Women’s Own
Warmly Winter
Published in Pakistan’s “Women’s Own” Magazine, December 2010
It’s finally happened.
The knock on the door, and an outstretched palm containing a steaming plate of food.
Chicken-and-veggie rice casserole or Palestinian maqluba, to be specific, on a plastic white flower patterned plate.
Yes, Mama Jama the landlady brought us dinner!
And it couldn’t have been at a more opportune time. In my missionary zeal for bhoono-fying, I had just burnt the aloo gosht. Mama Jama probably smelt the aroma of charred onions drifting down the staircase and took pity on us.
Of course, it’s not that I was expecting her to. It’s not the reason I’d show up at her doorstep every other week with a lovingly-prepared bowl of kheer, zarda or melt-in-your-mouth gulaab jaaman.
I was just being neighbourly.
And testing out my (extremely novice) Pakistani dessert skills.
And skirting the guilt of single-handedly consuming 2 pounds of sugar in one afternoon – an inevitability if said bowl of kheer or gulaab jaman remained in my apartment, thanks to the relentless sweet tooth inherited from my dad.
Yes, I am an epicure (fancy word for greedy). If it were up to me, I’d either be at home baking apple pies and chewy chocolate brownies before proceeding to do justice to their goodness, or I’d be outside in a café or bakery sinking my teeth into the congenial warmth of freshly-baked cinnamon roll, red velvet cupcake, almond croissant, pumpkin pie, strawberry cheesecake, piping hot apple pie or chewy chocolate brownie, with my nose between an equally delicious New York Public Library book.
Luckily, I have a very active and health-conscious husband, who, a) makes sure that I never find more than 50 cents in my wallet at whatever random moment the sweet tooth calls, rendering me helpless in the face of heavenly-smelling street stalls and petite cafés with bothersome minimum-cash policy; and, b), manages to drag me out somewhat regularly for a bit of exercise.
Our current physical activity is rock climbing – on the boulders of Central Park. So, if you ever happen to be strolling near Columbus Circle on a Saturday morning and see two figures attached to a rock – one, strong, athletic, moving swiftly across the rock face like a demo picture from “The Self-Coached Climber”, and the other a ball of play-dough smushed against the wall – you’ll know it’s us.
I have to say though, as much as I was dreading another East Coast winter, there is a charm about it, a crisp-coloured storybook charm.
I don’t know if it’s in my brown BearPaw boots, or the toasty knit cap and woollen mitts that I gleefully don every morning; the feel of a hot Starbucks hazelnut latté between my fingers or the beautiful bareness of Central Park, the crunch of leaves beneath my feet, and the blossoming of Christmas lights on 5th Avenue. Ice skating at Bryant Park, followed by a cup of steaming apple cider and a stroll through the dazzling holiday market, a veritable Santa’s workshop; the pleasant conviviality of huddling with strangers in the 8×8 floor space of Kathi Rolls or Mamoun’s Falafel in the Village, exchanging smiles over a shami kabab roll and shared hearth; or, maybe it’s just the indescribable comfort of home, where you return from the cold with relief and bliss in your heart – given that the heat is working, which you can trust it to be if you’re on food-exchange terms with the landlady.
Of course, slopping through puddles to do your laundry or buy a carton of milk is another matter, as are the thundering hailstorms that sound as if they’ll break straight through your skylight and flood the apartment, the sodden subways and the razor-sharp winds whipping through the labyrinth of high-rises ready to slice off your nose, or having to wear the same inflated down jacket for five months until you are resigned to looking like the Michelin Tyre Man in every photograph.
But no matter how much I complain about it now, winter was always my favourite season in Lahore. I would dream about it the whole year – dream of the day, sometime in November, when the gas heaters were unearthed from the store room and dusted out, when bright chunky sweaters and printed Aurega shawls were unpacked and sunned to get rid of the minty smell of mothballs.
The marvelous halvas my mother would begin to ghot-ofy in the kitchen, gajar, anda, sooji, and my personal weakness, chana daal, the rich smell of ghee and shakkar permeating the entire house in its intoxication; the blood-red pomegranates and succulent oranges we’d eat sitting out on the dewy lawn, the dogs snoozing under the chairs, wrapped up in a brown khaddar shawl that smelt of faded Chanel No. 5.
Even going to LUMS in the morning was fun, dressed in a gigantic sweatshirt and sitting on the sidewalk across the cafeteria after class, watching the steam from the PDC teacup mingle with our cloudy breaths, as the fabled Defence fogs circled in around us from the empty stretches of Phase 5, and we pretended we were in a Sci-Fi movie…
Winter was synonymous with Ramzaan and Eid, with grand tented shaadis, Capri nashtas and apple sheesha at MiniGolf, starry walks, sunny picnics, bonfire dances; lying curled up on a floor cushion in front of the heater in your living room, looking out at the lights of the 600-year old Lahore Fort from the rooftop of Cuckoo’s on your cousin’s December birthday, or blushingly saying “Hello” to your soul mate in the back rows of a Gymkhana concert…life didn’t get any better than a winter in Lahore.
And though I am here now, and New York City beckons with its lights, treats and newfound friends, and I am happy with my new life, I still dream of those magical Lahore winters, old friends, old shawls, ancient forts, and the fresh, pink-cheeked days that hold some of my most precious memories …
And that’s alright. Because time doesn’t flow if you don’t dream.
California Dreaming
Published in Pakistan’s “Women’s Own” Magazine, November 2010
I’m sitting on a Virgin America flight to San Francisco, sandwiched between two very distinct gentlemen: one, a rotund avuncular specimen happily cuddled into a hot pink inflatable pillow, and the other a goggle-eyed, fuzzy-lipped stick figure equally absorbed in a game of Doom on his personal TV.
Meanwhile, I’ve been nibbling on the egg and cheese Panini I bought from JFK five hours ago. Consider yourself lucky if you even get a complimentary packet of peanuts on a domestic U.S. flight; the crisp coleslaw sandwiches and squelchy shahi tukray of PIA en route to Karachi are but a distant fantasy. Ah, PIA, I forgive you the screeching babies and leering uncles and assiduously obnoxious 5-year olds kicking behind my seat for the sake of those shahi tukray!
There it is again – that incorrigible nostalgia I’ve been wallowing in of late. It also happens to be the sole motivation behind this trip to the West Coast. San Francisco, Berkeley, Bay Area! What don’t I miss about that place? The deep blue waters of the Bay, the impossibly puffy white clouds, the crunchy-freshness of the air, the swaying palms on the horizon? Or the incredible purple-gold sunsets over the Golden Gate Bridge, which I watched from the steps of the International House in Berkeley every evening on my way back from class…
Then there were my favourite haunts – the thrift clothing stores where you could find tassled Pocahontas skirts, Dashikis and BCBG jackets all on the same rack, Berkeley’s answer to Zainab Market and the place I’d inevitably splurge half my work-study paycheck. Those wondrous second-hand book stores, musty and chaotic, where wiry old men in suspenders smiled benignly at you over their wire-rim glasses, exactly the kind you’d expect to hand you a copy of “The Neverending Story” and promptly vanish. The board game shop that I never spent less than an hour in each time I entered.
The diminutive Taiwanese baba in a coolie hat who stood on a bucket all day chanting “Happy, Happy, Happy” and holding anti-Bush and anti-Dalai Lama placards; the crazy campus bum who earned his daily bread by charging people to swear at him (I think the rate was a dollar per minute). The roadside jewellery stalls on Telegraph Avenue, a riot of feathers, seashells and antique Afghan silver; the proliferation of Pakistani fast-food joints, free Lipton mixed chai and plastic cups of kheer; the refreshing absence of chain stores till as far as the eye could see, save for the errant downtown Starbucks. The fixture of anti-war protestors on Sproul Plaza, the Native American chief who lived in the trees and ran for Berkeley mayor, the weedy-smelling People’s Park and my homeless old Vietnam-veteran friends who strummed away my favorite Eagles’ songs on the grafittied pavements.
Crazy, beautiful, bubble-of-a-Berkeley, just my kind of place. But most unforgettable of all were the friendships, forged over the unforgettably tasteless food they served at the International House, where I lived two years during Journalism School.
So, when I found out that Z’s company was sending him to Los Angeles for work, I immediately pulled out my old Dashikis and peasant tops and gotay-wali kurtis from the suitcase under the bed – no way was I missing out on a trip to California either!
As for New York City – well, I’m learning to like it. Getting out of the house definitely helps, which can be quite a challenge for a ghar ghussoo or homebody like me. As I blissfully look around at the avocado green walls of my apartment, the potted Pothos plant hanging from the ceiling, the block-print Gultex tablecloth, the beauteous kilm gracing the dark brown floor of the living room, which my mother brought over from Lahore this summer, the mantelpiece full of books, and as I inhale the scent of caramel-vanilla candles and sandalwood incense, listen to the birds chirping in the trees, and open my fridge to admire the lasagna, apple pie, leftover homemade Pad Thai and housewarming chocolate pastries, I think: who in their right mind would want to step out of this piece of heaven? Out there, into the puddles and gloom, odiferous subways and tourist-yapping streets?
Actually, I have been forced to step out. I have been forced to communicate with people other than my husband, the Palestinian landlady and the Indian-Guyanese cashier at the grocery store – courtesy my two jobs.
Yes, I’m working! The hitherto unemployed, Master’s degree-holding housewife has found not one, but two jobs (Thank you, thank you). I have joined the ranks of the active labour force. Now I too get to catch the morning train at rush hour along with the rest of the dapper designer bag-clutching Stieg Larsson-obsessed populace. I, too, grumpily slam down the alarm clock at 7 a.m., gulp down a bowl of cereal, throw on a slightly crumpled H&M button-down, and shoot down the stairs to the subway with the alacrity of somebody who’s just been informed that Michael Jackson has come back to life – all to sit in a windowless office staring at a computer screen for 8 hours straight, with a meager 15 minutes at lunchtime to eat your humble turkey sandwich, and, if it’s a particularly exciting day, exchange a few words other than the mechanical “Good Morning” with your ambitiously poker-faced colleagues.
Sounds tempting, doesn’t it? It’s true, jobs are overrated. Work is overrated. A necessary evil. At least that’s what I’ve concluded from my weeks of face-reading and eavesdropping on the jam-packed subways, and from my own (brief) brush with a 40-hour work week. I’m already beginning to daydream about the “Era of Gainful Unemployment”: extended tea sessions with Mama Jama the landlady over half-a-dozen wedding albums and Syrian soap operas, 5-hour long grocery store binges, simultaneously reading Kafka, Tolstoy and Orhan Pamuk, walking with no purpose. The “Era of Frustrated Unemployment” has been conveniently glossed over, like a Pak Studies History book, as has the even more miserable “Job Application Process”. Dissatisfaction, thy name is me! Of course, it would be an entirely different matter, if, say, I actually found that elusive “dream job”, or, if I even knew what that was…
“Ladies and Gentlemen, we have begun our descent into San Francisco International Airport. Please switch off all electronic devices, bring your seat backs to an upright position…”
Yay! The announcement I’ve been waiting for! Peering over the globular uncle’s hot pink pillow, I catch a glimpse of the blue water, the green hills, the red arches of the Golden Gate from the window. Memories flood back to me. I remember the moment when, over 3 years ago, I landed in this city as a graduate student, straight out of LUMS, moving away for the first time from the only home I had ever known. I remember teasing my mother at the forlorn finality of her goodbyes – “Ammi, I’m going to come back, you know!” But she knew better.
And though I can’t wait to see all the places and people I loved, the nooks and crannies and eccentricities of this place I grew to call my second home, I also feel a little nervous. Will it be the same?
I often feel this way landing in Lahore. Is going back ever the same? Or do those beloved places and people inevitably move on, and leave you behind, so that the only way you can enjoy them is through nostalgia, through memory?
Perhaps they don’t change at all. Perhaps the change is in you.
PS: I had an absolutely fabulous time in California. Can’t wait to go again.
PPS: In case you were wondering, the beady-eyed furry creature(s) in the oven have been eliminated.
Hello New York!
Published in Pakistan’s “Women’s Own” Magazine, October 2010
I’m sitting cross-legged on the dark brown laminate floor of our 3rd storey brownstone apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. To my right is a mound of tools – staple gun, drill, screwdrivers, pliers, nails, measuring tape, paintbrushes, and a number of pointy objects I can’t identify – and to my left, a mountain of half-opened boxes, bags and suitcases. Infront of me is the ustad – my husband – wearing paint-splattered khaki shorts and a white t-shirt, mounted on a step-ladder and swiping the bedroom wall with strong strokes of a roller brush soaked in “Kabuki Clay” – a rich, creamy white paint that looks so MilkPak delicious I’ve been tempted more than once to dip my finger in for a taste. “No, you can’t eat it,” my better half repeats with inexhaustible patience. He looks pretty good, I think. The rugged workman look, stubble, smeared forearms and all.
I on the other hand look like a complete bum. Not the cool dreadlocked guitar-toting kind of Berkeley and Ithaca – my two former domiciles – but the true urban homeless, the kind who sleep on subways, scour through trash cans, trundle around with empty shopping carts, and invariably miss a few teeth. OK, maybe not exactly, but I think my dirt-streaked face, faded blue jeans ripped quite naturally at the knees, musty red rag-of-a-t-shirt with a mournful-looking Batman printed at the front (the kind they call “vintage”), spots of dry paint on my calves, toes, fingers, fingernails, forehead, hair – which currently sits in a chaotic jumble on the top of my head – are enough to earn me a kindly quarter from a passerby, or even a Central Park bench spot.
“Four days ago, I would’ve died before I let you see me like this,” I joke with my husband-of-nine-months. But appearances stop mattering pretty quickly when you’re moving house, living out of a single duffel bag, subsisting on bread and cereal, sleeping on the floor surrounded by paint cans, scrubbing bathroom tiles, carrying a 70 pound flatscreen TV up three flights of stairs, and whatever kajal you’re wearing melts away like candlewax in the fanless stillness of a New York June afternoon, leaving unflattering gray streaks in its wake…
But, here we are – our new home! Or at least the four walls, slowly colouring up and being adopted as our own. Bed, dressing table, sofa, kitchen cabinets….all afterthoughts. They’ll follow in due time. Meanwhile, I’m already in love with the leafy elm tree outside the living room window, the peeping spires of a nearby Greek cathedral, and the rows and rows of slender redbrick buildings, framed with terraces and ivy and windows, rows and rows of windows, like a beehive, a kaleidoscope of lives. I’m beginning to discover for the first time the guilty city-pleasure of observing neighbors through my window – what they’re watching on TV, the colour of their walls and curtains, who they have over for tea, coffee or lemonade, whatever their cultural preference. I also love our landlady, a sweet old Palestinian grandma as white and delicate as a cream puff. She sweeps the backyard every morning in her black embroidered thob, spends the afternoons with her “cousins” around the block, and sits on the porch in the evening sipping mint shai with the Moroccan neighbours. She knows maybe 10 words of English (including “crook”), and breaks into a melodious stream of Arabic the moment she sees our faces. To date, she has six grown-up American-accented children, who all seem to live nearby but keep appearing at the building every other day. I suspect she has more, because I’ve seen letters in the mailbox addressed to other people with the same last name (nosy, I know, but I can’t help it!). I think I’ll just ask her one of these days – when I go to call on her, officially, carrying a pot of biryani or gajar ka halwa, some deliciously impressive Pakistani dish (cooked over the phone with my mom’s instructions), my 30 words of Arabic, and my own first name – from experience, the surest way into an Arab’s heart!
How we found this apartment is another story altogether. Let’s just say that after ten days of Craigslisting, emailing, subway-hopping, borough-crossing, handshaking, trickster agents and sore feet, from Gramercy to East Harlem to Clinton Hill, Bushwick, Jersey City and Jackson Heights, from hoods to dens to beaver hats, the one question that we asked ourselves was: “Could we bring our parents to this place?” I mean, if you’re going to live 6,000 miles away from home, family and every imaginable comfort, it better not be underneath a phaatak or graffitied expressway, above a Liberty Market-esque kids’ clothing store with sugar-pink jumpers in the display, or a scene that inspired George Orwell’s Victory Mansions.
So, Cobble Hill won, with its Thai and Mexican restaurants, Chinese laundromats, 24-hour Arab-owned delis, Cuban musicians, Indian policemen, British bankers, thrift stores, designer boutiques and fresh fruit markets, moms, nannies and stroller-babies, yuppies, hippies and hipsters, English on the street in twenty different accents – all the things that make New York special. There’s a lot to be done of course – painting’s just the start! – and I’m reminded of my mother and father, at the time we were building our own house in Defence, Lahore. The interminable haggling with the contractor, the spectrum of paint samples on the wall, endless trips to Casa Bella and Barry’s for upholstery fabric, Bajwa’s for lights, Ferozepur Road for tiles and bathroom fixtures, my sister and I grumpily trailing behind after school in our dusty blue-and-white checked uniforms. My mother was a natural at it; colours, textures and the arrangement of things came effortlessly to her. I don’t know if my design sense is as instinctive, though I’d like to think that I’ve imbibed at least a little. You can decide next month, once we get to the Architectural Digest Before & After stage!
Uh-oh. I was just in the kitchen putting together some sandwiches for dinner, and I opened the oven, where I had stored some extra plates, and a scream escaped from my throat as a pair of beady black eyes met mine…it seems, to quote Agent Mulder, “We are not alone”!
Or, as any veteran New Yorker would say, “Welcome to New York!”
Windswept Words 