It has been a long time...

It has been a long time since I last posted anything on this blog. I apologize. Life encroached on my endeavors. A little over a month after I last posted here, I deployed to Iraq for two and a half years. My life took a turn for the hectic and altogether too exciting, and things are not entirely stable yet.

During the interesting times that I had in the last five years, I have often thought about this blog and my desire to add new material to it. I will be doing so in the near future.

For now, it is worth noting that a week ago, June 10th 2014, was what would have been my mother's 70th birthday. She died almost seven years ago.

Seven years.

My world has not yet stopped shaking.

Jake

Lovely Zaina

Say hello to Zaina, daughter of Aziza and Ahmad (and my niece).

Happy Birthday, Mom

Today would have been mom's 64th birthday. I wish she were here.

Do any of you have any stories about any of her birthdays?

Linda Kay, born May 23, 2008

Sarah had her second child yesterday. She named her Linda Kay in honor of her mother. I will post more information when I get it.

Happy Mother's Day

Mom never really put much stock in Mother's Day. Or Valentine's Day, or most other Hallmark-inspired holidays.

Happy Mother's Day, mom, all the same.

Egyptian Transvestites, Coed Habitation, and Tolerance

Mom's friend (and I daresay mine) Leif Pareli sent me a very interesting anecdote that not only highlights how interesting my mother's life was, but also how insightful--not to mention how colorful--she was:

I was working at IFAD for several weeks, as part of an international team that had already been working together in Egypt for a month. Rome is prohibitively expensive, so we left our hotel and rented a four-bedroom flat. It was three men, an Australian, a Dane, and an Egyptian, and me. I hadn't known any of them before this trip. The Egyptian was born and raised in Beni Suef, as was his wife, had traveled considerably, but remaining quite conservative. We went to work together every day and returned together every day, and the four of us dined together every day. We were staying near the Termini subway station, in a colorful neighborhood. There were prostitutes on the corner across from the door of the station, starting sometime in the afternoon. Their pimps were down the hill a little bit. The prostitutes were quite beautiful, with amazing outfits, lots of beads and fringe. Ibrahim and I never spoke of them. One day we came along and they were fighting, throwing each other over cars and cursing each other in the most imaginative way, in Arabic. Ibrahim, whose skin is quite dark, became totally white from shock. When he was able to speak, he sputtered, "How can these dirty women talk like this in Arabic?" I said he hadn't understood the whole story, and explained to him that these women were not women at all, but men. He was stunned. Later the earthquake came to Cairo and we went home. He told me that I had to come to his house for dinner within the next two or three days because there would otherwise be problems with his wife. There was nothing at all between me and Ibrahim, but he didn't want his wife to object to me, and so he wanted me to meet her before imagination spoiled everything. I went. She was much less exposed to the world than her husband, and quite conventional. When the kids went to bed, she started asking me about the women on the corner and started going on and on about how Egypt would never have something like this. I said Egypt did have things like that, but more hidden, but not less numerous. She was put out by that and said to Ibrahim that he should tell me there wasn't such a thing in Egypt. He asked her if she remembered some guy who lived down the road from them in Beni Suef, and of course she did, and he explained to her that he used to come to the coffeehouse wearing a flannel gallebeya but under it was a red chiffon nightgown belonging to his mother. Everybody knew this, because he used to lift up the flannel one and show it to the guys at the coffee, but he was from the neighborhood so what the hell. She was shocked, but he was from the neighborhood. I told her that was all over the country, and that the people who do zikr and zar, for instance, are mostly transvestites and/or homosexuals, and nobody says a thing. It was quite a nice conversation, and she adjusted quickly, because, I think, it involved people she actually knew. And, she adjusted absolutely to my staying in an apartment with three men, maybe because I explained to her how expensive it would be otherwise, and how of course everybody wanted to save money so they could take things home to their spouses and kids, and also because I was at her dinner table and basically she thought I was okay even if I had seemed to be a little wanton until she met me.

This is my general experience in Egypt - people may hassle you for one thing or another, but if they know you, they don't care about your peculiarities. And also, I think we have an expectation of constancy - if Ibrahim's wife, for instance, had been very doubtful about my living in a flat with a group of men, she changed quite quickly when she understood. And other things - I was working with a very conservative Moslem factory-owner in the eastern delta, and as I spoke Arabic, he thought I should cover my head. I said I couldn't do that, because I wasn't brought up with it and I would overheat. He immediately picked that up and said well, anyway, what really matters is what's in your heart, and that was the end of that. This goes on absolutely all the time, and it's not bad. I'm not explaining it very well, but I do really feel that people are much more tolerant than they appear to be, so long as there is something personal in the situation, and that's all to the good. Especially compared with the way people talk in America these days, which is superficially very facilitating but in fact has no substance at all, consisting mostly of stock phrases. Conversation in Egypt is much more fun.

The Little Things

As I was driving along in Columbus, Ohio, with my wife Ragia, my son Ali, and my mother-in-law Zakia, Zakia said something about a place that mom had taken her while I was in Bahrain in 2002. Ragia and Farah* had gone to a movie, and Zakia and mom went to get some coffee. Mom took Zakia to a place that is semi-hidden, is small, has all manner of coffee and treats, and is in Durham. That is all she knows.

I don't know what place this might be. For a split second, I caught myself thinking that I'll have to ask mom when I see her next.

Every time I realize that I can no longer ask mom anything, I die a little.


*This was before Ali was a gleam in his mother's eye.