I’m attempting to organize, toss, or pack 15 years worth of stuff from my bedroom.
Tonight, I’m sorting through old files. It’s funny to see the papers of the younger me. A yellow writing pad, for instance, is scribbled with every insignificant creative thought that occurred to me. Here’s a sample (these funny things are headed for the garbage, but I couldn’t help but record a few first):
In (1660?) London, a (young?) architect Sir Christopher Wren looked upon the great ashes and burned pliers of wood – all that remained of
But alas, I’ll never know what it was because there my creative burst ended, and I never finished the sentence. Here’s another:
Turn left on Wood St.
Street, stairs, ticket for train, “door’s closing.”“I’m looking to get married,” says the 40 year-old guy who has just entered the train at North-Clyborn.
This actually occurred. Except the man was younger than 40 years old. What he’d actually asked me was, “Are you married?” as if he meant to ask me to marry him if I wasn’t already someone’s. I was silent because I didn’t want to lie but telling the truth, that I wasn’t married, was an even harder option. By not answering though, I offended him.
To convey the creepiness I apparently felt the need to exaggerate his age. I guess I changed the dialogue for the same reason… Because in reality, the man had tried to be polite, said asalaamu alaikum… Even though I responded to his salaam, he wanted to make sure that I was Muslim before he asked what I was reading–and then proposed.
It would have been so easy, so nice back then to tell him I was engaged. Except that it would have been a lie, and that was hard to do. On the other hand, now that I am engaged, folks are making it very hard for me to say it frankly. In a long over-do call to an old friend who moved years ago to North Carolina, I said:
“I’m engaged.”
She gasps. “For real?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is he from?”
“Uh? He’s from here… oh you mean? Yeah, he’s Pakistani.”
A little disappointed she says, “I was hoping you’d marry a white guy.”
She goes on to say that she saw an ethnic woman in the park that had my features, who was married to a white guy and had cute biracial babies, which made my friend wish that I’d marry a white guy so that I’d have adorable looking biracial babies too.
Who could blame me for laughing? Moving on, she asks, “So you did the nikah right? The katab-ul-kitab?”
I say no, that we’ll do the nikah on the actual wedding day. But it takes some time for her to understand this. Her idea of engagement is a nikah. The wedding is just ceremony.
“But you did have an engagement party?”
“No.”
“A ring? You must have a ring.”
“No–I mean, not yet.”
She’s completely bewildered.
I bet she thinks I’m pretending to be engaged.
