Divide Me By Zero

the things we do for love

2008-11-11T22:31:00.004+02:00

I would bend white light for you
Summon my shadow to dance for you
Draw blood in honour of your name

I would crush gravel for you
Steal the glow from the stars for you
Lick fire to keep you from pain

I would blend all the colours for you
Plant a thousand tulips on mountains for you
Memorise the lines that compose you, each verse and every vein.

Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy

2008-11-07T23:04:00.007+02:00

Young adulthood entails a lot of things for girls – hormones, hot guys, female rivalries, sweet infatuations, regular rebellion, pimpled foreheads, fun and frivolity. But if you’re a Muslim girl, you’ve got one additional thing to master, aside from how to lie convincingly about why you got home past curfew on Friday night: culinary school.

Run from every dutiful mother’s kitchen, it’s a part time course that starts with how to slice an onion properly (very thinly, without stabbing your thumb through your tears). Then it proceeds to the easy stuff: baked beans, khuri kitchrie, pasta, fresh fruit juices, custard and jelly. Mum instructs, you obey, furiously writing in your first little recipe book while trying not to burn the rice. (That constitutes an immediate fail).

You receive your credits for this first course once your mum decides she can trust you in the kitchen with a can of Koo, and still come back to an intact house with no sign of burnt AMC pots.

Then you’re eligible for the serious food course: chicken curry, kebab chutney, battered chops, home made KFC, grilled steak, and every other carnivorous delight. If you’re like me, you start off by pulling your nose and squealing “ewwwww!” with every chop and drumstick you have to bludgeon, but you persevere. (You also finish a quarter of a bottle of liquid soap after every poultry-hacking session, feeling like Macbeth did when he cried: “Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?”)

This course is tough to master because it’s not simply about cooking the damn dish. It has to meet your family’s prerequisites for perfection: the salt must be just right, there mustn’t be too much of oil, don’t over-cook the chicken, add more pepper to the steak next time, remember to garnish nicely. You keep all this in mind for the next time, and the next time, and the next time, until you attain the perfect recipe that meets your satisfaction. (It then becomes known as “your” chicken curry, not mummy’s).

If you’ve lasted this far without losing any fingers or blowing up the kitchen, it’s time for the final course, the mother of all credentials, the definitive skill that distinguishes chicks who can say “I can cook” from those who can say “I can cook anything.”

I’m talking about akhni, briyani, dhall and rice, and all those other special dishes that are reserved for Friday lunches and Eid day. Grandmothers reckon that if you can cook these dishes, you’ll make a splendid wife and you’ll have “no problems” with your husband. (Assuming of course, that men marry on the sole criteria of a perfect plate of fish briyani.)

Since I cook because I love to and not out of any fear of “problems” with my hubby, I’ve happily marked today as my graduation from culinary school.

It took 2.5 hours and two sinks of dishes, but the end result was a delicious pot of chicken akhni, served with vermicelli, papad, and dhai.

The epic Friday lunch, my biggest solo production for the palette to date. My grandmother would be so proud.

Oh! Oh! Obama!

2008-11-05T15:33:00.011+02:00

I awoke at 6am, reached for my phone, checked Twitter, and whooped in delight.

The world, and America, had been sold on the audacity of hope.

Let's hope Obama, with all his charm, sincerity, eloquence and good intentions, does not disappoint. I'm not expecting miracles in the Middle East any time soon; just some reasonable, intelligent policies that do not destroy cities and families on some absurd, false pretext.

I've been busting my bandwidth watching victory videos, but the best way to celebrate the departure of the disaster that was Dubya is to revisit these Bushisms:

"I want everybody to hear loud and clear that I'm going to be the president of everybody." -George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 18, 2001
"I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right." -George W. Bush, in Rome, July 22, 2001
"It's my honor to speak to you as the leader of your country. And the great thing about America is you don't have to listen unless you want to." -George W. Bush, speaking to recently sworn in immigrants on Ellis Island, July 10, 2001
"They misunderestimated me." —Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000
"I'm oftentimes asked, What difference does it make to America if people are dying of malaria in a place like Ghana? It means a lot. It means a lot morally, it means a lot from a -- it's in our national interest." - George W. Bush, Accra, Ghana, Feb. 20, 2008
"Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever." - George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 12, 2008
"Information is moving -- you know, nightly news is one way, of course, but it's also moving through the blogosphere and through the Internets." -Washington, D.C., May 2, 2007
"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table." --George W. Bush, Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 22, 2005
"We're concerned about AIDS inside our White House - make no mistake about it." -George W. Bush, Feb. 7, 2001
"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror." -George W. Bush, interview with CBS News' Katie Couric, Sept. 6, 2006
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." — George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

pauses (,) and periods (.)

2008-10-29T22:26:00.008+02:00

I remember my four years of university in scenes, some prosaic, some profound.

A night during O-Week, lying on a beanbag in some guy’s flat whom I had never met before. People strewn around the floor like sweet wrappers, a hookah pipe travelling around the room like a prostitute among desperate men. Strange music, strangers everywhere, pretending they – we – are already friends. (We’re still not).

Getting back my first Media Studies essay, bludgeoned by a red pen and a confidence-crushing 58%. Growing a thicker skin there and then, appreciating the lecturer’s acerbic wit over my own “Modernity is a multifaceted term that refers to a period in the....” jargon. (I still don’t understand what modernity is).

Watching the first ever episodes of Desperate Housewives in a marathon session, all six of us crammed on or at the foot of my friend’s single bed. I&J chicken fillets roasting on an illegally imported mini-grill that could get us expelled from res. Stolen posters from the cinema for wallpaper. Eating off paper plates instead of dinnerware, sitting on overturned boxes instead of dining room chairs. No curfews, no rules of decorum. Such small but sweet freedoms.

Walking to Pick ‘n Pay on a Sunday morning to get breakfast. Watching with bemusement as a dude runs out of the pub in his birthday suit, flashing cars, and high-fiving strangers. After seeing people diving into bushes “for fun”, and racing in the “naked mile” after taraweeh, nothing short of phenomenal displays of stupidity can surprise me anymore. (I do still appreciate Chuck Norris jokes though).

Interviewing Akin Omotoso over lunch; my first big journalistic assignment. He bought me juice and gave me ten pages worth of story in between bites of pasta. What began as a textbook interview became an earnest conversation between absolute strangers that is as rare as it is rich. (The only thing I did wrong was forget to ask for an autograph.)

Putting together my final multimedia portfolio over the past few weeks, all the while love-hating the exhilaration of getting technology to adhere to my whims. Each menu button, each edited video clip is a tiny, pathetic, necessary victory. Slave to the machine, I eat jelly tots for supper, curse like a truck driver and press the proverbial pause button on my life until it’s all over. (It is and it isn’t).

Now is that time in my life when people start blurting inanities.

“You’ve finished university. Now you have to enter the real world,” they say, equating my last four years and all its lessons to a measly pair of fake Pumas.

“It’s the end of the road for you. A new journey begins,” they philosophise, as if our past, present and future are separate highways.

I am not overwhelmed by this “end” because I don’t really believe in it. Life is just a long string of sentences, each experience separated by commas, until God inscribes the big fat full stop.

the tentacles of time

2008-10-13T21:25:00.001+02:00

The prelude to death scares me more than death itself. How vain of me to be twenty-two years young and petrified of ageing, but it’s not the mental image of wrinkles or dentures that make me quiver.

It’s the thought of the gradual erosion of everything – one’s eyesight, one’s memory, one’s selfhood.

It’s the inability to climb a flight of stairs, or bake chocolate cake, or read Douglas Coupland anymore.

It’s the feeling of everyday, all-the-time helplessness as someone else scrubs your back, feeds you lunch or plaits your hair; the things mummy used to do for you when you were six.

It’s the indignity of having to greet visitors when you’re in a hospital bed and your chest is exposed and you are wearing a urine bag.

It’s the inevitability of loss as your children surround you, and you relate memories of your youth and remind them to bury you next to your husband.

It’s the unmistakable sound of your own gulps for breath, and the taste of too many pills and the slow tears of no more hope.

It’s the quiet, bewildered surrender as you lay there, empty, having come to the end of yourself.

if you were not...

2008-10-10T15:40:00.005+02:00

you could be

light blueness,

a poet’s muse,

braai'd marshmallow,

soft rain,

a beautiful poem,

gel pen ink,

silk,

a rusk dipped in Earl Grey tea,

butterfly wings,

mist,

the scent of petrol and vanilla,

an esculent word,

dusk,

a cashmere shawl,

autumn leaves,

cocoa butter.

but you are, and in so being,

you’ve become

my reification and

Love’s inscape.

Asking for it

2008-10-08T10:58:00.011+02:00

The next time someone, however naively, asks if I am "forced" to dress this way, I will reply:

"Yes. My dad will disown me if I expose my arms and my husband will smack me around if strands of my hair are showing. I am as oppressed as you assume me to be. Want a pic to go with that?"

If only these budding journalists-cum-activists would fuck off and find real oppressed women to liberate.

Transience

2008-10-02T15:07:00.000+02:00

There’s nothing like a run in with mortality to bring one closer to Allah. Even if it was not mine; especially because it was my father’s.

He was shot in the chest on the night of the 28th July in our kitchen, by one of two burglars. They escaped with nothing but our peace of mind. My brother, who was in the next room, drove my dad to the hospital while my sister, barefoot and hysterical, tried calling my mum and family members for help while in the car. (Her R12 of airtime lasted, somehow).

She called me too, in desperation, but stuck in this tiny town a thousand kilometres away, all I could was pray. Please keep him alive, please keep him alive.

[Oddly, I remember thinking of the novel Shades during those hours, and Father Charles’ belief that those who have enough faith don’t need to bargain with God. I didn’t. None of that “Please Allah, if you do x, then I promise I will do y”, because my dad also taught me that His will doesn’t come with conditions.]

I flew home the next day, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. My dad has always been my bastion, my cliched pillar of strength. I love him like he is invincible, as daughters often do. But seeing him outside of our lives’ template - in a hospital bed, wires protruding from his body, struggling to breathe, grimacing every time he moved – was a hack to the heart each time.

Two months later, he’s almost recovered from his injuries. He’s got his smile back, but not his verve. And sometimes I can tell that the puffiness around his eyes is not from exhaustion but tears.

Life persists, we comply dutifully, rehearsing platitudes that “we’re okay now.” Even if my sister has nightmares and my mother has insomnia and I cry in the bathroom.

I fluctuate between sheer gratitude and abject rage, ineffably glad that my father is alive but repulsed and terrified to be living alongside people with no humanity.

Inner aesthetics

2008-09-24T12:45:00.000+02:00

Everyone is ugly, even the best of us. It’s underneath the skin, in those places that make up can’t fix and the tweezer can’t reach.

We each are privy to our own capacity for compassion and cruelty, though others may get a telling glimpse . Only you know though, that you once kicked a cat or beat up a street kid or wished ill on an enemy. That you betrayed a friend or cheated in an exam or made your mother cry.

Our secrets are also our sins.

I know my shame by that acrid tang in the back of my mouth, almost like lime, that means: you should not have done that / that was wrong / that was inexcusable / take it back.

Ramadaan is an introspective month for me. Looking back on the people I may have wronged, hurt, stomped on or slated, I wonder if any reason is a good enough reason to have done so. I wonder too if sorry is too puny a word to say, especially when I don’t even remember all of their names or the ambit of my transgressions.

Nevertheless, I am working assiduously on a kinder heart, a softer tongue and better deeds. Everyone can be beautiful too, even the worst of us.

Paper plate love

2008-03-06T00:53:00.000+02:00

Monday night was the hottest damn night (temperature wise, ahem) that I've ever experienced.

The flat was a sauna, my forehead was sweating so profusely that it felt like a free facial.

Unlike normal people, we don't own a fan and couldn't open the windows. You see, the economist in him is reluctant to spend money on a "wind blowing thing" during this cash-strapped month, and the arachnophobe in me is paranoid of spiders crawling into our room and biting me to death. (Yes, death. I've read that such things have happened).

I did what any girl would do: I whined, and moaned and bitched about the weather, dropping not-so-subtle hints about how the oven-like heat was his fault.

He was more proactive though: he ransacked the kitchen cupboards for a paper plate and used it to cool me down. I think I swooned then, even after years of being with him. He spent a good half hour flicking it to and fro, like a geisha with an oriental fan, until I eventually fell asleep.

Now that's love. Bless.

Not to brag or anything, but...

2008-02-04T13:46:00.000+02:00

In a way, I was ahead of this blogging stuff. Back in 2000, when I was a spotty and moody fourteen-year-old, I began keeping an electronic diary, using the password feature on MS Word as a ‘lock’. It was my innovative attempt at privacy - something that didn’t really exist in our home. My parents and siblings just didn’t get it. Knocking before entering? They barged right in. Not entering my room when I wasn’t there? “What rubbish!” my mum said.

I kept the ‘e-diary’ for two years, documenting all the crucial moments of my teenage life in about 180 pages. You know... how many words my crush spoke to me that day, my latest fight with mum, my Maths marks, that pair of shoes in Woolworths that I absolutely must have. Fascinating, life-defining stuff.

It probably read like a Sweet Valley Middle School book instead of Anne Frank’s diary (I still can’t believe a fourteen year old can have that impressive a vocabulary!) but it was cathartic, in a superficial way. I didn’t - and still don’t - have any deep longing to hang my soul on barbed wire.

Anyway, I outgrew my e-diary along with my teenage angst, and have been keeping my thoughts (mostly) in my head ever since. Until now.

Welcome, voyeurs.

P.S. I’m actually quite humble.