When I first met my husband I had never chopped a tomato. I was that girl in college who ordered fried chicken wings when everyone else ordered normal Chinese from the takeout menu. In fact, this was what a good friend of mine from college pointed out to me the first time she learned that I was cooking Pakistani food. It was my first tastes of chicken curry that convinced me I had to learn to cook Pakistani food, not to mention that I thought it might be a little unfair for me to expect my husband to convert to American cuisine only.
The first dish I tried to make was chicken curry, but if I had only worked on that dish until I perfected it, we both would have starved. I kept getting chicken curry wrong! I would cook it in Canada and everything would seem fine and then, back home, I'd invite my best friend over to try it and cook it all wrong. Eventually, my husband and I all but gave up on it and I learned to cook byriani by watching Z's wife cook it once. It was really great! Even though she does not speak much English, she talked as much as she could and was very tolerant of my note-taking. That dish was so easy that I've done it just right since that day and it really built up my confidence. Since then, I've gotten really good at Kadhi Pakora, all types of byriani, beef and chicken, bindhi and daal curries.
Finally, in year number seven, I've made a chicken curry that I consistently adore. It took me seven years of ShowMeTheCurry.com and youtube cooking gurus with trial and error to finally get proficient enough to even ask coherent questions of others who are better cooks! Gori Wife, you've no idea how much I envy you!
Friday, December 24, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Forced out of Silence
When I first decided that I wanted to marry a Pakistani, a lot of things went through my mind.
What if his parents don't like me?
What if I cannot understand the religion?
What if I can never learn the language?
How can I learn the language?
What if we don't have the same ideas about kids?
What if, what if, what if?
So, to figure out the answer to my questions, true to form, I Googled it. In my Google search I used lots of search terms, but "learn Urdu" or "Study Urdu" became frequent. As you can imagine, there are not a lot of places online that you can learn about Urdu for free. . . . .you can't even get Rosetta Stone for that language! I felt dejected, so I started typing in goofy stuff like, finally, "Urdu for Gories." "Gori" is the word that I found out my husband's family used to describe me. It means, basically the equivalent of "white girl," so I was typing, "Urdu for whities."
Anyway, up popped the Sometimes Sobia forums. Most of you are probably very familiar with Mrs. Sobia, but someone many years from now who stumbles on this blog looking for support with their own Pakistani may know nothing about her. Why? The forums are now closing.
It's a really sad day for me because I kind of credit the support I got there for keeping me from going completely nuts. By the time I found the forum my husband and I were neck deep in the most horrible parts of our long, sad story. By reading about Sobia and her husband, and their successful, Pakistani/American marriage. . .and even by reading about the not-so-successful Pakistani/American ventures . . .I was not alone. I knew that there were other people just as crazy and weird as my husband and I (or at least close to it.)
I was kept from total insanity by a pink floral print website. I was able to share pictures, and see pictures of families I will likely never meet in person. In real life, I've only met one family with a Desi husband and a white wife, and when that woman saw me across the crowded Verizon Wireless store, she shouted aloud. We never spoke, so I guess it doesn't count. Without "Sometimes Sobia" I would not know anyone, much less 10 people, who are the same as me. Now, that is not to say that everyone there is there for the reason I was there. In fact, I met people of all different nationalities married to people of the same background or completely different background, another aspect of that forum I will forever miss.
I will miss knowing and talking to people literally all over the world, every single day.
What if his parents don't like me?
What if I cannot understand the religion?
What if I can never learn the language?
How can I learn the language?
What if we don't have the same ideas about kids?
What if, what if, what if?
So, to figure out the answer to my questions, true to form, I Googled it. In my Google search I used lots of search terms, but "learn Urdu" or "Study Urdu" became frequent. As you can imagine, there are not a lot of places online that you can learn about Urdu for free. . . . .you can't even get Rosetta Stone for that language! I felt dejected, so I started typing in goofy stuff like, finally, "Urdu for Gories." "Gori" is the word that I found out my husband's family used to describe me. It means, basically the equivalent of "white girl," so I was typing, "Urdu for whities."
Anyway, up popped the Sometimes Sobia forums. Most of you are probably very familiar with Mrs. Sobia, but someone many years from now who stumbles on this blog looking for support with their own Pakistani may know nothing about her. Why? The forums are now closing.
It's a really sad day for me because I kind of credit the support I got there for keeping me from going completely nuts. By the time I found the forum my husband and I were neck deep in the most horrible parts of our long, sad story. By reading about Sobia and her husband, and their successful, Pakistani/American marriage. . .and even by reading about the not-so-successful Pakistani/American ventures . . .I was not alone. I knew that there were other people just as crazy and weird as my husband and I (or at least close to it.)
I was kept from total insanity by a pink floral print website. I was able to share pictures, and see pictures of families I will likely never meet in person. In real life, I've only met one family with a Desi husband and a white wife, and when that woman saw me across the crowded Verizon Wireless store, she shouted aloud. We never spoke, so I guess it doesn't count. Without "Sometimes Sobia" I would not know anyone, much less 10 people, who are the same as me. Now, that is not to say that everyone there is there for the reason I was there. In fact, I met people of all different nationalities married to people of the same background or completely different background, another aspect of that forum I will forever miss.
I will miss knowing and talking to people literally all over the world, every single day.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Change and Overcome
Living with your husband for the first time is always a strange experience. Okay, that sounds funny, but think about it, you've lived most of your life with your parents, then in my case, lived for ten years or so alone or with roommates. Living with your husband is something completely different. You share a lot more space than you share with a roommate.
M and I had been married in April, 2006 and arrived home July 1, 2008. We had definitely passed the honeymoon stage! I have decided that the "honeymoon stage" is essential to a good co-habitating experience, without it we were both just a little crazy. On top of that, after two years of marriage, I was in a baby craze. We had both wanted to have a family from the very beginning, but held off because of the living situation. "Baby crazy" is just a little bit too much pressure for a husband and wife truly starting out.
M loved the apartment. He was depressed at having left his best friend Z in Canada, and that added to my stress and frustration. I had expected, naively, for everything to be just perfect and for us to be splendidly happy all of the time. It was so unrealistic, and I know that now, but at the time it made me pretty miserable.
Happily, I found out in August that baby S was on her way and got to calm down about the baby craze which made things a lot better.
But remember? I said M hates change. . .
M and I had been married in April, 2006 and arrived home July 1, 2008. We had definitely passed the honeymoon stage! I have decided that the "honeymoon stage" is essential to a good co-habitating experience, without it we were both just a little crazy. On top of that, after two years of marriage, I was in a baby craze. We had both wanted to have a family from the very beginning, but held off because of the living situation. "Baby crazy" is just a little bit too much pressure for a husband and wife truly starting out.
M loved the apartment. He was depressed at having left his best friend Z in Canada, and that added to my stress and frustration. I had expected, naively, for everything to be just perfect and for us to be splendidly happy all of the time. It was so unrealistic, and I know that now, but at the time it made me pretty miserable.
Happily, I found out in August that baby S was on her way and got to calm down about the baby craze which made things a lot better.
But remember? I said M hates change. . .
Monday, September 13, 2010
Leaving Canada
The day the visa finally arrived, I was a crazy person. M was at work, but I opened the package anyway. I immediately started snapping pictures of the visa inside his passport with my cell phone camera. From Canada I started picture messaging the picture to my family and to M. I kept opening the passport page and running my fingers across the lettering just to make sure it was real.
I really could not help myself. I started trying to hurry M along to leave Montreal. I was so excited for us to go home! his apartment lease was very flexible since he'd lived there for many years, his original lease was up and we did not need to give any notice and it was coincidentally near the end June. I wanted to leave within two weeks. I rationalized it with "saving money" and that was what eventually convinced M to do things my way.
M is not one of those people who like change, even if it is change they've been waiting on for years. Remember, this is the same man who took MONTHS to leave a HORRIBLE situation in Pakistan because he couldn't make a firm decision. I was in Canada because the summer had come and I was off work, but I was so excited to finally show my husband our home. I had spent two years married to a man living in a different country from me. I was excited.
The furniture I had carted to his apartment in Montreal, we decided to "gift" to some of his bachelor friends. The curtains and pillows and all were left out in the garbage pile when we left and as we drove away we noticed families from his neighborhood sifting through it and even taking some "jewels" away. What is funny is that this is not something I would have expected to happen, but M had told me earlier it would. He had laughed when we saw it happening. He was actually excited that something he left behind would find a new home with someone else.
I really could not help myself. I started trying to hurry M along to leave Montreal. I was so excited for us to go home! his apartment lease was very flexible since he'd lived there for many years, his original lease was up and we did not need to give any notice and it was coincidentally near the end June. I wanted to leave within two weeks. I rationalized it with "saving money" and that was what eventually convinced M to do things my way.
M is not one of those people who like change, even if it is change they've been waiting on for years. Remember, this is the same man who took MONTHS to leave a HORRIBLE situation in Pakistan because he couldn't make a firm decision. I was in Canada because the summer had come and I was off work, but I was so excited to finally show my husband our home. I had spent two years married to a man living in a different country from me. I was excited.
The furniture I had carted to his apartment in Montreal, we decided to "gift" to some of his bachelor friends. The curtains and pillows and all were left out in the garbage pile when we left and as we drove away we noticed families from his neighborhood sifting through it and even taking some "jewels" away. What is funny is that this is not something I would have expected to happen, but M had told me earlier it would. He had laughed when we saw it happening. He was actually excited that something he left behind would find a new home with someone else.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
The Biggest Break
It took two weeks to get a response from the consulate. It came in the form of a voicemail message that I received as I drove between the two schools where I taught Spanish. I nearly crashed my car into off the side of the road when I heard the man identify himself and leave a DIRECT number where to contact him with questions. In the message, he directly admitted the error in our case. When I called the number he left, he actually answered the phone. There was no routing message, no secretary, this number led directly to a consular officer. This NEVER happens and would in the end be the only way that our case was ever resolved.
At exactly the six month mark, my husband received confirmation in Montreal that his 212 waiver that I had filed in Buffalo was approved. Luckily, I was in Montreal when the notice arrived, because it did not DIRECTLY just say "approved." It was a long, confusing letter that listed all of the good/bad factors and just said, in the middle of the letter that he was now allowed to pursue his immigrant visa. I had to read it three times before I could tell we had been approved and then I began jumping up and down uncontrollably. It was the biggest rush I had felt in a very, very long time. I was able to get things rolling while there, setting up a new medical exam and prodding M to go and get updated police certificates. The letter was submitted to Montreal via fax and we waited. I emailed them and we waited, they emialed back that it could take 90 days for them to get the notice and to contact them again after that. They also stated we could turn in the updated documents and wait for them to recieve the letter directly from Buffalo USCIS.
Here is where the story gets frustrating (as if it were not already.) We waited 60 days and I started getting antsy. The emails they sent back to me kept saying that the form we were given was "not printed on the right form" to be an approval. Montreal refused to contact Buffalo and when my House Representative's immigration liaison contacted Buffalo, all Buffalo would do is send out a re-printed form, only this time with a date. After waiting this long, I started freaking out. One afternoon in June, the last day of school, I finally called my friend at the Consulate. We had spoken a few times in the between time and he had just told me to be patient. This time was different, I was freaking out. I was ready to cry. Mr. C answered the phone and I explained the whole story about the repeated emails from their consulate, the repeated emails from Buffalo, I was on the verge of crying.
Mr. C acknowledged that it sounded like I was "getting the run-around" but by this time he literally recognized the sound of my voice as soon as he answered the phone and had even stopped calling me by the respectful Mrs. M and started addressing me in an exasperated tone by my first name. He told me that he was going on vacation and was just cleaning things up that day. He decided he would contact the House Rep's liaison directly and at that point stopped talking to me.
Within two hours the House Rep's liaison called me sounding more excited than I had ever heard. She told me that Mr. C had called her and that things were moving. She thought that the visa was going to be issued and was faxing and emailing everything she had from the Buffalo USCIS office. I was too shell shocked to believe it, but I had that excited/nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. The next day, I got another phone message from Mr. C, the visa would be issued before he would ever get back from his two week vacation, I am sure by his own threat of bodily violence to his staff if he ever had to hear my voice again.
In the end, here is how long our case took:
Married April, 2006
Filed App May, 2006
USCIS Approved Aug, 2006
Interview Feb, 2007
New Divorce Cert July, 2007
212 submitted Oct, 2007
AP Over Feb, 2008
212 Approved March, 2008
Updated forms April, 2008
Visa Issued June, 2008
At exactly the six month mark, my husband received confirmation in Montreal that his 212 waiver that I had filed in Buffalo was approved. Luckily, I was in Montreal when the notice arrived, because it did not DIRECTLY just say "approved." It was a long, confusing letter that listed all of the good/bad factors and just said, in the middle of the letter that he was now allowed to pursue his immigrant visa. I had to read it three times before I could tell we had been approved and then I began jumping up and down uncontrollably. It was the biggest rush I had felt in a very, very long time. I was able to get things rolling while there, setting up a new medical exam and prodding M to go and get updated police certificates. The letter was submitted to Montreal via fax and we waited. I emailed them and we waited, they emialed back that it could take 90 days for them to get the notice and to contact them again after that. They also stated we could turn in the updated documents and wait for them to recieve the letter directly from Buffalo USCIS.
Here is where the story gets frustrating (as if it were not already.) We waited 60 days and I started getting antsy. The emails they sent back to me kept saying that the form we were given was "not printed on the right form" to be an approval. Montreal refused to contact Buffalo and when my House Representative's immigration liaison contacted Buffalo, all Buffalo would do is send out a re-printed form, only this time with a date. After waiting this long, I started freaking out. One afternoon in June, the last day of school, I finally called my friend at the Consulate. We had spoken a few times in the between time and he had just told me to be patient. This time was different, I was freaking out. I was ready to cry. Mr. C answered the phone and I explained the whole story about the repeated emails from their consulate, the repeated emails from Buffalo, I was on the verge of crying.
Mr. C acknowledged that it sounded like I was "getting the run-around" but by this time he literally recognized the sound of my voice as soon as he answered the phone and had even stopped calling me by the respectful Mrs. M and started addressing me in an exasperated tone by my first name. He told me that he was going on vacation and was just cleaning things up that day. He decided he would contact the House Rep's liaison directly and at that point stopped talking to me.
Within two hours the House Rep's liaison called me sounding more excited than I had ever heard. She told me that Mr. C had called her and that things were moving. She thought that the visa was going to be issued and was faxing and emailing everything she had from the Buffalo USCIS office. I was too shell shocked to believe it, but I had that excited/nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. The next day, I got another phone message from Mr. C, the visa would be issued before he would ever get back from his two week vacation, I am sure by his own threat of bodily violence to his staff if he ever had to hear my voice again.
In the end, here is how long our case took:
Married April, 2006
Filed App May, 2006
USCIS Approved Aug, 2006
Interview Feb, 2007
New Divorce Cert July, 2007
212 submitted Oct, 2007
AP Over Feb, 2008
212 Approved March, 2008
Updated forms April, 2008
Visa Issued June, 2008
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Getting the 'Scoop'
I figured out pretty quickly that the only way to get information from Islamabad or the Department of State or local offices of USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services, formerly INS. . .) is the dedicated help of elected officials. I enlisted the help of two, one of whom, sadly, has since retired. The retired official's immigration liaison was the most militant lady I think I've ever spoken to. By the time I spoke to her for the first time, I had discussed my case with several prominent attorneys and held my own. I had discussed very intricate sections of law and even introduced a few of them to some new aspects of processing. This lady made me shake in my boots. Everything she did was done in the most "word efficient" way possible. She wanted to know only the most important facts and she wanted to know them quickly. She made it clear that she was only going to help if you were, for lack of a better term, worthy. I felt that every second I was on the phone with her I had to make count.
Before contacting her, I had spent three months waiting on my worthless other Senator's (who unfortunately has not retired) liaison who accomplished less than nothing. I allowed him to work on the case for three months with no news and not a single call back to me. The expedient woman had my case number for three days and I had information back, VALUABLE information. For the USCIS aspect of the case, I had my House Representative's immigration liaison taking care of things. . . I think I just feared asking Ms. Expedient for too much. I was kind of afraid she might abandon me if I became too needy. Through much online research I found that Islamabad typically takes around six months to clear simple stuff and at exactly seven months after we submitted the divorce certificate, the case miraculously came out of administrative processing (aka, black hole of death.)
At that point, the consulate contacted me to tell me that they needed me to file two waivers, a 601 waiver, better known in immigration circles as the "Hardship Waiver" and the I-212, which I knew I had to file, for the expedited removal that I wrote about earlier. I had been preparing for this and immediately started drafting letters explaining why my husband did not need the 601 waiver. . .mostly because he had not broken a law that required the 601 waiver. I worked all day, and once home, was awake until 3:00 in the morning drafting and faxing the letter. It was two pages long, plus evidence, the fax ended up being about five pages. I sent it to the Immigrant Visa Specialist and the Consul General of Montreal. I also sent a hard copy. I then faxed a copy to both my Senator and my House representative to request that they write a letter in support of my letter and attached a copy of the fax I had sent. With all of this done, I settled in for ANOTHER wait.
Before contacting her, I had spent three months waiting on my worthless other Senator's (who unfortunately has not retired) liaison who accomplished less than nothing. I allowed him to work on the case for three months with no news and not a single call back to me. The expedient woman had my case number for three days and I had information back, VALUABLE information. For the USCIS aspect of the case, I had my House Representative's immigration liaison taking care of things. . . I think I just feared asking Ms. Expedient for too much. I was kind of afraid she might abandon me if I became too needy. Through much online research I found that Islamabad typically takes around six months to clear simple stuff and at exactly seven months after we submitted the divorce certificate, the case miraculously came out of administrative processing (aka, black hole of death.)
At that point, the consulate contacted me to tell me that they needed me to file two waivers, a 601 waiver, better known in immigration circles as the "Hardship Waiver" and the I-212, which I knew I had to file, for the expedited removal that I wrote about earlier. I had been preparing for this and immediately started drafting letters explaining why my husband did not need the 601 waiver. . .mostly because he had not broken a law that required the 601 waiver. I worked all day, and once home, was awake until 3:00 in the morning drafting and faxing the letter. It was two pages long, plus evidence, the fax ended up being about five pages. I sent it to the Immigrant Visa Specialist and the Consul General of Montreal. I also sent a hard copy. I then faxed a copy to both my Senator and my House representative to request that they write a letter in support of my letter and attached a copy of the fax I had sent. With all of this done, I settled in for ANOTHER wait.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Administrative Processing
*Reader Note* While this post is not all that impressive, I just updated the dates because I started writing it on May 21. Life is a really, really busy place!
The second divorce certificate was submitted to the US Consulate in Montreal, July 2005. Immediately our case was put into "Administrative Processing" which is a scary thing when you're dealing with US Immigration and a Pakistani-born immigrant. The petitioner (me) has no way of knowing why the case is in AP or how long it will take. There are no guarantees and the Department of State uses "National Security" as an excuse to blow off any inquiries or questions one may ask.
By August, I was freaking out. It took me a long time to figure out what exactly what was going on with the case because the US Consulate and the Department of State do not like to just give you information on your case. . .they make you work for it. I tried one of my Senate Immigration liaisons and gave him two months to try to get a response. I would call him back every two weeks, he would promise to follow up and call me back and then would never call me back. After two months of that, I made an inquiry through then Republican Immigration liaison to Senator John Warner. This woman was intimidating as Hell, but she was the most efficient and effective representative EVER. Within seven days she had a response and more information than I could have ever hoped for along with LEVERAGE!
She slipped in telling me that the AP was for "Document Verification." They did not tell her what type of document they meant, but I already knew that information, and that meant that my AP was finite, because it was not security checks! There are no words for how excited that made me. It was leverage because the more you already know when you call the Department of State, the more information they will give you. All I had to do was call and say, "I know that the case is undergoing AP to verify the divorce certificate I submitted to Montreal on. . . .Could you tell me what stage it is in?" Or, "can you tell me the last day a note was made on the case?" or "Can you see if the case has been returned to Montreal yet?"
I was able to find out that the rest of the case stayed in Montreal, while only the divorce certificate was sent to the US Embassy in Islamabad. In September I had a moment where I was discussing the case with M and told him (only half joking) that they were checking up on him for me and that if he was still married to some woman in Pakistan they'd let me know . . .he took it waaaaay too seriously and got all offended.
I now found myself spending time trying to get information from Islamabad, but if you've ever done that you know how futile it is. I sent them an email and within 10 minutes had a reply. They had SO MANY cases undergoing Administrative Processing that they give you an automated response ANY TIME you email them saying that they will not respond to emails sent before your case has been in administrative processing for 180 days or more. You know what I discovered?
They don't respond after 180 days either.
The second divorce certificate was submitted to the US Consulate in Montreal, July 2005. Immediately our case was put into "Administrative Processing" which is a scary thing when you're dealing with US Immigration and a Pakistani-born immigrant. The petitioner (me) has no way of knowing why the case is in AP or how long it will take. There are no guarantees and the Department of State uses "National Security" as an excuse to blow off any inquiries or questions one may ask.
By August, I was freaking out. It took me a long time to figure out what exactly what was going on with the case because the US Consulate and the Department of State do not like to just give you information on your case. . .they make you work for it. I tried one of my Senate Immigration liaisons and gave him two months to try to get a response. I would call him back every two weeks, he would promise to follow up and call me back and then would never call me back. After two months of that, I made an inquiry through then Republican Immigration liaison to Senator John Warner. This woman was intimidating as Hell, but she was the most efficient and effective representative EVER. Within seven days she had a response and more information than I could have ever hoped for along with LEVERAGE!
She slipped in telling me that the AP was for "Document Verification." They did not tell her what type of document they meant, but I already knew that information, and that meant that my AP was finite, because it was not security checks! There are no words for how excited that made me. It was leverage because the more you already know when you call the Department of State, the more information they will give you. All I had to do was call and say, "I know that the case is undergoing AP to verify the divorce certificate I submitted to Montreal on. . . .Could you tell me what stage it is in?" Or, "can you tell me the last day a note was made on the case?" or "Can you see if the case has been returned to Montreal yet?"
I was able to find out that the rest of the case stayed in Montreal, while only the divorce certificate was sent to the US Embassy in Islamabad. In September I had a moment where I was discussing the case with M and told him (only half joking) that they were checking up on him for me and that if he was still married to some woman in Pakistan they'd let me know . . .he took it waaaaay too seriously and got all offended.
I now found myself spending time trying to get information from Islamabad, but if you've ever done that you know how futile it is. I sent them an email and within 10 minutes had a reply. They had SO MANY cases undergoing Administrative Processing that they give you an automated response ANY TIME you email them saying that they will not respond to emails sent before your case has been in administrative processing for 180 days or more. You know what I discovered?
They don't respond after 180 days either.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
