Threading My Prayer Rug

by Sabeeha Rehman

  Why did he do that? He had just torn off a piece of something from a roll, wiped the counter, and thrown whatever it was, in the rubbish (“garbage” will follow). Just threw it away. Then he did it again. He is wasting it. After dinner, he wiped out the leftovers and threw them in the rubbish—sorry, garbage.

  “Why are you throwing away food? On the Day of Judgment you will be made to pick up every wasted morsel with your eyes.” That is what I believed happened to people who waste food.

  “Here if you start picking up every discarded morsel with your eyes, you will never stop.”

  Oh.

  I curled up next to him on the sofa as he went through his mail.

  Look at how many people write to him.

  He was doing it again, throwing away envelopes and their contents in the garbage.

  “Why are you throwing away letters people write to you?”

  He had to explain “junk mail” to his Pakistani, just-off-the-plane bride.

  Seems like such a waste, all that good paper.

  Ready for bed?

  Yes, but where?

  The closet door opened and out flipped the bed.

  Wow!

  How clever!

  Americans are so clever (“smart” will follow).

  I Wouldn’t Do That If I Were You

  It was my first morning in New York. Khalid gave me directions to the post office, some cash, and keys and took off for work. Just as all newlywed brides, I put on my shimmering outfit, gold jewelry, golden pumps, golden evening purse (“pocketbook” will follow) and stepped out into the crime-ridden streets of Jamaica, walking on air. I was off to the post office.

  Stopping for directions, which passersby graciously offered, I made it to the post office. I fumbled with my change. The small coin says, “Dime”; the large coin says, “Five Cents”; so the smaller dime must be less than five cents in value, right?

  “Just give me the nickel.” He was patient.

  Nickel? I just put the change on the counter and let him pick whatever a nickel was.

  If a ten-cent coin reads, “Dime,” then why doesn’t a five-cent coin say, “Nickel”? And why is five larger in size than ten?

  Ah, a drugstore. Let me see what they have. A nice old man with spectacles (“eyeglasses” will follow), behind the counter, beamed at me with a benevolent smile.

  “You must be new in town,” he said, giving me a grandfatherly look.

  “Yes.”

  “A bride?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can always tell a bride. She has that starry-eyed look.” Now he was talking to some little old ladies already in the shop (“store” will follow).

  “Young lady,” he said, turning toward me. “I wouldn’t be walking around the streets of New York with a pocketbook in hand.”

  I am not carrying a pocket-sized book, or any book for that matter.

  “A pocketbook?”

  He pointed toward my golden purse.

  Americans have ruined the English language. How does “purse” translate into “pocketbook”?

  “Why not?” I can picture the naïve look on my face.

  “Because you will get mugged.”

  “Mugged?” Remember, the British say “robbed.”

  He smiled.

  “Someone will snatch it.”

  Horror.

  “New York is a decaying city. No one is safe walking the streets.”

  Did I walk home, or did I run in shoes not meant for running?

  “Khalid, why didn’t you tell me?” Khalid got an earful when he returned.

  “I had no idea you would get all dressed up.”

  “Brides get dressed up.”

  In Pakistan, not in America. And certainly not on the streets of Jamaica, Queens.

  This is not the America I had seen in movies and TV serials.

  That evening we received two telegrams.“We are all OK. Do not worry.”

  I worried.

  In the days to follow, Pakistan suffered a humiliating defeat—lost half its territory. East Pakistan was now Bangla Desh, my cousin was a prisoner-of-war, and the country went into a downward tailspin. It never recovered. The glorious era of the sixties was over. Over the next many days, months, years, and decades, I would be confronted with the escalating anti-Pakistan sentiment in the media and political arena. The pain I felt for my motherland, the guilt at having abandoned it, the love for the promise it held remained potent. In due time, we would become active in promoting Pakistani culture in the US, but remain conflicted over the shifting boundaries of cultural assimilation.

  In the forty years that followed, I would make over twenty trips to Pakistan. I buried Daddy, then Mummy, and I still go back.

  But in those early years as I reeled from culture shock, spun around in dizzying confusion, I felt my identity slipping away. The hardest part in those first few months was surviving the unflattering inquiries about my culture and my homeland.

  6.

  Where Are You From?

  Where Are You From?

  Forty-four years later, I am still asked this question.

  Fresh off the plane, I would say with pride, “Pakistan.”

  “Where is that?”

  Insulted.

  “Is it in the Middle East?”

  Shocked.

  Isn’t this the most advanced country? Don’t they study geography in school? I was ten when we would play capitals of the world. I had a world map on my bedroom wall, and we friends would trace our fingers over it, gathering the capitals of new nations in Africa. And Americans have never heard of Pakistan!

  I was unable to reconcile ignorance with progress.

  It got worse.

  I was reeling with grief when Pakistan lost the war, while TV anchormen were delirious in their Pakistan-bashing rhetoric.

  Whoever coined the phrase “add insult to injury” must have experienced what I am going through.

  The next time someone asked me, “Where are you from?”

  “Pakistan.”

  “Ah! The ones who lost the war.”

  We did lose the war; so what am I to say? Get into a discourse on “this was a war that could not have been won” with a passerby on the street? I couldn’t be rude and say, “Guess who is losing the war in Vietnam.” Where is the culture of consideration of the other’s feelings? Americans are honest, and I appreciate that, but this is being blunt with a sharp-edged sword. At least I know what they are thinking.

  I was now labeled a loser.

  How Could You!

  “How could you! How could you marry someone you didn’t know?” She shook her head, narrowing her eyes.

  I had been in America only a few weeks, when an American wife of Khalid’s Pakistani colleague confronted me.

  Insulted again.

  “Why not?” I raised my voice. I tried explaining that this is our way of life…. We don’t date…. Parents know best…. Besides, love is blind, and love marriages end up in failure…. Arranged marriages dignify the girl, who is sought after…. It has its charm.

  “I don’t see what’s charming about it. You girls don’t have any individuality. You are led to the altar and you just go along.”

  Can’t American women argue without being rude? I am not going to tell her what I think about women sleeping with men out of wedlock. That would be rude. Besides, I am sure she is not that kind of a girl.

  “Do I look devoid of individuality? Do I look unhappy in marriage?”

  “Well you just got lucky.”

  “And all the other Pakistani wives around you, did they also just get lucky?” I argued that it is our mindset. We go into marriage with an attitude that has been cultivated through conditioning and culture—that we are going to make our marriage work. And then we work at it. Somewhere along the line, we grow to love one another.

  “It’s weird.” She shook her head.

  Uhhh!

  On the way home, Khalid asked me why I looked so upset.

 
“She insulted me, insulted our traditions.”

  Khalid laughed, rubbed his hand through my hair, one hand off the steering wheel. “Don’t let her get to you. Just understand that she doesn’t understand.”

  I was still fuming when I got home.

  I wish I could tell her what I think of their culture, but it wouldn’t be polite. Besides, I am a guest in her house. I cannot insult my host. And if she comes visiting me, I still can’t say it because now she would be a guest in my house and I cannot insult my guest.

  “It’s OK.” Khalid ruffled his hand through my hair. I loved it when he did that. He still does, and I still do.

  Two score and four years later, I am still asked this question, only now it is phrased delicately, almost in a complimentary tone. “Tell me about the wisdom of arranged marriages,” someone recently asked. And I have learned to be more understanding and less defensive.

  Sleepovers

  Dr. Zhivago was playing at the movies. Omar Sharif and Julie Christie kiss passionately; the scene changes, and they are in bed, clothes off.

  I gasp.

  But they are not married! And they are showing this on the screen!

  I felt myself tighten. I felt people watching me through the darkness of the movie theater. I flushed at the thought of Khalid knowing that I had seen a man, half-undressed, in bed with a woman, also bare shouldered. Later I talked about how gorgeous the photography was, how sad the story was … and pretended that the bed scene never happened.

  Another movie. Love Story. There they go again. In bed, out of wedlock.

  Is this how it is in America? Or is it just in the movies? I can’t ask Khalid. It’s too embarrassing.

  I was watching Dating Game on TV. A man and a woman, who have never met, are paired up to go off to go on vacation.

  An out-of-wedlock vacation? Maybe it’s just a game.

  One evening Khalid and I visited one of his Pakistani friends, a doctor. His American girlfriend was there. We chatted, had tea. As we were leaving, and they both walked us to the door, Khalid asked her, “Are you leaving too?”

  “I am staying,” she said.

  Staying where?

  That night, I asked Khalid.

  “She said she was staying. He has only one bedroom. Where is she going to sleep? On the couch?”

  “With him.” Khalid was incredulous, like, what a question.

  “NO!”

  “Bia, this is America. Girlfriends and boyfriends sleep together.”

  “But he is not American. Pakistani boys don’t do such things.”

  “Well, he is Americanized.”

  “But this is a betrayal of one’s culture. How could he! I am not sure if I want to visit him again. You see, if I socialize with them, I will feel that I am endorsing such behavior.”

  “Bia!” Khalid looked at me lovingly, with a get-real look.

  We did continue to visit him and other Pakistani friends with their girlfriends, sleepovers notwithstanding. I was getting assimilated, and I didn’t like it. But I had made up my mind.

  I am not raising my children here. If mature Pakistani men, who grew up in Pakistan, with Pakistani values, can veer off-course, what hope do I have for children who are raised in America? We are going back after two years.

  No Titles of Respect Here

  Tremors: a neighbor’s child addresses my husband by his first name, not “uncle.”

  That is disrespectful. You never call an elder by their first name. It’s “uncle” or “auntie” for an adult; and “baji” or “bhai jan” for anyone older than you. Come to think of it, there is no equivalent title of respect in the English language for elder sibling. Whenever my grandfather entered a room, Mummy would cover her hair with her dupatta, and Uncle would stand up and quickly extinguish his cigarette out of respect.

  Decades later, Khalid now a senior attending physician, could still not bring himself to call the director of medicine by his first name. He always addressed him as Dr. Bloomfield, never Dennis. I was an assistant vice president at Interfaith Medical Center, when the CEO, sitting across the desk from me, said, “What is this Mr. Jamison thing?! Call me Ted.”

  “OK, Mr. Jamison.”

  I never could call him Ted. He was older than me, senior to me.

  Old and Alone

  Aftershocks: my neighbor told me that her mother lives in a nursing home.

  “What is a nursing home?” I asked Khalid that evening. I had been too embarrassed to ask my neighbor, lest this foreigner appear ignorant.

  Khalid explained.

  “They leave their parents in an old peoples’ home in the hands of strangers? Why don’t they take care of them at home, just like we do in Pakistan?”

  Khalid explained that here women work and there is no twenty-four-hour live-in household help. It’s not practical.

  I don’t want to grow old here.

  Four decades later, I flew back to Pakistan to take care of my father, terminally ill with leukemia. Even as I tried to talk Daddy into coming to the US for medical treatment—after all, Khalid is an oncologist—I could tell the weakness in my argument. He was enveloped by all the comforts that America could not buy: a house full of family, children, grandchildren, extended family down the block; live-in domestic help of loyal, long-time Aurangzeb and Razia; someone to drive him, someone to help him out of the car, someone to park the car; friends coming and going, and Daddy relishing their company. He never had a moment alone. I watched his end-of-life days in heaven. What will it be like for me when I am dying of cancer, alone in my apartment in New York?

  Terrorists

  I switch on the TV. “Muslim terrorists blew up … Muslim suicide bombers … Islamic terrorists …”

  My religion has no respect in this country. Their point of reference for Islam is terrorism. What will this do to the self-esteem of my yet-to-be-born children?! I cannot raise my children here.

  Anonymous

  No one knows me; no one knows my family name; no one knows that I can sing; that I was the head girl in college; or that my mother stitches beautiful clothes. No one knows where I came from or cares. I am a foreigner.

  Yet …

  I am falling in love with America. I won’t be swept away. I will enjoy it to the fullest for the next two years and then return to Pakistan for good. I am not letting my parents down. I will go back.

  Yet, my love grew into respect and I ended up marrying America. I marveled at the ease of “getting things done”; the absence of corruption (in daily activities); the culture of honesty (even though it felt rude at times); having a clean life (despite the polluted air); the dignity of labor (the mailman owned a car); the opportunity to be anything you wanted (not just doctor or engineer); the freedom to express oneself (even though the press sometimes went too far); and the sheer excitement in the air.

  In less than a year, I had decided to make America my home, and “these Americans” became “my fellow Americans.”

  7.

  A Muslim Girl in New York

  A Holiday Muslim

  Why is it that when it comes to celebrating holidays, we suddenly find religion? Is it possible to transplant a Pakistani-style holiday in New York?

  January 1972

  At first it seemed as though I was the only Muslim on the streets of New York. If they didn’t look like me, didn’t speak like me, they weren’t Muslim. I have since forgiven myself for my stereotyping. Nowhere were the sounds and sights to be found—the muezzin’s call to prayer, Allah-o-Akbar; the minarets of the mosques towering above the skyline; signs displaying Qur’anic verses of prayer in Arabic calligraphy; the greetings of Assalam Alaikum; the good-byes—Allah Hafiz, God willing, and Insha’Allah; and I am embarrassed to say I didn’t miss it, so distracted was I by the excitement of discovering New York all dressed up in Christmas lights, so self-absorbed in making a blissful new life and being deeply, totally, wholeheartedly in love. Standing by the window, waiting to see Khalid’s blue Maverick pull up to the cur
b; watching him look up to the window, flashing his gleaming white teeth; rushing to open the door for him; these moments were all I cared to live for. I was a bride in heaven, and the only place religion had in my life in those first few months was saying the night prayer before going to bed, and, of course, the holidays. That is, before I found out that I was pregnant.

  But first, the holidays.

  It was the festival of Eid-ul-Adha, the holiday commemorating Prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son at God’s command (the directive was rescinded) and to mark the annual hajj (pilgrimage). This was my first Eid with Khalid, and I wanted it to be special. The yearning to capture the spirit and the celebration of Eid was intense.

  The bleating goats and lambs are paraded through the markets of Pakistan, as buyers line up to select the sacrificial lamb. It must be at least one year old, healthy, and not disabled. Buyers are seen stretching open the mouths of the lamb, counting teeth to confirm their age. In our backyard in Rawalpindi, the lamb is stringed to a hook in the wall, and for the next many weeks, is fed, fattened, petted, caressed, talked to, played with, and sometimes even given a name by the children. I get to love that woolly thing, its sad bleating a reminder of the countdown to Eid. On the morning of Eid, the butcher comes to the house, sharpens his knife on the stone slab, and—with the servants holding the lamb down—says a prayer asking God’s permission before he slaughters the lamb. The darling lamb is sacrificed. Children weep.

  A child of the tender age of eight, unable to comprehend the slaughter, I had asked Daddy, “Why?”

  Eid was not an official holiday in the US—still isn’t. That was a first for me—a holiday without a holiday! There was no way I could have survived Eid if Khalid had not taken the day off. Once again, his friend Izhar, chief resident, saved the day. He had worked it out in advance—the Muslim doctors worked Christmas and got Eid off; but it was taken out of their vacation days. OK, so Khalid had the day off, but how do I create the festivity? How do I recreate the traditions? It’s not as if I had a lamb tied to a pole in my nonexistent backyard. Nor was Khalid going to be walking down the block to the nonexistent mosque. No Mummy or Daddy to give me a hug; no family we could go visiting; no neighbors to stop by; no families to distribute meat to.