Wedding in Pakistan Pt. 2- Getting Ready for the Nikkah

The day after my mehndi was the nikkah.  The nikkah is the religious ceremony where the marriage is legally solemnized, so technically after the nikkah you are married legally and Islamically.  For my nikkah we decided to make it a relatively small affair, at M's house, with just family and some really close friends invited.  I think ultimately there were between 30 and 40 people there.  I had already gone out and chosen my dress for the nikkah, which was a firoze green sharara with heavy yellow gold work, from Rizwan Mozzam, one of my youngest sil's favorite clothing shops in Karachi.  It was the only one of my wedding outfits that I personally chose myself.  All the others were picked out by sil and M before I reached Karachi, and then "approved" by me.  A sharara consists of a skirt, a top (relatively short top, not long like a kameez), and a duppatta.  The duppata on my sharara was very heavy, we'll come to that later.

Two days before the nikkah, I went to one of M's cousin's house to do a test run of my make up.  This cousin had a beauty parlor in her house (similar, but smaller than the one I had my mehndi done at).  I warned her about putting too much pale make up on me, since I am already a pasty face to begin with.  Many brides in Pakistan wear very pale make up, which looks fine when you have darker skin, but I didn't want to end up looking like a mime on my wedding day!  So she did the make up, and then we drove home.  When we got there, M about died laughing, he said I looked like a zombie.  She had put on too pale make up and really greeny-bluey eye shadow to match my sharara, but it looked awful.  I told my sil's that they had to tell her to go much much more natural for me.  I still had some misgivings about her doing my make up for the nikkah, but I couldn't say so, not wanting to hurt her feelings or cause any family tensions.

The day of the nikkah I got ready in the new big bedroom that would be "ours" once the nikkah was finished.  Although I had been in Karachi for 6 weeks, I had been sleeping in my sil's room, while M slept on the floor in our bedroom.  We had a new bed and he refused to sleep in it until we could both be there.  So he was sleeping on the floor.  So back to getting ready.  I got my sharara on, with help from my sils and M's Appi.  My hair was done up, and then M's cousin stepped up to do my make up.  I didn't look, but when she stepped back, she had done a wonderful job!  M's sisters had told her about what went wrong the first time and she corrected it all perfectly!  Then I put on my nikkah jewelry, two 24k gold necklaces, gold earrings, and rings, and green and gold churian (bangles) that covered pretty much my entire forearms.  Finally it was time for the duppata.  M's cousin placed it on my head, and using about a gazillion hair pins, pinned it into my hair.   It was so heavy!  Then she safety-pinned it into my hair for good measure, and then safety pinned one side of the duppata to the shoulder of my blouse, to create a really nice cascading look.  When I was finally ready, I had to be helped up to walk and move around, because the weight of the dress and accessories and moving around in my high heeled gold flowery chappals (sandals) was beyond the grace of my tomboy self :).

Finally, we made it down the stairs and into my sil's bedroom, where I was deposited and arranged, and then pretty much left alone, with some aunties and teenage girls, who basically just gawked at me and talked to each other.  I don't know if they could speak English or not, but none of them talked to me.  After seeing other weddings there, I understand why, because a lot of times the bride is supposed to me acting really sad and almost in mourning that she is about to get married, and not want to talk to anyone. So I don't think it was a snobby thing, just a normal thing at Pakistani weddings.

So there I was sitting and sitting and sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting...

Close up of the work on the duppatta of my sharara.

The jewelry I wore for my nikkah. M picked all my jewelry for me. 

You can see my earrings here.  These are fresh jasmine (motia) garlands that we got after the nikkah.

Once I was finished getting ready, they put this veil over my face.  Here I am pretending to be very sad and morose like a proper Pakistani dulhan. 

To be continued...

My New Year's Resolution

Oh no, has it really been over a month since I posted anything on here?  After I promised that I would restart this thing and even persuaded some of my old friends back here to read it and everything?  I am sooooo sooo sorry.  Can I make excuses?  Two trials out of town, Christmas, Muharram, fixing up our house, etc etc?  Ok, so one of my new year's resolutions is to write at least one post a week from now on and I really want to do better about it.  (And no, this doesn't count as my one post).  So I will be doing some more wedding posts, travel posts, catching up on the past 4 years of my life posts.  

For New Year's M had this cute idea that we should write down ten resolutions and seal them up (not let each other see), and then open them at the end of the year and see how many we kept.  (He even decided we should get graded, with 60% being passing!)  I have written my ten down, (actually 11), but I won't write them here, because I think sometimes he actually reads this thing.  So I will just say that one of them is to post once a week on here (at least!)

A Lot of Love in a Little Space

Sunday night I got back from a visit to Wisconsin to spend the holidays (Thanksgiving and Eid Al-Adha) with my two sisters in law, brother in law (husband of one SIL), and nieces (all M's family).  We drove from Dallas to Wisconsin, which is a 16+ hour drive, even without an 18 month old tagging along.  We had to break the drive up into to two days, which means we spent four days driving.  Despite the long travel, it was a really great vacation and well worth it.

We loaded up the car on Wednesday night, made sure we had enough kiddie dvds, Kix, and juice boxes to placate an army of toddlers, and headed up on the journey from Dallas, through Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, and finally Wisconsin!  When we got to Wisconsin, we all bundled into the small two bedroom apartment that my sister in law and two nieces are living in while she completes her fellowship at the U of Wisconsin (they usually live in Chicago). 

So including M, little D, me, sil, her husband, two nieces (ages 5 and 7) and other sil visiting from Karachi, we had 8 people in her two bedroom apartment.  And we had tons of fun!  People from here think I'm crazy when I say that we all stayed together in one apartment.  "Why didn't you stay in a hotel?" they ask, truly puzzled.  It's hard to explain to them that, first of all, it would be offensive to M's family if we wanted to stay at a hotel, even if it means cramming even more people into said tiny apartment, and second of all, we actually all have fun hanging out together in such close quarters (and for ten days, no less).  I think that this is something far removed from the typical "American" experience and most people would get a hotel rather than all cram together.  Actually, when we got married here in the States (detailed posts to follow on that wedding, if I ever get around to finishing Pakistan wedding posts), we had 14 people staying at our house!  (And we were the newlyweds!)  We have a pretty big house, but people were still having to sleep on couches, air matresses, etc.  It's just normal for M's family to all stay together like that.  They would think it's weird for everyone to stay in hotels. 

I had a lot of fun in part because I got to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal for M's family, all of whom (except M) had never had one before.  Everyone except for sil's husband had never even had turkey before!  Although I guess it truly is an North American food, seeing as how you only get them on this continent.  This was the first time I have ever cooked a Thanksgiving meal by myself (my mom usually does it), so I was really nervous, especially when BIL showed up with a fresh halal 15 lb turkey on Wednesday night.  Luckily, after a long day of basting, baking, and cooking, I ended up with an extremely delicious turkey (which I credit wholly to its freshness and halalness, have you ever had a fresh, never frozen turkey before? wow wow wow!)  I also made the Thanksgiving staples of green bean casserole, stuffing, gravy, squash, crescent rolls and cranberry sauce.  For dessert we had pumpkin pie.  All in all everyone really enjoyed it, and then we collapsed into a tryptophan-induced stupor and watched the Cowboys play the Raiders.  Doesn't get more traditional than that!

Turkey Before and After

Eid followed shortly thereafter, and turned out to be wonderful as well.  I had never celebrated Eid together with M's family, usually its just the three of us, so I was so happy to finally have the chance to do so.  There was no masjid for us in the town we were in, so we decided that we would get up, put on our Eid clothes, and say the Eid prayers together as a family in the living room, then have M take pics of us all in our finery.  Afterwards, we had chai and yummy sheer korma that sil from Karachi made.  The week had flown past already and it was time to go home.  As I reflect on the celebrations of last week, I realize just how lucky I am to be able to share the Thanksgiving traditions I love so much with M's family and be able to experience the beauty and peace of Eid traditions at the same time, so close together.  Somewhere in there it shows what the ideal of being an American means to me, striking a balance between the long held traditions of both Thanksgiving and Eid.  Taking both and making them uniquely ours, as Muslim Americans.

Support Saudi Women in their Campaign to End Guardianship

I've added a black ribbon to the side bar of my blog to support Saudi women in their "black ribbon campaign" to end guardianship.

"Saudi Women Launch International Campaign Against Guardianship

November 5, 2009 10:16 p.m. EST

The Media Line Staff

A group of Saudi women have launched an international campaign against the kingdom's male guardianship law, on the anniversary of a prominent protest, in which dozens of Saudi women publicly drove their cars through the country's capital.



The campaign calls on supporters all over the world to tie a black ribbon around their wrist signifying a call for Saudi women to be given equal rights to men and an end to the male guardianship system, in which Saudi women are represented by men in all public and official spheres of life.



"We are calling on everybody, both Saudi and non-Saudi, to show their support of Saudi women," Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, the leader of the campaign, told The Media Line. "It's not just about the right to drive, it's everything," she said. "We want to have our lives back, which the male guardianship system took from us. So we are calling for everyone to wear this black ribbon and spread the word."



A statement by campaign organizers called for women to be given "rights to marry, divorce, inherit, gain custody of children, travel, work, study, drive cars and live on an equal footing with man."



"We, Saudi women activists, appeal to all those who support Saudi women's rights, inside and outside the Kingdom, to participate in the campaign by wearing a black ribbon on their wrists as a symbolic and peaceful gesture of their advocacy to Saudi women's rights," the statement read.



Under the motto "we will not untie our ribbon until Saudi women enjoy their rights as adult citizens", the "Black Ribbon Campaign" was launched Friday to mark the anniversary of a famous event on November 6, 1990, in which 47 Saudi women publicly drove cars through the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in a protest calling for Saudi women to be given the right to drive. The women were subsequently detained by Saudi police, had their passports confiscated, and some were fired from their jobs"

Click on the link in my side bar to read the whole article. 

Although the campaign is calling for people to actually wear a black ribbon on their wrist, I think it would be great to get a movement to "wear" a black ribbon on your blog.  So if you support Saudi women in their campaign for equal rights, rights in keeping with those promised to women by Islam, please consider adding a black ribbon to your blog.

Wedding in Pakistan Pt. 1- Mehndi

So I am going to do a series of posts about our wedding in Pakistan and the different ceremonies, etc.  We got married in August of 2006, and we didn't have the full-out traditional Pakistani wedding with all the multitude of different ceremonies.  Basically we had three, a combination mehndi/dolkhi, a nikkah, and what we called a "reception" which I guess was some hybrid valima/rukh satti thing. 

The first thing that happened was the mehndi/dolkhi, the night before the nikkah (the actual religious ceremony).  The day of the mehndi, I went to this salon near M's house to have my mehndi (henna designs) done on my hands and feet.  One of the interesting things about a lot of salons in Pakistan is that they are in people's houses, instead of in a strip mall like here, which was the case with this salon.  I had quite a few pre-wedding beauty treatments at this place, as well as being my first experience with threading, ouch!  Back to my wedding mehndi, the designs were quite elaborate, and reached all the way up to my elbows.  When the lady doing my henna found out that I had not shaved my arms and did not want to shave my arms, she was not happy with me at all.  I have blonde hair and have never shaved my arms, and wasn't about to start, so I decided she was just going to have to deal with it.  (It's not like I'm really hairy or anything anyways!)  I had to sit pretty still for about 4 hours while my henna was done and I couldn't put my arms down because if the henna gets smeared when its wet, then you mess it up.  Plus my SILs left me there alone because they had a lot of errands to do before the wedding, so basically I was stuck in this room for four hours holding my arms out to my side and I couldn't even talk to the lady doing the henna (she didn't speak English and my Urdu was pretty much non-existent at that point). 

Here is what my mehndi looked like soon after getting home from the salon.

When the henna is first applied it dries black and then crusts off to leave the red designs underneath.  I was told to let it fall off naturally, because that would keep the dye sealed in longer and make the color more vibrant.  You can see places where the crust had already started to flake off before the pictures were taken.  I was also told that the darker and more vibrant the henna showed up after the black part fell off, the more auspicious it was for our wedding.  

After we were done with the mehndi, I hurried home to change into the traditional yellow shalwar kameez for my combo mehndi/dholki ceremony that night.

After the guests arrived, we all went upstairs, for the dholki, which is the name of the party and the drum that is played at it.  My sister in law took the drum and we went up stairs, and split, boys on one side of the room, girls on the other.  The girls played the drum, and sang fun songs.  I don't know what they were singing, but they seemed to really enjoy it.

You can see the dholki here in the center of our group of girls. 

At some point during the dholki, the girls began to sing songs making fun of the guys.  The guys would then have to give them money in order to get the teasing song to stop.  Some of the guys would hold out longer than others.  Some guys would try to be cheap about it, and their first offers would be rejected.  Sometimes they would try to trick the little girls, who were acting as the runners, into taking less money, and their mom's would shout, "nahin, nahin," and send them back to their husbands for more.  M's brother in law tried to get away with giving some rupees, and was rejected.  Since he lives in Chicago, they would only accept dollars from him!  With all the money they collected, the girls pooled it together to go out for a nice lunch together.  Considering I have no idea what the songs were saying, I found the whole thing rather hilarious and a lot of fun.

After the singing was over, we all went downstairs to the dining room for a nice dinner of chicken broast from a local restaurant.  I was already looking forward to the next day, and the Nikah, which will be the subject of my next post.  

Veiled Ambivalence

What is up with the obsession with hijab, niqab, and all things "covering" for Muslim women? 

Here's my disclaimer-- I'm a Muslim woman.  I don't wear hijab.  I know all the different takes, arguments, etc., so if anyone wants to read this and then criticize me for not wearing it, or post a bunch of hadith in the comments or whatever, feel free, but its really not going to change my mind, and I've probably read them all a thousand times, so, you might not want to waste your time.  I am not opposed to people wearing hijab, or think it is bad, and in fact I have a lot lot lot of respect for people that do, I'm just not at a point where I can do it. 

When I first converted, I wanted to wear hijab, really really wanted to.  But then I had a conversation with M that went something like this, M- people who see you wearing hijab will think you are oppressed, people who see me with you wearing hijab will think that I am your oppressor.  Ouch, I could see his point.  We all know that its not true, but it is what people will think.  And I can say I don't care what people think about me (true, to some extent), but I do care about what people think about M and about how what I do affects his life as well, so hijab was put on the back burner for a while. 

Meanwhile, once my hijab-obsession was quelled for a while, it freed my mind to really delve into other aspects of Islam that had been pushed aside while I had been focusing exclusively on how I dressed.  I felt more connected to Allah and more spiritual.  I began to discover what it meant to me, personally, to be a Muslim, and what I wanted my relationship with God to be.  I'm still discovering. 

Meanwhile, I keep reading current events dealing with Muslims and Islam, I am reading Muslim blogs, main stream media reports, etc.  There is so much focus on the veil, hijab and niqab, it's like an unending drumbeat through the internet.  Every cliched article on women in Islam has some title like "Going behind the Veil" or "Islam Unveiled."  It's as if we, as women in Islam, are purely defined by our veils.  Western politicians pontificate on relieving Muslim women from their oppression by banning the veil, saving us from a prison of polyester/cotton blend.  Education, health care, birth control, protection from violence, equality in legal rights are all issues tacked on as an afterthought, as if, somehow, if we could just get women to de-veil, all these problems would be solved for them.  Simultaneously, women who veil seen as more conservative, more religious, more pious, dare I say more fundamentalist, than those who don't.  Women who don't veil are seen as irreligious, presumed to disapprove of those who do, or to follow a more "modern" version of Islam. 

All these presumptions based off a little piece of fabric, about who I am, who you are, what we believe, how we feel. 

We Muslims don't help the issue of veil obsession.  We obsess about it too.  As I mentioned before, I spent a large part of my early days as a convert doing just that.  Our mosques are so obssessed with veiling and segregation that our communities become fractured, and our youth become disenchanted with the mosque as a community center.  Our mosques offer no safe space for youth to interact with members of the opposite gender in a halaal way, and to build the foundations for our young people to lead the mosques in the next generation, working together for the interests of both genders. 

Instead of discussing spirituality, prayer, introspection, tawhid, and other ideological doctrines of Islam that could provide inspiration and a foundation for the next generation of American Muslims, we continue to focus and harp on hijab and segregation. 

Overseas, Muslim insistence on the morality of society being pinned on the bodies of women and obsession with regulation of women's clothing, in my mind, must contribute to Western obsession and focus on hijab as an overriding issue for Muslim women. 

If we didn't obssess about it so much, would everyone else?

As for my own feelings, at this point, I am ambivalent.  I do not honestly believe that I can wear hijab and be successful in my chosen career.  I do believe that hijab is a beneficial act in Islam, and maybe one day I will wear it, but not yet.  And I definitely have plenty of other things I personally consider more important to get right in my own spirituality first.

Gotta do some lawyerin' and other odds and ends

I am supposed to go to trial in 2 weeks.  It is my first trial ever.  I am not going to be actually doing anything in the trial, but I will be a "support attorney" (I guess).  Which means a lot of behind the scenes grunt work.  But I'm not complaining, I'm really excited.  Our cases rarely ever go to trial, so when they do, it is a great opportunity for everyone involved.  Anyway, all of that is a long way of explaining why I haven't posted in a while and why I probably will be sporadic in my posting until November.  I want to do a series of posts on my wedding in Karachi next, and have even started writing them, but I have to go and find the right pics off one of our many hard drives full of thousands of pictures.  So hopefully I can do that soon. 

This weekend we went to the Arboretum to their Pumpkin patch and took some fall-themed pictures.  We had a lot of fun even though the weather was gloomy and M got some great shots.  I think he is a great photgrapher and have tried to encourage him to enter some contests, freelance or something.  I think maybe I will post some of his work on here and let you all see it because I am so proud of him. 

It was so cold for Dallas, already in the 50's.  It's like we skipped fall and went straight to winter (50's is winter in Dallas for all you northerners :) ).

Little D looks more and more like a little boy and less like a baby every day.  Where does the time go?

Call Me Amma

So I don't want to make this blog all about my kid, Little D, which I could easily do, being the braggy besotted mommy that I am, but I know that not everyone in the world wants to hear about how many cheerios Little D had for breakfast today, so I promise not to let this blog devolve into that (although as a mommy, I like reading other mommy blogs!)  Anyway, one of the things I am really interested in has been learning about raising bilingual children.  M and I are really making an effort to raise Little D in a bilingual environment and I think there are a lot of benefits to it, but it can also be very confusing and there is a lot of conflicting information out on the web about raising bilingual kids.  Since Little D stays at home with M during the week, M and I are trying to make sure that M talks to him in Urdu as much as possible, because I figure that he will get plenty of exposure to English from me and my family and later from school and just generally being surrounded by English all the time.  I am not worried about it at all.  Both of my nieces, who are 7 and 5 now spoke only Urdu with their parents early on, and now are fluent in both Urdu and English with no accent in English whatsoever.  (I can't tell if they have an accent in Urdu, not being fluent in it myself). 

Little D as of now seems to be pretty much bilingual.  I try to speak to him in Urdu a lot too, mainly because it also helps me to keep learning at the same time.  For a while, I considered the one-parent, one language strategy, which is where each parent speaks only in their language to the child, but after speaking to some other people who have raised bilingual kids who didn't follow this method, I decided that it wasn't necessary.  I like being able to talk with Little D in both because it helps me to keep practicing my Urdu and it also follows the natural flow of language in our house pre-little D, which was a general mix of both languages (in an attempt to help me improve my Urdu).  M's English is pretty much perfect, and sometimes he corrects me, so he doesn't need any practice. 

So at 16, almost 17 months, here is Little D's progress so far: 

Of course, his first word was Baba (daddy in Urdu), followed closely by Amma (mommy), although for the longest time he would only cry Amma, as in AAAAMMMAA, when he was upset, he would never just come up to me and say Amma, like he would to his Baba.  Now he will look at our pictures and point and say Baba, Amma.

After that came dudu, which he still says uddu or uggu.  (Milk in Urdu), then ball, and then juice, which he says for everything that is wet that is not dudu.  So juice is juice, water is juice, coke is juice, even rain is juice!  He also says quack, for any bird, but especially ducks.  And nok, (nose in Urdu), sometimes nok and quack get confused.   

Then book, and now his favorite word for the last few days is juta (shoes in Urdu, don't know if I spelled that right).  Also lately added to the repertoire is choo choo.

So far seems like he is pretty even on English and Urdu.  As a language nerd, I am finding his language acquisition fascinating (and from a bragging mommy standpoint, I just like to talk about it, ha!)

Humpity Bumpity

When I went to Karachi in 2006, we went to the beach with M's friends one day.  The beach we went to was really far away from M's house.  Karachi is a port city, right on the water, so there are a lot of beaches relatively close to M's house, with the nearest probably being Clifton.  However, M and his friends wanted to go to a less crowded beach that would be more fun and where there would be less people to pay undue attention to me, so we drove about an hour to the other side of the city to go to the beach.  We spread a blanket, had a picnic and walked by the waves.  Some of M's friends' wives and I waded out a little bit into the water and then went for a walk on the beach.  As it started to get dark, a man came by with a camel offering camel rides for around 25 rupees.  So of course I jumped at the opportunity for my first (and hopefully last!) camel ride.  It was not very much fun at all in my opinion!  The camel's "saddle" seemed to be very precariously attached to it, and when it stood up with M and I on board I realized just how tall it was and how it was probably going to hurt if we fell off.  We humpity bumped down the beach and back.  The camel getting up and down is probably the scariest part.  So I can say that while I am glad that I had one camel ride in my life, I probably won't be sad if it I don't have to ride on one again!

At the beach with M's friends.

Our noble steed

Humpity Bumpity down the beach

I look much more confident than I was!

I have to be off next week to celebrate a holiday, I just don't know when...

Eid Mubarak to everyone!  Yesterday was Eid here in the States, it's today in Pakistan.  Because Muslims celebrate Eid based on the visualization of the new moon (there is a more technical explanation for this, but I don't know how to explain it), Eid can be on different days in different parts of the world.  In the U.S., because every mosque does their own thing, a lot of times Eid can be on different days for different groups within the U.S.  It gets pretty confusing and sometimes frustrating.  I don't know why, but we almost always celebrate Eid here in the U.S. a day after the Sunnis do.  This year was the first year since I converted that we have both celebrated it on the same day.  Every year on the night of the 29th, we start checking our mosque's website, seeing if they have declared Eid.  It can be quite suspenseful, and while it would be nice to know way ahead of time when Eid will be, it is kind of fun to have the anticipation of checking and checking and checking the website to see if the moon has been spotted.  Then there is a frantic dash to get everything ready for the next day.  Presents wrapped, house cleaned and decorated (this year we had adorable balloons and center pieces from NoorArt), gathering all the ingredients to make a big meal and the traditional Sheer Korma. 

Another thing about Eid being slightly unpredictable is that it makes things a little hard at work.  I always never know how to handle it.  I always feel kind of strange saying, "I need to be off one day next week.  Which day?  Well, I'm not really sure, could be Monday or Tuesday.  I won't really know until the night before.  Why?  Well, its like Muslim Christmas...yeah, we don't know what day our holiday is going to be on yet."  Lucky for me, I work in a place where people are rather understanding, and as an attorney, I have some flexibility in my job to take off whenever I feel like it, meaning there is no set amount of vacation or any schedule that I have to follow.  Initially I was going to take today off, but we are supposed to go to trial in a little more than a week, so it was either yesterday or today that I was going to have to work.  (The flip side to this flexible schedule is that if you have to work, you have to work, whether it's a weekend or late at night, if something has to get done now, you have to do it). 

So yesterday we had a great Eid.  We went to the masjid (mosque) for the Eid namaz (prayers).  The nice thing about our masjid is that they have two sessions of namaz, so M went for the first one, while I sat on the women's side with Little D and visited with my friends, then we listened to the Eid khutbah (sermon), and then I give Little D to M so that I could say the prayers at the second session.  Afterword there was a nice breakfast and a carnival with some food and bounce houses for the kids (although Little D is too little to go in them, and he was sad that he couldn't!)  While I was saying the second namaz, Little D played on the toddler playground with M.  He loves the slide!  After that we left the masjid, picked up some mithai (Indian style sweets) and went to my parents' house for lunch, which was nice.  Then we took family pictures all dressed up in our Eid clothes.  I told Little D to ask his grandfather for Eidi, so he held his hand out and my dad gave him five dollars, which I thought was really cute.  Even though my parents aren't Muslim, I think they had a fun time celebrating Eid with us.  Then we went home, and changed and went out to dinner at a delicious desi buffet down the street from our house.  Back again and opening presents, Little D got some Arabic Blocks and a really cute picture book about Ramadan called Under the Ramadan Moon.  I love the pictures in this book!

Because my gift from M hadn't arrived yet (or Little D's gifts from family), we have decided to have a traditional three days of Eid, just like in Muslim countries.  Tonight we will open more presents, and I am going to make a big dinner, and afterwards Sheer Korma, since we didn't get time yesterday (also because of another reason that I will explain in a different post).

So Eid Mubarak whichever day you are celebrating on, may you have a blessed day! 

Beach Trip to Karachi 2006

So I said I would pick up where I left off three years ago, which was leaving Chennai to go to Karachi for the first time.  I spent six weeks in Karachi, and had a blast.  Besides getting married (a post or more to come in the future), I went shopping at a bunch of great malls and bazaars.  I also went out to eat at all the places where I can't eat the food here, like KFC, Pizza Hut, had hamburgers.  KFC in Pakistan is sooo much better than it is here.  Two words--zinger burgers.  Anyway, one day we decided to go to the beach, all the way on the other side of Karachi, so I decided to document some of the interesting people and things that you may see on the streets of Karachi and thought I would share some of the pictures with you.

                         I have seen up to 7 members of a family on one 70cc motorbike, babies and all.  

This is a hijra (someone correct me on the spelling if I got it wrong, my Urdu transliteration skills are horrible).  They can be transvestites or transexuals, drag queens, in the rare instance actual eunuchs (although I don't know how common that is anymore).  They are usually working as beggars.  There were many of them on the street in 2006, and some even came door to door in M's neighborhood.  They will offer blessings for you if you give them money, or some people believe they can send the evil eye on you if you anger them or don't give them money.  Strangely, I did not see any when I was there this year, don't know why.  They will show up at weddings and offer to bless the couple.  In all, I think it is a very interesting cultural aspect for such a conservative country, and I think for the most part their lives must be very difficult, like all beggars on Karachi streets. 

This is a gadha guardi (donkey cart).  These cute little donkeys sometimes have to pull very heavy loads.  In the rainy season (like when I was there in 2006), their owners put plastic bags over their ears so that they don't get wet.  

Little donkey with a big load.  I also saw horse carts and camel carts, but those are less common.

 Rickshaw full of laundry, for some reason M thought this was really funny. 

Ok, next time I will actually do a post from when we got to the beach.  Maybe I should rename this Karachi Street Scenes 2006.   When we went this year, we took an actual video of the street as we were driving along, but you'll have to wait for that, as I am working my way forward (may take awhile, ha!)

Picking Back Up Where I Left Off

So I've given it some thought, and decided that I will just pick this thing back up where I left off and try to recount some of the more interesting stories from the last three years of my life that I probably would have been posting if I hadn't been doing the many many things I have been doing. Basically here is my excuse for not posting for the last three years. In the last three years I have...had two weddings, graduated from law school, moved to another state, bought a house, studied for and passed the bar, started my career as an attorney, gotten pregnant, had a baby, and gone back to work. Somewhere in between there I have traveled to Iceland, Pakistan (twice), and England. So as you can see I have been quite busy, and...ok enough excuses, next post picks up where we left off, leaving Chennai for Karachi, first time around. I am going to have to dig up some of those pics to stick on here too. Stay tuned!

Here Goes Nothing

Well, I've decided to give this thing another go.  Took me a while to figure out my password and pretty up the old blog.  I'm leaving my old posts from law school up for posterity, and let's see if I have come up with anything worth saying the last 3 years.  Wonder if anyone will even check this anymore.  Stay posted, I promise I will post something more substantive soon. 

Temple in Chennai

I could really only mostly see the outside of the temple because non-hindus are not allowed. My friends told me that this was not the way it had always been, but was more a product of the British Imperial era. Hindus were bannned from Christian churches by the British (I guess they didn't want the locals hanging around?), so they did a tit for tat and banned everyone from their temples. I thought it was weird about the Christians banning Hindus because I always think of Christianity as such an evangelical religion that they would want to bring people into the fold. Maybe Anglicans aren't as evangelical as folks where I come from?

The largest temple in Chennai.


A close-up of some of the figures on the sides of the temples.

India Part 3

Here is the stage where the wedding took place (that is the guru who led the ceremony):

The ceremony was very elaborate. Here is an offering that was made for the ancestors so that they would come down and bless the married couple:

In the evening there was a reception, which is literally that, a reception (not a party like we have here in the States).

All in all I had a great time, although I was only in India for four short days. After the wedding I visited some landmarks around the city, mostly some pretty amazing temples. It was very interesting and my friend's sister explained to me about all the different gods and stories behind them. Although I must admit I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the concept of polytheism, coming from where I come from.

India Wedding Cont'd.

For some reason blogger would not let me post this pic in the last post, so this is a continuation of the post below.

The ones in the middle are a model of a sari and a dhoti (sarong type dress that the groom wears). I don't think anyone actually ate them, but they looked nice :).

I was so jet lagged, I was literally falling asleep at the pooja. So I went off to sleep at a guesthouse with some of the groom's cousins from France, who were really nice (we are such an international bunch!) There were people there from the following countries: India, United States, Germany, France, and England. At the German Wedding there was also a Russian. Pretty cool, huh? (And all different religions, present as well, Christian (Catholic and Protestant), Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish). Shows you that on the individual level, we really can all get along.

So on to the wedding itself: the next day, we woke up quite early and went back to the groom's house to get ready. I wore sari for the first time, and thank God there were people there to help me put it on! (Actually the hardest part is the pleats and they were pre-sown for me by M's aunt). I wore a steel blue and maroon silk sari that M's mom sent for me which I love. Too bad I am anonymous, so you won't get to see the pictures ;).

The wedding itself took place in a hotel, here is one of the decorations from the hotel lobby right before you entered the wedding hall:


The ceremony itself was quite elaborate and took several hours to complete. It was really fascinating. People don't really watch the whole thing, they kind of mill around and stand on the stage and around the stage and take pictures. In all it was interesting.

Madras Marriage

Well, I want to apologize for my extended absences, I just have not had time and that can be explained later, but I would like to pick back up where I left off and continue to tell you about my trip this summer because it was a lot of fun and definitely a once in a life time experience. So after I left the airport I got into the car and headed off with my friend's dad to their apartment. Upon pulling out of the airport, immediate panic set in. Oh, no, we are driving 0n the wrong side of the road!! I am going to die!! It was an instinctual response, even though consciously I knew that they drive on the other side, my whole being was rebelling against it, and it took quite a while to get used to it. Not to mention the traffic! There are no lanes, people just drive helter-skelter, along with all the rickshaws, bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, and so on. Although Pakistan was much worse, but I will get to that later.

My friend's house was all decked out for the wedding:

Color design on the floor outside the apartment.

Front door of the apartment decorated
with flower garlands.

Everyone was ready for the wedding and reception, which were both taking place the next day, but I quickly fell asleep in the only room with air conditioning. My goodness it was hot! I slept until the afternoon and then got up for some lunch and just relaxed. That night they had a pooja to bless the clothes that they were wearing for the wedding. All of this was totally new to me, as the only thing I knew about Hinduism was what I had seen in Bollywood movies. During the pooja, everyone stepped forward to place turmeric powder and other substances (not sure what) on the bride and groom's hands and face. Also, some sweets were blessed to be taken the next day for the wedding. They were very cute.

Passage to India- Southern Masala Style

Well, let me start off my series of posts on my trip so far with India, which is where I went first. I left the U.S. on July 9 and got to India on the morning of the 11th. That was not a fun trip, but it definitely prepared me for the heat here. First leg of the trip I took American Air to Frankfurt. When I got to Frankfurt, I had no idea where to go, there were no signs in English and when I did finally find a departures board, my flight wasn't on it. Finally I just decided to follow the group of desis that had gotten of the plane with me and they took me right to the gate!

The next leg of my trip was on Gulf Air, which was an experience. First we flew to Bahrain, which was just supposed to be a quick stop (i.e. I wasn't even supposed to get off the plane). For some reason of which I was never informed, they decided to take us off the plane in Bahrain and put us on a new one, which means getting on a bus, going into the airport, going through security again, and then getting on another bus and going to the new plane. Did I mention that it was ungodly hot during this whole process? I was also exhausted at this point because I had not slept the entire trip, due to the very nice but overly talkative man from Oman sitting next to me. He spent half his time trying to convince me that I don't need to buy zabiha meat in the U.S., if I just say bismillah over it it is halal. Riiiiiight, I get this all the time from people who must assume that I know absolutely nothing about Islam. Just because YOU don't care if your meat is zabiha or not does not mean you have to convince the rest of the world that they should eat the way you do. Hmmph, but that is a totally other rant (which btw, I don't care if you eat halal or not, that is your own business, as whether I do is mine). Ok so after I left Bahrain, we flew to Muscat, Oman, where I had a 3 hour layover. I tried to sleep in the terminal, which was an absolutely ridiculous idea, especially with the litany of people staring at me. When they finally called for boarding the aircraft, I went down and stood in line for about an hour. I don't know why they called us to board and then made us stand there. Then when we got on the plane, we sat there for about an hour with no AC! I thought I was going to die, even the South Indians were complaining about the heat. So again no more sleep and then we were finally on the way to Chennai.

When I got to the Chennai airport, I breezed through customs, as there was nobody in the "foreigners" line and went to collect my luggage. I had two huge suitcases because my trip is for 7 weeks, and they were both coming down the line at the same time, so there was no way I could pick them both up. I asked one of the men standing next to me if he could grab one of them, while I got the other. Of course, when he picks it up, it flies open and my clothes go everywhere, including my underwear and bras. People scatter to help me grab my clothes off the conveyor belt and floor, including a couple of extremely embarassed guys when they realized they were handling my panties! Poor guys, but I am so grateful that the people were so nice and helpful in that situation. I was terrified that I had been robbed blind because the case was open coming through the airport, but miraculously, nothing was missing! So I exited the airport to find my friend's dad who was there to pick me up. Wow, this post has gone on longer than I thought, so I will have to do another one about the actual time I spent in India, LOL.

No Censors for Me!

I busted the Pakistani block on blogger! Look for more updates about my trip to India and Pakistan so far, coming soon!!!!!!!!!

Update

Hello out there and thank you so much to anyone who is still reading this blog after over a month of absence! I have not been this busy EVER. I love my job, but we keep going 24/7! I work all day and then usually they have a social event for us in the evenings, so I leave my house at about 7 am and don't get back until midnight or later. So here is a quick update on what I have been doing this summer.

The Work- has been fabulous. Complex litigation stuff for big name clients, with actions pending all over the country. Exactly what I wanted. Now my difficult decision is do I want to practice general lit or labor and employment?

The Firm- Everyone has been really nice and fun. I've meet a lot of people that I get along with really well. Also, our clerk class got along really well, which apparently doesn't happen all the time. I know that if I come to work here I will have to work hard (2000+ billable hours a year). Other great things about the firm --> they have a great track record with retaining women and making them partners. I have worked with some amazing female partners while I am here. They are pretty family friendly too, seems like most people have kids and they spend a lot of time with them.

The Social Scene- Do you need to know anything about any restaurant near downtown Dallas? I will give a review. I go out to lunch EVERY DAY. I don't know how I haven't gained 200 lbs. I also go out to dinner about 4 times a week. We have had many great parties also. I think some people think it is weird that I don't drink, because alcohol is a big part of the social scene, but no one has said anything. We have gone to some cool locations in Dallas, as well as some of the partners' houses which are beautiful. I just wish that M could be here.

Ok, so you say, that is all well and good but you could have dropped us a line at some point! Which leads me to the other, darker side of my summer, which would be.....

THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE LOST MY PASSPORT!!!!!!

Yes folks, thats right. I am supposed to leave for my big India/Pakistan trip in 2 weeks and my passport is MIA. I sent it to the Pakistani Consulate to get my visa via express mail and the P.O. lost it on the way back. The thing has tracking numbers all over it and still they can't track it! ARRRGH. Well, that is only the first part of the story, because after battling the P.O. for about a week I realized that I needed to concentrate on replacing the passport and my visas. My mom, who is amazing, spent about 20 hrs one week researching the whole process and now my stuff is being expedited by a private service. Insha'Allah it should be here by Wed. or Thurs. Here's the kicker though: the whole thing is costing me about $650. Ouch!

The moral of the story, never send you passport via U.S. Mail, always use Fedex, UPS, or DHL. And when you send it, insure the dang thing for 1,000 bucks because that is how much it is going to cost to replace it.

Also, now I have to worry about identity theft, because I am sure that someone stole it from the P.O. So I have taken all the measures to prevent that. Fraud alert, etc.

Anyways, that is the summary of the past six weeks. I don't know when I will post again, but if you are still hanging around I appreciate it.