Posts from — December 2008

Around this time last year, my brother got married. Ok, ok, technically, he was already married in both the civil and religious sense, but the receptions were at the end of December last year. Yeah, receptions, plural. One from the girl’s side and one from the guy’s side.

The reception from our side was on a Sunday, two nights after the other one. I was so happy that we had a day of rest between receptions except for one thing: there was still a ton of stuff to do. I put together a slideshow  while everyone else tended to equally chaotic activities. The day of, there was the cake to pick up, the decorations and flowers to worry about, wondering if the reception hall folks would be finished setting up in time, hoping that the last minute DJ we got would work out well, worrying if people would come on time, if the the photographer would take good pictures, etc, etc, etc.

Oh yeah, and I was sick.

You know what I dislike the most at a wedding reception? When one doesn’t even feel like they are at a momentous occasion, that is just some fancy dinner. Since we were the hosts, I wanted to make sure that everyone felt welcome and that we were truly happy for them to be there. So at times when I wasn’t MCing (during dinner, dessert, etc) I went around to different tables, talking to aunties and uncles and other people to see how everyone was going. Even when I sat down to eat dinner with my friends, I rushed through that so I could go around and talk to everyone and make sure everything else was fine. All while wearing a sari, of course.

I have to say, I was pretty happy when it was all over.

The next morning, I took my time getting up, reveling in the fact that there was nothing pressing to attend to. I had slept on the floor of my little sister’s room because we had a guest over for the wedding who was sleeping in my room and so I just lay there on the floor, staring up at the ceiling for quite a while before I could muster up the energy to do anything. I finally reached for my phone and texted my cousin in my haze of exhaustion to let her know how things went:

“Reception last night went well. Remind me to elope.”

Last week, a lot of family was gathered at my sister’s place to partake in turkey and other food items we only have every couple of years. After dinner, dessert, and testing out my brother-in-law’s projector by projecting an Indian movie, my little 10 year-old cousin had one request for my brother-in-law: “Can I play Rock Band?”

She had never played it, never even had seen anyone play it before, but had certainly heard about it. While she wanted to try her hand at singing and playing the guitar, she was especially interested to play the drums.

“Do you know how to play the drums?” I asked.

“Well, you just have to go with the rhythm,” she said.

“And you have to hit it according to the colors,” I added in my ‘I’m talking to little kids voice’. “Look, why don’t I play it first so you can get an idea of how to play?”

She shrugged her shoulders but by the time Rock Band was setup and my little nephew finally relinquished the drumsticks, she sat in the chair and readied herself for her first foray into Rock Band. My brother-in-law brought up one of the first songs, Weezer’s Say it Ain’t So on the easy setting, and started it.

Every time my brother-in-law had started up Rock Band when he had people over, someone would sit down in front of the drums for the first time and realized they couldn’t just play it. They understood that it would take practice so after a few minutes, they would give up and look for something else to do.

I imagined that type of scenario with my cousin and when she failed out, I would be there to tell her that it was ok, that everyone fails out on drums the first time, and that she shouldn’t let that affect her.

The song started and she started drumming. Besides initially telling her that the orange bar meant she had to use the foot pedal, she got the hang of it fast. In the end, she finished the song with 65% efficiency. Let me put that in perspective: the first time I played that exact song on the easy setting, I failed out with 35% efficiency. I couldn’t even finish the song.

Radiohead’s Creep then started and she started drumming again. She finished at 85% efficiency and I think the only reason she didn’t do better was because my brother-in-law paused it in the middle and she missed a few notes when he un-paused it as she tried to get back into the rhythm.

I was in awe. I didn’t need to use my “there, there” speech with her at all.

I don’t get to play Rock Band as much as I want to but I’ve played enough that I can be in the 90s on the medium setting. I thought that wasn’t too bad.

But now I know.

My 10 year-old cousin will soon be able to drum circles around me. I am, in fact, a Rock Band phony.

Oh well

Alright, ok, not me specifically but my people were featured on this past Sunday’s episode of The Simpsons: People who like Apple products!

And, there was a Muslim family in the episode too!

Bart made friends with Bashir and his family who happen to be Jordanian Muslims. Homer of course thinks they are planning something against the U.S. because he happened to see a bit of an episode of 24 in which Jack Bauer was interrogating an Arab guy. Funny enough, Shoreh Agadalashoo provided the voice for Bashir’s mom and last time I saw her, she was on 24 playing the mom in a sleeper cell family in the U.S. Alas, she made her exit from the show in traditional 24 fashion - she was done in by the bad guys.

Can anyone please tell me what happened to Behrooz?!

In all seriousness though, it was a pretty good episode by current Simpsons standards and the episode actually gave a good message that one cannot judge someone based off of religion and ethnicity. I know no one goes searching for meaning in a Simpsons episode but here’s the thing - people still need to be reminded of this even after all the public service messages, interfaith work, and everything else the Muslim community in the U.S. has done.

Which is why it was really cool that there was an episode of Simpsons like this.

USA! USA!

(Btw, I understand I’m a few days late with this.)

BBC America recently televised a British miniseries called Britz, a drama serial that follows a Muslim brother and sister as their paths in life take decidedly different turns. Sohail, a law student in London joins the Mi5 while his sister Nasima, a med student in Leeds, takes company with extremists.

Britz is made up of two parts, each part devoted to each sibling. Part 1 is Sohail’s story as we see him going from just a law student to joining and learning the ropes at Mi5. Over the few months, Sohail finds himself immersed in the investigation of the 7/7 London bombers. Eventually, this leads him to come to terms with spying on people he grew up with in order to deal with possible threats.

Sohail

Part 2 is “Nasima’s story” and takes place during the same timeline as Part 1 but is instead from Nasima’s viewpoint. Part 2 skips over details that we know from Part 1 and then goes into more detail with the turmoil caused in Nasima’s life due to the arrest of her best friend on trumped up terrorism charges. Nasima goes from trying to change the system by being only politically engaged to turning towards more drastic measures.

I thought the series was interesting but wanted to touch on a couple of things. Britz depicted some of the issues that Pakistanis/Muslims have to deal with in England. For instance, there is the blatant racism. I was trying to figure out why that is. I mean, I know that things are not perfect here in the States and that there are plenty of people that will happily tell you to “go back to your country” but it seems to be a bit more so in England. So here’s my theory (that may very well be stated in a bunch of other places too but oh well): The U.S. is a land of immigrants. Unless you are Native American, you are originally from somewhere else. Maybe some people who have been here for generations don’t see it that way, but that is the way it is. If someone tells you to go back to your country over here, you can always respond with a “you first”, have a laugh, and move on with your life. In general though, there is a great deal of tolerance here because this country is meant to be a place for everyone.

But it’s not like that in England. The English may be looking at immigrants, Pakistani or otherwise, as taking over their country. Not that I’m saying that the racist behavio(u)r is warranted but being racist could merely be a defense mechanism as some try to deal with their country being home to so many other types of people.

There’s something you notice about the immigrant population in England which was depicted in Britz- there are some places that in which people live completely within their own ethnic community. For instance, Sohail and Nasima are originally from Bradford, a city that has a lot of desi Muslim people. Dewsbury, which isn’t too far from there, is also like that. Once when I was in England to visit my cousin, she took me to Green Street in London, another area that is completely saturated with desi people. I believe other ethnic groups may have similar types of areas as well.

In the U.S., we really don’t have that. Granted you can say that there are a lot of Pakistanis in the Bay Area but we don’t all live clustered together in one specific area with nary a non-Pakistani soul to be seen. Pakistanis and Muslims in general are pretty well integrated in American society. A lot of us still try to retain the culture of where our parents or ancestors came from but in the end our identity is just as American if not more American than the identity of any other country.

Having said all of that, there are plenty of integrated Muslims in England, like my relatives for one, and I’m not saying that all the ones that are not integrated are more prone to turn to extremism.

Ok, ok, I don’t completely see the point of this post but I guess I just wanted to relay some of my thoughts on a couple of aspects of the series.

And while I have you here, check out Guy Lawson’s article in Rolling Stone titled The Fear Factory about the U.S. government actually manufacturing fear for its citizens with fabricated threats. I blogged about it back in February back when the article came out but figured this would be a good place to bring it back up

Oh, so I realize that I didn’t actually review Britz with the above babble so here’s a short review: I liked it and I thought the acting was really well done. Although I have to admit, my initial reason for watching it was because I realized that the guy who played Sohail, Riz Ahmed, is the son of an old friend of my dad’s and I met him in England back in 1995. We went over to their place with my aunt’s family and his mom made fried chicken the first time we went over. That’s a really random thing to remember, you say, but there’s a very good reason I remember that particular detail: One of my cousins ate a bunch of chicken wings and put all of the bones in my plate when I wasn’t looking. With a “Hey everyone, look at how much chicken Bushra ate,” I didn’t hear the end of it from my family for the rest of the trip.

And with that, I’ll end.