Abeer

You Are Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 23:37:00 +0000

This post is about my return to Nigeria 25 years after my family left.

Abuja (click here for all my Abuja photos)

I flew into the planned city of Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, in September 2012. The night I arrived, I ate gari (pounded cassava), egusi (okra, greens, and fish stew), jollof rice (tomato rice) with mackerel, stewed crayfish, fried plantains, boiled beans with spinach, and fresh pineapple (yes, this was all one meal) (no, I couldn't help myself).

After dinner, I found a deserted playground so I could once again walk barefoot in the blood red dust without anyone seeing me be weird. Then I sat on a swing set and swung into the black night until I felt sick. I had, after all, eaten (way) too much.

Maiduguri (click here for all my Maiduguri photos)

The next morning, I flew to Maiduguri, a city of 3 million people in Northeastern Nigeria in the state of Borno. Maiduguri is the headquarters of Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group that some people say is a cover for governmental meddlings or religious bluffery, and others say is an attack on western education. Either way, it makes the city dangerous ground.

The con of travelling with security detail in a bullet proof car is that you can't roll down the windows for street photography. More's the pity, because Maiduguri is sprawling and colourful, scruffy and luxurious side by side. The shots I do have are through black tinted glass or the windshield (until the police officer I inadvertently photographed yelled at us). Here are 5 variably uncharted moments:

1. At a street corner, a massive garbage heap rises metres high, hosting at least 2 dozen grazing goats, and at the very top, two billy goats with horns rear at each other, one full on aggro on his hind legs, forelegs high in the air. Meanwhile the setting sun makes the whole scene a silhouette, darkening the rubbish into a 3 peaked mountain, the sewage swamp surrounding becomes a shallow lake, and the goats are armies at the ready, their kings already at war.

2. A pick up truck roars past a traffic jam, cutting itself a lane by edging onto the already crowded sidewalk. In the bed of the truck, two young men stand, holding on to the cab facing the sun, wearing tshirts with the sleeves cut off, all muscle and grin.

3. Past the pale green gates is the mansion, the only sound is water from the fountains spilling inside and out. Indoors, the ceilings are three stories high, and a chandelier threatens its crystal tears while a staircase spirals out of sight. Through the windows, as wide as the walls, palm trees stamp themselves against the blue sky, and a peacock herds her chicks in the silence.

4. 3 wheeled baby taxis ferry their passengers in the dust like bright yellow birds. One pauses at the crooked wooden stall selling eggs and cigarettes and candy under the low shade of a leafy tree, and the sign selling calling cards waves frantically in the breeze.

5. A woman, heavy bosomed and middle aged, climbs over the highway median, one leg thrown over the cement barrier as she straddles it awkwardly. Cars whiz past in double time on both sides. Her ankle length wrapper skirt of green and gold paisley is hitched up past one knee, and her matching blouse slightly askew with her effort. She makes it to the other side, straightens her clothes, and frowns into the oncoming traffic.

After I had toured Maiduguri and Abuja and taken several hundred photographs (including of President Goodluck Jonathan!), I finally got to go south, to Nsukka, the town I grew up in.

Enugu (click here for all my Enugu and Lokoja photos)

I flew into Enugu, the nearest city with an airport. The Abuja-Enugu Arik Air flight of 45 mins suffered 2 delays totaling almost 4 hours. At Abuja airport, there was willy nilly queuing on the edge of the tarmac in blazing sunlight until we were given a sign. We fast walked to the plane with no indication of which plane or even what direction, other than following the crowd. God forbid you checked luggage because you had to leave the queue to inspect the pile beside the plane, identify your bags to the staff so they could put it on the plane, and then rejoin the queue even more willy nilly. Then on the plane, the justifiably enraged big chief man who bought a biz class ticket for a plane with only economy seats took his angst out on me by boxing me out for overhead luggage space. BUT the plane arrived safely. No mean feat for a route where only one domestic carrier has a license to operate as all the others have been grounded for safety considerations (ie catastrophes).

Then I was there, in the town I was born. Amma - I didn't track down Enugu Teaching Hospital for you because the site of the hospital changed 5 years ago. I was received by Fidelis, a driver of Vice Chancellor Bato of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. UNN was one of the first universities in Nigeria and my father taught geology there for 15 years, even compiling and editing UNN's first academic calendar and staff brochure, back in 1972 before I was born. While I didn't get to meet Prof. Bato (he was out of town), he and his senior special assistant, Prof. Moneke, were taken by my background and the purpose of my visit, and they extended every hospitality I could possibly wish for.

Enugu Airport looks like a veritable disaster zone (I don't have a photo that shows just how ghetto it looks). Yes, it was pouring rain when I arrived which makes everything look grim, but the building, which is under construction, doesn't look as if it can even accommodate people. Plus there was some VIP on the plane with me, so armed soldiers were stationed at every half constructed nook and cranny, like some prison camp. We were all directed to exit around the side of the building via a dirt path which had become a mini stream because of the rain.

It took Fidelis and me 2 hours just to get off the airport road because of the rains and traffic, but by early evening, I was happily ensconsed at the Chijiokes, sharing a delicious home-cooked Thai curry dinner. I didn't take up the hotel that had been booked for me by the VC, instead staying with Mark and Mary Ellen Chijioke who used to teach at UNN and now live in Enugu. Their three sons had attended my old school but were in different grades and now live in different countries.

Nsukka (click here for all my Nsukka photos and videos)

The next morning, Fidelis picked me up and we left for Nsukka, 100 km away, or about an hour's drive depending on the traffic, weather, and road conditions. I remember the road being quite good, alongside hilly and jungly terrain, and in typical Nigerian fashion, some of it still is, and some of it is in much worse condition than decades ago.

The campus of UNN is surrounded by walls. When I lived there, there was one entrance, at the top of a hill, barricaded by a gate and guards. But as we drove through a fancy processional corridor with sweeping lamp posts, nothing looked familiar. I was baffled. I have had a map of UNN in my head for as long as I can remember, and while I didn't think it was complete or 100% accurate, I didn't think it was so off the mark that I would have forgotten the very entrance. Then the rest of the campus map started falling into place, and I realised that we had entered from a totally different part of campus. Fidelis explained that there was a new entrance, one that bypassed the bustle of the outer town. Phew.

My first stop was my old school - University Primary School and University Secondary School - where I attended kindergarten through 8th grade. I dropped in on the current headmistress, Mrs. Susan Eche, to say hello and ask permission to take photographs. She was overjoyed to meet me, and when news of my arrival spread, half a dozen teachers gathered to greet me. A few had even been around when I was there, and everyone insisted on taking photographs and exchanging phone numbers and emails. I left her office with a bolt of UNN fabric with which they make the current school uniform. I think my twin niece and nephew will look super cutie in matching UNN shirts.

Outside her office and behind the school, the vast assembly grounds and back playing fields shrank in my adult eyes. The concrete bungalows of classrooms were more compact than I remembered, and the tree by the headmistress's office was not as encompassing. However, the broken or missing window panes of the classrooms were the same :) Of course, perception of scale is one of the main differences between childhood and adult perspectives, but it was still startling to see it played out.

The secondary school classrooms had been taken over by the kindergarten classes (the new secondary school is in a different location altogether). And there were new sets of buildings eating into the back fields. Still, I was able to find the classroom where in grade 6A, I memorised "The Tiger" by William Blake, and Form 2B (8th grade) where I learned to draw the human skeleton from scratch, and got whipped by the French teacher for every lapse (he whipped everyone, liberally).

At the university bookstore, I picked up some UNN memorabilia for my family (who are eagerly awaiting my stories and photos), and then visited the Children's Centre (including the first children's library in Nsukka that my mother helped start). The wonderful Prof. Jill Dike still heads up the Centre, and she also treated me to lunch and gave me some books and pamphlets to take home.

And I walked through the grassy compound of the CEC Guest House where we used to play freeze tag and hide and seek amongst the rusting statues (still the same ones!) and fan palm trees.

As it got to later afternoon, while navigating badly deteriorated roads, I found what I think was the very first house we lived in, on Odim Street. I definitely found our second house, on Ako Okweli Street. That one was easy because it was a corner plot at the end of the street, and on the other side of our hedged compound was the jungle, i.e. our playground in the evenings after school.

Now there is an apartment building on the other side, pushing the jungle farther away. The compound is much smaller - I think part of it has been cut off because there isn't enough space for the second garage (which is no longer there) nor the mango trees we used to climb, or the side garden. The front garden is now incredibly wild and overgrown - not a hint of my mother's beautifully laid out garden of roses and alamanda bushes and cactus plants and frangipani trees - but lovely in its own right.

I did what I did 26 years ago, and stood at the very southwest corner of our compound and faced the setting sun. I was 13 then, and we were about to leave Nigeria. We hadn't decided where, and our choices were radically different from each other: Papua New Guinea, Oman, Bangladesh, America. I could sense a terrible impending loss, so I stood in that corner every evening for a year before we left, and I memorised the crawling hills, the coiling jungle, the violent sky.

This time I was 39 and so much had happened that I didn't know what to think, or even what to wish for. So I just stood there on the wet red earth in squinting sunlight, and I thanked everything and everyone that had brought me back here, in the incarnation that I am now, that I will be in another quarter century, if the accident will. Then I got back into the car and left Nsukka in its golden hour.

I thought everything would feel anticlimactic after that visit, and indeed I am still filled with a kind of melancholy relief. This thing I have dreamed about for so many years has finally happened. And as expected, the actuality of Nsukka was both staggering and shabby, reduced yet incredibly redolent.

However, the travel gods had more plans for me, and my journey back to the States was epic. Foiled by Arik Air's sudden suspension of all flights (for billing rather than safety issues), I hired a shared taxi to go overland from Enugu to Abuja, along with 2 other stranded passengers (ordinarily a 6 hour drive). Other than a stop to haggle lengthily for palm wine and bananas, and another to replace a fan belt, all was well until 4 hours in, at Lokoja, the town at the confluence of the massive Niger and Benue rivers.

The taxi driver had made the same drive the day before and had boasted of driving his car through knee deep water. We hoped he was exaggerating. In fact, in the 24 hours since, the Niger had risen and Lokoja was underwater. Riverside houses were almost totally submerged, with only their top floor windows showing like desperate eyes. The road ahead of us had vanished, children body-surfing the surface of the flood in glee. The rest of the Lokoja residents sat on the verandas of the houses just barely out of reach of the water and watched in silence, mattresses and whatever items that could be saved piled nearby.

The people, they de suffa, said our driver. Honestly, said the woman passenger in the back.

We followed the line of cars off road into the bush. The path was hilly, unpaved, and unmarked, beset by treacherous ditches and puddles, and barely wide enough for cars. And of course there was an equally eager procession coming from the other direction, and it took us an hour to get back to the road.

Then the road went underwater again, but only tire high, so we drove through it slowly, and reached dry land only to come to a stop inside the most monstrous traffic jam I have ever seen, miles upon miles of trucks, buses, and cars, in total standstill, in 40 degree heat.

Every inch of road and pavement was taken up by vehicles. Absolutely no movement possible, not even to give up and go back. Even the motorcycles were hardpressed to zip between the lines for more than a few metres at a time.

3 blazing hours passed, children crying in the heat, and people leaving their transports and climbing up the construction site to the west to pray or walk the edges of the hills back home or god knows where.

Until our spirited driver (who couldn't have been more than 20 years old) somehow scraped and muscled our car to the other side of a line of trucks and onto the flooded "sidewalk" next to the yawning river.

Finally we came to the head of the monster - a hundred metres of road under waist deep water. The driver switched off the engine and we gathered our belongings on our laps. I mentally prepared to carry my laptop and camera above my head, climb out the car window and walk/swim to the other side.

Three boys pushed our car slowly, slowly, slowly, until finally we got to the other side. Our engine started (joy), and we continued the rest of the way to Abuja, plagued only by traffic and construction, minor concerns now.

12 hours after I left Enugu, I got to Abuja, with 20 minutes to shower and eat before heading to the airport to catch my flight to the States.

And now I'm back in New York. It feels surreal and sustained. Naija, I de come back soon. And in the meantime, for my all Nigeria photos, click here.

Always already in the city of dreaming

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Sat, 12 May 2012 00:30:00 +0000

7 years ago (right about now), I was living in San Francisco (funk soul brother), my favourite city in America and my home of 4 years. Before the Bay, I had been in Philadelphia for a glorious and tortured decade. Before that, in Pittsburgh for all of horrific high school. Before that, in Nsukka, Nigeria for 13 rose coloured years.

The point is I was geographically stable for years at a time, and my adult homes had been veritable nests: closets full of shoes, scarves, bags for any weather and occasion; walls covered in paper and poems and photographs; canopies over pillowtop beds; candles! jewelry! makeup! All of that was about to fly out the window.

In the spring of 2005, I had just given up my flat in the Mission and my job in Berkeley, and I was distraught. Once I came to terms with the unravelling, I decided to run with it. By summer, I had sold or given away everything except for my books and albums which I shipped to my parents' place in Pittsburgh. Then I bought a one way ticket to Bangkok and I skipped town.

Later that year, I wrote my first blog post about San Francisco. It would be my 7th blog post ever (this is the 64th). I was living in the hot delicious city of Bangkok, and I was having a ball. In the travel works were jaunts to Bangladesh and Barcelona, and then back to America, after oh, maybe a year. I had no idea.

On what I thought was a super long shot, I had just applied for a Fulbright. The news of that win the following year would cut short my Barcelona time and send me to Bangladesh and India for almost 2 years to write my second book, a linked collection of stories, poems, and photographs, called The Lovers and the Leavers.

The money I saved from staying with my fabulous Sabrina Aunty would fund a fourth year in Latin America (until I went broke from replacing all my stolen electronics, damn you Santa Theresa thieves). A fifth year would be spent in NYC (and at my first residency!), making up and saving up money. The sixth year split between Bangladesh and London (where I started my third book, a novel in progress about memory loss, called Memory Alone) (fabulous clown boy painting by Lavely Miller). The seventh spent at three more residencies, wondering how to slow down, where to stop, how to stay.

But I'm zen with my haphazard skidding this last restless year (two if I'm honest), if only because it led me back to San Francisco, my city of dreaming. I have always belonged there. I knew it the first time I visited in 1997. I was 23 and I stepped off the plane and it was clear right away. That feeling has never left me. Not when I finally moved out west to Berkeley in 2001, nor when I left the Mission in 2005. So when I walked once again into that cool still air, 39 and counting, on three separate occasions friends said welcome home, and I was overcome, in tears.

For one far too short week, I stayed with my dark humoured bright hearted pixie pye girl, Jules. She and Christian and their three tousled cookie monsters, Audren, Solène, and Blaise, live in the Mission, in a jaw droppingly beautiful house, chockfull of amenities and light and charm. I slept in the living room, arguably the most stunning room in the house, a delicately furnished East facing bay windowed wonder.

Including breakfast at the Chadwick-Dunns (and my first gander at the precocious Bella!), Nina's funny sharp show "Seat Assignment," and a quickie visit from the always lovely Mara and her Zael boy, too much happened to tell it all, so I will describe only these ten things.

1. In Lone Palm, a bar in the Mission, with Jules, Christian, and Alan, drinking stellar gin gimlets: outside the sky was breaking open and flooding San Francisco (literally - basement garages submerged, rain like a waterfall, thunder, lightning, the works). Inside, a reunion of professors and writers from USF's MFA program, and the always luminous Lynka Adams reading her funny sharp story just published in the latest issue of the Farallon Review.

2. Sitting on a wooden bench outside the new Asian fusion joint Hawkers Fare, in downtown Oakland (now hopping! revitalised! funky!), a short walk away from Feelmore, the excellent sex-positive woman-friendly sex shop (owned by a hot black lesbian filmmaker), and listening to my favourite writer-mother-snoop Mary tell me about orgasmic meditation (boy do I want to try it) and feeling so grateful that I know someone so funny and strong and nurturing, so bounce back joyful and vibrant, so live and let live. I am ever sustained by her.

3. On top of the world with my blue eyed boy, Alan, my supplier of socks and midnight conversation, no matter the time zone. Among the places he took me was Grand View Park, on the edge of the Sunset, atop the fabulous Moraga Steps (pictured above).

It has a 360 view of San Francisco including Golden Gate Park, Downtown, the flat pastel lands of the Richmond and the Sunset, Golden Gate Bridge, and on the other side of all that, the ruins of the Sutro Baths at the edge of the roiling blue ocean. Up there on the hill, the wind whips something fierce, the light is cold and fine, and the time is always now.

4. Sitting in Jules and Christian's kitchen, as I have so many nights, so many years, the plates cleared from yummy dinner, drinking wine, playing silly hilarious games, and laughing into the night.

5. On yet another sunny breezy afternoon, climbing down the outdoor wooden stairway at the back of Jules' house carrying the sleeping Blaise, walking through the overgrown garden to the back left corner where a low swing hangs from the tree, and if you sit facing the sun, each time you swing forward, the light gilds everything from your eyelashes to the air.

6. The dandelion field just off the walking path along the Marina that skirts the North Bay toward the looming swooning Golden Gate Bridge, where I interrupted my decade long conversation about writing and life with Mahmud to make him take a squinting photo with me among the shining flowers.

7. A fantastic three hour chat with my thesis advisor and the best writing professor ever, Stephen Beachy, in a sunny little cafe in Berkeley. Over his tea and my bagel, we talked about my ongoing agent hunt and his recent book tour (for his latest book, Boneyard), as well as what Desi short story writers he might include in his next course syllabus (Mahmud - I put Killing the Water on the list, along with Mridula Koshy, Rana Dasgupta, and Daniyal Mueenuddin). Stephen is the kind of person who teaches, sometimes without your even noticing you're learning. It's just excellent conversation, and afterwards, you're better for it.

8. Walking through the winding steep streets of Bernal Heights with its quaint and crooked housing alongside fabulous Renaissance woman Sara, and her dog Mabel, talking about setting fires, transmedia production, cooking blogs, agents, babies, singing, hair dye, and of course, what's for dinner (at the Maamouri table, nothing ever short of a gourmet feast).

9. Driving back from sexed up drunken revelry in Healdsburg with my favourite Scott Keneally, San Francisco growing in the horizon, and Lana Del Rey singing "Blue Jeans" in her lazy voice. She pauses for a breath as the grey road rushes underneath and away. Scott raises his hand between us, as if holding the silence, and the world shrinks into our car. Just before she cries out the rising chorus, his hand swoops down, ushering in the sound, and this gesture stops my heart. Scott, if you're reading this, I just listened to "Fallen Souls" - another monumental musical moment of ours.

10. Having dinner with the elegant eloquent poet queen, Aaron Shurin, my favourite poetry professor, on the heels of his latest book, Citizen, and a reading of his that I was lucky enough to attend. If you have a chance, go listen, to his voice and elocution - if nothing else, this alone is worthy). Over scallops and white wine, I listened to him talk about USF's MFA program (he's just retired as director), of writing holidays and the gay scene in Mexico, the ever challenging poetry publishing world, and the trials of illness and aging and housing, all inspiring and ass kicking motifs of life, rendered in his inimitable language and voice.

I wish wish wish California weren't like another country to the East Coast. I'm gone, heart city, but I'm always coming back.

Fall in the Hamptons

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 03:51:00 +0000

If you take the Long Island Rail Road from the mad circus heart of Penn Station, it takes 20 minutes to get to Jamaica, Queens. Jamaica is what I think of as the last outpost of New York (an hour long subway ride from Manhattan, or 20 minutes on the LIRR). But keep going. It's another 3 hours to the end of the Montauk line, at the end of Long Island. Your fellow passengers will be wearing loafers and tailored shorts, scarves or sweaters around their shoulders, chunky rings, button down shirts, ie the uniform of the fabled jetsetting denizens of the Hamptons.

The last half an hour of the ride, the train will slow to a chugging crawl, and the sea will appear on the left, bobbing and waving its aquamarine body as you pass South Hampton, Amangansett, and finally roll into Montauk, where the track and the East Coast ends.

A steep mile straight uphill, through the woods and past the manor house, will bring you to "the Barn" built in 1928, and bought by the inimitable, witty, and feisty playwright, Edward F. Albee (pictured on the right), in 1967 and converted into an art colony: the venerable and rustic Albee Foundation residency.

The Barn houses 5 artists at a time: writers, visual artists, and composers, during the summer months, when a drafty open air barn with an outdoor shower is perhaps the only way to live. My residency was from September through mid October 2011. (yes, this is a delayed post, but I haven't forgotten a single thing:)

My room/studio was upstairs, in the southwest corner of the barn. It had two entrances, one door to the bedroom part and one to the studio part. Inside, there was an archway between the two spaces, but otherwise it was open and full of cobwebs and creaky floor boards. There were 3 generous windows, and the afternoon sunlight was overwhelming.

My bed was in the corner the way I like it, and covered in an alien throw up coloured quilt. My clothes fit into one drawer but I spread them out into 4. The closets stood empty.

In the early morning, when I woke up and looked out the window, sometimes there was a family of deer congregating towards the edge of the woods. The seagulls cried to me all day, the crickets all night. Otherwise the wind was the only sound.

I also had three desks, one a drafting table, ratcheted up to standing height for my laptop, one holding my flatbed scanner for a family album scanning project, and a third that carried a dome lamp, a box fan, and a growing collection of multi-coloured origami lotus flowers.

My favourite time of day was when I finished yoga or pilates in my studio and went for an outdoor shower. It was a wooden structure on the back side of the house and the sunlight made it look as if my skin were radiant. I am a rabid believer in outdoor showers now.

In my first week in Montauk, I wrote an email to my friends. I told them there was no turmeric in the kitchen, but this was not the only reason my daal was tasteless and boring. I included my address and said I liked dark chocolate and hand written cards. I was overcome by the response. In my six weeks there, almost a day didn't go by without an arrival of gifts.

Postcards and letters from Kolkata and Portland and NYC and Iowa City, chocolate and dolls from Paris and Philadelphia and Virginia, books and nuts and fruit and more chocolate from San Francisco and DC and Pittsburgh, whiskey and socks (hand delivered from the Bay !), and the most expensive bottle of turmeric I have ever owned. Talk about gold powder. Oh and did I mention chocolate? I shared liberally with my companions, as well as with Rex and Diane, our fabulous arty caretakers, and still I had a dangerous dark stash left over at the end.

My four fellow residents at the Barn were as different as they were lovely.

There's always at least one playwright at the Barn, in honour of Mr. Albee. Kevin Doyle is tall and rangy and outspoken, with left politics and a no nonsense manner. His theatre company is called Sponsored by Nobody, and he went swimming in the cold blue ocean every day, no matter the weather.

Christian Maychack is a blue eyed sculptor whose work I loved. He looked boyish (which is probably why he sports a beard) and spoke softly and carefully. Wearing paint spattered overalls, he sawed and sculpted the most amazing things out of woven baskets, wood, magic sculpt, and paint.

The novelist, Scott Pinkmountain, is also a full time musician, with several records and bands and MFAs and residencies to his name. He looked like a lanky mountain man, was working on a gorgeous funny novel which I hope gets published soon, and I loved our thoughtful pleasurable conversations from minute one. [Note that Scott is one of those crazy writer types who gets up at 4am to write. Luckily, he had the east facing room, and I, who live for late afternoon sunlight, had the western one.]

The other visual artist was Nora Griffin, a quiet wide eyed painter, and an avid runner, who had just gotten out of Columbia's MFA and was stringing together a series of art residencies until she was ready to join the real world.

My first night, Scott took me grocery shopping in his car. This was the first residency I had attended where we weren't provided with food. I was a little worried since groceries aren't known to be cheap in the Hamptons. But I needn't have been. I bought $100 worth of food which lasted double the time I thought they would (hello salad life). What didn't last was a $7 block of garlic infused aged cheddar, and a frozen pack of okra which I thawed, sauteed, and ate in one sitting.

Both Nora and Christian appeared to be both gourmet cooks. They handled knives with swift ease. Scott was also competent in the kitchen, whipping up hot breakfast, or quesadillas with all the toppings, in the time it took me to mix my Banana Nut Crunch with almond milk. Perhaps that's how Kevin and I first bonded, over the fact that for dinner, I sometimes had canned clam chowder, or boxed rice and beans, or cereal, and he had crackers with spready cheese.

From the Barn, the beach is an 8 minute bike ride, downhill. But sometimes, I wouldn't leave my commune for days, perfectly happy to wave goodbye to everyone else going on bike rides, hikes, runs, surfing, nights out in town. I sat on my sunny bed and read, stood at my desk and wrote, blasted music and danced around all riotous. I like being alone, no matter what one might guess. I'm a bit of a closet hermit who stumbled into gypsying by a twist of fate.

I finished a first draft of my novel, Memory Alone, at the Barn, in early October. I thought I had finished a draft at VCCA earlier that year in February, and then at Millay in June. But it took me til the end of my residency at the Albee Foundation, almost 2 years after I first started, to finish my poetical dense dream of a novel. What a flawed first draft it (still) is, but it's a draft nonetheless. And of course I took some photos. Here are my sets from September and October in Montauk.

As in Sweet Briar, in my little writing cottage in the middle of the meadow, and in Austerlitz, in my warm book lined studio in the woods, I knew from the first day that I was going to be sorry, oh so sorry to leave the Barn, that these six weeks would be a wonder, a treat, a secret ecstatic whisper in my head for years to come. When I was in Montauk...

Lights and music are on my mind

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:23:00 +0000

Day 1: Rahim and I flew into Zurich, Switzerland Saturday afternoon, with $100 worth of duty free alcohol (curse the woman who sealed it all into one arm breaking bag). Armed with Diyari's precise directions and uber efficient Swiss trains and trams at our service, by 4pm, we were ensconced in Diyari and Dani's adorbs Albisrieden flat, decked out with comfy mattresses in the living room, chocolate on the table, and even more alcohol in the kitchen. We uncorked the first bottle, unpeeled the first chocolate bar, and began my five day Swiss birthday party.

That first night, we indulged Rahim's (and every gay boy's) favourite new pastime, Grindr. Mattias was our host for the evening, a sweet hot Swiss boy who served us stiff vodka and bitter lemon drinks in his flat just down the road from Diyari's, and then taxied us to T&M, a gay club downtown.

As Rahim will attest to, I am a willing gay club goer. Even if said club costs 30 Swiss Francs to enter, 3 Francs to check your coat, 16 Francs for a cocktail (thank god and JimChae for my flask), and disallows women on the second floor (um)... Still I had a blast. I danced so happily that the gay boys bought me beers (please to appreciate this as they were gay and each beer cost 9 Francs). I danced so long that Rahim got tired and had to sit until I was done (hello dawn).

Day 2: Diyari returned from her Easter trip to the mountains with her handsome Swiss fiancé Dani. After an effusive reunion and homemade pizza lunch, we played a few rousing games of Brändi Dog and Bananagrams, ate more chocolate, and then offed to the Hive. The Hive is a three floor extravaganza boasting a huge women's bathroom with a long couch, and a mailbox where you can fill out Hive postcards and "post" them unstamped. Arif, you'll have to tell me if yours ever arrives. Under roving laser lights, and surrounded by assorted Easter candy and bunnies and baskets hanging from the ceiling, stuffed in nooks and crannies, littering the floor, we danced and danced and danced.

Day 3: Day of rest. By which I mean we slept so late we barely had time to shower and meet Diyari and Dani for dinner. Since Zurich is so expensive that people have to bring their own meats/fixings to BBQs, or charge guests for dinner parties (not joking), we went to an Irish pub downtown that featured a Monday night special in which buying a 23 Franc fish and chips dish got you another dish for free. Whatta deal. Also, note the 12 Franc baked potato on the menu where each topping cost another Franc. We surreptitiously spiked our 5 Franc sodas with whiskey from my flask, chowed our half priced still insanely expensive meals, and then trammed back to the house for drunken boardgames and silly movies and hysterical laughing.

Day 4: Tuesday, day of grace, and my 39th birthday. April 10, 2012 also proved the first and only day of my Swiss visit which was bright and warm! After a whiskey and chocolate breakfast, Rahim, Diyari, and I took the tram to Lake Zurich, surrounded by snowcapped mountains and jewel green parks.

After a light snack of sausage and bread and magic, we settled on the grass and people watched and laughed and talked through the sun drenched afternoon. We toasted sunset with Prosecco in plastic champagne flutes (we're classy like that) and more sausage with spicy mustard.

That night, thanks to an OKC tip (I am such a geography whore), we ended up at the underground dance spot, Helsinki Club. The DJ played fabulous trancy tunes set to green and yellow spotlights, where I met and danced with the lovely lithe Salome, the eager blonde Peter, and other pretty ones. At some flailing juncture, I felt something brush my leg, and it was only much later that I realised it was my gorgeous bead anklet come undone, and now gone, sacrificed to the gods of going out. Pretty please to make me another right quick, Reema. My ankle feels NAKED. As the club closed out, I finished the dregs of my flask, kissed a wanting beau, and went home, alone, joyous.

Day 5: Pouring rain dissuaded us from museums or old town ventures. It did not dissuade us from finishing the last of the Flor de Caña, the second bottle of Jameson, the fifth block of cheese, the eighth bottle of Prosecco, the nth chocolate egg. Nor from dancing around the living room under the wooden beams of the red red roof under the ash grey sky. Hail to my dancy loves Diyari and Rahim, to Dani, to Zurich for my epic 39th birthday bash.

An Idiot's Guide to Sundance

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:25:00 +0000

The Sundance Film Festival was started by Robert Redford in 1978 in Utah and is the largest independent cinema festival in the States, promoting both American and international indie films. If you have a few hundred dollars for airfare, a few thousand dollars for hotel accommodations, and a week off in late January, then here's what else you have to do:

1. Spend some time with the online film catalogue and make a list of what you want to see. It is stupendously international and topically diverse. More than you can possibly take in, even if you watched movies all day all night for 10 days. For you blockbuster junkies, this is the kind of indie arty thinky film you don't want to watch, but then you watch and realise it's the best thing you've seen in years. Your list should include where the films are showing (more on this later), and it should be a long list because you might not get your first or even your fifth choices. Luckily, it's an all star list.

The Orator: the first feature length Samoan film (ever!), and New Zealand's nomination for best foreign film in the 2012 Academy Awards. A richly shot depiction of village life in Samoa, with a cast of unusual and nuanced characters (all untrained actors from the village), and a satisfying plot. A little long and slow, but nice.

2. Register in the fall (ticket package registration starts in September and individual ticket registration in November), and get everyone in your party to register too, even those who aren't sure they're coming. It's free to register. Everyone who does gets randomly assigned a three day slot (it's not first come first serve). Within this three day slot (hopefully someone in your group will get lucky with an early slot), you get one and ONLY ONE SHOT to buy tickets for the movies you want to see. Individual tickets cost $15/each. The package or festival pass options give you earlier ticket selections and some other benefits (like awards night party tickets), but cost double or more.

Father's Chair: A Brazilian film about a family falling apart, a gorgeous (natch) wife who wants a divorce from her husband, and a teenage son who flees this discord. His father takes up chase and their asynchronous journey through the countryside outside Sao Paolo is the heart of the film. It's a little heavy handed with the father-son remonstrations, but totally moving and worth watching.

3. Book your Park City accommodations early. Since you might not know til just before the festival starts where your films are being shown, I suggest booking your place in downtown Park City (several months in advance), and when the time comes, either choosing films being shown in Park City, or accounting for travel time from there. At least this way, you'll be in the heart of the festival, near the quaint and cute Main Street pubs and restaurants and lounges, and close to great skiing spots.

Note that if you do your research and book early enough, then your downtown Park City vacation home with 3+ bedrooms and a hot tub will cost the same as a cookie cutter hotel suite sans private luxury amenities 20 miles outside Park City (doh). Be prepared to shell out $400-$1000/night. However, these condos and town houses sleep 8-12 people more than comfortably. So get your posse in gear.

This Must Be The Place: The always brilliant and mutable Sean Penn gives a bizarre and endearing performance as an ageing goth rocker who embarks on a hunt through middle America for his father's Nazi tormentor. The film had the potential to be great - some fabulous cinematography, strong acting, and able direction (by Italian director Paolo Sorrentino), but the plot didn't hold together enough. Still worth a look on Netflix when it gets there.

4. Rent a car, preferably a four wheel drive SUV. It is nowhere clearly stated on the Sundance website that the films are being shown in four different cities in Utah, some of which are over an hour from each other, driving at full speed. Most of the films are in 2 locations: Park City and Salt Lake City (45 minutes apart - given no traffic and good weather). But quite a few films are also shown in Ogden, an hour and half from Park City, and another city I don't remember.

Arbitrage: a high tension high finance thriller starring Richard Gere and Susan Sarandon that we were all looking forward to seeing but missed, despite a valiant 2 hour effort, because of rush hour traffic and blinding snow on the road to Ogden.

You'll also want the car because it's highly unlikely you'll manage to book all your films in Park City, and even if so, you'll still need to get from Salt Lake City airport to Park City (an $80-$150 taxi ride each way). The aforementioned posse would make a taxi or rental car split much more affordable.

Even more critically, transportation wise, Sundance takes place in the heart of winter. In the four days that Tayo, Natalia, and I spent in Utah, over 20 inches of snow fell (boarders' wet dream and Japanese painter's inspiration). Highway 40 shut down because so many accidents occurred, cars slid off the road by the dozen even after the storm was done, and tire chains were required on certain roads at certain times. I've never been so happy to drive a gas guzzling monstrosity as in Utah in January.

Marina Abramović The Artist is Present: "Seductive, fearless, and outrageous, Marina Abramović has been redefining performance art for nearly 40 years." i.e. she's my new hero in the world. I gave up the ticket for this film showing in Park City to try watch "Arbitrage" in Ogden. Fail on both counts, but I'll keep watch for both to hit the theatres.

5. Make friends, or put your friendly friends to use. You will need them to hobnob and find out where the much vaunted celeb studded afterparties are (if that's your bag). Some of these events are hosted by big corporations, although Sundance is trying to limit the elite/corporate element and focus on the films. Other parties are private do's. These parties will probably be well attended and feature gorgeous skinny actors and models and those who love them.

Wuthering Heights: this updated version of the Emily Bronte classic features a black Heathcliff (!) and promised fine performances and arty cinematography. Timing/location idiocies on our part prevented us from seeing it, but my list of movies to see grows.

6. Set aside time to wander. There are numerous installations and exhibits and music events and panels and workshops and performances and so on, all around town, most of them free. New Frontier is an organisation supporting innovative storytelling, and how new media folds into these efforts. One of their featured installations in 2012 was Ho Tzu Nyen's "The Cloud of Unknowing" - a surreal atmospheric experience that uses sound and steam to blur the lines between film and audience. Another was "Question Bridge: Black Males" a multimedia project that attempts to build a dialogue and a new kind of social network among black men nationwide.

Where Do We Go Now: Lebanese director Nadine Labaki (who made the fantastic 2007 international hit film, Caramel) tackles religious conflict in Lebanon with her whimsical lyrical edge. I was dying to see this film but couldn't get tickets before it sold out.

Lastly, pull on your boots and go for a walk in a snowstorm. Stand in knee deep powder by the edge of the icy pond under the black and white mountains. Press your camera to your frozen face. Click.

Summering in Millay

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 01:12:00 +0000

I can't imagine a better way to return to America after 6 years of jaunting than spending one summer month at the Millay Colony for the Arts. Austerlitz, New York is 2.5 hours north of NYC by train+taxi. The day I arrived (June 2, 2011) (yes, this blog post is way overdue) was brilliantly sunny and just a little bit nippy. White clouds, blue sky, private studio, cave like bedroom. Could I ask for more? Apparently so.

Donna was our chef extraordinaire. She cooked three course gourmet dinners for the seven of us, five nights a week, and for our other meals, did all our grocery shopping, paid and delivered. Dark chocolate? Check. Blueberries and oranges and grapefruit and strawberries? Check. Bacon? Check. Quinoa? Check. Avocados? Check. Pretty much anything our hungry hearts desired.

Then there was my studio - small, warm, flooded with sunlight, filled with books (it used to be the library), windows on two walls, one big fat desk and swivel chair, a super long bench seat with comfy pillows, and enough floor space to do yoga, pilates, or dance around like mad.

Then there were my six arty companions.

Amanda is a writer and performer, eloquent and precise and hilarious, as thoughtful as they come, killer Bananagrams player, and in the midst of her transition from a lifetime in California to a running start in Brooklyn.

Jesse is a dry humoured and self deprecating painter of layered mythical scenes, up for a stroll or a dance or a rousing discussion about farms or religion or art or really anything.
Casey is a playwright, irrepressible and charming, romantic and idealistic (and she follows through in deed), Twin Peaks fan, and champion of our artistic patron, Edna St. Vincent Millay (whose house and grounds were all around).

Dustin is a sweet and smart visual artist (and fellow Penn alumni), who was about to start on a Western odyssey of art residencies. During his time at Millay, he covered and recovered the walls of his studio in the barn with sculpture/drawings so contained and subtle and careful I had to look and look again.

Lydia is a writer from Arizona, tall and lanky and sun blonde, with an addiction to baked beans and bacon and beer, an excellent music collection, and a jewelry making business on the side. She and Dustin soon discovered their mutual dream to start their own art colonies.

Liz is a painter of colourful geometric work, former punk girl rocker (and dances like she means it), open hearted and playful and dedicated, and my yoga and bathroom mate.

Our crew grew really close, playing Bananagrams and watching Twin Peaks after dinner, bbqing on the weekends, going for long drives, shopping at thrift stores, jumping in Lake Queechee every chance we got, and even making a movie together (starring a hapless Monster in the woods).

The Hudson River Valley is an escape for many city folk. Country and weekend homes abound, and there's a reason the cutie main streets in many towns feature fusion restaurants, hipster thrift stores, and movie theatres catering to Big Apple tastes, from indie flicks to the smarter blockbusters (we watched Bridesmaids and Win-Win - both were excellent).

One of the joys of Millay is your phone doesn't work. For four of the residents, the ones who slept and worked in the barn, the internet didn't either, unless they came up to the main house where there was wifi. Even though I elected to live/work in the main house, I'm quite sure I would have been about a million times more productive if I had been in the barn. But I'm addicted to the internet, you see. It's not just facebook (I swear). Six years of gypsying, not always having a phone, or a phone no one will call because it costs a bomb to call a Dhaka mobile, has inured me to web-enabled communication. Chat, email, facebook, twitter, G+, blogs - I get my friends+family fix through the ether. I think I'd die without it. Or be a great deal unhappier anyway.

But there was at least one way to make a call (other than Skype-out): if you walked across the gravel road, past Vincent's lovely house, into the garden where she held her debaucherous naked parties, up the hill and past her little writing cabin, through the tree line and the first meadow, you get to what the June Millay residents called "the cell phone hill."

Up there, Vincent had built a clay tennis court (now overgrown), on a plateau on the hill. You can still see the posts for the net, and to the side, a wooden table and metal chair for sitting and writing and drawing. Or staring at the distant hills where you could just make out the cell phone tower, ie you got bars and got your call on.

I know it was a terrible shame to walk through all that beautiful landscape just to make a phone call, but maybe you know what a hermit I can be. At Millay, I tried to venture out at least once a day - there were poetry trails, hidden meadows, lush woods, overgrown cemeteries - GREEN! SUN! WIND! SKY! THE WILD OUTSIDE! - but there were some days I only went out to call you. Yes you.

Of course, the whole point of art colonies is so you have time and space to work. So I worked: 25 new pages of my novel, and 10 submissions to grants, lit mags, photography contests, prizes, agents, and publishers (and the grind goes on).

I ended my residency at Millay with an art workshop led by the ambitious and accomplished (and hottie) Nina Katchadourian (pictured on the right; Caroline, Executive Director of Millay to the left). One of the many things we talked about was a creative tribe or artistic family: who teaches you, who you look up, who looks to you, who you work with.

I loved the way Nina approached her artistic life, everything geared towards making art, to recording her ideas in some musical or artistic or literary way. If she didn't know how to do something or couldn't learn something fast enough, she found people to collaborate with. And her brilliant and hilarious "Seat Assignment" project proves that sometimes you don't need anything but imagination and time.

Perhaps Nina has felt unsure in the past, but the overwhelming feeling I got from her in those three hot shiny July days was the sheer joy and power and rightness of art making. It poured off of her. There didn't have to be any other point to the making than the making. It was a given, a pursuit as worthy and unchallengeable as anything else.

There are writers I admire, writers I know, writers I want to be (oh, David Mitchell). I'd never thought of them (us) as a tribe. In my head, as untrue as I knew this to be, I had been working on my ownsome. And though I've had a great advisor or two (ah, Stephen Beachy) and many amazing editors and readers, I had never thought of what it meant to have an artistic mentor (hello Nina). Chalk up yet another reason to heart my time at Millay. And thank you Calliope and Caroline for the chance to return in the winter. A sensate artful treat.

Dhaka in Heat

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 01:09:00 +0000

Bangladesh in May steams in heat. It's a cinch to teach hot yoga. You just shut off the fans in the Black Belt Academy studio, and voila, instant humidity, and a constant temperature of oh, 90 degrees (32 C). I didn't have as many students as I did last year, but it's easier and more fun with fewer people in class. As I discovered last year, I love watching different bodies approach and gradually master the poses. It's the only kind of teaching I've ever enjoyed, and I've taught a lot, from business to writing to test taking. It's too bad it's so expensive to get certified to teach yoga in the States ($4000-$12000, depending on the style), plus it's a hustle finding work. Yogis in NYC are a lithe dime a dozen, so it's not a good way to make money. BUT if I ever decide to settle in Bangladesh, I know how I'll be making a living.

One of the highlights of my month in Dhaka was when my childhood friend, Madhurima (who used to live in Nigeria as well) came to visit from India. Mads is hands down one of the sweetest loveliest people I know, a joy to be with. And I finally got the chance to (partially) return the enormous favour of her hospitality whenever I've visited her hometown of Kolkata.

Unfortunately, we spent way too much time in the hot boxes that are Dhaka's CNGs (three wheeled compressed-natural-gas-powered taxis). Rampant theft and assault have resulted in the CNGs being caged, literally. Green metal grids block both sides of the vehicle, making the whole experience hotter and more claustrophobic. The city traffic worsens every year, and we must have spent between 2-4 hours a day boiling away in jam after jam. A trip between the neighbourhoods of Dhanmondi and Mohakhali could take less than 10 minutes after midnight - or 5 to 10 times as long during the day. And travelling between Old Dhaka and anywhere else? Forget about it. Two traumatic hours, minimum.

But I'm hoping that Mads will focus on some of the nicer parts of her visit to Bangladesh. Such as when we couldn't find a CNG near Dhaka University (thank god), and instead took a bicycle rickshaw to Old Dhaka. One should never travel that route any other way. First, it's breezy. Second, you can see! And what a fantabulous sight Old Dhaka is from the vantage point of an open rickshaw.

This was my second trip to Old Dhaka in less than a week. I would ordinarily not subject myself so, but my intense and beautiful ex-boyfriend, Ram, was shooting a film in Bangladesh, and had only one measly day off before he returned to Bombay. So we spent part of the day on a boat ride on the Buriganga River in Old Dhaka. The ride was hot as hell, with dark smelly waters, but as Ram noted, keenly romantic, and a visual treat. I heart boat rides.

Mads and I also went sari shopping in Hawkers Market, where she found an ashes of roses Jamdani which she fell in love with (Mads - I'm still waiting for a photo of you wearing said sari, as is my mom). When we exited the market, we found that the sky had opened and flooded the streets. Cue yet another CNG ride, but this time in the glittering cool of nighttime rain washed Dhaka.

It was with Mads and teh awesome Tarfia that I discovered the new Bongo Bazar. The original landmark market burned down a few years ago, and now the place to fulfill all (and I mean all) your wardrobe needs is Dhaka College'r Oolta Dige (literally, "Opposite Dhaka College"). If you can bear tropical jungle conditions, crowds of determined shoppers, no fitting rooms, and clothes with any number of defects, then you're set. Not for nothing is Bangladesh one of the world's major suppliers of garments. Look carefully for misplaced pockets and missing text (ONGE OB Squarepants, anyone?), and don't pay more than 70-100 taka for anything ($1-$1.25). [Note: If you can't take the heat, then Artisan in Banani is a great alternative. Their prices are twice as much and there isn't as big a selection, but they have fitting rooms (yay!) and AC (double yay!).]

My fabulous cousin, Sabbir, accompanied Mads and me on a day trip to Tangail, about three hours from Dhaka. There we were treated by the wonderful nonprofit UBINIG to yummy food, a tour of the local seed bank, a meeting with master Jacquard weaver, Kartik Bashak, a look at the silver jewelry shops, and of course Tangail sari shops (thank you Sabbir for my boudoir red Tangail sari skirt).

But the best part (for me anyway) was our long bike ride through the rice paddies of rural Bangladesh. I can still hear the man who sang as he worked in the field, his voice a bell in the clear bright air. Our bike ride ended at the ornate and beautiful 17th century Atia Mosque, in the middle of wondrous nowhere.

Dhaka has always proved a feeding frenzy for me. I eat myself into a stupor every time I visit my various families: Hasina Fupu and her family in Uttara, Shirazi Bhai and family in Dhanmondi, and everyone's favourite chef, Mala Mami in Shantinagar (see her send off dinner for me to the right). YUM.

Plus I scarfed momos at Hot Hut, fuchkas at Prabarthana (see left), margaritas at the American Club, biryani in Old Dhaka, steak in Gulshan, and tons of hilsa and vegetable mashes and shutki at Neeta's.

Speaking of Neeta, I'll end with my curly girl who hosted me for the month of May, and it was to celebrate her bash of a 45th birthday that I even considered this last gypsy turn (6 years come to an end). She's one of my favourite people in the world, outrageous, outspoken, stylish, warm, and generous, and a kick ass mom to two lovely girls. Her wardrobe is incredible and varied, and her shoe collection even more impressive, but it's our midnight to dawn conversations that I heart (and miss) the most. She's not on Facebook, erratic on email, and hard to pin down even in person, unless you're living in her house. I don't know when I'll be back in Bangladesh, but it'll be for her that I go. And of course, the myriad pleasures of my adopted/inherited home.

Indian Spring

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Sat, 14 May 2011 10:36:00 +0000

I came to Delhi to celebrate my 38th birthday this April. It was my reward for finishing the first draft of my novel - a two month trip to India and Bangladesh. My mother laughed when she heard. People go out to dinner for their birthday, she told a friend. This one goes to India... But listen, maybe you'd have done the same if you didn't have enough money to go out to dinner but had just enough miles to get to Delhi (my return to the States will have to be funded by teaching yoga in Dhaka).

I'm also hoping that this hiatus from novel writing will be time to lay out and fund a photography book that I've been dreaming up for years (I'm writing this down to embarrass myself into doing it). Check out this website I'm building to help plan and pitch it (suggestions and sponsorships welcome).

I've been to Delhi three times now, and each time has been wildly different from the last. The first time I came to Delhi, in 2007 (i.e. pre-Facebook-ubiquity), I knew no one. I had two contacts through friends, and another one even more transitive than that. I stayed in Chittaranjan Park (of course), with friends of my aunt. Mona and Sagar housed and fed me, took me to extravagantly tasty Bengali dinner parties, and otherwise let me wander on my own.

The last two times I've visited Delhi (last spring and this April), it's been as a guest of host extraordinaire, Sheba Karim, herself a recent transplant from New York. Because she is an adventurer, and a researcher par excellence, she knows what's what. Plus she speaks the language(s). I didn't have to think twice in Delhi. I didn't even have to plan. It was all done and with style.

Still, I almost miss the Delhi I discovered my first visit. Or rather I miss that feeling of standing uncertainly, under the tangle of electric lines in Chadni Chowk, before the gate of Qutb Minar arguing for a local's entrance fee, facing the crowded alley dividing Khan Market, in the shopping warrens under Connaught Place. That fear and anticipation before the joy of seeing that you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

That said, I was exactly where I wanted to be this April, which was in the company of the new face of Cointreau, ie Ms. Karim. Flanked by fellow travelling partiers Rahim and Diyari, and fabled event planner Punit, Sheba threw me a fabulous birthday bash at her Delhi barsati (rooftop flat), with a cocktail hour sponsored by Cointreau, candles and fairy lights, a (lemon! not chocolate!) cake with a photo emblazoned on it (how do they do this?), enough biryani and booze for a small army, and a disco dance floor. What better way to turn 38? I couldn't say.

Because I can never come to India without visiting Kolkata and my lovely friend Madhurima, I also spent a week in West Bengal, and enjoyed Mads' usual stupendous hospitality, despite Kolkata's horrible humidity and my constant greaseballness (Dhaka awaits, argh).

In my seven steamy days in Cal, I had fuchkas and ice cream, floated down the Hougly at sunset (see left), shopped Gariahat's street stalls, wandered the overgrown gorgeous desolation of South Park Street Cemetery, hung out with writer/filmmaker/chef Ruchir, took about 100 auto rides (I heart Cal's shared auto route system - please to do this Dhaka), ate more than my share (ilish mach!), and on my last night went dancing at the Underground with THE man about town, Rana - where I met more than a handful of hotties (um, why didn't I go out earlier in the week?).

And in Delhi, Rahim, Diyari, and I were shown around Sheba-style: ruin hopping, an eye candy photo exhibition, qawali and kebab night, a fashion show at Pragati Maidan, jazz fest in Nehru park, house party after house party, dancing at the Zoo, Sheba's reading and reception at Alliance Francaise, yummy Bhavan and Gunpowder dinners, quiche and champagne at Punit's, shopping and snacking at Khan Market, Easter Brunch at Olivia's, and of course, plenty of lazing on the terrace with fresh mint drinks.

Click here to read about our dazzling trip to Orchha and Khajuraho. And here for Part 1 of my Delhi 2011 photos, and here for Part 2.

Someone told me Delhi is poised to be the next cultural capital of Asia, this after years of being maligned as a cultural wasteland. With all the art and music and literature and verve, I can see it. And thank the gods for dry heat. And air conditioning.

One night in Orchha

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 17:03:00 +0000

Our stunning trip to Orchha was an eleventh hour decision. Diyari was visiting from Zurich, and Rahim and I from New York, and we all wanted a trip out of Delhi, somewhere wild, in the mountains. We were ready, bus tickets printed, bags packed.

Then, two hours before we four idiots were to leave, sitting in Khan Chacha's, someone decided to check the weather. To be fair, Sheba had been to the mountains around the same time last year, and it had been pleasant during the day, colder at night, so we thought we had some idea. We didn't. The five day forecast for Manali was freezing. Literally. 0 celcius, high of 10 (50F) on the warmest day. Almost doable, but it would also be raining. All week.

We unanimously bagged the trip. And then scrambled to figure out where else we could go. Goa and Pondicherry were out because last minute air fares were astronomical. So we settled on a four day trip to Orchha, a little town in the state of Madhya Pradesh, that Sheba had visited last year on a writing retreat.

Built in the 17th century by the Bundela Dynasty, Orchha had ruins aplenty, and a palace, plus the famed erotic temples of Khajuraho a day trip away. And it was dry and warm - a 6 hour train ride south of Delhi, in the desert. Maybe even too warm: 40C (that's over 100F) but Sheba promised to find us a nice hotel with a pool (more on this later).

Orchha turned out to be a bit of a scrabby town, but the ruins and palace and temples were fabulous. There are remains of the old royal complex stretching for miles around, and the centre of the Bundela kingdom, Jahangir Mahal, is grandly and beautifully preserved.

My favourite sightseeing spot was the chhatris, a set of multi-story memorials to the rulers of Orchha, built along the River Betwa. Vultures perched on steepled tops, larger than life, reminding me of the old stories we were told in Nigeria about how they could carry a child away (these definitely could). Inside the chhatri complex was a fountain filled with flowers in the middle of a garden surrounded by elegant old tombs, spiring into the sky.

Our day trip to Khajuraho was a mixed bag. We spent 8 hours in a hired car, driving there and back, and the hottest 3 hours of the day in Khajuraho itself, an even scabbier town with touts galore. Spanish speakers, take note, Spanish is the foreign language of choice and every boyman will speak it to you while he grabs for your attention.

Not in Khajuraho but apt

The restaurants are hohum, the service unfriendly, and the men relentless. A trip to the ice cream shop resulted in me, Sheba, and Diyari surrounded by young ones, staring and whispering (on the good side), pushing through us and arguing with the shopkeeper (on the bad side). Ugh.

But the Khajuraho temples are sexed up sandstone spectacles. The manicured park that contains the Western temples is nothing like the jungle that used to surround, but it does make it easier to see. And the erotic sculptures live up to the hype - they are intensely intimate, romantic, sensual, explicit. Friezes of sculptures band the outsides of the temples, several stories high, and inside, the gods sit in stone cool silence. Marvelous.

So our hotel in Orchha was, as promised, lux. A replica of an 18th century nobleman's residence, Hotel Bundel Khand was over the top, a sight to see. Our rooms were massive with carved wooden headboards, high ceilings, stained glass windows, fans and light switches from another era. The bathrooms had lushy painted tiles on the floors and walls, and showers big enough for an orgy. The terraces were bound with vines and overlooked the River Betwa, with its boulders and clear running water.

As opulent as all this, the open spaces took the cake: the four part lawn, two open air lounges, a pool, a rooftop terrace with views of both the river and the inner courtyard. Every night, folk musicians played in the centre lawn for guests who wished to dine outside.

There was a flowering hedgerow around what we named the dragonfly lounge, for their iridescent company. There, in relative seclusion, under the billowing canopy, on pillowed lounge chairs, we started our 10 hour party, in the heat of the afternoon, set to the soundtrack Rahim had made for my birthday earlier that week (on my kickass portable speakers), tripping the light fantastic.

Towards twilight, we danced our (nearly) nungu pungu way into the cool blue pool, scandalising the guests and their children. By night, we were up on the roof that ran the circumference of the hotel, ornate watchtowers every turn, posing with the lizards and the sodium lamps, laughing and laughing and laughing.

Just before midnight, we lay down to watch the world breathe, unravel, coalesce, when the lights went out. Thunder and we stood and shivered in the open air hallways, watching purple lightning splinter the sky, wind and rain like the world was going to end. To the rescue, here is beauty. If we exist for nothing else, it's enough. Would that I remember.

Sweet Briar High

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 02:56:00 +0000

My six week residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) this past winter was out of this world, deserving of its own blog post and more (including two fat albums on flickr for Jan-Feb and for Feb-March). This is the second residency I've attended. The first was the Saltonstall Arts Colony in the summer of 2009, amidst the woody waterfally lands of Ithaca, NY. It was luxurious and inspiring and enabled me to write a fourth draft of my memoir in one month flat. The previous two drafts had taken over a year and half (the first draft 2 years).

This second residency was smack dab in the middle of Virginia at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains (I had to look it up when I found out I got in, because I actually had no idea where it was). VCCA is set on acres and acres of woods and trails and meadows, with a pond and horses and cows and dogs - pastoral and perfect. Twenty five artists, writers, and composers are invited at a time, to spend anywhere from days to weeks to work on their heart's arty desire.

My stay was funded by a NEA fellowship for "Artists of Limited Economic Means" - an obviousness if there was ever one. Other fellows were funded by different fellowships or grants, or they paid sliding scale according to their means. And half of the residents were returnees, so some knew each other from previous years.

I arrived in Sweet Briar in late January after an epic journey that started in New York City 13 hours earlier, after yet another snowstorm that had blanketed the eastern seaboard. (Hello beast coast winter. I remember you less insistent.) The snow plows hadn't gotten going yet in New York that dawn, and so the sidewalks were piled high with snow. I had to drag my carryon down the centre of six city blocks, in the wake of crawling cars and their barely passable tire tracks. Two subways, one very slow bus, two flights, and a taxi ride later, I was finally there.

The first three weeks of my residency, the remodeling of the visual artist studios and maintenance in the main kitchen meant that we had meals in a makeshift dining room with paper plates and plastic forks. More troublingly, our half strength numbers were all writers, with only one composer and one visual artist. Don't get me wrong, I find it fascinating to talk about plots and writing routines and character motivation and word counts. But it can also get rather tedious.

This is why I adored my immediate friendship with the lone artist among us those first few weeks, the fantabulous and thoughtful painter Ken. Ken's work deals with beginnings and endings, with the underneath, and what happens when you leave aside that garish fellow, colour. He generously lent me a few of his paintings to beautify my writing studio, and eventually be inspired to write one of the first poems I've written in years (and to think I did an MFA in poetry). It doesn't come close to capturing the restraint and spirit of his work, but here it is:

something feral
underneath its skin
behind the masque
empty eyes
blood lines mark
the old map
that used to be

now it's moving
now it's morning
a state between
then and after
a place of its own
holding its own
the feathers fan
the feathers close
painting space
where there was no space
once upon a time
once
there was something feral
underneath

For more of his work, visit kendubin.com, and you'll also see (writer) Tyler's beautiful prose poem which touches on Ken's work and aesthetic and also a bit of what it was like to be at VCCA.

We were fed three times a day, by gourmet chef Sara, and despite a daily routine of yoga and pilates, I gained weight because I cannot refuse free food when it's in front of me. Especially not when it's delicious, organic, and freshly made (with plenty of vegetarian and fish options). Even though I'm hohum about the dessert thing, I missed not a one. Raspberry pie? Cheesecake? Sundaes with homemade fudge sauce? Strawberries dipped in chocolate? Lemon cake? And how. Maybe I've spent too long as a starving artist/student. Maybe it was just awesome.

All the fellows got private bedrooms in the main residency building, and shared a bathroom with one other person (though I had mine to myself for half the time). But the prize was our work studios, a few minutes walk across a couple of fields. The writers got big desks and comfy chairs and shelves and lamps in our studios. The visual artists got lots of space and open walls and light. The composers had a grand piano each and their studios were set at the ends of the building for sound proofing. Everyone got a twin bed in case you wanted to sleep in your studio after working late. (The bathrooms had showers, so you essentially could set up shop at your studio if you wished, and some people did.)

Mine was the BEST studio (obviously). It wasn't part of the long snaking ranch complex like everyone else's, but was an elevated stand alone one room house (it used to be a corn crib) in the middle of a field, like a bird house. The inside was tiny, carpeted, with skylights, windows, little blue and white curtains, and a robust set of heaters. I also requested and received a drafting table (see above) so I could write standing up (better for posture and for impromptu dance fests). It was an absolute haven and from the first day on, I was already afraid of missing it when I left.

My days began around 9am, just as the breakfast hour was ending. I'd grab half a grapefruit and some cereal, and then do yoga or pilates. By the time I showered, checked email, and packed my bag, it was time for lunch (11:30am). The lunch room was near the studios, where many did take away so they could keep working uninterrupted. Winter in Virginia is mild. We had a few bouts of freezing weather, but most of the time it was nice, sometimes even balmy. I had a number of my lunches on the picnic table beneath the curly branched tree, drenched in sunlight.

I wrote from about noon til 6pm, during which time I tried not to use the Internet (the bane of my productive existence) (it wasn't that hard b/c wifi access across the residency was spotty at best).

If I were done a bit earlier, I'd walk one of the trails through the woods back to the residences, usually with hottie writer-artist Theresa, a joy to wander with, not least because she wears little dresses and big boots, and talks about the most serious and silly things in a baby doll voice. Dinner was served at 6pm, after which I'd work another 3-4 hours, and then meet up with others in the living room by the fire for a rousing game of Bananagrams (I got a tidy crew addicted to my current word game obsession).

When some fellows heard I was doing yoga in mornings, they asked to join, despite the fact that my schedule (morning workout, later workday) wasn't quite right for most people. Thus I ended up leading yoga classes for most of my time in Virginia (good practice for my upcoming class in Dhaka in May!). Other exercise junkies went to nearby Sweet Briar College's gym (we had free access to their library and other facilities).

One of my favourite parts of VCCA, and there were so so many, was the composers. The Saltonstall residency had writers and visual artists, and that in itself was amazing. Rachael (who I met at Saltonstall, and whose two person show I just went to in NYC in January) is a painter who talks about art in a way that is both relevant for writers, and also out of the writing league. And because it's art – i.e. doesn't necessarily have a narrative or a linear theme or even a subject sometimes – it can allow me as a writer more rein to play, to experiment, to be a little crazier. Writers are so often beholden to that dictator, narrative.

So Saltonstall had already opened that window, but VCCA’s composers blew the roof off. I met six different composers and every one of them as different from the next as you can imagine. Andrea and Gina were two contemporary concert music composers (aka classical music but not tied to that old time period) - both beautiful highly accomplished women. Chris was a flautist and found sound composer (a long haired Chicagoan who also does theatre, and who built a lovely installation in the woods - see his seed pods pictured just below). Walter was a ukulele and trombone player who played twenties style jazz and blues, and was composing a space opera (and he was one of my favourite midnight walk companions). Patricia was an electronic music composer who used hand made, technologically complex instruments to create sound installations (and she was a sexy thing living in Paris). And Alan was a composer from Hong Kong who created eclectic pieces for even more eclectic bands.

Andrea kicked off our weekly open studios (these were all informally organised and completely voluntary, both for hosts and attendees). (She is also a yogi, and holds music salons in her house in Philadelphia.) I remember sitting in her studio listening to her talk about the piece she was working on, for a 100 piece orchestra with four part voice harmony, and playing bits of it for us. I've sung with large choruses accompanied by an orchestra, for years, and I had never thought about what it might take to make up the music. Through the successive weeks, I listened as the other composers talked about their processes, played multiple instruments with aplomb, sang, held impromptu gigs, mixed traditional and electronic technologies, and in general left me dripping with awe.

And this is not to mention the hottie tomboy graphic novelist who was also a horse wrangler (Danica), or the sound engineer turned writer who also made her own fabulous jewelry (Louie), or the artist who was fashioning the most delicate and dark doll dresses (see right) out of bones and branches and mud and leaves (Annie), or the hilarious memoirist who grew up on a miniature golf course and used to be a standup comic (June), or the sweetly spoken Kansan writer who was never seen without a tumbler of whiskey (Andrew), or the cutie Russian painter whose portrait of Osama Bin Laden was in the White House earlier this year (Darina), or the writer with the porn star bod and the most grief stricken novella (Stacy), or the poet who had taken decades to come back to writing while she raised a family and worked, and thank god she did because her work is gorgeously nostalgic and precise (Kitty), or the artist building exquisite light sculptures (Wendy), or the only other POC at VCCA while I was there (represent!), who filled in some other diversity quotas with his wry writing about growing up gay, black, and Latino (Charles).

My residency was one of the longest, so I saw many more lovelies come and go than those I've listed. There is so much talent in the world. The down side is that most artists are struggling to make ends meet. I realised I have to stop whinging (so much) when it comes to the financial travails of the writing life. I'm actually lucky to be a writer and a digital photographer. I have no expensive supplies to continually replenish. I need no special equipment, instruments, or tools. Even a computer could be considered a luxury (and used for free in a library). One could make do with paper and (Muji) pens and sit in a coffee shop or even on one's bed. On top of this, as a visual artist or composer, you not only have to shell out for rent, you also need a studio, which you will probably time-share with someone else but still pay through the nose (especially if you live in NYC like a dozen or so fellows I met). Not an easy life.

But art colonies like VCCA make it worthy, and could give you enough space and solitude to get a tremendous amount of work done in an incredibly short time. People left their children, partners, jobs, flats, countries, for as long as they could - sometimes only days could be spared. They came brimming with ideas, open to possibility, pressed for time, no matter how long they had (there is never enough time). In my six weeks at VCCA, I wrote 40 pages and finished a first draft of my novel. It's flawed, incomplete, and unpresentable, but I loved the writing part and my companions, and the second draft will fix some of the problems (I hope). It was a gift, and a sensate treat, my time in Virginia, and I hope I am lucky enough to return.

Steel City

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 22:04:00 +0000

About two years ago, while laying out my toiletries, I had my first sensation of anti-wanderlust. Because I was in my room in my parents' house in Pittsburgh, I could unpack everything and put it away. I could dig out ticket stubs and notes and mementos from the catchall pocket of my carryon, and paste them into the growing pile of scrapbooks on the dresser. I could go to the pharmacy and buy only what I needed right then, and not worry about what I might need in three months 10,000 miles away.

A year later, when I wore the same pair of jeans for six months in London, I had the thought that it might be nice to have another pair, except I didn't have room in my bag. I have a one-in-one-out policy with clothes, that is, when I can afford the one-in.

This past November, I got back to Pittsburgh, looked inside the closet at my parents', and found that over the last six years, I've accumulated two dozen skirts (count 'em), a pile of jackets, tapestries and blankets from different parts of the world, and a satchel brimming with multicoloured pouches and purses.

Garber St. Berkeley, CA 2001

This isn't new, my collector ways. Since graduating college, I've had three flats in Philly, and three more in the Bay Area. My beds sported silk cotton sheets and canopies overhead, my walls were covered with butcher paper and hand scrawled poems, my shelves held photo albums by the dozen, and there was at least one fat candle on the window sill. I used to invite people into this packratness, concoct drinks, and make them dance with me. That Abeer used to exist. (She still does in her Pittsburgh closet.) Do you remember her? If I met you in the last 6 years, maybe not.

This last trip home, the honourable and hot Mr. Becker met me at the airport when I flew in after a year abroad. Since Alan is always online, he's one of the few friends I've been able to keep in almost daily touch with. Email is great. So is Skype, especially Skype video which I can't laud enough. But there's nothing like chatting to find out the little things that caulk a friendship. Everyone complains about Facebook statuses that tell you what someone had for breakfast and how they don't care. I don't mind in the least. In fact, if it's my friend, I want to know. Every stupid detail if you would.

Unfortunately for me, but oh so fortunate for him, Alan has quit his fancy Apple strategist job and is now on a volunteer gig in Kenya (sans regular internet access) with the amazing One Acre Fund (check them out - they're expanding to Bangladesh soon). So I don't get my daily Ano dose and am in slight withdrawal.

But before he up and offed to warmer lands, he came to see me, and additionally got to meet my beautiful Nadiya girl and her frighteningly precocious daughter, Ilana, who were visiting from Iowa for Thanksgiving (FYI: Thanksgiving is the only American holiday that the Hoques congregate for and celebrate each year).

Nadiya is a Bangladeshi writer and translator, and one of my old friends just met. We met about four years ago in Dhaka, but truth be told, we became close after I left Bangladesh and was traveling (and chatting) through South America for a few months (sorry, this blog post is turning out to be an ode to chatting). I remember sitting on the sunny balcony of a motel in La Paz, Bolivia with my laptop talking about my sexed up coked up nights, and she about her monsoon Dhaka days. Nothing like crash and burn romance to keep the conversation going. She's now living the hot single mother life in Iowa doing her MFA in fiction and managing the Bangladesh to Iowa weather change with aplomb.

The third in my welcome back party was my gorgeous architect friend Irene, who herself has only recently moved back from Barcelona where she had been living for several years. Irene and I have known each other since college and our passion for talking about amor and ambition remains unabated. So we were both psyched when she took a break from her teaching fellowship at UM Ann Arbor and drove to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2010 at the Hoques was a well attended, well fed affair, as per usual, and closely succeeded by Eid which was the scene of one of the funniest Bangladeshi community events I've ever attended. I got Nadiya to come along despite her atheist ways, perhaps only because she loves to dress up. And dress up we did, in my mother's resplendent saris with blouses to match.

The original do had been scaled down from dinner and a kids' fashion show, to just dinner. This was because the Pitt university hall that had been booked had fallen through, and we were now to have dinner at the Monroeville mosque's community hall. Because it was a mosque, no music was allowed, so the kids' fashion show was summarily canceled despite weeks of practice and excitement.

No matter, because there were ideas afloat for post dinner entertainment. An aunty got up to the podium and announced that a game of "pass the pillow" would pass our time nicely. There would be four rounds, one for the ladies, one for the men, one for the older kids, and one for those under 10.

Since no music could accompany the game, the pillow passing would start and stop to the sound of... wait for it... "SPOON BANGING!"

I was sitting at the kids' table with Nadiya and my little brother Maher, and others I've watched grow from babies to babes. Ages 17 to 37, we all burst into muffled laughter. The aunty was holding two metal ladles in her hand, and explained that the pillow passing could occur as long as there was a "continuous bang" and stop when the continuous banging stopped. Naturally.

As if that weren't enough, she also said that the kids' round would be played by those under the age of 25.

Her eyes roved over our table, landed on me, and she hastily added, "or unmarried." Our table lost it.

God or magic has a sense of humour, but I still didn't win the kids' round of pass the pillow. In fact, I was the first one banged out. But Ilana made it to the finals of the under 10 round. And the food was delicious, especially the peas and paneer dish, and there was lots of Fanta. The taste of soda pop and spicy desi food are, and have always been, bound together in my mind.

The universe's sense of humour came into play again during Friday jumma prayers, which I did not even ask Nadiya to attend, and which I went to only because I cannot say no to my mother most days.

The Monroeville mosque my parents go to (and helped build along with much of the Pittsburgh Bangladeshi community) has an interesting praying arrangement for the genders. The men are on the ground floor with the imam up front, and the women are on an open mezzanine directly above them, with a balcony one could look over down at the imam (but no one does of course).

The khutba (a sermon given by the imam) was a stern affair about how listening to music is the devil's playground and how we must strive to keep our minds and hearts clean (and I suppose toneless). I swear I'm not lying, but in the middle of his rant, someone's phone went off in the male section, and the ring tone was a rap song.

The rest of my Pittsburgh time was a feast (if on the frigid side). I have four albums:
----- November 2010 including Thanksgiving
----- Kurbani Eid 2010 including spoon banging
----- December 2010 including cool old factory jaunt, and
----- March 2011 (which was still snowy! see photo above).

The December album includes photos of my adorable niece, Vesper, who was a full year older than the last time I saw her, and since she's 1.5 now, you might guess how big of a change that was. She is also (ridiculously) prominently featured in this Northampton album from January, from when I visited my sister Simi and her partner Ezra, and here again in March.

During my three visits home, my mother threw a few of her awe inspiring dinner parties where she manages to cook a tasty ten course meal for 30 people in a matter of hours (and she teaches full time). Plus she always has my favourite foods on hand, for all the in-between meals. Banana nut muffins? check. Jollof rice and okra? check. Whole wheat parathas? check. All manner of fishies? check. Korolla (karela for you Indians) with potatoes? check. Egusi? This was her first attempt at the staple Nigerian dish, and she used pumpkin seeds she had been saving up. It was so close to the real thing and so nostalgically good.

As has been long habit, I went to visit my first boyfriend's parents, Ann and Roger, who are like my second parents, and have been since 1991 when Glenn and I started college and our seven year rock and roll relationship. They're both retired now but more active than anyone else I know as they have as many kayaks as grandchildren, and Roger, who's been writing poetry all his life, has enough for three collections at this point.

For those of you who have admired my fringe scarves over the years, Ann is the maker of those wonders and a million other crafty beautiful things she's gifted me over the years. (See another scarf, my favourite, in lustrous greys and browns in the photo below with Eshadee.)

I also went dancing and shopping and lunching with my old friend Eshadee who grows more beautiful and svelte every year and every child she has.

And of course, I got to hang out with my lovely lazy brother Maher and his doggie Oreo in his big party house, just down the road from my parents' house, with the red basement and big TV and loungy couches and delectable home made meals (he is a gourmet cook, Maher mia is).

Lastly, I have to mention Pittsburgh's magnificent landscape. Not just its 2000 bridges (yes way) (more than any city in the world), its snaking rivers and snow tipped trees, its winding roads and hilly neighbourhoods - all this and I am most enamoured of da burgh's old industry.

I think Pittsburgh has done better with its image, economy, and art/lit-scape than any other city in America, given the depths of its former economic despair. When my family moved here in the late 80's, there were neighbourhoods so toxic smelling, it was painful to drive through them (let alone live there). The failed steel industry was a painful weight and you could feel it, just walking around. The city is worlds away from that now.

But there's something about old factories and machines, frozen conveyer belts, perforated holding tanks held up by giant steel beams, ladders that lead nowhere. It gets me. I've been dreaming of doing a photography project about ruin. I could start here, in Pittsburgh, and then move south by southwest to photograph old broken down barns, which I think are just about the most beautiful things in the world.

My favourite bridge in Pittsburgh is Hot Metal Bridge (and not just for its kickass name). Back in the day, Hot Metal Bridge was this rusted wonder, part disused railroad tracks, overgrown and narrow and mysterious, and part cleaned out and converted car bridge. In all the times I've driven over it, I never once stopped to walk its edge or take a photograph.

Now, the railroad tracks have been removed, the weeds and plants cleared out, and the rail section is a smooth new bike path.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for the fabulous Rails-to-Trails project (that will eventually let you bike from Pittsburgh to DC when it's done, and it's damn close), but I need to start shooting before all the old turns new.

Does a summer spent wandering and photographing the Rust Belt count as gypsying? Not if I have a home base, right? Maher says I won't be able to sign a year long lease come fall. I almost want to bet him but I'm direly afraid of both outcomes. I'll keep you posted.

London in the Rain

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 14:02:00 +0000

I love London. It's imposing, elegant, drenched, a cultural, literary, and financial powerhouse. It has naught the charming of Paris, the thexy of Barthelona, the quaint of Prague, the laissez faire of Berlin. But it is alive and roiling and older than you know. And it is goddamn beautiful.

Once again, I've left it too long, and now that I have to write one post about my six months in London, I'm paralysed by the possibilities. As happens when you condense, the grace notes that filled my days and nights get drowned out by the climaxes.

First Violin: THE SUMPTUOUS BRITISH LIBRARY

My memory of London is dominated by the three months I spent in a reading orgasm at the British Library. I went there five, sometimes six days a week, and in that time, read 20+ books on memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer's, drug addiction, and other uplifting topics. Novels, memoirs, short stories, essays, self help guides, family support books, neuropsychology papers, textbooks, whatever I could get my hands on. Given how many ways there are to lose it, I'm astonished and awed we keep it together as much as we do.

Because the BL is, hands down, one of the finest libraries in the world, only my imagination and ability limited my progress. The fact that it's not a lending library - i.e. you cannot take the books out - you have to read them there - meant I had to sit in one place for hours and do my biz. I cannot tell you what a pleasure it was to read and only read, for eight hours a day. I have not spent that much time absorbed in books since I was a teenager.

Thank you, England, for issuing anyone who can show proof of residence, anywhere in the world, a reader pass (in my case, a Pennsylvania driver's license got me in), and letting her sit in the hushed reading rooms with their wide tables and comfy chairs and double plug points and banker's lamps.

Attacca: The locker rooms in the basement of the BL are free but competitive. If you arrive after noon, then expect to rove like some SUV driver in the mall parking lot. Ditto on the reading room carrels. While I usually managed an AM arrival, I almost never scored the coveted long yellow lockers up front, nor the corner carrels with the elevated reading rests and additional desk space.

I ordered my memory books from the BL's online catalogue a night or two before, or in the morning before hopping on the bus to King's Cross. Like magic, they appeared behind the reading room front desk, where they were held for as long as I kept coming back (unless I skipped for longer than three days).

Fanfare: The glass walled rare books section which rises through the centre of the BL for several stories, like some fantastical gilt edged literary lava.

No pens are allowed in the reading rooms, nor bags, nor gum, nor water. Nor bare feet propped up on desks (doh). So I carted my laptop over and racked up 82 single spaced pages of notes about memory. Not one page of fiction, but what an unparalleled treat to spend a summer reading.

Grand Piano: JIMCHAE

My host these last six months (a lovely pianist and singer himself, and one of my oldest friends in the world) would be mortified if he knew I were calling any attention to him, but I must. He let me take over his open plan Old Street loft, his weekends and vacations, his dinner plans and dance card, all with utterly generous aplomb.

Despite being a hermit, self-affirmed and obvious to anyone who knew him in his white terry robe university days, Jim is one of the most sociable people I know. A brilliant conversationalist, he can talk about love and war, finance and gaming, drugs and dancing, like they are all two sides of the same coin. In fact, they are. And Jim was always there to remind me not to be too proud of anything, like my hipster arty life, because it's as fraught with moral and financial corruption as an AIG convention in Vegas.

Trill: Unfortunately, I had little influence on Jim's Love Films rental queue. To that end, I watched more films with "Terrifying!" in their tag lines than I ever wanted to.

I cannot count the number of luscious dinners I was treated to, the VIP seating movie tickets, the Oyster and O2 topups, the black cab rides back home from nights out. And the weekends he didn't spend on the couch in his underwear playing Fallout and Uncharted, while I worked on my novel at the dining table in my underwear, we jaunted to Southend-On-Sea, Angel, Notting Hill, Lithuania, Camden, Hyde Park, Chinatown, Shoreditch, among others.

Dissonance: The time Jim and I got trashed on gewurztraminer and were dancing like mad men around his flat, and he decided it was a good time to read a page of my novel and mistook (and enjoyed) a gay sex scene as a baby murdering scene.

My poker-playing fried-chicken-eating bestie is hilarious and sharp, witty and silly, and oh so easy to get on and travel with. I couldn't have done London without him. I wouldn't want to.

Timpani: AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Ok so all money is blood money, and even though I've managed to support myself the last nine years by working for scientists and educators and environmentalists and universities and students, I know my hands are not clean. I support the capitalists by teaching bschool wannabes. I destroy the environment with my air travel. I sleep with cocksure adulterers. I love CVS and hotdogs and lux hotels. I live large.

Interludes: Seven days on the Turkish Mediterranean, a revel in Ireland, returning to my heart city of Barcelona, a Baltic jaunt in Lithuania, and my thank you taste of Berlin. London is a launch pad.

But there probably couldn't be a clearer breach of my so-called morals than what I did this fall in London by working for the defense of the destruction of rainforest land. Twelve years ago, I walked (crawled) away from Whartonia, for many reasons. At the time, I was so fucked up, I couldn't have articulated any of them other than that I couldn't do it anymore. I have a little more clarity now. I don't judge anyone for operating within the clever subversive domain of marketing, or the outrageous paper chase of high finance. I just don't want to do it myself.

What I want is a marginally innocuous part time job that pays me enough money to rent my own flat in some megacity of the world, while I write and take photographs on the side. I've managed it in the past, but the last five years of travelling have both thinned my self-sustaining abilities while fattening my ambition.

Sognando: I spent most of October working on a proposal for my next pipe dream project - "The Long Way Home" - a large format book, with images from over 25 countries on five continents, interleaved with poems, and organised by themes that reach across region and religion. It's a way of contrasting and coalescing my images of arty religious Mexico City and Kolkata, the sexed up foodie cultures of San Francisco and Bangkok and Buenos Aires, the solitude of Bhutan's mountains and the salt flats of Bolivia. These places exist alone. They exist in each other. They share something multiplicitous and mysterious, real, if only in the eye. I might not get the fellowship I applied for, but I'm making this book, and if nothing else, it will be one accounting of my gypsy years.

I need to stop moving. Not because I want to date or because I need a stable income source or because I would like a room (and bathroom) of my own. All those are true, but above all, I need some time to think. And while I've figured out how to write on the move, I can't think on the fly. When I needed to pick poems for my MFA apps, I used a polling system and Excel to rank the ones I'd written. When I'm freaking out, writing a to-do list calms me down, even if I end up doing nothing on the list. When I need to figure out my next move, I have to try it out. None of this visualising, theorising, pros and cons discussing works.

Where to live? I have to actually go live there. Who with? S/he has to be a willing thrall. Which job? I gotta work it to know. What to wear? For now, this is easy, but I'd like it to be a little more complicated, like owning more than one pair of jeans.

I'm not complaining in the least. London was a haven for me. I didn't have to think about the real world for six months. I just read and wrote and sometimes worked. Aside from a handful of beautiful people who took me to plays (thank you (camera-shy) Zubaer), let me feed them experimental quinoa meals (thank you Maeve), watched any movie I wanted (thank you Ray and Debbie), acted their hearts out on stage (thank you Leesa), talked shop while sitting pretty (thank you Ella and Shane), went dancing with me whenever I asked (thank you Farah and Ewelina), and let me house sit for weeks (thank you Tahmima), I walked alone and I loved it.

Staccato: The candy store in Angel which sells pickle scented lip balm and bacon flavoured dental floss. Front row seats on the 55 bus to Oxford Circus. Sweet potato falafel balls and perfectly ripe pears and avocados from Waitrose. Fabulous! free! museums! The surprise eight course meal at the Lobster Pot. Surviving in the Ministry of Sound til 5am to be rewarded by space to dance all wild to the best DJ of the night. The £5 ferry ride from Embankment to Canary Wharf at sunset. George's kickass dynamic yoga classes at Virgin Active Moorgate. The National Theatre. McVities Dark Chocolate Digestives.

Even the rain prettifies London. The sodium lamps. The glittering streets. The flashbulb store fronts. The high heeled revelers. The cranes with their grey heads hung in mourning. The looming centuries behind, the ones to come.

I've never been one for history. Nothing I ever learned in school, in Nigeria or in the States, seemed real or relevant. It was only when I started writing, travelling, photographing, that history started to resonate. London stands in it, substance, significance, saga. Everything about it is epic. Eye teeth for a red passport.

In the fall, Berlin

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 19:27:00 +0000

My sister Simi visited Berlin six years ago and when she came back, she said I had to go. Had to had to had to. She's an architecture professor, and so naturally, looking at buildings is one of her primary delights (as it is one of mine), but she also spent her last night dancing til 6am and going directly to the airport thereafter. As you might guess, up my alley.

So when my butterfly girl, Camalo, moved to Berlin last year, I knew I was nearing for a visit, especially after I moved to London in June. Still it was looking iffy because I was broke (to be specific, I had $14 to my name) and potentially leaving London after the summer. Then a long overdue debt repayment, failing to win a yoga teaching scholarship in California, and finally landing some editing hours in London changed all that. My first paycheque was for $300 and I threw it all to the travel gods, i.e. EasyJet and the travel exchange at Tottenham Court.

Camalo and her fun funny husband, Karsten picked me up at the airport, and in their lovely plant filled flat in Neukölln, we began the first of five nights of drinking wine and talking til 3am. This would have been a fine state of affairs if their two year old daughter, Ms. Ghighi, didn't wake up at 7am every morning. The upside of being up at this hour is that the light is perfect for taking photographs of fat cheeked blue eyed baby girls.

I loved Berlin, but I was surprised at why. Yes, the architecture is wickedly diverse, ranging from traditional to soviet to modern. And perhaps the nightlife is indeed thralling til dawn - but staying with new parents is not exactly the way to catch the club scene (Camalo, next time, we're doing the alternative pub crawl and tripping the light fantastic).

What got me about this split up, stitched up city was how live and let live it all seemed, how anarchic, how artsy, how accepting, and this unexpected fact: how affordable. A flat in Berlin can cost less per month than a flat in London, per week.

Many of the people I met had lived in London before, sometimes for several years, and with very good memories. But one comment was unananimous - London was too expensive (and I can appreciate this fact even though I live with a banker who sugar daddies my every desire).

The people I met (and re-met) were marvelous, especially in Camalo's commune of a building. Japanese, Iranians, Americans, Turks, Germans. Photographers, painters, programmers, designers, musicians. Prowlers, parents, students, squatters, dreamers. The flats were like rooms in one giant house, with roommates who babysit while you go for a bike ride using their bikes.

One cloudy afternoon, Camalo and I went biking around Treptower Park, which included the breathtaking Russian War Memorial with its looming grievous statues, an ambling path along the River Spree, and this last most creepy beautiful vision - the abandoned amusement park behind barbed wire fencing: rollercoasters strangled with vines, mini train carriages stopped in their broken tracks, dinosaurs on their sides, turtles on their backs, swans overlooking, everything being swallowed slowly by the deep dark forest.

Another highlight was the street art tour of Berlin (thank you Buneka for the pointer!). Alternative Berlin runs free walking tours everyday and they are fabulous, especially when your guide is an animated Aussie graffiti artist in love with his adopted city.

Berlin's International Literary Festival was also going on, and I got to see lovely Rana Dasgupta talk about his second book, Solo, which won the 2010 Commonwealth Prize and is now also available in German. Get yourself a copy. It's stupendously good: smart, sprawling, and gorgeously written.

My last night, I got to catch up with my friend Bodo who I know from my payroll days at UC Berkeley's geology department eight years back. He was a postdoc then and is now a professor, and he and his wife Linda and their two vivacious sons, Tayo and Keanu, are living in Berlin. We had a rollicking yummy dinner together, and I have Facebook to thank for it as I didn't have Bodo's email address anymore.

Last but not least, Berlin has outfitted me for western climes, especially since it was far colder there in September than in London (weird, or maybe not?). My last five winters have been spent in tropical countries, and my wardrobe, certainly my footwear, is ill suited for rain and cold. From a kickass flea market in Neukölln, I scored myself a warm puffy hipster jacket (€5! Brand new! With a furry hood!), and from Camalo, a pair of funky closed-toed shoes. Now, I'm ready for autumn in London, and maybe even (shhh...) the land of the free.

A Baltic Holiday

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:25:00 +0000

When my favouritest JimChae asked me if I'd like to go to Palanga, Lithuania with him, I said yes without thinking twice. It was his first holiday in a year (and we holiday well together), so I was more than happy to accompany him wherever he wanted to go. Plus, how fun to go to a country I never thought of visiting before, and actually had to look up on a map (my geography is shameful).

It turned out that Jim might have wanted to look it up too, because the non-Brit-invaded beach vacay he had envisioned was only half realised. True, there were no Brits in Lithuania, at least not on the Baltic coast. In fact, other than some Germans we encountered in a campground in Nida, there appeared to be no non-Lithuanians in Lithuania. Even the Hari Krishnas looked at home.

Thus, as first generation Korean and Bangladeshi immigrants, Jim and I raised the diversity quotient in Palanga by infinity percent, and everyone noticed. Every man, woman, and child got their gawk on every time we walked down the busy pedestrian street of Basanaviciaus. This horsie too. What?

No matter - I'm used to the staring, and Jim's been to Dhaka so he knows about it too - except it's not quite beach weather in Lithuania, even in August (aka the rainy season). Don't tell the Lithuanians that because they're quite happy to run from the windy cool beach into the freezing cold Baltic, and back again, in the nude no less.

Of our eight days in Lithuania, Jim and I spent exactly two at the beach: once in the clothing optional beach of Nida, and the other toasting the sunset in Palanga. In the former, we made the mistake of entering through the nude-women-only entrance, and then had to walk through a long stretch of sand to get the coed clothed bit. We're classy like that.

Imagine a fuzzy brown girl trying to be fleet, and a pale Korean boy getting whiplash, both fully dressed as it were nippy (so to speak) surrounded by naked Lithuanian women of every shape and age.

You couldn't make up that shit if you tried.

Ok stop laughing.

Our hotel in Palanga was one of the highlights for me - super lux with down pillows, king bed, red velvet couch, dark wood balcony, and frigid AC (it turns out Jim is even more of a humidity princess than I am). When not frolicking in the Botanical Gardens, I spent an indecent amount of time in this room (I love nice hotels), continuing what has turned out to be my summer of reading Stieg Larsson and David Mitchell. Jim also got plenty of massages at the spa upstairs and made daily use of the sauna.

The big tourist attraction in Palanga is the Amber Museum. As you all know, Palanga is the amber capital of the world (250 Baltic varieties alone). Housed in an old mansion, the museum features all kinds of beautiful amber jewelry and knick knacks, as well as details about how amber is formed which I cannot tell you because the signs were all in Lithuanian.

One ambitious sunny day, we took a cab to a ferry to a bus to get to Nida, on the pencil thin Curonian Spit, about 100 km down the coast. Once there, we climbed up Europe's highest sand dune mountain, the Parnidis Dunes, and at sunset, we took a sailboat ride around the dunes into Russian waters (privet!).

It took us til our last night in Lithuania to finally check out the night life which was supposed to be rocking. We had seen evidence already - strip bars on Basanaviciaus, scantily clad women in heels, restaurants clearing out tables for dancing at night. But the cheeser music blaring out of these joints had dissuaded us thus far. And plus there was the girl who kicked the hornets' nest waiting back in the hotel.

We took a cab to nearby Klaipėda, where we had our best meal yet, in the rooftop restaurant of Vivalavita. FYI, the food in Lithuania, no matter what you order, will come floating in an inch of oil. But Vivalavita had scrumptious grilled fish dishes, lightly broasted veggies, and yumyum cocktails, served up with a fabulous 20 story high view of the sea.

Next up, Dr. Who, which has trippy paisley carpeting all the way down the spiral staircase to the basement dance floor. If you seat yourself at the base of the stairs, you can see clear up the girls' dresses as they go upstairs (this is not much of a feat even without the lech positioning). There was also green laser lighting, thumpy club music, and too many hottie girls to count. I danced with a 6 foot tall bride, a birthday cowgirl, and my favourite, a 21 year old raven haired Russian wearing a dress requiring two haircuts and the most insane(ly beautiful) blue suede heels (and I don't even like heels or animal skin).

We got trashed, danced for ages, and returned to Palanga in the wee hours, with only hours left before our flight. I was done, but not Jim. He used this time to go get snackies, look in on what he called the 'saddest strip club ever' (and he's been to a few), and do jägermeister shots with a hot Lithuanian babe who pulled him away (momentarily) from the fry shop.

Needless to say, on our trip back to London, we felt like this woman, and not just because we had a two hour layover in Riga's steamy little airport. I would have cried with joy when we finally got back to Old Street except I was asleep within seconds and would stay so for the next 14 hours.

The western coast of Lithuania is pretty, the beaches clean, and the clubs packed til dawn, but I wouldn't recommend longer than a long weekend, unless you're as much of a hotel hermit as I am. Either way, be sure to get a KitKat ice cream bar (yum!) and catch the sunset from the pier at the end of Basanaviciaus. Worthy.

Ode to Barcelona (i.e. to Bee and Balconies)

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:08:00 +0000

I remember perfectly the first time I saw Bee. It was eight years ago in San Francisco and she waltzed into writing class, wearing some slinky number, swingy hair, significant smile. The class collectively stopped and swooned.

Soon thereafter, Bee went off to Italy and me to Thailand, and so we didn't see each other, although we lived somewhat parallel lives: lovers galore, stints in our home countries (Pakistan and Bangladesh), moving to Barcelona (she more successfully), and painting our toes silver and only silver.

So when I went to Barcelona last month, and stayed with Bee for five naked warm nights, it was like old friends just met. Because in a way, we were really meeting for the first time, but in a way, we'd known each other forever.

My first trip to Spain was just after college in 1995, in that cliche backpacking trip that all middle class Americans do post college. Boyf #1 and I did a forty day tour of southern Europe, tracing the Mediterranean, and Barcelona was hands down our favourite stop of all. I swore I'd go back, but it took me another 11 years to return. In 2006, I lived next to the Sagrada Familia for four sexed up months (with boyf #5) before I ran out of money, won a Fulbright, lost the love, and left Europe, broke and broken hearted.

It would be another four years before my next trip (at least the time in between my visits is becoming shorter), and what a fabulous time I had this time. But of course, it's Barcelona, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The curvilicious architecture, the flower frothing balconies, the beaches, the night life, the stupendous seafood. I even go shopping there, and you must know what a rarity that is.

How could you not love a city where their Lover's Day (La Diada de Sant Jordi) involves an exchange of gifts where you give your girl a rose and your boy a book, the streets fill up with stalls, and half a million books leave the shelves? Utter joy.

Luckily for me, Bee knows how to live large on a budget (can you see we were meant to be?). Superb home made mojitos? Check. Balcony overlooking Parc Güell? Check. Bread and wine at midnight? Check. Good use of Barcelona's spanking new public bike system? Check. Free dancy concerts every night? Check. Fire dancing on the beach? Check. Flasks full of whiskey? Check. 9 hours of sleep a night? To begin with.

I also got to meet Carlos again, witty sweet couchsurfing friend I made while we were both backpacking around South America two years ago. We hit it off then in Iguazu, Argentina, and now, in Barcelona, his home city. Carlos took me chocolate drinking in El Raval, lunching at the most fabulous Catalan spot in Sagrera (where I had my first taste of that seafood noodle goodness that is fideuà, see above), and to his made for romance flat, complete with brightly painted walls, arty photographs, french doors, wrought balconies, and billowing white curtains.

And I got to spend a drunken heady evening with Francisco, old friend from Penn and El Salvadorean transplant in Barcelona, in his gorgeous little Eixample flat. Francisco, you owe Arati and Philly a visit, so please start planning (Spring '11?), and I'll meet you there.

Every one of these lovelies are people with whom I would happily stay up til dawn, night after night, talking and talking and talking. And so I did, in between the feasting and dancing and everything else. I hope it's a lot less than 4 years before I go back, if only to lounge around and drink mojitos with Bee again. Plus it's my heart city. I knew it fifteen years ago, and it only gets clearer with the years.

So many homes. So little time.

A Revel in Ireland

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:59:00 +0000

It's true Ryan Air charges you £35 if you don't print out your boarding pass ahead of time. Another £35 if you want to check a bag in, or if your carryon is too big. They don't even let you carry more than one item on board. Toiletries, clothes, camera, laptop, book, umbrella, liquor - it all has to fit into one smallish bag. But if you can manage all this, then for £20 roundtrip, you could fly from London to Dublin and back, all taxes included.

So I compromised. I brought two cameras and a bottle of scotch, and left behind my laptop and umbrella. Of course, I got to Dublin in the middle of a cold summer downpour. Luckily, my hilarious dancy friend Johnny was there to pick me up and take me home to cocktails, pizza, and good music.

I met John two years ago outside a bus station in Villazon, Bolivia, on the southern border with Argentina. He and three fellow travellers had missed the morning bus to Tupiza (where the alien beautiful salt flat tours begin, and where I was heading myself), and in the chilly boring hours had decided to buy tracksuits. When I got to the bus station, I saw four jokers (including Johnny) sitting around in matching red and blue tracksuits. Love at first sight. I ended up travelling with them all through Bolivia.

Johnny had promised me a cheap as chips July vacay in Dublin, and fun to boot. It was all that and beautiful too. On Saturday, we checked out the lovely little Biorhythms exhibit about music and the body at Trinity College, and then met up with Cynthia (!) on her last gypsy outing before starting up her new king of the world job in NYC.

The three of us had a great rainy walk around Grafton Street - where I had my first real Irish Guinness (it was ok. Yeah, just ok) (gratuitous photo of a pint of Guinness to the left) - and St. Stephen's Green (see photo above where Johnny and I demonstrate very weak ups). Then drinks at the fancy Morgan Hotel, in Temple Bar, and (natch) a night of dancing.

Apparently there's free fun dancing to be had most any weekend in Dublin's eminently walkable city centre. Shebeen Chic has a tiny ornate little basement, and the DJ ducks under red beaded chandeliers to do his thing. Bia Bar is a bit more spacious and regular-ish (except for this awesome writing on the wall). Both were tremendous fun, and then John and I stumbled home and ate mini pancakes before crashing (don't carbs taste like manna at 3am?)

Sunday, the rain finally cleared up, and so we set off on a roadtrip. First up, Powerscourt Waterfall, the highest in Ireland, tripping down a towering stone mountain, while you stand at the base and watch. Then we went to Glendalough where Saint Kevin, the hermit monk set up camp, only to have his rabid followers follow him there and establish a monastery, school, cemetery, and other buildings now in ruins. As you might know, I love cemeteries, plus this one is in a lush valley with two lakes and some great hikes.

We wrapped up the weekend by eating dinner at the famous (and highest) pub in Ireland, Johnnie Fox's, which while frequented mostly by tourists, boasts fabulous food. I had mahi mahi, Cyn went with paella, and John ordered giant Balti shrimp. All were yum, plus we got to watch Spain beat the Netherlands in the World Cup finals (although I'm still bummed about Ghana).

Monday, Cynthia and I rented a car and drove south. Even though I made her switch the rental to an automatic (manual plus the left side of the road would be too much for me), I still almost killed us when I pulled out on the wrong side of the road in Cashel, and instead of swerving, I jammed on the brakes in panic. [Note to self (everyone), don't rely on my quick thinking in an emergency situation.] Luckily, the driver of the oncoming car had a bit more presence of mind and was able to stop just in time.

The weather held up - sunny and cloudy in turn - but no rain! And so we got to wander the lovely rock of Cashel with its ruined castle on a hill and pastoral landscape all around.

In Cahir (pronounced 'Care'), we skipped the castle, and went on a hike through the verdurous woods alongside a babbly brook, and then took a tour of a 'Swiss Cottage' - a cutie playhouse for the Butlers, nobility of old Ireland.

We got to Cork in Southern Ireland just in time for drinks with some of Cynthia's own travel friends, Ciara and Tyg (who she met at a music festival in Malawi, Africa) (those Irish get around).

Unfortunately, Tuesday was a bit rushed as I had a flight back to London in the evening, but Cyn and I still managed to pack quite a bit in. In Cork, we wandered the Old English Market, which has amazing amazing food (I want more of those quiches, Cyn!), and the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, which despite its mundane name, had a great collection.

Among my favourites - the lushy sexy "Red Rose" painting by John Lavery, Carl Zimmerman's stark and peaceful "Wild Boars in the Snow," the mournful muted painting "The Keyboard Player" by Gerald Dillon, and two of Sean Keating's, forlorn Irish emigrants in the prosaically titled "Economic Pressure," and the larger than life watery eyed soldiers in "Men of the South." But the highlight was Harry Clarke's sumptuous jeweled stained glass work (pictured above), which caused a sensation when they came out in 1924, and were heralded as "a revel in blue." Indeed.

On the drive back to Dublin, we stopped for lunch in the cutie quainty town of Kilkenny with its imposing castle, and sprawling design museum and shop. I wish we could have had more time here, but we were already cutting it way too close, and when Cyn finally dropped me off at Dublin's airport, I had to sprint all the way to the gate to make my flight (which was thankfully delayed a bit).

I've been to Ireland three times now. The first was a solo trip to Dublin where I did all the pretty tourist stuff and walked everywhere. The second was a rollicking trip to Galway with Irish travel friends I had met while trekking to Machu Pichu (like I said, they get around). And now this third time - all totally different, but such warm fun experiences that I'm always left wanting more. I'll be back, Johnny, and not just because you're the perfect host with the prettiest eyes. Or maybe just because of exactly that.

Seven Days at Sea

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:33:00 +0000

When international man of leisure, Scott, asked me along on a sailing trip in the Turkish Mediterranean in June, I said yes. Even though it would take all my meagre savings (including my Nigeria-homecoming-nest-egg) and then some. Even though I would know absolutely no one on this trip except for Scott himself. Even though I was supposed to be staying put in London and working on my novel.

But it was Scott, who loves to travel perhaps even more than I do, and does it with panache. When mutual friends first introduced us in New York two years ago, they told me he was jobless, homeless, and riding around America on a motorcycle. Of course, I loved him instantly, and our mutual love of scotch only confirmed it.

Eleven of us flew into Dalaman, Turkey, from Australia, New York City, the Hague, London, and Boston. Most of this crew was Australian, including Megan and Jodi, Scott's two sunloving sisters and their partners and a couple of friends. Almost half are based in NYC, so I now have a whole new cadre of BFFs in that big bad city.

We set sail from the little touristy town of Marmaris, with its lovely beach promenade, rife with carpet shops and stressball touts. Our boat wasn't quite the gulet (traditional Turkish sailboat) that we had expected. But since none of us were expert sailors, no one knew this right away. What we did know was that it was massive (photo of boat by Scott), a 90 footer, with private cabins, en suite bathrooms, sunny and shady lounge pads, dining on the deck, and plenty more space to dry off, do yoga, hang towels and togs, and for Shawn to play king of the world.

We floated from Butterfly Gorge to Turtle Beach to Caunos to Gocek, stopping at tiny isolated coves to swim, snorkel, and feast. I don't think I was ever hungry in the seven days we were at sea. Our fabulous chef, Mahmet, cooked us breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner every day.

I also don't think I was sober ever. We went through about 20 bottles of liquor between the 11 of us. That's almost 2 litres each, not counting the cases of beer we emptied steadily. To help matters, we had a professional bartender among us, the long limbed Alexis, who made us stellar watermelon tequila cocktails one blue evening. Alex was usually in charge of the gin and tonics, starting around 3pm. The Dude, of course, would whip up the White Russians. Scott and Jono would round us off after dinner with scotch. And Tom played DJ. At night, we'd lie on the roof of the boat, and watch the Milky Way wheel itself across the sky. Somehow I missed every shooting star, but apparently, they exist.

It was on the fifth day that we finally persuaded our crew to sail our boat, rather than motor it. That was when we were made to understand that our boat was actually not a gulet, but something in between a gulet and something much bigger. Putting up sails basically meant floating in place in the middle of the Med, while smaller boats whizzed past, their sails abillow. Did we mind? Nah.

Nor were we chuffed about the lack of good snorkeling and diving. As the Lonely Planet warned us, "the Red Sea it ain't."

It weren't. Sometimes there were little fishies. Other times an outcropping of soft coral. Most often, it was rocky mountains, the cool blue sea, and us jumping in joy.

We docked at Fethiye after a week, where we caught the first game of the World Cup at a local bar, ate some yummy meals, and went dancing at a local club to lovely live Turkish music. Then one by two, we flew back to where we'd come from.

In the ancient city of Caunos (4th century BC) on the Turkish Mediterranean coast, there is a beautifully preserved amphitheatre halfway up the mountain, and below, the remains of a promenade and a fountain, rebuilt among the ruins. According to the signs, there is also a monument of gratitude. I looked for it, but I couldn't find it, not in the outside world anyway. So I left, carrying it within me.

Six Months Grace

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 22:25:00 +0000

I came to Bangladesh in mid December 2009 for several reasons: to lick my agent hunting wounds (round 1 was a bust), to hug my Dhaka peeps, to have a jumping off point for New Year's Eve and Melissa's birthday in Fiji, to visit Sheba in India, and to celebrate Mahmud's first book being published by Penguin India, and my father's fourth and fifth books coming out in Dhaka.

I thought this would all take, oh, a month, maybe two at most, and then I'd return to New York in say, March, with the worst of the winter behind me. Instead, it's July and I'm only halfway back to the land of the free.

In the six months I lived in Bangladesh, I started my first novel and third book, Memory Alone (82 pages, baby), I practiced and taught a tonne of yoga, and I lived with the fabulously beautiful and talented Nadiya, who (and I cannot stop bragging just yet) is bound for University of Iowa's world class fiction writing masters program this fall.

In other news, I learned I could live without air conditioning even in the worst of the swelter (hello April, and May, when the rains are late). My bedroom in Nadiya's sprawling flat had no AC, and worse, when the power went (as it did a million times a day and night), even the fan didn't work, because it wasn't hooked up to the generator or IPS box. I'd wake each time the power cut, drenched in sweat and angst and darkness, and tell myself, You are not a fucking princess, Abeer. You will sleep this one out. And I did. Mostly.

It doesn't help that I sweat profusely as soon as it goes over 80F (26C). I had to carry a little towel with me everywhere I went. Once I got into a CNG, sweating and mopping my usual piggy self, and the CNG wallah turned to me, and said, "Madam, you came from an AC room, didn't you?" I didn't know whether to agree/lie, or admit that this was my natural disgusting state of things.

Half a block down from the number 8 bridge in Dhanmondi is where my favourite jhaal muri wallah sits. For 5 taka (7 cents), he will mix puffed rice, diced onions, ghugni (a chickpea paste), chopped chillis, chanachur, salt, and lime juice, fill up a newspaper cone with this goodness, and give it to you.

It's true, you can get any number of (serious) ailments from eating street food, but I was addicted. I can't tell you the number of times Nadiya and I had jhaal muri as a meal. After a few under and over orders, I think we settled on 60 takas worth of jhaal muri being just right for two hungry lazy writer girls. Tk 50 was not quite enough. Tk 70 left some wasted.

Our other favourite haunt was Hot Hut on Mirpur Road, for its delicious momos (dumplings filled with veggies or chicken) and its even more mouth watering chilli cilantro sauce. In this venture, my greed (I can't, in good faith, call it hunger) surpassed even Nadiya's. I think my record was eight momos in one sitting, though four to six of these babies should suffice any normal person.

Thanks to my favourite Mala Mami who is possibly the best cook in the world, I also had the most wonderful home cooked meals, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis, depending on how often I made it out to Shantinagar.

This feasting included more than my share of bhartas - the winter/spring specialities of Bangladesh. Bhartas are mashes of pretty much anything you can think of. Potato bhartas of course, are common, but then there's eggplant, flat beans, lentil, egg, shrimp, chilli pepper, plantain, tomato, and so on.

My favourite is the oft-hated (and oft-loved) shutki - made of salted/cured fish - and which has many varieties, including the famous and fantastic loitta shutki, a speciality of the port city of Chittagong.

Take a gander at the new drink in town. At least new to me (and to my mother who had never heard of it when she was growing up in Dhaka). It's kacha am'er shorboth (the juice from unripe mangos) - mixed with chilli masala and salt, and served cold and utterly refreshing. I think it might also work quite nicely with a dash of vodka.

There are fruits I ate this year which I had never eaten before, including the crunchy watery taal (date palm fruit) and the sour sweet jaam (which look like long black grapes). And of course, I ate a million mangoes. The fabulous Farah Mehreen's garden in Gulshan boasts nine varieties alone, and each one is different from the last.

As you can tell, eating constitutes one of my consummate pleasures in Bangladesh. To combat my lack of eating self control, I embarked on what I still think is an insane campaign of daily exercise. Last summer, I had to stop running due to a clicky hurty knee. It was a huge blow, not to be able to run, after 4+ years of it. Running is the easiest, fastest, shortest way for me to get and stay in shape. I only have to do it (slowly) for 30 minutes, three times a week. And I'm done. Strong limbs, flat stomach, high energy, no matter what else I do or eat. And I can do it in any country, at any time, in any weather. But no more.

In an attempt to counter my softening body and my endorphin deprived mind, I upped my once/twice a week yoga routine to 5 days a week. This stayed the softening but did nothing to reverse it. For more of an experiment than anything else, I tried a daily yoga routine. To my surprise and trepidation, one hour of hot yoga a day in a hot country in the hot season was the trick.

Every morning, I'd get up from my damp bed, wash my face (in vain), and then do an hour of yoga in the dripping heat. I'd shower (in vain), eat my jhaal muri lunch, and then work on my novel. I'd be at my laptop (which was perched on Nadiya's ironing board) (I write standing) for two to six hours. The goal was a page a day, no matter how shitty.

By May, I finished a very rough draft of part 1 of my novel. Jewel, my young druggie protagonist, is losing his mind, and with it his ability to invent himself, a devastation of perception and genesis. Part 2 shows him as an old man suffering from dementia. He's the same person(ality) from part 1 but he doesn't have the same history.

Because he's someone older, in a different place and time, he's losing something different: webs of interaction, an erasure of history, a disengagement. I'm captivated by this story, though I also have no idea how to tell/finish it the way I imagine.

May was also the month I taught a month long yoga class to the exercise class starved denizens of Dhaka. Between 10 and 25 people showed up to each class, in varying conditions of flexibility and strength, but every last one of them eager. Still, I didn't have high hopes, for my own enjoyment, that is. I have not thrilled to my teaching experiences in the past, which have included classes on computers, information systems, English, GREs, GMATs, essay writing, and creative writing. I wasn't particularly good (or bad) at it, and I always felt like I was missing out on doing my own work.

To my surprise, I loved teaching yoga. I loved watching the progress of different students, learning how different bodies move through different poses, when to encourage, how far to push, when to let it go.

I've been obsessed with bodies ever since I started dancing by myself in my bedroom, the summer after I turned 16. That fall, I joined the swim team - my first conscious non-intellectual endeavour (but certainly not non-mental, as any athlete will tell you). I watched my own body struggle and shift, and then over the years, shift back and struggle again, and again, and again.

That first season of swimming was the hardest thing I had ever done, and possibly is yet still. It was an epiphany, that moment, two months into the season, in the middle of another interminable set, when I lifted my head as usual to take a desperate breath, and my body suddenly propelled through the water with my stroke. A stretch, a straightening, a twist, a turn, and now power, grace in my form.

The trick will be to parlay this love of muscles in motion into a part time paying career so I can keep writing and photographing. Yoga teacher cum corporate editor? Hypocrite much?

It was halfway through my ever extending visit that I realised that I can't live in Bangladesh. Not long term anyway. My libido gives me two maybe three months grace before it starts driving me crazy.

The twenty seven year olds, the even younger, the taken, the philanderers, the dissolute, the uncertain, the adulterers, the immature, the open marriages, the parentally oppressed, the parents. I can't take it.

Bangladesh is yet difficult for single women (and yes, single men, but women have a harder time of it, as with most everything else). It doesn't matter how young I look, how good you feel, how mythical click our connection, I'm done sneaking around.

So I left, just before the rains started, in June. I know I'll be back. For the photographer's dream, the jaundice yellow jhaal muri, the dry cool winter as much as the hot yoga heat, and most of all, for the feast of family and friends and food.

Asian Adventures

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:15:00 +0000

1. I missed my flight to Fiji. This is because in the month of December, all airlines leaving Dhaka move their flights up by several hours. Why? The sightless fog which blankets the city every night through the dawn.

Whichever passengers with local Bangladesh phone numbers are notified of this change. Whichever passenger booked her flight from another country online and gave only her email address will arrive at the airport 3 hours early and in fact be 3 hours late.

Said passenger will then spend 2 days arguing her way onto a flight to Hong Kong, but will miss one of only two weekly flights to Nadi, Fiji. She will then spend 3 ridiculously posh days in Hong Kong, courtesy of the wonderful Cecily Park's wonderful parents, eating fishball soup, watching movies in 3D, and seeing light shows in the sparkling rain.

New Years Eve will be spent flying over the Pacific drinking Fijian rum punch as the pilot does the countdown and the attendants and passengers conga line down the aisles. Totally ridiculous, totally fun.

I got to Nadi on January 1, 2010, wired, tired, and a week late. Luckily, this crew of friends have more than just New Years Eve in them. Party queen Melissa had organised her 40th birthday party in Fiji, all the way from San Francisco, and 15 of her friends had flown in from all over to celebrate.

The birthday bash was scheduled for January 3, 2010 and everyone was raring to go. Competing song and dance teams? Check. Naked belly dancing competitions? Check. Sport Illustrated swimsuit modelling? Check. Fire dancing? Check. Gourmet meals? Check. Snorkeling around Castaway Island? Check. Umbrella drinks? Check. World class sound system? Check. Glow sticks in our bikinis? Check. DJs among us? Check. Sailing into the sunset? Check. Cardinal joy? And how.

2. I have high tolerance. This means more drinks, more pills, more tabs, more drops, more drags, more cookies, more magic, more lines, more money, more time. (More on functional damage later).

So at 3am on Malolo Island, the night of Melissa's bash when everyone's crashed out (to their credit, we started partying 12 hours before), what was I doing?

Spraying myself with Deet, and running down the cliff stairs to the beach where the tide had gone out a quarter mile leaving the ocean bed wet and empty and lit up like a black and white photograph below the tumescent moon. (no photos from this episode, so you'll have to look at this beautiful blue moon from Kolkata's Durga Puja (2007)).

I danced to my iPod for the next 4 hours, through the incoming tide, the outgoing fishermen watching bemused, the waning cheesecake moon, the incomparable sun. Arif, in case you're wondering, the song on repeat was Reckoner, by Radiohead. Not a dancy song as such, but who cares when you're alone inside the starry world?

3. I've run out of money. This means I've resorted to siphoning from my mother's rental income from her flat in Shantinagar. $250/month is supposed to be going into a Bangladeshi bank account to fund her retirement. Instead the last 4 months, half that money is funding my rickshaw and CNG rides and the occasional Baishaki meal (I love bharthas). The rest of the time I bum rides, eat at my relatives', sleep in Nadiya's and Neeta's guest rooms, write. Could I live like this forever? Possibly. Should I live like this forever? I think you and my father know the answer to this one.

Come back home, he tells me with some feeling in late February when I'm dropping him off at the airport so he can go back to America. I find it so utterly ironic. Abbu brought me to Bangladesh in 2001 and said, this is your home. This is where your roots are. No mind that I had never lived here and found it alien ground.

Still, I returned on a Fulbright (incidentally 45 years after Abbu's own Fulbright to study in the States). I stayed almost two years to write and photograph my Lovers and Leavers book, found friends and lovers, and rediscovered my extended family. I loved every dirtypretty second. Every year since, I've come back, for a few months at a time, and it's been amazing. I get all the privileges of a guest, all the warmth of a homecoming.

One of these days, I'll look back on the years (4 and counting!) I spent below the poverty line (true this was voluntarily to a certain degree - Wharton BS notwithstanding), and I'll be overwhelmed with the deeply madly beauty in my life.

4. I'm losing my memory. So is my father. His is age related and possibly (horrifyingly) Alzheimers related. Mine is self inflicted hedonist whim. Thank you, JimChae for our ecstatic years in San Francisco which have destroyed a good part of my short term memory, possibly forever. Take, for example, the time I opened a bathroom cabinet (sober) and for a few seconds, forgot the purpose of everything, including myself.

Ergo, my obsession with memory loss and its effect on personality and identity, parlayed into a novel, as yet untitled, as yet with double digit page count, as yet plot free. I am writing it, gay porn scene by gay porn scene, as Dhaka moves from winter to spring to monsoon.

As I have to come up with a synopsis eventually, here's a stab: my novel is about Jewel, a Christ following druggie who's losing his mind. In "Sliding Doors" style, it's also about Jewel, an elderly linguist who's losing his mind. There's also Lailai - his adopted Chinese sister, their crazy Mamma, Rio - Lai's boyfriend, Cruz - Jewel's lover of undetermined gender, and Father Martin - a priest. They live in the model fairy town of Berkeley. This excerpt is for you, sexy Mr. Jack Murnighan.

Jewel swishes his belt out of the loops. It leaves the bone curve of his hips, marks the air with the opposite sine, then falls by his side. He pulls the boy's wrists together, binds the belt around them, and then buckles it to the bedpost. The boy is helpless, liquid with laughter. Jewel's face is still, stern. He's playing his part even if the boy won't.
"Quit your laughing," he hisses. "Want a beating too?"
"Yeah," the boy says, "With a cupped palm."
"Like you get to choose how," Jewel says flipping him over all rough like.
The boy cries out and Jewel turns him back quickly. His eyes are screwed shut, his mouth slightly open. Jewel leans down to kiss him and in doing so brushes against the boy's cock. It's hard. He grins.

5. The Indians don't want us. Since the Mumbai attacks and then Headley, it's become harder for foreigners to enter or return to India. An aunt in Dhaka was refused entry because it had been too soon since her last visit. Another Bangladeshi American acquaintance was rejected for unknown reasons. Friends have been stranded at borders or spent days in embassies trying to reenter India on perfectly valid visas.

Last November, I was refused a 10 year visa on my American passport due to my birth country being different from my birth citizenship being different from my current citizenship. And the matter of my foolishly saying I was an editor (writers, photographers, filmmakers, repeat after me, I am a project manager).

And god forbid one is a dual citizen Bangladeshi and desires multiple entry visas extending for longer than 2 weeks, entry ports different from exits, land AND air options... My chances of getting everything I asked for? Apparently 100%.

From start to finish, my month touring Delhi, Rajasthan, Bangalore, and Kolkata was a wet dream, picture perfect. Of course, it's always been the case that from the moment I leave Bangladesh for India and put away my dhupatta, I feel free. I walk, wear, say what I want and no second glance my way.

I first thought to go to Delhi because of my good friend Mahmud Rahman's debut publication by Penguin India: a collection of stories called Killing the Water - a strong quiet book stretching from British Raj India to contemporary America, each story set with integrity, thoughtful characterisation, and compelling detail. You can get it in bookstores throughout India, as well as from Abebooks.com.

To celebrate, we organised a reading (Electric Sweet Water Girl) featuring 7 readers at the lovely gallery space, Khoj, sponsored partially by Tranquebar since almost all the writers had appeared in the Tranquebar anthologies, Electric Feather and the New Anthem.

The readers were Mahmud Rahman (natch), Shabnam Nadiya (a Bangladeshi writer, poet, and translator, who incidentally just got into Iowa, the best writing program in the world), Parvati Sharma (Delhi based writer, look for her hilarious short stories, Dead Camels and Other Love Stories, out later this year), Mridula Koshy (with her debut collection published in Delhi last year, If It Is Sweet), Sheba Karim (Pakistani American novelist with a young adult novel out last spring, Skunk Girl), Samit Basu (best selling fantasy and graphic novel writer), and moi.

Over 50 people showed up to listen, drink, and then dance at our raucous kissy afterparty (thank you, Samrat for hosting and Hari for photographing and Nadiya for coming into the bathroom)...

My India visit was defined by my luminous Sheba baby (photo by the uber talented Hari), whose bed I shared for two weeks (though poor recompense for her and Faisal's own disastrous Indian visa dealings). Sheba is in Delhi on a Fulbright researching her second novel, a historical fiction about Razia Sultana. To that end, we went on a 10 day tour of Rajasthan including a 10th century fort in Ranthambore and the fabulous Dhai Din Ka Jhopra in Ajmer.

In non-research related touring, we went on a tiger safari in Ranthambore (not a bagh beheld, but fauna and flora abound), a Sufi qawali in the Dargah at Ajmer, a special lassi and shopaholics tour of Pushkar, and a 5 star Fulbright sponsored holiday in Udaipur. As if this weren't cake enough, on a surprise and fabulous impulse, our hilarious and hot friend Rahim joined us on this trip, a day in Agra and Fatehpur Sikri, and my last weekend in Delhi.

I'll tell one story in detail. In Ajmer, Sheba and I left Rahim outside the dargah with our cameras (no cameras allowed) and went inside. Sheba wanted to give prayers for her parents who had always wanted to visit Ajmer and the saint's tomb (a very holy place for Muslims) but had been thwarted twice now. But we didn't know how or what or where. As we milled in front of the beautiful tiled tomb, I saw a boy watching us. Since he was pretty, I up nodded him over. Tahoor Chisty turned out to be a descendant of the caretakers of the tomb. He procured a silver tray of red petals and led us to the back of the tomb where he said the line would take 5 minutes instead of 50. As instructed, we each took a spilling handful of petals and crouched and huddled and crawled our way into the tomb amidst masses of bodies.

Inside the tomb, it was sweltering, humming, at once hushed and roaring. Tahoor stood in the centre, on one side of a grating, beside the tomb itself. We stood on the other side of the grating and flung the petals over his head, onto the tomb and its luscious tapestry covering. Then he took the corner of the tapestry and pulled it over our heads and said, whatever you wish for now will be granted. And then he prayed over us in his cracked boyman voice.

I'm not religious, but I love ritual, and I rather like the Sufis. They like to dance after all. I watched a spectacular dervish display at Humayun's Tomb one evening. The hand above is the one that receives. The hand below gives.

I must also mention Delhi's ever awesome Qutub Minar, gay boy parties, picnics in the most beautiful city park - Lodhi Garden, my first Holi, and the best farewell party ever. Of course, Sheba has always thrown the most fantabulous parties, ever since those Bachanal nights at Penn more than a decade ago. If I remember correctly, those also featured kissing.

Old friends just met, Mandakini, Rosalyn, Durba, Hari, Anindita, Samrat, Vikram, SK, and Misha, you are beautiful. And thank you pretty Mr. Rana Dasgupta for signing my (Commonwealth Prize winning) copy of Solo (I just got to the Narwhal chapter and it's one of the most beautiful things I've read).

In Bangalore, I got set up in Charan's lux city digs, courtesy of my thugpretty cinematographer ex, Ram, with whom I've wandered many many cities (starting with Philly, San Francisco, Bombay, Chennai, and now Bangalore). And it was a pleasure to finally meet his lovely sweet smart woman, Vinuta. Another highlight was Sharan's farm house, decked out all industrial chic, and eating his mom's stellar food (I want more of that daal, Sharan). I'm only sad because I foolishly didn't charge my camera battery and so don't have photos of our yummy dinner party.

My last stop in India was Kolkata. Kolkata is perhaps one of my favourite cities, visually. I think it's stunningly beautiful, chockful of character, endlessly entertaining. Plus I can speak the language. The last few times I've been, my friend Madhurima and her dad, Kanak Uncle, have been my hosts, and you couldn't ask for kinder, more welcoming people to take care of you.

The first outing the lovely Madhurima (see photo to left) took me on was one of my favourite things I've ever done in Kolkata: a sunset boat ride from Outram Ghat, topped off by fuchka and ice cream . Queue up Chambalamba Jewellers in New Market, Rajasthani thali at Teej, drinks with Rishi and Pooja at Silver Grill, a million metro rides on Kolkata's fantastic subway system (so cheap! so clean! so quick! so often!), the fanciest mall ever (South City), seeing Misha again, and catching up with Saugata (finally!)...

I'm back in Dhaka. In the next month, I have 8 photo albums to organise and upload, editing clients to solicit, taxes to file (my ticket out of Bangladesh?), 2 personal websites to rehaul, 5 residencies to apply to, 30 pages to write, and my 37th birthday party to plan (April 10).

You may send your birthday love cards to:

AH (do spell it out)
c/o Anvir Khan Babu
Apt 1/701
Eastern Peace
30 Shantinagar
Dhaka 1217
BANGLADESH
(I'm here at least through early May, and after that my uncle will forward on...)

Til then, I remain the silver lining in your pocket.

Brought To You By JetBlue

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:52:00 +0000

The good thing about not blogging in ages is that there's plenty to say. The bad thing is that the big things overcome the little. (As you may guess, I love the little.)

You might learn then that my niece was born this summer, but perhaps not about the kickass conversation with the Peruvian boy on Canal Street at midnight (about scars and digital cameras and writing to your mother). Ah well. (write to your mother)

July 2009

My niece, the androgenously adorable Ilana Shanti Vesper WoodHoque, was born, looking like Mr. Burns and Yoda rolled into a pale hairy 7.5 pounds. 5 months later, she's twice her length and weight, and has cheeks to match. I lovelovelove her. I'm going to miss her something fierce when I leave the land of the free.

July was also when two of my oldest friends in the world, JimChae and Stokes, came to spend 2 debaucherous weeks with me in the Upper West Side. I've known them both since we were in the same freshman dorm at Penn, oh, 18 years ago. Every night, we feasted (and drank) like kings. Every afternoon, we woke up crying, dragged ourselves to the gym where we were scamming free trials, to sweat out the alcohol. Incidentally this gym was beside the fine wine and liquor store where we'd replenish supplies. And start all over again.

Speaking of freshman year, I also got to see my first love, the 7 year one, Glenn, and meet his two little girls, Alden and Olivia, for the first time. I hadn't seen Glenn or Sarah since their wedding 5 years ago and so it was about time. Of course, it didn't matter for a second how long it had been. It was exactly as funny and fun as it had ever been. What's perfect isn't forever. I'm in love with the memory of us and I don't ever have to fall out of that.

[small memory] the rickshaw boy artist with a nose ring who cycled me around Times Square at night for free and then drew a purple and gold lotus flower on the inside of my arm. [/small memory]

August 2009

I finished my rewrite of my first book, a memoir called Olive Witch, which had started out 6 years ago as my thesis for my MFA in writing. The rewrite took about a year longer than I expected (1.5 years total) and is a wholly different (hopefully better) animal.

Then I spent some weeks condensing 250 pages into one paragraph for my query letter to agents. This latter task was perhaps more painful than writing the 4 (count 'em) redrafts.

Then I sent this query letter out to 20 agents, 6 of whom were "warm" contacts, ie agents of friends. 5 wrote back asking to see the full manuscripts of both books (Olive Witch, and my novel-in-stories, The Lovers and the Leavers).

Then I clapped my hands, pulled out my credit card, and went to Edinburgh to drink scotch with JimChae and his banker friends. Since this was August (the month of festivals), we caught the Fringe Festival, the Book Festival, and the International Festival. It was FABULOUS. Among other things, I saw the brilliant Margaret Atwood, a ridiculous American comic, street performers aplenty, a clever English staging of Don Juan in Soho, and the most outrageous of all - a Malawian musical about Madonna adopting a baby where Madonna was played by a statuesque black man in a blonde wig. Naturally.

[small memory] In London, using Jim's pile of change to buy bottles of the cheapest white wine, packs of scones, and tubs of clotted cream. Consuming all of this myself. [/small memory]

September-October 2009

I bought JetBlue's fly-all-you-can-in-a-month pass, and I flew all I could in a month, which ended up being 6 cities, 3 on the east (Pittsburgh, Boston, New York), and 3 on the west (San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles). Naturally I didn't do this in any geographically logical order, but then again, unlimited flights! [Click to see all my photo albums from this year, and my New York sets here.]

It was my first time in Portland and I got to see 2 friends I hadn't seen in years (Rory and Paul) and 3 others I only see in other places (Laura, Ola, and Jim Frost), and additionally wander a charming chill city.

My visit coincided with the winter migration of the Vaux's Swift, birds which rest in Oregon en route from Alaska to Central America. They stop to roost in this one chimney of an old school in Portland. Folks take their picnic baskets and kids, lie on the grassy hill beside the schoolyard at dusk, and watch as some 10,000 birds gather in the darkening, and then swirl down into the chimney for the night. Oh so worthy.

Also spectacular viewing - a hike in the wet woods with the lovely Laura. And of course, the book lover's wet dream of a bookstore: Powell's with its four floors, wall of manga, glass room of rare books, art gallery, and cafe. Litgasm.

In Los Angeles, I was hosted by the firecracker Ms. Rounsaville and ate fish tacos for every meal (it's true). In San Francisco, I got to see the uber-talented writer/musician couple, Neela and Robin tie the knot. My favourite bit: Neela's 16 year old cousin, Abhay, dancing at the talent show. Liquid dancer boy. I hope he keeps on it.

Back in New York, I saw Naeem Mohaiemen's brilliant solo show at Cue Arts: Live True Life or Die Trying - a meditation on protests, journalists, activists, photographers, in turn poetic reportage, crystalline aware, philosophical, pop cultural, wondering, provocative, and grounded.

The photographs and text pulled out, focused in, deliberate and deliberately casual, about his (your) role as observer, participant, in the event, in life. So fucking good.

[small memory] Walk of shame through the Mission in a sari. Poet in a suit beside me. Kisses in the cup of my hand. [/small memory]

November 2009

4 of the 5 agents wrote me back turning down representation. The only one who offered any feedback, minimal as it was, puzzled me. She found my Nigeria stories not for the adult reader and my voice indistinct. I know I have a lot to learn, writing-wise, but IMHO, my Nigeria stories and my voice are not my weak points. (Repeat to self, I don't want anyone who doesn't want me.) Round 2 of the agent hunt looms.

I launched my editing website, Abeer Prep. I'm hoping it's going to be my perfect job: part time (so I can write and take photographs with the rest of my time), able to be done remotely (I could live anywhere(s)), for a good cause (aiding school and scholarship). This particular career might even help me get to Bangladesh once a year, maybe during peak application season.

I'm singing again! I joined a choral group (the Bank Street Chorus). Our practices are only an hour long, but harmony (yay altos) and singing has always made me happy. This is good because the agent hunt is a tad demoralising, especially since I haven't written anything new in so long. It's like my entire body of work is up for judgment and I have nothing else to show. Time to write again (ergo). I also have ideas for my next book (about memory and chance), though calling it a book at this point is so premature as to be laughable.

[small memory] Tripping the light fantastic at the Ritz, a gay bar in Hells Kitchen. [/small memory]

December 2009

I leave New York next week. Over the next four months, I'm hoping to hit Paris, Dhaka, Fiji, Delhi, and London. I have no money past the airfare, and sometimes not even that (there's a reason I bought a one-way ticket to Dhaka). I have 3 cameras, 2 energy bars, and a head lamp. What more do you need? Love.

[small memory] on the D train to Manhattan, crying reading this line by the great Dr. A.R. Luria: "A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being — matters of which neuropsychology cannot speak." [/small memory]

Oh and write to your mother.

I Heart New York

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:31:00 +0000

I was debating summarising my last two months using only photographs. Then I remembered a piece I wrote many years ago. In the story, a rustling across my face woke me from a sound sleep. I opened my eyes to find a 4 inch long cockroach on my pillow. We both went into break up mode which for him meant running away and for me meant crying. (some girls never learn)

I eventually tracked him down to the bathroom and proceeded to create a crime scene of destruction. Magazine holder toppled, bathmat askew, biggest boot i own atop mister mister.

I couldn't remove said boot immediately so I left my flat (this was in Philly) and went for a walk. When I returned, the bathroom looked so comical that I took a photo and then cleaned up. When I wrote this incident up as part of a writing exercise for school, I included the photo at the end, as an end. My professor, the (spectacular) (sexy) Mr. Shurin asked me why I had resorted to laziness after such a winning beginning ("He's looking straight at me, Mister Cockroach is.")

I had no response because he was right. I have even less excuse now, despite having 23,845 more photos than before. So sorry, gentle reader. You get the mostly text version of my time in the land of the free in 2009.

So, I spent the last two months reading books by people I know personally (and they were really damn good). First up, Sheba Karim's Skunk Girl, which she wrote about 15 years too late to serve my hairy teenage angst needs, but I'll take it. Especially since she's one of my best friends and so beautiful I can't stop looking at her ever and throws the best parties (see photos from her launch by clicking on her photo above) and has started two kickass websites (cheaptoboot.com and gradinsider.com) and is going to India on a Fulbright to research a historical novel (score for creative Fulbrights!). And Skunk Girl rocks. It's funny and breezy and real. Get yourself and your niece a copy.

Jack Murnighan's Classic Nasty was perfect reading for the subway (or
the beach). My work commute from the Upper West Side to Midtown takes about 20 minutes, enough time to read one nasty classic excerpt and more urgently, Jack's warm sexy forward editorials. So very close to his warm sexy forward self. I'd walk into work all hot and ready. To proofread alongside my cutie gay boy coworkers. Life isn't easy.

Ok it is. Sometimes. I scored a fabulous Manhattan flat within days of my arrival. I moved in on a chilly Tuesday evening, went dancing, and brought back my red light kiss later that night. Who says twenty nothing year olds aren't worthy? This one made me birthday breakfast and even better, washed the dishes after.

So I had a birthday. It rocked. My (6+ months pregnant at the time) sister Simi AND my dancy brother Maher AND my pretty parents were in attendance, as well as a host of beautiful boys and girls who danced me into my 36th year. Maher - do I ever get the photos?

Spring in New York isn't warm enough. There were enough cold rainy days to remind me why I left the East Coast so happily and so often. But if you have to spend your life indoors, then there might not be a better place to be.

The hands down highlight was getting to watch one of my favourite singer/songwriters in the world perform his razorblade music: the inimitable Leonard Cohen. In Radio City Hall no less. Mr. Cohen went through an unbelievable 3 hour set singing every single song I wanted him to. Thank you LC. You're my tea and oranges, my prophet and pall bearer, my beauty and my burning violin.

IMHO, getting around in NYC is almost as much fun as getting there. I cannot say enough about the subway system. Sure it might take you an hour or more to get from one burrough to another, but it's POSSIBLE. and CHEAP. and UBIQUITOUS. and 24 HOURS A DAY. Can any other city in the world say this? Not any I've been to anyway, and I've been to a few. I could spend the entire day on the subway people watching. It's the great equaliser. From the 7 figure salary to the indigent, from the white boy to the black girl (and every gender and sex (those are different) and colour in between).

For the scarce sunny days, there's picnics in the park or the fabulous botanical gardens in Brooklyn and the Bronx. And when it gets really cold, for $490 roundtrip, you can go to Kauai (thank you cutie cattiho for getting married on a Pacific island).

Pasha Malla's The Withdrawal Method was also riveting subway reading (I'm a rabid fan of short stories now). I met Mr. Malla when he read at a cute bookshop called Word in Williamsburg (where incidentally Sheba will be reading as part of a young adult lecture series on July 30 - come! I'll be doing the Q&A (argh)). I met Pasha again on Sharlene's last night bartending in Park Slope with the everkissable Radhika.

Speaking of Sharlene, my vibrant friend now has her own (eponymous) bar (pictured to the left) which was reviewed in the New York freaking Times here and again here. Now if I can just score a bar-backing gig at hers, I might not go hungry (or thirsty) this summer.

I should also thank New York for my share of corybantic nights. Happy Endings figured in more than once along with Desilicious, Sonar NYC, and god knows from where else I stumbled home. I got kissed in taxis, parlours, elevators, bars, on dance floors, street corners, subway cars, beds. Gotham could give Rio a sexed up run for its money.

I'm about a week away from wrapping up a wildly productive month at Saltonstall Arts Colony spanning May and June in Ithaca, NY. I'm almost done rewriting my memoir so by June end, when I get back to the Big Apple, I'll be ready to rock (ie finally face the agent music).

My month in the woods has been so isolated and beautiful and lux (room and board and weekly maid service incl.) My fellow artists are talented and chill and sweet: Rose Desiano is a photographer who layers sculpture and architecture into her work. Christine Elfman is a painter who also works with photography and mixed media. Rachael Wren is a painter (and a web designer on the side). And my favourite is Cecily Parks, the poet (after all, poetry is my first love) who's currently writing a series of poems about a girl in a ginger ale dress doing mischief in the woods.

I spend most of my days writing, and most of my evenings organising my photographs, submitting work to literary magazines, applying to other residencies, and thinking about how to fund my next pipe dream (getting to Nigeria). In between, I run in the woods, do yoga in my room, go for long hikes through waterfall dripping gorges, eat, and sleep. This is what happens when you're hundreds of miles from anyone you know, your cell phone doesn't get reception, and you don't have a car. The only drawback is the WiFi, but I've managed to limit myself to a few hours of internetting a day. Could be better, but, as any addict knows, it could be worse:)

Saltonstall is having an open house on Sunday, June 14, 2009 from 2-4pm. The poet and I will be doing readings while the painters and photographer will have their studios open. I think I'll read about my mother growing orange roses in Nigeria. Come listen.

The hundredth empty place

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 02:38:00 +0000

There are a hundred empty places I’ve stood in, the past four years of traveling, and imagined kissing someone. By empty, of course, I mean alone.

Sometimes it was a wild place, like the Devil’s Throat in Iguazu Falls, or the winter wonderland of Bohemia, or the Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan.

Sometimes it was a lost place, like the overgrown temples of Angkor Wat, or the red city of Fatehpur Sikri, or the Incan trails in Peru.

Less often, it was an urban space, like the gardens of Hanoi’s Ethnology Museum, or the Montjuic Cemetery in Barcelona, or most recently, in my flat in my favourite megacity, Dhaka.

Dhaka wasn't on my itinerary this year. I meant to use my savings to 1) escape the East Coast winter, and 2) fund a 3 month writing retreat in San Francisco and Mexico City, before returning to New York to find an agent for my books. But then I got an email from my mother. She had just left my father in Dhaka and was worried about him.

Since retiring from geological consulting a year and half ago, Abbu has written two books: a novel and a collection of short stories, in Bangla. Note that during this same time, I have not written 2 books. Nor even 1. But the ways that I will never measure up to my father abound. Abbu's books were set to be published in Bangladesh in February. No one from our immediate family could attend the launch, except for me. More distressingly, Abbu's memory is failing. My charge was to get to Dhaka ASAP, help plan and attend the launch, and act as Abbu's personal assistant. Stick to him like glue, my mother entreated, and I squeezed out half my savings to do so.

Bangladesh is crazier than ever. After the horrifying February 2009 BDR mutiny, I was asked by many whether Bangladesh felt different this time. I have to say that for all the madness (which resulted in scores of officers being executed and a restructuring of the entire paramilitary force), Bangladesh did not feel different to me this time.

Recall that this is the country where I arrived in 2006 to a series of hartals (country-wide strikes), followed by riots and bombings, followed by cabinet ministers resigning, followed by a failed election, followed by a military-caretaker government, followed by emergency rule, followed by curfews, followed by anti-corruption drives, followed by a cyclone... you get the picture.

Abbu's book launch was held under the massive banyon tree at Bangla Academy, where Dhaka's month long book fair is held every year. It went famously. Noted professor and writer, Sirajul Islam Chowdhury was the guest of honour. Even better, famed author Jafar Iqbal was scheduled to speak just after Abbu's launch, and his presence on the periphery of the stage caused a mini-media sensation that spilled over to include Abbu's event.

Book publishing in Bangladesh is a different sort of affair than in America or even India. Most anyone can publish their work because the process involves the author buying half the copies printed, and selling them him/herself. Zero sum game for most authors, IF they can sell their copies.

In Abbu's case, it's difficult to tell how many books have been sold from the publisher's copies (apparently BD publishers are a lying lot). Out of "his" copies, we mailed a couple hundred to the States and held a book launch in Jackson Heights, NY on April 11, 2009 (this was fabulous as well).

Since my first winter trip to Bangladesh, back in 2001, I have loved hanging out with my dad in Dhaka. I don't know if it's because he's retired from a job that was stressing him out, or that he's finally doing what he first loved (writing), or because he's in Bangladesh speaking his mother tongue. Any which way, in his fatherland, Abbu is the funny witty man my mother always said he was and we always denied.

I think all our parents should write their memoirs for their kids. I know kids are idiots and might not appreciate this effort until too late, but at least we'd have a recorded history of a time that was not obsessively documented the way it is now.

One of my favourite Abbu stories I heard this time was set in his village in Feni when he was about 10 or so. Back in the day (when there were still lots of Hindus around), there was a stark difference between the education levels of Hindus and Muslims. The Hindus in Feni were well educated, whereas most Muslims hadn’t made it past class 8, if that. My grandfather and his cousin were the only Muslims in town who got further - when Dada returned with his masters, he was greeted at the train station by a crowd of well wishers.

Because of his education, Dada was on good terms with the Hindus and so when Abbu asked permission to go see a jatra (a staged drama) at a neighbouring Hindu family’s house, he agreed. Abbu spent most of the night at the neighbour’s place and returned, mind alight, at dawn. His uncle, who taught at the local madrasa, caught him by the front pond and asked where he’d been. After hearing that he had spent the night with Hindus, he proceeded to dunk Abbu in the pond 7 times, and made him recite prayers to cleanse himself.

One of the best parts of this story is the context in which it was told. We were at Feni Girls Cadet College with the headmaster, an army chief, and assorted teachers. What we were to learn from this story, Abbu declared, was how backwards Muslims were at the time, that watching a drama staged by Hindus could constitute a wrongdoing.

I don’t know what anyone thought of this pronouncement because all I heard afterwards was the shuffling of feet. Ha. It was the same resounding silence when Abbu saw the mosque that was being built for the college and he said he hoped they weren’t going create noise pollution by blaring the azaan through loudspeakers rather than having a human voice project the call to prayer.

Not that I should talk about kissing after talking about mosques, but here’s a story that includes both (are you excited yet?).

One dusty afternoon, I took a CNG (a compressed natural gas powered 3-wheel taxi) to Karwan Bazar. Apparently CNGs are more dangerous than ever, their passengers subject to increasing incidences of violence and theft. But as sprawling and confusing as Dhaka is, I find CNGs to be one of the easiest ways to get around. I could take buses, which are far cheaper, but my fear of new things and crowded starey places has thus far kept me from learning that system.

I thought I’d take a few pictures at Karwan Bazar and then go meet Zafar, editor extraordinaire, who works for the Daily Star. Karwan Bazar is one of the largest open air markets in Bangladesh. Selling everything from mops to mosquito nets, it is a visual treat to walk through. The first time I walked through it (in 2001), I was too shy to take even one photo, disturbed by the fixed gaze of oh, everyone. This time, I braved two shots. At this rate, I’ll have a dozen photos of Karwan Bazar by 2025.

Discouraged by my (lack of) courage, I waited outside the Daily Star offices for Zafar (have you read my book yet, Z? I want feedback). We had plans to check out Munem Wasif’s (phenomenal) photography in Old Dhaka, part of Chobi Mela, an international photography exhibition that takes place in Bangladesh every year.

When Zafar emerged, I greeted him with a kiss on each cheek, not realising that I was standing directly outside a mosque. I had not only touched a boy, but kissed him, twice, surrounded by that most judgmental of populations, religious men.

Are you disappointed with this story? You take what you get in Bangladesh, and I got very little this trip, in terms of kisses anyway. Some from a poet wanderer and more from a gay boy artist (yes way, gay boys like kissing girls sometimes).

Most of the time, I lay under my mosquito net, alone in the heated dark, and I made up my fancies in my head. My father's flat in Uttara has a corner bedroom with a balcony, which is where I stay. I leave the doors and windows open all hours of the day and night, and the wind, hot and slow, cool and wet, has its way with me.

I love Dhaka more each time I return. My friendships are stronger, more absorbing, my family ties more binding. I spent day after day, night after night, lounging in bed, on couches, in cafes, with Neeta, Nadiya, and Shahpar, my extraordinary women friends who are as sexy as they are smart and sensitive. I ate meal after meal with nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins (and to counter, spent every morning running or doing yoga). Perhaps it's no surprise that I got little writing done. And due to photography-fatigue, I didn't even take that many snaps.

Being in Bangladesh feels less like a holiday than before, and I'm glad for it. I can see myself living in Dhaka, teaching yoga, volunteering at a women's organisation, taking Bangla and photography lessons, writing. I can see myself staying. I'm writing the word again on the inside of my arm. To remind myself to be, to remain in the moment, to stop thinking about the next new thing.
stay light, stay loose, stay willing, stay wanting, stay now, stay later, stay dancing, stay jaunting, stay hungry, stay feeling, stay free, stay fine, stay closer, stay deeper, stay longer, stay mine.

A Winter in Mexico

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 04:22:00 +0000

I lovelovelove Mexico City. My current pipe dream is to have a little flat in Coyoacan (which has the best market and cutest little painted houses) or Condesa (where all the hip bars and restaurants and clubs are). I'd take Spanish lessons, write all day, dance all night, sleep all day, write all night... you get the drift.

The weather here is like a warmer San Francisco, temperate year round, and DRY (heaven). June 2008 marked my first visit to Mexico City. I came with fellow gypsy partier, Kem, and we hit all the sightseeing and nightlife spots we could. We left the capital for Baja just before the rainy season (hello catastrophic mudslides), so most of the time, our time in D.F. was partly cloudy with some blindingly bright hot days in between.

This January, I came with an entirely different purpose - to write. D.F. in winter is cool in the mornings and evenings, roasty-toasty in the afternoon sun. Unfortunately, Mexico City housing has that same issue many San Francisco houses have - no heating, and so sometimes it ends up being colder inside than out. No fun to sit indoors at a desk all day writing in 50 degree weather (that's 10 celcius for you non-Americans). Every so often, I'd get so cold, I'd go sit in the balcony in the sun like a lizard.

A week in, I bought a pair of fingerless gloves from an Indian woman selling them on the street corner. I've always thought fingerless gloves were about the most useless invention in the world, but now I know why they exist: for writers (and other computer-chained geeks) whose hands start getting numb with cold, but who still need undiminished fingertip dexterity. Plus my gloves are hip and multi-coloured. Like our new prez-o-dent (yay!).

Speaking of writing, I'm almost done with rewriting "Olive Witch" for the third time. Since I have no friends in Mexico City and have limited(ish) access to the internet, I get tonnes done. I eat my mamey breakfast each morning, sit down in front of my computer (with my gloves on), write 2-4 hours, do yoga in the afternoon or go run in Viveros Park, eat tlocoyos or tostados for lunch, shower, cut up a guava or avocado, write another 2-4 hours, eat beans and tortillas for dinner, read, sleep. Perfect schedule, IMHO.

Some days, I've even been able to get out and tour D.F. a bit. I've toured the new controversial contemporary art museum (surprisingly interesting cool art), listened to a classical music concert (clinched my dislike for Strauss), prayed in the Catedral in Zocalo, and climbed the art sculptures dotted all over UNAM. But most of my time has been spent writing writing writing.

As per the suggestions of my beautifully brutal critics (danke: Sheba, Jan, Alan, Zafar), I've tried to run a narrative through "Olive Witch" from beginning to end, play out different themes, streamline the characters, even out the writing style, include more setting and backstory, be more reflective, and show how the Nigerian girl becomes the American girl becomes the Bangladeshi girl all while staying the same. We'll see what my next batch of critics say (get ready: Sara, Zafar, Nadiya, Ram, Adrienne).

In between all that, Simi (who is also here to work) and I have been having a blast together. Stone cold sober and sillier than ever, my sister is about to start teaching her first semester as UMass Amherst (as a tenure track professor in architecture, engineering, and environmental science), while applying for funding for her nonprofit organisation that deals with planning and architecture in flood prone areas.

I don't get much extended time with my baby sis and so this is gold for me, plus we get to do it in Mexico, far far away from that terrible East Coast weather some of you are suffering through now. We get to sit on my bed (where the internet and sunlight is) all day and talk. In the afternoon, we go to the market and get just enough veggie goodies to cook dinner. Then we watch movies in her room til we fall asleep.

Tomorrow, we're going to visit Tepotzlan, a lovely mountainous area an hour outside of D.F. On Sunday, our working vacation is over, and we'll part ways at the airport carrying tamarind lollies and dusty backpacks. But it's Friday night now. Time to make fresh guacamole, eat plantain chips, and watch some bad TV. What are you doing?

Happiness Holding Me Back

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:31:00 +0000

First things first. Even though this happened back in August. I went skinny dipping for the first time in my life. It was a lazy sunny late summer day in the French countryside with the river running through it when my girl love Pamela insisted we go for a run. I protested. Did I mention I was feeling lazy?

There are few people in my life who insist I do something. Perhaps because I'm too busy insisting something first. Pam is one of my only friends who tells me to do things (and the following are all things she had to persuade me to do (and you thought I was adventurous)): ride a Velib bike around Paris; go on a run to find the Eiffel Tower; and worst of all: when we get to the unexpected end of the narrow overgrown path in St. Aignan sur Cher, where the river divides, instead of turning back, she strips off all her clothes, jumps in, swims to the middle, and then turns around and says, come in! What? You've never? There's no one around for miles, Abeer! Do you know what the water feels like against your naked skin?

No, no I don't.

I mean, I didn't.

It's pretty fabulous.
River weeds against my breasts
river stones under my feet
river water between my thighs

I don't like baths. I never have. And not just because I'm a tepid water kind of girl. I don't know whether it was growing up in Nigeria with cold water showers (I mean, the water wasn't *that* cold), but I'm not going to be that lover who you want to take showers with. Every partner I've had who's jumped into my shower has jumped out immediately thereafter screaming like a little girl. *I* don't think it's cold. Maybe luke cold. Like I said, little girl. Add to that, the idea of sitting in stagnant water and your own filth... And don't get me started on hot tubs with other people.

Which is why it's interesting that one of my most delicious-out-of-body-I-am-so-supremely-happy-to-be-alive moments this year (there were so many) was in a bath. Never say never. It wasn't in the River Cher - that was cool running fresh water. This bath was in San Francisco this December, in a Japanese tub, built for one. I used Arati's thank-you present to treat myself to a Bliss spa appointment at the Kabuki Spa on Geary Street. This included 25 minutes in a candle lit wooden slatted room, sitting nakedly on a stool while a stout Japanese woman poured heated water on my steaming body. And then sinking into a green ceramic bathtub filled with water and ground tea leaves and cucumber oil. I'd rouse myself every few minutes to eat slices of lemon-salted apple and drink water, and then lie back dripping with joy.

Speaking of joy, I had my tarot cards read by James. It was past midnight, pouring rain outside, the cats were luxuriating by the heater, and my favourite Radiohead song was playing on the stereo. Unfortunately (or not), I was drunk on scotch and interrupted the reading to insist (there's that word again) that he dance with me. The only thing I do recall from my reading was the card that represented my challenge: the three of cups, which is a symbol of happiness. Happiness is holding me back.

That actually sounds about right. Not that I think one has to be sad to be productive (though I do think you have to have been broken at some point, to understand). Take Rumi, a 13th century Persian Sufi, one of my all time favourite poets - he turned his ecstasy into art. But if my life is all scotch and sleeping in and midnight kisses and sunshine and rock band (I love playing bass), then why bother sitting down and gut wrenching this book into shape? Um.

Ok, before you smack me upside the head, let me tell you about the sex club I went to last weekend. It was girls night out, in honour of Cynthia's visit from New York, and we had just gotten kicked out of Levende on Mission and Duboce. Levende sucks. They wouldn't let us in for a drink b/c we got there just after 10pm when they start charging cover. If you know Suna, Melissa, and Cynthia, then you know that it wasn't about money (obviously I'm the weakest link here). But we had a dinner reservation for 9:45pm - let the hotties in for a drink and a dance, no? No. So after a heated battle with the management, we let loose a flurry of insults and left. No matter. We recouped at Andalu and discussed our next target: Kickies, a jumping jack and jane flashing scene in the Mission that Suna, sexy dancer extraordinaire said had good dance music.

First we had to get dressed up, so Suna took us back to her phat new pad in Potrero and pulled out her costume trunk. [Note to Hardik - you need to start a costume trunk now that you're living in San Francisco.]

Red lingerie, lace up corset, high heeled boots, strapless gown, mini skirt, silver tinsel, flameorange leaf head dress. (done and done and done)

But if I wear the ankle length strapless gown, couldn't I keep on my jeans underneath? Ok fine, but what about my negative heel Earth shoes? I had to ditch my orange socks too? Hmpf. Just to be sure, I didn't sneak on something from my decidedly unsexy wardrobe, my caring friends replaced the dress with a pleather tube top and skirt. And handed me a set of 3 inch heels in my size (damn you Suna. Next time, I get the corset).

I have to say though, as is so often the case, the pre-party dress up phase was the most fun part of the night. This is why Sara's naked lady party (a clothes exchange) was fun the entire time. It was all about ladies stripping down and dressing up, over and over again. While getting drunk. 100% fabulous. Plus I scored a pair of sexy ass hugging jeans.

But I know I know, you want to know about the sex club. So one accessed it with a password, an unmarked door on the street, and $30. There were rules. No photography, clean up after yourself, bring your own booze and leave it at the bar. There was a smoking room, a dance floor complete with a pole and mirrors, a bar, a terrace, and two "sex" rooms, one in which you could play or watch and another one in which you had to participate. The decor was hoholicious fab: Mexican papel picado strung along the ceiling, candle lit altars filled with eye candy kitsch, rocking horse, velvet couches, and of course, guests in sexed up holiday-themed Burning Man-esque costumes.

Unfortunately (for the diversification of my sexual education), I think my girls were the hottest guests. So we made do with kissing each other in the voyeur room, drinking in the champagne room, and dancing til the wee hours. (Does everyone know how to pole dance except for me?) I did not make it into the other sex room as there was no one I wanted to participate with. Perhaps the hot ones were already in there but I wasn't taking any chances.

However, the hot ones were in plain view at the hot tub and swingers party in Glen Park that the beautiful Florencia took me to. I love it when gay boys turn out to have (female) wives and straight boys start kissing other straight boys on the dance floor. Even better when the girls have feathers in their hair and lace bustles and strip tease dance moves. As previously mentioned, I don't do hot tubs, but I don't mind when someone shows up from the steaming outside, flushed and heated and half dressed from a recent dip, and asks for a dance. Would you?

There's a body deep understanding I've learned from years of ecstatic dancing. Like the shrooms that put diamonds in my eyes, no matter how long ago my last trip. I was sober in Glen Park, but who could tell amongst all the languid flailing boys and girls?

It was like when Scott Skinny Red Feathers came on stage with OURS at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City this fall. The low rumbling sound of his didjiridoo pooled around my feet with all the oceanic force of epiphany. I suddenly saw my meaning of life. Wasn't vision reason enough to be? Wasn't music essence? Wasn't motion language? Didn't touch have the most integrity of all?

All this and I'm entranced by my facebook, email, and texting love affairs, as incorporeal and one-sided as some of them are. The half Indian web developer gypsy I met underground. The outrageously flirty and funny editor who gives as good as he solicits. The fire fighter mountain climber (not nearly as aggro as that sounds) who I'm still half in love with. The 23 year old (good fucking lord) who fancies himself in love with me (oh but his kissing lips).

Speaking of children, now that I have appraised the playgrounds of San Francisco with TopCookie Audren, and hence the children who frequent them, I understand why people breed. And why they don't. You know that saying about everything you needed to know you learned in kindergarten? Well, what if you're like Audren, and you just always knew how and why to share - after the 17th kid has grabbed his/her toy back (or yours for that matter) saying mine! wouldn't you learn to return the (dis)favour? I am ever more disenchanted with the idea of having children, even as my body desires them more desperately. I have 5 years til I turn 40 and hopefully this demented urge to destroy my pitch perfect life will disappear.

I am also giving myself this time to learn some patience. When I was young, I'd rage against everything. Cross me and lo, a pandora's box of wounding righteousness. And I'd be over it before my target's tears even started. Here's a little time line to illustrate:

Age 5
Abeer: rage rage rage
Simi: crying
Abeer: unrepentant

Age 15
Abeer: pointed barb
Simi: silence
Abeer: unapologetic but assuaged

Age 25
Abeer: underhanded insult
Simi: that wasn't nice
Abeer: silence
Abeer, a little while later on her own: damnit

Age 30
Abeer: impatient judgment
Simi: you shouldn't have said that
Abeer, petulant: true

Age 35
Abeer: careless comment
Abeer, almost immediately after: damnit

I believe my progress is accelerating, ever so slightly. Maybe one of these days, I'll be able to stop *before* I let loose one of my poison arrows. One can only hope. In the meantime, my 3 week visit to Pittsburgh to visit my parents over Thanksgiving loomed ominously in my mind. The goal was to limit my biznatchness to one outburst a week. Luckily for me, my cutie parents are nicer than ever, perhaps more aware of my limitations than I am, and willing to walk gingerly around them.

In fact, I don't think I had even one major eruption. Despite my father's occasional critical pronouncements, or having to accompany my mother to jummah prayer at the mosque. They let me eat what I wanted (I love my mom's cooking), run at whatever odd time I wished, read and write however much I needed. Easy peasy. So what if Abbu thinks that when a woman has a heavy travelling schedule for her job, it must mean she's a bad wife with a bad marriage. So what if Amma makes me listen to the imam expound at length about how when one goes on Hajj in Mecca, one will be so excited about being in this little corner of heaven on earth that one won't be able to sleep. No one rests in heaven after all - there's too many fun things to do (his words, I swear).

But it's true, Amma didn't expect me to believe no one sleeps in heaven. She knows how much I love to sleep, and never once rousted me early out of my yellow bedroom. Nor was Abbu judging my travelling, or my potential marital behaviour. Plus his increasing and troubling memory lapses break my heart. I cried at least once a day about yet another frustrating and mixed up conversation with him.

I know it's only gotten colder on the East Coast since I left, but the windy sleety snow that frosted each November day was more than enough to remind me why I hate winter. I spent most of my time in Pittsburgh indoors, next to the heater. Or dancing with my most beautiful Eshadee, who with each child she bears, with each passing year, only gets more breathtaking.

Not that December in San Francisco is proving much warmer. I know 30 degrees makes a difference, but when it doesn't go above 50 degrees one entire week in the state of California, you know there's something wrong. I'm cold. And I haven't written in almost 10 days now. I'm afraid of having to do what I must: chuck entire sections of my book and start over. It took me 3 days to realise that was what I had to do, another 3 to accept and internalise the decision, and the last 4 days were pure squander.

But I can't complain. Not when I get to go to over the top joyous funerals like the one Mary Patrick held to bury her dead dream of big time publication. And see Jules every day. And live in the most beautiful apartment ever (Hardik, you make me want one of my own, and that's saying a lot). And make up with my orgasmic brain deep boy lover after almost a year of silence. And eat Reggie's scrumptious raw food meals every week. And do photoshoots of Camalo and Karsten's Ghisele baby. And attend Neela's white elephant party. And see the hysterical Obama dildo. And peruse a science museum with coral reefs!

My monthly MUNI pass is getting a workout. Sometimes I use it 4 or 5 times a day. Potrero Hill, the Marina, Bernal Heights, the Mission, Noe Valley, Lower Haight, the Tenderloin, Union Square, Duboce Triangle, the Sunset, North Beach, Glen Park, the Castro, Japantown, the Richmond, Western Addition, Golden Gate Park. I love San Francisco and its windy park benches, strung out addicts, sunlight and sea. It makes me happy to be here. All those dichotomies between the East and West coasts of America: the hard and the soft, the edgy and the hippy, the intellectual and the free. I know I'd be fine on either coast, perhaps even better somewhere else altogether. But if I had to choose, even the hard edgy intellectual part of my brain would place me here, in my city of dreaming.

An Autumn in New York

noreply@blogger.com (Abeer) — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 04:34:00 +0000

It's late autumn in New York. I've been here almost two months and time is faster than ever. It's been a gorgeous fall. Until just last week, I wore a skirt almost everyday. The leaves are doing their chameleon thing, and the wind is brisk and flirty. I almost love it, until I remember how much worse/colder it gets. New York is beautiful beautiful. Every filigreed curlicue, every shining tower of light, the very ground beneath me glitters. Diamonds in my eyes.

I've been manic for months now. At first I thought it was the sexing around South America. But after all the body closedness in Bangladesh, who wouldn't let loose? Then I thought it was the love in Bolivia. And I did love. At first sight. Without even having spoken or touched. And after the speaking and touching, well... Then I thought it was the altitude in Peru. I'd brush my teeth at 10,000 feet, and experience a kind of high I associate with rolling. Then I thought it was the writing in London. Everyday I sat in the sun in the inner garden of Jim's lux Pimlico apartment complex and I rewrote Olive Witch. Writing has always made me happy. Then I thought it was the working out in New York. I've now scammed free short term memberships from five of New York's finest gyms. That's two solid months of running, yoga, dance class, aerobics, pilates. Endorphins, endorphins, come out and play.

But now my mania is due to the music. I'm not atop a mountain, have not made love nor written in ages. But even on the days I don't work out, I step outside, into the mad bad fad energy of this city, and the music moves me to laughter.

This is what's playing on my Nano right now:
Daft Punk's "Make Love"
The Killers' "Human"
Fischerspooner's "Emerge"
Royksopp's "So Easy"
Adam Freeland's "Supernatural Thing"
Ladytron's "Versus"
Amon Tobin's "Chronic Tronic"
Joseph Arthur's "Honey and the Moon"
Mika's "Relax"
Pobon Das Baul's "Dil Ke Doya"
Rihanna's "Umbrella"
Alias' "Unseen Lights"
Duffy's "Mercy"
Beck's "Gamma Ray"
Stoic Bliss' "Abar Jigai"
The Decemberists' "Mariner's Revenge Song"

I can put any of those songs on repeat, like the obsessive I am, and the world's alright with me.

All through September, I stayed with Cynthia who converted the cosy study room in the back of her Chelsea flat into a bedroom for me. Now, through October, I'm sleeping beside my beautiful boy, Rahim, in the West Village, who lets me wear his socks and doesn't mind if I snore. Next month, I think I'll move to Fort Green in Brooklyn and crash with Arif. In between, I've stayed over Arati's in the Bronx, cooked countless dinners with Sheba in Hell's Kitchen, and had drinks with Sharlene in her Park Slope bar, Commonwealth. I love my friends. They've made it possible for me to live in New York for 3 months, save $3000, and have a blast while I'm at it.

So that's what I've been doing. Working up a storm, and I have nothing but money to show for it. I have two jobs, both of which I found after hours of trolling Craigslist. One is assisting Cy, a funny old professor and environmentalist, organise his life in the Upper West Side. The other is proofreading in Midtown. While neither is very well paid, both are uber-flexible, and mostly interesting. Ok, the proofing isn't riveting, but I love my co-workers, gay actor boys who know their grammar (hot). And there are free apples and cartons of Tropicana in the fridge. Incidentally, the professor makes the best salads and so I almost never buy lunch on the days I work uptown. So, all in all, not a bad deal. Though this 40 hour work week is bearable, fun even, only because I know it's going to end, and I'll go back to working part time, writing full time, and being (even more) poor.

I remember the first time I thought about the concept of cash. I was 22, sharing a flat on 20th and Walnut, in Philadelphia, with my first love, Glenn. After one of our rock and roll fights (my college friends can attest to our turbulent yet utterly trusting 7 year relationship), Glenn's fantabulous mother, Ann, told me that if it was a problem that could be solved with money, then it wasn't a real problem. I wouldn't forget her words, but I wouldn't understand them then either.

When I was 27, I went from being a grad student to being a single startup employee with a six figure salary. I paid off my student loans in less than 9 months, scored a corner flat on the 17th floor near City Hall, all the fuzzy cashmere sweaters I wanted, weekend love retreats in Europe, money coming out my ears. I felt poor. This is because there is never enough money. Admit it. There isn't.

This September, I got to New York with less than $100 in my pocket. I had just spent my last $500 on a plane ticket from Paris. I thought I'd get here, crash for a few months with friends, get feedback about my newly rewritten Olive Witch book, rewrite it, find a flat, and a job, and an agent, and be all respectable like.

Instead a month in, I got feedback that threw my entire schedule off track. My critics (all writer/editor friends of mine) had eerily similar things to say. Along the lines of, Abeer, you have a rare and unusual talent, BUT this here isn't a book. Your use of language is fantastic, so incredibly poetic, BUT there's no narrative cohesion. Your stories are energetic, magical, vibrant, BUT the themes all peter out, if they ever get started at all.

Imagine if writing a book were like going from stage 1 to 10. I figure I'm at stage 3. When I left London late summer, I had thought I was at stage 8.

None of this is bad news, per se. Narrative arc, theme development, tension buildup, backstory and foreshadowing, characterisation - these are all things I can learn. Versus changing my writing style, which I feel I'm pretty much stuck with, but apparently, that's not one of my major literary failings.

I'm hoping some of it I'll learn over this next draft. Others might take a lifetime. But fortunately, that's what I got. A lifetime. I'm committed to feeling poor for the rest of my life, if that's what it takes to keep writing and photographing and learning my arts.

So I've decided to put aside writing for now. I'm working for 3 months, saving up some money, praying for Obama to win (oh please God), and then taking off for 3 months to rewrite Olive Witch (Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Mexico City are potentially my writing retreats). I also want to revise "the Lovers and the Leavers" so that I can pitch it as a novel in stories. This is the new in-thing to do. Scrounge out any loose link between the stories in your collection, call it a novel, and presto, marketability. Apparently, no agent or publisher likes to represent or sell short story collections (let alone mine, which has interlaced poetry and photographs to boot). This is apparently because no one wants to buy story collections. You all (me all) want novels. Yes, yes, there are exceptions, but this is what I heard from agent after publisher.

Take Rana Dasgupta's enchanting surreal darkly provocative book, Tokyo Cancelled. 13 passengers are stranded in an airport (their flight to Tokyo cancelled). They tell each other stories to pass the time. These stories are set in the major and minor cities of the world. From North African deserts to Eastern European brothels, from London to Lagos to lala land. If he can call this collage "a novel in fragments," well then, I certainly can do the same for my book "the Lovers and the Leavers," which, point in fact, has repeating characters throughout, side characters who become main characters, and everyone's roots leading back to South Asia. I may not even have to thicken the connections that much, but we'll see.

My plan is to return to NYC in February or March 2009 and pitch my so fresh and so clean novels, one nonfiction, one fiction, to agents, one of whom will snap me up, find a willing publisher, along with an eye watering advance, or at least a few thousand dollars, so I can go gypsying through Africa (my next travelling dream).

During my brain-dead spare time, I've also come up with a five year plan. Hardik made me make one, almost exactly five years ago, against my vehement protests. Much to my dismay, I found out he was right. It was incredibly useful. Not because I did everything on the list (anyway, I couldn't fit that first plan into 5 years, so I made it into a 20 year plan), but because it clarified what I thought was important, what might be possible, what I realised I didn't want to do after all. And now, looking back, I can see what I misunderestimated, and I can revise and adjust my time frame, my means, and my ends. I'm learning what I'm capable of. Slowly. Who knew a snap judgment queen like me would take so long to figure out what's what?

So, tentatively, this is what I might want to do by the time I'm 40: rewrite and publish the two books I have now, join a choral group, take photography, bartending, and guitar lessons, write a collection of poetry, design a text/photo book, blog more, redesign my website, volunteer once a week, hold a photography exhibition in SF or NYC, write a novel, practice patience with my parents, learn Spanish, have a savings plan, live in another country, have or adopt a bastard love child (or kill this bothersome baby urge), catalogue and do more with my photograph collection, go back to Nigeria, teach a creative writing course, try something brave and new each year.

If I only do half of those things, I'll feel accomplished. If I do a quarter of those things and the rest of the time fall in loose languid love, then that'd be alright too. In fact, by now, you know I could do none of those things, and as long as I can walk the streets of the world with my music, alone and alive, I'll be happy.