run!

 

Where’s Your Masala at? Masala Storage

I should really post this on my food blog, but I don’t get as much traffic there (and don’t post very often—maybe I will cross post this), and I wanted some feedback:

I have been eyeballing this pricy Tablefare SpiceCare Interlocking spice storage system for a while, but haven’t found any in depth unaffiliated reviews of the product. I asked about it on my favorite foodie website, Chowhound, but no one responded to my query. It looks great, though. I am afraid it will cause fumbling and I will have to unlock a lot of stuff all at once to get out a few spices. The SpiceCare thingy was recommended by Chef Bosco Pereira on twitter (@Chef_Bosco), so that’s how I found out about it, and I trust what Chef Bosco says a lot. (His tweet soliloquies on South and South East Asian food are awesome. His food-knowledge is as vast as the Seven Seas!) But I’d still like to read some feedback on the product before investing in it.

In my daily cooking, I usually cook the typical dishes of my husband’s particular community. For those dishes, I keep the fast moving standard every-dish spices in a masala dabba.  Spices I use less frequently are in clear plastic jars with lids (the little jars are about 16 oz in size, I’d say). They are just all stuffed in the cupboard. There are some I keep at the front of the cupboard, but I step up on a step-stool to dig around for others. I have a friend who keeps all of her spices in a clear plastic jars but keeps the jars in clear plastic stackable storage drawers so the spices are easy to see and take out. Awesome idea! But never got around to doing that. I should really do that, I suppose.

The spices I purchase usually come in large plastic baggies. Here is what I do with the plastic spice baggies: If it is a fast moving spice for me like red chile powder or cumin, I pour some in a plastic jar, some in the masala dabba cup, and then use the tiny bit left over in the baggie first. If it is a very slow moving spice, I pour it into the plastic container, and I toss out the few tablespoons which are left over at the bottom of the baggie because I know it will go stale before I use it all. It is a waste, I know, but I buy the spices cheaply at the Indian market, so no worries. Before I started tossing them out, I kept the left over amount in its baggie closed with a rubber band, but it would just sit in my cupboard for ages and I would end up throwing it away anyway. For Shan masalas, I mostly use only a couple of teaspoons at a time, so I keep them in the boxes in which they come. For rice and chapati ata, I have them in giant clear plastic locking storage boxes, and for daals, I have them in one drawer in medium sized lockable clear plastic bins.

What about you? If you are a spicy home cook, how do you store your masalas? Any recommendations?

 

Misbah Rana was never really Molly Campbell

Her sudden disappearance from a British school led to an international hunt and a diplomatic row with Pakistan.

And when 12-year-old Molly Campbell turned up in Lahore – 4,000 miles away from the home she shared with her mother on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland – it was feared that her Pakistani father was about to force her into marriage with a man twice her age.

Then Molly went on television insisting that she was happy and had chosen to live as a Muslim. She became Misbah Ahmed Rana and faded from the headlines.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1356426/Multicultural-Britain-From-luxury-life-Pakistan-modest-house-Blackburn.html#ixzz1Dr0QiHVT

I remember seeing Misbah’s story in the news. I wondered what had happened to her, too. I felt sympathetic towards the non-Muslim British mother based on the way the UK  media had portrayed events. It was as if Misbah had been whisked away, brainwashed, and was being forced into a marriage at age 12. I had read the stories about Misbah. I had also read books with a similar theme about other internationally abducted children. (What is the name of the book by the UK woman whose two daughters were force-married in Yemen and one daughter came back? The girls married mountain men and lived under very difficult conditions in rural Yemen.) I had seen Not Without My Daughter. Haven’t we all seen that movie? There is the specter of child-kidnapping for every Western mother who has children with a foreign-born and raised man, especially an Eastern and Muslim man. If you divorce, he will steal your children, we are told by our society. And it does happen. I tried through Google to find the statistics and couldn’t, but I recall reading once that 25% of international child abductions from the US involve a parent from a Muslim majority country.

The latest update on Misbah’s situation gives a clearer and more complex picture of the situation.

I have friends whose stories have similarities to Misbah’s. They are biracial Arab-white American, and since the parents’ divorced, the kids got the mind-@#$%^ of parents constantly fighting and mom leaving anything Islamic and Arab. Even if the mom didn’t become rabidly Islamophobic, there was always the message from mom that dad’s culture was backwards, and if the kids had contact with dad, dad put down mom’s culture and ways. What an assault on a kid’s identity. Many non-Muslim Westerners cannot understand why kids in this situation would actually CHOOSE Islam. (“Why would anyone choose to be backwards and oppressed?”) But some do choose Islam. They are not being treacherous to their mothers. They are simply claiming the identity that they want. I feel the non-Muslim or ex-Muslim mothers have a complete right to leave Islam and to live any way they want. As a religious Muslim, let me make this clear: I believe that there is no compulsion in religion and that anyone has a right to leave Islam and should not be treated punitively by anyone for their personal choices. But everything known about parenting biracial/bicultural kids shows that in these situations, it is extremely damaging for one parent to isolate kids from the Other culture and Other people and especially to give negative messages about the culture. I see great error in Misbah’s mother trying to turn her daughter into “Molly Campbell” and forcing her to put Islam behind her when Misbah had previously been raised as a Muslim child. You cannot suddenly have a new identity forced upon you. As a biracial/bicultural person, you cannot suddenly be told to forget about the other half of your identity just because your mother wants to move on from her ex-husband’s culture and religion. Misbah’s situation represents how often biracial/bicultural children are forced to lay down and act as cultural bridges upon whose backs adults thoughtlessly walk across or even have battles upon.

Something else strikes me in the updated version of Misbah’s tale. She wants to live as a Muslim woman in the UK and not in Pakistan, despite living a very privileged lifestyle in Lahore, because she feels that she will have greater freedom and more autonomy with her life choices as a Muslim woman in the UK. Many Pakistanis as well as non-Muslim British people are perplexed by Misbah’s assertions, but for very different reasons. I see that from some of the comments below the above linked article. There is so much mutual misunderstanding and Misbah has borne the brunt of it on her young shoulders.

I wish the best for Misbah on her life journey. I hope that she finds what she is looking for.

 

Honorary Member

The Big, Bad, Blonde Bahu was discussing this recently. My 2 rupaiyan:

In American Muslim communities there are a lot of women of various ethnic backgrounds (African American, Latina, and white…definitely a lot of white) who get married to native Muslim men and become ‘honorary Arabs,’ for a while. I really haven’t seen any convert men doing this. I have seen them getting into a foreign language. But they don’t experience the metamorphosis that women often go through. I don’t know why. WHY? But I have friends who have gone through this phase with Arab culture. Often at the other end of this tunnel of romanticizing and exoticizing the culture is later becoming disillusioned and becoming and ‘expert’ on all things wrong with the people and the culture.

I do think that with desi and Arab cultures, if your husband or significant other is a recent immigrant, you do get pressure from his family and community to desify or Arabize. We receive pressure as well as positive praise and attention from in-laws, other recent immigrants, or locals when we go to husband’s home country. US raised children of immigrants of course find ‘wannabes’ creepy. They know exactly who we are and where we come from, so we look extra ridiculous to American born and raised children of immigrants. We also get to do all the “cool” stuff of the culture (sari and bindi) without the burdens that they have to face—possibly growing up in a household with strict gender roles and sexism, expectations that they study a certain subject or go into the family business, avoid sexual transgression, marry a person of their own community, and so on. So there is that element that us foreign-wives are not only flakey but also extra patronizing because we have the right, the privilege,  to pick and choose with much more freedom than they ever could.

There is also this competition between white wives married to these recent immigrants: take gori wives. Who can cook desi well, who can speak a little of the language, who knows all the desi habits and manners, who has been to the des the most on visits? When we pardesi-married-to-desi women see each other, often  hackles stand on end because in our minds, we are each other’s competition. And we will be compared to each other by some, but more so by ourselves.

With white people in particular, many of us believe that we have no culture. We are ‘normal’ and other people are ‘cultural.’ Well, live abroad or get married to a foreign man and we learn really quickly that of course we have a culture when we have something to compare it to. Anyway, this whiteness as a cultural blank-slate phenomenon is an aspect of our culture that pushes some people to mistakenly see other human beings from foreign cultures as exotic and spicy and we see imitating them as a way to spice up our white bread with mayonnaise lives. That is objectifying and ultimately racist.

It isn’t popular to discuss this white-American (or Aussie or Canadian or Brit) element in the context of converting to Islam, but white people get into Buddhism and Native American religions to spice up our lives, so there IS an element of white privilege and white entitlement when we look into Islam. I know that this isn’t all it is about, but it is there. I know that becoming Muslim is different than going to some phony Native American sweat lodge one weekend, obviously we change our entire lifestyle and take on the burden of being visible Muslims, and face Islamophobia. So it is different. But for some of us, what prompted our ‘seeking’ outside of our own backgrounds in the first place has a connection to our entitlement and privilege.

I think it is really complex. We all have our own stories. Some of us have lived in India or wherever for long periods of time…just as our husbands change in the US, wouldn’t we change living in an Indian community in India? Some of our adoptions have become natural to us. I don’t know about you, but I LOVE Pakistani food and love to cook and eat it, I am not trying too hard there, that is really me. I read a lot about South Asia. I am not an expert, and I find there is always something new to learn. It is an interesting region for me. I like gold bangles. I own many. Hmmm. Why do I feel defensive about these things?

I have written these words here and there before when this discussion comes up on blogs: We have all seen her, the girl with Irish features and freckles, obviously a strawberry blonde, who has dyed her hair black, has  painted  on black eyebrows and cat eye kaajal. Occasionally some desi humors her and tells her she looks like a Kashmiri or a Pathan…she is sooo elated, maybe she can pass! She is wearing a bright orange, sequins covered shalwar qameez and rolling off copious head bobbles and spouting ufffos. She looks so silly. She is newly in love with her desi guy…why is she affecting his accent? WHY does she do that? Sometimes a girl meets a guy who is into camping and hunting and she gets into that to please him, impress him, to be closer to him. Sometimes a new beaux listens to some type of music that she doesn’t know, and suddenly she has to know all the bands and his station becomes her favorite station. Do men do this with the same frequency as women? Do many of us women really feel the need to attach our identities to a man’s? With a foreign guy, it becomes his culture.  With the pardesi-desi relationship, her man is her vortex to spicy exotic love (cringe), her wanting to please him has taken her to bizarre extremes, well…many of us have been there and we usually come to our senses and get over it. She will, too. I actually like her better than some of the women who are married to desi recent immigrants and know nothing about their husband’s cultures or countries. (I am NOT lying, I know a white woman who says her husband is Pakistanian!!!) As long as she comes away with a positive respect for the culture and doesn’t turn into one of those women who go on tirades of  ”I know everything about Indian men and they are SO sexist and uncivilized!!!,” then I see no harm in it, cringe worthy as it may be. It passes.

 

Azwaaj e safaid faam

Not much going on here. We are still *just relaxing.* I am okay with that. I knew that we could be crashing at mom and dad’s house for a while. My husband has been having a lot of interviews, Mashallah…something will work out eventually…Inshallah. When, Inshallah, he gets a job, we will move to the location of the job.  Every time a series of interviews gets serious, I start to imagine what it would be like to move to whatever part of the country that this job is in. Denver? Don’t know much about that place. Makes me think of boulders. Guess cuz there is also a city called Boulder around there somewhere. New Jersey? I was always meant to be a Jersey girl. According to my parents, unless you are very rich and live in Manhattan, it’s terrible to raise kids in/around NYC, which is where they both grew up. Everyone who was moving on up left for Long Island or even better: New Jersey (and then the grandparents retired in Southern Florida, Flaaawrida!). That’s the way it was for New Yorkers of my parents’ generation. I have lots of cousins in New Jersey. In Texas I am weird looking for a white person, with dark hair and different facial features than the common German and Irish faces. When ever I go to the East Coast, I see lots of similar faces to my own, nice Italian, Jewish, and Greek noses, lots of black hair and fair skin. The people know kosher pickles and Dr. Brown soda and egg creams. And they fold their pizza. This is alien in Texas. A lot of people in Jersey have a similar history in America to my family, Ellis Island great grandparents, lower Manhattan, the boroughs, and then: New Jersey. That was meant to be my family’s story, too. New Jersey. But somehow I became a Texan instead. I mention to a couple of people that Dh is interviewing for a position there. “It’s a dump!” they say. I am kind of miffed cuz all my cousins live there. That’s not very nice to say. What does that mean? How can a whole state be a dump? I never had that impression of it as a kid. Funny how everyone has their ideas of what a place is like. But I was meant to be a Jersey girl. Then that position didn’t  pan out and I had had the whole silly neurotic and self-indulgent “I was meant to be a Jersey girl” fantasy for nothing. What place is next? I spend time googling mosques and Muslim community activities in these random places across the USA. Mashallah it seems there are a lot of Muslims everywhere these days.

People keep asking me how my husband is dealing with living with my parents. Mashallah my parents are very laid back and un-intrusive people. They don’t demand to know our every move, they are cool with us doing things as a nuclear family but happy to join in when we do the extended family thing. We have our own space, my husband has access to his own TV and computer. He drives. Alhamdulillah, it is an ideal situation. He doesn’t mind. Gori wives get questions about how we deal with our husbands’ “desi soch” sometimes. In this case, you know, because culturally it is supposedly the worst thing that we are at the maike ghar and the woman’s family members are the ones helping out. Mard-hood is lowered. Husband is like a bahu. (he helps with the dishes, too!) “It must be difficult for your husband.” (mostly aunties asking this stuff, yes, but not just them.) Hey! NOT all Pakistani men are the same!!! It is hard for him, probably. But he doesn’t let on. I mean, who really truly loves to live with their inlaws? (Okay, I know, some people do, sure.) This is just majboori. He is a good sport. Hello, my parents are VERY nice people, Mashallah. STOP asking me that!

I think it is interesting to watch my husband observing my family’s culture and habits. Us white people talk about learning about *other* cultures. Sometimes I will see some other goriwife’s family picture with her desi immigrant husband standing at a BBQ or birthday party and there are all of these stereotypical looking whities surrounding him, and realize that NO DUH!, it goes both ways. My family’s values and habits are so different from the stereotypical Pakistani values and habits, so I know many things are notable. My 26 year old sister gets picked up at our house by a guy for dates. My 21 one year old brother’s girlfriend is at our family functions. My mom has a beer sometimes. Things like that. My husband is intimately involved in a very different cultural space. He likes observing us. And sometimes I step outside of myself and imagine that I am observing us, too, because I am imagining what stands out to him.

My girls are enjoying gramma and grampa’s house. That is really important. So alhamdulillah, I am just relaxing these days.

 

Fantasy Goat Dish and Other News

1. My two daughters play together when I do stuff. Mashallah. It is just as I planned. They can keep each other busy while I do important things like cook lunch and surf on the internet. Two year gap has worked out, Mashallah. When Baby D. was alone at this age, I had to be the entertainment more often than not. I would have to put her in the high chair and give her some vegetable sticks to eat and a pot and pan to bang on while I cooked. Not now with Baby A. The girls play well and let me do my thing.

2. We got back from Pakistan yesterday. I had a good time. I always learn a lot of new things when I go there. Like cultural or historical information that is new to me, and new Urdu and Punjabi words and stuff.  While there, I mostly slept, ate A LOT, and shopped.  Karachi looked okay, all things considered. Everyone was doing the same ole same ole. Local businesses were flourishing even under the circumstances. The center of Karachi looked terrible after the Ashoura rioting, though. It was very sad to see. I went there at night and the whole area still looked bad. People were inside shuttered up shops tinkering away at repair work, trying to fix things so that they could re-open their businesses. I can only imagine all the income that these people are losing. Supposedly the government is gonna give them some money to fix their shops, too. I pray for the speedy recovery of that neighborhood. Despite being Muharram, there were a lot of weddings going on. I was at the beach, in parks, at malls, and everyone was just enjoying. It wasn’t like it is “on TV” in Pakistan. It never is.

3. I always have a list of things to eat when I go to a place, Karachi included. I hit most of the things on my list, but I missed sajji. I have never tried sajji before. I was reading about the cuisine of Balochistan and I came across the dish “sajji.” I also discovered that it is widely available in Karachi. Balochi food isn’t famous among non-Baloch, but it seems that this dish is. It is very much like Gulf Arab mashwi/showa/qouzi . Showa is my favorite dish of Omani cuisine.  I don’t know the specifics of this history, but some king or someone gave a chunk of Balochistan to the sultan of Oman at some point in history. There are many connections between the Gulf Arabs and South Asians, but Balochistan, especially Makran, has very strong connections. So I was thinking this might be a dish which is similar to showa. My husband’s aunt, who lived in the Middle East for a several years, also compared sajji to qouzi. So I was very curious.  I wanted to eat this dish, but circumstances prevented it. Inshallah one day I will get to try some authentic sajji. I don’t want chicken sajji either. Only goat sajji. It is one of those dishes that I have never tasted, but know from the way it sounds that it will be really good.

4. I ended up getting 4 ready made suits and several unstitched suits. I also got some gifts for people, and some suits for my girls for the Eids of 2010. So now I will be busy going back and forth to the tailor. I got all the lining and trimming in Karachi though, so basically it is just a matter of dropping everything off. The fashion changes so quickly among the fashionable of Pakistan, so next time I go to Pakistan all of my suits will be very out of fashion…and I must be fashionable in Karachi even though I am a gori and don’t even live there, of course. Right now the qameezes are loosely fitted and long, and the up to the minute pants are a wide leg trouser (azaar). I will probably stitch a few pieces like that since I have always loved that look. It looks like a Vietnamese ao dai, which is a dress I love since it makes you look long and graceful even if you are short and stocky like yours truly. The rest of the suits I will sew in a classic cut because abroad it is just too impossible to keep up with the look of the minute. But it shows when people come from abroad and you can place the exact season of the last time they visited Pakistan because of how their suits are cut and the type of trimming sewn on.

5. I need to shed a few lbs after this trip to Pakistan. Two weeks did a lot of damage (I do it to myself, I do). I ate with gusto there. The food is just so good. A tomato actually tastes like a tomato. The radishes were sweet. The gulab jamans were out of this world…actually I prefer the kala jaman. I must have eaten 25 or so over two weeks. I had mustard greens and corn flour flat bread. I had afghani tikka laced with fatty charbi with long fluffy Qandahaari naans and alu bukharay ki chutney.  (I ate the chunks of brown toasted charbi, too!!! I know, BAD for my health but luscious taste!)  I had the delicious home cooked vegetables of my in-laws’ home. Abroad many people think of Pakistani cuisine as meat based, which it is. I suppose the iconic dishes of Pakistani cuisine are meat dishes.  But the veg and daal dishes, the “home food,” are  wonderful daily culinary delights. I had mungochi in shorba (mungochi are ground mung bean fritters similar to baray but made of mung ki daal instead of dhuli maash), various okra dishes, green bean dishes, paalak mixed with a sprinkle of methi, veg and meat combos like cauliflower and meat, turnip and meat, and so on. I ate kulfi with sheera and falooda every other night. I also had some excellent Western style baked goods from the coffee shops near to my in-laws home. If I lived in Pakistan I would surely start to resemble a she-water buffalo considering the pleasure I take in eating the foods there. Anyway.

6. I also cooked some vegetarian stuff for my MIL since she likes that sort of thing. I made Manchurian Balls, and Indian Chinese recipe of finely chopped vegetables bound with flour and deep fried, served in a brown Chinese style sauce. My cooking teacher-friend actually custom-made me a recipe for that on request. It came out AWESOME! And I made rajma. My MIL loved both dishes.

7. So now after all that eating, I’d better just have salads for like two months. Well, after today. Cuz um, we brought some kala jaman back with us, and they are luring me over to devour them as I type. YUM!

 

No khatirdari here

It is gonna be American Thanksgiving on Thursday and then Eid on Friday, Inshallah. Usually we have people over for Thanksgiving, but this year I haven’t bothered to invite anyone. I still want to cook for Thanksgiving, though.  And then the next day is Eid. So this coincidence could potentially make for way too much cooking. Even though I have not invited anyone over for Eid, and we don’t know anyone well enough for any Eid milan unannounced but expected popover stuff.

I am just cooking because I am imposing on myself a pressure to play a role of wife cum-family cook who produces holiday meals. My husband could care less and would just as well enjoy ordering a pizza. And my kids are way too small to care. So it is all me. All in my head.

I don’t want to invite anyone for Thanksgiving. I just don’t feel like it. I know that’s bad. I am getting so anti-social. We get these huge turkeys over here and every year I end up freezing a bunch of leftovers even when we do have guests. So this year I bought a fresh leg-thigh piece. It is still pretty huge. And I have no clue how to cook this thing. I was thinking of pan searing it in butter and then baking it. But for how long? Maybe 45 mins to an hour? I just don’t know. I will have to research. I hope I don’t screw the dang thing up. But you see, I MUST cook turkey. Even if it just a piece of the bird. It is a compulsion.

And then the next day is Eid. Once again, I am being a recluse and have invited no one. And no one has invited us. That is how it is in Dubai. We may go all dressed up in our Eid finery to the Global Village or to a mall. So sad, I know. At least on Eid day 2 we are invited to a one-dish party. I plan to do dam ka queema. But for day 1 I am tempted not to cook anything. Yet I feel I should just to go through the motions. Isn’t that so silly? I will probably end up preparing my husband’s family recipe for qabuli pullao. I should make a sweet dish but actually no one will eat much of it but me. My husband isn’t too crazy about desi sweets so if I make muzaffar or kheer or sheer qorma or whatever he will have one tiny bowl and I will end up eating the rest of it, a bowl here and there a few times per day over the next few days, loading up on ghee, sugar and thickened milk fat calories. No thanks. I write this now. But watch me cave in and make a sweet dish anyway. The qabuli pullao we will eat for lunch. And then we will probably end up having some Eid dinner out at, perhaps at the Global Village at Kausar Pakistani resto. Or if we are at the mall it may be…gasp…Chili’s. Chili’s for Eid dinner? Oh, scoff away but I promise every Chili’s location will be packed and there will be a 25 minute wait for a table. And I will have a fajita salad and my husband will have a burger. Eid in Dubai. Hmmm. Last Eid, I did make a biriani for lunch and then I believe at 10 pm that evening we were at the mall and had Hardee’s burgers.

Anyway, I could invite. But I just don’t feel like it. Some people love entertaining, but I find it stressful. Especially cross-cultural entertaining where I have my American “help yourself, make yourself at home” type thinking and a lot of people here have the “you are my guest so let me attend to you ever so well ” style. I am just not up to playing hostess right now, I guess. 

Somehow I don’t want to play hostess, but I want to play chef. Sigh. I know.  Just go ahead and order that pizza.

 

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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.