While I was in the bathroom trying to force another Aha! Moment, I realized that I was constipated. No not in that way, but I can understand your confusion. What I've now realized is that you can’t force Aha! Moments, otherwise they’re just little droppings, lacking substance. Sorry, but isn’t that what an unresolved thought is; worthless crap?
So I flushed it and went out in search of some much-needed inspiration. (aka distraction!) And where can the resident of a small town go to fill such a need?
Target!
My absolute favorite store, because when I shop there (for everything I need and don’t need) I am donating to charity. That’s right, they give over 3 million dollars a week to local charities and schools... OK, so even though that’s true, I know I shouldn’t use it to justify my addiction to stuff. (Mainly clothes and shoes and jewelry and knee-high socks)!
Before Hamzah started school, I used the argument that he needed structure in his life! I took pride in my ability to convince him that our trips to Target were a necessary part of his learning experience. What? I've read that children like consistency in their lives, and if a week went by without a visit to the world’s greatest super-store, he got very irritable, as did I!
Now that he’s in school and I can go alone on my weekly charity runs, I’ve actually managed to accumulate socks in various shades of off-white; which I will never wear! When you don't have a child to hurry you out of the store because he needs to pee, or because he's hungry, or because he's getting tired of the "structure and routine," you end up delivering hundreds of bags of unnecessary clothing, shoes and socks to non-profit organizations.
So I’m right, it all goes to charity in the end!
Back in 2007, during one of my weekly trips to "Tar-zhay" (back when I had Hamzah with me and couldn’t stroll mindlessly down every aisle) I picked up a book by Elizabeth Gilbert, called, Eat Pray Love. As soon as I found myself living inside her world, I realized something urgent - apart from the fact that I needed a publisher who'd pay me to “Rome” around Italy and meditate in the country of my ancestors - I realized my own need to write.
It had been a year since my divorce, and I was feeling a lot of emotions, and relief was (sometimes) one of them. Even though I was still working on my degree full-time, and had Hamzah at home with me, (thanks to the school districts abusive cut-off date) I knew that writing about my experiences would be cathartic. After all, a memoir is a form of a journal, and my teen years were spared many self-destructive acts thanks to my incessant need to write.
For me, life begins to make sense as soon as I put a pen to paper or my fingers to the keyboard. Thoughts and emotions begin to pour out of me at such speeds, that even I can’t keep up!
What I mostly admired about Gilbert, and what sparked my own cathartic purge was her brutal honesty. Even though I've always been a candid person, I was still taught to sensor many of my thoughts and emotions, or just leave them in the diary which was hidden underneath my mattress! Desi etiquette 101: Don’t speak even when spoken to, just smile and nod (or do the head bobble motion if you’re a man!)
By admitting my weaknesses, mistakes, or deep dark desires, I find that I can accept the (sometimes harsh) realities of my life. Once it’s out there, I can’t reclaim it. I can’t take any of it back. And even though I can later change how I feel about some of my (bad) choices, once recorded, those feelings will remain my truth. Frozen in time.
If other (Pakistani and Indian) women had the ability to confront life's challenges, or heal wounds from the past, a feeling of inner-peace could prevail, and life could go on without all the unnecessary baggage.
This is where I should start singing, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” But I’ll spare you my patriotic side! Plus I'm sure there are many Pakistani and Indian women who have those freedoms, but just haven’t realized them yet.
So in the meantime, allow me to speak for my “sisters” and admit our greatest fear: MOTHER-IN-LAWS!
My ex-mother-in-law was actually a consideration for why I should stay married! She was a rare gem. One you find but once in a life time. She was so uninvolved in our life, that I actually took offense in her inability to meddle! What kind of mother-in-law are you, when you don't hate your daughter-in-law, or coddle your son, or tuck him in at night-even when he’s 30 years old- or remind him daily that he wouldn’t be alive if it hadn’t been for your womb.
“Save the drama for your mama!”
However, even after being blessed with such a wonderfully distant American mother-in-law, my sisters (shortly after my divorce) declared: “It’s time to look for one of your own and stop being a sell-out!”
I suppose they feel that since I’ve tried out:
a. African American (my ex-husband).
b. Italian (I carried a picture of Antonio Sabatto Jr. in my wallet for too many years).
c. American (Johnny Depp was another man’s poster I had hidden in my closet, before my dad found the mosaic of hotties behind my clothes and tore them all down).
That it was time to try on - I mean - try out a Pakistani man.
Maybe my sisters are right. Maybe sharing weird superstitions and customs can bond people together better than a child, nice house, fancy car, and the ability to listen to each other speak english without cringing!
But I have to wonder how speaking the same foreign language or having the same funky smell (of friend onions and goat meat) in your hair helps to secure a mate in the love seeking process?
Well, it worked for my parents!
My mother grew up in England and loves Shakespear and Monet so much that she was going to major in literature and fine art. She also has a passion for traveling, and has visited Switzerland, France, Dubai, India, and of course Pakistan. (And there are several more locations on both of our, “Where we want to travel before we die” lists.)
She is smart with her money, and advises me against spending mine on “stuff that I don’t need” (i.e. socks in various shades of off-white!) and to save it for traveling or other necessary expenditures. She is a beautiful and intelligent woman, and is self taught on every subject, which for me elicits more respect than when you’re forced to learn something at school. She didn’t finish college because she went on a “vacation” to Pakistan with my grandmother. In spite of my grandfather’s warning of "not to get her married because she has to finish college first" she returned to England a year and a half later with a baby in tow!
That had to have been one wild vacation! From what I’ve heard, it was love at first sight. It's actually quite a romantic story, and one I was eager to emulate when I got older! Not the going to Pakistan to find a husband part, the love at first sight part.
My father on the other hand, grew up in Pakistan, and majored in finance; but can never manage to rid himself of debt! (Damn those credit cards with 0% financing….read the fine print daddy!) In spite of his money woes, he managed to take us on a vacation each year. He didn't just provide us with a home, but a happy, loving home; conditions that make the money woes forgivable! Another example of the unconditional love that I wrote about in chapter 3.
My father moved to England after my parent's got married, because my mother either convinced him to or said, "There's no way in hell I'm living in Karachi!" I don’t know the details! However, from what I’ve heard, my father was eager to leave Pakistan. It turns out he was trying to head to Canada, like the millions of other young desi men desperately looking for a better life, or at least a better education for their un-born children.
I once asked my father if there was anywhere in the world he had always wanted to visit, and to my dismay, his response was: Canada! I repeated my question, because I was convinced he hadn’t heard me properly! “Abo, if you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?” When he responded, “Anywhere? Hmmm. Actually, I have always wanted to go to Canada!”
I almost fell out of my chair…not laughing…crying!
This is why I love this man with all my heart. He doesn’t long to see the pyramids of Giza, or the Great Wall of China, or even float in the Dead Sea. He simply wants to go and see America’s British other-half. You don’t even have to catch a flight to get there from here!
And what do you know, last summer my father made that life-long dream a reality when he drove relatives - visiting from England - all the way to Niagara Falls. IN CANADA! The excitement was clearly overwhelming for him. I know this because he captured it all on video!
However, his excitement quickly turned to disappointment on their way back, when a border patrol officer made him throw out (or eat) two crates of mangoes.
To think he went all that way for two things you can get here: a view of Niagra Falls and sweet ripe mangoes!
So the question that I find myself asking lately is: How come my parents have managed to stay married in spite of all these differences? Maybe it's because of these differences. Or maybe it's because they had children. Or maybe it’s because they're of a different generation. Or maybe it’s because they didn’t force themselves to have Aha! Moments in the bathroom, but instead, just accepted what was, what is, and what is yet to come.
Or better yet, maybe it's because they love each other. Unconditionally.
© 2010 by Rabiya Khan
