Day 10 Wednesday
Walid and I reflected before on the first instances when people called us "uncle" and "aunty." I was called aunty when attending college. Walid's nephew, Asar, called him "ammu Walid," which made Walid conscious about his age.
I went to the hairdresser in the afternoon. She was quite dressed up, in all black clothing and sharp cream-colored gel-nails, which helped me feel that I was also going for a "makeover." She was also quite focused on making this trip an "experience," asking a lot of well-meaning questions, and showing the end product through a dramatic build-up. She offered a lot about herself as well: unmarried (despite wearing a ring), easygoing, likes to travel to Europe and the Caribbean, of Italian descent...
I felt uncomfortable when she kept praising my straight hair in front of two other ladies of African descent and mused about the origins of this interracial hair salon. She also noticed my frequent yawning and asked if I partied last night. I felt slightly obliged to educate her on the idea of Ramadan. Instead, I gave up and offered a sheepish smile.
I waited for a bus transfer for forty minutes without cellphone service while Walid waited for me at Malden Center. The rushing cars, suburban decay, and the manicured, external facade left me feeling apocalyptic. The habitus of the well-tended gardens and individual houses can render immigrant existence as largely ahistorical and destined for such depressing, parochial pastures.
I reunited with Walid and complained about the foreignness of the aging suburban community and my out-of-place-ness. Walid was quite understanding although he was tired of waiting at the station. We recharged at the Indian take-out restaurant while I ate spicy palak paneer with a mango lassi. The restaurant played a punjabi playlist, including Punjabi Mast, which swept some of the blues away. Other days the TV played teledramas or Hindu and Sikh bhajans. I wondered if internet connectivity was more essential to diasporic people than non-diasporic people in the U.S. I realized that the cook/cashier man lost a lot of his hair over the short time I had met him. Walid thought it could be from stress.
We bought groceries and Walid helped carry it all the way back. He was excited over the $2 / pound mackerel that would be perfect for his baking plans. He broke his fast with the remaining lassi, while uttering the words prior to iftar. He made a vegetarian version of maqlooba and we both enjoyed it.
I felt ill in the evening and Walid read surat al-jumaa for me. I found the message about Jewish people eye-opening and somewhat disturbing as well. One version of the explanation is that the passage meant that if certain people think they are favored by God, they can "prove it" by desiring death since that is a sign that they are sure that they will enter heaven (jannah). But this life is attractive in its own ways, and among all the people I have met, only a few who I have seen in Asia have truly achieved that level of consciousness.
Day 11 Thursday
The sun finally appeared after days of rain and clouds. I chatted with Amina in the morning, which helped me wake up my brain. I learned more about updates in her life while offering some of my wisdom on how love affects one's spirit, without using those words as such. Later, she messaged me and said that she finally realized that over-rationalizing prevents other sweet aspects of life.
I read Dr. Kecia Ali's interview of scholar amina wadud, and was comforted by the fact that Buddhism helped dr. wadud realize that God's form is not limited to an old white man in the clouds. She also said the following quote about her lived engagement with theology: “I don’t believe in a dead God; I believe in Al-Hayy, the Living God, and I don’t practice a dead religion.” The following passage is also quite illuminating:
I felt rather hyper and full of energy. My roommates discussed their graduation plans and incoming relatives. One roommate's deadbeat boyfriend possibly cannot attend her graduation. I felt sorry for her.
I listened to a podcast about a study on migrant laborers in Beirut. In between, I called Ahmad and wondered if any successful Syrian ever wrote about his or her account of life as a businessperson in Lebanon. I finished the podcast, wrote down some thoughts, and ventured to school. I drank a cup of coffee and saw a few fellow students, some of whom were still grading tests before their graduation.
I read the "Repression in the Fieldwork" chapter in anthropologist Pascal Menoret's Joyriding in Riyadh and learned a lot of useful information. I liked his description of his as well as his bedouin informants' tufshan (emptiness and repressed life). The level of social suspicion described by Menoret reminded me of the telfaz11 short that depicted a thief who tried to enter a shilla and pretended to be related to one of the absent friends of an all-male gathering.
I found anthropology quite personal: if you don't like the researcher, it is hard to relate to the moods described in the ethnography. In contrast, the data in history is impersonal. During that time, my friend CP texted me about the death of I. M. Pei. I told him that I also visited places of his works, and felt the loss of this great Chinese American architect. CP found it impressive that I had traveled to such places.
I returned my professor's book and printed some reading. I printed and began reading Baudrillard's Forget Foucault on the way back to Malden. I would not have been susceptible to such a title prior to this summer break, possibly because I have realized the limitations of working with the archive, truth, and genealogy. The first section discusses how capitalism has destroyed our understanding of sexuality, with finer words. He discusses how liberation can also be part of repression, which is interesting to think in terms of the social conditions of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and China.
I also found relief in the sensibilities both Walid and I share, to some extent, in regards to how to discuss taboos. While taboos are generalizable, different cultures have different reasons and manners to observe those taboos. Luckily for us, we can come to the same habitus and understanding in regards to sexual taboos. When I was young, I liked generalizable information on such subjects, since they can help navigate the terrain. Now, after marriage, the practice is about what Walid and I share as truth and does not matter what works for others. Science tries to be generalizable, but ethics are specific and interpersonal. I have yet to read works on a queer modernity's vision of ethics, that would be as informative to me as Bedouin ethics of manhood, described by Menoret.
I once lamented to Walid that there are fewer and fewer people who can think with me. Many people can think against me (as is often seen in trite academic debates). But that is perhaps I have matured and found comfort in my own thinking patterns.
I met up with Walid at Oak Grove. He just finished his first day at a pizza place. There were Iraqi kurdish coworkers, one of whom worked at the same place for seven years. The Egyptian owner found Walid's skills to be quite good. Walid did not find the food suitable for himself there and waited to eat his own maqlooba. We listened to the music of the carnatic violin. I was surprised that he could appreciate the music, which my mother cannot. He joked that he cannot change this type of suffering, so he might as well enjoy it. Then he played Black Thema's song fi bilad ay hagga, which was quite depressing.
I quoted to him a version of this quote: “A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.” - Murakami
We walked around the neighborhood around 11pm pretending to smoke. We saw the moon and Walid remembered how a sahaba said that the Prophet Muhammad was more beautiful than the moon.
On the way back, we discovered a skunk. Walid remembered my grandpa's cautionary tale of the skunk. We translated its name in Google and found out that skunks are unique to North America. Animals truly humble our ways of knowing and bring attention to our limited existence.
Walid wrote a very beautiful poem for me in our collective journal. We drank a can of soda, ate a lot of pepper jack cheese and slept.
Walid and I reflected before on the first instances when people called us "uncle" and "aunty." I was called aunty when attending college. Walid's nephew, Asar, called him "ammu Walid," which made Walid conscious about his age.
I went to the hairdresser in the afternoon. She was quite dressed up, in all black clothing and sharp cream-colored gel-nails, which helped me feel that I was also going for a "makeover." She was also quite focused on making this trip an "experience," asking a lot of well-meaning questions, and showing the end product through a dramatic build-up. She offered a lot about herself as well: unmarried (despite wearing a ring), easygoing, likes to travel to Europe and the Caribbean, of Italian descent...
I felt uncomfortable when she kept praising my straight hair in front of two other ladies of African descent and mused about the origins of this interracial hair salon. She also noticed my frequent yawning and asked if I partied last night. I felt slightly obliged to educate her on the idea of Ramadan. Instead, I gave up and offered a sheepish smile.
I waited for a bus transfer for forty minutes without cellphone service while Walid waited for me at Malden Center. The rushing cars, suburban decay, and the manicured, external facade left me feeling apocalyptic. The habitus of the well-tended gardens and individual houses can render immigrant existence as largely ahistorical and destined for such depressing, parochial pastures.
I reunited with Walid and complained about the foreignness of the aging suburban community and my out-of-place-ness. Walid was quite understanding although he was tired of waiting at the station. We recharged at the Indian take-out restaurant while I ate spicy palak paneer with a mango lassi. The restaurant played a punjabi playlist, including Punjabi Mast, which swept some of the blues away. Other days the TV played teledramas or Hindu and Sikh bhajans. I wondered if internet connectivity was more essential to diasporic people than non-diasporic people in the U.S. I realized that the cook/cashier man lost a lot of his hair over the short time I had met him. Walid thought it could be from stress.
 |
| A picture of maqlooba from Fauzia's Kitchen fun |
I felt ill in the evening and Walid read surat al-jumaa for me. I found the message about Jewish people eye-opening and somewhat disturbing as well. One version of the explanation is that the passage meant that if certain people think they are favored by God, they can "prove it" by desiring death since that is a sign that they are sure that they will enter heaven (jannah). But this life is attractive in its own ways, and among all the people I have met, only a few who I have seen in Asia have truly achieved that level of consciousness.
Day 11 Thursday
The sun finally appeared after days of rain and clouds. I chatted with Amina in the morning, which helped me wake up my brain. I learned more about updates in her life while offering some of my wisdom on how love affects one's spirit, without using those words as such. Later, she messaged me and said that she finally realized that over-rationalizing prevents other sweet aspects of life.
I read Dr. Kecia Ali's interview of scholar amina wadud, and was comforted by the fact that Buddhism helped dr. wadud realize that God's form is not limited to an old white man in the clouds. She also said the following quote about her lived engagement with theology: “I don’t believe in a dead God; I believe in Al-Hayy, the Living God, and I don’t practice a dead religion.” The following passage is also quite illuminating:
I think in becoming a Muslim I intuitively knew, as did Africans who were brought here and enslaved who had Islamic backgrounds, that you are connected to the entire planet. You are not separated from Divine truth just because you’re separated from your origins. The reality of the sacred is manifest everywhere, in every religion, and even in nonreligions. I see that manifestation, so I’m no longer so estranged by the mandate to define a territory as exclusively mine, as a Muslim, as a woman, as an African American.
I felt rather hyper and full of energy. My roommates discussed their graduation plans and incoming relatives. One roommate's deadbeat boyfriend possibly cannot attend her graduation. I felt sorry for her.
I listened to a podcast about a study on migrant laborers in Beirut. In between, I called Ahmad and wondered if any successful Syrian ever wrote about his or her account of life as a businessperson in Lebanon. I finished the podcast, wrote down some thoughts, and ventured to school. I drank a cup of coffee and saw a few fellow students, some of whom were still grading tests before their graduation.
I read the "Repression in the Fieldwork" chapter in anthropologist Pascal Menoret's Joyriding in Riyadh and learned a lot of useful information. I liked his description of his as well as his bedouin informants' tufshan (emptiness and repressed life). The level of social suspicion described by Menoret reminded me of the telfaz11 short that depicted a thief who tried to enter a shilla and pretended to be related to one of the absent friends of an all-male gathering.I found anthropology quite personal: if you don't like the researcher, it is hard to relate to the moods described in the ethnography. In contrast, the data in history is impersonal. During that time, my friend CP texted me about the death of I. M. Pei. I told him that I also visited places of his works, and felt the loss of this great Chinese American architect. CP found it impressive that I had traveled to such places.
 |
| The Arabic translation's book cover |
I also found relief in the sensibilities both Walid and I share, to some extent, in regards to how to discuss taboos. While taboos are generalizable, different cultures have different reasons and manners to observe those taboos. Luckily for us, we can come to the same habitus and understanding in regards to sexual taboos. When I was young, I liked generalizable information on such subjects, since they can help navigate the terrain. Now, after marriage, the practice is about what Walid and I share as truth and does not matter what works for others. Science tries to be generalizable, but ethics are specific and interpersonal. I have yet to read works on a queer modernity's vision of ethics, that would be as informative to me as Bedouin ethics of manhood, described by Menoret.
I once lamented to Walid that there are fewer and fewer people who can think with me. Many people can think against me (as is often seen in trite academic debates). But that is perhaps I have matured and found comfort in my own thinking patterns.
I met up with Walid at Oak Grove. He just finished his first day at a pizza place. There were Iraqi kurdish coworkers, one of whom worked at the same place for seven years. The Egyptian owner found Walid's skills to be quite good. Walid did not find the food suitable for himself there and waited to eat his own maqlooba. We listened to the music of the carnatic violin. I was surprised that he could appreciate the music, which my mother cannot. He joked that he cannot change this type of suffering, so he might as well enjoy it. Then he played Black Thema's song fi bilad ay hagga, which was quite depressing.
I quoted to him a version of this quote: “A poet might die at twenty-one, a revolutionary or a rock star at twenty four. But after that you assume everything’s going to be all right. you’ve made it past Dead Man’s Curve and you’re out of the tunnel, cruising straight for your destination down a six lane highway whether you want it or not.” - Murakami
We walked around the neighborhood around 11pm pretending to smoke. We saw the moon and Walid remembered how a sahaba said that the Prophet Muhammad was more beautiful than the moon.
On the way back, we discovered a skunk. Walid remembered my grandpa's cautionary tale of the skunk. We translated its name in Google and found out that skunks are unique to North America. Animals truly humble our ways of knowing and bring attention to our limited existence.
Walid wrote a very beautiful poem for me in our collective journal. We drank a can of soda, ate a lot of pepper jack cheese and slept.
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