The gong show

When you come to the week of your brother’s wedding and when you’ve stayed too busy to sleep in weeks and when everyone is gathered in together for the Mehndi and when the bride and groom are missing and when the bride and the groom are missing because they’ve had a wreck and when the crowd is bored and when the crowd is looking to you, bored

then

maybe you decide to take the bull by the horns and maybe you decide to entertain and maybe you decide to dance and maybe you decide to dance with your sister and your cousin and maybe I’m talking full-fledged Shakar Wandaan although maybe it’s not so good and maybe no one even pays attention and maybe this goes on for like fifteen or twenty minutes.

Well, maybe you don’t do any of that.

Maybe it’s just me.

A dream?

It is a dream, or most probably a dream. I cannot be certain, for I am in the same place within the dream as without, as is my habit.

But yes, it must be a dream, after all. I am almost certain of it, now, as much as I can be certain of it, which is to say nearly not at all.

The bird that ruins my nap has a green body and a blue head. It taps. It taps. I get up to shoo it off and it stares at me through my window.

The bird is my friend, Arun.

I know right away what this is. A spell has been cast – on Arun, I mean to say – and now to all the world, it is as though Arun is a bird. Scared and alone, he has flown nine thousand, five hundred-odd miles in hopes that I might recognize him and solve his dilemma. I recognize him.

“Come in, Arun,” I say and I slide open the window. “You have traveled far. Rest and find comfort here while I bring water for you.”

A spell is only a trick. Maybe a trick of the mind. Maybe hypnosis. Still, in the end, only a trick. Myself, I have a way with puzzles and mazes and riddles and I can break this. I can!

It is a simple matter, really, just a matter of coming at it from a different angle. The unintended angle. The illusionist waves his right hand before the crowd so no attention is paid to what his left hand is doing. That's all there is to casting or breaking a spell. 

I can break this spell.

This is my sort of game exactly.

I walk back to the room, water glass in hand, and find my cat, Qasurah, Lord of the South, up on the window sill. The scattering of feathers around her does not look promising.

It seems my cat has eaten Arun.

Yes. Yes, it is only a dream.

Probably.

A report from the green party convention

I sat across the hallway, mostly. People-watching.

I am afraid that I did not participate in any meaningful way.

Despite my standoffishness, friendliness abounded. Attendees approached me offering political literature, which I accepted gladly. A man congratulated me on my “magnificent” nose.

I sat on a windowsill. I sat cross-legged, which is not to say I suffered from some sort of affliction – not walleyed or club-footed, pigeon-toed or hump-backed – but I mean to say rather that I sat with my legs crossed.

What an appalling word! Cross-legged. Like an impairment or very nearly so: “I am sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Patel, but little Sanjay is going to be cross-legged for life. We can have him fitted with leg braces.”

This report of mine is a travesty, bogged down in talk of cross-leggedness and no way to extricate myself from it now. This is why I avoid political reporting.

At least I didn’t say “sitting Indian style.”

Dr. Cornel West ran from me, I believe.

Wikileaks' Julian Assange spoke via satellite.

This young man came in second in the Florida
Green Presidential primaries. He is 17.

In the end, the convention nominated these two individuals
to be President and Vice President.

Electronic mail

Miss Iqbal, Why you only tell half the story? Like mooslems don’t do anything wrong. The mooslem world is all happy people and flyng carpets?

I'll read you when you tell the truth.

---------------------------------------------------------------- 

Dear truth-seeker:

This blog is a happy place. I hope it is a happy place. It’s a place full of magic snakes.

There are strange skies, sleepwalking sisters, and impossibly small faces here, too. I put them here. If tomorrow I were to begin posting, let’s say, clips of terrorist beheadings, this could not help but spoil both my vibe and my brand.

I am cultivating here, sir!

Places do exist, online, where you can go should you wish to watch the latest beheading. Wish to watch, wish to watch. I cannot imagine why you would, really, as it seems like a poor way to spend one’s precious time.

If you wish to read of Middle Eastern people doing bad things, I recommend Headscarves and Hymens, which Mona Eltahawy wrote. This book is certain to put you in a suitably awful mood.

I have always doubted the safety and practicality of carpets as a mode of transportation.

Thank you for reading and writing me.

I hope your time here glows.

Love,

Naz

Swap

Have I told you yet about Nice Old Mary?

We used to do household chores for her in exchange for hearing her stories, my sister and I. Dusting, dishes, that sort of thing. Nothing too laborious.

Nice Old Mary was nice and old and spoke with an accent which I can still imitate but have never successfully identified. Her stories were of her youth, full of creatures and places long vanished, for she was impossibly ancient, I should think.

If she knew of the distant past, then it only stood to reason to me that Nice Old Mary should know of the distant future as well.

I said, “Nice Old Mary, tell me of my future husband. How handsome will he be? How strong? How rich?”

Earning such a story meant clearing out her garage, a task encompassing three days’ work.

When these three days were completed, my sister and I were then made to search out and capture a particular variety of black spiky worm. A caterpillar, in fact.

The next order of business was to find ourselves a leaf of medium size. Not a tiny leaf, no, that would not do, but neither was it to be an elephant ear sized leaf, for that would be superfluous to the old woman’s purposes.

Nice Old Mary’s instructions were quite firm. I wish to be clear on this. I was to print my question upon the leaf, which was medium-sized, and feed it to the caterpillar, which was black and spiky. This I did without complaint.

I still had no answer regarding my future husband.

The caterpillar cocooned.

All seemed lost.

A creature emerged at last from the cocoon, weeks later. A moth. Pale yellow. Upon its wings were hieroglyphs in Nice Old Mary’s native tongue.

My sister and I squealed. “What does it say, Nice Old Mary?” we said.

Nice Old Mary turned the moth around. To read the glyphs right-side up, you know.

“It says your life will be a happy one,” she said. “It says you will be smart and strong and successful, with or without a man.”  

The moth flew away.

“What the hell is this?” I said. I was indignant. “What about my husband?”

Nice Old Mary shrugged. “Don’t blame me, kid,” she said. “It was your damn caterpillar.”