The Trip

It's been almost a year now since I first traveled to Pakistan. By nature, I am a planner, but I am also a procrastinator. And I can tell you two things I've learned about my husband in the last eight years: He does not pack for trips, he does not plan ahead.

The night before our trip I was packing until 2:00 in the morning. I then got up at 6:30 am to go to work. I left work early that day because I had an open block in the afternoon and had to pack the car. We had decided that for a very cheap fare, we would fly from New York city, and so, we rented a van to carry the absolutely crazy-huge suitcases into which we had packed gifts and food for the baby. Keep in mind that baby S was eleven months old at this time and was kind of particular about the type of food she ate. There was this irrational fear I had that we would not be able to find anything in Karachi to buy that she would eat. Sooooo, we packed baby food jars and bottled water and extra bottles.

I told you I am a planner. It was my plan to take thos disposable bottles that Playtex makes with drop-in liners so that we would not be trying to boil bottles at all hours of the night. (Even my in-laws balk at the idea of washing a baby's bottle in regular tap water in Karachi.) In my frenzy to pack everything, I packed the bottles, and did not pack the liners. Out the window went my great plans. I ended up in Karachi with one, yes ONE, Avent bottle. It took four days to find a store to buy another bottle to save me some washings.

We drove to New York and arrived at our hotel at 1:30 in the morning. We had to be up the next morning at 6:00 am to make our flight. Our flight was to go through Dubai, UAE and the first leg was to be a 13 hour flight. We would have a layover in Dubai for three hours and then take a 2 hour flight to Karachi.

By the time our flight began, having slept less than seven hours in two days, I was exhausted. S slept quite a bit on the plane, when she was in the bassinett provided on the plane, but someone was supposed to monitor her at all times and when she was on my lap, in an airplane seat, there was no sleep. I had this nutty stewardess too who kept making me take her out of the bassinett and buckle her into my seat with me. By the time we stopped in Dubai, my headache had begun, and we weren't even there yet!

A Teacher's Rant

People choose to become teachers for a lot of different reasons. From the time that I was a small child, I wanted to be a teacher. It started in the first grade when my teacher read us "Charlotte's Web." It was the first "chapter book" I had ever heard and it was magic to me when it became the first book of that length I ever read on my own. The sense of pride I felt at being able to open that world for myself, the gratitude at being taught to read, I wanted to give that to other people. I tutored all throughout my elementary and middle school years.

By the time I got to high school I had changed my mind about being a teacher a few times. My family became involved in emergency medical services, everyone was a Paramedic and I wandered into that world and dedicating my time to medical careers. I never stopped teaching, but spent my time teaching CPR classes and precepting (training) other EMT's.

I spent a lot of my time during school, evaluating and re-planning lessons that I saw. I thought a lot about how I would have done something differently or how much "fun" teaching a certain lesson might be.

I have never met anyone who became a teacher for the money, and anyone who says they did it because teachers have "summers off" was joking.

Politicians and more prevelantly, "journalists" have been balking at the "high salary" and "outrageous" benefits given to public school teachers for such an "easy" job. They further complain about teachers having the summer off and leaving work "at 2:30."

I would like to go on record as saying that I'm not sure which teachers these guys are talking to, but I, for one, do not leave work at 2:30 and have a lot more responsibilities than this gentleman seems to think. They quote the average salary as $51,000 and benefits packages at $27,000. Those numbers must be inflated, because I am nowhere in the ballpark of those figures after five years of teaching. That is all I will say.

I do have a few challenges for these "journalists." I would really like them to go and teach journalism classes (six per term) in a normal public school. I would like for them to forego their journalist salary, and take on the teacher salary they would earn for their respective degrees (Glen Beck you don't qualify, because I hear you didn't attend. . . .) I want them to have "normal" class sizes, be responsible for all parent contacts that a normal teacher would have, the grading practices of a normal teacher, the meeting ratio and continuing education requirements of a normal teacher.

I would like for them to have the same reporting requirements, and the same peer observation requirements. The only difference is that I would like for there to be a REAL journalism teacher present in an observational capacity, so that someone will be there when the journalist runs screaming out of a room of thirty-three 15-18 year olds.

I really try my best not to talk about topics that I am not knowledgeable about. I really feel personally attacked each time one of these journalists balks at teachers wanting class size limits or when they say how lazy teachers are. I take very personally the attacks on teachers.


*I apologize for this post and promise to get back to the Pakistan trip soon.*

The Eye Roll--or--Still not Quite Accepted

If you've read past the first page of archived posts, you know that I have a very personal and deep interest in intercultural marriages and the effects on both sides of the family. For some reason, this last few days I've been reading up on other blogs talking about the difficulties people have faced in intercultural, interreligious marriages and it reminded me of my first trip to Pakistan.

Yes folks, I went to Pakistan. M was pretty against it for a long time. He actually tried to talk me out of it. I just kept looking for tickets. It was really important to me to see his city, to know where he was born and where he grew up. All this time of not having experienced Karachi made me feel like there was a part of M that I did not know. . . like there was a bit of a puzzle missing and I am a real type-A personality. I must complete the puzzle.

M still laughs now, months later about my determination to visit Karachi. He and I were watching the notorious "Not Without my Daughter" opening scenes where the husband begs his wife to go to Iran with him. She fights back insisting that it is not safe and he tries to convince her over and over of his ability to protect her. M just looked at me with feigned astonishment at this scene, "What in the world did I marry?" he said. "He's standing there begging her to go, and I was begging you not to. . ."

Anyway, this leads me to what M considers an American cultural phenomenon, eye rolling. He is certain that he has never seen a Pakistani woman roll her eyes at anyone. It would be too disrespectful, he asserts. . . .it would never happen.

I let him argue this way for several weeks before I finally said, "I've met your mother, and she is a really good eye roller." At his insistence, I gave him an example.

We went to Pakistan in April. Our trip ended on our wedding anniversary. His family, thinking I could not understand their Urdu, told his mother, "Ammi, this week they've been married for four years! This is their anniversary." Her response, a large eye roll, tilted head and pulling tighter her duppatta. At the time, I overlooked it, but now it is one of my strongest memories of the trip.

Karachi really is a beautiful place, by the way :-) I will have to write more about it soon!

Pakistani Holidays

Every marriage is interesting when you try to mix traditions, but when you try to mix staunchly American and Pakistani traditions, when mixed with Christian and Muslim traditions, it is more than interesting, maybe better described as mind boggling.

I really thought that after all my husband and I had been through together we knew each other well, but it occurs to me, that you cannot know anyone completely, EVER.

One of my best friends is married to a German man, they are both fairly agnostic and knew each other for about eight years before deciding to get married. We had a conversation recently about how many things she has now discovered, five years into the marriage, after having two children, that she would have never expected.

I feel the same way she does. M and I have been married for almost five years now. We have baby S. We've celebrated Eids together and Christmases together. We've put up a Christmas tree, after a HUGE disagreement, I've bought Eid gifts and helped him pick out new clothes for the baby--part of the tradition. I've learned about the Eidee tradition (and taken full advantage of it!) and I've tried my best to be respectful and helpful. This year, my husband volunteered "his wife" to make food for the entire mosque for the breaking of the fast during Ramadan one night. Since they wanted fried chicken, he figured it should be right up my alley.

Forget the fact that they also wanted vegetable pullao, which until that day I had never made, and that we were to feed at least 100 people. One-hundred people! Thank God for my mother, we pulled off the chicken and I extorted a rice maker from my husband for the pullao!

This brings me to Christmas, largely ignored by my husband. This, normally, wouldn't be a problem but this year my parents had to celebrate with us on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas day and this confused my husband. This year is particularly important to my parents because baby S is finally old enough to open their presents and ooh and ahh over them. But my husband, suddenly felt that tradition was being broken by not celebrating on Christmas starting a conversation about whether or not he supports my traditions in the same way that I celebrate his. Cue his *remembering* Iftari dinner and my mother's contributions and how it came to be that I received $200 in twenty dollar bills as my Christmas present. . . .

I think there might still be a culture gap.

Chopping Tomatoes

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!

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.

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. . .