Three Things: The Home Edition

Chukairiyaan, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

1. Waking up at 8am, realizing it's a Saturday, and burrowing back under the warm covers to sleep in until 10:30. Washing my face, and then promptly sitting down at the computer. I check emails and weblogs while my mother pulls up a chair beside me and flips through catalogues and coupon books. We discuss an impending visit to IKEA (she's never been!), and she tells me The Sister is on a newfound campaign to add a cat to our household. A cat would be nice, says my mother wistfully. She fondly recalls our previous next-door neighbor's cat, Daisy, who used to keep my mother company in the garden.

2. I wash and condition my hair, then actually take the time to comb it out, too - albeit abruptly, top to bottom rather than the other way around, so that my impatient tugs result in lots of gnarled hair in the wastebasket. Still, it got combed. Since I'm a firm adherent of the "I don't believe in combing my hair" philosophy, today's effort is highly newsworthy and must be mentioned, especially considering I have conversations about hair quite rarely anyway (my favorite conversation is still that latter one, with a four-year-old, no less). I then sit in a pool of sunshine on the living room floor, willing my hair to dry while reading the last few chapters of John Knowles' A Separate Peace, a book I love but have never reread since finishing it in one evening for my tenth-grade English class, eight years ago. In one passage that makes me smile, Gene says:

After the lights went out the special quality of my silence let [Phineas] know I was saying [prayers], and he kept quiet for approximately three minutes. Then he began to talk; he never went to sleep without talking first and he seemed to feel that prayers lasting more than three minutes were showing off. God was always unoccupied in Finny's universe, ready to lend an ear any time at all. Anyone who failed to get his message through in three minutes, as I sometimes failed to do when trying to impress him, Phineas, with my sanctity, wasn't trying.

3. Lazily sitting around the dining room table after we've just finished dinner, The Sister looks around at each of us individually and asks, wide-eyed, "Anyone want chocolate cake?" I laugh at her excitement, and she adds, "I've been looking forward to this all day!" Our mother, ever the practical one, advises that we save the dessert-consumption for after taraweeh [the nightly congregational prayers held during Ramadan], but the daddy-o - never one to refuse dessert - overrules that suggestion with an authoritative, "Well, in that case, we can have two! - one dessert now, and another one when we get back from taraweeh." A quick peek into the refrigerator makes me laugh at all the choices available to us: apple-caramel-pecan cake, chocolate ganache torte, apple pie, chocolate-orange sticks, and, in the freezer, two pints of ice cream, one of which (my new favorite: Ben&Jerry's American Pie) merited an excited email from me to fellow ice cream fan 2Scoops months ago, raving about how it was "basically exactly what it sounds like - apple pie with ice cream!" Just for 2Scoops, I would like to add that the American Pie ice cream is still SPECTACULARICIOUS.

May you inherit a world of light and love

Those of you who've been following along know that Baji is my (and everyone else's) favorite robot monkey pirate. And, guess what! A wee one by the name of Mr. Mini Monkey Pirate has recently swooped down and crashed the (boat)party. Run along and wish Baji congratulations on the latest edibly adorable addition to her familia. May he grow up to own many bookcases [the best prayer I can think of for the son of a fellow bibliophile]. And may he read books, not eat them or stab them with his pirate sword.

Hundreds of pages, pages, pages forward

THIS...is the fastest way to my heart, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.

Last Friday, I managed to drag my friend A along with me to Oakland, where I usually pray Jummah salah [the Friday congregational prayer]. I kept extolling the virtues of this favorite masjid of mine, until she reminded me that she had gone there with me once before.

"Really?" I said. "I don't remember."

"Yeah, I've been there before."

"Really? When?"

This, of course, was the mystery.

Only after we had entered the masjid and settled in for the always lovely, humorous, and inspiring khutbah [sermon] from my favorite imam did I recall that A had come to Jummah with me during the summer of last year. And that afterward, a group of us had gone out to lunch at Berkeley's Naan 'n' Curry restaurant [not the usual one we frequent on Telegraph, but the new - and subpar - one that had opened on College Ave.].

M, who is Iraqi, had offhandedly mentioned that he didn't enjoy desi food, or didn't eat it all that often, or something like that.

"But you should have said something!" I said. "We didn't have to eat here!"

"It's tradition," he said simply.

I couldn't argue with that.

Sitting in the masjid last Friday, I couldn't help but laugh inwardly at another memory from two summers ago: the post-conference meeting for organizers/volunteers, held at the Telegraph Naan 'n' Curry. At the end, W insisted on paying for everyone's meal, and went up to the register and did so, whereupon M leapt out of his chair in an effort to stuff some bills from his pocket into W's hands. W fending him off, dodging him, the two of them running through the interior of the restaurant, skidding around tables and chairs and other customers, strangers who looked on perplexedly while the rest of us held our stomachs in aching laughter. It was good times.

After last Friday's Jummah salah, it was time for lunch in Berkeley. Another tradition. I parked my car, and A and I made our way up Telegraph Avenue. We passed by Moe's Books on the way, and couldn't resist ducking inside. We went up to the third floor to look at the books on sale ($5-8 FOR BRAND-NEW BOOKS!), and I laughingly recounted to A the story of the last time I had been there, with HijabMan and my sister in September. We had all lost track of one another in the bookstore while pursuing our own literary interests. Finally, HijabMan had texted me with, "I'm on 3rd floor. East religions," and my sister and I had gone upstairs to find him agonizing over the piles of books he had been tempted to buy.

A and I went to lunch, then walked back down Telegraph to my car. In front of Cody's Books, someone had set up a table with the above "BOOKS AND EVERYTHING ELSE: 25 CENTS" sign. Books lined the sidewalk in neat rows. I had to stop. The lovely A stood by, waiting patiently while I jabbered on and on excitedly and picked out books. All ELEVEN of them.

I don't know where I'm going to put these, and, more importantly, I don't know when I'll even get around to reading them. But I wanted them.

Here's what I got:

- Anthem, by Ayn Rand
- The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald
- Pale Horse, Pale Rider, by Katherine Anne Porter
- 9 Plays by Black Women, edited by Margaret B. Wilkerson
- Seven Short Novel Masterpieces, edited by Leo Hamalian, et al
- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, by John Berendt
- The Man Who Moved the World: The Life & Work of Mohamed Amin, by Bob Smith with Salim Amin
- The New Pocket Anthology of American Verse, edited by Oscar Williams
- The Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer
- The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood
- A Pocket Book of Modern Verse, edited by Oscar Williams

After I had gleefully dropped my quarters into the blue plastic mug and we began walking away, I looked back again, and gasped, "Oh my GOD, there's MORE!" There, at the edge of the sidewalk, was a row I hadn't seen.

Ah, well. Next time then.

well i walked over the bridge into the city where i live.

Last week, I went to Borders to study for my neurobiology and my molecular & cellular bio final exams.

(As an aside, nothing has made me mentally curse over the past few weeks as much as thoughts of neurobiology do: Friggin' hell! I understand that NPB stands for Neurobiology, Physiology, and Behavior, but, friggin' hell, maybe I'd actually understand it if it were less physiology and more behavior. So, once again, friggin' hell, man! Alright, I'll stop. Moving along now.)

I walk into the Borders cafe, a bit chagrined to find all the tiny, individual tables taken. The only one that looks nearly empty is the long, rectangular table in the center of the cafe, occupied only at one corner by a mother and her small daughter. I approach them from the opposite end of the table and smile. "Mind if I sit here?"
The mother shakes her head. "It's a bit too big for just us." The daughter, sitting in her mother's lap, regards me wide-eyed.
I smile my thanks and drop my messenger bag on the floor, place my discman and headphones a bit more carefully atop the table, and pull out a chair at the corner diagonally across from them.

"I saw my daddy today!" the little girl tells me as I sit down. "And he brought me this juice!"
The little girl is Asian, although her mother apparently is not. The daughter has lots of shiny black hair and huge, dark eyes, and she's gulping down an Odwalla Superfood beverage, holding the opening of the plastic bottle right up against her mouth in the manner that little kids are wont to do, so that her mouth is totally surrounded by a large green-black ring. In a word: Adorable. I suppress a smile.
"Is the juice good?" I ask with genuine interest, since it looks really…well, greenish-black, and I'm trying not to wince at the color. She nods enthusiastically.

She points outside in the direction of the parking garage. "We came down here in the elevator!" And then, with characteristic forthrightness: "How old are you?"
"I'm 24. How old are you?"
"Four. No, four and a half."
"Not yet," laughs her mother.
A stranger sits down across from me, smiling politely at us before delving into his book.
The little girl watches him curiously "Do you know him?" she asks me. "Does he know you?"
I shake my head, while her mother speaks softly into her ear.
"How old is he?"
"Maybe not everyone wants to say how old they are," says her mother.

I take my books out of my bag and spread them out in front of me while the little girl watches. "How did you tie up your hair?" she asks, pointing at my headwrap.
"Well," I say, accustomed to hearing this question often, "I doubled my hair up in a pony-tail, and then I tied a bandanna around it, and then I just wrapped this other big scarf around my head."
"Can you show me?"
Her mother tries to shush her. "It probably takes a lot of time, and I don't think she would want to take off her scarf and re-do it all here."
"I can tie up my hair," the little girl murmurs. "I can tie my hair around my hair, too." She gathers her hair in front of her and starts braiding it. I'm smiling to myself, because this is the most talkative, articulate four year old I have ever met. And also because she is sitting in her mother's lap with her back against her mother's stomach, and her mother seems to have no idea of the large black ring around her daughter's mouth.

As I pick my sweater off the table and drape it across the back of my chair (never underestimate the speed with which my fingernails turn blue in air conditioned environments), the little girl remarks, "You look different without your coat."
"I do? How?"
She shrugs. Her mother smiles and correctly points out, "She wasn't wearing her coat when she came in."
"Yes, she was!"
As they get up to leave (the mother finally noticing and trying in vain to wipe the black circle off her daughter's mouth), I turn around in my chair to say goodbye. While passing by my chair, the little girl gravely sticks out her hand, and I shake it just as solemnly. "I'm Yasmine. What's your name?"
"Lily."
"Bye, Lily! It was nice talking to you."

Only after she is out the door do I realize I could have added, "We both have flower names!" But maybe that would have been overdoing it. After all, I do laughingly refer to my own as a "generic flower name" often enough.

I find a small table of my own and move my stuff over, but now that Lily and her entertaining chatter are gone, I'm bored already. I watch everyone else around me, in an effort to distract myself from studying, and cringe at the too many girls under twelve who sashay about in their ruffled mini skirts. My blend of pity and irritation is soon alleviated by my amusement at the old man gravely reading "eBay for Dummies" across the room, and the South Asian boys next to me fervently discussing the merits of "Nintendo Power."

I look up for a split second, and the woman sitting with her back to me at the next table is perusing a book whose pages address concerns such as "Flaking Eyeshadow" and "Bleeding Lipstick." I want to say, "Buddy, eyeshadow is fun, but seriously, makeup is not worth all that drama if you have to read a whole book about it," but decide to leave her to her reading.

When I get bored of biology in all its various forms, I wander over to check out the real books, because we all know textbooks don't count. The Calvin and Hobbes compilations hold my interest the longest. I stand there and laugh, speedily flipping through the pages - like I used to with those mini animation booklets we made in elementary school - then drag the books back to my table, against my better academic-oriented judgment. "I've got nothing but consonants!" continuously exclaims Calvin in outrage, spelling three-letter words as Hobbes condescendingly put far more elaborate tongue-twisters. It reminds me of all the times I've played Literati over at Yahoo! games with Chai & Co., and whined about not having any vowels at my disposal.

A middle-aged gentleman leans over my table on his way out and says, "Thank you for brightening my lunch," then turns and scuttles away before I can even think to formulate a proper reply. I don't know why exactly he was thanking me, unless, knowing me, I had probably smiled absently in his direction whenever I turned my head to scrutinize the local Persian artist's paintings hanging on the wall just behind his table. I laugh silently at how I am The Most Oblivious Person In The World™ (yes, it merits capital letters and a trademark symbol, it's that bad), and am reminded of H#3 and his habit of shamelessly flirting with every girl at our workplace. One morning, I walked over to his cubicle to grab some paperwork and greeted him with my standard, "How goes it, buddy?"
"Better now," he said smoothly.
"Oh," I said with concern. "Were you not feeling well?"
His winsome smile slipped away, replaced by a wide-eyed, incredulous, "ohmygod she totally didn't get it" look. Meanwhile, I wandered off obliviously, and then laughed out loud when it finally hit me while I was sitting at my desk, a good hour or so later.

I listen to Amos Lee on my headphones while consuming ice-blended chocolate drinks and a raspberry latte. Two years later, and I sadly still don't know the difference between espressos and mochas and lattes and whatnot.

As I am leaving Borders at the end of the day, I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye, and turn to see a little boy running by, exclaiming in wide-eyed awe, "Dad, I SAW BUTTERFLIES!" My wide grin comes naturally, as does the irrepressible laugh that follows. The other cafe people look up with vague interest, then return to their magazines and coffees and books and muted conversations.

Those were the best parts of my day: Lily and Calvin and The Butterfly Boy.

as if i haven't already amply proven my nerdiness...

Hi, my name is Yasmine and, lately, all my posts seem to be about books. I am a complete and utter nerd. The end.

Alright, so Baji is making me do this survey thingamajig under threat of incarceration, which actually doesn't seem so bad if it means I get to take all my books with me.

Let's begin:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Apparently, everyone is hella confused about this question. If you're asking what book I want to douse in gasoline and light a match to, then, to be honest, I really have no idea. I usually only buy books I've already read and liked, so I'm slightly attached to all the books in my bookcases. If there were any I ever disliked, I most likely sold them back.

Oh wait, I know! Jasmine, by Bharati Mukherjee. It was handed to me by my 10th grade English teacher, who was amused by the similarity between my name and the protagonist's and thought I would enjoy a novel by a South Asian writer. Umm, no. First of all, we all know how much I hate hate hate the name "Jasmine." Vomitrocious! [See below.] Secondly, Jasmine was just highly annoying and kept making stupid life mistakes and apparently had multiple personalities because she kept changing her damn name: Jyoti>>Jasmine>>Jase>>Jazz>>Jane. What the holy freakin' smoley?

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Do they have to be fictional characters from books? Because I did want to marry MacGuyver when I grew up. Okay, fine, at the risk of destroying any sort of literary credibility I've established, I would have to admit to crushing on the Goblin King from Labyrinth. Hey, I was ten. I remember watching the movie a few years later and just about dying of laughter (it was released in 1986, so what do you expect? Most other '80s movies I grew up with totally rocked though). The Goblin King sounded much better in the book than he looked in the movie. I was a shallow kid, okay?

And I don't think this constitutes crushing, but I've certainly always had a soft spot for Sidney Carton (he's so damn jaded yet genuine) from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and for Charlie Gordon from Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon. I read the latter for the first time when I was about twelve, and I think it was the second book that made me cry. The first book was Wilson Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows, when I was ten. I wanted a best friend like Billy Colman, and I totally bawled my eyes out when Old Dan and Little Ann died. Alright, I think that's it.

The last book you bought is:

How to Eat Like a Child: And Other Lessons in Not Being a Grown-Up, by Delia Ephron with drawings by Edward Koren. I bought it a couple of days ago from the Friends of the Library section at my local public library, and it's hardcover, so it cost $1. Paperbacks cost fifty cents. The flyleaf says, in cursive handwriting dated 7/25/79, To Alexis, This is so you never forget how to act like a child. Love, Gwyneth.

Highlights include sections entitled "How to Laugh Hysterically," "How to Tell a Joke" (Immediately repeat ten times.), "How to Torture Your Sister," "How to Talk on the Telephone" (Hello. Are you English? Are you Swedish? Are you Italian? Are you Finnish? Well I am. Goodbye.), etc. The crowd-pleasing "How to Express an Opinion" offers the following word choices:

Yucky
Gross
Dis-gusting
Ugh
Sick
Sickening
Scuzzy
Smell-y
Oh, barf
Creepy
Icky
Obnoxious
Boy, is this dumb
Creeps
Crummy
Vomitrocious

And how could I not share with you all the author's sage advice on how to eat ice cream cones?

Ask for a double scoop. Knock the top scoop off while walking out the door of the ice cream parlor. Cry. Lick the remaining scoop slowly so that ice cream melts down the outside of the cone and over your hand. Stop licking when the ice cream is even with the top of the cone. Be sure it is absolutely even. Eat a hole in the bottom of the cone and suck the rest of the ice cream out the bottom. When only the cone remains with ice cream coating the inside, leave on car dashboard.

...and french fries?

Wave one french fry in air for emphasis while you talk. Pretend to conduct orchestra. Then place four fries in your mouth at once and chew. Turn to your sister, open your mouth, and stick out your tongue coated with potatoes. Close mouth and swallow. Smile.

I freakin' love this book! LIKE OH MY GOD, BECKY, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW. Okay, I'll stop now.

The day before that amusing purchase, I bought Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart for $1 from the American Cancer Society shop in downtown.

The last book you read:

Audre Lorde's Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, a "biomythography" of her life as a queer woman of color. While the writing is pretty sexually provocative at times, it is for the most part also lovely, poetic, and fascinating enough that I've left dog-eared pages all the way through the book. If you can handle reading about queer women of color, then I highly recommend it.

What are you currently reading?

Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. It was assigned reading for a womens studies course I took last quarter. I've only just started it, so I am quite obviously an academic slacker. Also, I read two chapters of Karen Armstrong's new memoir, The Spiral Staircase : My Climb Out of Darkness, standing up in the unversity bookstore this morning, so I think that totally counts, especially since I'm planning on buying it eventually, unless I just end up finishing it by reading a few chapters every time I stop by the place. And last night, I started Deafening, by Frances Itani, which I had bought months ago (for $1!) and then promptly forgotten all about.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:

Do you realize how painful a question this is? You're killing me. Five?! Geez louise. Alright, here we go:

- The Quran, as edited by Abduallah Yusuf Ali, because I agree with Baji - footnotes are a good thing. And I haven't read the entire Quran in translation nearly enough times yet.
- The Complete Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. If there was one single book that helped me survive eighteen months in Pakistan (ten years ago) with limited reading material in English, this was it. My brother and I swapped it back and forth and discussed each story in detail, endlessly. Not to mention all the times the binding started coming apart and I had to keep gluing the pages back in. The brother still has it, because we're all sentimental fools in this family. Hardcovered, four novels, fifty-six short stories, over one thousand pages... The island's not looking so bad after all.
- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. "The narrator is a downed pilot in the Sahara Desert." Hey, if he can make it, why can't I? It's a simple, rich, and poweful little book.
- Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales, by Ray Bradbury. Quantity and quality, all at once. I love this man. 'Nuff said.
- The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, as edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell. As I mentioned recently, I love this book; it's definitely one of my favorites. The funny thing is, though, that I keep re-reading the same poems and bits of prose over and over, so I definitely need a desert island in order to make it through the book in its entirety.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

Baji is making this so difficult by already having picked the other bookworms I can think of straight off the top of my head. Who else likes books around here? Alright, here goes:

- Najm: because my fellow vampire child was online really late the other night, and, in response to my interrogative inquiries [is this a redundant phrase?], he confessed it was because he had been reading a really good book. In my haste to go to sleep, I forgot to ask what the really good book was. I also want to know what all those other books are, the ones he's stockpiling on his shelves but has never gotten around to reading in their entirety. [Dammit, kk beat me to this. I shoulda posted this deal last night instead of saving it as a draft. What was I thinking? Well, fine then! I'll find someone else! So there.]

- BAQ: because he's a bookworm and I know it, and also because, as with me, conciseness is not his strong suit either, which means I'm anticipating a pretty thorough post in response, so I'm already rubbing my hands together in giddy expectation. Also because maybe this will give him a push to update.

- Queen_Hera: because she is the absolute best QUEEN of books, and I can imagine her eyes lighting up at these questions, and only someone with such an enormous collection of books would appreciate my excessive nerdiness.

- bki./: because he likes Eric Carle (which is always a selling point with me), but he clearly also likes a lot of other literary stuff as well, if his awesomely-composed "globalog" is anything to go by. Besides, he knows German. How many of you know German, huh?

Also, I'd like to cheat (and monopolize this quiz thingamajig) by saying that I'd enjoy hearing from the following people as well, if you're up to it:

- Yaser: because he's blunt and straight to the point, which I think is an admirable quality and so I always always trust his book reviews.

- Fathima: because I want to know what books are being read/recommended by someone who writes as amazingly as she does mashaAllah.

- HijabMan: because I'm thinking it's going to be good, unexpected, or, at the very least, definitely different and thought-provoking.

- Sister Scorpion: because she reads everything. Also, because someday I would like to be as articulate, open-minded, hilarious, and talented (say, "MashaAllah"). So I gotta get a head start by stalking her bookshelves.

- Knicq: because he needs to update that joint already, and nagging fellow ramblers is so much fun. Plus, he thinks I'm funny, for some reason, and I totally suck at accepting compliments, so this is my lame kindergarten way of responding along the lines of, "Thanks, I think you're cool, too, so, Tag! You're IT!" [Okay, kk beat me here, too. Ugh! Creeps! Crummy! I give up.]

If you absolutely love books and I've inadvertently left you out, feel free to participate. Let me know so I can add to my ever-increasing list of future books to read. On the other hand, if you're not a bookworm at all, please accept my deepest apologies. We're so outta control. I accept full blame.

for all my fellow bookworms.

Check this: The 100 favourite fictional characters... as chosen by 100 literary luminaries [via Kottke]

Tin Tin! Dr. Watson! God! Jane Eyre! Paddington Bear! Antonia Shimerda! Anne of Green Gables!

(I think I need to expand my literary collection, is what.)

And, in response: Character witnesses, as chosen by Independent readers

Sidney Carton, Holden Caulfield, Tom Joad, Rebecca de Winter, Jo March, Atticus Finch!, Eeyore!

(Ditto the parenthetical confession above. Good lord, why haven't I read barely any of the other books on this list?)

And: My anti-Hero (because the bad guys are so much more interesting)

Also, because I am now obsessed with the Enjoyment>>Books section of this site:
- Interviews with authors whose books I want to read:

* Nuruddin Farah
* Eric Carle (one of my very favorite authors/illustrators of children's books)
* Asne Seierstad
* Sarah Vowell (a.k.a Violet Incredible!)
* Nadeem Aslam ("Most ordinary Muslims say, 'We just want to get on with our lives. Don't identify us with the fundamentalists.' But it's a luxury. We moderate Muslims have to stand up. As a child I was really frightened of the game Hangman. I was terrified that my not knowing the answer was going to get somebody killed. As a grown-up, I feel that a game of Hangman is being played on an enormous scale in the world, and that sooner or later I'm going to be asked certain questions, and if I don't give the right answer somebody is going to get hurt.")

Plus, an argument: Independent versus Chain bookstores

knowing that life is life, not mood.

I’m not too easily embarrassed. But I don’t need the drama of trying to use a credit card when I know perfectly well that there is no money available there for me to use, and I’m not the type of person who’s so mortified that I will offer the cashier, my companion, and the other customers in the line behind me an explanation as to why my credit card was declined.

So when, on my way out a bookstore the other morning, I swiped my debit card to pay for a pile of books and found it declined, I didn’t turn red or shuffle my feet apologetically or stammer a possible explanation for that unexpected turn of events. But I did raise an eyebrow and say confusedly, “That’s so weird. I know my deposit cleared,” because a quick phone call just five minutes beforehand had confirmed that I did indeed have money available in my bank account.

I was in the bookstore because I can never pass up the chance to duck inside one. And because I love bookstores and their wide floor-plans, comfy armchairs, café tables, window seats, and, of course, the endless array of bookshelves to wander through, fingers trailing along the books’ spines as I hold my head to the side to read the titles.

I really wasn’t expecting to buy anything, until I came across Tamim Ansary’s West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story, a memoir that my father had loved and made the entire family read and had raved about to friends and strangers for weeks afterwards. Turning it over in my hands to skim the back cover, I smiled to myself, remembering an email I had written to a friend in July 2002, soon after reading the book myself:

There is a passage in the book, where the author is talking about Pashto, and I was remembering your IM to me the other day that your friend dictated in Pashto. (Pashto is a kickass language, for reals.) I thought you and your friend might find this amusing:

“Pashto was the language of the ruling clan and the official language of Afghanistan, and no one was allowed to make fun of it or insult it. My father infuriated the authorities by going the other way. He championed Pashto too much, loudly proclaiming it ‘the mother of all the languages.’ He drew up lexicons of words in Pashto and other languages that sounded similar, and drew forced etymological connections. The name Mexico, he claimed, derived from the Pashto phrase ‘Maka sikaway’. Pashtuns, he explained, had discovered Mexico but didn't like it, and when they came home, they told their friends, ‘Maka sikaway’, which means, ‘What are you doing? Don't do that.’”

Isn't that hilarious? I think the Afghani Pashto is a little bit different from the one we speak at home, because we would say it as, Muku sukaway. Or actually, in the real order, it would be, “Sukaway? Muku!” But that whole thing about “Mexico” being derived from Pashto just totally made me laugh, though.

I switched Ansari’s book to one hand, knowing that I wanted my own copy. Continuing through the bookstore, I stopped eventually at a table where books were selling for a fraction of their usual prices. I found a 2003 collection of Alice Walker’s poetry, Absolute Trust in the Goodness of the Earth, and flipped through the pages for a few minutes:

Loss of vitality
Is a sign
That
Things have gone
Wrong.

It is like
Sitting on
A sunny pier
Wondering whether
To swing
Your feet.

A time of dullness
Deadness
Sodden enthusiasm
When
This exists
At all.
Decay.

The sticker on the back said it cost $5. I held onto both books and continued down the table, breathless with surprise and delight when I came across Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Fifth Book of Peace. Four hundred pages, hard-covered, for $5 again. Months ago, I had stood in a different bookstore as rays of late afternoon sunshine drifted across the carpet, having just picked out a card for HijabMan, and reading the first twenty pages of Kingston’s desperate rush into the Oakland-Berkeley hills in a failed attempt to save her home and her material possessions. Everything she owed, including the manuscript of her novel-in-progress, was lost as the hills were ravaged by fire in October 1991 just as she was driving home from her father’s funeral. I remember driving up through those winding roads with my own father soon afterward, on one of our endless trips to the Children’s Hospital Oakland, as he gravely explained to me about the fire, while I, ten years old and terrified of losing my home, gazed out the car window at the blackened hills I loved even then.

I had been sorely tempted to buy Kington’s book that first day I came across it, but I had had only enough money for one book, and that had to be The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, as edited and translated by Stephen Mitchell, for which I had been searching for days and had finally found on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, somewhere in my bookstore journey between the revolving card-stand at the window and Kingston’s book on the table in the back. So Rilke it was, an identical copy of the book I love, true to the original German and beautifully rendered into English with both languages displayed on facing pages, clean and smooth compared to my own mercilessly dog-eared copy, the perfect gift for a new friend who possesses amazing wisdom and clarity of vision and who was about to leave on an inspiring journey. And I don’t even give books as gifts. But that’s how perfectly fitting Rilke’s book was.

So that was all a few months ago. On this day, then, I had three new books picked out, which is usually enough to make me giddy, because that’s just how much a nerd I am. To celebrate yet further, I scooped up a few Lindor truffles from the little bowl at the end of the register counter while waiting in line behind a lady with two young children.

When it was my turn to pay, I piled the books onto the counter and laid my truffles next to them. I chatted with the girl at the register as she rang up and bagged my purchases, she asking about my headwrap and I smiling a lot because it turned out she was Pakistani and her name was the same as that of one of my aunts. And then, as mentioned before, my debit card was declined, much to my confusion. “That’s so weird though.” I swiped it again, and again the same. The girl looked apologetic. I shrugged unconcernedly. “Can I put these on hold and come back for them in the afternoon?”

“Sure,” she said. She grabbed a pad and pen to take down my name.

From behind me, I heard a voice say, “I could pay for those.”

I turned in surprise. The man behind me in line was perhaps in his thirties, and so completely nondescript that I cannot now remember anything about his appearance, except how very grim and solemn he looked.

“I can pay,” he offered again.

“Oh no,” I said. “I couldn’t let you do that.”

“I’m paying for my stuff anyway,” he pointed out. “I can just add yours to it.”

“No, really,” I protested, “Don’t worry about it.” He shrugged, still unsmiling, and I looked at him and the counter girl helplessly, torn between laughter and awkwardness and pure amazement at his generosity.

The girl stepped back from the counter, throwing up her hands in surrender. “I’ll let you two fight this out,” she said in amusement.

“Look, it’s okay, it’s not like it’s a hardship for me,” he said, holding up his hand, “I have a gift card, see?”

Oh yeah, I thought, I have one of those, too, suddenly remembering that the university’s Women’s Resources & Research Center had given me one the other day as a thank-you for designing and facilitating the women of color discussion circles this quarter. Flattered and touched at the gesture, I had slipped the gift card somewhere in my messenger bag and then promptly forgotten all about it.

I smiled and said out loud, “I really appreciate the offer, but don’t worry about it, I’ll be back later for all this.”

He stared at me for a second, and I was disconcerted by the juxtaposition of his gruff demeanor and generous offer.

“You sure?” he asked.

“I’m sure,” I said firmly. “But thanks so much for the offer. I do appreciate it.”

He shrugged expressionlessly, holding his hands palms-up in what could be construed as a gesture of defeat. Or an unsaid, Your loss.

“Have a beautiful day!” I said, moving away from the counter.

He nodded brusquely and turned away to place his books next to the register.

For a split second, on my way out the door, still moved by this unexpected kindness from a veritable stranger, I looked back to see him standing at the counter, face blank and eyes shuttered, and wished I had let him pay after all, if it meant he would have smiled.

from Ray Bradbury’s The Beggar on O'Connell Bridge

The snow was falling fast now, erasing the lamps and the statues in the shadows of the lamps below.

"How do you tell the difference between them?" I asked. "How can you tell which is honest, which isn't?"

"The fact is," said the manager quietly, "you can’t. There's no difference between them. […] So what does it prove? You cannot stare them down or look away from them. You cannot run and hide from them. You can only give to them all. If you start drawing lines, someone gets hurt."

[…]

A moment later, going down in the haunted night elevator, I found the new tweed cap in my hand.

Coatless, in my shirtsleeves, I stepped out into the night.

I gave the cap to the first man who came. I never knew if it fit. What money I had in my pockets was soon gone.

Then, left alone, shivering, I happened to glance up. I stood, I froze, blinking up through the drift, the drift, the silent drift of blinding snow. I saw the high hotel windows, the lights, the shadows.

What's it like up there? I thought. Are fires lit? Is it warm as breath? Who are all those people? Are they drinking? Are they happy?

Do they even know I'm HERE?

for all my fellow word-lovers out there:

- MoorishGirl
- Words Without Borders: The Online Magazine for International Literature
- Mizna: Prose, Poetry, and Art Exploring Arab America

and for those of you who prefer pictures instead:

- Bendib Cartoon: Independent, uncensored, free-speech political cartoons

All links via Dove's Eye View, another weblog you should read. Because I said so. So get to it.

my eyes have always been bigger than my stomach

I decided that letting three weeks of fall quarter pass by without buying any of the books I need for my classes was long enough. So today I walked into the university bookstore and bought twelve books for $173.80. (Which is really not bad, when I recall that, as a pre-med neurobiology major, I used to pay close to $400 for textbooks during each quarter.) I also spent way too much time I didn't have lurking around the English and Comparative Literature aisles, browsing through books for classes I'm not even enrolled in. Which means I ended up buying one book I don't need: Farid ud-Din Attar's Conference of the Birds. Way too cool to resist though.

edit: Forgot - two books I really, really wanted but decided to resist for now:

- Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, by Atul Gawande (I read the introduction while just standing there in the bookstore, and it was absolutely fascinating.)

- Palestine's Children: Returning to Haifa & Other Stories, by Ghassan Kanafani

Read 'em for me and let me know how it goes, okay?

But still, the highlight of my last week, in contrast, was ducking into a used bookstore close to my hometown and coming back out with thirteen books for $25. Not bad at all, eh? A few short story collections by Ray Bradbury; a few novels I loved, growing up; and this gem by Susan G. Woolridge: poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life with Words - I'm reading it less for the poem-writing advice and more for the author's delightful stories interspersed throughout the book. Also, two poetry collections by Seamus Heaney (Station Island and The Haw Lantern), among other things. I was so tempted to buy this book - Ray Bradbury! One hundred short stories! Brand-new! Only $9.99! (All those exclamation points were my hyperactive bookworm brain trying to convince me I need to invest in books I really have no space for.) But I abstained, even though my fingers were all twitching. Clearly, I am such a nerd, what can I say.

Thank you, karrvakarela, for the Seamus Heaney recommendations; I trust your judgement, and I'll definitely be checking out the ones you mentioned.

Anjum, I still owe you a book list. Gimme a couple days to go through my archives, buddy. I know, I said that a week ago. Sorry, dude.

Oh yeah, and I have absolutely no idea where all these books are going to go. I need to invest in a couple more bookcases. For now, the floor's just gonna have to do.

will the change come while we're waiting

On Monday I start working in downtown Sacramento, and I'm already missing my lazy slow-motion life of the past couple of weeks. Much of it has been spent drinking endless glasses of cranberry juice, reading stacks of books from the public library, and eating tomato-cucumber-extra cheese sandwiched between slices of whole wheat bread. Clearly, I am not a firm believer in the strenuous lifestyle.

In the daytime and afternoon, when the heat of the outdoors keeps me closeted inside and the heat of my room makes me flee to air-conditioned areas of the house, I contort myself into the confines of the living room armchair – head on one armrest, knees curving over the other, legs sprawled over the side so that my toes touch the shiny black end table hugging the side of the chair – and read.

I'm very fidgety when it comes to sitting like a normal human being, seeing as how I must always have my feet up. I sit cross-legged at the dining room table, and stretch out my legs when I'm sitting on the floor. I prop up my feet on any available surface – a friend's coffee table, the dashboard of Somayya's car, even the model sofas and glass tables in Macy*s furniture department. Even now, typing this entry, my feet are resting up on the seat of my chair, my knees bumping against my chin, my fingers spelling out typos galore as I try to maneuver my hands around my legs in order to reach the keyboard. I need to invest in a footstool.

Lying across the living room armchair like that, is it any wonder that sleep is constantly on my mind? And, just think, I don't even have to feel guilty. Oftentimes, I turn my face into the back of the armchair and nap, the book resting on my stomach. Once awake, minutes or hours later, I continue reading from wherever I left off.

In between the guilt-free naps and guzzling of cranberry juice, I've found it is a bit unsettling to pick up Ray Bradbury's novels and come across dog-eared pages, marked when I last checked out the book from the public library at least five years ago.

Bardbury's Fahrenheit 451, especially, is filled with corners folded up from the bottom of the page to form little triangles now so smooth that, with the book tightly closed in my hand, I would barely have even been able to tell that the pages were marked had I not known to look for them. Either the book hasn't been touched in the past five years, or the reader(s) after me appreciated the same passages and decided to indulge my need to mark them.

The thing is, I dislike jotting down notes in the margins of books, or highlighting passages, or underlining sentences that jump out to me. But, for as long as I can remember, every time I've come across a passage that strikes a chord with me, I absently fold up the bottom corner of the page and continue reading without pause. Rereading the same book much later, even if it has been years, the first thing I always do is check for dog-eared pages and, finding one, skim the page until I recognize why I had marked it so.

Rereading Fahrenheit 451 a couple of weeks ago, I came across a page I hadn’t marked back during high school, containing a passage I must have glossed over then with no more than a cursory reading, but which holds so much more significance now, especially in light of today's date:

"Someday the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And someday we'll remember so much that we'll dig the biggest steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."

What do you see in your mirrors?

like a good book, i can't put this day back

The last term paper is due Monday afternoon and the last final exam is scheduled for sometime Tuesday (I really should figure out the exact time, shouldn't I?), and then I'm free for a week. One week during which I'm going to do nothing but lie in the sunshine and read books. And sleep a lot. And have reunions with old high school people - but only the rockstars though. The ones who thought it was highly entertaining to repeatedly ask me where Aladdin was will just have to wait a few more decades to see me again, by which time I'll have hopefully come up with some witty retorts.

And have I mentioned sleep?

Not that any of y'all even care, but here's my planned reading list for the week of spring break:

- The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- An American Brat, by Bapsi Sidhwa
- The Mango Season, by Amulya Malladi
- A Breath of Fresh Air, by Amulya Malladi
- A Prayer for Children, by Ina Hughes
- The Storyteller's Daughter, by Saira Shah
- Dreaming Water, by Gail Tsukiyama
- Train to Pakistan, by Khushwant Singh
- Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston
- I Sweep the Sun off Rooftops, by Hanan al-Shaykh
- A Man to Match His Mountains: Badshah Khan, Nonviolent Soldier of Islam, by Eknath Easwaran
- Women of Sufism, A Hidden Treasure: Writings and Stories of Mystic Poets, Scholars, & Saints, selected by Camille Adams Helminski

This list is more for my recollection purposes than for your edification anyway, so stop rolling your eyes. And who says I can't get through this entire list in one week? Actually, even I probably can't, but that's not the point. Not that I even remember what the point was anymore. And, in reference to the above list, I'm not quite sure how to explain my newfound interest in what I laughingly call "ethnic" novels, but I suppose it's related to the over-abundance of English and American literature I already possess. Change is a good thing, sometimes.

And now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go calculate exactly how much money I owe in public library fines.

DISCLAIMER: I don't do book recommendations. Read at your own risk.

i don't buy everything i read/i haven't even read everything i've bought

Speaking of books and reading, I went to the University bookstore the other day to return three textbooks and buy two more instead. I walked out of there with not only the two textbooks, but also four books from the Comparative Literature and English aisles. No, I'm not enrolled in any English or Comparative Literature courses this quarter, but I couldn't resist wandering through those aisles anyway. This is becoming a bad habit. Actually, it has been a bad habit for years. Is there a twelve-step program for bookworms? The first step is admitting one has a problem, or so they say.

Hi, my name is Yasmine, and I have a problem.
So where do I go from here?

Anyway, my collection of books, though seemingly overwhelming, is actually quite carefully selected. For years, I've made it a general rule to buy only those books which I've already read and enjoyed enough to warrant my own copy. That day at the University bookstore, I bought:

- Selected Poems, Unabridged, by Paul Laurence Dunbar
- Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year, by Esmé Raji Codell
- Danny the Champion of the World, by Roald Dahl
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott

I actually broke my usual rule here, because Bird by Bird was a book I'd neither read nor heard of 'til that day. But I stood there flipping through the pages for so long that I decided I might as well buy my own copy. It's a beautiful book, well-written and thought-provoking, amusing and poignant all at once. I haven't even been reading it in my usual fashion: So far, I've read the last chapter, and parts of the thirty-page introduction, but only bits and pieces and random sentences in between. Somehow, it seems more fitting that way.

Only very rarely do I recommend books to people – not only because I don't personally know anyone else who shares my love of reading, but also because I simply can't be bothered to give book recommendations. Those who truly love books will always find books that interest and inspire them. Those who don't – well, to be honest, I couldn't care less. I'm impatient and selfish like that.

But if you deeply enjoy writing, or if you want to enjoy writing but don't know what the hell you're doing, or if you detest writing but are willing to change your stance, then I recommend you read Bird by Bird.

[p.s. Someday, I will own all the Norton Anthologies ever published. I will, I will, oh yes, I will. Just you wait.]

(good Lord, this is a freakin’ long post. You all asked for it though. Stop nagging me now. And, just so you know, guilt trips don’t work. The end.)

and here we go again

I was still eleven years old when we moved away from the Bay Area, and I promised myself that when I grew up and had children of my own, we’d always live in one place. I promised myself that they wouldn’t have to deal with the self-consciousness, the uncertainties, the resentment that constant moving presented, all those things that I struggled with during those years away.

I remember that, for my twelfth birthday, three weeks later and in our new house, I received a copy of Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! from Somayya, a comic book from her brother, and a dollar bill from a younger cousin. A whole entire dollar seemed so much back in those days, when we siblings used to pool all our change together to buy Snickers bars and acidly sour, mouth burning Goosebump gumballs from the little market on the corner. Even a mere dollar was enough to make us feel wealthy.

But what I remember most about that first year away from the Bay Area is how bitter and resentful I was. It’s not that I appreciated the Bay Area and my hometown for what they were. The “big picture” was of no concern to me. I was far too busy being heartbroken over the fact that I was leaving behind my childhood home, the half-acre yard and winding brick walkways, the prickly rosebushes and a fig tree with comforting branches that enveloped, the lines of silvery smooth eucalyptus trees soaring to huge heights. My brother and sister and I used to roll down the lawn, hold mock sword-fights, push one another along the walkways in a wheelbarrow, and preside over picnics consisting of chunks of cheese and unripe fruit. We built tree houses, foot-raced across the lawn, ran away from home more times than we can recall, and between us went through more broken bones, concussions, and bruises than an entire football team. And this was long before my father’s geranium madness started; back then, he focused mainly on the roses.

I hated leaving my home, and I hated my new house, too. But just when I learned to reconcile myself, to accept the new place as “home,” to at first grudgingly and then more readily appreciate the sparks of beauty I found even there, we moved again. And again. And a couple times more.

Five moves in five years, and we ultimately came full circle, back to my childhood home and the memories it cradled. And once I was back, I recalled all those years of fervent late-night prayers to God, all those years of pleas that seemed to fall on deaf ears, if God has ears, that is. And I promised myself that I wouldn’t take this place for granted again. In the past five years I’ve been back, though, I’ve taken it for granted time and again. You'd think I would know better by now. Sometimes I think of those old “MY-children-will-never-EVER-have-to-move” promises and smile indulgently, because the truth is that all those moves were good for me. I like the person I’ve become since then, and so I refuse to think of them as lost years. Change is good. So is progress. But the thing is, I can afford to be philosophical about it now. After all, I moved back, didn’t I? If I hadn’t, some part of me would have remained bitter and resentful.

Which is why it still surprises me that I can so easily take all this for granted.

Last Friday, I drove around town and asked for boxes from various stores and shops. My dad picked up some more on his way home from work. I stared at those piles of boxes stacked in the entryway, and felt the familiar sense of panic. One of those oh my God, here we go again feelings. And on Saturday, the packing started all over again.

The books were the first to go. I packed them slowly, carefully, gently, like fragile objects that merit special treatment. There were the five shelves worth of books from the bookcase itself, then the piles of more books along the floor and underneath my bed and even inside the dresser drawers. Down came the artwork, the posters, the paintings, the framed photographs. The garbage bag kept growing. You’d think that, after so many experiences with moving, I’d have toned down my possessions to only those which are the most important. But no, I’m still a pack-rat. A sentimental and nostalgic fool, that’s me. I found empty moving boxes, stashed away in some storage space, labeled Yasmine’s box in my fourteen-year-old handwriting, and more labeled the same from the year I was seventeen. I used them again, and the feeling of déjà vu increased steadily. I discovered the identification tags at the bottom of my hearing aid containers are still labeled with my address from eight years ago. Mind boggling, indeed.

What made it all bearable was the presence of the relatives who came to help out. Especially the cousins. Not only did these three crazy teenage boys strip the walls bare, shove the furniture around, and affably carry boxes at my brusque command, they also gobbled down endless platefuls of pasta, platters of sourdough bread, hunks of chocolate fudge cake, and cans of Pepsi as if there were no tomorrow. And they made me laugh. When I asked one of them to carry a box for me, he leaned close into my face and crowed, “How ‘bout noo, you dirty Dutch bastard?” in perfect Austin Powers imitation. I couldn’t help but crack up. Needless to say, he took advantage of my amusement to repeat the same line about a bajillion more times at random intervals throughout the day. And like the easily amused crackhead that I am, I laughed every time. Later, I asked them to move my mattress and bed frame, and returned to find them wrestling across the mattress, pummeling the bejesus out of each other with taunts of “What now? What now, huh?” Craziness galore.

And I guess it’s telling that I’ve been sleeping on bare mattresses for the past four nights, yet my books were the first things unpacked. I walked into this unfamiliar new room and saw all the boxes stacked haphazardly, and my heart did this nervous little trippy dance, you know the kind I mean? But then my gaze zoomed in on the boxes of books, and I thought, Okay, I can do this after all. Because, more than anything, it’s the books that have always remained familiar to me, wherever I moved. Therein lies my stability. As long as I have those, I’m all set. After all, I was the eleven-year-old kid who showed up at her new school lugging around a one-thousand-page hard-cover copy of David Copperfield, still on loan from my Bay Area library. My new sixth-grade teacher was so intrigued that she piled on the books, mainly the classics, but others as well. George Orwell’s Animal Farm was one of ‘em, I recall.

So I sat there on the ground, facing an empty bookcase, and tried to make sense of all my books. There’s so damn many of them, especially since I went through so many different phases in terms of reading. There’s the novels and poetry anthologies and short story collections, all in Urdu and German, from back in the day when I read those languages as fluently and voraciously as I read English. There’s at least a dozen more anthologies and poetry collections in English. There’s authors I have multiple books of: Robert Fulghum, Daphne du Maurier, M.M. Kaye, J.D. Salinger, Franz Kafka, Anne Rivers Siddons, Nathaniel Hawthorne and more. Tennesee Williams’s plays and Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories lumped right in there with Anne of Green Gables and the Bronte sisters. Kipling next to Jane Austen, Rainer Maria Rilke (in German and English) next to various Norton Anthologies, Emily Dickinson next to Homer’s The Odyssey. Shakespeare and Nancy Drew, Hemingway and Melville, Sinclair Lewis and Oscar Wilde, and Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift From the Sea. Chicken Soup books, Maya Angelou, and books that were required reading for various university classes, on multiculturalism and gender and selfhood, which I found too interesting to sell back. And biographies and autobiographies, and books underscoring my long-ago fascination with the Jewish Holocaust, Anne Boleyn, and the American Civil War. And dozens more, probably, but I really should stop cataloguing.

Such an insane mix, which is why I sat there the first day and blankly stared at all the books, not sure where to start. Help came in the form of Shereen, who advised me to shelve all the books alphabetically (alphabetically! good Lord), and laughed, “You know what, your dream house is going to have a library.” “No,” I corrected, “my dream house is going to BE a library.” “With an internet connection,” she added. Of course, of course. But seriously, I’m so attached to all these books that I almost protested when Shereen made off with my German dictionary and determinedly shelved it into the reference bookcase. I did follow her orders though and shelved the rest of ‘em alphabetically, but it looks all wrong. It’s impossible to fit them all in one bookcase anyway, which is why they’re currently stacked not only vertically, but also horizontally along the shelves. As soon as I get another bookcase, I’m dumping them all out and starting all over.

And for godssake, it’s just that I’ve moved into a brand-new room we've just added on to our existing home, down the hall and across to the other end of the house, a room almost twice as large as my old one, and the hustle and bustle over the weekend was because we decided to repaint the entire house while we were at it. No big deal, right? It's not a new house. It's the same home I grew up in. But every morning I wake up with the panicked oh my God, not again feeling, my eyes straining to trace familiar patterns on the ceiling. Instead of a window that looks out to the sky and the lemon tree, I now have two windows, one looking onto the beautifully-stained red-orange fence, the other with an unobstructed view of the orange tree in the courtyard, the one that grows so quickly and hugely that it must be on steroids.

And the boxes. Good Lord, the boxes are still here and there and everywhere, and seeing them doesn’t help one bit, but I’m just too damn lazy to clear ‘em out, not to mention the fact that all the other rooms are still half empty because most of their corresponding furniture is in my new room. Déjà vu mostly sucks, and you heard it here first. Although my clothes are hung in the closet, for the most part I’m still literally living out of boxes. I still don’t know where most of my things are. Everything is a guessing game, sort of a moving-day version of the annoying cell phone Can you hear me now? repetition, only this version is more like, Is it in this one? or in this one? or this one? or maybe not? dammit, where’s my miracle-bubble bottle? But at least I don’t have to look for my toothbrush.

And everyday brings a repeat of the same gut-wrenching test: Can I make it from here to there without tripping? Can I make it across the whole entire room without falling flat on my face? Is it possible to remove one box without bringing down an avalanche of five more?

The answer, of course, is, No.
If I could, then I would.

But because I can’t make it to my German dictionary without scraping my knuckles and bruising my shins, I shall have to give up that attempt in favor of freetranslation.com, which tells me that the correct way to authoritatively call out, “Release my camel!” auf Deutsch is, Geb mein Kamel frei!

So there you have it.

so i wonder when they’re going to start paying me for taking naps

Late-Night AIM Conversation (OR, the Things I Say When I’m Half-Asleep):

Ben: but I want money
Ben: it's nice for buying things
Yasmine: no way? is that what it's for?
Yasmine: wow, I'm so glad you told me
Yasmine: cuz I was thinking maybe you're supposed to eat it or something
Yasmine: or feed it to the cat
Ben: I bet it'd be taasty
Ben: or make good kindling for fires!
Yasmine: yeah, for reals. I should try that out next time
Ben: so what're you doing up so late?
Yasmine: working on a scholarship application
Yasmine: cuz I ate all my money, and now I need more for tuition
Yasmine: I did it bassackwards... I shoulda paid the tuition first and then eaten the leftovers
Yasmine: *siiigh*
Ben: hindsight is 20/20
Yasmine: true true
Yasmine: I need to remember that for next time

I just found out the other day that my application for a $3,000 scholarship was actually, surprisingly accepted. Surprising, because it was rejected last year. And lazy child that I am, I just resubmitted the exact same letters of recommendation and personal statement as last year. The only things that changed a bit were my transcript and resume.

yayyeee babyyyy.
::ahem::
Alhamdulillah.
It'll come in handy, that's for sure. Especially since the UC's are seeing a 30% fee increase starting this fall, and my father has already been paying for all my tuition, fees, parking permits and books out of pocket for three years.

I’ve also managed to make over a hundred dollars by selling back to the university book store about a dozen books from various classes I took last year. I feel so rich I don’t know what to do. Two days ago, I didn’t even have enough change to buy a measly candy bar. Now, wandering around with a hundred dollars in cash makes me feel just plain…whoa! It’s a pretty cool whoa! feeling though. And, so far, all the fun ideas stemming from my newfound wealth seem to involve food, in one form or another. Or maybe I could just go shopping. But I’m not that girly. Shopping, for the most part, bores me. Unless we’re talking about grocery shopping, of course. Then I could disappear for hours, and you’ll most likely find me in the bakery or the deli.

The man who scanned my books couldn’t believe some of the prices. His eyebrows shot up in surprise when one of my used human development textbooks came out to forty-six dollars. “I think it’s too much,” he said a bit grimly, “but I’ll still give it to you.” I laughed. “If I were buying it, I’d agree with you,” I said. “But since I’m selling it, there’s no such thing as too much.”

Which is why I’m still kicking myself for not having had the presence of mind to sell back all my general chemistry, biology, and organic chem textbooks from freshman and sophomore year, as soon as I had finished the series and before they went and changed the books on me. My annoyance and frustration towards all those classes from hell could have been eased a bit if I had received some monetary compensation for my efforts. ‘S all good though.

Funny thing is, most of my English and comparative literature anthologies and novels are still stacked in unsteady piles at the foot of my bed, perfect candidates for a model Leaning Tower of Pisa. I’m far too attached to those to even consider selling them back. To answer your question, Faiza, I like to joke that I’m a wannabe English major. I seriously thought of English or CompLit during my second year, but I like what I’m currently studying too much to go back to those. After all, there’s only so many papers I can write without going insane, and I’m already considered certifiable enough as it is. :)

butterflies and books

Okay, so one midterm down; now, a constant stream of midterms, research papers, and final exams planned for the next three weeks. How exciting. If I keep disappearing from my blog for prolonged periods of time, it means I'm pretending to study. Got it?

Hmm, I’m trying to think of interesting things to write, but I’m simultaneously thinking of the midterm I have on Monday, and trying to convince the evil voice in my head that b.s. skills are not an option for this one. Gotta crack those coffee-table decorations…err, I mean, textbooks. Yes, I still need to stop thinking of them as existing strictly for ornamental purposes.

So I’ve changed my preschool deal once again. It’s now on Friday mornings since, during the summer, that's the only day I'm free from classes. Today was fun primarily because all the boys wanted me to make them paper airplanes. I sat there hesitantly folding construction paper, uncertain about whether I even remembered how to make a paper airplane. But my first attempt flew all the way from one end of the room to the other, and that was all the proof the boys needed. Then the girls got into it too, and I have hereby been declared a “paper airplane expert.” So, anyway, I made a bunch of airplanes, and somewhere along the way I had to deal with one of the boys bursting into tears because he somehow got the idea I wasn't making him one after all. Little kids crack me up. They're soo cute though, masha’Allah. The funny part is, just sitting there making paper airplanes totally made my day. Crazy, huh? But very true. It's totally been making me smile all day. I can't help it; I'm a weirdo. It's all good though, because I can admit it, so that makes it normal. Slightly demented, is how I would put it. Hmm, I'm rambling, aren't I? Okay, moving along.

Did a lot of coloring at the preschool today. Crayons are the love of my life (after french fries), in case you didn’t know. There’s nothing quite like balancing precariously on those tiny wooden chairs and madly scribbling away, elbow-to-elbow with 4-year-old artists-in-the-making, to make you feel good. They kept passing me the red crayon, too. What cute kids, see? In between drawing butterflies and flowers for all the girly-girls, I was inundated with requests to make even more paper airplanes. One boy came up behind me, flung his arms around my neck, and said plaintively, “Yasmine....” I said, “Yes, Noah?” He smiled sweetly. “If you make me a paper airplane today, I'll be very proud of you...” It was so cute. The kid already knows how to push people's buttons. And he's only 4. So I made him one too, of course. I mean, how could I resist the whole concept of a 4-year-old being proud of me?

And yes, I love being easily amused; it’s such a skill. Everyone should practice it. If you haven’t yet cultivated the art of being easily amused, I think you had better get to it, yo.

On the way home, I stopped by a used bookstore and bought ten books for seventeen dollars. Very slick, I say. Of course, I’ve read most of them already, but that’s the whole point. I only buy those books which I’ve already read and appreciated enough to want my own copy. I’m seriously in need of at least two more bookcases though, since I have books piled on the floor, crammed into the only bookcase, stashed under my bed and inside my dresser drawers, and even flung somewhere into the far recesses of my closet, I believe. *sigh* They should formulate a twelve-step program for me. “Hi, my name is Yasmine, and I have a problem. I can’t stop buying books, man.”

Alhamdulillah for chill days.

forget “dear abby”; this man knows his advice

“You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you to write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose…

“…Save yourself from general themes and seek those which your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty—describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses—would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention thither. Try to raise the submerged sensations of that ample past; your personality will grow more firm, your solitude will widen and will become a dusky dwelling past which the noise of others goes by far away…”

::Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

blah days

::Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day (Judith Viorst)::

It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

My mom says some days are like that.

Even in Australia.

I have final exams starting in one week, so I apologize in advance for what may be sporadic posting during the upcoming week while I (attempt to or at least pretend to) study. lol. Please make du’a for me, everyone! I will appreciate it much. :)

The following passage has been at the back of my mind for some time, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on the book and author, so this evening I finally went hunting through my stuffed-to-the-max bookcase and tried to pinpoint it. Here you go… Read and reflect. The very last paragraph sums it up really well…

From It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It, by Robert Fulghum (author of All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten):

A friend doesn’t like the essay “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” Says it’s nice as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Thinks it should go beyond “nice.”

He’s right. There are things I learned—and needed to learn—that were not taught in primary school. Teachers and adults would never tell you these things. Oh, they knew them all right, but they would never tell you they knew. You had to find them out for yourself, or from your friends…

Here’s the tough part of what I know now: that the lessons of kindergarten are hard to practice if they don’t apply to you. It’s hard to share everything and play fair if you don’t have anything to share and life is itself unjust. I think of the children of this earth who see the world through barbed wire, who live in a filthy rubbled mess not of their own making and that they can never clean up. They do not wash their hands before they eat. There is no water. Or soap. And some do not have hands to wash. They do not know about warm cookies and cold milk, only stale scraps and hunger. They have no blankie to wrap themselves in, and do not take naps because it is too dangerous to close their eyes.

Theirs is not the kindergarten of finger paint and nursery rhymes, but an X-rated school of harsh dailiness. Their teachers are not sweet women who care, but indifferent instructors called Pain, Fear, and Misery. Like all children everywhere, they tell stories of monsters. Theirs are for real—what they have seen with their own eyes. In broad daylight. We do not want to know what they have learned.

But we know.

And it ain’t kindergarten stuff.


The line between good and evil, hope and despair, does not divide the world between “us” and “them.” It runs down the middle of every one of us.

I do not want to talk about what you understand about this world. I want to know what you will DO about it. I do not want to know what you HOPE. I want to know what you will WORK FOR. I do not want your sympathy for the needs of humanity. I want your muscle. As the wagon driver said when they came to the long, hard hill, “Them that’s going on with us, get out and push. Them that ain’t, get out of the way.”