Hello, anyone who tumbles by this page

I hope everyone is doing better than me!  I'm now a law school graduate, waiting on bar results to tell me whether I get to practice law.  I can tell you, I'm a wreck!

I'm writing today to get anyone who will, to take a look at this documentary.  It deserves a lot of attention and maybe someone will see who can help get this case moving instead of continuing to be stuck in its multi-year limbo.  Take a look, it will surprise you:

School Progress

Well, I survived the first year of law school! There were a few moments where I thought I might not. The biggest problem for going back to school with a young daughter is the money aspect. Every day I read a new article or survey talking about how the legal market is saturated and that law school graduates are having difficulty finding jobs. . . so I began to worry that I was making a huge mistake. The stress was made worse by the fact that I did not have a summer job lined up. Most of my classmates had the same issue, but they were able to take volunteer positions where they would gain connections and experience.

 Some of them were able because they happen to be independently wealthy (not my situation) and others because they still live with parents, and others because my school awards summer stipends of around $2,000 to people who volunteer for the summer in legal positions. $2,000 for three months was nowhere near enough for me to be able to do it. At the last possible moment I got a call from the career services department at my school. I had, the week before, gone in and basically begged them to help me find a suitable summer job.

Fortuitously, a medium sized firm with a large immigration department called the career services office within days of my visit. The CSO remembered me and I was basically offered the job over the phone. I went in for an interview and have been working there for nearly two months. It is the best possible job for the summer for me AND the BEST part is that it continues into the school year as a part-time job! The job changed my entire outlook and M's too. M would never say anything to worry me, but I think he'd started to think I had made a mistake too. It was a huge change for his mood when I got the job and liked it.

 Such a great thing! Baby S is not such a baby anymore. She recently turned three years old and is amazing. The only sad thing is that she is abandoning speaking in Urdu. She speaks English like an old pro and understands Urdu whenever it is spoken to her, but she refuses to speak any to her Baba. This is with one exception, when I tell her something to tell her Baba in Urdu, she does it! If I tell her, "Tell Baba, 'ajao'" she'll do it. . . .and if I tell her to tell him to hurry, as long as I, say "jeldi" she'll say it too! She does love telling her Baba what to do!

School

I decided, a while ago to go to law school. I got addicted to the research of M's immigration situation and thought that it would be really cool to actually know what the heck I was talking about for a change. This was how I set out on the journey to law school.

I thought about it for years, but the month S was born, I became certain, just certain I had to try it and decided. . .on a whim. . .to take the law school admissions test (LSAT). The LSAT is not the type of test you take on a whim. It is the kind of test you practice for. It is the kind of test that decides not just IF you get to go to law school, but how much law school is going to cost you.

I signed up just after S was born and ordered a study guide and two practice tests (yes two). The test was about five-six weeks later, and since I was late in registering, I had to sign up for a test about 70 miles away from home. You can imagine how much studying I got done with a one-month-old.

The night before the test, S was up until 3 am. I got up, dutifully, at 6:00 am to go and take my test. Can you imagine what a silly idea that was?!

So my score was okay. Not scholarship worthy, just ok, and I decided to take the test again. This time I registered early and orderd more than 15 practice tests and three different coaching books. There are prep classes for the LSAT, but they were too expensive for me.

In the end, my score was pretty good and I got into a nice law school, with a nice discounted tuition.

You know college brochures? Those pictures of co-eds sitting on a nicely groomed lawn, working together. . .people playing frisbee. . .perfect trees and impossible architecture? I thought those were fake, but now, I go to THAT SCHOOL. Today, it was nearly 80 degrees in my city and the lawn was absolutely covered in co-eds chatting on the lawn and even reading textbooks. (Am I the only person who never experienced that in undergrad?)

Baby S Enters the Christmas Battle

haha, I say that to add drama. There's never really been a Cbristmas battle, but there's always been this lingering fear that one might appear. To set the record straight, baby S is firmly in the "pro-Christmas" column. Oddly, M is pretty far in the pro-Christmas column too, but he is loathe to admit it.

There is a fair amount of debate about how much Christmas is okay between American Muslims, specifically the ones I talk to (lol), this time of year. I've heard the "It's not okay to celebrate any holidays that are not specifically Islamic" I've heard, "Is it okay to accept Christmas gifts from American friends?" My husband is totally okay with accepting gifts from his American family and baby S is right there with him. (He sometimes wonders if what he is doing is totally okay, but the receipt of his favorite colognes and clothing straight from me allays his fears. . . .)

S is very excited. This year she is two and a half years old and knows exactly what her job will be on Christmas morning. She walks around telling family members about how SHE bought them a Christmas present. She adores the lights and snowment and is enamored with the mall Santa Clauses. My parents took her to a work Christmas party and Santa arrived on a fire truck and distributed gifts. She now has a beloved "Pandy" named after a sub-character on "Kai-Lan". This only made her newfound love of Christmas stronger.

The battle I speak of, truly comes down to the Christmas tree. Baby S sees the one at my parents' house and wants to know, "Where's OUR Christmas tree Momma??" My husband, normally her fervent slave, continually manages to not bring it out of storage. Before baby S we alternated between having one and not having one, and this year it seems very important to him that we do not display one. I'm not sure if it is his attempt to make sure she realizes that our family is "different" or what exactly. I've actually asked, but he just shrugs it off and says he'll take it out soon.

This really is not a battle though, because I don't mind at all. I think it is great that the baby gets to celebrate her "American" "Christian" holidays and her Islamic ones as well. I'm happy that he does not mind letting her hang out with my family and celebrate the way that they love to celebrate. Frankly, I love seeing how excited she's getting for the holidays and how her eyes light up at the sight of the gifts and Christmas lights and everything that goes with the season. I'm especially proud each time she reminds me that we need to buy someone specific a gift or she clamors to help wrap one. Totally fun.

Language Barrier (or Jobs M will never do . . .)

It was a very surreal experience to wake up in someone else's house. . . .in PAKISTAN. I could hear S playing somewhere, but there was no one else in the house where I had been sleeping. I had pulled up these velvety cushions on the floor and M's Aunty had given me a blanket to sleep with. I found my way out of the house and out of the room and found M and S pretty easily and the baby was obviously happy surrounded by all of these cousins.

In the house where we stayed there were two young cousins, both boys. S was 11 months old when we went and the boys were 4 and 8. S was getting tons of attention and everyone was doting on her. I still had a headache, but M armed me with a 1.5 Liter bottle of water, and that helped quite a bit. I found myself trying my best to smile, widely, at everyone. I am, to this day, unable to string coherent sentences together in Urdu, but could understand most of what was said in Urdu. The problem was that the people in M's family tend to switch to Hindko when in the company of family. And then, M has friends who speak Punjabi and/or Pashto. . . so I was lost quite a bit.

M's best friend was married to a quite educated woman (I later discovered this was the cousin involved in arranging M's first marriage. . .the one who wanted to marry a woman whose family would not consent unless M married the particular woman he did. . . ) It became evident over the course of the trip that this friend felt like he "owed" M something. He became our voluntary chauffeur, refusing to allow us to take a taxi or rent a car for any trip we took. He took days off work and took us to meet family, invited us to dinner in his home, took us on shopping tours and even enlisted the help of his wife in negotiating bangle prices for me (haha.)

I felt guilty for a lot of the trip for not knowing the language. M's sister also tried to speak to me in the English that she knew, and we got quite good at using hand signals.

I learned, on this trip, that M is a HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE. . .I would say nearly worthless, translator.

Okay, back to the trip. . .

Trying to gather all of our luggage together was absolutely nuts. There was a porter (or five to ten of them) jockeying to try and "help" us with our luggage. M was really wary of these guys, apparently having had a bad experience with them in the past. Everything went really fast once we managed to find our luggage.

I turned around and suddenly family members were everywhere and M's youngest brother had grabbed baby S. The next thing I know M's mother had her hands on my face and was hugging me and saying a lot of things in Hindko. She was a few inches taller than me and had a long, thin face. I was still looking frantically around to find the baby, but M's brother had gotten way ahead of us. All of this was exacerbated by the fact that I really had no idea who was who.

M's mother grabbed my hand and started walking quickly towards the exit. I was a little delirious at this point, probably from dehydration, so I just tried to smile as much as possible and follow along. It was hot when we left the building, but it was a dry heat, something I'm not really used. Having grown up in the southern portion of the United States, I've always lived in places known for humidity. . .so this was a bit different experience. M was smiling widely, and I must admit, from his hesitation before the trip, I was a bit surprised. There were two men besides M's brother and he didn't bother to introduce them. I was later told they were cousins.

M's family had gotten a tiny van to carry us from the airport, but it only fit our luggage and three people all squeezed together. Truth be told, no one bothered to tell me what was happening, but we were walking for a block or two to a parking lot to grab a taxi. M's mother was holding on to me most of the way and trying desperately to dote on baby S. Beyond my headache, this was encouraging.

The headache, my most major mistake for the trip, will be something I try to fix next trip. I've read since then that airplanes are some of the dryest climates we face (lol)and I did not pre-hydrate at all. Also, the stewardesses on the plane, while very polite, were too busy to deliver refreshments for the largest part of our 16 hour flight. Since there are restrictions on how much water you can bring through security (as in none) I'll be forced to make a large investment in bottled water from the stores in the airport after we pass through security.

As it was, I was so nauseous and dizzy by the time that we reached M's home, I ended up sleeping in one of M's uncle's houses, next door. He had an airconditioner in his sitting room and offered it up for me to nap. M and baby S socialized and I slept in the uncle's floor, for how long, I will never know, but when I woke up, M's brother had arrived with a delivery man to install our very own airconditioner in the room M, S and I would be staying!

Good Tidings of Great Joy

Today, my father-in-law called. He does not call often, in fact, it only happens once every two, sometimes three years. It is never "good" news when he called. . .unless you can count today.

Today, he called to tell M that the youngest brother in the family is getting married. He is the last in the family to do so. M's youngest brother is "W." W met the lady on the train last month. He was on the way with my MIL to the nephew's wedding in Lahore. On the train he "fell in love." He and the family have decided he will get married next month.

We are not invited to the wedding. . . but we are. . . .

hmmmmmmmm, what is the right word? "Requested?" "Ordered?" Hmmmmm, not sure. . .

We don't need to come, but should send $2,000 to pay for the wedding.

Can anyone explain to me exactly how I'm supposed to react to that?


:/

Presuppositions

My biggest fear on this trip was how the in-laws would behave. If you've read the beginning pages of the blog, you understand that my in-laws could never be considered "fans." I kept running scenarios through my head where I was separated from my husband for too long or where they were just plain mean.

I convinced myself that this was the absolute best trip we could have ever planned. The baby was eleven months old (and terribly, terribly cute.) I figured there was no way they wouldn't like her, and thus she would turn all of the negative energy they had for me, into positive energy for her. Since it was my first intercontinental trip, we were to visit for only ten days. This was another thing that worried me, since M's last trip (scheduled for two weeks) lasted nearly five months. M did not tell them how long we were staying, and this scared me. I had this nightmare that they would push M into staying longer or refuse to take us back to the airport causing me to miss work and/or lose my job.

What actually happened was amazing. When we arrived, Karachi International Airport was not nearly the huge, busy airport I had imagined. M had told me stories of the separate lines for returning citizens and for foreign citizens, and those lines were nothing like what he had described. The officers spoke a funny kind of English asking jumbled up questions that they expected me to understand. M finally tried to just talk to them in Urdu and they resisted, jumbling up more English phrases. One example, "What is your good name?" It literally took me four repetitions to understand what he was saying. I mean, when was the last time someone asked you for your good name? I had also been up for hours and must have looked like I had been run over by a train.

I had changed into salwar kameez on the layover in Dubai and felt very, very out of place in my sandals. It did not matter that everyone else was wearing salwar kameez, I felt like an elephant in my bright, new shiny outfit as compared to the normal everyday wear around me. This is always exacerbated by the fact that my husband insists on wearing western slacks and outfits, EVERYWHERE, our home, our wedding, PAKISTAN.

Each officer was dressed in green uniform that resembled the Pakistani army uniforms I had seen on television. The biggest surprise was that one of the customs agents was a hijab wearing woman. When we got to the desk, in my muddled Urdu understanding, I could tell that the male customs agent next to us, while interviewing someone re-entering Pakistan, was on his cell phone, trying to finagle a visitor's visa to the United States.

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. . .

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.

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

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.

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.

Side Step

For just a moment, I'd like to take a leap faaaar into the future. Today is baby S's first birthday and I've been having flashbacks to the day she was born for the last three days!

Having a baby, while a beautiful experience, is stressful in a lot of ways and when you have the huge differences in culture involved that M and I have, it can be made even more stressful. When I first told M that I was pregnant, he panicked. I am not talking about a little freak out, I am talking about major panic, household crisis.

M wanted children, yes. He knew that we were planning for children, yes. He just apparently did not realize that it could actually. . .happen. As time went on there were larger and smaller panic moments, for instance, the day we found out the baby was a girl and M silently disappeared for several hours only to return with 20 pounds of beef. Yes, I said BEEF. I still have no explanation for what happened there.

Over the course of the pregnancy, we discussed how things would go for the delivery. We knew that I would have to have a Cesarean ahead of time and I informed M that he would have to be in the delivery room. He balked and was nervous about it and many times told me that he would not do it, but I never took him seriously. The difference in birthing habits culturally is huge. I've heard friends from Pakistan talk about the mother spending the weeks leading up to and the weeks immediately after delivery with her parents and as M relates it, the man is DEFINITELY NOT expected to be in the room.

My Cesarean was scheduled for the morning of May 7, 2009 and M felt that he would be prepared. He still joked that he wasn't going in with me, but I knew that with the advance warning and preparation, he would be fine. Saturday, May 2 and Sunday, May 3would be my last chance to get the house prepared for the baby to come. I spent all day Saturday cleaning the house and cooking byriani and haleem and spaghetti. The haleem would be done Sunday morning, the byriani was done around 5:00 and M wanted to take some to his buddies at work, and a friend who was visiting. These visits usually last for hours so I just kept checking the haleem and doing laundry, and cleaning the house.

Here I was, days before my planned birth running up and down the stairs with big boxes of laundrey and three meals cooking in the kitchen. I was feeling SO well organized! So prepared! Just after M left I noticed some signs of labor. I pushed them aside as being to minor. . .called my parents who encouraged me to call my doctor. Talked on the phone with my bestest friend who begged me to call the doctor. She told her mother, who called and scolded me for NOT calling the doctor. So, under pressure, I paged my doctor directly, she did not answer. I paged again an hour later, she did not answer. I took it as a sign, but my father, did not. By this time, a normally very mobile, active baby was not moving at all and had not for hours. He demanded that I call the on-call physician who listened apparently, to the first part of what I said and told me that there was nothing wrong and that I should wait a few hours and call back.

I called M and told him about the ruckus (downplaying a little, not wanting to cause a panic) and he told me he'd be coming home soon and not to worry. An hour later, no M. I called the hospital again and the nurse said that the doctor had told her to tell me to come in and be evaluated if I called back. . .still no M. So I called him back, 10:30pm and told him we needed to go to the hospital. . .sounding annoyed, he told me he'd be on his way home soon. . .

At 11:30 when M was not yet home I called him and absolutely tore into him no longer downplaying or being calm. It was just before midnight when we got to the hospital. There was construction all around and the normal entrances (I am a Paramedic, you'd think I could figure out how to get into the hospital. ..) were all closed. The Labor and Delivery was closed at 8:00. . the emergency room entrance blockaded by cones and "Do not cross" tape. M was mad. Mostly he couldn't see past the fact that I had yelled at him on the phone and that though he'd been up since 5 am I was dragging him to the hospital to be "checked out" for something the doctore said was "nothing." Frustrated, I stomped back to the car and called my dad. I told him that the doors were all locked, we couldn't find an entrance and that I was taking this as a sign that God did not want me there tonight. By the way, I DROVE TO AND FROM the hospital.

We got all the way home while my father berrated me for leaving the hospital. He told me that I was acting crazy and that if I did not turn around and go back he was leaving work and driving the hour to my town to MAKE me go. THIS is what convinced M that I needed to go to the hospital. . . .and so we drove back. We went to the non-emergency entrance and found construction signs saying it was now the emergency entrance. We were registered (while my water was continuously breaking) and I was forced to sit and calmly sign all the paperwork--they even asked for my $500 copay. . .

In the room, the nurse did her tests as M dozed on the daddy couch. The nurse confirmed that my water had broken and told me that the surgery would be moved to the next morning around 7am. We discussed a few questions back and forth before M looked up, oblivious and asked, "So when are we going home?"