choti eid 2010

Driving driving driving SW on 275, the sunset imminent, freshly napped in the gas station parking lot and coffee-ed and pretzel m'n'm-ed (150 calories between two people, I'll take that). On an impulse I get inside my Lucky Ali playlist, the one I downloaded and created during the first ugly, crying and laughing by myself all day, dancing as I dusted the house it's crazy how distinctly I remember the first few times I listened to Lucky Ali here, on the clunky Dell laptop room to room and in my head on my way down Cross Creek to the Publix under a crazy cloudy sky. And Lucky Ali sings, clean and clear and awkward and suddenly it's not the sugar or the caffeine or the heading home from one of the most difficult Eids in history that is making me smile but 1998, 1999, and 2000.

aisa naseeba hum dil waaloon ka hai yeh

mil kar na mil paaein yeh faasla hai yeh

sachi wafaaoun ka shayad sila hai yeh

paayen gai phir bhee tujh ko hausla hai yeh

Staying up all night running out of internet minutes, downloading music from Napster, translating Anjaani Raahoon Mein into the original Opendiary, a time where everything you wanted to learn or know or get could not be found on the internet and there were winters and birthday cassettes and dark, desperate days completely unlike dark and desperate days now.

It is impossible to sing along in any melodious way but I do it, and then I replay it and I translate it for T and I don't know, I don't know, it doesn't make sense in English, does it?

kehnay se bhee mein darta hoon

apno ke dhunn mein rehta hoon

kar kya sakta hoon?

dai sakta hoon mein thora pyar yahan par - jitnee haisiyyat hai meri

reh jaaoun sab ke dil mein dil ko basaa kar - ik aisi niyyat hai meri

*

What an amazing Ramzan this turned out to be. Fulfilling and productive and clean. And late into the month, three magical mornings as I sank into the words and the voice and quivered and felt small and insignificant and wrung out my soul - sleepy teary burn-y eyes too early for contacts - and prayer so utterly magical until I cried so hard again that I was entirely too preoccupied by what I would do with all the snot.

Eid day and post Eid all I want is to go back. And it's scary as I get attached, and I wonder about what the future of my belief and my faith will be when I spend hours at the masjid at night strong and believing and yet my hair is the biggest fashion accessory I wear, bangs obscuring eyes as I float in oversize 80s t-shirts and (skinny) skinny jeans furtively flaunting Ramzan-assisted weight loss.

Ek pal jo mil jaaye phir woh chala jaaye door kaheen

duniya mein is dil ke jaisa koi majboor naheen

How strange is this?

(I would think, I can even drive on the interstate now. I remember to roll or not roll the Rs according to the situation most of the time. I can buy things online without having to try on a million different items of clothing because I know my sizes. I convert units quicker and think in quarts and gallons and miles and pounds. I can ask people at school to donate money for Pakistan without embarrassment or apology. I don't even have the number of daysmonthsyears I have been here on the tip of my tongue anymore. I would think, in my American-think I got this.)

But for the past few days, I have woken up every morning expecting to feel a little chilly when I get out of bed.

I knew August was ending but it hadn't registered that today was the 2nd of September until I looked at the calendar. My weeks are constructed according to day, not date. I suppose I'm still in the haze of dateless, dayless, timeless summer.

My body hunched of its own accord to block out the cold, relaxing little by little when it realized it wasn't. I walked around the house, my brain prepared for a slight difference in the temperature in the air between my clothes and my body, the air that enters my nose as I breathe.

It's 88 - or 31 - degrees outside (and it will be for another three months) but in my head it's autumn. Only because my body insists that according the rotation of seasons that it is used to, expects, wants, demands, it's time.

Oh, September.