Hi Boys

That peace sign is more than enough salaam, thanks...

Dear Boys:

Please I would appreciate it greatly if you would not hit on me. Please. I realize that it is possible that my loud eye-makeuped, skinny-jeaned, laugh-out-loud-while-texting, nail-biting-while-reading-Howard-Zinn, boom-swagger-swagger, big-earinged, bescarfed person is some variety of charming, or mysterious. Or even tempting. That’s even kind of on purpose, I won’t lie to you.

Nevertheless, I am taking this opportunity to ask you – tell you – to please ignore the fact. Once upon a time I was a dowdy, buck-toothed, frizzy-haired twelve-year-old in overalls. Just pretend that’s still true.

If you happen to see me laughing while on the phone with a friend walking down the street, or reading a book of philosophy next to you in a cafe, or strolling with my parents, for God’s sake don’t mention how cute I am doing any of those things. Or whatever adjective happens to come to mind. It would be nice if you just kept that to yourself.

And if you have half a care, definitely don’t ask if I want more coffee.

You should pay all of these little advices – entreatments – a great deal more mind if you happen to be charming. Or good-looking. Or a little bit hipster. Or nerdy. Or vegetarian. Or you ride a bike. Or you have some kind of interesting career. Or a nice low beard. Or – God forbid – all of the above. Just keep a nice, generous distance. Over there behind the bushes where I’m unlikely to notice that you exist. I appreciate your effort.

The problem with you not following any of this (or all of this) advice is that, well, I like you. I’ve liked you for a long time. In fact, I don’t think I remember a time when I didn’t like boys. I’m a big, devoted fan.

Nevertheless:  It stops right here.

Look, fine, okay, I get it, you like me back. We’ve established that. And, really, it’s flattering. And look, if things were different, your efforts would probably pay off a lot more. But things being as they are, this good, bescarfed, laughing girl is trying to stay just that: good. Y’hear? And you all don’t make it easy, with all your beards and t-shirts and eyeing me all the time. I can’t handle it, dig? A girl can only take so much.

I’ve given you your chance. I think if you examine the record you will find that I have been more than fair. I’ve spent years looking all kinds of cute, letting you hit on me in whatever venue you choose, and I’ve been responsive, Lord knows. So don’t tell me that you haven’t had your day in the sun. But it ends here.

I have my reasons. It’s not really personal. Actually it’s not personal at all. I just need some me time. Kinda like Fergie.

Look. I don’t know if it’s the way I was raised, or if it was my extremely dysfunctional first boyfriend, or any other of the plethora of things that could have mussed up a nice girl’s psyche coming of age in the late 90’s and early 00’s, but – I don’t insist on enough. And I like you. Too much.

The problem with me and you, frankly, is that I’m very good at you. On average, you are less adept at me. Meaning…meaning what. Meaning some girls are the girls that give girls a bad name. Some girls are crazy and high-maintenance and nagging and picky and helpless…except when you can’t find a parking spot, and they suddenly turn into Parking Space Backseat Hawks. Then there are the nice girls. You have nothing bad to say about them. Nobody has anything bad to say about them. They’re kind of girls you take home to meet your mother. And there is the third type. Rarer than the first two by far; this small, magical sisterhood manages to redeem the word “girl” for the masses, never to be lost to the ranks of insult. Purely because we are fascinating, you crave our company, and you always will. I am of this third category. You laugh; it is no small feat, let me tell you. There’s a reason most of us don’t turn out like that.

So before we sit back and celebrate, or admire, just how rare and alluring a flower I really am, let’s talk about you for a second. Or rather, me and you. Me with you.

One of the setbacks of engineering with this whole extraordinary-and-rare-woman system is that we are, by nature, low-maintenance. And usually optimistic. So you say something; we believe your word. Whatever world you spin up for us the first chance you get, we believe wholeheartedly that it is real. It takes a lot of reality not being that way for us to realize that we may have been a bit rash.

So you see, we have a problem. I believe you. You come all kinds of charming and tell me how sweet I look laughing or you earnestly want to know if I’ve discovered the secret to life in that book I’m buried in…you know what? I don’t have much armor to defend myself from these attacks. I was so busy all this time paying attention to myself and whether or not I was reasonable, or patient, or kind, or friendly, or whatever – I forget to pay attention to your end of things. And of course you’ve mastered charming. Who hasn’t? You know how to say a lot of pretty things. And I’m pretty, so I make it extra super easy for you.

But I’ve wised up, and I’m here to tell you so. It’s not that you’re not good guys. I’m sure you are, down to the very last one. But I have things to take care of. I’ve got to move, and get ready for law school, and then I’ve got to kick a lot of butt while I’m there. And I have to be writing the whole time. I don’t have time to be messing around wondering whether or not you are objectively worthy of one of the most extra special varieties of woman postmodernity has cooked up. That takes a lot of mental gymnastics. And, let’s be real, you had your chance. I’ve been an un-law student for many a year now. And…my defenses are, quite frankly, down.

So you just stop before you utter a single word, and look away, and find some other super woman to be your girlfriend. I hereby drop out of the running. And hey – thanks.

Ever not-yours,

Muppie

Hot hipster lovin’

Saturday morning in a Somerville cafe: in stroll the hipsters. They come for the open doors, the walls covered in art, the outdoor patio and killer fritattas…who knows why they come? Maybe they just happen to be the people living within a stone’s throw of The Biscuit, our favorite closes-too-early-because-of-course-I-forgot-I-live-in-Boston spot. Anyway, in they stroll in their unwashed-hair, unmatching-in-a-surprisingly-fetching-way splendor.

Raise your hand if you don't want to be one of the people in this picture...didn't think so.

I’m, well, ungracefully trying not to stare at these gum-chewing dislays of companionable affection and discipline myself into reading a novel that I am not enjoying one bit. People-watching proves to be the far more compelling pastime (why do I end up feeling like every time I read a novel translated into English it’s full of unnecessarily exhibitionistic excalamations of premature emotion?), and Snow gets ignored, sitting closed by my cooling coffee.

The most charmingly in love couple takes the table next to me (!) before they place their orders. The man is sitting opposite me, and as his girl stands next to him (to better see the menu), he sort of absentmindedly lets one hand travel up and down the inside of the thigh closest to him. She seems not to notice – absorbed instead by the sandwich selections. Embarrassed to be intruding on such an intimate moment, I avert my gaze, yet again, back to my disappointing literature.

Later on, these two chat about some common project on their (shared?) overgrown Mac. He leans over as if to kiss her cheek – doesn’t – whispers something in her ear, and BAM. They disappear.

I start to think about this. At work, we’ve just finished a house meeting campaign, which basically means that we’ve gone around and asked hundreds of people who are part of the Boston Muslim community what issues they’re facing. These were both among the top issues:

1. getting married (as in, we’re having trouble doing it)

2. staying married (as in, we’re having trouble doing it)

And looking at my idealized fantasy of hipster love, I’m wondering if a little of this ain’t what we’re missing:

Matching, hugging, absorbing L-O-V-E.

Now one could argue that this is, for a lot of reasons, not the appropriate model for Muslim relationships. I’m going to ignore that whole side of it for now, hoping you’ll forgive me – as I explore What the Hipsters Have and We Don’t.

Speaking with some of my (not that much older) married friends, these are prominent commentaries on marriage (slash advice):

1. People think that married people don’t get lonely. Married people are often really lonely.

2. Dishes. Every day. Be prepared to do them. And be prepared that he won’t.

3. You should be picky, because this is the man you’re going to obey for the rest of your life.

Fantastic! Where do I sign up?

And then I’m looking around me at all the marriageable people, and I’m thinking, No freaking wonder we’re still single. I mean, here we are, for better or worse, completely immersed in a culture that not only prizes romantic love very highly, but displays it prominently – both in person and in the media. I don’t need Disney to form a warped, idealistic picture of romance – I have the thigh-touching, whispering, disappearing hipsters next to me. So we’re trapped – maybe not unpleasantly – in a world in love, surrounded by a bunch of married Muslims who are either not in love with each other, or who don’t show us that they’re in love with each other because they consider it to be inappropriate.

I’m not asking for people to start making out with each other outside of Eid prayers or anything. That would be kind of gross. But, like, a little something? Like holding hands with each other, maybe, or the occasional smile from across the room as though you share a private joke? That would be nice. That would make the rest of us maybe find marriage a more attractive state – not some sort of elaborately disguised prison.

The conventional wisdom goes: romantic love does not last; therefore, it’s an illogical and doomed reason to get married. Better to marry for the sake of common values and a synchornicity in thinking about gender roles within marriage and how Islam should be practiced/Muslim kids should be raised – 10 years later you’ll thank us.

I would counter with, “What about the Obamas?”…But I’ll admit that they are the exception and not the rule. So this may very well be sage advice. Nevertheless, I’m not positive that it’s responding – or suitable – to our cultural milieu. It may very well be unwise, but Muslim kids grow up watching their peers fall in love again and again – Muslims see people around them in love all the time. The common cultural narrative goes like this: boy meets girl in some sort of meet-cute, they exchange some pleasant witticisms and then numbers – or maybe they friend each other on Facebook first (baby steps), then they agree under some pretense to meet for coffee (perhaps they happen to be reading the same book, which one of them only read because the other was reading it…), they flirt, they walk to some other destination (someone’s class? The bus stop? He walks her home?), navigate the awkward first goodbye (are we kissing or hugging?) but not before making plans to see each other again. They meet a second time – in the evening, so as to make looking hot and kissing more plausible, have a surprisingly wonderful time, and end the night with a kiss – which, if it’s sublime (and why wouldn’t it be?), will initiate a love affair that may or may not involve thigh-touching at the local cafe, much to the Muslim next door’s chagrin – and, if everyone’s amenable and things go well, could very well end in marriage, kids, and a plot at the local community garden.

And…apart from the kissing, etc. pre-marriage, what’s wrong with this picture? Are we telling ourselves to want something we can’t want?

I feel like we might be approaching it like this: the married community (to the extent that such a thing exists) is telling the unmarried community, “This [i.e. romantic love] is what’s broken in your culture [self].” So we’re supposed to want to get married for very practical reasons: to have a family, to have religious support, to not sin. But I don’t think that’s why we really want to get married. We’d like to be swept off our feet by an experience that makes us feel like taking on responsibility and adulthood with this person will feel less of a burden, and maybe even fun – we want to lose sense of ourselves, to desire someone – hopefully for deep and shallow reasons, we’d like to come across a person who makes us feel like all this waiting we’ve done is insignificant, erased, by the pleasure of his/her company. We’d like our minds to be blown – and eventually think about a family, support each other, happily not-sin together.

It’s not that we’d like to marry someone with terrible character and a tendency to shirk responsibility. It’s that we don’t want it to be just that. Who wants to end up in Charlotte’s marriage to Mr. Collins?

Practical? Very. Hot for each other? ...I rather think not.

Now, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy? There’s a better model. The beauty of this fictional match is that neither partner compromised on the ideal character of their imagined beloved – they both dreamed of marrying refined, interesting people of superb character. Perhaps Elizabeth imagined herself with someone a tad more outgoing, and Mr. Darcy imagined himself with someone a tad more rich – but these things are not the glue that holds people together. They loved and respected each other, and with good reason. And no surprise, happy ending there.

I like this much better. Much.

Why should we be trying to fit ourselves into a box that…doesn’t fit? If we want to love our spouses, I mean – isn’t that okay – isn’t it desirable? It only needs to be tempered with some sort of reasonable wisdom or reason – of course it’s possible to lust after, or even to be infatuated with, a person who is all kinds of wrong for you. Of course. It happens all the time. But that is very different than feeling deeply in love with a person you respect and admire, and therefore want to spend your every day with. Maybe he doesn’t rake leaves, and maybe she’s not so on top of the dishes, or the laundry, or whatever. But I’d so much rather do without a few of the teeny little chore expectations I had and have someone I actually like spending time with. Isn’t that what marriage is? Time? I’d so much rather enjoy it.

So I think it’s hot hipster lovin’ or bust. This unhot transactional nonsense has got to go, dig? Can’t nobody defenestrate that but us, one lovemonkey marriage at a time. Ready?

Because properly married people should stand like this. Really it's indecent not to.

Dear Yale

Yale has asked for two hundred and fifty words, and this is keeping me up at night.

A 250-word love letter to Yale that I will never send:

Yale,

Everything I think to write to you sounds absurd in my head. The notion of admission at this point is ludicrous. What, me? Since when did I have the audacity to think myself special? Doesn’t the world know yet that I have not grown up? I keep thinking that one morning I will wake up and suddenly things will click; that I will prefer soup to nachos, that I will stop ingesting coffee at such an alarming rate, that I will rise at five o’clock every morning for a five-mile run, that I will start making grocery lists and going to the dry cleaner’s. I’m waiting for my future to become the technicolor present. I am in a fabulous law school, and lo! I study like a maniac, because this time around I actually know what I want. Come the end of first semester I surprise myself, but not my parents or professors, by acing all of my exams. My family declares that they are proud of me, my mentors prophesy that I will make a smashing scholar of the law, and I manage to dress fashionably the entire time. Nutmeg has a favorite perch (on the windowsill, overlooking the street) in my charmingly adorned, yet small, apartment near campus. I drink tea and read the paper every morning, and have not given up novels despite the raging pace of studies. My yoga practice is flourishing, and I’ve finished the manuscript of my first novel.

I promise this is all possible, Yale. For you, I would become the girl I could be. If you asked.

Love,

Muppie

Becoming

I apologize for not having written. If you’ve held out for this long, you’re a real trooper of a reader, and I appreciate it.

I’ve spent the last month and change digesting. So much was happening all the time, and in a way I felt incapacitated in terms of writing. I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure what to say or how to put it. I was afraid of revealing too much of myself (a shocking declaration for a blogger such as myself, I know). I had to just sit for a minute or a month, and see what came out at the end. It was the culmination of a much larger, much longer process. And I will say this, and hope that it is enough, and not too much:

This year has been fascinating for me. So much has changed, and in so many ways I have come into myself and grown into my Islam. But it’s been a mixed bag. Part of that growing has been a broadening, and much of what I have encountered – thoughts, feelings, deeds – I thought I had left behind forever when I came to Islam. But eventually we are who we are. It may come under the heading of one religion, one philosophy, one world view that is coherent; but embracing something so comprehensive does not mean that we embody that idea fully. As much as we’d all like it to be different, this is, if nothing else, a process.

Maybe I was a better Muslim a year ago, or two years ago. It’s hard to say. When you take pieces of yourself – memories, ideas, longings, tendencies – and pack them away in a far, cobweby corner of your identity, is that goodness? So many of the things or ideas I embraced were not whole, were not wholly mine. I was not myself. The intoxication of a whole new way of being – a chance to reinvent myself at 23! It was all that mattered, and maybe I took that chance too much, maybe I went too far.

When I was contemplating returning to the States from Egypt, I thought it would be more difficult than it turned out to be. I thought that I had become someone different: a postmodern ascetic, taking refuge in an urban desert from the social high of a colder, more verdant city. But I came back and went out every weekend again, and loved people again, and loved them more. I hadn’t changed at all. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

If I had to name this year, if it had to be one thing, it would be me falling into myself. I’ve unpacked everything that I tucked away in shame or zeal, and I’m in the process of going through it all: this I want to keep, this I can do without. But at last I am doing the real work of being a Muslim, I think. I feel that I went on a very long, two-year vacation, and now I’ve come back to my apartment, my storage space, and I’m going through all of the boxes. I’m deciding which ones deserve to come along for the long haul, and which can go to the recycling. I thought that I had already done this work, but it was the illusion of an escapist. The real deal doesn’t happen overnight. It’s never been that way, and it never will be. People change slowly; we may successfully reinvent ourselves, but it happens in slow, sedimentary time, not in the lightening mood that accompanies that first, inescapable “aha.”

And so for the first time in a long time I feel authentic. I feel Muslim, I feel deeply that this is who I am, and I also feel that I haven’t cut off any proverbial limbs in order to feel that. It’s not an either/or anymore. I’m tempted to call it “healthy” or “wholesome” but I think I might be dipping a toe into a pool that is a little too new-agey for me. I’ll stick with authentic. But that means that I’m stuck with myself, and I’m not so sure how I feel about that. I want to crawl back under the covers and come back out after my spirit has successfully slain my self. Can’t somebody else take care of this unruly thing that is my personality?

If sin is a fable, then so am I. I’m taking me, with a massive dose of tawba. God alone knows what the right choice is.

Muppie is as muppie does

So. When I began this little endeavor, I was totally and completely without any sort of gainful income. I was taking a course in journalism, but that was about it. The course, and reading, and writing all the time.

Not a bad life.

Since then, God in His mercy has blessed me with not one, but two jobs, plus a couple of small writing gigs (not regular….yet!). Plus, still the course. Now, part-time is supposed to be the chill person’s way of earning (in my naive naive mind of February). Turns out that juggling all these things is, um…it’s hard.

Which is why Writer’s Progress hasn’t been updated in so long, why my cat is feisty with me, and why I’m so tired today I can’t even think straight.

I’m happier to be working than my whining implies. It’s just…well, I feel compelled to explain my vacation from the blogosphere, however abbreviated. I feel that I have neglected myself, and you – whoever you are – and, worst of all, my writing. One of my major loves and dreams in this life. Which is bad. Bad bad bad. Writers are to write. It’s a very simple, straightforward idea, and I ought to stick to it. Tired or no. Busy or no. Writers don’t write only when they feel like it. They write because it’s got to get done. And it does. I need to stop starting things, and finish something. One thing. Do one thing well. And in a timely manner. Yes. That’s the ticket.

It’s odd; when all I had to do was sit in a cafe all day and read, stare onto the street, observe my fellow addicts, and think, ideas came easy. You’d think that being out in the world more, becing more “active” and social with people, would fuel the fire of thought. Not so. I’m shuttling myself between Cambridge and Boston  – home and work and other work and friends’ apartments and cafes. Because I am pathologically social and, well, love to read at small tables with a mug of steaming tawny liquid in one hand. It just ain’t the same at home in my sweats. I don’t know why, but it’s not. And the thing is that I’m so segmented between the ten things/places I have to do/go to in one day, that I end up feeling like I don’t actually get anything done. Not like a normal person does. Including, sadly, thinking thoroughly and well.

So despite being introduced into the World of Consulting (about which, before two weeks ago, I knew less than the average toddler), I am hopelessly, hopelessly without insight into the world. Or myself. Or religion, or literature. Maybe my brain has just given up. I don’t know. But hi, Dry Spell, what’s up? I’ve introduced him to Writer’s Block. They’re cohabiting happily in my living room. I think it’s getting serious.

Over the past couple of weeks, I would sit down to write something, and then think: no. I can’t write about that. It’s so trite. Or transparent. So I have a few drafts just sitting there collecting WordPress dust (dust collects at roughly the speed of light in my apartment). I’m not sure to bring them out or just let them lie. Obviously I’m letting them lie for the moment.

I am rambling.

Here’s my problem: I have indulged in being amazingly personal on this blog. Which I do not regret. I am a what-you-see(read)-is-what-you-get kind of girl and I’ve come to peace with that. But the reason I can be so deeply personal is because I’ve been writing about things that (get this) I can toss out there without really caring too much. Not because I don’t care at all. But because there’s nothing really riveting happening in my life right now, so there’s nothing to conceal. Baring my secrets is totally my bidness, and I can do it without really harming anyone else, or embarrassing them, or anything. Which. You know. Is nice. But so is having an actual life. One that you feel compelled to guard from the eyes of the world. Because it’s personal. Which would lead one to think that I have a problem.

Dicey. Do I want to write, or live, more? This is kind of sad, but I waver. Actually that’s really sad.

Case in point:

When I was in college, way back in the early days before Facebook (ah, the days!), my college had this thing called PlanWorld. The fancy computer-literate people would post various images and links and things, but most of us Neanderthal liberal-arts folk were of the text-only persuasion.

I had just transferred in from an all-girls school, and the tiny tiny cliquey, jock-ridden world of rural Amherst was a bit of a shock. Plus the witty banter was like nothing I had ever heard before. It was the only social currency, and boy were these kids LOADED. It was clever, it was sparkling, and I stuck out like a sore thumb.

An acquaintance from high school kind of adopted me in a fit of pity, and I promptly engaged in accidentally seducing one of his best friends. When I became aware of this one fine Saturday evening, to my very pleasant surprise, I was totally taken in by this guy. To the extent that you can be, in the basement of a dilapidated brick dorm, with a keg in one corner and a blue strobe light in the other, and some guy named Chaz stripping in red-faced, drunken, this-will-embarrass-you-when-you-wake-up-tomorrow glory to the cheers of a circle of miniskirted, tanktopped coeds.

So. You know. Not the stuff of romantic legend, but a boy does what he can. And a girl can’t blame him for Chaz’s last keg stand. It wouldn’t be democratic.

The next day, true to my transparent, exhibitionist, shout-it-from-the-rooftops self, I wrote about my unbridled, democratic enthusiasm on my plan. And my own personal Don Juan read every word.

Which sent him running for…well, the campus is on a hill. He was running for the lowlands. Which was sad, because I did really like the guy. Silly Lizzy, mucking it up again. Story of my life.

At nineteen, I was too naive to understand why transparency isn’t always the best social option. I’m not sure how well I’ve learned my lesson (I still have this notion of everyone in every room I’m in being able to read my every thought, no matter what I say), but I’m certainly putting some effort into it. This all gives me a new appreciation for Jane Austen’s spinsterhood. I wonder if a married woman would have had the moxie to write what she did. It would have been personal. But as the casual observer, she was free to comment on what she liked. Was it worth it? Is it? Can it be?

I more function as a casual observer of myself, or my past, than the people around me. Because the present – well, let me put it this way. Writing is precious. But so are people, and my relationships with them. And I don’t have strobe lights to detract from the charm of it all anymore. So I am stuck, and I’m not ashamed to say that much.

(…and Joe, if you’re out there somewhere reading this, I’m sorry about PlanWorld.)

Something else entirely

Very often this happens: I start to write about something. An event, maybe. An idea. And then three-quarters of the way through, or even after I’m done, I realize that I was writing about something else the entire time. Usually the something else is loneliness.

I’m not really sure what to say about it. We all feel it, and yet we can’t seem to solve it for each other, which puzzles me a great deal. It seems that things get confused, like my writing. We think we want one thing, but after we get it we discover that we wanted something else entirely. Back to square one, a new post, a new project, a new something, chasing something else. And then the refinement of that. And so on.

I think the loneliest time in my life was probably during junior high. I had kind of a clique in elementary school, but it busted wide open in seventh grade, spilling its contents in different classes, separate hallways and lunchtimes, and a wide range of rungs on the social ladder. I landed somewhere near the middle-bottom. I think. No way of really knowing.

Here’s what junior high is like:

1. All the same people are cool. There is some predefined coolness that is unchangeable and unknowable until you get there. There is not a lot of room for originality, unless you want to totally give up and embrace becoming an outcast. Few people have the courage to do this early on. It usually takes a couple of years of swimming in pointless circles.

2. All of the people – cool, uncool, pretty, unpretty – have crushes on the cool people. Now this is interesting. The cool people aren’t necessarily the prettiest. They’re not necessarily the most accomplished. They’re not necessarily interesting, but the people who have crushes on them don’t know this, because they’ve never actually spoken before. These crushes are feelings borne of wallflower moments at school dances where one person seems to shine or appears immoderately happy, out of imagined intimacy when one arm brushes another in the hall, out of the aura, the mystique, created by the fatal combination of distance, new, overgrown desires, and active imaginations.

3. Everyone wants to be cool, but no one is sure why. There is some social currency in popularity , but it’s not clear what it will get you. Maybe a boyfriend on the JV basketball team. But maybe not. Nobody knows, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

4. The psyches of barely-not-children are pretty trampled on the way to the top. Example: I once had my two best friends bring me to the Guidance Counselor’s office (who, keep in mind, is there to reign in reason and protect the sanity of the innocent) to tell me that they couldn’t be such good friends with me anymore, because I wasn’t cool enough. That’s right. That was the only reason. They were magnanimous; they would let me say hi to them in the hallways. But no more weekend sleepovers. It was over.

Time passes, and a few things happen:

Sometime in high school, or college, depending on where you’re at, you realize that all the hullabaloo is a sham. The cool people are bland. Or you realize that the girl who sits next to you in homeroom is actually prettier. Or you develop some interest that allows you to interact with people in a way that isn’t based on mutual advantage. Like, you like the same things. Hey! Who thought of that as the basis for a friendship? Genius.

You become interested in and interesting to the people who are like you. It’s not really based on prettiness anymore, or status. It becomes about whole people, and this is totally refreshing. And affirming. The rate of rejection is relatively low, which, you know, ROCK, plus you actually enjoy your time more. No surprise there, but it still seems like a novel idea.

You realize that this obsession with popularity is a blip. It’s a stage. It’s developmental. Children have wholesome friendships, and so do adults, but somewhere in the middle there we lose all sense and fly at each other like dogs – and there is only one bone, and it is golden, and it is called The Perfect Social Life. But you have to rediscover either that it doesn’t exist or that there are a million different versions, once you enter the world of See and Be Seen. Because then, it’s not only about who or what you like. It’s about the consensus about who and what you like. And you can’t escape the pressure cooker of public school, so you get all twisted up faster than you can untie yourself.

Which brings me to the latent effects of this syndrome in the Muslim population. It is sad for me to say it, but some of us are kind of still in junior high. Every girl wants to marry the MSA president (or, if the MSA president is a girl, vice versa). Every boy wants to marry the prettiest girl he has spied out of the corner of his eye in the musallah. Which, you know, to each his own, but (and convert alert here, I’m coming at this from the outside) these impulses seem to miss the point that marriage is about soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more than the ability to give a good speech, or really great recitation, or good looks. Those things, frankly, don’t matter much when it comes to being happy in a relationship (don’t say I didn’t warn you). When was the last time you gave a speech in your kitchen? And let’s face it, people – we’re all going to age. Have you ever seen a beautiful old person? That beauty is from character, and wisdom, and goodness – good genes give way to wrinkles eventually. Now, I’m not advocating for marrying someone who doesn’t appeal to you at all…I’m just saying that when it comes to domestic bliss, in all respects, and thank you for not making me spell that out, a lot more comes into play than a pretty face. I mean, we’re talking roommate for life, God willing. Not only is this person going to share your kitchen, and your bathroom, and bicker with you over window dressings, but you have to share a bedroom, too. And a bed. And the covers. And trust me, you’re not going to care how hot she is if she won’t give you the blanket in January. Trust me. If you’re going to have no refuge from someone, have no refuge from an interesting someone. From a nice someone. From a merciful and loving and patient and kind someone. No refuge from a hot someone gets old pretty quick, if that’s his/her crowning virtue.

So let’s all make an effort to get along. Let’s be mavericks and throw middle school to the dogs! Let’s dig each other for the important things. Things that matter to us. Let’s be nuanced individuals, and be, like, interesting, and stuff. I mean, I know it’s hard, and you’ve all been good, and you feel like your kiss with the prom queen is ten years too late and you deserve it already, but overvaluing the transitory elements of people, allowing yourself to be guided by the intoxicating cocktail of an aching desire and a rich fantasy life, amounts to shooting yourself in the foot. And besides, what happened to the prom queen of your high school? Do you even know where she is now? Do you care? You see my point. Balance in all things. If middle school was raging, repressed hormones, and high school was discovering your angst, and college was finding your niche, be in college. Marry the girl/guy who likes pina coladas (virgin, goes without saying) and taking walks in the rain.

Sometimes I feel like I’m looking around at this plethora of lonely, awesome people, and I feel like: what is our problem? Can’t we hook up, already? It’s all most everyone wants. But nobody manages to pull it off. (Well – some do – and may God bless them all, and bless us poor single folk with the same happy fate! But not enough do it. Not nearly enough.) And I’m not sure this is the solution, but I figure I’ll throw it out there just in case. Fuel the brainstorm, you know. I’m nothing if not brazen. So here are my brave ‘n brazen two cents for the day: we need depth in our interaction, and nuance, and love. We need to let each other be a little quirkier, and embrace it. Join that knitting group! Or dig on your hopscotch! Or whatever it is, rock! Be it, and be it like whoa, and find other Muslims who will do it with you and support you and make you feel like a million bucks. And who knows? One of these days you might wake up and look at that brother you get along with like peas & carrots but just aren’t that into (he’s no Brad Pitt) and think: smokin’.

It’s been known to happen.

[Comments, please. Stop being so shy. For those of you who have already - thanks!]

The fragile familiar.

Familiar is: being crushed against a chest whose shape you have accidentally memorized over two decades of touching. Being so wrapped makes you think that you will melt, or at least never let go. Remembering yourself with a kiss on the cheek – there is something else to do: you have to be introduced to the friends.

Familiar is telling your mother to stop calling you to check on 1) whether or not you’ve met Mr. Right and 2) your new part-time job every day. Too much pressure for news. And then feeling terrible and wanting to talk to her, and calling back to apologize, and hearing her say: I don’t just call for news. I miss you. I want to hear your voice. And you telling her you can’t make a life out of no life, and her protesting that she is the one who doesn’t have a life, so she lives vicariously through your tiny one. And both of you ending up laughing at the race to entertain each other.

Familiar is the feeling of your niece’s small body relaxing against yours and twitching asleep to your hushed lullaby that is actually a pop song. The tiny sigh when she wakes up and looks at you like a stranger. Little hands wrapped around your neck, and kiss after tickling kiss on your collarbone. Balancing her few pounds on your hip in the kitchen. Her laugh when you hold her against you and waltz. Going down the stairs one at a time, down, down, down, stepping backwards, holding your coffee and her toy in one hand, and engulfing her gripping fingers in the other.

Familiar is the sound of your own voice rehearsing a speech you don’t want to give to someone who is not your friend, and after the speech never will be. Wanting to be wanted and knowing that you’re not. Familiar is realizing that disappointment, like elation, is nothing new. You have survived, and you will again. Your own thickening skin, wishing someone would come along who would make those callouses wither and fade. Knowing it’s a fairytale. Wanting it anyway.

Familiar is the curve of your lower lip left in lipstick on the ten-thousandth coffee cup you’ve drunk from, and piles of papers around you in your thirtieth favorite coffee shop. Late nights of drinking coffee and tea, staying up to write or read, and not caring, not knowing any other way to be. Wishing you were a morning person. Your mother worrying about you being out late alone at night. You worrying too, but reassuring her, because what are you supposed to do? Some nights you have to get out of the house. It’s too quiet in here.

Familiar is the loud clicking sound of your high heels on the street, and the embarrassment of coming home late yet again and making a racket on the tile floor of your apartment building when you walk in. Your silent sorry to the people who live by the mailboxes. Shushing your cat as you come in the door so she doesn’t wake your roommate.

Familiar is the dread in your throat when you get two missed calls in a row from your mother. Your first thought now is: either Grandpa or Dad is is the hospital. They both were, too recently. Familiar is your grandfather’s labored breathing, and his telling you you’re pretty, and hugging him every time as though it is the last – because it might be. Familiar is everyone asking how your father is, because they met him, and they worry about him too. Familiar is your father’s advice, no matter the ailment, to focus on work. You feeling annoyed with him when he says it, and thanking him half-heartedly, and then realizing later that you’ll miss those weird things about him when death separates you for a time. Feeling terrible for every undevoted moment, because you will miss it all. What bothered you most will be endearing in hindsight. Hating that you think about that so much.

Familiar is monitoring your own heartbeat inside your chest, and wondering what makes it go. That feeling of it overflowing with affection for the people who have known you for so long that when you do something, they say, of course you did: the people you trust, and are trusted by, despite differences and time apart and failed plans. The eyes of those people, how they look at you and know you. How nothing can take away how you used to tease each other on the bus, and compete, and how that eventually turned into some sort of bond. How seeing them is wonderful, because you can gush, and it doesn’t matter, because they already know. A guaranteed I love you, too.

This is the new part. You pull away and hear the news: a mutual friend’s father has died. Someone you both grew up with, familiar to both of you. One of you has been home for the funeral. You start to cry. You didn’t know the father, but suddenly he is yours, because you are all growing up together or apart and none of you can help it. Because you remember when the mutual friend was a boy, and you had a crush on him, and he had a crush on you back, and he yawned and slinked his arm around you during a slide show in the fourth grade, and you were both so vulnerable – because that boy’s father has died. Because the father wasn’t sick, you’re hearing, it was a fluke complaint at a physical, that led to tests, that led to surgery, that led to a coma, and waiting, and death. Because a fluke at a checkup caught something that almost killed your own father not six months ago. Because life is barreling ahead, and the eight-year-old you once met, and then knew, and grew up with, is standing before you: a man with a beard, looking in his pockets for a tissue because he feels bad that you’re crying. And you’re standing in front of him, a woman who feels like a girl and can’t help it, a woman who can’t get rid of her childlike heart that wants to wrap her small hands around a neck, and be rocked and sung to sleep by anyone whose touch she has accidentally memorized.

On a day like today

On a day like today, life is waking up. With the marvelous blustery wind kissing our faces, we’re reminded of our summer selves. We come back to life and back outside, prowling the city sidewalks in hope of a warm raindrop on the face, or the glimpse of an opening crocus. All of life is singing a chorus of living – and it is wonderful to be alive, and here in New England.

Almost all of the charm of living here is wrapped up in today’s wind – in its hope, its promise of summer, its reminder that the cycles are about to move again – just when we were beginning to think we’d lost them forever.

It is plain, and yet still amazing, to see and feel for oneself how much sway nature holds over us. Over our moods, the hours we keep, our dress, our manner with each other, and whether or not we drive with the windows down. It’s such a liberating thing to do after a winter encased completely in glass. You wouldn’t think it – but it’s transformative. It always has been, for me. And I’m suddenly in high school again, singing along to, I don’t know, Dave Mathews Band or Mambo #5 (remember that? what an awful song) and sneaking cigarettes between ballet and home.

I don’t smoke anymore, thank God, and I don’t want to; but still the feeling of sticking my naked hand out the car window and feeling the air go over it, and not freeze it, is like nothing else in the world.

One word: awesome.

It’s my hometown, and my first car (a navy ‘88 Volvo 250 GL named Stella), and every spring break, and summers in Maine, and sleeping outdoors – spring is coming of age all over again.

I have no desire to relive my teen years. I’m nostalgic about certain things, but the fact remains that a lot of the experience, at the time, was nothing short of brutal. Even so – nothing compares to the memories of catching fireflies on my high school’s baseball diamond at four in the morning with my best friend – and, well, I just don’t do stuff like that anymore. For starters, I don’t even know where the nearest baseball diamond is. And wandering around the streets of the city in your pajamas at four a.m. is a lot creepier than giggling down a couple of hushed country blocks at thirteen. Too bad, really.

It’s these kind of harmless and vaguely stupid things that I miss. I have a distinct feeling that, eleven years from now, if I happen to catch my niece (who is now two) sneaking back into the house after a few hours of bug-catching, half-naked gallivanting, I won’t kick back and tell her, “Yeah, I used to do that, too. Ah, the days!” I more imagine myself saying something like, “Good way to get grounded.” Not because I’m into being tyrannical – it’s just, well, she’s two. And a tiny two. She’s tiny, and precious, and the thought of her being out without some tenaciously protective relative like myself in the middle of the night makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Of course, my mother would have reacted the same way if she knew about my teenage nocturnal wanderlust. Cuz that’s how the adults are. And I suppose I am one now. (If not now, when?)

So yes, I feel a bit of a pang thinking of those sillier days running barefoot down my street with eight other girls under a full moon. Or night-swimming (my generation takes REM’s advice very seriously) in some pond.

(There are stupider and funnier stories, but I’ll leave it at that, in the interest of my dignity.)

The real power of the emerging spring is in reminding us of glories past. The fact that they’re returning makes the memories more vivid and more delectable for our minds…I can’t speak for the rest of you, but my enjoyment is wrapped up in also planning all of the warm things I’ll do this year – picnics, hikes, reading poetry under a blooming tree, walking through the grass barefoot, wearing sandals, preferably a walk in the warm rain at some point with a good friend to discuss the meaning of life, frisbee, soccer, iced drinks, the condensation on the outside of said drinks, fruit pies, and sleeping with the windows wide open. I’m planning on all of these and more. Perhaps it’s more powerful this year because I missed last spring encased in Cairo’s fine dust. God knows best.

And while I’m planning, I’m reminded also of things I miss and can’t have back. I’m going to be honest with you: I miss the nineties a great deal. It might be unfair of me – I can’t have been all that involved. After all, I was a green seventeen when we rang in the new millennium, so the early nineties were admittedly a bit of a blip. But I believe we’ve lost some of the natural, earthy charm of the nineties – spring’s dirty smell is a bittersweet reminder that not everything is controlled by the human race, and I think we were better at accepting that ten years ago. I’m willing to allow that it might be my nostalgic fancy altogether, but I don’t think it is.

Remember when our heroes were Ben Harper, Eddie Vedder, and Janeane Garofalo? Remember when a pleasantly plump, philosophically-minded Ethan Hawke was the heartthrob? I mean, way back when, before anyone ever thought you needed to bring sexy back? When sexy was not antithetical to slightly worn clothes and something other than a six-pack? Man I miss those days. I miss matte lipstick, and pajama-clad brownie fights that turned into love scenes. Now we’ve got perfectly-coiffed kisses even when they’re in the rain. Can’t someone’s mascara at least run? And what happened to grunge, and flannel, and Doc Martens? Remember when social activism wasn’t a popularity coin celebrities could cash in with the tabloids? (I’m sure some of them are sincere….I just think the mixing of the two is a little insidious.) Remember when everyone used Manic Panic? Dying your hair a really awful color used to be a right of passage. Now the fifteen-year-olds are better with makeup and hair irons than I am. I mean, everyone’s prettier – and maybe that’s great – but isn’t there room for a little bit more, a little bit different, a little punk? I miss the freedom of those days. I had frizzy hair that was occasionally different colors, and braces, and fairly awful tapered jeans, but at least I was comfortable being myself.

My own imperfect charm (real or imagined) is likewise wrapped up in that remarkable decade. I started out pleasantly buck-toothed, but by the end of the it I had a perfect smile – however fake. I was (still am, truth be told) missing a tooth up front. It was attached to my retainer after I got my braces off, and I used to “forget” it some days, just to flash my pirate smile at my friends. They would play-cringe and then marvel. My sister advised me to never have a permanent bridge made; now I have one, but it’s broken, giving me back that snaggle-toothed appeal (work with me). When her friend called me pretty, the same sister simply said, “Did you see her tooth?” We’ve been spoiled out of appreciating the irregular, the arresting, the unusual.

On a day like today, I miss that. I miss the variety – is it possible to say that I miss the counter-culture being popular? But I feel that the Parises of the world have taken over in a bleached, starved fury, and I miss it when the popular kids in school played “Angel from Montgomery” at the talent show and had green hair. I miss my own bleached-blonde stripe in the front of my hair (homemade, of course; a brassy yellow declaration of independence). I did it in the spring; no surprise there. I did it sunbathing with my sister in the secluded backyard. My parents hated it, but at least there was some variety.

But hope springs eternal. The flowers are about to come back, in all their sneeze-inducing, mutlicolored, variously-shaped glory, and we’re all more than ready for them. April rain will run our mascara, and soak the hems of our jeans, and leave us all soggily unattractive – even if the movies deny us the pleasure of a parallel reality. And after all, the fifties reigned in starched, stiff, regular beauty – and then the sixties came and tore down that unanimous empire. I’m not holding my breath – and I’m the first to admit that it ain’t all bad (hair products have certainly improved, to no one’s disappointment).

I’m just going to say this, then: here’s to the coming season, and greasy-haired leading men, and acoustic music. And while I’m at it, here’s to my missing pirate tooth. Yar. Take that, ye pretty ladies.

Pet self

Lemme tell you something about white people:

We have more spiritual impediments than everybody except politicians.

Now before I insult some really nice, pure-hearted white person, let me explain myself.

We’re not raised right. This is my thesis. We’re not raised right in this country (perhaps I should expand beyond the whites here; still, if Islam has taught me anything about culture, it’s that we white people have more of a cultural identity than I had previously thought, in my whitewashed existence. And God knows best).

We’re raised – and by we, I mean, of course, I – to believe primarily in the self. To begin with, we’re raised in small families. Mine is fairly giant by today’s standards, with a whopping six members in our nuclear unit alone! But even so, I grew up not sharing a bedroom, or a plate, or a doll, or much of anything besides the dog. And to think, I criticized only children for being naturally selfish. God forgive me. If only they could see me now, with more pet peeves than Jack Nicholson in As Good as It Gets.

The four kids in my family had wide-ranging interests that sent my mother into a carpooling frenzy for an untold number of her middle years. God bless her. My two older siblings went to boarding school while my brother and I (who are much closer in age) were still quite young. But we two kept our parents busy shuttling us from soccer to hockey to piano to ballet to gymnastics, and then, as a result, to the orthopedic surgeon for a number of dislocated years. And by we, I mean, of course, I.

In school, I was naturally competitive, and was further encouraged in the trait by my teachers. I spoke out in class, a surprisingly dedicated and feisty feminist of twelve. I aced math and science exams, and excelled in just about anything I could get my hands on, except – you guessed it – team sports. Dance was my thing. Very individual. Also very cooperative. It has that tasty balance of trust and love for your fellow dancers, and beauty-body-talent-skill-flexibility-grace feuding every night of the week. Delicious.

My parents, in loving support, told me, You can be anything. Anything, indeed? Yes, darling, anything. The world is your oyster.

Ah. There’s the rub.

See, I’m a girl, and a member of one of the first generations raised in the aftermath of the feminist movement – equality is a female president, and women eating the corporate food chain like chocolate, baby! - so it’s understandable, it’s expected, and it was very kindly meant by everyone who said it, hinted at it, or spoonfed it to us in one way or another.

With such assurances, high school trained up my arrogance and selfishness very well, and I planned on going on to college and, after a brilliant thesis, changing the world. But it wasn’t all bad. My adolescent self was a tad self-serving, but not evil. I had a good heart in there somewhere, however fatally arrogant and self-centered I was. I cared about people, participated in causes, protested Bush’s first ascent to Washington like a good little liberal, and cooperated with my fellow theater enthusiasts in putting on shows.

But it was still my oyster, and I didn’t like sharing. I didn’t deal with disappointment well, and to a certain degree I still don’t. Under a kindly facade, I liked things just so. I might not say so, really – I was brought up too well for that – but I resented every imagined and real affront and nursed it in my heart like a baby seal or something. I’ve spent my twenties trying to train this out of myself, in fits of grumbling, self-censured bitterness.

The problem with ‘the world is your oyster,’ besides becoming a serious spiritual handicap after too many years, is roommates. Wait no, let’s revise that – any relationship at all. Teacher-student, friendship, sibling, cousins, uncles, you name it. According to the doctrine of ‘the world is your oyster,’ all these people are, in peeved moments, are obstacles lying in the way of us having everything the way we like it, the way we left it, or how it ought to be. And then we have to bite our tongues – perhaps, in the process, building mountains of barely-concealed ill will in our psyches, or risk seriously offending people we actually care about very much, under our festering resentment.

The problem with crowning individualism is that the people who live out solitary lives are actually devastatingly lonely. Sex in the City is painful to watch even if it doesn’t make your moral hairs stand on end. Because the oppressive, fashionably-clad loneliness is stifling. And it’s real. Those characters are fictional, but there are a lot of people close to forty, and forty, and beyond, out there who are still single – and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the reasons is that we just can’t live together gracefully. We’ve got too many doggone ways.

Tricky. Very tricky.

I had a revelation the other day. It’s very obvious, and very sad that it took me this long to see it exactly in this way. (Someone like my lovely sister-in-law, God bless her, who was raised around numerous family members she was taught to serve selflessly out of love, no questions asked, would, I imagine, smack me playfully for my shameful white stupidity.) So here it is: all those people that bug me, in their very tiny and harmless ways – it’s not them that is bothering me. They’re not the problem, and whatever it is that they’re doing that is like nails on a chalkboard is not the problem either. My feelings of having been slighted, my taking it personally, and my annoyance – those are the problems. If someone else leaves a mess, say, I can clean it up – either doing it because it’s the nice thing to do, and I should place myself at the service of others whenever I can, because therein lies the spiritual path, or with a black and angry heart that only gets blacker and angrier with every wiped up crumb.

Now I’m wondering why I’ve consigned myself to such torture. For Pete’s sake, woman, clean up the freaking mess and be done with it!

…I just want to submit, briefly, that I’m not maligning the idea of equality between the sexes. I do think that the Western version of the idea is, frankly, bizarre – please see Martha Stewart and Britney Spears for further reference – but I’m not suggesting that men are better than women. What I mean to hint at here is that in the fifties, maybe American men were a little selfish and a little hard on their wives – prompting many “mysterious” depressions and The Feminine Mystique, among others. But the “feminist” solution was not to tell the men to be less selfish – it was to tell the women to be equally as selfish as the men. So instead of fighting over equal rights to education, we find ourselves bickering over whose night it is to cook or whose turn it is to take out the trash – and God forbid that either party would lovingly budge and actually try to do extra. Which leaves us in our current quandary of either being resentfully yet lovingly attached, or serenely yet lonesomely single. No dice, if you’re asking this white girl.

The wisdom of fools.

I’ve been neglecting my writing. Last week, I had the excuse of a midterm. This week, I am ashamed to say that my only reason for staying away was an inability to think about anything other than Jane Austen.

You see, I am jealous of Fanny Price.

Fanny has the good sense that no one around her seems to. At eighteen, she has the forbearance to consistently refuse the man pushed on her from all sides: her rich, benefactor uncle, the cousin she is in love with, her friends, her parents, and all her acquaintance together. He has been a libertine in the past; he tells her he has changed. She is the only one to not believe him, is cast out and called a fool. In the end, he runs away with her married cousin and vindicates her refusal.

It’s possible that I am Fanny’s opposite. I believe the things that people tell me, have faith in everyone’s ability to change (hey, I’m a convert – if not me, who?), and let optimism conquer reason without putting up much of a fight.

These would be admirable qualities indeed – in a world of people who spoke only the truth, changed all the things they intended to, and lived up to expectations. Sadly, this is not the case; disappointment abounds, and it is often mine.

I know many people who are not like this. My brother, for example. He is good and wise, and it seems that he was always so. He is purposeful and deliberate. People more than twice his age seek his advice. Whenever anyone meets the two of us, or hears me talk about him, that person always assumes he is the elder sibling. Always. The reverse is true. It is also true that I am often a fool – so the mistake is understandable.

I once found myself in a situation that was truly pitiful. I fell for a man who (surprise!) said he had changed, and talked about his ability to refine and improve himself a great deal. I was impressed by the commitment to improvement he was always chattering on about. What undaunted struggle! What courage!

What blindness.

My family dutifully raised their objections, as did my friends. All and every one. And I, the loyal lover, defended my man to the last. I defended my own flawed reasoning with logical dances I can’t hope to reinvent. My elaborate maneuverings of love were so impressive and impromptu that when family recounts them for me now, I’m aghast. Really? I said that? Idiot.

A funny thing happened amidst these objections. I noticed that I was unhappy in love.

It would be so great if this didn’t feel so mournful…

Unhappy in love is an unfortunate combination, and is fraught with danger. The danger is that one will say to oneself, I don’t care. I’d rather be with him than without, no matter how miserable I am. Perhaps even more perilous is the suggestion, It will get better. He’ll change. We’ll learn to get along.

I’m not sure why, or how, but remarkably and miraculously, neither of these tempting thoughts won out. I got out. I got out fast, and reflected later on all of the building evidence of my own unhappiness that I did not see at the time. The mounting pile in the corner that suggested, oh so massively, that the man I loved was not actually the one I was involved with, but an elaborate invention we had both spun out of hope and breath and forgiveness. It was so clear in retrospect.

Foresight? We’re fresh out. Try the hindsight store next door; bitterness is on sale, and self-loathing is half off.

I’m seven years older and a good deal more experienced in relationships than Fanny, so what gives? Why does her presence of mind elude me in all the most important ways, in all the most important moments?

This is what I was thinking as I was walking to the post office today. Why wasn’t I just born wise? What is the purpose of all this fumbling towards sense? Couldn’t I have been more like Abdullah? I would have been spared a good deal of false starts and heartaches.

Then I thought: Because I’m a writer. Because I’m a writer, I was born a well-meaning, good-hearted, foolish girl. Because I’m a writer, I have some comic foibles that entertain more than myself. Because I’m a writer, there is a path to wisdom. If it had been easy, there would have been no story to tell. There would have been no point in speaking. If I were all alone, the Buddha on the mountaintop (to steal from Reality Bites), there would be no one up there to relate to me, and no benefit to all my wisdom. Because I’m down here mucking it out, I get to tell stories that are also, on occasion, lessons. It is a peerless joy, purpose. I can say, Here is point A: silliness. If you want to get to point B, which is marginally less foolish, I have recently discovered the secret to doing so, and it is X.

Actually, it is Islam, but that’s a little tangential.

My current suggestion is to read Mansfield Park. It is an incomparable study on patience, modesty, and the will of God making things turn out all right in the end. It still shocks me. Every time! It all turns out all right. Sometimes we just have to ride out the rough wave of sticktoitidness. Definitely holding to your principles is key. Holding to your romanticism, or your faith in the fancy promises of others…not always a great idea.

I know. I read it in a novel once.