Chapter 3
After my divorce, I was beginning to wonder if I really was a quitter. According to the uncle mentioned earlier, (the one known for his gentility) “Being married to someone for five or six years isn’t long enough to say you have tried. Women stay married for decades and they’re miserable. But they stay anyway. You can't say you've tried if you've only been married for five years. You're only thinking of yourself and what you want, and that's selfish.” If you had seen the look on my face as he was speaking to me, you might have thought I was staring into the eyes of... (I can't say it, I have to respect my elders).
But I will say that the wrath that was spewing beneath the surface of my (still delicate) almost 30-year-old-skin was about to boil over. Luckily for him, my cousin noticed my countenance, and quickly interjected with, “Why don’t we have some chai?”
A cup of tea will solve any problem for a Desi. If you’re thirsty, drink tea. If you’re cold, drink tea. If you're hot, drink tea. If you’re sick, drink tea. If it’s cloudy, drink tea. If it’s sunny, drink tea. If you’re in a good mood, drink tea. If you have just been diagnosed with cancer, yep you guessed it, drink a nice hot cuppa tea.
And if you see that your emotionally drained cousin is about to attack her uncle, and is getting ready to launch that stand-on-one-leg Karate Kid pose that made Ralph Macchio famous and forever remembered as the cutest White boy ever, drink some tea. RIGHT NOW!
It has now been three years since my divorce, and after lots of tea drinking, I’ve realized that a). I'm not a quitter, (I just get bored easily), and b). my man-hating ideals are getting old. Even for me!
Two years ago (which in hindsight was too soon after my divorce) I put up a profile on a Muslim Matrimonial site. BTW, no Calvin Klein underwear models on those sites. (In case you too are single and looking for a Muslim version of Antonio Sabatto Jr.) Oh, and he has to be Muslim because according to my mother's words of wisdom, "If he doesn't do abdus (wash himself after he uses the toilet...and this time I mean the toilet) then you can' t marry him!"
Hmmm? And I always thought it had to do with the whole trinity thing?
After getting over that disappointing fact, I realized that in my desperate attempt to find a match, I was setting myself up for another catastrophic disappointment. I say desperate, because you can’t be anything but desperate when you resort to the internet as your pathway to romantic Jane Austen style romance! (I had to return to Mr. Darcey since Mr. Sabatto was strictly off limits, and Mr. Darcey, being European, probably used a bidet)! So it's all good (under the hood)!
When you find yourself “hooking up” (which for good girls means exchanging email addresses first, and then exchanging phone numbers; because of the obsessive/compulsive email checking that makes it nearly impossible to complete your online course work) with a Pakistani who is drowning in debt, unable to make his child support payments, in his first year of college - because a recruiter came to his high school at lunchtime and told him he would be better off serving in the military than going straight to University, and paying for it himself - and oh yeah, another veteran of the United States Army too, you begin to wonder…”WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?”
Someone (obviously from the army) must have embedded a magnet inside of me that attracts me to...guys looking for a free education?
Or, maybe I've been watching too many Lifetime made-for-tv-movies?
I can’t be the only woman, who while in a relationship, tells herself things like, "But he’s a good guy, and having money isn’t everything. And at least he’s passionate about his country, which means he won’t end up getting recruited by terrorists who are anti-everything-to-do-with America, which means you won’t have to worry about getting ‘randomly’ searched at the airport when you go on vacation…if you can even afford to go on vacation, because he’s not even done with his bachelors degree yet. DAMMIT!”
When he asked me for money two months later, I slapped myself in the face, (HARD!) took down my profile and told myself never to go looking for love on Muslim matrimonial sites! NEVER-EVER AGAIN!
The electronic filters on these match-making sites couldn't even produce a good enough match for me. Let's face it, if an intelligent computer can't find me someone, I'm probably doomed! And I even carefully selected from the options (that made me feel shallow and racist): age, height, weight, hair, (facial, head, and body...because chest hair = gross!) and nationality. I guess they need to create filters for income, educational levels, and polygraph test scores to make these matches fool-proof for me! Oh, and a box to root out veterans would be nice too!
Chai anyone?
Deep down, I wish I didn’t have this desire to be loved by a (freakin') man. My son loves me – he better! I’ve spent the last seven years being a dedicated mother! School was put on hold for him until he was three years-old, and work was a desire that I pretended to forgo for his sake!
Like I really want to wake up at 3 am in the summertime to pray fajr, (dawn prayer) and then try to go back to sleep, only to find that the two hours of telling myself, “GO TO SLEEP WOULD YOU” got me nowhere but in a fit of rage because now it’s 5 am and I have to drag my sorry a$$ out of bed, get my son off to school, then sit in rush hour before I get to sit at a desk all day. (Quickly closing my facebook page every time the boss makes his rounds).
What happens in the workforce, doesn't stay in the workforce!
This type of manic existence might explain why younger Pakistani’s have switched from drinking chai to chugging highly-potent Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee.
And they say Paki's and Indians can’t do business together? Estupids!
Yep! If this book doesn’t fly off the shelves or make it on Oprah’s book club list, that misery will become my life. And the world really doesn’t need another sleep-deprived woman on the streets!
As I was saying, (before I went off on another tangent!) I shouldn’t have this need for a man. I’m blessed with a father and son who have shown me what unconditional love really is. (Yes, I am aware that my son’s love for me may be tested after he reads the first chapter of my memoir).
Hopefully he never reads my facebook profile! In reference to my job as a stay at home mother, I wrote that some days I would rather be climbing Mount Everest…barefoot and naked! (Astaghfirullah-God forbid!) But wait! In the personal section, I have also written that the only honest men in my life are my father, my son... and the Holy Ghost! (Astaghfirullah again!)
The unconditional love part means that I need to find someone who will love me in spite of my faults; the way my father and son love me. (Loving me because of my faults, well, that would be like hitting the green card lottery!)
I love my Abo, (dad) even though he deleted all of my work on our PC once. That's what I mean by unconditional love! And he still loves me too, even though I screamed, "UGH! Why don't you just leave the computer alone, you're not an IT specialist! " This is the type of unconditional love that I have yet to find with other men!
My father may not be the computer genius, that the stereo type of Asians suggests he should be, but for a Pakistani man, he is uncharacteristically affectionate and I adore him for that! I have never tired of his prickly kisses (from his mustache), or his warm public embraces. His PDA’s make some Pakistani men and woman a little uncomfortable, but he doesn’t care, and neither do I!
I don’t understand how my culture is comfortable with grown men holding hands in public, yet cringes at the sight of a father showing affection for his daughter?!
I remember a time back in the 80's, when we went to pick up a relative from the airport. My sister and I desperately tried to keep our distance from my uncles who, upon being reunited, kissed each other on the cheeks, (more than three times) and then continued to stroll merrily through JFK airport hand-in-hand wearing shalwaar kurtas. (Long dresses and baggy pants).
This was pre-9/11, so the looks of suspicion were of a different nature!
All together now: "Astaghfirullah!"
Copyright 2009 Rabiya Khan
© 2009 by Rabiya Khan
