Native Born

More Than Words

Faiqa Khan — Fri, 11 May 2012 08:41:51 +0000

Oh, but Parenting is, in fact, "a Job" @betadad

Faiqa Khan — Fri, 04 May 2012 05:59:31 +0000

In addition to being timely, dependable, a great dad and a rakishly handsome dead ringer for Sting, my friend Betadad is an excellent writer.

All that complimenting, of course, means I'm going to disagree with him. I was going to e-mail him, but then I thought, you know, why waste five hundred words on a one person audience when I can publicly disagree with him in front of tens of people by writing a whole post.

Okay, it's hundreds. Not tens. I do have my pride.

In a post on Dadcentric that critiques what I agree is a stupid commercial aimed at getting people to purchase soap by propagating an idea of parenting and motherhood that would seem more at home in a Greek tragedy, Betadad dismisses the idea that parenting is a job, at all:

We could have a very long and pointless discussion about what makes a job "hard" or "dirty" or "bad" or even "rewarding," but that would be beside the point. The thing is, parenting is not a job. It has some things in common with a job, sure, but it's a whole different animal. We don't get paid to parent. We can't quit if we get pissed off. We can't look around for better parenting gigs. We can't sue our employer. We don't have an employer. We don't have the option of not taking our work home with us. We generally don't receive any training, on-the-job or otherwise.

Well. I don't know.

If we're talking about job in the sense of being paid, then, yes, unless hugs, smiles and poopy diapers count, we are not, in fact, paid. But the word "job" doesn't just include work that is paid. While this is certainly the primary definition, my dear friend the former English teacher and Sting look alike, I believe the informal usage of "job" can refer to general tasks, paid or not.

Being the parent of small children can make you either want to tear your hair out or it can make you think you got this parenting thing in the bag. Truth is, that give or take ten years, you've got another forty or so years before you're not that child's parent any more due to the whole heart not beating any more thing. If your kids aren't teenagers yet, you're about one thirtieth of the way through.

Saying parenting is not a job when you're three years in feels premature.

And when it's stated that one cannot be fired from this job? Having fired a parent myself, I know this to be completely false. The parent I've fired is still and always will be my biological parent, but they will never, ever hold the trust that a parent deserves. My spiritual and cultural beliefs dictate that they are treated with courtesy and respect. But my heart fired them a long time ago.

They were fired because they quit. They were fired because they tried to find a better gig. They were fired because they went to far away places and never bothered to take their work with them.

So, Betadad, it's easy to say that this isn't a job when you didn't have someone quit on you.

Furthermore, I say, yes, this is a job. I work hard every day not to be the kind of parent that will be fired. I worry every day about dropping that ball, about unconsciously quitting, about slipping into a better gig without realizing it until its too late and I'm left wondering why those damned kids never call me. We don't get paid, that's true, but we can get fired. To me, that's enough to make me want to work very hard and do a good job of it.

Furthermore, I hold the people who do this job well in high regard and esteem because I know, from experience, that they absolutely have a choice even if they think they don't.

Now, is parenting the hardest job? I don't know about that. My understanding is that dumpsters have to be cleaned and scraped on a bi-annual basis. My vote is with the dumpster cleaners.

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What to do if Someone Breaks Into Your Car

Faiqa Khan — Fri, 04 May 2012 04:53:20 +0000

The dollar figure of goods stolen from cars is around 1.2 billion dollars.

It's my pleasure(? not really) to report that I was able to add a few hundred dollars to the pot the other day. On a sunny Memphis morning, I pulled into the parking lot of my children's school ten minutes after its official start. I'd be doing volunteer hours there that day, so I grabbed my bag and slung it over my shoulder. Go, Go, GO… we're late-late-LATE. This, by the way, never makes the children go faster. In fact, I suspect it makes them go slower.

What I failed to do amidst the grabbing of various small people and their accessories was to retrieve my cell phone from the inner console where it serves it's primary function which is to stream a Pandora station titled "Journey" that has been carefully managed to play twenty two specific songs that are not only stadium eighties rockingly awesome but are safe to listen to around my children. The first time you hear your under age six children belt out "Any way you want it/THAT'S the way you need it" in unison, it might be the coolest you'll ever feel in your LIFE.

The kids made it to the front door. I made it inside. I did my volunteer work.

A few minutes later, I was treated to a slow motion moment as I sat in my car, looked to my right and saw that the shatter proof window on my Prius was doing its damnedest not to shatter. I looked down. My cell phone was gone. The charger was still there. They took the auxiliary cable which I thought was funny for some reason.

Now, I know you're supposed to get upset when something like this happens, but I just got super calm. Like, okay, that's cool, someone broke into my car, now let's fix this calm. Now I'm thinking to myself, why shouldn't you, my friends, benefit from my super scary calmness?

What to Do When Someone Breaks Your Car Window & Steals Your Cell Phone in a School Parking Lot that Also Happens to be a Church Parking Lot - No, For Real. Seriously.

Look around. Someone committed a crime in your car. Go back to where there are (non-criminal type) people and reassess whether it's safe to go back.

Call the Police Department. Try not to call 9-1-1 because, I know you're not going to like this, but your car getting broken into just kind of sucks and is not really an actual emergency.

Retribution. Quickly e-mail and call all of your friends and ask them to text things like "Jerry wired the fifty large, the hit is on" to your cell phone. Alright. I didn't actually do this.

Cancel all of the phone things. Call your cell phone provider, suspend your service, report the phone stolen and ask them to give you its serial number.

File a police report. If you're planning on engaging in a farce that entails pretending your auto insurance provider/agent has a soul, you'll need to have this on hand.

Call your insurance company. Then hang up the phone and scream "What the hell do I pay you for ANYWAY?!" because your agent has just informed you that you have a deductible that is probably about $50 less than the repairs needed and you might as well just not file the claim.

Don't give up. Most people were good before someone broke your window (in a school/church parking lot, no, seriously, wth) and stole your cell phone and, my dear, most people are still good.

If you have any doubt about the last one, think about the principal who walked out of her office in the middle of the morning and helped you clean glass out of your car despite the fact that those pieces of glass drew blood.

Close your eyes and think of how the officer reminded you that, yes, you're right, maybe you did leave your phone in the car, but that doesn't mean that someone else being a thief is somehow your fault.

Remember the kindness of the woman that cradled your son in her arms for an extra hour so he would take a nap while you went to vacuum glass in the seats and buy plastic to cover your window.

Think of the sweet, helpful children who stood by your car in the parking lot when they could have been playing and instead helped you affix plastic to your car as you tried to fabricate a makeshift window.

So, yeah, 1.2 billion dollars in items were stolen from cars this year. According to my research, though, for every one person that steals something from someone's car, there's at least eight people who are there trying to make it right.

That's a statistic I can definitely live with.

photo credit: Sirkku :) via photo pin cc

Rooted

Faiqa Khan — Wed, 02 May 2012 02:14:19 +0000

There are things we take for granted. I'm sure there are things about your life that you think are perfectly normal things that everyone experiences, but, in fact, may be alien to me.

Bacon comes to mind for some reason.

Here in Memphis, the Central Library branch of the public libraries is magnificent. In appearance it looks less like a library and more like a museum of modern art or even a high end shopping mall. As I walk into the glass doors over pavement that is etched with images of Dr. Seuss as well as welcome messages in a variety of languages, including Arabic, there is a coolness that passes over my mind. The only way I can describe it is... I'm home.

It's without hesitation that I tell you now that I belong among books. If we lived in ancient Egypt, aside from the two coins over my eyes for the boat man, I would ask you to bury me with books.

All kinds. Comic. History. Literature. Cooking. I don't care. Keep your gold, bury me with books.

On the upper levels of the Central Library, there's an entire section devoted to genealogy. Stacks and stacks of books charting when people were born, where they moved to, when they died. The first time I walked past this section of the library is most likely similar to the experience that many people feel when they find out for the first time that there are people in the world who don't eat bacon. See, before that moment, they think everyone eats bacon and it doesn't occur to them that there are people out there who can't even conceive of this thing of which they have intimate and every day knowledge.

When I was young, my father would pull out a piece of paper and write a name at the top. More names came from that single name resulting in a long and wide triangle of names until finally one of the names would be mine. He would do the same for my mother's side of the family. At the time, this was just something fun, I thought. I realize now that it was more. It was the passing on of a story of great importance to my father. It was a story he wanted me to not only remember but own. It wasn't until years later that I found out that girls names weren't even put on those family trees, but that, in what I have to admit was an uncharacteristic act of feminism, my father was careful to include my name.

Anyway, until I walked past that section of the Central Branch, I never realized that some of those trees grow as the result of hours of study, countless minutes of sifting and detective work. That what would be drawn out on a piece of notebook paper for me once a month could only be found the corner of Walnut Grove and Poplar for others. It's just funny, you know, how you don't realize how important the important things can be.

photo credit: Fadzly @ Shutterhack via photo pin cc

Somebody That I Used to Know

Faiqa Khan — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:01:06 +0000

I feel like the universe it trying to tell me something. Something about transition. Letting go. That kind of stuff. Some people say the universe whispers to them. My universe is a screamer. In other or related news, I just can't decide if the Glee version of that Goyte song is better... you tell me.

Needing to Know

Faiqa Khan — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:39:56 +0000

Something as simple as a child losing their first tooth can change something fundamental inside you.

Rewriting the Headlines: The Murder of Shaima AlAwadi

Faiqa Khan — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:22:30 +0000

An uncharacteristic apathy washed over me when I heard the news of an American Muslim woman murdered in El Cajon, California last month. Thirty two year old Shaima AlAwadi was found bludgeoned to death in her home as a note calling her a terrorist lay next to her. Recently discovered court documents indicating that AlAwadi was filing for divorce are now leading the media to suggest that her assailant may have been a family member thus rendering her another casualty in a phenomenon that is on the rise in North America called "honor killings" that supposedly emanates from the higher numbers of immigrant Muslim communities into the continent.

I'm not an apathetic person. To the contrary, I often find myself in the embarrassing situation of explaining why I've suddenly become passionate, angry, or upset about issues that affect "other" communities besides my own. Shaima AlAwadi was an immigrant from a Muslim nation, and my parents immigrated from a Muslim Republic. I'm a wife and mother living in America in my thirties, and Alawadi was also a thirty something mother and wife living in America. AlAwadi was a woman who because of her head scarf was visibly Muslim, and I, too, am visibly Muslim in the same way.

Despite our many intersections, however, I find myself in new territory, engaged in an awkward, guilt ridden internal struggle that of which the major undercurrent suggests that I'm not angry or upset enough about this event. Fundamentally, my guilt lies in rejecting an idea that most people seem to take for granted: I should be very, very upset because AlAwadi was a Muslim woman and somehow this death should matter more to me because of that. It does not. In fact, the continuous focus on her Muslim status detracts from the broader, more universal context of her murder. It also seems to confuse people when they try to extract actionable meaning from the tragedy.

In an age where news stories are broken in seconds not minutes, it's easy to fall into the trap of having the wrong conversations about important events. Opinions and scholarship are no longer methodically laid out for careful consideration but are quickly packaged and produced for immediate consumption by an audience that's time constrained and seems more concerned with quantity of information rather than quality. The rhetoric surrounding Al Awadi's murder is no exception.

At the peril of being misinterpreted as being opposed to hate crime legislation, I will express that I find the hate crime paradigm of understanding AlAwadi's murder both divisive and distracting. Hate crime legislation exists to protect those that would be victimized by violence that is rooted in a political or social cause. The problem with this terminology seeping into public discourse is that it automatically pits communities unfamiliar with the nuance of defining hate crimes against one another. Conversation then ultimately moves away from the central issue, that of one individual being murdered by another individual mercilessly, and then becomes a conversation about whether bias is real, whether the minority in question is being oversensitive or not and most unfortunately whether or not the victim's inability to be perceived as a member of the broader society at large is not at the heart of their demise.

Calling AlAwadi's murder a potential "honor killing" proves even more distracting. I spoke with Dr. Nancy Stockdale, a Middle Eastern Studies profesor at University of North Texas and author of Colonial Encounters Among English and Palestinian Women, 1800-1948 (2007), about this terminology and its impact on discussions about Shaima AlAwadi. Dr. Stockdale brought up the idea that honor is not an ideology that is exclusive to the Muslim world. "If someone cheats on their spouse here, don't they feel disrespected in front of their community?" The professor also mentioned a point I had not considered previously, that nearly one third of women murdered in the United States die at the hands of someone with whom they're intimate. Is it a huge leap to assume that many of those murders could have been committed by partners who felt betrayed, undermined, disrespected and, yes, even dishonored?

Just a few days ago, Kevin Allen fatally shot his wife, Katherina, and his daughter in an Ohio Cracker Barrel restaurant after his wife told him she was leaving him. Is it ridiculous to guess that Kevin Allen may have been motivated by a sense of honor or shame? What is the criteria that holds him exempt from having participated in an honor killing? Katherina Allen was shot and killed because her husband was mentally unstable, but Shaima AlAwadi may have been murdered by her husband because she's foreign and a Muslim? What religion was Katherina Allen? Was she born in this country or not? Why is it important to know those details about the late Mrs. AlAwadi but not about the late Mrs. Allen?

As an American Muslim, this untenable distinction between the two women cuts deeply in my psyche and lays at the core of my shutting down when it comes to discussions about AlAwadi's death. I cannot discuss her on the terms that both the general population and the media want to discuss her. The nomenclature used crowds out the sense of connection I have with women who are non-Muslims. It makes me feel othered and misunderstood. I imagine for many non-Muslim American women in the United States, it also causes them to view this crime as something that happens to "those people" from "over there" and thus offers a safe, yet intellectually questionable degree of distance from this type of violence.

The overemphasis on ethnic and religious identifiers obfuscates more important and central issues. While it would be remiss of anyone considering the merits of the case to dismiss entirely that she was an immigrant, a Muslim, or leaving her husband, I believe we can do better in terms of how we as women and a community of informed citizenry frame the discussion. As I researched this story, almost all of the headlines included terms such as "hijab", "honor killing", and "hate crime", and I can't help but feeling that these buzz words detracted from conversations we should be having about violence in general as it applies to women or anyone, for that matter.

I'm struggling with how to frame this death and the discussions about it so that each of us are moved by it in a way that we consider how to pull a more productive and meaningful course of action from it other than making it yet another line of distinction between us. A woman in El Cajo, California was beaten to death in her home. First, investigators thought it may have been someone who didn't like the way she dressed or looked, but now they think it might have been her husband.

Does the absence of AlAwadi's faith and ethnicity change how you would frame this discussion?

What would be your headline?

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The Drift

Faiqa Khan — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:38:36 +0000

Realization: I am, without a doubt, just a plain old human being. I know. Devastating, really.

Tonight, I’m thinking of “the drift.”

The drift occurs when the emotional space between two people expands at a seemingly infinitesimal, yet constant rate. It is what begins as forgetting to return a phone call and ends in a faint memory of someone you knew quite well a very long time ago. The drift is painful, hopeless and, 99% of the time, permanent. There is no "un-drifting" once you've drifted.

When you walked in, I felt a peaceful knowing in my heart that we were going to have great adventures together. You looked shy. I knew you had no idea how beautiful you were. I was going to show you that.

I mean, for me, my life is full. I have to make room for everything, anything. If I want to breathe, I have to look at my to do list. I have a space between 11:45 and 11:50... I can breathe in those five minutes or I can make an awkward phone call. I barely have time for the people with whom I have relationships that are not awkward and forced, so who needs that?

As I convinced you that you were just as beautiful on the outside as you were on the inside, you taught me to believe that I was brave, wise and strong. With you by my side, I no longer had to pretend to be that. I was that... because you saw that when you saw me. Your eyes made me real.

People will say things.

"Make time to fix this thing."

"Friendship is important."

"Hold on."

"Don’t let go."

And other lyrics from ".38 Special."

Others understand. This is who I am. My life is this way because I want it to be this way. I seriously don’t have time for this kind of thing.

Even when there were oceans between us, we were inseparable. Two thumps in one heartbeat... blood rushing in, blood rushing out. Absent from the day to day of each others’ lives, one phone call would cascade in a blanket of reassurance. You are loved, blood in, you are perfect, blood out.

We’re all grown ups here and while I realize that some people prefer their reality sugar coated, I'm more of the "hold the sugar, give it to me straight up" kind of woman. My heart is too full and my life is just too busy to harbor a silly, childish hope that we can just pick up right where we left off. There is now only time for picking up socks and groceries and kids from practices.

You loved, accepted and admired me without any reservation or envy and, most importantly, without any expectation. You are the only person I have never feared I’d disappoint. If I am honest with myself, no one had ever loved me like that, nobody has loved me like that since, and I suspect that nobody ever will.

When the drift happens, it happens because it’s what both of the people want. People will fight to protect something they need. People let things that are no longer relevant to them fade away. Either way, it’s important to note that everyone in the situation is making a choice.

Conscientiousness optional.

I looked up one day and you were simply not there anymore. I was hurt, alone and, yes, a little angry. Babies have been born, rings exchanged, people buried. Suddenly, I realized that I couldn’t even remember the last time I looked in your direction. I also realize that nobody seems to ask whose fault it is when a book ends. This isn't much different.

The drift itself, while painful, is not the excruciating thing. The real pain shows up when it hits you that there will probably be more drifts and that everyone is a potential drift candidate.

You will never be replaced. I cannot move on. There is no “letting go” of you. There is only an ache in my heart, a lump in my throat, and the horrible realization that there is nothing I can do. I don’t know you anymore and you don’t know me and we are past the point of pretending with any degree of credibility that this is not the reality of who we are to each other. I cannot pretend this is not happening anymore.

The drift is the best reason to hold the people still in your life a little tighter today. Because those moments after a drift, you’ll find the certainty that all this won’t last forever firmly, if not tragically, renewed. Sometimes, you've got to just take a deep breath somewhere between 11:45 and 11:50 and pay attention to right now. This minute. Here.

Goodbye.

This

Faiqa Khan — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:59:41 +0000

Woodrow Wilson, The Spirit of Learning, 1909.

Some things never get old.

Happy Friday.

Spanking Kids and Bombing Countries (Or the lack thereof)

Faiqa Khan — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 06:17:04 +0000

An interesting article posted by my friend Fatima on Facebook:

"Spanking Kids Can Cause Long Term Harm: Canada Study"

TORONTO (Reuters) - Spanking children can cause long-term developmental damage and may even lower a child's IQ, according to a new Canadian analysis that seeks to shift the ethical debate over corporal punishment into the medical sphere.

The study, published this week in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, reached its conclusion after examining 20 years of published research on the issue. The authors say the medical finding have been largely overlooked and overshadowed by concerns that parents should have the right to determine how their children are disciplined.

The initial reaction to this post on my part was, well, duh because it's a conscious parenting choice on my part not to spank. I feel a strong need, because I realize this is a sensitive topic, to strongly emphasize that my choice doesn't make me a better parent. Simply put, though, I believe that emphasizing that you're stronger or taller or older than someone is not the best tool to teach them what's right or wrong. One day, we will not be stronger and bigger and taller. Principled living results from a person intellectually accepting something because they believe it to be right. There's a line in the Quran (this is probably going to surprise our friends who believe in a vast conspiracy to force Islam on everyone) : "There is no compulsion in religion." Put another way, you can't *make* someone believe something is right.

I don't think you can force someone to believe something, and I believe that physical punishments are an act of force.

I hear this a lot: some kids need to be spanked. I disagree. I just disagree. A child is a person. A total and complete person that just knows a little less about the world than I do. To drill down to the simplest explanation: I don't spank children because I don't spank adults. Shut up. Perverts.

I also don't spank because I remember what it felt like to be spanked, both in an educational environment and at home. It was ineffective, shaming and made me resentful of the people who used those methods to assert authority over me. To this day, the adult in my life who has the most impact on me is the one who never laid a hand on me: my mother. All my mother had to do was tell me she was disappointed in me and I would straighten up. I cannot recall a single second of my life where I did not respect my mother. Not even when I was extremely young. And I'll tell you this, kids aren't born respecting their parents, their parents earn that respect. My mother earned her respect from me somehow without every laying a hand on me.

(Okay, there was this one time that she slapped me when I was sixteen, but I totally deserved that. And, also, she apologized for losing her temper. It's just that she thought I was lying dead in a ditch because she didn't know where I was for eight hours and I was supposed to be at school).

People who disagree about this seldom change their minds or find compromises they can agree on as evidenced by a discussion I had on the show CYR (episode 20) a few years ago.

All of that up there was my initial reaction to the Canadian study. My second reaction was far more philosophically based than controversially based, and I'm hoping you latch on to this part instead of the first. How can we as a society, dare I say, species consider eliminating the use of physical discipline when it permeates the highest levels of our society? I feel like that's pretty hypocritical.

Spanking your kids is supposedly bad according to this latest research, but dropping bombs on country because you suspect that they have nuclear capabilities is okay? See, if we accept that spanking kids is definitely, absolutely not okay... well, we'd have to reassess paradigms that allow us to push the boundaries of what we believe are appropriate responses to international situations where we feel a particular nation or people need to be "taught a lesson" for a perceived or real threat.

You know what I mean?

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