Brought To You By JetBlue

The good thing about not blogging in ages is that there's plenty to say. The bad thing is that the big things overcome the little. (As you may guess, I love the little.)

You might learn then that my niece was born this summer, but perhaps not about the kickass conversation with the Peruvian boy on Canal Street at midnight (about scars and digital cameras and writing to your mother). Ah well. (write to your mother)

July 2009

My niece, the androgenously adorable Ilana Shanti Vesper WoodHoque, was born, looking like Mr. Burns and Yoda rolled into a pale hairy 7.5 pounds. 5 months later, she's twice her length and weight, and has cheeks to match. I lovelovelove her. I'm going to miss her something fierce when I leave the land of the free.

July was also when two of my oldest friends in the world, JimChae and Stokes, came to spend 2 debaucherous weeks with me in the Upper West Side. I've known them both since we were in the same freshman dorm at Penn, oh, 18 years ago. Every night, we feasted (and drank) like kings. Every afternoon, we woke up crying, dragged ourselves to the gym where we were scamming free trials, to sweat out the alcohol. Incidentally this gym was beside the fine wine and liquor store where we'd replenish supplies. And start all over again.

Speaking of freshman year, I also got to see my first love, the 7 year one, Glenn, and meet his two little girls, Alden and Olivia, for the first time. I hadn't seen Glenn or Sarah since their wedding 5 years ago and so it was about time. Of course, it didn't matter for a second how long it had been. It was exactly as funny and fun as it had ever been. What's perfect isn't forever. I'm in love with the memory of us and I don't ever have to fall out of that.

[small memory] the rickshaw boy artist with a nose ring who cycled me around Times Square at night for free and then drew a purple and gold lotus flower on the inside of my arm. [/small memory]

August 2009

I finished my rewrite of my first book, a memoir called Olive Witch, which had started out 6 years ago as my thesis for my MFA in writing. The rewrite took about a year longer than I expected (1.5 years total) and is a wholly different (hopefully better) animal.

Then I spent some weeks condensing 250 pages into one paragraph for my query letter to agents. This latter task was perhaps more painful than writing the 4 (count 'em) redrafts.

Then I sent this query letter out to 20 agents, 6 of whom were "warm" contacts, ie agents of friends. 5 wrote back asking to see the full manuscripts of both books (Olive Witch, and my novel-in-stories, The Lovers and the Leavers).

Then I clapped my hands, pulled out my credit card, and went to Edinburgh to drink scotch with JimChae and his banker friends. Since this was August (the month of festivals), we caught the Fringe Festival, the Book Festival, and the International Festival. It was FABULOUS. Among other things, I saw the brilliant Margaret Atwood, a ridiculous American comic, street performers aplenty, a clever English staging of Don Juan in Soho, and the most outrageous of all - a Malawian musical about Madonna adopting a baby where Madonna was played by a statuesque black man in a blonde wig. Naturally.

[small memory] In London, using Jim's pile of change to buy bottles of the cheapest white wine, packs of scones, and tubs of clotted cream. Consuming all of this myself. [/small memory]

September-October 2009

I bought JetBlue's fly-all-you-can-in-a-month pass, and I flew all I could in a month, which ended up being 6 cities, 3 on the east (Pittsburgh, Boston, New York), and 3 on the west (San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles). Naturally I didn't do this in any geographically logical order, but then again, unlimited flights! [Click to see all my photo albums from this year, and my New York sets here.]

It was my first time in Portland and I got to see 2 friends I hadn't seen in years (Rory and Paul) and 3 others I only see in other places (Laura, Ola, and Jim Frost), and additionally wander a charming chill city.

My visit coincided with the winter migration of the Vaux's Swift, birds which rest in Oregon en route from Alaska to Central America. They stop to roost in this one chimney of an old school in Portland. Folks take their picnic baskets and kids, lie on the grassy hill beside the schoolyard at dusk, and watch as some 10,000 birds gather in the darkening, and then swirl down into the chimney for the night. Oh so worthy.

Also spectacular viewing - a hike in the wet woods with the lovely Laura. And of course, the book lover's wet dream of a bookstore: Powell's with its four floors, wall of manga, glass room of rare books, art gallery, and cafe. Litgasm.

In Los Angeles, I was hosted by the firecracker Ms. Rounsaville and ate fish tacos for every meal (it's true). In San Francisco, I got to see the uber-talented writer/musician couple, Neela and Robin tie the knot. My favourite bit: Neela's 16 year old cousin, Abhay, dancing at the talent show. Liquid dancer boy. I hope he keeps on it.

Back in New York, I saw Naeem's brilliant solo show at Cue Arts: Live True Life or Die Trying - a meditation on protests, journalists, activists, photographers, in turn poetic reportage, crystalline aware, philosophical, pop cultural, wondering, provocative, and grounded.

The photographs and text pulled out, focused in, deliberate and deliberately casual, about his (your) role as observer, participant, in the event, in life. So fucking good.

[small memory] Walk of shame through the Mission in a sari. Poet in a suit beside me. Kisses in the cup of my hand. [/small memory]

November 2009

4 of the 5 agents wrote me back turning down representation. The only one who offered any feedback, minimal as it was, puzzled me. She found my Nigeria stories not for the adult reader and my voice indistinct. I know I have a lot to learn, writing-wise, but IMHO, my Nigeria stories and my voice are not my weak points. (Repeat to self, I don't want anyone who doesn't want me.) Round 2 of the agent hunt looms.

I launched my editing website, Abeer Prep. I'm hoping it's going to be my perfect job: part time (so I can write and take photographs with the rest of my time), able to be done remotely (I could live anywhere(s)), for a good cause (aiding school and scholarship). This particular career might even help me get to Bangladesh once a year, maybe during peak application season.

I'm singing again! I joined a choral group (the Bank Street Chorus). Our practices are only an hour long, but harmony (yay altos) and singing has always made me happy. This is good because the agent hunt is a tad demoralising, especially since I haven't written anything new in so long. It's like my entire body of work is up for judgment and I have nothing else to show. Time to write again (ergo). I also have ideas for my next book (about memory and chance), though calling it a book at this point is so premature as to be laughable.

[small memory] Tripping the light fantastic at the Ritz, a gay bar in Hells Kitchen. [/small memory]

December 2009

I leave New York next week. Over the next four months, I'm hoping to hit Paris, Dhaka, Fiji, Delhi, and London. I have no money past the airfare, and sometimes not even that (there's a reason I bought a one-way ticket to Dhaka). I have 3 cameras, 2 energy bars, and a head lamp. What more do you need? Love.

[small memory] on the D train to Manhattan, crying reading this line by the great Dr. A.R. Luria: "A man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being — matters of which neuropsychology cannot speak." [/small memory]

Oh and write to your mother.

I Heart New York

I was debating summarising my last two months using only photographs. Then I remembered a piece I wrote many years ago. In the story, a rustling across my face woke me from a sound sleep. I opened my eyes to find a 4 inch long cockroach on my pillow. We both went into break up mode which for him meant running away and for me meant crying. (some girls never learn)

I eventually tracked him down to the bathroom and proceeded to create a crime scene of destruction. Magazine holder toppled, bathmat askew, biggest boot i own atop mister mister.

I couldn't remove said boot immediately so I left my flat (this was in Philly) and went for a walk. When I returned, the bathroom looked so comical that I took a photo and then cleaned up. When I wrote this incident up as part of a writing exercise for school, I included the photo at the end, as an end. My professor, the (spectacular) (sexy) Mr. Shurin asked me why I had resorted to laziness after such a winning beginning ("He's looking straight at me, Mister Cockroach is.")

I had no response because he was right. I have even less excuse now, despite having 23,845 more photos than before. So sorry, gentle reader. You get the mostly text version of my time in the land of the free in 2009.

So, I spent the last two months reading books by people I know personally (and they were really damn good). First up, Sheba Karim's Skunk Girl, which she wrote about 15 years too late to serve my hairy teenage angst needs, but I'll take it. Especially since she's one of my best friends and so beautiful I can't stop looking at her ever and throws the best parties (see photos from her launch by clicking on her photo above) and has started two kickass websites (cheaptoboot.com and gradinsider.com) and is going to India on a Fulbright to research a historical novel (score for creative Fulbrights!). And Skunk Girl rocks. It's funny and breezy and real. Get yourself and your niece a copy.

Jack Murnighan's Classic Nasty was perfect reading for the subway (or
the beach). My work commute from the Upper West Side to Midtown takes about 20 minutes, enough time to read one nasty classic excerpt and more urgently, Jack's warm sexy forward editorials. So very close to his warm sexy forward self. I'd walk into work all hot and ready. To proofread alongside my cutie gay boy coworkers. Life isn't easy.

Ok it is. Sometimes. I scored a fabulous Manhattan flat within days of my arrival. I moved in on a chilly Tuesday evening, went dancing, and brought back my red light kiss later that night. Who says twenty nothing year olds aren't worthy? This one made me birthday breakfast and even better, washed the dishes after.

So I had a birthday. It rocked. My (6+ months pregnant at the time) sister Simi AND my dancy brother Maher AND my pretty parents were in attendance, as well as a host of beautiful boys and girls who danced me into my 36th year. Maher - do I ever get the photos?

Spring in New York isn't warm enough. There were enough cold rainy days to remind me why I left the East Coast so happily and so often. But if you have to spend your life indoors, then there might not be a better place to be.

The hands down highlight was getting to watch one of my favourite singer/songwriters in the world perform his razorblade music: the inimitable Leonard Cohen. In Radio City Hall no less. Mr. Cohen went through an unbelievable 3 hour set singing every single song I wanted him to. Thank you LC. You're my tea and oranges, my prophet and pall bearer, my beauty and my burning violin.

IMHO, getting around in NYC is almost as much fun as getting there. I cannot say enough about the subway system. Sure it might take you an hour or more to get from one burrough to another, but it's POSSIBLE. and CHEAP. and UBIQUITOUS. and 24 HOURS A DAY. Can any other city in the world say this? Not any I've been to anyway, and I've been to a few. I could spend the entire day on the subway people watching. It's the great equaliser. From the 7 figure salary to the indigent, from the white boy to the black girl (and every gender and sex (those are different) and colour in between).

For the scarce sunny days, there's picnics in the park or the fabulous botanical gardens in Brooklyn and the Bronx. And when it gets really cold, for $490 roundtrip, you can go to Kauai (thank you cutie cattiho for getting married on a Pacific island).

Pasha Malla's The Withdrawal Method was also riveting subway reading (I'm a rabid fan of short stories now). I met Mr. Malla when he read at a cute bookshop called Word in Williamsburg (where incidentally Sheba will be reading as part of a young adult lecture series on July 30 - come! I'll be doing the Q&A (argh)). I met Pasha again on Sharlene's last night bartending in Park Slope with the everkissable Radhika.

Speaking of Sharlene, my vibrant friend now has her own (eponymous) bar (pictured to the left) which was reviewed in the New York freaking Times here and again here. Now if I can just score a bar-backing gig at hers, I might not go hungry (or thirsty) this summer.

I should also thank New York for my share of corybantic nights. Happy Endings figured in more than once along with Desilicious, Sonar NYC, and god knows from where else I stumbled home. I got kissed in taxis, parlours, elevators, bars, on dance floors, street corners, subway cars, beds. Gotham could give Rio a sexed up run for its money.

I'm about a week away from wrapping up a wildly productive month at Saltonstall Arts Colony spanning May and June in Ithaca, NY. I'm almost done rewriting my memoir so by June end, when I get back to the Big Apple, I'll be ready to rock (ie finally face the agent music).

My month in the woods has been so isolated and beautiful and lux (room and board and weekly maid service incl.) My fellow artists are talented and chill and sweet: Rose Desiano is a photographer who layers sculpture and architecture into her work. Christine Elfman is a painter who also works with photography and mixed media. Rachael Wren is a painter (and a web designer on the side). And my favourite is Cecily Parks, the poet (after all, poetry is my first love) who's currently writing a series of poems about a girl in a ginger ale dress doing mischief in the woods.

I spend most of my days writing, and most of my evenings organising my photographs, submitting work to literary magazines, applying to other residencies, and thinking about how to fund my next pipe dream (getting to Nigeria). In between, I run in the woods, do yoga in my room, go for long hikes through waterfall dripping gorges, eat, and sleep. This is what happens when you're hundreds of miles from anyone you know, your cell phone doesn't get reception, and you don't have a car. The only drawback is the WiFi, but I've managed to limit myself to a few hours of internetting a day. Could be better, but, as any addict knows, it could be worse:)

Saltonstall is having an open house on Sunday, June 14, 2009 from 2-4pm. The poet and I will be doing readings while the painters and photographer will have their studios open. I think I'll read about my mother growing orange roses in Nigeria. Come listen.

The hundredth empty place

There are a hundred empty places I’ve stood in, the past four years of traveling, and imagined kissing someone. By empty, of course, I mean alone.

Sometimes it was a wild place, like the Devil’s Throat in Iguazu Falls, or the winter wonderland of Bohemia, or the Tiger’s Nest in Bhutan.

Sometimes it was a lost place, like the overgrown temples of Angkor Wat, or the red city of Fatehpur Sikri, or the Incan trails in Peru.

Less often, it was an urban space, like the gardens of Hanoi’s Ethnology Museum, or the Montjuic Cemetery in Barcelona, or most recently, in my flat in my favourite megacity, Dhaka.

Dhaka wasn't on my itinerary this year. I meant to use my savings to 1) escape the East Coast winter, and 2) fund a 3 month writing retreat in San Francisco and Mexico City, before returning to New York to find an agent for my books. But then I got an email from my mother. She had just left my father in Dhaka and was worried about him.

Since retiring from geological consulting a year and half ago, Abbu has written two books: a novel and a collection of short stories, in Bangla. Note that during this same time, I have not written 2 books. Nor even 1. But the ways that I will never measure up to my father abound. Abbu's books were set to be published in Bangladesh in February. No one from our immediate family could attend the launch, except for me. More distressingly, Abbu's memory is failing. My charge was to get to Dhaka ASAP, help plan and attend the launch, and act as Abbu's personal assistant. Stick to him like glue, my mother entreated, and I squeezed out half my savings to do so.

Bangladesh is crazier than ever. After the horrifying February 2009 BDR mutiny, I was asked by many whether Bangladesh felt different this time. I have to say that for all the madness (which resulted in scores of officers being executed and a restructuring of the entire paramilitary force), Bangladesh did not feel different to me this time.

Recall that this is the country where I arrived in 2006 to a series of hartals (country-wide strikes), followed by riots and bombings, followed by cabinet ministers resigning, followed by a failed election, followed by a military-caretaker government, followed by emergency rule, followed by curfews, followed by anti-corruption drives, followed by a cyclone... you get the picture.

Abbu's book launch was held under the massive banyon tree at Bangla Academy, where Dhaka's month long book fair is held every year. It went famously. Noted professor and writer, Sirajul Islam Chowdhury was the guest of honour. Even better, famed author Jafar Iqbal was scheduled to speak just after Abbu's launch, and his presence on the periphery of the stage caused a mini-media sensation that spilled over to include Abbu's event.

Book publishing in Bangladesh is a different sort of affair than in America or even India. Most anyone can publish their work because the process involves the author buying half the copies printed, and selling them him/herself. Zero sum game for most authors, IF they can sell their copies.

In Abbu's case, it's difficult to tell how many books have been sold from the publisher's copies (apparently BD publishers are a lying lot). Out of "his" copies, we mailed a couple hundred to the States and held a book launch in Jackson Heights, NY on April 11, 2009 (this was fabulous as well).

Since my first winter trip to Bangladesh, back in 2001, I have loved hanging out with my dad in Dhaka. I don't know if it's because he's retired from a job that was stressing him out, or that he's finally doing what he first loved (writing), or because he's in Bangladesh speaking his mother tongue. Any which way, in his fatherland, Abbu is the funny witty man my mother always said he was and we always denied.

I think all our parents should write their memoirs for their kids. I know kids are idiots and might not appreciate this effort until too late, but at least we'd have a recorded history of a time that was not obsessively documented the way it is now.

One of my favourite Abbu stories I heard this time was set in his village in Feni when he was about 10 or so. Back in the day (when there were still lots of Hindus around), there was a stark difference between the education levels of Hindus and Muslims. The Hindus in Feni were well educated, whereas most Muslims hadn’t made it past class 8, if that. My grandfather and his cousin were the only Muslims in town who got further - when Dada returned with his masters, he was greeted at the train station by a crowd of well wishers.

Because of his education, Dada was on good terms with the Hindus and so when Abbu asked permission to go see a jatra (a staged drama) at a neighbouring Hindu family’s house, he agreed. Abbu spent most of the night at the neighbour’s place and returned, mind alight, at dawn. His uncle, who taught at the local madrasa, caught him by the front pond and asked where he’d been. After hearing that he had spent the night with Hindus, he proceeded to dunk Abbu in the pond 7 times, and made him recite prayers to cleanse himself.

One of the best parts of this story is the context in which it was told. We were at Feni Girls Cadet College with the headmaster, an army chief, and assorted teachers. What we were to learn from this story, Abbu declared, was how backwards Muslims were at the time, that watching a drama staged by Hindus could constitute a wrongdoing.

I don’t know what anyone thought of this pronouncement because all I heard afterwards was the shuffling of feet. Ha. It was the same resounding silence when Abbu saw the mosque that was being built for the college and he said he hoped they weren’t going create noise pollution by blaring the azaan through loudspeakers rather than having a human voice project the call to prayer.

Not that I should talk about kissing after talking about mosques, but here’s a story that includes both (are you excited yet?).

One dusty afternoon, I took a CNG (a compressed natural gas powered 3-wheel taxi) to Karwan Bazar. Apparently CNGs are more dangerous than ever, their passengers subject to increasing incidences of violence and theft. But as sprawling and confusing as Dhaka is, I find CNGs to be one of the easiest ways to get around. I could take buses, which are far cheaper, but my fear of new things and crowded starey places has thus far kept me from learning that system.

I thought I’d take a few pictures at Karwan Bazar and then go meet Zafar, editor extraordinaire, who works for the Daily Star. Karwan Bazar is one of the largest open air markets in Bangladesh. Selling everything from mops to mosquito nets, it is a visual treat to walk through. The first time I walked through it (in 2001), I was too shy to take even one photo, disturbed by the fixed gaze of oh, everyone. This time, I braved two shots. At this rate, I’ll have a dozen photos of Karwan Bazar by 2025.

Discouraged by my (lack of) courage, I waited outside the Daily Star offices for Zafar (have you read my book yet, Z? I want feedback). We had plans to check out Munem Wasif’s (phenomenal) photography in Old Dhaka, part of Chobi Mela, an international photography exhibition that takes place in Bangladesh every year.

When Zafar emerged, I greeted him with a kiss on each cheek, not realising that I was standing directly outside a mosque. I had not only touched a boy, but kissed him, twice, surrounded by that most judgmental of populations, religious men.

Are you disappointed with this story? You take what you get in Bangladesh, and I got very little this trip, in terms of kisses anyway. Some from a poet wanderer and more from a gay boy artist (yes way, gay boys like kissing girls sometimes).

Most of the time, I lay under my mosquito net, alone in the heated dark, and I made up my fancies in my head. My father's flat in Uttara has a corner bedroom with a balcony, which is where I stay. I leave the doors and windows open all hours of the day and night, and the wind, hot and slow, cool and wet, has its way with me.

I love Dhaka more each time I return. My friendships are stronger, more absorbing, my family ties more binding. I spent day after day, night after night, lounging in bed, on couches, in cafes, with Neeta, Nadiya, and Shahpar, my extraordinary women friends who are as sexy as they are smart and sensitive. I ate meal after meal with nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, cousins (and to counter, spent every morning running or doing yoga). Perhaps it's no surprise that I got little writing done. And due to photography-fatigue, I didn't even take that many snaps.

Being in Bangladesh feels less like a holiday than before, and I'm glad for it. I can see myself living in Dhaka, teaching yoga, volunteering at a women's organisation, taking Bangla and photography lessons, writing. I can see myself staying. I'm writing the word again on the inside of my arm. To remind myself to be, to remain in the moment, to stop thinking about the next new thing.
stay light, stay loose, stay willing, stay wanting, stay now, stay later, stay dancing, stay jaunting, stay hungry, stay feeling, stay free, stay fine, stay closer, stay deeper, stay longer, stay mine.

A Winter in Mexico

I lovelovelove Mexico City. My current pipe dream is to have a little flat in Coyoacan (which has the best market and cutest little painted houses) or Condesa (where all the hip bars and restaurants and clubs are). I'd take Spanish lessons, write all day, dance all night, sleep all day, write all night... you get the drift.

The weather here is like a warmer San Francisco, temperate year round, and DRY (heaven). June 2008 marked my first visit to Mexico City. I came with fellow gypsy partier, Kem, and we hit all the sightseeing and nightlife spots we could. We left the capital for Baja just before the rainy season (hello catastrophic mudslides), so most of the time, our time in D.F. was partly cloudy with some blindingly bright hot days in between.

This January, I came with an entirely different purpose - to write. D.F. in winter is cool in the mornings and evenings, roasty-toasty in the afternoon sun. Unfortunately, Mexico City housing has that same issue many San Francisco houses have - no heating, and so sometimes it ends up being colder inside than out. No fun to sit indoors at a desk all day writing in 50 degree weather (that's 10 celcius for you non-Americans). Every so often, I'd get so cold, I'd go sit in the balcony in the sun like a lizard.

A week in, I bought a pair of fingerless gloves from an Indian woman selling them on the street corner. I've always thought fingerless gloves were about the most useless invention in the world, but now I know why they exist: for writers (and other computer-chained geeks) whose hands start getting numb with cold, but who still need undiminished fingertip dexterity. Plus my gloves are hip and multi-coloured. Like our new prez-o-dent (yay!).

Speaking of writing, I'm almost done with rewriting "Olive Witch" for the third time. Since I have no friends in Mexico City and have limited(ish) access to the internet, I get tonnes done. I eat my mamey breakfast each morning, sit down in front of my computer (with my gloves on), write 2-4 hours, do yoga in the afternoon or go run in Viveros Park, eat tlocoyos or tostados for lunch, shower, cut up a guava or avocado, write another 2-4 hours, eat beans and tortillas for dinner, read, sleep. Perfect schedule, IMHO.

Some days, I've even been able to get out and tour D.F. a bit. I've toured the new controversial contemporary art museum (surprisingly interesting cool art), listened to a classical music concert (clinched my dislike for Strauss), prayed in the Catedral in Zocalo, and climbed the art sculptures dotted all over UNAM. But most of my time has been spent writing writing writing.

As per the suggestions of my beautifully brutal critics (danke: Sheba, Jan, Alan, Zafar), I've tried to run a narrative through "Olive Witch" from beginning to end, play out different themes, streamline the characters, even out the writing style, include more setting and backstory, be more reflective, and show how the Nigerian girl becomes the American girl becomes the Bangladeshi girl all while staying the same. We'll see what my next batch of critics say (get ready: Sara, Zafar, Nadiya, Ram, Adrienne).

In between all that, Simi (who is also here to work) and I have been having a blast together. Stone cold sober and sillier than ever, my sister is about to start teaching her first semester as UMass Amherst (as a tenure track professor in architecture, engineering, and environmental science), while applying for funding for her nonprofit organisation that deals with planning and architecture in flood prone areas.

I don't get much extended time with my baby sis and so this is gold for me, plus we get to do it in Mexico, far far away from that terrible East Coast weather some of you are suffering through now. We get to sit on my bed (where the internet and sunlight is) all day and talk. In the afternoon, we go to the market and get just enough veggie goodies to cook dinner. Then we watch movies in her room til we fall asleep.

Tomorrow, we're going to visit Tepotzlan, a lovely mountainous area an hour outside of D.F. On Sunday, our working vacation is over, and we'll part ways at the airport carrying tamarind lollies and dusty backpacks. But it's Friday night now. Time to make fresh guacamole, eat plantain chips, and watch some bad TV. What are you doing?

Happiness Holding Me Back

First things first. Even though this happened back in August. I went skinny dipping for the first time in my life. It was a lazy sunny late summer day in the French countryside with the river running through it when my girl love Pamela insisted we go for a run. I protested. Did I mention I was feeling lazy?

There are few people in my life who insist I do something. Perhaps because I'm too busy insisting something first. Pam is one of my only friends who tells me to do things (and the following are all things she had to persuade me to do (and you thought I was adventurous)): ride a Velib bike around Paris; go on a run to find the Eiffel Tower; and worst of all: when we get to the unexpected end of the narrow overgrown path in St. Aignan sur Cher, where the river divides, instead of turning back, she strips off all her clothes, jumps in, swims to the middle, and then turns around and says, come in! What? You've never? There's no one around for miles, Abeer! Do you know what the water feels like against your naked skin?

No, no I don't.

I mean, I didn't.

It's pretty fabulous.
River weeds against my breasts
river stones under my feet
river water between my thighs

I don't like baths. I never have. And not just because I'm a tepid water kind of girl. I don't know whether it was growing up in Nigeria with cold water showers (I mean, the water wasn't *that* cold), but I'm not going to be that lover who you want to take showers with. Every partner I've had who's jumped into my shower has jumped out immediately thereafter screaming like a little girl. *I* don't think it's cold. Maybe luke cold. Like I said, little girl. Add to that, the idea of sitting in stagnant water and your own filth... And don't get me started on hot tubs with other people.

Which is why it's interesting that one of my most delicious-out-of-body-I-am-so-supremely-happy-to-be-alive moments this year (there were so many) was in a bath. Never say never. It wasn't in the River Cher - that was cool running fresh water. This bath was in San Francisco this December, in a Japanese tub, built for one. I used Arati's thank-you present to treat myself to a Bliss spa appointment at the Kabuki Spa on Geary Street. This included 25 minutes in a candle lit wooden slatted room, sitting nakedly on a stool while a stout Japanese woman poured heated water on my steaming body. And then sinking into a green ceramic bathtub filled with water and ground tea leaves and cucumber oil. I'd rouse myself every few minutes to eat slices of lemon-salted apple and drink water, and then lie back dripping with joy.

Speaking of joy, I had my tarot cards read by James. It was past midnight, pouring rain outside, the cats were luxuriating by the heater, and my favourite Radiohead song was playing on the stereo. Unfortunately (or not), I was drunk on scotch and interrupted the reading to insist (there's that word again) that he dance with me. The only thing I do recall from my reading was the card that represented my challenge: the three of cups, which is a symbol of happiness. Happiness is holding me back.

That actually sounds about right. Not that I think one has to be sad to be productive (though I do think you have to have been broken at some point, to understand). Take Rumi, a 13th century Persian Sufi, one of my all time favourite poets - he turned his ecstasy into art. But if my life is all scotch and sleeping in and midnight kisses and sunshine and rock band (I love playing bass), then why bother sitting down and gut wrenching this book into shape? Um.

Ok, before you smack me upside the head, let me tell you about the sex club I went to last weekend. It was girls night out, in honour of Cynthia's visit from New York, and we had just gotten kicked out of Levende on Mission and Duboce. Levende sucks. They wouldn't let us in for a drink b/c we got there just after 10pm when they start charging cover. If you know Suna, Melissa, and Cynthia, then you know that it wasn't about money (obviously I'm the weakest link here). But we had a dinner reservation for 9:45pm - let the hotties in for a drink and a dance, no? No. So after a heated battle with the management, we let loose a flurry of insults and left. No matter. We recouped at Andalu and discussed our next target: Kickies, a jumping jack and jane flashing scene in the Mission that Suna, sexy dancer extraordinaire said had good dance music.

First we had to get dressed up, so Suna took us back to her phat new pad in Potrero and pulled out her costume trunk. [Note to Hardik - you need to start a costume trunk now that you're living in San Francisco.]

Red lingerie, lace up corset, high heeled boots, strapless gown, mini skirt, silver tinsel, flameorange leaf head dress. (done and done and done)

But if I wear the ankle length strapless gown, couldn't I keep on my jeans underneath? Ok fine, but what about my negative heel Earth shoes? I had to ditch my orange socks too? Hmpf. Just to be sure, I didn't sneak on something from my decidedly unsexy wardrobe, my caring friends replaced the dress with a pleather tube top and skirt. And handed me a set of 3 inch heels in my size (damn you Suna. Next time, I get the corset).

I have to say though, as is so often the case, the pre-party dress up phase was the most fun part of the night. This is why Sara's naked lady party (a clothes exchange) was fun the entire time. It was all about ladies stripping down and dressing up, over and over again. While getting drunk. 100% fabulous. Plus I scored a pair of sexy ass hugging jeans.

But I know I know, you want to know about the sex club. So one accessed it with a password, an unmarked door on the street, and $30. There were rules. No photography, clean up after yourself, bring your own booze and leave it at the bar. There was a smoking room, a dance floor complete with a pole and mirrors, a bar, a terrace, and two "sex" rooms, one in which you could play or watch and another one in which you had to participate. The decor was hoholicious fab: Mexican papel picado strung along the ceiling, candle lit altars filled with eye candy kitsch, rocking horse, velvet couches, and of course, guests in sexed up holiday-themed Burning Man-esque costumes.

Unfortunately (for the diversification of my sexual education), I think my girls were the hottest guests. So we made do with kissing each other in the voyeur room, drinking in the champagne room, and dancing til the wee hours. (Does everyone know how to pole dance except for me?) I did not make it into the other sex room as there was no one I wanted to participate with. Perhaps the hot ones were already in there but I wasn't taking any chances.

However, the hot ones were in plain view at the hot tub and swingers party in Glen Park that the beautiful Florencia took me to. I love it when gay boys turn out to have (female) wives and straight boys start kissing other straight boys on the dance floor. Even better when the girls have feathers in their hair and lace bustles and strip tease dance moves. As previously mentioned, I don't do hot tubs, but I don't mind when someone shows up from the steaming outside, flushed and heated and half dressed from a recent dip, and asks for a dance. Would you?

There's a body deep understanding I've learned from years of ecstatic dancing. Like the shrooms that put diamonds in my eyes, no matter how long ago my last trip. I was sober in Glen Park, but who could tell amongst all the languid flailing boys and girls?

It was like when Scott Skinny Red Feathers came on stage with OURS at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City this fall. The low rumbling sound of his didjiridoo pooled around my feet with all the oceanic force of epiphany. I suddenly saw my meaning of life. Wasn't vision reason enough to be? Wasn't music essence? Wasn't motion language? Didn't touch have the most integrity of all?

All this and I'm entranced by my facebook, email, and texting love affairs, as incorporeal and one-sided as some of them are. The half Indian web developer gypsy I met underground. The outrageously flirty and funny editor who gives as good as he solicits. The fire fighter mountain climber (not nearly as aggro as that sounds) who I'm still half in love with. The 23 year old (good fucking lord) who fancies himself in love with me (oh but his kissing lips).

Speaking of children, now that I have appraised the playgrounds of San Francisco with TopCookie Audren, and hence the children who frequent them, I understand why people breed. And why they don't. You know that saying about everything you needed to know you learned in kindergarten? Well, what if you're like Audren, and you just always knew how and why to share - after the 17th kid has grabbed his/her toy back (or yours for that matter) saying mine! wouldn't you learn to return the (dis)favour? I am ever more disenchanted with the idea of having children, even as my body desires them more desperately. I have 5 years til I turn 40 and hopefully this demented urge to destroy my pitch perfect life will disappear.

I am also giving myself this time to learn some patience. When I was young, I'd rage against everything. Cross me and lo, a pandora's box of wounding righteousness. And I'd be over it before my target's tears even started. Here's a little time line to illustrate:

Age 5
Abeer: rage rage rage
Simi: crying
Abeer: unrepentant

Age 15
Abeer: pointed barb
Simi: silence
Abeer: unapologetic but assuaged

Age 25
Abeer: underhanded insult
Simi: that wasn't nice
Abeer: silence
Abeer, a little while later on her own: damnit

Age 30
Abeer: impatient judgment
Simi: you shouldn't have said that
Abeer, petulant: true

Age 35
Abeer: careless comment
Abeer, almost immediately after: damnit

I believe my progress is accelerating, ever so slightly. Maybe one of these days, I'll be able to stop *before* I let loose one of my poison arrows. One can only hope. In the meantime, my 3 week visit to Pittsburgh to visit my parents over Thanksgiving loomed ominously in my mind. The goal was to limit my biznatchness to one outburst a week. Luckily for me, my cutie parents are nicer than ever, perhaps more aware of my limitations than I am, and willing to walk gingerly around them.

In fact, I don't think I had even one major eruption. Despite my father's occasional critical pronouncements, or having to accompany my mother to jummah prayer at the mosque. They let me eat what I wanted (I love my mom's cooking), run at whatever odd time I wished, read and write however much I needed. Easy peasy. So what if Abbu thinks that when a woman has a heavy travelling schedule for her job, it must mean she's a bad wife with a bad marriage. So what if Amma makes me listen to the imam expound at length about how when one goes on Hajj in Mecca, one will be so excited about being in this little corner of heaven on earth that one won't be able to sleep. No one rests in heaven after all - there's too many fun things to do (his words, I swear).

But it's true, Amma didn't expect me to believe no one sleeps in heaven. She knows how much I love to sleep, and never once rousted me early out of my yellow bedroom. Nor was Abbu judging my travelling, or my potential marital behaviour. Plus his increasing and troubling memory lapses break my heart. I cried at least once a day about yet another frustrating and mixed up conversation with him.

I know it's only gotten colder on the East Coast since I left, but the windy sleety snow that frosted each November day was more than enough to remind me why I hate winter. I spent most of my time in Pittsburgh indoors, next to the heater. Or dancing with my most beautiful Eshadee, who with each child she bears, with each passing year, only gets more breathtaking.

Not that December in San Francisco is proving much warmer. I know 30 degrees makes a difference, but when it doesn't go above 50 degrees one entire week in the state of California, you know there's something wrong. I'm cold. And I haven't written in almost 10 days now. I'm afraid of having to do what I must: chuck entire sections of my book and start over. It took me 3 days to realise that was what I had to do, another 3 to accept and internalise the decision, and the last 4 days were pure squander.

But I can't complain. Not when I get to go to over the top joyous funerals like the one Mary Patrick held to bury her dead dream of big time publication. And see Jules every day. And live in the most beautiful apartment ever (Hardik, you make me want one of my own, and that's saying a lot). And make up with my orgasmic brain deep boy lover after almost a year of silence. And eat Reggie's scrumptious raw food meals every week. And do photoshoots of Camalo and Karsten's Ghisele baby. And attend Neela's white elephant party. And see the hysterical Obama dildo. And peruse a science museum with coral reefs!

My monthly MUNI pass is getting a workout. Sometimes I use it 4 or 5 times a day. Potrero Hill, the Marina, Bernal Heights, the Mission, Noe Valley, Lower Haight, the Tenderloin, Union Square, Duboce Triangle, the Sunset, North Beach, Glen Park, the Castro, Japantown, the Richmond, Western Addition, Golden Gate Park. I love San Francisco and its windy park benches, strung out addicts, sunlight and sea. It makes me happy to be here. All those dichotomies between the East and West coasts of America: the hard and the soft, the edgy and the hippy, the intellectual and the free. I know I'd be fine on either coast, perhaps even better somewhere else altogether. But if I had to choose, even the hard edgy intellectual part of my brain would place me here, in my city of dreaming.

An Autumn in New York

It's late autumn in New York. I've been here almost two months and time is faster than ever. It's been a gorgeous fall. Until just last week, I wore a skirt almost everyday. The leaves are doing their chameleon thing, and the wind is brisk and flirty. I almost love it, until I remember how much worse/colder it gets. New York is beautiful beautiful. Every filigreed curlicue, every shining tower of light, the very ground beneath me glitters. Diamonds in my eyes.

I've been manic for months now. At first I thought it was the sexing around South America. But after all the body closedness in Bangladesh, who wouldn't let loose? Then I thought it was the love in Bolivia. And I did love. At first sight. Without even having spoken or touched. And after the speaking and touching, well... Then I thought it was the altitude in Peru. I'd brush my teeth at 10,000 feet, and experience a kind of high I associate with rolling. Then I thought it was the writing in London. Everyday I sat in the sun in the inner garden of Jim's lux Pimlico apartment complex and I rewrote Olive Witch. Writing has always made me happy. Then I thought it was the working out in New York. I've now scammed free short term memberships from five of New York's finest gyms. That's two solid months of running, yoga, dance class, aerobics, pilates. Endorphins, endorphins, come out and play.

But now my mania is due to the music. I'm not atop a mountain, have not made love nor written in ages. But even on the days I don't work out, I step outside, into the mad bad fad energy of this city, and the music moves me to laughter.

This is what's playing on my Nano right now:
Daft Punk's "Make Love"
The Killers' "Human"
Fischerspooner's "Emerge"
Royksopp's "So Easy"
Adam Freeland's "Supernatural Thing"
Ladytron's "Versus"
Amon Tobin's "Chronic Tronic"
Joseph Arthur's "Honey and the Moon"
Mika's "Relax"
Pobon Das Baul's "Dil Ke Doya"
Rihanna's "Umbrella"
Alias' "Unseen Lights"
Duffy's "Mercy"
Beck's "Gamma Ray"
Stoic Bliss' "Abar Jigai"
The Decemberists' "Mariner's Revenge Song"

I can put any of those songs on repeat, like the obsessive I am, and the world's alright with me.

All through September, I stayed with Cynthia who converted the cosy study room in the back of her Chelsea flat into a bedroom for me. Now, through October, I'm sleeping beside my beautiful boy, Rahim, in the West Village, who lets me wear his socks and doesn't mind if I snore. Next month, I think I'll move to Fort Green in Brooklyn and crash with Arif. In between, I've stayed over Arati's in the Bronx, cooked countless dinners with Sheba in Hell's Kitchen, and had drinks with Sharlene in her Park Slope bar, Commonwealth. I love my friends. They've made it possible for me to live in New York for 3 months, save $3000, and have a blast while I'm at it.

So that's what I've been doing. Working up a storm, and I have nothing but money to show for it. I have two jobs, both of which I found after hours of trolling Craigslist. One is assisting Cy, a funny old professor and environmentalist, organise his life in the Upper West Side. The other is proofreading in Midtown. While neither is very well paid, both are uber-flexible, and mostly interesting. Ok, the proofing isn't riveting, but I love my co-workers, gay actor boys who know their grammar (hot). And there are free apples and cartons of Tropicana in the fridge. Incidentally, the professor makes the best salads and so I almost never buy lunch on the days I work uptown. So, all in all, not a bad deal. Though this 40 hour work week is bearable, fun even, only because I know it's going to end, and I'll go back to working part time, writing full time, and being (even more) poor.

I remember the first time I thought about the concept of cash. I was 22, sharing a flat on 20th and Walnut, in Philadelphia, with my first love, Glenn. After one of our rock and roll fights (my college friends can attest to our turbulent yet utterly trusting 7 year relationship), Glenn's fantabulous mother, Ann, told me that if it was a problem that could be solved with money, then it wasn't a real problem. I wouldn't forget her words, but I wouldn't understand them then either.

When I was 27, I went from being a grad student to being a single startup employee with a six figure salary. I paid off my student loans in less than 9 months, scored a corner flat on the 17th floor near City Hall, all the fuzzy cashmere sweaters I wanted, weekend love retreats in Europe, money coming out my ears. I felt poor. This is because there is never enough money. Admit it. There isn't.

This September, I got to New York with less than $100 in my pocket. I had just spent my last $500 on a plane ticket from Paris. I thought I'd get here, crash for a few months with friends, get feedback about my newly rewritten Olive Witch book, rewrite it, find a flat, and a job, and an agent, and be all respectable like.

Instead a month in, I got feedback that threw my entire schedule off track. My critics (all writer/editor friends of mine) had eerily similar things to say. Along the lines of, Abeer, you have a rare and unusual talent, BUT this here isn't a book. Your use of language is fantastic, so incredibly poetic, BUT there's no narrative cohesion. Your stories are energetic, magical, vibrant, BUT the themes all peter out, if they ever get started at all.

Imagine if writing a book were like going from stage 1 to 10. I figure I'm at stage 3. When I left London late summer, I had thought I was at stage 8.

None of this is bad news, per se. Narrative arc, theme development, tension buildup, backstory and foreshadowing, characterisation - these are all things I can learn. Versus changing my writing style, which I feel I'm pretty much stuck with, but apparently, that's not one of my major literary failings.

I'm hoping some of it I'll learn over this next draft. Others might take a lifetime. But fortunately, that's what I got. A lifetime. I'm committed to feeling poor for the rest of my life, if that's what it takes to keep writing and photographing and learning my arts.

So I've decided to put aside writing for now. I'm working for 3 months, saving up some money, praying for Obama to win (oh please God), and then taking off for 3 months to rewrite Olive Witch (Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Mexico City are potentially my writing retreats). I also want to revise "the Lovers and the Leavers" so that I can pitch it as a novel in stories. This is the new in-thing to do. Scrounge out any loose link between the stories in your collection, call it a novel, and presto, marketability. Apparently, no agent or publisher likes to represent or sell short story collections (let alone mine, which has interlaced poetry and photographs to boot). This is apparently because no one wants to buy story collections. You all (me all) want novels. Yes, yes, there are exceptions, but this is what I heard from agent after publisher.

Take Rana Dasgupta's enchanting surreal darkly provocative book, Tokyo Cancelled. 13 passengers are stranded in an airport (their flight to Tokyo cancelled). They tell each other stories to pass the time. These stories are set in the major and minor cities of the world. From North African deserts to Eastern European brothels, from London to Lagos to lala land. If he can call this collage "a novel in fragments," well then, I certainly can do the same for my book "the Lovers and the Leavers," which, point in fact, has repeating characters throughout, side characters who become main characters, and everyone's roots leading back to South Asia. I may not even have to thicken the connections that much, but we'll see.

My plan is to return to NYC in February or March 2009 and pitch my so fresh and so clean novels, one nonfiction, one fiction, to agents, one of whom will snap me up, find a willing publisher, along with an eye watering advance, or at least a few thousand dollars, so I can go gypsying through Africa (my next travelling dream).

During my brain-dead spare time, I've also come up with a five year plan. Hardik made me make one, almost exactly five years ago, against my vehement protests. Much to my dismay, I found out he was right. It was incredibly useful. Not because I did everything on the list (anyway, I couldn't fit that first plan into 5 years, so I made it into a 20 year plan), but because it clarified what I thought was important, what might be possible, what I realised I didn't want to do after all. And now, looking back, I can see what I misunderestimated, and I can revise and adjust my time frame, my means, and my ends. I'm learning what I'm capable of. Slowly. Who knew a snap judgment queen like me would take so long to figure out what's what?

So, tentatively, this is what I might want to do by the time I'm 40: rewrite and publish the two books I have now, join a choral group, take photography, bartending, and guitar lessons, write a collection of poetry, design a text/photo book, blog more, redesign my website, volunteer once a week, hold a photography exhibition in SF or NYC, write a novel, practice patience with my parents, learn Spanish, have a savings plan, live in another country, have or adopt a bastard love child (or kill this bothersome baby urge), catalogue and do more with my photograph collection, go back to Nigeria, teach a creative writing course, try something brave and new each year.

If I only do half of those things, I'll feel accomplished. If I do a quarter of those things and the rest of the time fall in loose languid love, then that'd be alright too. In fact, by now, you know I could do none of those things, and as long as I can walk the streets of the world with my music, alone and alive, I'll be happy.

Eglantine European Evenings

When my favouritest Jimchae told me he had landed a summer internship in London, and that there would be a free couch in a lux flat in Pimlico, I knew what I had to do. South America was turning cold anyway, and I needed a place to hole up and rewrite my first book. And who'd turn down a rent-free summer in London? Not me.

I had two layovers on my way from Latin America to London. The first involved three days in the best city on the best coast, San Francisco. My fellow robbee, Chellis and I, threw a fundraising party in the big bad Mission to try and recoup some cash, music, photos, and sympathy for our newly re-gadgeted selves.

A big fat sloppy thank you kiss to everyone who attended, hugged us, paypaled money, emailed sympathy, called to commiserate, and otherwise made us feel so damn lucky to have such fabulous friends and family.

My second layover was in Galway, Ireland. While trekking in Peru, I met two crack girls from Galway who told me that if I were ever in Ireland, they'd show me how much more fun Galway was than Dublin. And indeed, I have to say that it was one of THE BEST party weekends I have ever had (and I've had one or two).

In Dublin's defense (and I had a fine time when I visited 2 years back), I didn't go out at all at night, I didn't know any locals, and I didn't attempt to meet anyone either.

Everyone knows that having a local host is the best way to visit a new place. I've eaten home cooked feasts in Bangalore, gone to house parties in Buenos Aires, picked frozen apples in Bohemia, been guided through the crumbling treasures of Old Bombay, traversed little known bike paths in Barcelona, and strolled around Brasil's magic seaside city of Rio. I wouldn't have done most of those things if a local hadn't joyfully been showing me the secrets of her city.

Galway was no different. Niamh (pronounced Neeve) picked me up from Dublin airport and drove me all the way across the country to Dierdre's house in Galway. Niamh's and Dee's immense overwhelming hospitality didn't stop there: a fridge stocked with yummy veggie food, my very own guest room, and a 3 day itinerary packed with parties, pubs, walks through the quaint downtown, a road trip through the limestone landscape of the Burrens, ending in the towering Cliffs of Moher, and more kisses than I knew what to do with. Can I tell you how much of a sucker I am for light coloured eyes? Sometimes I was the only brown eyed girl in the room and I could hardly breathe from the beauty.

I arrived in the Big Smoke, (s)exhausted. Chellis, I love this word of yours. But also ready to (re)write. And determined not to go broke in London despite having less than $500 to my name and July and August to kill. Impossible, you say? You're right of course. Unless your best friend provides you with a mobile phone, a magically topped-up Oyster card, weekly groceries from M&S, cash whenever he thinks I'm scraping too much, and a flat complete with daily maid service, broadband wireless internet, a full sized pool, exercise classes all day, and free gym membership. I'm a lucky lucky girl.

Still London manages to bleed me dry every time I step outside. I try to stay home as much as possible (this isn't hard, after all, my digs are pretty fucking lush), but there are SO MANY fun festive things to do in the summer over here. Poetry slams, walks along the South Bank, cute dancy bars in East London, punting in Cambridge, free museums and festivals and parks, double decker bus rides all over town, musicals, home cooked Bangladeshi meals, weekends in Liverpool, dinner parties, concerts, performances, bowling, scones and cream, Nigerian(!) restaurants, and more.

And in the meantime, I've almost finished rewriting my memoir-novel, Olive Witch, An American Dream. I hadn't looked at it, as a whole, since summer 2003 when I finished it, and so I had collected a bunch of ideas over the years about how to make it longer (it was well under 200 pages to start with), more tied together, deeper, wider. ie the next great (Nigerian born) (Bangladeshi bubbled) American (dream) novel. harhar. We'll see what the NYC agents think of that and my story collection, The Lovers and the Leavers.

Summers are a magic time in the north western hemisphere. The days are long and warm, the sun is out, and it feels like holiday everyday. Especially in a country known for its dark damp clime. I'm hard pressed not to overly romanticise my summer in London. Even though I have to say that the English aren't nearly as friendly as the Irish, or the Indians, or the South Americans, or the Thai, or really almost any other nationality of people I've met these past few years. Still, I'd love to come back next year and spend a year or two here. But now autumn's on the horizon, my money's run out, and my next stop will be New York City, where I'll be working to pay off my debts, wondering how I'll afford health insurance, and trying to find an agent for my books. Fun, no? And how.

Approaching the Land of the Free

I suppose it makes sense. The closer you are to the US of A, the more likely it is that the American power of meddling will affect you.

In South America, you can't even say you're from America, because they will bristle and ask you what you mean.

America, eh? You mean the United States? You mean North America?

And of course, they're right. South Americans are from America too. But they don't go around co-opting the term for themselves. And they are far away enough that their own problems, and those of their former colonial rulers, can safely subsume them.

But in Central America, it's perfectly clear what one might mean by "America." They know who you/we/they are.

Costa Rica

My first stop in my month long Central American tour was Costa Rica, for 10 yoga-powered writing-intense lazy-beachy days. My USF MFA writing partner of three years, Chellis, had been trying to arrange a Latin flavoured rendezvous for us and finally succeeded by finding me a crazy cheap ($300) ticket from Peru to Costa Rica (via Florida, naturally. Thank you, Spirit Air, and travel researcher extraordinaire, Chellis). Two days, two flights, a bus and ferry ride later, I found myself in the tiny surfing town of Santa Teresa on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. Absolutely lovely. Nicoya Bay is a feast for the eyes and luckily some of my photos from it survive.

Speaking of co-opting, Americans have taken over Costa Rica as their vacation destination of choice. Everywhere you turn, another nasal American accent. And as Lonely Planet will tell you, there's not much to do in Santa Teresa other than surf. Luckily, Chellis was there to get her surf on, along with all the other (Australian) (American) (Tico) boys and (a very few) girls. Every morning, she'd get up and float and crash and bruise and elevate her body over the sea.

Meanwhile, as the only non-surfer in Santa Teresa, I'd get up, do yoga under a thatched roof, and then write all day. Chellis and I would meet up in the late afternoon, brain and body exhausted, have an early dinner, and be in bed by 10pm. Like clockwork for 8 days straight.

Then on the 9th night, we thought we should go dancing at least once. So we shut our laptops and went to a beach front bar and danced like crazy in the strobe lit dark for 2 hours. Unbeknownst to us, in this time, our 2nd floor balcony was being scaled, the glass door was being jimmied open, and all our worldly (read: Apple) belongings were being stolen.

When we left the party, I was in a joyous mood as I always am after dancing. So much so that when Chellis suggested we run the 2 miles back home, I agreed. We got back and were laughing (heaving) so hard we didn't notice at first that our light was on. And why was our front door locked from the inside? Not yet panicked (though Chellis was having a suspicion), I came up with the bright idea of shouldering the door open, like in the movies.

1! 2! 3! Bang!

It actually worked. Except it opened up onto a totally destroyed room. Both our laptops, both our cameras, both our nanos, my iPod, my main back up hard drive, and whatever other dozen odds and ends we had in our laptop bags. Gone. $4000 of my shit and $2000 more of Chellis's.

It's true:
1) we should have figured out a way to lock up our laptops. Even though there were no lockers in the room like in all the hostels I stayed in all over South America. Even though the hotel reception closed at 6pm every evening (and also had a glass door). Even though our neighbours, two funny silly Australian boys, left their lights on and their (equally nice) laptops out on their beds in full view and went to the party with us, and they didn't get robbed.

2) we should have gotten travel insurance, but Americans don't usually get it. It's not part of our travelling culture, although you can be damn sure it is now for me and Chellis.

3) we should have jammed our balcony door with Chellis's surf board or something - all week the lock was acting funny, although this made us doubly sure to make it was locked before we left each time. But it probably meant it was easier to jimmy open.

The thing I'm still most upset about is my stolen scrapbook containing all my mementos and paper souvenirs from 3 months of touring South America. And my address book dating back to 1995 which I somehow stupidly didn't back up. [Email me your address and phone number please...]

But it doesn't compare to Chellis's loss. Three years of photographs and music and writing. Gone. Believe me, she's heard the cries of disbelief enough, and no, she didn't back her shit up, and yes, she will now. Gmail, young grasshopper. Gmail everything to yourself. Everything. Your contacts, your calendar, your little black book. Do it now. Get a second portable hard drive (less than $150 for 300 gigs at Best Buy), copy everything, and put it in your office, at your parents, wherever, but somewhere different than your computer. Preferably, a different city altogether. In case, you know, (the bad kind of) lightning (earthquake) (cyclone) strikes.

The next day, we left Costa Rica, but first I insisted we embark on a useless trip to the next town where the Costa Rican version of the FBI, the OIJ (Oy Hota!) had a small investigative office. I thought we might as well file a report, just so we could say we had done everything we could. Of course nothing would come of it. The hotel barely refunded us half our room rent for the week and only after much persuasion. $80 in return for a combined $6000 loss and unrecoverable data.

Everyone we spoke to in Costa Rica after that had a story of theft. From the Tico taxi driver who took us to the Oy Hota! to the American hotel manager to the Australian surfer on the airport shuttle. Robbery is all too common in these small towns. It's sometimes even clear who's responsible. In our case, a bunch of dreadlocked young Tico thugs who hung out at the corner surf shop. But no one's doing anything about it. Not yet anyway. And when privileged people visit a poor place bringing their pretty polished things, it's natural that some exchange might be expected. I just hadn't expected to be one of the losers.

Actually, I'm lying. I'd been waiting for (ie dreading) this moment for three years now. The moment that I might lose everything I have. And I had prepared myself so thoroughly that when it happened, I was astonished to find myself mostly reconciled with my "lighter" state within hours.

In fact, because I had so much of my stuff backed up - on DVDs I mail back to my parents every few months, to the extra hard drive hidden in my clothes that the thieves didn't find, to Flickr.com (I love you, Flickr, and Flickrdown, which helped me get back hundreds of my South America pictures, complete with tags and captions) - I had been ready for something far worse. I still had (mostly) everything I needed. My photos, my writing, my music. I just had no media to access it anymore. But media is gettable. You just need a credit card, generous friends and family who help you fundraise, and a willingness to start over.

I should add that the thieves (quite deliberately) left our passports and credit cards. Chellis's theory for this is that if they take these, then the victims are stuck in place for a couple of weeks while they procure new passports, and thus have more time to track down the villains. This way, when all you have of value remaining is your passport and a credit card, you'll probably just get the hell out as fast as you can.

Panama

I arrived in Panama with 2 bags instead of 3, my trusty dorky laptop bag that had travelled around the globe several times over now gone. I met my sister, Simi, and her design partner, Apichart, in Panama City, and we drove 5 hours to Venao, where the two of them were designing a house to be built overlooking the sea.

Eco Venao was beautiful. Since I had no camera or laptop, I read like a maniac. And did even more yoga. And went walking on the beach. And drank more than my share of Herradura. And ate delectable home cooked meals every night. And toured around various resorty and stand alone residences with Simi, Apichart, our amazing host, Nico, and his super fun friend Dan.

Ok, fine, I did have a camera. My lovely swivel lens Nikon point and shoot survived the theft (of course it would be my SLR that got nicked). So you have some photographic evidence that I continued my trip through Central America. Panama is the most "American" of these countries, naturally. The currency is US dollars; the US only just reluctantly gave up its lease on the canal; and land is being bought and developed, hundreds of hectares after another, by Americans.

On our way back from Venao, we stopped for two days in the gorgeously decrepit old neighbourhood of Panama City: Casco Viejo. Deserted, graffitied, crumbling, ornate, overgrown, and utterly captivating. Even though we chose the midday to go walking and the light is so horrible then that I sometimes resorted to the sepia setting on my camera to capture any sort of detail or nuance.

The final highlight was lunch at the Canal restaurant. Well, not lunch so much as the restaurant's balcony from where you can watch the hugest tankers and freight ships navigate the lock system of the Panama Canal, up close and MASSIVELY personal. Because the lake that the canal traverses inland is 50 metres higher than sea level, every ship that crosses the canal has to be lifted through and up a 3 stage lock system before the lake, and then back down again after the lake. We watched the lowering process for ship after ship, as lightning crackled the sky - a flabbergasting and awesome experience.

Master packer and mistress of minimalism that Simi is, she helped me get rid of even more stuff so that I would leave Panama with only 1 bag: my well worn orange duffel bag containing only clothes and toiletries. My fellow travellers from Bolivia, you can stop laughing at me now. Ok well, my duffel is still a rolly, but at least it's all I have left. Ha.

Mexico

I knew I'd like Mexico City. My sister and I usually have unerring predictions about each other's likes. And she's loved Mexico City for years. She's told me all about the street food, the mad traffic, the modern architecture mixed in with the traditional, the public art, the museums, the murals, the clubs, the tequila, the music, the pollution, the water systems, the taxis, the danger, the dirt, the vibrant energy everywhere, everywhere. I loved it instantly. Plus the weather is like San Francisco's on a September day. Which as any SFer will tell you is pretty pitch perfect.

Kem, a Couchsurfing friend who had toured Rio with me, joined me in Mexico City and we spent a week having the best tacos of our lives, going dancing all night, walking all day, and additionally visiting the largest city in pre-Columbian America: the spectacular pyramids of Teotihuacan.

Next, we spent a few days in Mexico's second largest city, Guadalajara. I loved our cheesy double decker bus tour of that city, the magnificent two towered church (where I sang with the other worshippers and remembered how much I love (and miss) singing), and the fantastic shopping town of Tlaquepaque (and I don't even like shopping!). But I think my favourite part was our hostel - a beautiful, clean, quaint, well kept establishment with ridiculously good kitchen and laundry facilities, flowers and plants everywhere, and a roof terrace perfect for doing outdoor yoga in the dying light.

My last week in Mexico was spent beaching in Baja, Mexico. Unfortunately, my Nikon camera decided to develop a lens error just as we got there, and so I have no photos from here. (piss poor camera luck this year for Abeer.) You'll have to check out Kem's photos when he gets them up on flickr...

In La Paz, we ate yummy fish tacos everyday and went snorkeling and swimming with the sea lions. And in Cabo San Lucas, we played scrabble on the most beautiful beaches I've ever seen in my entire life: Lovers Beach and its counterpart, Divorce Beach (harhar). Like being in a Corona commercial, I kid you not.

I must also tell you that going out in Cabo San Lucas will make you laugh your ass off. I've never seen more ridiculous behaviour in my life. Conga lines for free tequila shots. Contests to see which couple can simulate the most sexual positions in 60 seconds. Beer chugging races. Embarrassingly bad Spanish singing lessons. (Can you guess which nationality dominated the willing crowds?)

The Giggling Marlin, Zoo Bar, El Squid Roe, Jungle Bar... Kem was more thorough in his rounds of CSL's night life than I was, but we both made it to CaboWabo because we couldn't resist Lonely Planet's description: "like a frat party, only everyone's older and drunker."

I'm still laughing. And anyway, it's nice to be dark brown again after my years out of the sun. I'll write more soon, from the paler side of the world.

10 Things I Hate, I Mean, I Love About My Life

1. It rained almost all my days amongst the thundering waterfalls of Iguazu. Did I care? No. On the Brasil side, I walked right up to the waterfall just as the storms began in earnest. But by then it was impossible to distinguish between the rain and the waterfall, not in sound nor fury nor vision. And when I finally stood by the Devil's Throat on the Argentina side, I started crying. It was so roaringly moving, so eye candy, acid trippy, stop motion film, changing faster than I could take in. Most joyous experience.

2. I caught the flu the day before I left Buenos Aires. This turned into 3 days of laryngitis in Iguazu, and 2 weeks more of a hoarse (not sexy so much as foghorn) voice and a cold that plagued me throughout Bolivia. But who doesn't like to pass ridiculous hilarious sexy notes about mundane and serious affairs? And why pass up an excuse to lean in close for a whisper by a waterfall? Clever flirty banker from London? Lithe cocky do good American? Multi media artist from Barcelona? Tech consultant from Nigeria? Film maker from Brasil? Hot nurse from Italy? So little time...

3. For 225 pesos ($75), I bought a ticket for a 30 hour long bus ride from Iguazu, Argentina to Villazon, Bolivia: my first ever long distance solo trip, over land, in South America. I had with me my big orange duffel, my small black roller, my laptop bag, and my camera bag (go ahead, everyone else laughs too). Everything I owned, everything I cared about. True I had burned a DVD with all my (new) photos and documents and mailed it to my parents in the states. True Argentina is one of the safest countries to travel about in South America. True my Spanish was just enough to get on with it. I was still afraid. It's only now that I know that that (completely uneventful) ride will count amongst one of the most luxurious easy trips I've ever taken.

4. Altitude above 4000 metres means Abeer will suffer from vise-like headaches, medium strength nausea, and biting cold wind, despite the constant chewing of coca leaves and the popping of altitude sickness pills. Altitude above 4000 metres means Abeer will see stunning mineral coloured lagoons, spiky mountain ranges, clouds of pink flamingos, and this last most alien surreal beautiful landscape: Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flats in the world, a sea of hallucinogenic hexagonally marked whitewhitewhite, as far as my awestruck eye can see.

Add to that, my four hilarious jeep partners who made my Salar experience so much fun that I followed them through Bolivia all the way to La Paz. Giggly giant funny man, Shannon, from Australia. New age accountant from Ireland, Garrett. Dance machine thumbs upper, John, also Irish. And the fire fighter mountain climber from Tasmania, Dan. Beauty.

5. Number 1 worst bus ride in my life: from Uyuni to Potosi, Bolivia. Slated for 5 hours. Actual damage: 8 hours. At night. On the most ruinous roads in the world. Every threadbare unreclining seat filled, plus every inch of aisle taken up by hapless ticketless Bolivians, including the man who sat on my foot the whole time. No heating nor windows that closed properly. Music like cartoons on fast forward, on high volume of course. But all of that means that your clever fingered lover can give you enormous pleasure in the crashbang dark. Totally unnoticed by anyone else.

7. The upside of sharing a hostel dorm room in the mining town of Potosi with 8 boys? Most comically, it's not immediately obvious that it's the one girl who's snoring (sorry, but I snore when it's cold and/or if I have a cold, both of which were in effect all over Bolivia). And what stimulation, to be constantly surrounded by surfers, bikers, swimmers, hikers, climbers, travellers. Every last one had a lean body, distinct accent, shining blue or green or grey or gold eyes, and they made me laugh, all the time.

6. I have nothing bad to say about Sucre, the quaint cute hilly red roofed sometime capital of Bolivia. If you need a place to rest after 4 days in a jeep touring the salt flats, this is it. It's got a market with cheap yummy dishes and fresh juices, a lovely textile museum, cafes with stellar views of the city, a sunny central plaza, pretty churches, affordable and spacious matrimonial accommodations, and dance clubs open all night every night.

7. I thought after 2 weeks in Bolivia, I'd have acclimated a bit. But no. I couldn't walk a block in La Paz without getting huffypuffy. The airport is 4000 metres in the sky and the drive to town alone is worth it all. The mountains surrounding the city are dotted with houses, the way you'd expect to see tree cover. The coke dens are alive and tripping, and a midnight sniff at Club 36 is a novella begging to be written. The Witches Market sports llama foetuses and potions and spell books. The Indian restaurant is ho-hum. The tapestries are vibrantly coloured, the sheep hoof tambourines bizarre and clunky, the parades a whirl of (co)motion. But the best was my last night in La Paz, one of the most exceptionally fun sexy nights I've ever had. Does it always get better with time? I hope so.

8. I sadly left my hot funny boy contingent in La Paz and moved on to Isla del Sol, an island on Lake Titicaca (on the Bolivian side) with old Incan ruins and fabulous views of sunrises and sunsets. I saw both if you can believe that, and even got my 9 hours of sleep in between.

9. Second worst bus ride in my life: Puno to Cuzco, Peru. 10 soles ($3.25) will get you on a 7 hour long rickety creaky bus ride, marginally better upholstered than the aforementioned Bolivian bus. Five minutes outside of Puno, the engine stalled and the bus started sliding backwards. Our driver slammed on the emergency brakes and steered us sideways to the curb. An hour of petrol filling and other mysterious mechanical work got us heaving forward again.

Two hours into the drive, ten large hipped screaming Peruvian women swept past me to bang on the driver's door to let them out. He unwillingly opened the door and the bus immediately filled with smoke. Apparently our engine was on fire. I grabbed my laptop and joined the rest of the passengers standing in the scrubby Peruvian desert. The driver doused the fire with water from a petrol station across the road. I took this opportunity to pee behind a scrub. Then, amazingly, we all reboarded the bus.

From this point onwards, every time we stopped (which appeared to be every 10 minutes), a crowd of small thin men would crowd around our engine for an hour and discuss its state, while another crowd of small thin boys would heave sacks larger than themselves onto our already towering bus roof.

We arrived in Cuzco only one hour late, and with our bodies and belongings intact. Additionally, I arrived totally well rested (I am ever grateful for my ability to sleep in any conditions, no matter how dangerous or turbulent).

10. I've never gone trekking before. I've never done backcountry camping. I don't own hiking shoes or a day pack or a gortex raincoat or a sleeping bag or trekking pants or shorts. I've had knee surgeries on both knees and one's been stiff for weeks. I hate the cold. I don't do well in high altitude. So what's the first thing I do in Cuzco? Sign up for a 5 day, 4 night Salkantay to Machu Picchu trek: 2 days of hiking up and down Salkantay Mountain (4600 metres), 2 days of wandering through the Peruvian jungle, and the last day spent climbing up to and touring the newest named wonder of the world, the spectacular sky high Inca ruins of Machu Picchu.

Bright idea, no? It was brilliant. Despite the fact that it dropped below freezing the first night. Despite the fact that after 6 hours of hiking, I'm not only exhausted, but worse, bored. Despite the fact that the guide tried to molest me from day 1, even engineering me into his tent for two nights. Despite the fact that I wore the same pair of damp heavy jeans and dusty running shoes for the entire trek. Despite the fact that I descend mountains at a snail's pace, a half hour or more behind others. Despite the fact that I become slow and sluggish and sulky above 4000 metres. Despite the fact that I foolishly packed 3 pairs of underwear for 5 days.

Even then, I absolutely loved my first trek. Even the parts I hated I loved. And I made 10 new friends from Israel, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, and France. I may not do it again, but I'll do other treks. And this time, I'll be sure to pack extra underwear.

Un lugar en el mundo

Buenos Aires is beautiful, beautiful. Except there are too many foreigners here. Don't get me wrong, many of those are the right kinds of foreigners, the ones that travel to see, and not to be seen, or worse, be entertained. But if you know as little Spanish as I do, then it's a bit hard to find the natives amongst the whities. And whities there are a plenty. Apparently the Argentines did a better job than the Brazilians in their various ethnic cleansing attempts. That and the massive influx of Europeans over the decades has made Buenos Aires the land of beautiful (white) people (who tan well).

I've been taking Spanish lessons galore with my hottie Argentine teacher, Marial. Five times a week plus homework, done diligently and daily. Still, I can't always remember the simplest words when I must. Verbs, transitions, let alone the niceties. I am ever more appreciative of the trials of non-native English speakers in the former British colonies. For where street I find bus stop? Yeah, that's kind of like my Spanish. To boot, Argentine Spanish has some pronunciation quirks that make it difficult to understand basic words. Yo (I) is pronounced "Jo"; Calle (street) and Ella (she) are pronounced "Cashay" and "Ehsha." It's going to take longer than I've allotted to learn me a new tongue. Sic.

My biggest accomplishment so far has been figuring out the Guia T, a 192 page pocket sized bus guide. Everyday, I get onto a bus, praying it's the right one (even the familiar ones mutate their routes every so often), and flip madly through the Guia T maps as the bus rolls from Palermo to Cementerio Recoleta to San Martin to Congreso to Microcentro to San Telmo to La Boca to Belgrano to Caballito (Cabashito) to Boeda, craning to see the street names each time we turn, jumping off too early, too late, and sometimes, just in time.

Four days after I arrived in Argentina, I turned 35. Couchsurfer and old-friend-just-met, Emily, came over to my cutie pad in Palermo and cooked dinner with me (using my one working burner, talk about being minimal, I am perfecting the one dish meal). Then we went and met, oh, about 20 other couchsurfers, and went dancing all night.

Since then, I've walked all around the city, taken myriad photographs, eaten dozens of empanadas, drunk copa after copa of vino tinto, and of course, gone dancing with the gay boys til dawn. Things don't get going here til 1am. It's kind of insane. The only party that's early is the fabulous all percussion open air jam on Monday nights in Abasto. La Bomba de Tiempo is strictly from 8-10pm, and an all out dance party. Like straight out of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, replete with dreadlocked boys and girls with their sunburned faces and starry eyes.

Thursday, I spent a sunny afternoon sitting in Plaza de Mayo in front of Evita's Casa Rosada, drinking mate. Mate (pronounced mah-tay) is a bitterly strong tea served in a beautiful round carved wooden bowl and sipped through a silver straw. All around marched Las Madres, shouting, "Our children were assassinated by Latin America!" Las Madres are the white scarved mothers who have been protesting in this plaza every Thursday since 1977. That's when the Dirty War started to disappear the first of 30,000 sons and daughters of Argentina's left. Forget the left. Anyone who happened to be listed in the personal address book of an accused was rounded up and disappeared. Almost no one survived. One long strip ripped from the striation of society. God or magic forgive us. Our need to separate ourselves from each other knows no bounds.

La Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes was another brilliant highlight. It has a stunning collection of the western masters, but the gem is the second floor where contemporary Argentine artists strut their (wild) (whimsical) stuff.

I also enjoyed the collection at La Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), despite the fact that they kicked me out for not wearing shoes. As you may know, I'm not a fan of uncomfortable girl shoes, but I didn't realise that my Havaianas from Rio would give me blisters - they're rubber flipflops, for god's sake. By the time I got to the MALBA in the late afternoon after a full day of walking, I was unable to stand the rubbing of the straps against my broken skin. So I hooked the offending shoes to my bag and wandered around MALBA's blinking winking art pieces. I was warned once, re-shoed myself, but snuck them off again on a different floor. Unfortunately, the same security guard tracked me down and told me I should probably leave. Luckily, I'm not longwinded in museums, so I was pretty much done anyway.

There are so many times when Buenos Aires reminds me of Barcelona. The flower dripping balconies, the wrought balustrades, the sunlight sifting through the tree lined streets, the city of the dead (though I still like Barcelona's famous Montjuic cemetery best), the girls with perfect asses. Except (and this is what I do after Spanish class) you can sit in a cafe in Buenos Aires all afternoon drinking fine wine and eating cheesy pastries and leave a mere 15 pesos poorer (that's about $5). I'm not sure where else in the world this is possible.

Sure, going out out will dent your budget a bit more, but nothing compared to the other party cities of the world: Sao Paulo, New York, Paris, Bangkok. Certainly nothing next to London. And even though it's not a coastal city, like all my other favourite places in the world (Istanbul, Bombay, Barcelona, San Francisco, Rio), Buenos Aires has that laid back feel that cities by the sea have.

I spent one day wandering the gritty colourful vibrant neighbourhood of La Boca and another wandering San Telmo's famous Sunday market. In San Telmo, this meant I joined the 10,000 other collectors, tourists, locals, and expats walking down Defensa amidst hundreds of stalls selling anything and everything: calabash musical gourds, delicately woven scarves, painted magnets, chunky jewelry, and so on. And every few blocks, what else but a tango show? How do all the girls here have such perfect bodies? And I don't mean that flat tummied, over-toned muscle, bony collarboned look that Americans call fit. I mean smooth, curvy, busty, bottomy, strong. 100% luscious.

It's getting colder here. Winter approaches. I'm fleeing North, to warmer climes, like the good Bangladeshi I am. I'm going first to Iguazu Falls on the Argentine-Brazilian border, then to the alien landscape of the Bolivian salt flat, Salar de Uyuni, and finally, to that holy grail that both foreigners and locals claim is the one thing you must do in South America, if you must do only one thing: Peru's Machu Pichu and the Incan Trail. I'm afraid. I have to travel thousands of kilometres by bus, alone, carrying everything I own. I can't wait.

I want to figure out a way to come back to Buenos Aires. Live here for a year or two, stop speaking English to the Americans, start speaking Spanish to the locals (lovers), write a novel starring an Argentine, learn to change my aperture and shutter speed. As it were.

It's another world here, in the South of America. You won't know it til you've come. And once you do, as anyone will tell you, you won't want to leave.

8 Days in Rio

I'm leaving Rio de Janeiro in 8 hours. I'm sad. Even though the weather has been variably mediocre, and I can't afford Brazil much longer. Still, who wants to leave a city so absolutely undeniably magical and marvelous? Mountains, oceans, lagoons, rain forests, bays, beaches, clubs, dancing, shopping, culture, diversity, Rio's got it all, down to every last toned and tan Carioca (resident of Rio).

I've been having a blast, despite the fact that I bemoaned my lack of photographic equipment, oh about every 5 minutes. I have now been resupplied (thank you, Cynthia), and have about 30 measly, totally not illustrative enough photographs from Rio. And I have only 24 hours in Sao Paulo before I leave for Argentina to feverishly recoup that week's lost photos.

Sugar Loaf (click on the photo above) is the iconic two humped mountain in southwestern Rio that you can ascend via cable car. Hardik, you're right, sunset atop Sugar Loaf is where it's at. Also immense and picturesque is Cristo Redento, a 13 story high statue of Jesus perched on Corcovado Mountain, looming over Rio with an air of infinite patience. I just missed a train and got there after dusk, but o what a wild blue silver vision of the city at night. I wandered the jaw droppingly beautiful hilly neighbourhood of Santa Teresa, chockfull of frangipani trees, hibiscus, yellow alamanda, and house after house rivaling San Francisco's painted Victorians. Centro Cultural Banco do Brazil had a fabulous exhibition of photos of old Rio going back to the first half of the 1900's. And of course, a Brazil trip would be incomplete without a trip to the soccer stadium. I watched Rio's Vasco da Gama beat Sao Paulo's Bragantino 2-0, in a frenzy of singing, flag waving, and air punching. Totally fun.

Couchsurfing has been one of my defining experiences of Brazil. The CS scene here is booming. Hosts and surfers alike abound. Hard core CSers in Sao Paulo and Rio have handed over spare keys to their flats, taken me dancing, found me super cheap airline tickets, shown me around town, cooked me meal after meal, kissed me to sleep, and in general, proven that we humans are worthy after all, sometimes extraordinarily so. Thank you Sao Paulo and Rio CS city ambassadors, Vanessa and Davi, for hosting me, and other CSers: Alberto, Kem, Andrea, and Natalia for making my Brazil visit so damn fabulous.

Lastly, I would be amiss if I left out Rio's charged up sex life. This city is so in the mood. I refused sex more times than an exotic dancer. I got kissed every night, from 5 star hotel rooms to hostel dorms to bedrooms, on dance floors, in taxis, down hallways, in private, within crowds, by locals and foreigners. But I'm overwhelmed, missing exlove, wanting more. Don't get me wrong. It was grand fun. I'll be back. With camera and charged up libido in tow. It's Rio after all, its own myth and reality in one.

Strolling through Sampa

First, so you know where to send my birthday card:

S. Ruggieri 2733 P.B. "F"
Capital Federal (1425)
Buenos Aires
Argentina
(valid through April 30, 2008)

If you are taking the trouble to send something to Argentina (either snail mail or email, would you include a photo of yourself (or your child if you must, you breeders) that I can put on my fridge?

Second, Marko you were right, I'm not loving Sao Paulo. It's sort of a big mad ugly city in the same way Bangkok and Dhaka are big mad ugly cities, but somehow without the distinct aliveness (DAC) and warmth (BKK) and yummy spicy food (DAC <-!!!-> BKK) that both the latter are known for.

But I did top off my two weeks in Brazil by joining 4 crazy Sao Paulo kids and jumping out of a plane into the wide blue sky. Ok, so I've never really wanted to sky dive, but when you get off a plane from Rio, on 3 hours of sleep and kissing, your judgment's not so hot. And sure each second of the fall cost 6 reais (~$4), but it was totally worth it. Once. Haha.

And, I love my CouchSurfing host, Vanessa. She's a pouty mouthed curvy ridiculously generous Sampa native (that's what they call SP here), a 28 year old marketing manager with her own flat in the south of the city. As soon as I arrived, she gave me wine, salad, and cheese pastries and we talked about sex and vibrators for an hour. Do you know you can get animistically decorated totem shaped vibrators in Brazil? Nor did I. Maybe it's time to retire my blue Czech for a brown Brazilian (though I still miss my San Francisco rabbit).

I went for a run this morning around the lovely Parque do Ibirapuera. Since I haven't run in, oh, a month, I was heaving around the flowering jacaranda bushes, lurching past the man selling coconut water, pausing heavily every 2-10 minutes. Good times. I'm going again tomorrow damn it, but tell me, when does exercise get any easier?

I also checked out the bustling soy sauce pungent Japan Town in the Liberdade neighbourhood, and saw some screamingly good (and bad) modern art at the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo. My favourite was Maria Martin's (1894-1973, Rio) sculpture called "o impossivel" (1940) which showed the larger than life size figures of a man and woman sitting so close as to be merging, and their heads were wholly these frozen spikes of tentacles, like 2 sets of jaws full of long long teeth, or maybe like Medusa's serpent hair, reaching towards, but not yet touching, each other in aggressive hungry ness.

I almost never want to go to art museums. I almost never like what I see in them. I always emerge exhausted, my brain on fire.

I thought I'd be in Sao Paulo through the weekend, but I might bail sooner. There's a CouchSurfer who lives in old Rio who likes Gary Snyder's poetry, veg food, origami, and playing the tambourine. Sounds up my alley. I know, Nadiya, princess life.

Except I'll be in Rio camera less. Let me explain. No, let me sum up. (hee hee)

Two days before I left for Brazil, I was in Houston was holding a plate of wedding cake in one hand, and my Canon digital SLR in the other. I thought perhaps I could one handedly uncap and take a photo of the bride and groom dancing. Turns out I couldn't. I dropped both cake and camera, and cracked my amazing portrait lens. I was traumatised. The silver lining was that the lens was one of the cheaper ones (<$100) though it would take a couple of weeks to replace.

Then 2 days before I left Sao Paulo, at a raucous gay club called Aloca (I love gay clubs), my beautiful Nikon swivel lens automatic camera got nicked from my bag. This may or may not have been while I was at the back of the dark tunnel room voyeuring the silhouettes of boys coming in and having slam against the wall sex (hot). Oh, did I mention that Sao Paulo has the best clubbing scene? Every night, til dawn. I don't know how they do it.

I'm trying to be zen about the photographic losses, but I no longer have pictures of Sao Paulo and I'm too demoralised to get a disposable for Rio. $450 to replace and ship everything (thank you, Cynthia, for coming to Rio next weekend and supplying me with camera equipment).

Maybe someone is trying to tell me to write instead of photograph. Ha.

Happy birthday to Shruti, Nellie, Alden, Lorena, Sharlene, Valerie, Ed, and Alan, my fellow April babies.

PS: I have new fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography publications in the Daily Star, the Farallon Review, Farafina, Schmap Guidebooks, and Ego Magazine: olivewitch.com/pubs.html

Transitions

It's Saturday, and I'm drunk every hour under the strident sun. The wind feels like an old lover. One who knows how to hold you so you know where you stand. Belize is slow. Even as my five days here disappear into the thick wet air. There's still mud on me from last night. I haven't washed well. We're all loathe because the tap water smells like sulphur. Who wants to brush her teeth with rotten egg toothpaste? Not me. I'd rather jump into the green blue sea.

We're here because Hardik is turning 7 leap years old. We're celebrating the wacky silly intense over-analytical thoughtful careless curious lazy inspiring boy that he is. That and he rented a mansion on the beach in Belize and invited 7 of his friends to come if we wished. We wished.

Last night, we raced our golf carts back from dinner. In a hasty about turn, Peter backed our golf cart into a well deep hole. Angela and I promptly leapt off the back of the golf cart to avoid drowning in mud although at that point, we were spattered well and good. Then, like aspiring Survivor candidates, we attempted to haul our golf cart out of the hole and not die while we were at it. We couldn't stop laughing.

It's Sunday and I'm sitting on a wide veranda watching the rain fall into the sea. I'm wearing a "you better Belize it!" tanktop and mini skirt and drinking whiskey at noon. I miss Bangladesh, but I wouldn't miss this for the world. I wouldn't miss any of it. Not the velvet slippery sting ray I held in my arms this morning while snorkeling. Not the technicolour coral reefs. Not the mac and cheese with green habanero sauce I cooked everyone for lunch (marking the first time I've used a stove in almost 2 years). Not sleeping beside Alan holding hands. No, I'm loving every quickslow moment.

It's Monday, and I'm sad in San Francisco. Even though I see my Jules and kiss her ever more beautiful Audren every day. I'm having after shocks of leaving Dhaka. I'm in between places, although where I am is perfect too. I keep coming back to my favourite city in the world, and then leaving. Each time I come to California, I can feel myself unwind. It's easy here. So utterly beautiful. And my friends here have wider wale (if you can organise people into corduroy patterns). You can be a writer and a surfer. You can be an artist and a programmer. You can be a doctor and a raver. You can be a detective and a mother. You can be dark and happy. You can be nothing and for as long as you want.

Every time I talk to friends who are doing all the right things, selling her book, buying his house, having their baby, earning that promotion, I second guess myself. Should I be sitting in one place writing furiously? Will I look back at my 30's and think, fuck, I should have had that baby, gotten hitched, written 3 more novels, made a mint, saved money, paid back my parents, bought that flat, gone pro? Or will I look at my years of wandering with satisfaction even if it means I'm penniless, unpublished, and partnerless? Not that my 30's are barely half done yet. I've done more with less time. And anyway, I still have, oh, 4 years to birth that blasted baby, and after that, there's years of adoption joy. If I don't kill this biologically ticking baby urge first. Donors anyone? The darker skinned, the better. The lighter eyed, the better. Fuck the Mensa sperm bank. I want my curly haired bastard love child to look good in the golden hour. I have my useless principles, after all.

Speaking of futile, I recently gave my favourite cunning linguist a list of my pipe dreams. I want to see the rain forests of Costa Rica. I want to stay in the live-work farms in Guatemala. I want to live in Bombay for a year. I want to go back to Barcelona. I want to learn tango and Spanish in Argentina. Hindi in Delhi. Graphic design in America. French in West Africa. Bangla in Dhaka. I want to move to San Francisco and see if he and I would be an item bomb (that's a Bombay phrase for something fabulous). If we might engender a simultaneous dual-orgasmic conception of commitment.

Because we never understand each other, and he's far too polite to impose on my brash self, it might not be clear to him (or anyone I've been with in recent years) that all of that (me) is malleable. Just a thought to start. I could just as easily (and joyously) want to learn Mandarin. Raise a child in Berlin. Study physics. Be a housewife (with artistic benefits). Plant a garden. There are so many ways to be happy. The world is wide.

It's Tuesday, and I'm driving to a WalMart. In Texas. Wearing pink. I don't know me anymore. Do you? I hate driving when I'm sleepy. The road becomes a video game and I feel like I'm on a trip. The bad kind. Plus it's the five year anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq and the public radio and Democracy Now is airing testimony by American soldiers against the war. I'm listening to marines, to foot soldiers, to bombers, to mortar men, to pilots, telling me, one by one, in heart breaking, distinctly American dialect and accent, about how the war has come home with them, how it might never leave, how they and we, mustn't stay silent.

I'm in the Lone Star state to help an old family friend plan his wedding in 3 weeks flat. Let me explain why someone like me who hates weddings and is ferociously suspicious of the institution of marriage, would drop everything (specifically, a month in Costa Rica) to help plan a wedding, in Houston of all places.

I was conceived in Libya. It was in Tripoli that my parents met the Ullahs and their 4 truly good, ultra smart and sweet children. Soon after Libya, the Ullahs moved to Zaria, in the north of Nigeria. My parents went to Nsukka, in the south, my mother holding her growing belly, her first child. In April 1973, my mother was due. She had just moved to a new country and knew no one. Dr. Ullah - I call him Nana (grandfather) - was abroad. So the rest of the Ullahs piled into their Peugeot 504, and their eldest son, Kismet Mama, then 13 and bearing a fake Bangladeshi license, drove 900 kilometres, through unknown, and sometimes unbuilt roads, down the length of Nigeria. So that when I was born under the god of war in Enugu Teaching Hospital, I would forever have a second set of grandparents and uncles and aunts, possibly closer to me than blood.

Thus when their youngest son, my "uncle" Nasr Mama, asked me to come help him plan his wedding, I made a decision within hours. Especially since their family is still reeling from Nana's death just a few months ago. One week later (I couldn't skip Belize:), instead of learning Spanish and wandering around San Jose, I am stuffing little bags with candy, buying candles and candid cameras, choosing flowers and cakes, arranging for hotels, updating the wedding website, addressing and mailing invitations, and more.

And then there's the joy of endlessly discussing boys and kissing with my adorable 15 year old cousin. Of jogging around the Woodlands and happening onto a rippling lake in the middle of sunlight and nowhere. Of seeing Snigdha Khala, who calls me her first baby because I'm the first baby she ever met, and who is responsible for engendering my ideas about beauty, and eventually art. She was the one who persuaded me to wear my glasses by making me understand that seeing is more important than being seen.

It's Wednesday and I am reading an email from my mother about Muslim speed dating in Houston. Yes, I went, even though my brother said I'd be disinherited (temporarily) if I did. My sister, on the other hand, begged and pleaded that I go and write about it. I'm still processing that experience and so you'll have to wait to get my take on it. I will tell you that I find it fascinating to watch the masses haul themselves into the 20th century. Some into the 19th, like the man who told me he was looking for a housewife because that was the natural order of things. I asked him if he might stay home and cook and clean and take care of the kids while his wife worked. He literally got up and walked away. Hilarious. Though it's unclear who was more offended between the two of us.

It's Thursday, and I'm lost in New York City. 25,000 frequent flier miles earned me a long weekend with old friends to drink chilled vodka, eat fancy salads, dance all night. Every time I come here, I relearn the subway map, haul my bags from house to house, borrow underwear and deodorant and toothbrushes (because my stuff is never in the place I crash each night), whisper confidences in the dark, touch, fall asleep. You know what it's like to be with someone who's known you forever. You can't escape whatever stereotypes they have of you, but you can lounge unwashed on their couch all day, accompany each other on little errands, be moody or over the top. I'm hoping this is my thank you taste before moving here in the fall, after having blown all my money in Brazil, Argentina, and London. Because that's when you're supposed to move to New York, right? Broke and beatific. That's me. On a Friday. In love.

My third winter in Dhaka begins

I've been told a few times that my blogs are very different from my photographs. My photographs have sometimes been described as unjudgmental, intimate, located. On the other hand, my writing appears to have very little to with physical geography, despite purporting to be part of a travel blog. I'm not sure why that is, other than my obsession with the geography of personality which perhaps comes out more readily in my writing than in my photography.

Despite what I told the Fulbright committee in my personal statement, I think I'm not writing about place at all. I'm more interested in emotion, in feeling. Because I gypsy about so, I may not even know anything about place at all. I think I may know how to write about it, but I want to talk about other things. Like sex. Like touching. Like feeling.

Someone told me recently that life wasn't about love. It was about justice. I was crushed at the thought. Was my entire creative energy funneling into a place that didn't matter? Would I be known as that writer who wrote about the surface of things, the love bits, lala chick lit? Was I wrong to imagine that justice, power, right, all of it, was swallowed by love, by skin? How I saw life clarified, dissolved, explained in kissing?

See there, I go again.

Ok, some physical geography. I'll tell you about one of my favourite parts of Dhaka: North Badda. There's a stretch of road I have walked once and driven through several times. There are stores selling all the usual conveniences: biscuits, sugar, paan, batteries, phone cards, cigarettes, flowers, fruit, soda, shingaras, sweets, and so on. But most of the stores here stock industrial items. Rubber tires, lengths of reluctantly flexible wire, and my favourite: the longest stretches of bamboo. These are stacked in massive piles, stretching from the road, into the stores, through the roofs, up into the sky, metres and metres of jointed wood, and at sunset when the light comes down in a slow flame, the bamboo transforms into molten spires.

It's cooling in Dhaka. Outside, the air is lighter, drier. Winter vegetables are coming into season in all their tremendous varieties and tastes. People are rebuilding their lives after the cyclone. Many here I've spoken to have relatives devastated by the recent storm. Altaf Bhai, Sayeef Uncle's driver, is struggling to raise 60,000 taka to rebuild his family home and purchase the chickens and goats that were killed. Jahangir Bhai is Babu Mama's driver, who I mentioned in this blog post about language. On a recent drive to Shantinagar, he told me his house in the village sat down. I thought perhaps I was not understanding his Bangla. He repeated, our house lay down on the ground. I imagined a shaggy straw house sleeping on its side. So it didn't break, I asked still confused. No, but we have to make it stand up again. Of course.

I have $1100 that my friends have given me to distribute. Part of it will go to Shajada Bhai whose house was destroyed and grandmother killed. Part to Altaf Bhai. Part to Jahangir Bhai. Part to Miron Bhai whose house was more inland and so just their roof and crops were damaged. I have to keep talking, asking questions, taking photographs, finding out more. There is so much to know.

This summer, I finished a first draft of my second book, the Lovers and the Leavers. I've given it to a few readers and am awaiting feedback so I can start a rewrite. I have 3 months more in Bangladesh. In that time, I want to finish a second draft of L&L. I want to hire a Bangla tutor to tutor me regularly so I can feel like I've internalised the Bangla I've relearned this past year and half. I want to have my second exhibition at Alliance Francaise Dhaka go off like a bang this coming January. And I want to teach a short creative writing workshop to encourage English writing in Bangladesh.

Then I think I am leaving. Even though when I'm outside, I cannot stop looking, taking photographs, thinking of stories. Even though when I'm inside, I'm overwhelmed by love from my cousins, my aunts and uncles, my nieces and nephews, my extended grandparents. I have been given the gift of understanding why I came here while I'm still here. We don't always have that luxury. Sometimes the realisation comes long after we're gone. I know why I came to Bangladesh. It was so I'd come to know my family, so I'd start to undermine my disbelief about blood being thicker than water.

So why am I leaving? A lack of a dating scene (read: my relentless libido on the prowl); a lack of a writing community (read: my literary learning foiled); a lack of (platonic) social network (read: I have no friends here, save a couple, despite more than a year); chafing at the constriction (read: I want to be able to walk alone at midnight); missing my friends and immediate family (read: I need my old relationships); wishing to publicise my writing and photography (read: I am most likely moving to NYC by 2009 or earlier); wanderlust (read: Costa Rica and Argentina, vengo).

But until then, I'm here. Sourcing delight from every exotic, erotic, elegant, eleventh hour angle of Bangladesh.

Of Money and Many Armed Goddesses

First: please considering donating something (anything) for Cyclone Sidr relief. You can also paypal me something (anything) and I will do my level best to make sure your (and my) money goes to someone who needs it. Thank you, beautiful people, who have already sent me over $1000 to this end...

Bhutan Redacted
On my last night in Bhutan, I told myself that if the next morning dawned bright and bushy tailed (what a strange expression), I'd postpone my flight back to Dhaka and go climb the Tiger's Nest. Taksin is one of the most famous monasteries in Bhutan. It's perched on the edge of a cliff so precariously that it's said to be held there by the hairs of angels. I had been dying to see it but most of my days in Bhutan had been rainy (ie muddy) and I hadn't wanted to chance slipping off a mountain (not that falling off the Himalayas would be a bad way to go, haha).

The next morning was wintry clear and I went off happily to the airport to change my flight. I had already changed it once before getting to Bhutan and the Druk Air people in Delhi had been more than accommodating. In Paro, they were no less friendly, and proceeded to book me on the next flight back to Dhaka which was 3 days hence.

True I only had 2000 rupees ($50) left, but if I could manage to spend only 500 rupees a night on lodging (as I had so far), and eat bananas and cheese momos and energy bars for 3 days, then I'd be fine. Recall from my last post that Bhutan has takins galore, but not a one ATM.

While I waited for my ticket to be stamped, the sun rose behind Druk Air's one hangar, and the clouds contracted against the sky. A Bangladeshi guy started flirting with me. He had floppy hair and an earnest manner. He and his two friends were orange farmers, in Bhutan on holiday. But why, he asked, was I staying on in Bhutan? Paro was boring - come back to Bangladesh with them! I stared at him, wondering how to explain I never get bored, especially when the outside is so primally present. Meanwhile, the station manager handed me back my ticket and said, that'll be 1000 rupees for the change fee. There's a fee?! I asked in shock. Yes, he said, because you're making a change on the day of your flight.

My stomach contracted. Paying the fee would leave me with only 1000 rupees ($25), not even enough for 3 nights lodging, let alone food and taxis. None of the cheapie hotels I'd stayed in took credit cards. The souvenir shops took only Visa, if anything, and I only had Mastercards. For once in my life, I had plenty of money in my bank account, but there was no way to get to it. Was it hopeless? Should I just bail and go back to Bangladesh? The orange farmer echoed my thought aloud, go back!

I took a deep breath and said to the orange farmer, No, I'm going to stay in Bhutan, but do you have 1000 rupees I can borrow?

Now it was his turn to stare. Of course because he had chatted me up, he was hard pressed to refuse. Between the 3 of them, they scrounged up 800 rupees. I gave them my business card and all the Bangladeshi taka I had (it is non-convertible currency abroad and thus was useless to me at that point). I took their business cards, and promised to pay them back as soon as I got back. Then I hitchhiked out of the airport.

Taksin was fabulous. I didn't do the last stretch of the hike which involved scaling a crazy gorge, but the rest of the hike up the mountain was sunny and stunning. On the way back, I found an old log to sit on and started writing in my notebook. A cutie Bhutanese family from Thimpu stopped to chat. Despite our language barrier, Sonam Yuden, Sonam Pelzon, Nima Penjor, Wangel, and I got along just fine. They took me to a 1000 year old monastery near by and fed me a picnic lunch that made my scalp sweat from the spiciness (but it was super yummy).

Then they drove me to Thimpu and insisted I stay with them a night. I went on another hike just outside Thimpu, an easy-ish hour hike up to the 400 year old Tango Monastery. After being blessed by the reincarnation of the original abbot and eating a hot fresh meal with some UNICEFers, I met a Buddhist religious art scholar, John, who took me to dinner and let me sleep in his spare bedroom. John also took me on a very special day time tour of Thimpu Dzong where the king's offices are, a lovely nunnery, and a stupendous 5 hour roadtrip through Haa and the highest mountainable road in Bhutan (almost 4000 metres high, above the tree line).

When I got to Paro Airport three days later, I still had the orange farmer's 800 rupees and then some. And an unforgettable tail end to my Bhutan adventure. Paul Coelho was right. If you really want something, the universe entire conspires that you get it.

Worshipping the Warrior Woman

My other SAARC joy was visiting Kolkata during Durga Puja. This is THE biggest festival in Bengal and Kolkata goes crazy for it. The entire city is strung with lights, and thousands of pandals (temporary temples) are constructed with all sorts of creative materials. In recent years, themed pandals (like the Harry Potter pandal in Salt Lake) have become popular, but I still like the traditional pandals best which rely on wild arty fabrications made of jute, bamboo, wood, cardboard, and so on.

Although Durga Puja has a religious foundation, it's more like a carnival, and people from all walks of life and dogma come to celebrate. And what's not to love about an exquisitely beautiful, curly raven haired, ten armed female warrior goddess?

To top off the miscellany, here's a link to photos from my November jaunt through the East Coast to see my beautiful friends and family.

Alone in Bhutan

Population: 634,982
# of tourists in 2005: 13,600
Forest cover: 72.5%
% pop. involved in agriculture: 69%
% of land used of agriculture: 7.8%
# of languages: 19
Literacy rate: 69% (male), 51% (female)
Year Bhutan will hold its first democratic election: 2008
Hottest of the 5 kings of Bhutan (IMHO): Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck
# of monks: 550
# of lay (married) monks: 15,000
% of rural land ownership by women: 60%
% of urban property and business owned by women: 45%
Dry day: Tuesday
Local liquor: ara
Traditional dress: gho (male), kira (women)
% of plant species found in Bhutan: 50%
% of vertebrates: 42%
% of earth's space: 2.5%
% of Bhutanese who declare themselves happy: 96%

Choki is blowing smoke out the window. Her rail thin frame folds and unfolds as she pushes open the painted wooden shutters common to every Bhutanese house. Outside, it's raining as it has been for hours, for days. The monsoons are flooding the rivers here, high up in the Himalayas. I see the waters of the Wang Chhu River rising every day and of course it's only time til it reaches Bangladesh. Only, it's hard to think about Bangladesh while in Bhutan. Actually, it's hard to imagine that anywhere else exists when you're in this magic forgotten place. The disconnect starts as soon as the descent. The plane must navigate verdant mountain ranges, crisscrossing, u-turning, diving, swooping, and finally finding that one narrow patch of runway, the only runway in the entire Land of the Thunder Dragon.

Enter Paro and the period-piece feeling intensifies. The men stand around in their ghos, a knee length pleated tunic of sorts, the women in their plain or patterned kiras and short jackets. The main road is flanked by colourfully painted houses and there are oh, about two other streets. No matter where you are, you see mountains looming above you. Not like the occasional glimpses you get in Vancouver. Or like the sea that winks at you only from certain streets in San Francisco or Barcelona. Here, in Paro, you cannot forget where you are.

And as the young will tell you, where you aren't. In 1999, satellite TV was allowed into Bhutan and everything went to hell. Or at least that's how some people see it. Rinchen manages a hotel in Thimpu which is a precarious two hour drive from Paro. He thinks that kids in Bhutan are somehow more susceptible to the influences of Western media, that the rate of change, or at least the desire for change, since 1999, is out of proportion. I cannot convince him that kids everywhere, not just in Bhutan, are bowing to that blue jeaned cultural overlord, the West.

Choki wants to go to America. She likes her high heeled boots and trendy SoHo-ish wear. She wants to improve her English, add it to the Dzongkha, Nepali, and Hindi that she already knows fluently. Every day after she comes back from work, she eagerly takes off her kira (all government employees must wear traditional Bhutanese wear) and slides into pencil thin jeans and a slinky cardigan. She calls her boyfriend. She has a smoke. She eats 2 plates of red rice and an ulcerally spicy dish of ema datse (chillies with cheese). She has a nap.

Choki locks the door of her bedroom, like any good teenager would when she's afraid her father might come in and catch her doing something bad. Above her desk is a massive poster of Avril Lavigne. Above her bed is an equally life size one of Britney Spears. Say what you will, but when the topic comes up, I can honestly echo her enthusiasm. Black nail polish and narrow high cheekbones on one hand. Rounded babyface sexuality on the other. What's not to love? I love how cultural (and orientation) divides can be so deep that you can talk about entirely different things at once and no one need stumble.

It's a different kind of alone in Bhutan. One where there is no chance to pierce it. I have no phone, no regular access to email. I find my $10/night hotels by word of mouth. I walk in with everything I own. I sign nothing. I pay cash. I walk out. No trace.

In Dhaka, I always have the feeling that I'm being watched, and that I should be doing more. Like finding a husband. Why not then? It's a question I've faced countless times all over Asia. Why aren't you married? It's as if I made a decision about it and that was that. Fit faht. Who wouldn't be lonely if one were constantly reminded about an alternate lifestyle, albeit one I have no interest in participating in (for now). It's gotten so that I almost think they're right. Until I remember how happy I am.

I'm even happier in Bhutan. I go entire days without having a single conversation. Then I spend entire days with people I meet randomly and listen to their stories, to their dreamings. It makes me think more about writing, about photography, about art, about life. It makes me see things. It makes me go to bed early.

Every morning, I wake up in a strange hotel room. I do my yoga. I shower. Then I go walking for 8 hours. Sometimes I don't eat all day. I almost never sit. There is too much to absorb. I have to do it standing, my camera in one hand, my heart in the other. Bhutan is so utterly simple and gorgeous. Almost no one I've met uses email. They all speak of the villages they've come from. They deeply love their king. They believe in their religion. They know their history. Rinchen has photos of each of the kings saved on his phone. Choki knows how many ngultrum a taxi would charge to go from Paro to her birthplace. Tshering can explain the intricacies of Buddhist philosophy and how his art addresses and adapts it.

I come back to my hotel every evening exhausted. I momentarily wonder where the lovers are when you need a back massage. I shower again. I play music on my little portable speakers. I forget the lovers. I dance.

Choki doesn't like to dance. The first and only time she's ever been to a dance club, she went with her cousin brothers and was exceedingly uncomfortable. Finally one of her cousins pulled her on the dance floor and she actually had fun. Don't you want to go again, I ask her hopefully. Club K on the main drag in Paro has no cover for ladies on Wednesdays. It's Wednesday. No, Choki says with cheery confidence.

Rinchen doesn't like clubs either. I ask him about Space 34, a club in Thimpu listed in my Lonely Planet guide as 'cosy and thumping.' He says it's a bad place full of drunk Bhutanese who will harass me. I wonder. It costs up to $250/day for foreigners to visit Bhutan, and they must be part of a tour group. Neither rule applies to SAARC country citizens. Naturally, this has limited tourist visits to the well-heeled, to tour groups, and to brown families from neighbouring countries. But single women? Not so much. SAARC or otherwise. So how have Bhutanese men had the opportunity to build up their molesting skills?

Still, I decide to skip Space 34 and write this instead. It's raining anyway, and I'm dangerously low on money, and maybe it is actually safer this way, though I always hate to give in to that concern.

In all my wanderings, the Bhutanese have scarcely given me a second glance, despite my sari skirts and kamises and dhopattas tied over one shoulder. But the Bangali labourers stop and stare open mouthed. Note, upon further rsearch, the labourers in Bhutan are West Bengali, not Bangladeshi as I had thought. Bangalis are everywhere. In Bhutan, among other things, we are painstakingly carving roads into the mountains. On Sunday, which is their holiday, Thimpu looks like brown town as my people hit the streets, markets, and bars in droves. These men (and sometimes women) even turn around as I pass, like we're in some B movie. The silence is broken only when they whisper torrid and wondering Bangla. It happens at least twice a day, and I don't even have green, blue, or blonde hair. Just plain black, for now.

I haven't figured out how best to react. Sometimes I pre-empt their murmurs by greeting them jauntily in Bangla as I walk past. Mostly I ignore them. I should strike up a conversation, because I desperately want to speak to them. But I'm afraid that we will have no common ground, despite the fact that there are very few people with whom I am not able to sustain a conversation. I even have my questions ready. I want to know how they got here, what it looks like to them, how far away the past is, how looms the future. Will it be amidst these mountains? Or back home? Or somewhere else altogether? I'm also afraid that they will write me off before we even begin. Some Western wanderer posing as a Bangladeshi in Bhutan. Or worse, a Bangladeshi posing as a Westerner. Or worst of all, the luckiest alone girl in the world. Because I am.

Letter from Delhi

I never wanted to visit Delhi. I know it sounds brash, but it’s true. I had heard so many mixed reviews over the years. The snobby new money-ness, the heat, the concrete, the demolished grandeur, the lost culture. Sure it's got kickass bookstores (I miss browsing well stocked bookstores), and has been a centre of power for, oh, 1000+ years. However, history has never been my strongest suite, and so I kept returning to Bombay, my city of Indian dreams.

Then I got an offer I couldn’t refuse. Old friends of my family who have been living in Delhi for decades invited me to visit, and I thought, well, it is rather close to Agra and one certain wonder of the world, and maybe I could even decide for myself what I thought about the erstwhile city of Djinns.

In my magic fashion, I landed up in the lap of luxury. My hosts, Mona Aunty and Sagar Uncle, welcomed me like the daughter they never had. Ensconced in Delhi’s Bong neighbourhood, Chitaranjan Park, I was thoroughly pampered from day one: my own room and bath, a cook who indulged my love of fish and vegetables, cold juice every morning, and Delhi at my doorstep. I was instructed not to travel alone at night unless in a cab, and otherwise was left to my own devices, unless I requested theirs. My ideal set up.

Within four days I had seen more monuments, ruins, temples, and other historical sights than I even realised existed in this city (note my aforementioned poor grasp of history). The towering and intricate Qutub Minar, India Gate flocked to by families, the serene almost alien-like Bahai Temple, the imposing Red Fort, Jama Masjid and its bird’s eye views of the city, the visually spectacular Humayun’s Tomb, and the secret step-well ruin of Ugrasen Ki Baolo.

Add to all this a blinding afternoon wandering the choked streets of Chadni Chowk, sweating my way through the circular mazes under and over Connaught Place, and perusing the hot little lanes in Haus Kauz, Khan Market, Dilli Haat, and Greater Kailesh. Oh and did I mention the heat? It’s hot in Delhi in the summer. Murderously so. Each day, I step outside, freshly showered, and feel I shouldn’t haven’t bothered because I am instantly drenched in sweat.

Within a week, I had additionally feasted my eyes on the un-hypeable Taj Mahal and the equally jaw dropping abandoned city of Fatehpur Sikri. I have hundreds of photos from that two-day trip, many of which are poor replicas of the postcards being hawked constantly all over Agra. Enough has been written about how cool the Taj is (and it so is) so I’ll just say this: my first good view of the Taj was from the rear. There’s a precisely tended midnight garden across the Yamuna called, naturally, Mahtab Bagh. From here, you get an unobstructed wide angle view of Shah Jahan’s seminal labour of love. As the sun moved across the marble and sandstone, the entire vision pulsated with the light, and my body gave itself over, prickling with the fabulousness.

It’s been 10 days now, and I’ve participated in a poetry open mic, hung out with dozens of different writers, artists, and scholars, and met editors from five major publishing houses. I’ve also gone to six dinner parties and taken about 700 photographs.

I think I like Delhi. It’s a little too mean, way too hot, concrete, spread out, inconsistent, aggressive. People speak Hindi and it’s hard to get by when you don’t know the language at all, like me. People revere Urdu and I have to stay my automatic knee jerk reaction. Old Delhi is lost, taken over by scrabbling shopkeepers and rabid touts. The fabled architecture is crumbling, visible only in bits and crumbling pieces.

Yet still, I think I like Delhi. It has a tangible mash of religions and cultures that rivals Bangalore’s diversity. I love all the various greetings and farewells and wishes and ornaments and head gear and scripts that I’ve seen and heard over the past few days. They could be derived from any one of India’s countless cliques. The city is hiding some forgotten magic, an oldness still visible under the newness. And I sense a certain nostalgia behind the skyscraping commercialism. I’ve always been a sucker for nostalgia.

Of course, it’s the people I’ve met that have really made the difference. There’s the writer and mother whose elegant body language and even more graceful prose are hard to look away from. Then there’s the curious and kind professor who divides her year between New Haven and New Delhi. Many more of the people I’ve met have moved here from other parts. A gorgeously dark skinned Bombayite who followed her boyfriend here and is now starting up a rebel printing press. A Goan Anglo Malayali architect philosopher who showed me Old Delhi through his intellectual lens for landscape. The Marwari Bengali researchers who traveled to Agra with me and played Scrabble with the most wicked backdrop of the Taj Mahal before us. An American poet who teaches school children and writes poems about the city in heat. And my favourite guide, a wanderer of many many Indian cities, whose irrepressible love for Delhi has led him to start a Ph.D. on her medieval treasures.

Many in this group of transplants had a similar refrain about first moving to Delhi. They hated it. Now they can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s true the Bombayite longs for the safety her city offers. The Kolkattan bemoans the striated society of Delhi. The Keralite misses the lushy green landscape of the deep South. But they’re here to stay anyway. Maybe I am too.

My late summer India albums including Delhi, the Taj, Fatehpur Sikri, and Kolkata

I spy Kolkata in my wicked eye

Host International is a seedy hotel on VIP road, minutes from Kolkata Airport. There's a restaurant downstairs with a preponderance of air conditioning units, but the lounge on the top floor is the place to hang. Styled like an old time cigar bar, complete with smoky lights and smokier air, the chairs are smoothly upholstered and tucked away into dark corners. Perfect for underhanded acts of love or lechery or loquaciousness.

So I take back my rants about the Americans. Well, some of them anyway. There was something I'd been missing sorely. Talking normally about relationships, love, desire, ambition, sex, families, racism, culture, misogyny, travel, disconnection, home. But not politics. You see, in Bangladesh, most every conversation seems to have a veneer of religion, corruption, oppression, ignorance, and of course politics. Bangladeshis are crazy about politics. The most downtrodden hapless citizen here will have a reasoned political stance. It's amazing. Sometimes ridiculous. A fraction of this mania would transform America (in a good way).

My Bangla is finally unstuck enough to argue with Daimond about why it's ridiculous to posit a separate heaven for Muslims and only one path to the light. I now have the audacity to imagine that my experience and memories give me the right to claim that not only were burkas not always the norm but they might not even be the clothes of the righteous.

However, these are not the conversations I'm interested in having. I want to start somewhere different. Where we agree that the house of God or magic has more than one entry, and the doors and windows we choose to open or close, create or destroy are more than a simple moral binary.

I have a vicious fierce longing for old old friends. Even the kinds I've only just met because I've been asked to pick them up at the airport. Sometimes, if you're very lucky, your very first conversation with someone can begin on the run, well past the "So, what do you do?" phase, straight into realising that even though you grew up in Nigeria in a Bangladeshi family or in North Dakota in an Indian family or in Trinidad in a British family or in New York in a Pakistani family or in Miami in a Cuban family, you all know the taste of Coca Cola with spicy food. (so fucking good)

Durba, Rajya, Jessica, and I were an instant clan. No matter that I had only met them hours before and might never see them again after Durba's wedding. Maybe that was why even. Either way, our first adventure together was a wholly memorable and bonding one. It was in pursuit of whiskey, my new favourite toxin of choice (thank you, Camalo). A dry wedding in Bangladesh was par for the course, but India? We thought not.

Further down VIP road is an intersection where we could deal with the dryness. At least that's what the waiter in the smoky bar upstairs told us. And the name of the liquor store? Well, Didi, he hesitated, these are not the sorts of places that have names...

At said intersection, we dismounted amidst the usual cacophany of cars, cycles, rickshaws, auto rickshaws, trucks, stray animals, handpulled carts, pedestrians, fruit sellers, paan-wallahs, battery stores, dhabas, flower boys, gawkers, hustlers, hasslers, what have you.

We decided to ask around, and to target men. They'd be more likely to know and tell, right? After a few blank and even passive-aggressive responses, we were on the verge of giving up, when we got the answer. You see the reason we were being foiled was we weren't asking young enough men. The older men probably knew perfectly well that just around the corner, past those shops, at the end of the tiny alley, below the torn Bacardi poster, was our holy(ish) grain, but they weren't telling us so. But the young rickshawallah, who hadn't had enough time to build up his wall of moral judgement, was more than happy to point the way.

It was a dingy dark (unnamed) store with a constant stream of men in various acts of entering, exiting, and loitering. A cage like grill separated us from the goods. Three dust lined shelves. One brand of whiskey. One brand of vodka. I asked for a bottle of each and shelled out a whopping 100 rupees ($2.50).

In the meantime, the usual curiosity my moss-haired self inspires had been aroused. Was I a guide? No, these were my friends and we had all come from different countries for a wedding. When I explained that I was from Bangladesh, they rushed off and brought a fellow from the back, hailing from Barisal, Bangladesh, sporting a huge shy smile.

During all this time, despite the heavy foot traffic, no one had bought a single bottle of whiskey or vodka. They were all traipsing in with empty bottles, chucking them through the grill and buying new bottles filled with a third kind of liquor. What was it? I asked. Country spirit, they replied. And how was it? Darun! they cried. Amazing! First class! Unmatched! Naturally there was only one thing to do. Fork over 43 rupees (about $1) and add "Bangla Modh" to our collection.

The ride from Kolkata Airport to Shyam Nagar takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 1.5 hours. More than enough time to sample our hard won goods. Bangla Modh was first on the list. I warned my new old friends that just recently a score of people had died or gone blind from drinking contaminated alcohol in Dhaka. So they would have to let me know if they started experiencing blurred vision or dysentery like symptoms. And pray, what would I do, they (quite rightly) sceptically asked. I'll stick my finger down your throat to make you puke. And if that doesn't work, I'll find the nearest hospital. Undeterred, they had only one more request. I drink first. Fair enough, no?

The top of the Bangla Modh bottle twisted off cleanly in a manner that destroyed the cap and disallowed resealing the bottle. Hm... Ok, we'll just have to finish it then, I told them as I took the first sip. They agreed cheerfully, watching me carefully.

So, no, it wasn't like gasoline on fire (i.e. Everclear shooters in flaming glasses, thank you, Misha, for that brainkilling idea). It wasn't like tequila shots with drops of tabasco sauce (I still can't drink straight tequila easily, 15 years later). Not like vodka frozen into lemon jello (ok, so those are just good, admit it). Bangla Modh was kind of like sake. Maybe even less alcoholic. And finishing a bottle split amongst 5 healthy Americans was easy as pie. Not one guest was fall down drunk at the wedding either.

I found out later that this darun! country spirit is indeed some kind of rice based liquor, and was *the* alcohol of choice when my parents' generation was growing up. But in those days, a bottle cost 3 rupees, and the top was sealed with a cork and lead. One broke the lead to get to the cork and invariably ended up with lead bits inside the bottle. So the liquor had to be strained through a hanky into a glass. Add water, and a slice of lime, and pronto, an afternoon well spent.

Ok, enough about that. More about the crazy wedding for which I went to India (by bus! with Jogu Uncle! from Dhaka). I met Rupa in Dhaka. She is a biostatistics professor in Minnesota, a fellow Fulbrighter in Bangladesh, and my wonderfully warm friend. She had invited me to the wedding of her gorgeous daughter, Durba, in her home town of Shyam Nagar, India. I was more than eager to attend.

First interesting fact: Rupa is a converted Christian. Durba perhaps agnostic-ish. Durba's groom to be, Jewish. The wedding? An all day affair on an auspicious Wednesday, i.e. full on Hindu. Sometimes, everything comes back to the grandmother. Especially if said matriarch is terrorisingly Brahmin. Ha.

Second interesting fact: bride cum cutie tree, Durba is 5'1. Groom cum wedding cake, Jeremy is 6'5. I want to know how the naughty bits fit.

Third interesting fact: The Hindu Holud (turmeric) ceremony has both bride and groom stamping on little clay cups and crushing them under their feet (I think this means the devil can't enter their house of love) which sounds curiously like the Jewish custom of stamping on glasses and crushing them.

Three days of being overfed fabulously good Bengali food, and I never wanted to leave Shyam Nagar. But I did, and had just as much of a blast in Kolkata proper. The highlight was meeting Madhurima. Over 2 decades ago, the Mukhopadhyays used to live in Nsukka, Nigeria, where I grew up. The son, Ayon, was my little brother Maher's best friend. They were 6. Madhurima was 3. I was 13. The Hoques went off to America. The Mukhopadhyays (back) to India. Fast forward 21 years. Ayon is married and living in the States. Madhurima is 24, doing her Masters in mass communications at Jadavpur University, and she is, by all accounts (just ask my newest addiction Facebook) the loveliest sweetest vibrantest woman. I can't wait to go back to Kolkata, (I'm definitely there for Durga Puja) and see her again.

Thanks to Rana, I also got to go club hopping my last night in Kolkata. Mr. Knows-Everyone-in-Cal took me and the wedding crew dancing all night. We waltzed into and all around Roxy, Someplace Else, Tantra, and the Underground, all without paying a single cover charge.

In between the wedding and the dancing, I walked a million miles around Kolkata. Park Street, New Market, J. Nehru Road, Gariahat, Ballygange, New Alipur, Jadavpur, Chadni Chowk, Sudder Street. I didn't make it to the Botanical Gardens with its 400 metre wide baobab tree. Or into the lusciously decorated Marble Palace. And I most sadly didn't get to Shantiniketan, Tagore's famed pastoral university. But all the more reasons to go back. I can't wait.

Rants and Raves

Ok, enough of these deeply precious navel gazing entries about life and love and the rest of it. Ok, fine, so I can't do without the navel gazing, but I promise to try steer clear of poignant musings, at least for (the first part of) this post.

Rant #1: I miss CVS. And believe you me, I would do away with the starbucking of the world before franchising yet another chain in Dhaka (why is KFC in every corner of the globe?), but hear me out. The other day, I visited the local pharmacy in my neighbourhood of Gulshan. Pharmacy meaning a dimly lit, ill ventilated corner shop, crammed with generic meds (Cyn and Shebes, stop your swooning now - your tranks are not available here), with 3 men behind the counter, 10 men on the other side, all 13 watching you intently as you attempt to acquire acne cream without knowing the Bangla word for zit. Charades, anyone? Between this horror and the corporate whoring of CVS must lie some happy medium, I'm convinced.

Rant #2: I hate British Airways. First, they have instated a ludicrous rule about only being able to check one 50lb bag when you're flying their stupid airline (note that this restriction does not apply on flights to/from the US and a few other random seeming countries, like Nigeria). However through September 2007, they are allowing customers to pack up to 70 pounds (in that one measly bag) to let them "become familiar with [their] new baggage policy and weight limitations."

Bollocks, I say. Planning my return to Dhaka from the 11th arrondissement became a logistical packing nightmare. Unaware of this new rule, I had arrived with two checked bags and now had to return with one. Luckily, my huge black Samsonite was up to the task, although my arms hurt for 2 days after dragging a 70 pound suitcase down Rue de Voltaire (aided by the ever radiant Pam) trying to find a cab to take me to Gare Nord and then hauling my shit from the train to the airport.

Of course, once I got to the check-in counter, Charles de Gaulle offered me his first break ever, one that I didn't need. "Oh you can check in 2 bags, no charge, no problem!" Goddamnit. Just for kicks, I checked my carry-on that had nothing in it except my running shoes.

Finally on the flight to Dhaka, I encountered a second and more mystifying aberration. Ever since my first vegetarian lover (so many vegetarians, so little time), I have been in the habit of eating as plant-centric as possible, and ordering the Hindu vegetarian meal on flights (way tastier than other options, IMHO). The flight attendant (who was not nearly as cute as these ones) brought me a tray boldly marked "HALAL" on which was a steaming tray of chicken tikka masala.

Um, what part of Hindu vegetarian did you not understand? I told the attendant that he had most likely given me a Muslim meal and handed it back. He walked away confused. I would soon be too. The Bangladeshi beside me was already confounded because in addition to speaking Bangla while eating Hindu and acting Western, I had just (automatically) responded to his sneeze with the Muslim blessing "Alhamdullilah."

Round 2 found me with the same tray, "HALAL" label ripped off, chicken tikka still steaming. Hmm... Ok, forget the Hindu bit, just focus on the vegetarianness.

Round 3: claimed to be a vegetarian dish but I couldn't see the veggies for the cheese. Fearing for my fellow passengers' health and goodwill (I am a bit lactose intolerant), and frankly craving brown people food, not white people food, I asked what had happened to BA's Hindu vegetarian meal. The response was astonishing (and I am writing BA to see if their corporate HQ will replicate the effrontery): the first meal you got, M'am, was the Hindu meal. And this next (complete lie because I've eaten it several times before, and on BA no less): We don't have a Hindu vegetarian meal, only a Hindu meal.

Ok, now, even though I'm not a practising Hindu (or a practising anything really), I could see why a Hindu (practising or not) might potentially be a little put out if his/her meal came covered in a halal Muslim wrapper. Hallo, Britain? Did you learn anything from your catastrophic South Asian meddlings? [Note: I subsequently wrote BA and got back a written apology for the inconvenience and a 10 pound voucher to shop their skymall next I'm on BA. Hmpf.]

And naturally the last indignity involved BA losing my suitcase en route from Europe. The checked in carry-on with my running shoes made it. But the Samsonite with every goddamned item of clothing and toiletry I own? Yeah, not that one. It took them 3 more days to locate and transport it to Dhaka.

Rant #3: Less than 2 days after congratulating myself on avoiding illness for more than half a year now, I came down with a vigourous 6 hour bout of dysentery. 6 runs to the toilet (pathetic pun intended) and another half dozen to the sink (to accommodate the other end of things), and I was left weak and dehydrated. My last session involved a foam-like oral output that made me feel like an alien. WTF? But then I had Mona Aunty and Sabrina Aunty come to the rescue with antibiotics and oral saline, Baby with fresh squeezed lime juice, and Sayeef Uncle and Nibras with hugs. It all worked. 24 hours later (of which I spent 20 sleeping), I am back to my old brandishing ways, and still committed to my regimen of not using AC in my bedroom, day or night, in order to acclimate and toughen myself. Two weeks into the monsoons and still going - wish me luck.

Rant #4: I'm stuck with my project. I haven't written in 6 weeks. And every time I read someone's big splash first novel, highly sensual love story, webbed and inventive masterpiece, heavily researched Bookerite, I feel increasingly insecure about my own efforts (although I like my most recent story). Because I'm halfway (10 stories, 20 poems, 50 photos, 100+pages), I thought I should stop and take stock, structure, streamline, single out flaws and fissures, start minding the gaps, as it were. But I think I'm being premature, both in my self doubt and my strategy. I need to keep writing, or rather, start writing again. In whatever fashion my writing brain desires. Because so far, it's been grand fun and immensely productive. And a hedonist never hesitates to heyday, no? Catch my next episode of panic around summer end 2007.

Rave #1: While I stood in the immigrations line in Dhaka International Airport, clutching my green Bangladeshi passport, the woman in front of me turned around and asked me, in Bangla, about a particular form. I replied in Bangla. In the course of our conversation, a helpful gentleman called out from the back of the line, "Does that woman (meaning me) know she's in the line for Bangladeshis? The foreigners' line is over there." Before I could indignantly (and poignantly) wave my Bangladeshi passport at him, the woman turned to him and said, But she IS Bangladeshi. My first moment of inclusion, 6 months in, and I didn't even have to orchestrate it, or hijab my mossy green hair (what do you think about "electric lava" next?)

Rave #2: My first outdoor tangle with the monsoon rains was at night while packed into a tiny car with 4 men (why is the public gender ratio in Dhaka so skewed I ask you?). It had been raining for at least an hour, though the city's poor drainage system would have you believe it had been days. Our car sloshed tire-deep in water all the way to Dhanmondi as we prayed nothing, liquid or alive, would enter the tail pipe and leave us stranded.

We were lucky. The same night, on his way home, Mahmud ended up waist deep in water (and thus steered half a dozen others away from the same fate, and who could then continue their knee deep journeys), and another friend's car got so jammed in the water logged traffic, he had to abandon it and walk home. By the time we got to Naeem's house, there was water underneath my feet, INSIDE the car, but outside: the most spectacular sodium lit water saturated display. I love Dhaka (especially when I'm not personally fjording her filthy flood waters).

Rave #3: My sister got her PhD! She is so cute and funny and fun and silly and generous and thoughtful and creative and handy that sometimes you can forget that she is also an intellectual powerhouse who is as familiar with Heidegger as she is with the incredible Hulk (or really any Marvel hero). And she will be teaching her second course at MIT this fall (she taught her first not having even completed her dissertation, which is now PhinisheD and PhileD, thank you very much).

Rave #4: A poem of mine, Lokhi Meye, just got printed on Vic Monchego's sharp eccentric political poetic blog (and is also on Ego Mag). As per the comments, I am now obsessed with a new online crush, Noah Cicero. Move over Manish Vij. Here are reviews of 2 of Noah's books, Burning Babies and The Human War. And if you're into totally compelling, spot on, down and dirty literary blogs, here's his. And he's fucking born in 1980. In Ohio no less. Or is that no more?

Rave #5 (because you gotta rave more than rant): I had my first Nigerian meal in more than 20 years. I have unsuccessfully scoured big American cities for Nigerian restaurants, and it's odd because Ethiopian restaurants abound, sometimes Senegalese, invariably a few Moroccan, but where de be Nigeria? However, if you're not up for a jaunt to the equator but crave garri and egusi soup, Q Bar opposite the Marriott where my brother has been swankly shacking up all year, on Kilburn High Road, will do you right. Maher and I rolled up our sleeves and tucked in with a vengeance. A bottle of palm wine and way too much pounded cassava later, I was thoroughly oversated, and overwhelmed with nostalgia and joy. Life can taste so fucking good.

Tuesday's child

grace first
then a boiling new pleasure begins
- Rumi



On April 10, 2007, I left the magic age of 33, and ended my first exhibition. Over the course of a week, all my relatives and friends in Dhaka came to Drik Gallery, looked at my photos, read my story excerpts, and gave me a big fat hug. In addition, TV crews, newspaper reporters, magazine journalists, photographers, students, art lovers, and several hundred others waltzed through, signed my guest book, bought a photocard or two, ate jhaal muri, samosas, and veggie sticks, and then waltzed out.

On the day of the opening, I wore Neeta's beautiful green and yellow cotton sari, a sexy halter top blouse I had made for myself, and flowers in my hair. On the last day of my exhibition, my 34th birthday, I wore Neeta's beautiful red sari, and topped off my day at Abby's beautiful flat, dancing all night and eating yummy lemon cake.

I don't know how I got to be so lucky. The universe entire conspires with me. Sure someone stole my phone the day of the opening (and they knew it was mine too because it had a bling bling ABEER tag on it) (email me for my new number). And on the morning of the opening, I had to get up at stupid o'clock and head to the gallery to fix the frames because the photos were hanging at awkward angles.

But really I have naught to complain about. How could I? Not when I have fantabulous friends, like Jim and Cynthia, who flew especially to Bangladesh for the first time ever, to see my exhibition and celebrate my birthday with me.

And I have the best ever (in the history of ever) family and friends who printed my invites, sponsored my reception food, secretly paid for my gallery space, videotaped my opening, produced my gigantically beautiful banners, designed my stunning posters from Boston, edited my introduction from Iowa City, categorised my photos from London, put them in order from San Francisco, described framing options from Hawaii, bought me my first SLR camera, and sent me love and more love from Bangkok, Barcelona, Bohemia, Bangalore, the Bay Area, and everywhere in between.

In the last month, I've barely done anything but work on this exhibition. I suppose I should have known how difficult it would be, but it's also true that getting anything done in Bangladesh is a different animal altogether. Sure, you can custom design your solutions for pennies. But unless you check and doublecheck each step along the way, you have no assurance that anything will come out the way you want it. And getting there and back in Dhaka traffic is no small feat. Dhanmondi, the neighbourhood where I printed, framed, and exhibited my photographs is only a few miles from Gulshan, where I live. But it takes up to an hour or more to get there, at almost any time of the day. The traffic here is legion. I don't know how everyone goes out every day for work. I am demoralised, overwhelmed, thwarted, and utterly tired at the end of each draining day I have to venture out of my bedroom.

To further muddy and prettify things, the rains have begun in Bangladesh, that same force of nature from my childhood in Nigeria. I remember when I moved to America at 13, I found the temperate spring season weak, spitting water from an emasculated grey sky. After 20 years, I am once again living with tropical rain. The kind that comes with gunshot thunder, eye candy lightning. The kind that falls so hard, so fast, you cannot tell the air from the water.

In between the storms, Bangladesh celebrated one of its biggest and brightest holidays. Pohela Boishak, our new year, is on April 14 and celebrations start at dawn. I reached Ramna Park before 7am, but it was as if I were late, because the madding crowd was tens of thousands strong already. I was exhausted, because of course in order to get anywhere by dawn, I have to stay up all night. The throngs were so overwhelming that I could only snap three measly photos. I can't tell you what a bodily treat it was to be there, surrounded by everyone dressed in their best red and white outfits, the songs coming from every direction, and that indescribable light of dawn.

The last of my lovely kissy visitors have left. I'm back to my old life, consisting of sitting at my laptop, dreaming up new stories and ways to connect them, playing with my new camera and old photos, eating, sleeping, reading, running, and yogaing. None of this requires contact with humans or even the outside world. Because by now, even my Dhaka friends know, as you have known for years, that I am perfectly happy dancing in my room alone, day or night.

Links galore
- to photos of my exhibition
- to reviews about it in the Daily Star and in New Age
- to my bang of a birthday
- to March in Dhaka
- to our trip to the chemical-free organic farms & weaver communities in Tangail
- to April in Dhaka so far
- to ze French masquerade party thrown by Magali
- and to a few new publications listed on my olivewitch site

Green green is the ground

My father grew up in Barahipur, a tiny village about 3 hours southeast of Dhaka. Everytime I visit his childhood home, I am amazed how he became the brilliant, world travelled, eloquent in multiple languages, eminently educated, sophisticated, progressive, and urbane man that he is. Hoque family history is rife with stories about Kasim, as he was called growing up. The way he eschewed playing soccer in the dried out fields so he could study. Because he was going to America, he told them, even though no one could quite confirm America's existence. Abbu used forks and knives in a land where they're considered an oddity. He had a legendary temper, and an even more ferocious will. One had to, after all. You couldn't start from a place like this and get to where he got.

My week long stay in Barahipur was marvelous and frustrating and not nearly long enough. I ate fish caught fresh daily from the pond, walked barefoot on the 100+ year old cement floor of my grandfather's house, traipsed all over the neighbourhood, fell into at least one rice paddy, took a billion photos of the cutie kids who followed me everywhere, rode rickshaws to town, sat in parks, circumnavigated massive ponds, toured coconut gardens and mango orchards, drove through deep village territory close to the Indian border, visited Mainamati's centuries old Buddhist monastery, read during the hot afternoons, wrote during the cool evenings, practiced speaking my Bangla, fell asleep before midnight every night, woke at dawn.

I'm allotted to a different bedroom in my grandfather's house each time I visit. This last one was lovely (as they all are) in a crowded way: yellow curtains, creaky grey window shutters, two massive green metal wardrobes, a dressing table whose drawers are filled with junk from another era. The latter was where I stored my beautiful green moshari (mosquito net), which is how I knew what the drawers were filled with. Usually I try not to open or look too closely at anything in the village. Because no one lives in this old house permanently anymore, (sometimes an aunt a month or two at a time) it gets quite dirty in the way that houses do. And dirty in the village is a different kind of dirty. It reminds me of Nigeria, where the outside was a continual force in your life. American is so sanitised, you forget the outside's power, its filth, its relentlessness. Here, you cannot forget it for a second.

In the evenings, when the bugs came out in full force, I was supremely grateful to be inside my moshari. My first night in Barahipur, there was an enormous beetle like insect, an inch and half long, flitting madly about my room. The second day, a spider as big as my hand sat calmly near the squat toilet while I took a bucket shower (hurriedly). Outside was the constant cheeping of chicks (they really do cheep!) and the quacking of ducks. And an unending flood of conversation came from everywhere. The gram is full of people, and there's never a moment's privacy. Since I was sort of an 8th wonder, I had to be careful when I really needed to be by myself (like when changing my clothes) because if I didn't lock the window shutters and bolt the door, invariably someone would peep in, usually a child who wanted her picture taken. (It's incredible how mad Bangladeshis are to have their pictures taken. It's not as if they have any thought to what I'll do with the photos, but they want a snap taken anyhow.)

Since I couldn't go for runs in the gram, I did my bikram yoga in my bedroom under a whirring metal fan. I've figured out ways to do it in the tiniest spaces, with a minimum of props. My iPod stopwatches my minute-long poses, and I turn in whichever direction there's space to stretch. It was probably the first time it had ever been done there:)

One of my guides in Feni was Nipu, a delicately featured 16 year old girl, who despite a certain religiosity, was bright and entertaining and warm. Her house is within my grandfather's compound and has obsolete calendars flapping on the walls as some curious decoration. Nipu's dream is to go to Dhaka University once she's finished with high school, and she thinks of marriage as a form of necessary bondage that she hopes to put off for another few years.

When she offered to show me the sights of Feni, I agreed eagerly. But the next morning, I met her outside her house and was startled to see her normal svelte figure totally burkafied, scarf covering her face and everything. According to her, this is standard fare for any girl over 15 in Feni venturing outside (if they were ever allowed, that is). As we trundled through the town by rickshaw, I saw not a single woman unswaddled in black, and more than likely veiled too. Nipu said it had always been this way, but I know when I visited 6 years ago, it wasn't so. She was only 12 then, and so I'm not sure that she remembers it accurately. It made me sad to think that my grandmother had fought so hard for women's rights, for the abolishment of Purdah, and successfully too, because my mother and aunts did not grow up wearing burkas. But now it seems her work, in that domain at least, may have been for naught. The burkaness in Dhaka is not as widespread as in Feni, but still a significant increase over the past few years.

While we sat on a swing in an adorable little park in Feni town, Nipu told me that she thought that being rich made you bad in some way. I disagreed saying that perhaps the bad was in there to begin with. I'm thinking now that she might be right. The universal warmth and generosity and humility that I find in the gram is unparalleled. Perhaps having money does stain you in some way. You forget what it is that you really need. Really really need.

Rekha was my other guide, through the rice paddy wonders. She is 10 years old and works as a maid for my aunt. Her last place of work paid her 200 taka a month (less than $5). She left after 8 months because they stiffed her a significant amount of pay. Instead of 1600 taka (a bit over $20), they gave her 1000 taka (~$12): for 8 months of 24/7 cooking and cleaning. Unconscionable, no? With or without the stiffing. I'm afraid to ask how much my aunt is paying her.

Rekha and I got on really nicely and she invited me to her house and I accepted. But unbeknownst to me, her father went and bought 300 taka worth of cake and biscuits and cold drinks. So sad especially when I eat or drink none of that! And to think, 300 taka can be a week's wages (for the nonindentured servant kind). I cringe to think of it still.

Rekha's family's old house had been razed to the ground by the government, along with several other houses, to make room for a new cadet college (for girls - yay!). The compensation offered to those affected had not reached Rekha's family, and so they had had to front the entire 1.5 lakh taka cost of their brand new house themselves. Most people have houses with thatching under a tin roof, and then brick, mud, tin, or cement walls, depending on one's means. Rekha's 5 room house (not including the separate kitchen and bathroom) was filled with aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, brothers, sisters, inlaws, babies... you name him, she was there. Her mother sported purple stained lips because of the paan that she chewed constantly, a toxic intoxicating combination of betel nut and god knows what else. I cannot even describe the state of her teeth (and the teeth of the majority of village folk).

I went on some amazing long walks around Barahipur with Rekha. The rice paddy fields are such an intense green, it makes me crazy joyous looking. We were followed by an ever growing crowd of children who by turns teased me and taught me songs as we passed by a billion kinds of trees, flowers, dirt roads, and hay stacks in the shape of primitive huts.

Ehsan Bhai also took me on some incredible trips through Comilla, the Northern hill tracts, and the backroads of Feni. We traversed tiny roads and vibrantly, primally coloured landscapes. Deeply dry and gouged pieces of earth interspersed with bright green fields. Red dust, blue sky, orange sun. I am 7 years old again in Africa. I will always be.

I'd love to live in Feni for a while, and write some stories set properly in the gram. Perhaps I can come back in the summer, spend a few weeks or a month here. And if Rekha is the one cooking, I'm sold. Though I'd make sure she'd get paid well, at least while I was around. Before I left Feni this time, I left 600 taka under my pillow because I knew she'd be the one putting away my bedding, cleaning my room. I told her I had left her something that wasn't a present, that was hers to begin with. I knew she wouldn't have taken it otherwise. I only wish things weren't so unjust in the first place.

Love, don't leave

I'm so very glad I came to Bangladesh. Do you know the latest reason why? Today I read a review on Slate magazine about Neil Pollack's book about alterna-dads. Two lover artist types decide to have a baby and fight about parental timing and responsibilities and various other pseudo-intellectual angsts.

Today I also heard about the Bangladeshi woman who died after 20 days of suffering whole-body acid burns. Her husband had attacked her thus to frame another woman's husband, so that he might then be with said other woman.

If I had still been living in San Francisco, running from sea to shining bay, drinking my organic vitamin infused juice, eating my locally grown vegetables, dancing my addictive trance dance, I might have actually thought the Slate article mattered.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I think we should all be thinking about activism all the time. After all, I just spent half an hour google-stalking the gorgeous Indian-Dutch Janina Gavenkar. And then another half an hour, reading about plastic Westernised beauty and wishing women (and men) would realise that it's the differences that make us beautiful. But the fact remains that single mothers have been playing soccer mom and alterna dad for ages now, and not having the existential issues that Pollack and Agger describe. Or maybe they're just too busy pulling their weight to write best selling books about it.

When I came to Bangladesh last January, it was to test whether I could live here for longer. Not that 3 months is enough time to figure this out, but that's what I had. What I figured was that I loved it, vibrance, desperation, all. But the lack of the dating scene was a major drawback. I returned in November armed with fresh batteries (for my cutie blue Czech vibe), but soon realised that I had more issues than my own pitypetty libido (I know, surprising) (that and I haven't had to recharge my batteries: hot brown imminently unsuitable boys abound).

First, the increasing numbers of burka clad women on the streets point to a rise in Islamic fundamentalism. I can probably umbrella the latter to cover other tragedies, but I will refrain, for now. In any case, I was/am laid low by the continuing oppression of women, the lack of open honest discourse about discrimination against Hindus and Ahmadiyas, the appalling dismal tribal civil rights, the highly politicised and meaningless election debacle, the government's general failure to build and maintain infrastructure in most any domain.

I don't know how to express all this grief I have building up inside me. It means nothing how well we treat our families or friends. What shows character is how we treat the downtrodden, and we are failing in this regard. It's not as if it's very different in the US. There, the maids and gardeners and field workers are Mexican. The prisoners are black. The detainees are muslim. And so on. But at least there is some awareness of it all. Here, I feel as if no one even notices the minorities unless it's to punish them for being.

My aunt related a conversation she had with a Hindu villager. Apparently, they don't want to be labeled as Hindu, or as a minority because it's just another way to make them stand apart. But what people don't understand is that labels are a double edged sword, and in my opinion, highly necessary in times of great inequality. Take women. We still need affirmative action and quotas for women, even in the West, let alone in Bangladesh. And women aren't even even a minority (except in parts of Asia where abortion is being used as a weapon against females).

My father thinks that if our government would act properly, we could catch up with India in 10 years. I think this is a bit far fetched, but he has a point when he talks about Bangladesh's essential gifts. We have a fairly homogenous population and one language (you know, after we oppress the tribals into silence). And we're inventive, generous, artistic, enterprising. But we don't have the English speaking technogeeks that India churns out by the ten thousands. We don't even have the proper educational system set up yet that would produce our own service boom. Garment workers are fueling our current economic (and feminist) progress, but it's only a matter of time before that function gets outsourced. 10 years to India-status? Maybe a generation. IF we start now.

But then, there are countless joys of living here. Yesterday marked the beginning of Pohela Falgoon, the first month of spring. People go to Dhaka University's Arts College wearing their very best yellow and red outfits, orange marigolds wound into their hair. Since Bangladesh doesn't do subdued, it is a total visual feast. Another treat was my day trip to fabulous Sonargaon, the old digs of the kings of Bengal.

Every day, I read about, meet, applaud ordinary people in the extraordinary business of helping people. Labour and trade union groups (BCSU, NLC, BCWS), human rights organisations (Naripokkho, BSEHR, Odhikar, BAMUS, BNWLA, UPDF, BSAF, NUS, ATSEC, and tons more), schools for poor/destitute children (NAF, ABC, LOMEF/ARF), centres to help victims of acid burns and paralysis, the list (of acronyms) goes on and on.

Last year, I volunteered for a women's activism organisation. This year, I'm volunteering for a anti-child-labour group which also does general labour rights activism. I also want to check out one of the street kids schools because I am ever enraptly photographing their gorgeous wise faces.

We're in the middle of Bangladesh's famed month long book fair. The Ekushay February Boi Mela takes place in Bangla Academy in Dhaka University. It's a great people watching event and the place in Bangladesh to buy all kinds of books. Bangladeshi publishers print a majority of their catalogue in this month because sales and awareness are highest now. Unfortunately, the English selection is quite limited (this is the case in bookstores nationwide too), but I picked up a few charming children's books that will hopefully help me improve my shameful reading skills. As per my father's request, I am taking my nieces and nephews to the Boi Mela on Saturday and buying them books of their choice (my dad is so cool). Maybe they can also help me decipher my own selections. Haha!

In the meantime, I've been writing like a mad woman. After returning from India in January, I made up a strict schedule with specific weekly goals. If I don't make my goals, I am (self) restricted from email until I catch up. In 6 weeks, I've only had to apply it once (although this week is looking slow). If I keep to my schedule, by June end, I'll have 8-10 new short stories, 15-20 poems, and 30-50 portfolio quality photographs. Kick ass.

Speaking of photographs, my April birthday exhibition is shaping up. Since I turned 21, I've thrown myself these lavish parties with my luscious friends. However, this year, I have no friends nearby (unless Jim decides to show up), so I've decided to do something different: hold a photography and poetry exhibition to celebrate turning 34 (good god. not that I mind because I think the added years are suiting me just fine). I've lined up an amazing venue (Drik Gallery) April 5-10, 2007. Now I have to select my photos and poems, print, mount, frame, promote. The tentative theme is also the working title of my book, "The Lovers and the Leavers." In case you want a preview, here are some selections from my collection, now 10 stories strong, in various stages of drafting:

- Before you eat, a story
- Dhaka Giftwrap, a photograph
- Bombay Mansion, a photograph
- Coma, a poem
- Missing, a poem
- Is this what it's like, a poem
- Now stay, my latest published story!

Oh, and happy VD, from one infectious lover to another.

I Heart India

Shall I tell you about Christmas in Bengalooru?
Or the railway workers in Hyderabad?
Or the night fairs on Chennai's beaches?
Or the fishing village on Madh Island?
Or the winding alleyways of Mumbai?

Or instead, can I tell you about the intense relief I feel when I leave Bangladesh for India?

The flight from Dhaka to Kolkata takes about half an hour and I've done it twice so far, both times on my own. Perhaps that's part of my love of India. The alone bit. Don't get me wrong. I am addicted to my Dhaka family's brand of protective luxury. I wouldn't have it any other way. But it's also completely alien to my life the last 15 years. Plus they don't stare as much in India, and you can wear pretty much what you want (within reason), and go wherever you wish.

Last fall, when I first suggested living on my own in Dhaka to my parents, they flipped out. But what about cooking and cleaning? asked my mother, forgetting for a moment that not only does she cook and clean every day in America, so do I. We both know how it's done. Still, I gave in to their worry (which was mostly about security - much more of a concern in Bangladesh than India) and my laziness, and moved into my lush digs at the Islams'.

Of course, it's not as if I roughed it in India. My business gig (thank you, Wharton) kept me in fine fettle during my three week jaunt through Bharatland. Although if you can believe it, there are some downfalls to living in lux hotels: they are sort of the same, the world over. One morning, ok, afternoon (so I'm a late riser), I walked out into the sun at the Savera Hotel in Madras which boasts one of the best pools in the city. As I watched brown child bodies vault into the shining blue water, I suddenly had no idea where I was. Was I at the Temescal pool in Oakland, California, where the black kids come to learn to swim? Or the Raval pool in Barcelona where Spaniards sun themselves a toxic chocolate colour? Or the Gulshan Club pool in Dhaka which is kept so hot and damp you can barely breathe?

You might think this happens more often to me because I've travelled a bit in the last year or two (I now need new pages in my passport even though it was brand new 16 months ago). But the thing is, I don't get disoriented easily. I usually know exactly where I am, even if I have no clue where I'm going. It's how I like it. Solid ground. Tenuous air.

I spent 2 days in Hyderabad and 2 weeks in Chennai (both for work) though I have a similar number of photos in each photoset. This is because in Chennai, I was mostly holed up in said lux hotel, writing up case studies, and surfing the web (I love Indian broadband). But I did manage to go out for a few beach and bookstore trips which were great, and also dine with Ram's parents, Kamala Aunty (I *love* her, and not just because I love most of my loves' mothers, hee hee) and Anil Uncle.

I'll relate a couple of funny encounters in Chennai. The first was on the lovely Marina Beach. It was night and I was crouched down on the sand, taking photos with my camera and tiny 3 inch tripod. A couple passing by had the following conversation:

Man: What is she doing?
Woman: I think she's going to the bathroom.
Man: No, I don't think so.
Woman: She is. Look, she has her hands in front of her.
Man (returning after approaching for a closer look at me): No, she has a lunchbox.

They move on satisfied, while Abeer falls over laughing.

The second involved going shopping for a sari for my mother. My mother's initial email request for a South Indian sari was summarily rejected. I explained to her that not only did I not like shopping (this has been the case from before I was poor), but sari shopping is a massive stress for me. I just don't understand sari fashion. And there is a divide between how it looks in the shop and how it looks on the person that I just can't seem to cross. My father promptly wrote me back basically telling me to suck it up and get my mother a sari because, Abeer, you know how much your mother loves her saris.

So like the dutiful daughter I am, I enlisted the services of R and his driver and went to Nalli, a massive sari emporium tightly ensconced in a neon lit Times-Square-like area. 5 minutes later and 2 (count 'em) saris later, we emerged to find our driver gone off on some unknown errand. He appeared 20 minutes later but R said we had to excuse him because I was probably the first woman to enter and exit Nalli in such an expedient manner.

My last day in Chennai was spent browsing around the kickass bookstore, Landmark. I picked up a book of poems by famed Kannada poet, A. K. Ramanujan (who reminds me of the brilliant Bangladeshi poet, Kaiser Haq, in his utterly sharp and modern accessibility). And while browsing the Indian authors aisle, I wrote down some of the best mango breasty titles (my term for the Asian penchant for exotified food/spice/colour imagery). You have permission to smack me if I ever use some version of the following in my work: Kardamom Kisses, Bougainvillea House, Mango-Coloured Fish, the Tiger Claw, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Mistress of Spices, Madras on Rainy Days.

Of course, Asians aren't the only mango breast titlers. Purple Hibiscus, the talented Ms. Adichie's first book, set in my birthplace in Nigeria, is an example of Africanised mango breasting. Ok, I'll stop pokyjabbing now. It's not as if I have a book to make fun of anyway. And if PR mandates a wet sari clad woman on my dust jacket, I'll at least make sure it's my own figure. After all, I'm now a pro at sari shopping.

Just before midnight on December 24, the fireworks start in Bangalore. In every direction you look, the sky starts filling with smoke and colour and fire. This city is possibly one of the prettiest in India. Granted I haven't been to Delhi, but from among the rest of the biggies, Bombay, Chennai, Kolkata, and Hyderabad: Bangalore is it. I love it. I'm told the army and the church are responsible for the ancient tree lined avenues and green spaces. Not that I'm a fan of either institution, but yay for flora! And for Blore's religious diversity. With a 20% Muslim population and a 20% Christian population, it has to be totally different from any other Indian city, no?

I lounged around with lovely brown prince, Tarun, now selling his soul to corporate America via a Stanford MBA, and back in Blore for a winter visit. Luckily, his clever charming mother, Nalini Aunty, is balancing the "man vs not-the-man" scales by getting her PhD in adult education (I am in awe of these parents getting their PhDs after retirement - Ram's dad is another one).

My host in Blore was my former Chaitime counterpart, the sexy activist, lawyer, writer, Achal. I saw him almost exactly two years ago in Blore, though he had spent much of the time between then and now working in Johannesburg, South Africa. He took me to a wedding feast that also featured a strange cool traditional dance (see photo above).

I capped my India trip by celebrating New Years in Bombay. Having done the fancy $100+ a head Mumbai party two years ago, my old Philly gang and I were looking for something a little bit different. We were all there for the wedding of our Chaitime friend and Bombayite, Dev on January 1 (I'm wondering how hungover his and Monica's anniversaries will be).

In pursuit of a novel beginning to 2007, Arif, Ram, Vijay, and I set off for Madh Island, about an hour outside Bombay. It was not quite what I had imagined and it was perfect. We wandered long beaches and a fishing village for hours and took hundreds of photos among the 4 of us (it turns out we're all mad about photography). Then in the night, we snuck into our hotel's dinner/dance NYE gala and had a ball. To our credit, we tried to buy tickets, but were refused. So we hid in the back of the hotel garden before the party started (and before they started checking tickets) and then when things were getting going, we strolled out and found a free table. Easy peasy.

While Vijay and I flew to Bombay especially for Dev's wedding, Arif was actually completely coincidentally there. He's taking time off from his activist work in the States and travelling around India and Bangladesh for a few months. Ram, however, lives in Bombay and has spent the last few years in various areas of filmmaking. He's currently working in cinematography and thinks about everything in terms of light, how to capture it, tweak it, filter it, create it. He made his first short film last fall and it's gorgeously shot. I also saw some of his stills and the slide film ones were especially fabulous. I learned that slide film captures light and thus colour in a different way - richer, more intense, more contrasty, which makes me want to try it out. Ram says if I come to Bombay again, he'll shoot me a film of my own. I say he's on, and not just because he's still his hot stoic self.

I am looking forward to coming back to India this summer. Starting July, I'll be spending 3 months in Kolkata continuing work on my book of short stories, poems, and photographs. I don't know anyone there and I'll be living on my own. It's going to be grand.

Neejay neejay

It's Victory Day. Thirty five years ago today, Bangladesh became. To commemorate, I am going to the Liberation War Museum. Last week, the military was deployed here. 4 out of 10 cabinet members resigned in protest. The traffic blockades and hartals are apparently at an end, but the January 21 elections remain in doubt. And I have less of a clue what Bangladeshi politics are about, a month later. Each time I understand one little piece, it leads to 3 more pieces that confuse me even more. Reading the papers, listening to my BNP relatives, the apoplectic NRBs (non-resident Bangladeshis), and everyone in between. None of it helps.

I'll tell you what does help and what also breaks my heart. My daily conversations with the maids and the drivers of Bangladesh. Setara is 40 but looks at least a decade older. She had long jet black hair, a forthright manner, and pain, seemingly in every part of her body. She came to Dhaka when she was still in single digits. Beaten every day for 5 years as a maid in the house of a rich family, she finally fled and on her way back home to her village, found love at the ripe young age of 12. Her first period coincided with her first pregnancy. Both husband and child were lost within months. Stricken, she returned to Dhaka on a train with only the clothes on her back and a few sticks of sugar cane to eat along the way. All this, yet she ends with love.

"You know how when you're hungry, you want some rice," she tells me.
I say sure.
"Well, before that, there is love. It comes even before your hunger."
I nod, thinking of all the love I've been graced with.
"Isn't it true?" she asks again.
"Akdom," I say. Absolutely.

Tuhin is a driver. Ask him any address in Dhaka, and he'll know where it is. He has a gruff schoolmaster sort of way about him and stands stiffly when I'm in his presence. It's expensive to live in Dhaka. Tuhin's flat with utilities costs a majority of his wages. Then there's the English medium schooling that kids can't do without these days. No matter that Tuhin never learned English, but his older son must. And the younger one? That one is only three, and naughty, so Tuhin is going to put him into a madrasa. In the old days, one would always save one child for God. This went for Christian families as well (no surprise, since it's all the same religion). These days, if one still wants to save a child for God, one might save someone else's child. Perhaps a poor villager, someone less fortunate, someone who might not have any schooling otherwise, madrasa or not.

I imagine Tuhin's younger son. Perhaps he has Tuhin's unruly curly hair. Perhaps he climbs everything in sight. Perhaps he wants to do everything on his own. Perhaps he's the way I was when I was 3. Family legend has it that my first word was "neejay" which in Bangla basically means "I'll do it on my own." Except at age 3, in addition to my Arabic suras, I was learning Bangla, English, and Igbo, and my own curly haired father had every ambition that I would grow up to advance the field of knowledge, to have a hand in my own destiny.

There is so much to write about. So much to photograph. So much to think about. After I crawl under my moshari each night, I lie very still and the words slowly blink out of my mind. It's because I'm writing poetry again and words were never the basis of my poetry. I think about the feelings I'm trying to capture, Setara's compressed grief, Tuhin's resignation, my powerlessness.

I am intensely glad I'm alone in Dhaka. I have become someone else here, someone perhaps few of my friends would recognise. Or perhaps I have become my child self again. The one who watched everything, the one who was apart. I know it won't seem like it from my photos, but I decline invitations daily, nightly. I stay home, say I'm writing, even if I'm not. I spend hours by myself and I love it. And when I'm with others, I spend much of my time listening. I don't want anyone to interrupt this solitude. Especially not the Americans. Mr. Bowie, I too, am afraid of the Americans. I didn't know there were so many here. Every night I meet another one and I feel increasingly withdrawn.

Last night, someone asked me if I were going to the marine party. I imagined some sea theme, mermaids, water. No, it was actually the Marines. You know, the US Marines. Um, no, thank you. I'm told everyone has the same initial reaction, but really, there's no reason to be afraid. There's only like 5 Marines in Bangladesh. Everyone else is an NGO-er. And it's too bad the Peace Corp pulled out of Bangladesh (after multiple death threats last year) because they were yet another dimension of Americana in the wide white world. Still. Ok, how about the Aussie Porn Party? Or the Hamptons-in-Dhaka party? I would have never guessed these subcultures existed in Dhaka. I knew about the divorce-happy uber-rich Bangladeshi crowd (I've met more divorcees, both male and female, in Dhaka than ever before). I knew about the political scandals, the affairs, the incessant gossiping. But the rest of it is news to me. And none of it, in my present state of mind, is very interesting news.

So I'm home again, listening to music on my little portable speakers, writing, and hoping Setara will come in for a chat bearing a carafe of sweet lime juice.

World power means nothing. Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters. Rumi.

My Bangladesh Albums on Flickr so far:
Dhaka, November 2006
The Alo Gala (couture by Tootli & mirror smash by Sayeef Uncle)
The SAARC Ball (couture by Aneela Haque & concert by Habib)
My first Casa Loca Party (thrown by intl man of biz, Abby)
Dhaka, December 2006

Another winter approaches

It's been a week that I've been in Bangladesh. In that (brilliant crowded) space, dozens have been killed or injured on the desperate streets. The January elections are where we're headed, far too slowly, far too violently. The current BNP government has stepped down and a caretaker government has taken over (to the cry of folly and fraud). The Awami League opposition party has held countless demonstrations and hartals (strikes) that have crushingly bought life and work to a halt, week after week. Another one starts today, meaning like much of last week, I and millions of others, are housebound. Hartals usually last all day, perhaps into the next, and they are ruinous, ruinous.

I am settled in my beautiful new home in Gulshan (thanks to you, I have so many many many many many homes). And beset by antisocialness, which appears to be my coping mechanism for starting up somewhere new.

Like when I got to Barcelona this past April and holed up in Tania and Francisco's spare room and slept and thought and wrote and read for weeks. Some days I only left their flat for my run.

Like now, in Dhaka, the staring capital of the world (just what are they thinking of my bluegreen hair?). I sit in my room and write crap poems by tube light. I love it. My Fulbright officially starts in January, but I'm ostensibly starting my research now. Part of that is reading kooky books, looking at crazy art, and surfing hyper, cool, strange, funky websites. Part of that is talking to my relatives, talking to strangers, and everyone in between. And of course, part of that is taking photographs with my kick ass new camera by the fierce dozen, I mean, century.

I've been reading celebrated Czech writer, Ivan Klima's previously untranslated stories: "Lovers for a Day." While his earlier stories (written when he was about my age) were convoluted and unsatisfying, his later stories (like "Conjugal Conversations") are brilliant. Although I cannot understand why the Times said his writing is the reverse of depressing. I was crying by the end, under my shadowy sexy moshari, despite Mr. Klima's obvious compassion for the human condition.

I've had to translate the gist of my Fulbright proposal into Bangla several times now, in fact with more detail than I actually provided in the application itself. I think this is the equivalent of learning something by teaching it - translating a barely thought through idea into your barely passable father tongue.

It's been good practice because I am at that place I hate. The place before the start. I haven't climbed up onto the block, its bubbled exterior rough on my feet. I haven't placed one foot behind, the other forward, toes off the block, crouched down, gripping the leading edge. I haven't tucked my head, swaying slightly with anticipation. And I have not yet jackknifed into the air, the pocket of air under my stomach popping as I slice into the water.

Or maybe I have, and I just haven't realised that all the worrying and writing crap poems til 3 in the morning is only the icing on my cake which I'm eating even now. That every interaction with the maids, the masters, the police, the politicians, the peons, the relatives, the strangers, the children, the shopkeepers, the beggars, and the believers, it's all just fodder. You don't have to be in Bangladesh to know that it's all dark and despair, all love and light, every midnight moment. You just have to be somewhere in the world, alone and alive.

Love and Hate in Europe

This post is being written in a sunny little house in Praha, a warm dark country home in Bohemia, in a tiny inlaw flat in Paris, in the ever more romantic getaways of my life.

The Czech Republic

Erotic City is on Skorepka Street in central Prague. It's a classier bit of Prague's vaunted sex industry, and I was there to replace my much loved rabbit vibrator that N broke in enthusiastic play in Barcelona (no one was hurt except for poor rabbit). While standing in front of all the Japanese made vibes picturing slutty bleached blonde pornystars, I wished I had gone to the amazing worker-owned Good Vibrations shop in San Francisco.

The first time I went to Good Vibrations, I remember being horribly mortified when one of their matter of fact staff approached me to ask me if I needed help. Of course, I needed help (I had never used a vibrator before, had no clue what to even ask). Of course, I said no (and had to leave the store within minutes). After 4 years in the Bay Area, I was a totally different sex shop customer. I could confidently approach an employee for advice on say, one prong versus two prong clitoral stimulators, or ask if they've restocked their super silky dental dams (I tell you, they're sexy, like you've never imagined dental dams, if you've ever imagined them, that is. Not that I even know how to use them properly. I just think they're fun).

Flash forward to the Czech lands, one bright cold day in November. The vibes here have positively trashy marketing. It appears the main use a woman might have for one is as a man-replacement, during those oh so few nights when she's not being banged by a Tarzan like partner. There is even a Tarzan brand, for God's sake, and in case you didn't get it, the box pictures both Tarzan and Jane writhing about (no vibe in sight) to show you just how jungle love this experience could be.

Hmm....

There are two employees up front chatting, and a handful of other customers. I kind of know what I want, but I'm not sure about brand, price, colour. I'm wondering if approaching them for help would embarrass us all, when the guy employee approaches me and asks me if I need help. He doesn't let on if my over enthusiastic yes! disturbs him, and instead willingly discusses the various pros and cons of different brands. When I can't decide among three, he says, let's take them up to the front, put in batteries, and you can see what you like better. Ha! Classic Good Vibrations, with a Czech accent.

He does exactly as he suggests, and not in any back room or side counter, but right at the register, while other customers mill about curiously. I suppose if I hadn't been trained in San Francisco, I would have wanted the earth to swallow me whole right then, but as it was, I was highly amused by the whole scene. And am now the happy owner of a brand new blue vibe (with two ears), and ready for my 8 months of chastity in Bangladesh, 3 more in India. That and literotica. What more could a girl want?

Despite all this, it's true that I think of lost love so much more now than the last few months. Is it the isolation of travelling that allows me the luxury (the torture) (the lazy sentimentalism)? At first I attributed it to being surrounded by the French. But I was only in Charles de Gaulle airport for what, three hours, in the godawful morning, on the way to Praha. Did I have to remember unrequitedness every redeye moment?

Anyway, there is so much more to tell that is far more interesting than that old story. First, I have a new upcoming publication in the lovely magazine, Swink! Yay! It's still in the editing phases, but it's the first story I wrote precisely for a magazine (they had a feature which inspired me), and they accepted it!

Second, I loved Prague. Of course, everyone said it was beautiful and old world and charming and all the rest. And of course, it is. Stunningly so. I bought red raspberries by the pound and ate them while I wandered around the magnificent St. Vitus Cathedral, the stepped Ledebour Gardens, the medieval Charles Bridge, the imposing National Museum, the shining River Vltava, the Dancing Building, the Astronomical Clock, the Jewish Cemetery, and so much more.

All this and I have the world's best host. My crazy funny geologist client picked me up from the airport on a mild Tuesday evening and has since given me a prime tour of his homeland. I've done precious little work (ok, none) and it doesn't seem to bother him in the least. In fact, he seems determined that I enjoy myself as thoroughly as any tourist might. Martin is great. And not just because we have the same canine tooth missing (I have a bridge, he an implant), have owned almost a dozen Nikons between the two of us, and know all the words to Madonna's "Hung up." He also has vastly provoking, belligerent, rational, paranoid, and thoughtful opinions, which makes for great conversation.

Of my nine days in the Czech Republic, three were spent in the Bohemian countryside, in a little village called Nove Hrad (New Castle). It has three pubs, 1500 inhabitants, and of course, a new castle. Martin's wife's family owns a lovely house here surrounded by a babbling brook, willowy trees, rolling meadows, and every other fairytale element you can think of. We drove in late, crashed, and woke up to find that it had snowed all night. Add sunlight and ta da: instant magic land.

I have yet another place to add to my growing list of places I want to live in, see, run around, write about.

La Belle France

It's been interesting following the US election news from Europe. I struggled through yesterday's Le Monde (my French is intolerably bad for having studied it to fluency, albeit 15 years ago) and one of the headlines roughly translated to Bush Beat Down. As a die-hard Californian and even more fervent strong-woman-lover, I love that Pelosi is speaker, but no one knows her outside the US. I wonder/hope if that will change.

I flew into Charles de Gaulle airport (again) last night, and this time, my lovely cousin, Ferdous Apa, and her husband picked me up. They've lived in the outskirts of Paris for almost 5 years now with their gorgeous little daughter I've been dying to see, Simran.

We were just about to pull out of a parking spot, when a huge black van pulled up blocking our path, and half a dozen black vested Frenchie police jumped out and surrounded the car. They immediately separated us and started asking questions. My US passport was soon extracted and examined (it has not always served me well in the past - in Tunis's Med port, they found the combination of my Nigerian birth, Arabic name, American passport, and Bangladeshi good looks to be wholly unbelievable and insisted I produce my "real" passport). This time, it appeared my blue jeans and blue hair was the right combination to dissuade further questioning.

However, poor Ferdous Apa, dressed in a lovely shalwar kamis unfortunately obscured by a puffy down coat, was so nerve wracked by the experience that she couldn't speak French properly. I was then pulled into her line of questioning to ostensibly translate their awkward English questions (about her visa, legitimacy, and papers) into my (shitty) Bangla.

We found out late into ze affaire that there is some illegal private taxicabbing going on, and we had parked inconveniently close to the taxi area. Once they determined that we were related and legal and so on, they let us go with a unsatisfying "desole" (which is probably more than the Americans would have done).

What's interesting is that the whole time I had disturbing thoughts of being hauled off and decitizenised and so on. And Ferdous Apa and Toaha Bhai, while upset and frazzled, were not afraid, at least not in that vein. Is America that fucked that I fear the worst? I guess it can't be, not with our newly elected Democratic leaders, and sharp silly sexy politically charged blogs like Sepia Mutiny.

After this rather harrowing event, we got lost for an hour (probably because Toaha Bhai was flustered), and then jammed in traffic for another hour and half, and so the normally half hour journey took almost three. I was hating France by the time we got home. But then Simran came running, with her adorable friend Waies, and their forthright Frangla questions and fragile hugs instantly made everything better.

Tonight, I meet up with my hottie girllove, Pamela, for a cabaret show and club hopping. I love going out with Pam. We're as interested in boys as we are in each other, which is guaranteed fun.

I'll post more Paris photos by Sunday before I leave Forashiland (more than a bit gladly) for Banguland...

November 12, 2006. Ok, so I didn't really think much would happen in my two days in Paris, but of course much did. I had the most spectacular meal the night before I left, courtesy of Bhabi who lives next to Ferdous Apa and Toaha Bhai. I went to a Berber cabaret, walked like 100 miles around northern Paris with Pam looking for a dance club, sat on multiple sidewalks, ate chocolate and drank Cote du Rhone, crashed an all Ivory Coast underground party, snuck into a massive dance club without paying the 25 euro cover (more because of our stealth than cuteness), got seriously groped by some Moroccan guy (I punched him in the balls (!) and almost got into a huge fight until he realised he was losing serious face by pushing a girl around and left), stayed out til 6am, went running around the Eiffel Tower, walked through the Luxembourg Gardens, had yummy crepes, saw crazy art in the Pantheon, and prayed for peace in St. Etienne's Church.

I'm back at the horrible Charles de Gaulle airport, minus a large silver carabiner (they are confiscating those now too, as potential weapons!), waiting for my flight to Dhaka. I have that faintly nauseous feeling you get when you haven't slept enough (and when you're about to start a brand new life).

Feast of Family

It was only recently that I realised my family's habits were different from the rest. I don't mean in the bad ways. In those ways, we are no different from anyone else, though I certainly lamented otherwise all my angst years.

My parents encircled my sister, my brother, and me in their Bangladeshi Muslim mannerisms. We attend only Desi parties. We eat Bangladeshi food at home. We wear only traditional clothes on Eid, and otherwise. We went to Islamic school and learned our suras. We behaved as though we were Bangladeshis living circa 1950-70. No dates, no parties, no dancing, no MTV, no malls, no movies, no sports, no (going, hanging, loitering) about, no loud music, no non-academic pursuits, no liberal arts education, and definitely, no talking back.

But all this behaviour is standard, and not just for first generation Desi families. Some other immigrant groups, and indeed even some white families (ha!), have similar strictures. What's different is how my mother can talk to anyone and everyone about anything and everything. How my father is willing to hear anyone out on any intellectual opinion, no matter the person's age or disposition. How our family has at least a 33 year history (as far as I can personally account for) of sitting down to dinner together, and talking up a storm.

I didn't know other families didn't necessarily do this until just a few years ago. I didn't even realise that it was cool until even later than that. At first, I credited my friends with knowing how to interact with us. And it's true, the few who have had dinner at 141 Grouse Dr. (from Eshadee in 1987 to Nellie in 2006), and the dozens more in the Bay Area, deserve a lot of credit. But interacting is a two way street when it's done right, and my family is undeniably fabulous at communicating. Maybe not at understanding or forgiving or agreeing, but talking? Even when I don't believe a word any one is saying, I am enrapt.

At a typical dinner, over rice, daal, two kinds of meat or fish, three kinds of veggies, you will no doubt hear at least one of my mother's charming stories, my father's deeply historical judgements, my brother's sometimes inane sometimes important exclamations, my sister's always stylish pronouncements, my strident claims. And you will be listened to with the utmost of attention (and compassion, if it's my mom).

It's true, we prefer the written word, especially when the topic is culturally conflagrant (and some of you know about our family epistles, as heartbroken and melodramatically eloquent as they are), but come to dinner sometime. We have a brand new house on Mallard Drive in Monroeville. Same dining table (much to my mother's annoyance), and the same steadfast love of a good conversation.

Of the six weeks I spent on the East Coast, sadly only three were spent with my parents (and only two days in their beautiful new home and my new yellow! bedroom). The rest of the time, I did a whirlwind tour of four other cities.

In Boston, I watched a ridiculous number of Blockbuster movies with Simi, and also got to see her be a rockstar MIT professor.

In Puerto Rico, I played in the sun with Hardik and Alan, and also went on my first kayaking trip (loved it!) in the luminescent BioBay.

In Philly, I had my first visit with my baby-Pye niece, Bronte, and her poetwife cum mum, Kim. I also went walking and photographing and eating yummy Tangerine dinner with Dave Toc. And of course, had my obligatory visit with the lovely ladies at my erstwhile school of hard knocks.

And in the big bad city I dream of, I lounged with my favouritest Arati, sipped tea with the girl who does everything supermodel glam, drank too many margueritas with a virgin boy doctor, watched porn at the W with the token blonde blue eyed white girl, ate breakfast with my Mujib Chacha, and woke my hottie cousin up at 3am with my shenanigans with a poet cum filmmaker (can't seem to get away from them).

I left the States on All Hallows Eve 2006. I was watching New York drop away, lit up in a sudden Indian summer sun, and wondering what I would feel the next time I returned. The last time I entered America, I stood in an interminable line at passport control in LA (their computers were down). The ponderous pale passport controllers and the insistent voices over the intercom about burning sienna terror alerts were making me ill. I was about to miss a connecting flight to SF and thus Nellie's rehearsal dinner.

In the year I had been gone, I had given myself over to lust and wanderlust, fallen into love and then out of it, lost 20 pounds and my self esteem to illness and infection, and won my esteem back, and a Fulbright scholarship. I'm afraid, terrified, rather, of the changes in me next I arrive. Let alone the changes in the land of the free. Still, I'll be back in time to solicit your vote for Obama in 2008. Say yes.

Three Dawns Rising

Is there any way I could possibly describe Burning Man with honour? Especially when anyone who knows me just *knew* I would like it, whether they'd been or not. I mean, how could I possibly resist such a gorgeous meld of beauty, technology, mechanics, architecture, art, music, space, intoxication, light, generosity, environmentalism, community, simplicity of life, and of course, dancing? So, I knew I'd probably dig my three days in the desert, but I didn't realise how much of an impact it would have on me - one of the most stupendous, transforming experiences of my life.

And I'll tell you this too - Jim, who drove with me to Black Rock City in our child molester's cargo van, came a cynic and left a convert. I remember as we drove past the cryptic poetic signs into the playa, he and I were still arguing about how commerce (or in this case, the absence of it) affects the creation and appreciation of art. Well, now, we're on the same page. At least about Burning Man.

It took the two of us roughly $1500, a week of planning, two days of shopping for food, water, and costumes, loads of advice and goodies from veteran Burners (thank you Cynthia, Ed, and Lynka!), 8 hours to drive there, 15 hours to get back - all so that we would not only survive the Nevada desert, but enjoy it too.

I think the scale of the celebration affected me most. The playa is miles and miles across, and so you need (lit up) bikes to properly navigate, or your best walking shoes. Every night, I'd stop, in mid wander, dust storms whirling, mountains looming, Ansel Adams sky above, fake fur coat wrapped around my tingling body, my brain on fucking fire, and there'd be the after-images of each vision-melting art-car burned into my mind, and the echoes of variously compelling musics doppelganging in the wind, and I'd think, there is nothing quite so grand as this moment.

People spend all year crafting their convoluted and crazy camp themes, and then come to the desert to setup, see, and share. In the space of one week, a city of 40,000 people appears, communes, and then disappears. It's not for everyone, to be sure, but if you're interested in art, and can deal with a little (ok, a lot) of dust, you should go. And reserve your van now.

One of my favourite installations was the jaw dropping Belgian Waffle, a $1 million, 45-team-members-strong, 3-weeks-long-in-the-building, massively intricate wooden structure that lit up all alien green at night, and which was burned to the ground on Sunday.

Another gorgeous piece was the giant daisy flower that telescoped several stories over our heads, glowing and pulsing in every shade of the spectrum. At some point, I saw my daisy in the distance, and I left the disorienting DISORIENT dance party and started running to get a closer look, and realised that I was only one of scores of dancers, also running, from all directions, towards the flower, as though we had finally found our god. The one that makes us kneel to beauty.

I have to stop, because what I've said, or even photographed, doesn't come close to the experience of it. But one last thing - the night the Man burned was the most spectacular night of all, something out of another world, a lunatic carnival, drums and dancers, fire and light, a dawn of a doom of a dream. Everything roaring, roaring, roaring. I hear you, Mr. Bukowski.

PS: I'm not doing a separate post for this, so here are photos from my last two luscious weeks in San Francisco.

A Summer in San Francisco

On my last day in Barcelona, I sat in my flat and wrote all day, wearing my sexiest dress. I was surprisingly unhung over from drinking too many g&t's the night before, and I was lonely as hell. Then an old family friend called to tell me that his long time partner had left him for a high school flame, and his father was dying. Suddenly, my diamond shoes were too tight. If you don't know this Friends/Chandler reference, it basically has to do with stopping complaining about my semi-perfect life. I mean, I had just spent three months in Barcelona, during which I had had more kisses from more boys than the entire year before, written 5 new stories and poems, and learned how to make a kick ass salad dressing. Nothing to cry home about.

It took me over 36 hours to get from Europe to the Best Coast (the other option was half as long but $500 more). It actually wasn't so bad. Really. Despite this next bit. My flight from Barcelona to Dusseldorf (don't ask) arrived minutes after the overnight baggage storage facility closed. My flight to the states wasn't til the next morning, and so now I was faced with finding a quiet dark corner of baggage claim, which also had enough space for a suitcase and carryon. Naturally, there is no quiet dark corner of baggage claim, or in departures, or in the lounge on the third level, or even in the meditation room. I had had high hopes for the meditation room. The one in Taipei is wall to wall carpet and cushions. Not so, the German meditation room (is anyone surprised?). This room was dimly lit, freezing, and all stone. There were a few granite benches one might find comfortable if one were a midget monk from the iron age. I espied a different floor surface towards the back of the room, and quickly hurried over to check it out, only to step wholly into a pool of water! I suppose this pool was supposed to add to the tranquility of the room, but all it did was make my feet fucking cold and wet.

After this unwelcome encounter, I decided to go back to the baggage claim benches which were padded and had no seat handles to prevent stretching out. It so happened that the least lit bench was also partially occupied by a life size statue of Ronald McDonald who was helpfully pointing to the McDonalds at the end of the terminal. I pulled my hoodie over my head, lay down next to Ron, and fell soundly asleep (I so wish someone had a photograph of this scene).

Soon, I was awakened by an airport employee who expressed concern for my well being in stilted English. He worked for Lost and Found, and managed to explain to my groggy self that I could store my bags there til morning for free. I finally focused on his Bangladeshi name tag, and revealed that we were from the same beautiful and desperate delta (naturally, no brown people guess on their own that a dyed blonde might be one of their people, despite my features and skin colour). We then proceeded to have a far less stilted 2 hour chat in Bangla over hot chocolate at 1 in the morning in Dusseldorf. I love it.

I finally got to San Francisco, and despite my utter and unexpected joy at being back in this gorgeous gorgeous city, I sat in Jim's lovely flat and I pined. Transition, culture shock, heartache, fatigue, debt, paralysis of glorious options, all of it combined to make me supremely antisocial. It took me a week to shift the burden of my pining from Jim to the rest of my wondrous and willing west coast friends.

The one good thing about heartache is that it slows time down. Of course, most of that time is spent thinking obsessively about things you should leave well enough alone, but if you're anything like me, you're glad for any extra time in the day, no matter how miserable and drawn out. Especially when you spend the first 2 hours of the day crying as you read the online news from America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the heartbreaking and heartstopping blogs from Lebanon.

But I also laughed all the way through Nellie's wedding, Jules' reading, Sara's birthday, salsaing with Eileen, the Manu Chao and Thievery Corp concerts, Mary's house party, MoMAing, Julie's farewell bonfire, the pool party with Ed, beach trips with Jim, Chellis' birthday, and playing with Amanda. And that was only the second half of July.

I've since decided to seriously test my friends' hospitality and futons, and spend another month and half here. Hopefully by the time I hit the East Coast in mid September, I'll be back to my old kissy ways. I'll have hiked across Angel Island, tripped through Burning Man, run all over Russian Hill, and hopefully fed and slept and written and conversed and danced and read myself to satisfaction. Maybe I'll even have thought out the book I want to create for my Fulbright. I want to make it experimental and bizarre and emotional and full of colour. I have lots of ideas but need many more. If you have any suggestions for cool/strange/nontraditional/nonlinear books, films, art, music, photographs, etc. please tell me. I would be much obliged.

"My heart's not I, I cannot teach my heart:
It cries when I forget."
Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam

Usted Esta Aqui.

It's true. It's been ages. I have some excuses, none of which are really responsible, because we all know the real reason (a weak writing spine, or conversely, far too turgid (tumescent, engorged, bulging) a social spine). But the excuses are interesting, at least to me, so here you go.

First, in the 2.5 months I've had a flat in Barcelona, I've had it to my naked nimble self all of 7 days. While it's true that I invited all of you to come, I had no clue you'd all take it up. Every last one of you. Yes, even you, because I know you're online checking for tickets right now. Do it quick because I leave July 13.

Of course, I have loved all my visitors (Sunshine, Simi, Ezra, Cathi, Diego, Andrea, Ali, Sheba, Faisal, Yasir, Cynthia, Ed, Suna, and soon to come Shondy and Vijay). With them, I have jaunted through the loopy Parc Guell, the always jawdropping Sagrada Familia, the wild and trippy Sonar Festival, parks, beaches, mountains, cemeteries, shops, restaurants, cafes, London, and my balcony. If I then schedule in my 9 nightly hours of sleep, and a sudden influx of editing work (after months of loafing), then we can all see in which corner of oblivion my writing schedule sits.

Let's just call it research mode. Or something.

Next, I had a fucking blast with my Sonar crew. 7 ambitious partiers flew in from San Francisco and New York in mid June, rented a fat flat on Gran Via, and threw down for 3 days. This annual music and art festival is housed in the impressive Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona (how crazy brave of the city to lend a museum to the cause of international revelers). The space was a trip in itself, but of course, you know us, we left nothing to chance.

The music was mostly strange and confusing progressive electronica, with some bursts of excellence. The art was sometimes provoking, often incomprehensible and techobabbly, and not as pervasively funky as I wished. The organisation was terrible - 2 hour will call lines, 1 hour entrance lines (AFTER freaking will call), popular DJ acts blocked up because too many people were trying to get in, and the Sonar Noche events miles and miles away. You would think after 15 years, they would figure that shit out. Oh, and the scene was hohum. Not the wild dancy crowds of Coachella, or the shiny arty druggie meld at Burning Man.

But did we care? No. We didn't even make it to day 3 of the festival, despite our stylish festival armbands. No, instead we woke up at 4pm (ok, so, we didn't wake up before 4pm any of the days) and tripped our way through Gaudi's garden city in the hills to the north. I was sitting on Parc Guell's curvilicious tiled ceramic bench, when Mr. Ken Kesey's intoxication of choice hit. I don't think we stopped laughing for the next 10 hours, through the hall of columns, the yellow flower garden with the "comfortable" stairs, the metro rides, the trashy tourist cafe on Passeig de Gracia, the fat flat, the explosive crowded intense dance club City Hall, and our breakfast and chillout spot, the next morning.

No one who is interested in beauty and motion should pass this experience up. At 7:30am, as I was taking the subway back home, I watched in awe as the floor of the subway transformed into a 3D tron-like grid, where the tiling and dirt marks became shooting points of light, pulsing around my feet in 90 degree angles. When I emerged outside, under the looming spires of the Sagrada Familia at dawn, it was as if the world had been painted, fresh, just for me.

Since I've been living large in BCN, i.e. spending all my money on rent and Sonar tickets and Rioja tinto and one way plane tickets, I've had no money left over. My bank account has been at $0 for 2 weeks now. I can count the number of times I've been to a Barcelona dance club on one hand. The number of times I've eaten out in a proper restaurant on two. But the number of times I've chopped up a million cheapo veggies for a salad meal, I can't even tell you. I think I'm part espinaca, part garbanzo, all farty queen at this point (and when you come to visit, that's what you're getting for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, kiddo).

I'm in love with this city. Even though I still can't speak Spanish. It's ok because after all my visitors, I am totally antisocial, and enjoy being utterly alone in the city. I go for long bike rides on my rusty bike. I run slowly around my neighbourhood of Eixample (pronounced ey-shamp-lay). I sit on my sunny balcony for all my meals. I lie in bed all afternoon and read. I am continually in awe of my semi-perfect life. (I should add that I also work! I know no one believes it, but I edit, write, and transcribe, sometimes full time, like the last 3 weeks. After all, I have to fund my semi-perfect life somehow, right?)

I'd like to come back to Spain after my Fulbright. Oh I got a Fulbright Scholarship! (which you all know already because I've been going on about it for ages now) There are (at least) two fantabulous things about this. First, they are going to pay me to do something I was going to do anyway - go to India and Bangladesh to research and create a collection of short stories, poems, and photographs. Secondly, my father was one of the first Asians to receive a Fulbright, after they made it available to non-US citizens to come to America, and it enabled him to go from Bangladesh to the US to do his graduate studies at Johns Hopkins. And now, some 50 years later, I am making the return journey on the same scholarship. Poetic, nah?

So I had all these pipedream plans to go to the big bad apple to find myself an agent, but I think I might come back to Spain instead next fall. Or maybe I could buy a used car in Central America and drive south as far as it goes (it being the car or the continent). Or I could hitchhike to my hometown in Nigeria, see if the playground jungle gym in Nsukka is still bright red, or even there.

Speaking of hitchhiking, I stole that idea from my cool uncle, Jamie Mama, who is an architect in Liverpool. When he was doing his degree in Ankara, he hitchhiked from Turkey to Tripoli where my parents were living at the time (incidentally, where I was conceived). Admittedly, he had to buy a ferry ticket along the way (there is the Med after all), but most of it was on the fly, and he arrived at my mother's (his older sister) doorstep with a beard and a bag, 2 weeks later.

When I hear stories like this, I understand why my parents accepted my wanderlust of a life so quickly. I understand why I did. It's true that being away sometimes reminds me I'm American, in pleasant and unpleasant ways. But it's also true that being in America reminds me that I'm not from there. I'm from somewhere else.

And it's always true that being home (wherever that is) is a changeling thing, and home is where you (yes, you) are. Whether it's Rita Aunty's outside London, or on my couch in Berkeley with Cynthia, or at Sonar laughing with Sheba, or teetotaling with Irene in Barcelona, or in Sabrina Aunty's house in Gulshan, or on the Andaman Sea with JimChae, or pesking around San Francisco with Jules, or in Bangkok with Marko, or in the firehouse with Arshad, or in New York with Amudha, or in Nellie's kitchen in Lake Merritt, or in Becky's VW in Westwood, or in Rahim's flat on West 15th, or walking with Dave Toc through West Philadelphia, or watching the Elizabeth River drift by with my mother, or lounging in North Philly with Arati, or visiting Brooklyn at night with Arif, or seeing Feni through my father's eyes, or walking through Piedmont cemetery with Mary, or driving through the East Bay hills with Dean, or analysing everything with Hardik in DC, or throwing Glenn's frisbee through Southern Europe, or writing across continents with Chellis, or MSNing with my brother, or playing with the dogs in Valerie's flat in Seattle, or doing anything, anywhere, with Simi.

Speaking of Simi, I must boast yet again, about my brilliant little sister, who has just been offered a lectureship at MIT this fall. She's not even done with her PhD (ETA: December 2006 from UCB), but soon she'll be teaching senior architecture undergraduates a studio class of her own design. Pretty f-ing cool if you ask me.

I hope to see some of you in the West Coast when I'm back Bastille Day 2006.

Wish me love, do. I wish it for you.

Thexy Barthelona

I've not written any new stories in almost two months, unless you count these blogs. I've not taken photographs for days. This is what I do: I walk Barcelona's streets for hours and hours and hours and I cannot stop looking.

I remember now why I loved this city so, and so immediately. It's the most beautiful urban space in the world (save Istanbul), the one where I'd want to live longest (save San Francisco). Each corner I turn is a revelation. It's like driving down Highway 1, along the western coast of America. Except the winding road is a stone cobbled alleyway, the drop away cliffs are exquisite old buildings, and the churning sea is balcony after balcony after balcony, weeping flowers down on me.

Apparently spring is the time to come to the Mediterranean coast of Spain. It's like those late summer months in Berkeley - cool air, warm sun. And if you land up with such spectacular hosts as Francisco (an old college friend) and Tania (his fabulous partner), you couldn't dream a better welcome to this, the third leg of my wondrous world trip. First Bangkok with Marko and Jim. Then Bangladesh with my father and all my assorted relatives. Now Barcelona.

When I got out of customs at the airport, the first conversation I had was with a hot Spanish woman (so little time) who luckily used only words I understood (de donde vienes: where are you from). I was about to say Bangladesh, and then America, and then I realised why she was asking, and so I said, Dublin. My plane came from Dublin. Haha!

Speaking of Spanish, I have intense Spanish language lessons all next week - group lessons every morning and then private lessons for an hour and half in the afternoons. So hopefully by Cinco de Mayo, or as they say here, Thinco de Mayo, I'll have stuffed enough Spanish back into my brain to get on with it. And by it, I mean going out. Because that's what you do here. Go out.

I don't know how Irene (my other exuberant beloved college pal in Barcelona) did it, but she went from being the Asian girl who turned bright red after half a halfass cocktail, to being able to down half a bottle of wine in the time it takes to discuss why fingering is almost always so much better than intercourse (she says always, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. But it's hard when there are 10 of one and only 1 of the other).

Of course, it's true that I (and by association, most of my friends) can talk about this sort of thing for hours on end, and so maybe that's not saying much about Irene's drinking prowess, but I'm telling you, that girl can chug. I'm not sure whether I can keep up, but I'm fairly certain that the 15 pounds I lost via tiny eating portions in Thailand and dysentery in Bangladesh will quickly be replaced with alcohol consumption in Spain.

I have additionally accomplished the fastest apartment search in history. The day after I landed, I went and saw an apartment I had looked up earlier online (craigslist rocks). It's two blocks from the stupendous Sagrada Familia, has two bedrooms (to house all my various guests), two balconies, a sunny living room, open kitchen, fully furnished, central, near the Metro, free wireless, and done and done and done. True, the bathroom is the size of a closet, and it's a little more expensive than I wanted, but the timing and location and perfectness of the flat made up for anything else. I move in May 9. Come.

Notes on Dublin

Don’t fly into Dublin at 5:30am on a shoestring budget. The city centre buses don’t start running til 8:45am, and so first you’ll stand outside for a good half hour, stamping your feet in the April chill, finally read the fine print on the schedule, and then spend the next two hours nodding off in the airport lounge.

Do take your laptop or book to the beautifully remodeled National Library of Ireland on Kildare Street. The reading room upstairs has a cathedral ceiling and wide tables outfitted with curiously but conveniently dented cushions that will comfortably cradle your inanimates.

Don’t eat alone at the vegetarian restaurant, Cornucopia, on Wickham Street, because their servings of sweet potato daal, brown rice, and two salads are so large that you won’t be able to finish, though you’ll want to.

Do take the tour of the Chester Beatty Library at the Clock Tower of Dublin Castle (yes, that’s its actual address). The little old Irish woman giving the tour will tell you about the two Buddhist monks who spent six weeks in the library, sitting in their orange robes, cross legged and barefoot, moulding a spiritual structure out of sand, taking breaks only to smoke cigarettes outside in their Nike trainers (to show everyone they were normal human beings), and finishing by carrying the painstakingly created sculpture to the Liffey River and pitching it in (to show that everything in life is transient). Spend some time on the top floor gallery, which gorgeously honours three great religions (Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity), through the lens of religious art. Sir Beatty did not use his hard and cleverly earned wealth to acquire first edition copies of Shakespeare or Beckett. He was interested in beauty, first and foremost, and his stunning collection spans multiple religions and cultures.

Don’t throw your crime evidence into a bog because as the Museum of Archeology and History will tell you, the anaerobic and acidic conditions of peat bogs help preserve many natural elements. This beautiful pale blue Victorian museum has (among many many other riveting exhibits) a whole section devoted to items that have been recovered from bogs, including clothes, which rarely survive the test of time.

Do eat alone at the ritzy Clarendon on Chatham Street. It’s a splurge but sit on the first floor landing at sunset where you can watch all the Grafton Street shoppers and bikers head home while you eat soya fried squid and drink bloody marys, the cheapest cocktail on the menu. Luckily I like bloody marys. Luckily, you could substitute any drink for bloody mary, and I’d still be sitting pretty in the bride viewing light.

Don’t take any vehicular form of transport, other than to/from the airport. Dublin is imminently walkable, and on sunny days, the stone and brick city is quaint and glowing.

Do splurge 7 Euros to visit the Writers Museum, unless you’re really not interested in writing. The sophisticated audio tour offers a detailed and fascinating history of Irish literati (who all seemed to have attended Trinity College), all of it carefully arranged in a wrought Georgian mansion on Parnell Square North. And when you’re done, you can stroll across the street and sit in the tranquil Garden of Remembrance with its tumult of tulips and rippling mosaic pools.

Don’t leave the third floor of the Museum of Natural History, AKA “The Dead Zoo,” for last. If you’re pressed for time, quickly peruse the stuffed versions of Irish fauna on the ground floor, the stuffed mammals of the world on the first floor, and the vertebrate animals on the second floor. But then climb up to the third floor balcony and immerse your creepy crawly self in the invertebrate section, which displays 10,000 different insects and crustaceans (out of a collection of more than 2 million!), many reproduced faithfully out of glass (because their soft bodies cannot be stuffed).

Do stop by Moore Street Market for all your fresh veggie, fruit, and flower needs. The vibrant displays alone will make your eyes happy, and you can ward off an attack of winter scurvy with their luscious citrus selection.

Don’t bother going to the Museum of Decorative Arts and History, even if it is free (like every other National Museum of Ireland!). Unless you’re into old coins, silverware, and period furniture and dress, housed in a plain stone castle, you’ll find it terribly boring.

Do stay at the Ashfield Hostel on D’Olier Street for 13 Euros a night and free WiFi in the lobby. Their location is central, their bathrooms clean, their bunk beds firm, and their staff brisk and cheerful. Plus the guy at reception will offer you coffee and breakfast at 4am while you write travel stories.

Remembering the now

this is another thing:
every so often
when I blink
I forget where I am

and I see the world
through eyes that see
for the first time
then I remember
and the now of it astonishes me

how did the buildings grow so tall?
when did the streets get so wide?
why did the sky stretch so grey?
how did the people fade so pale?

it makes me want to cry
sometimes. or laugh
I’m uncomfortable in my own skin
those days
and the length of my fingers
reaches farther than I want
to touch

I'm sitting on a bus heading from Boston to New York City. It's one of those bright winter days where the cold doesn't feel as hideous as usual. Of course, it's April, and it shouldn't be this cold at all, but don't tell that to the miserable East Coast. Not that I'm miserable. No, not in the least.

I just spent a week with my ever radiant little sister during which we yoga'ed, went running, watched movies, cooked dinner, drank tequila (slowly), did laundry (lots), hung out with her beautiful girlfriends (yum), talked endlessly about architecture and writing and orgasms and Barcelona and politics and the environment and parents and Islam and partners and travelling and all the silly serious things you talk about with your better half. Because she is. She hasn't even finished her field work at Harvard and MIT, and she's already written 100 pages of her dissertation. She can read a book in 3 hours even it's about the pedagogy of epistemology. And she's the cutest funniest thing in the world.

I turn 33 in 3 days. I cannot wait. It's going to be in the big bad city of New York, and I'll be surrounded by some of my favourite people in the world. People keep asking me if it's strange to be back in the States after 3 months in Bangladesh. It's not. Sure, there's more white people around, but I seem to slip into each new world without a blink. I'll tell you why. 20 years ago, our family moved from Nigeria to America. I was 13, and as you know, 13 isn't the most comfortable age in the first place. Plus I was one of those hot tempered righteous serious types, and that kind never has an easy time adjusting to new things. We had a dim dinky flat in Pittsburgh, and all Kmart clothes that quickly took on the oft-paired odours of curry and BO. It sucked.

I don't think I ever got over the sudden narrowing and darkening of the sky. Nothing I've experienced since has compared to that shock. So Bangkok to Bangladesh to Boston to Barcelona to Bohemia to Berkeley in the space of a year? Easy. Culture shock is such a curious thing. I sometimes think of it as un-egalitarian. As if the place you've come from is the status quo, and this new new thing in your vision is an outlier. When in fact, each distinct space we inhabit has grace.

Look around. Where are you now? It's the elevated norm all around. It's always been.

So of course, all the crap I'm spewing is borne of culture shock. Changing states, geographically that is, always makes me turn inward. I haven't yet figured out how to properly describe my 3 months of joy, dysentery, publication, and chastity in Bangladesh. I went to Dhaka for a test run. To see if I could live there for longer. Not that 3 months is enough time to know such a thing, but that's the time I had. After 2.5 months, I thought that barring the total lack of romantic options, I could definitely live in Dhaka for a year or more. The incredible food, my fabulous relatives, the vibrant desperate contradictory hospitable lurching earnest sneaky generous bricolage that is Bangladesh. I could write and photograph there for years.

However, if you know anything about my libido (and my friends do as they've all been molested by it at some point or another), the abstinence constraint is a significant one. Especially if you are a hot young thing like me (don't get me wrong - anyone with any fire in her belly is a hot young thing in my mind). But then 2.5 notches into my chastity belt, I met the son of my mother's friend's sister (yadda yadda yadda). He was unmarried, despite his advanced age (ie my age), progressive, light hearted, sharp, and fun. Most importantly, he took me dancing, and I soon met a whole crew of silly fun active intense dancy drinky thinky people in Dhaka. And my entire perception of romance and the dating scene in Bangladesh shifted at that point. In a way, I'm glad I didn't meet all these people before. My last 2 weeks were spent running around with this crowd, which greatly cut into my time with my relatives, something I really regretted, but couldn't (didn't) really avoid. There's never enough time, is there?

Towards the end of my stay, Sabrina Aunty asked me what my favourite bit about Bangladesh was. Despite my fantabulous trips to the beaches in Cox's Bazaar, my father's village in Feni, and to Kolkata, in spite of all the drives around the rice paddy wonders of outer Dhaka, the chaotic teeming of the city, the art galleries and fruit stands and restaurants and rickshawallahs and book stores and folk dance lessons and markets, what I liked best in Bangladesh was sitting on my bed in Uttara with my Hasina Foofoo and listening to her tell me about the day my grandfather died, in Ehsan Bhai's arms, in Noakhali. Or lounging in Buneka's lushy bedroom in Gulshan with my Sabrina Aunty, learning what it was like to grow up in Dhaka in the 60's and 70's. Or eating with Mala Mami (oh, her cooking is divine) in Shantinagar and showing her my photos. Or trying to explain Western individualistic philosophy to my cousin Ashraf, in Bangla, while we walked on the roof at sunset, or chatting with my cousin Nibras at midnight about girls and school and the internet, or going bowling with my cousin Raiyan and talking about first loves. I have a hundred more moments like these. A thousand more reasons to return, celibacy or no. And besides, I can't play the celibacy card anymore when complaining about Bangladesh (more's the joy).

Is this what it’s like to lose yourself in
Dhaka, in kissing, in the writhe of your skin
the wides of your eyes, your muscle and thin
slower (I whisper)
faster (I fall)
the winter is holding its breath as you call
you’re coming (say it) you’re coming (say it)
you’re coming

in darkness, in traffic, in lamplight, I kiss
you, my mind in motion, my body in bliss
full abandon, there’s only one thing I miss
time (what’s yours)
time (what’s mine)
the winter is digging its grave as I find
a way to see (tell me) to free (tell me)
to stay

Speaking of Tongues

Today, February 21, 2006, is International Mother Tongue Day, so named in honour of Bangladesh's fight to speak its own language, which led to revolution and eventual independence. Speak.

Father Tongue

It took me my entire life to realise this: your grasp of a language can change who you are. I used to think language was just a means of expression, a natural extension of yourself. I didn’t know personality could live apart from speech. But a month in Dhaka with my dad changed all that.

My father and I spent a lot of time in the car. This isn’t surprising, of course, given the traffic situation here. During this time, we talked incessantly about Bangladesh, in English, as is our wont. We do this in America too, which is one of the reasons my Bangla is piss poor, my younger sister’s even worse, and my little brother’s downright embarrassing.

Abbu occasionally interrupted our conversation to speak to our driver, Jalil, in Bangla. Jalil was a wiry little man with an ambitious moustache and a nervous eager demeanour. He often hunched over the steering wheel as if to bodily urge the traffic jam loose. It was during one of these asides that I realised that my father was hilarious, in Bangla. Amma often alludes to Abbu’s wit and humour. My siblings and I had always shrugged it off, seeing no sign of it ourselves. To us, Abbu was always the professor. Stern, meticulous, exceedingly formal. But that was in English. In Bangla, however, he swung from shuddho to slang in the space of a sentence. And his angle never failed to surprise me.

“Ey, Jalil mia!”

“Hah sir!” Jalil replied, half smiling in anticipation.

“Tomar horn-toh, gola kharap hoyah gesay. Theek korthay hobay-na?” [Your horn has contracted a sore throat. Aren't you going to have to fix it?]

And Jalil and I were unable to respond because we were cracking up. Of course it’s true that everyone contains multitudes. I just hadn’t grasped that one of my father’s was the jokester. Not that Abbu let go his lectures completely. At one point, we found out that Jalil had two kids back home, deshey, and he hadn’t yet sent his daughter to school despite her being of age. Jalil soon had an earful about the necessity of education, particularly for girls, since they have enough disadvantages without being illiterate to boot.

In inspecting my own linguistic performance, and thus personality, I came up with this inescapable conclusion: in Bangla, I am a simpleton. My language skills are such that I can explain the psychological reasons why I don’t like to eat meat, but not the political or environmental ones. I can describe my sister’s love match with an American, but I can’t tell you why it makes sense to choose your own partner in a place where families and friends are flung thousands of miles apart, and so you better be damn well matched with the one person you get to see everyday.

February in Bangladesh has everyone abuzz with the books. People flood Bangla Academy every evening to browse the hundreds of new books being published in this month, listen to poets and writers and singers, remember the war we fought to speak the way we wanted. I was doing my best to regain some measure of the fluency of my childhood. It was perhaps an impossible task since I was only here for a few months. But now that I was aware of it, I was more troubled with the idea that my father had spent all my life outside his country, speaking a language that appeared to trap him into one limited version of himself. Especially since he had marched these streets with the throngs, half a century ago.

Inside the compound of Bangla Academy, there were still stalls being erected. It was only the beginning of the fair, and not everyone was set up. My father had a list of four books he wanted to buy, but tracking down each publisher’s stall appeared to be a hopeless task. It seemed there was no order to the order of the stalls. When we finally found the information booth, the multiple page list of publishers was not alphabetised. My father and I looked at each other askance, and then tripped over each other to ask why.

“We have no software to do that,” came the mumbled reply.

Hmmm…

Despite a rapid thumb and willing manner, a search of the list produced only one publisher on the list. Fine. We collected one book and kept wandering. Luckily, the dust wasn’t bad yet. It was early afternoon, just after lunch, and book lovers were most likely enjoying a Friday siesta. By chance, we stumbled across a second publisher, one that the information desk promised was not on the list. The man behind the stall counter had a baul deep voice and longish hair to match. He laughed when Abbu asked him why he had been hiding his stall from the mela organisers.

“Sir, we should be on the list. We came yesterday,” he said, his voice rumbling through his chest.

Abbu responded, “Pa goola dhoray gehsay, apneder khoojay. Ar duita boi baki ahsay… Akhon bolen, ki korbo?” [My legs have worn out while looking for you. And I have two books more. Tell me, what should I do?]

Somehow, my father managed to sound graceful through his complaint. Maybe it was his long suffering tone. Or his elderly ways that automatically elicit tolerance. Or perhaps it was that in Bangla, Abbu came across exactly as he intended, which in this case turned out to be persuasive. The baul immediately sat Abbu down, got his list, and sent a boy running to find the other two books.

There is something about the way I speak English that is very different from the way I write it. My spoken English is often simplistic, blunt, repetitive. I’d like to think that in conversation, my language habits are more storyteller-like, easier to understand, more entertaining. And hopefully a front for a far more elegant and complicated interior.

For entirely different reasons, my spoken Bangla is also roundabout. My gaps in vocabulary force me to dance around topics, go off on tangents in order to explain the gist, sometimes unavoidably avoid the very thing I want to talk about.

My cousins on my father’s side grew up in the village in Feni. When I was young and visiting Bangladesh in the summers, this stark difference in our cultural and geographic upbringing didn’t matter. A jump in the pond or flick of the carom piece didn’t require assimilation or empathy on either side. It was only as an adult that I became a stranger to my cousins, and they to me. The fact that they were all men now, and I a woman, made it even harder to relate. It was with their wives that I was expected to converse now, even though we’d just met. Luckily, every single one of my cousins was arranged (or in one case, chose) well. My bhabis are unilaterally gems, each sharper, more hysterical than the last. Give one an inch, and the mile was spent laughing, usually at the expense of each other and their unknowing husbands.

But how was I to answer their endless questions? After they overcame their initial shyness, they were insatiably curious. Who was it I was holding a candle for in America? There must be someone. Who wouldn’t choose to get married, after all? If I wasn’t already, at the rotten old age of 32, I must not want to at all, right? Not quite.

Dottie Bhabi got my love of the traveling life as she’s the only of them who’s left Bangladesh’s borders. But she imagined I might want to be a nomad forever, which was certainly not the case. Dalia Bhabi and Momota Bhabi understood why I might not wish for all the responsibilities that came with starting a family. But they probably didn’t know the importance I placed on commitment and loyalty. And was there any hope of explaining my reservations about the legal, informal, and patriarchal institution of wifedom? Not in Bangla anyway. No, in my father’s mother tongue, I left my listeners with the impression that I didn’t really know what I wanted, and perhaps hadn’t even understood the matter altogether.

My father returned to the States shortly after my abortive social reprogramming attempt with the bhabis. And I found myself bereft. It wasn’t just that I missed laughing at his silly jokes, at his charming finicky ways. It wasn’t even the sudden loss of his instant Bangladeshi encyclopaedic knowledge, no matter the topic, social, political, lingual, or historical. It was the fact that when he left, he called it going home, whether he was speaking in English or Bangla. Even though there was no doubt in his mind where he was from. This meant he got my double cum halfwit life as a Bangladeshi American. And he forgave me my linguistic lapses, whether formulatory or fundamental. Mostly I missed him because despite our essential philosophic differences, he knows that there is more to me than what I’m saying and how I say it. He knows, from personal experience, that language is elemental – describing who we are, yet telling only part of the whole story.

---

This is my Neruda inspired tribute to Dhaka (Neruda poem also included):

Here I Love You, Dhaka

Here I love you, Dhaka.
In the neon streaked night, your streets rise and roar.
The hoarse hawkers and blighted beggars
vie with their ululations.
A hundred times I listen.
Horns, whistles, engines, breath.
A thousand times I hear anew.

The crows swoop and cry.
Dust whips off their wings in slow motion.
Your black water stained buildings are unremembering
Of the rains.

Oh the lurid flutter of your clothes.
Beckoning.
The sultry hoods of the rickshaws unfurl and wink.
Saris weep and wave from crumbling balconies.
This is a window.
Here I love you.

Here I love you, and the winter shrouds you in vain.
I love you still amidst the dull and deep.
Sometimes your path is lined with dark slow streams.
I see myself lost in your staining excesses.
Your brides of the late afternoon light fade.
I love what I do not see. You are a vision.
My words wrap around you to no effect.
But then the moon reveals itself over your lakes.

The boat on the water is a sculpture
Carved and set upon a gleaming stone.
And as I love you, the wind threads its fingers
Through your rippling heedless body.


Here I Love You
Neruda

Here I love you.
In the dark pines the wind disentangles itself.
The moon glows like phosphorous on the vagrant waters.
Days, all one kind, go chasing each other.

The snow unfurls in dancing figures.
A silver gull slips down from the west.
Sometimes a sail. High, high stars.

Oh the black cross of a ship.
Alone.
Sometimes I get up early and even my soul is wet.
Far away the sea sounds and resounds.
This is a port.
Here I love you.

Here I love you and the horizon hides you in vain.
I love you still among these cold things.
Sometimes my kisses go on those heavy vessels
that cross the sea towards no arrival.
I see myself forgotten like those old anchors.
The piers sadden when the afternoon moors there.
My life grows tired, hungry to no purpose.
I love what I do not have. You are so far.
My loathing wrestles with the slow twilights.
But night comes and starts to sing to me.

The moon turns its clockwork dream.
The biggest stars look at me with your eyes.
And as I love you, the pines in the wind
want to sing your name with their leaves of wire.

Winter in Dhaka

I've spent a month now in Bangladesh. My Bangla has improved enough to say what I think, but not why. As for the script, let's just say that my 8 year old niece reads faster than I do.

So, I have three amazing homes here. These are the households of my Babu Mama (mother's brother) in Shantinagar, my Sabrina Khala (mother's (cousin) sister) in Gulshan, and my Hasina Foofoo (father's sister) in Uttara. Uttara is actually where my family's flat is - mildly embarassingly named "Mansion de Abeer." My widowed foofoo and her two sons live there since we are hardly ever there.

Everywhere I go, I am fed and loved to bursting. When I was in Gulshan one morning, I was eyeing my cousin Raiyan's glass of fresh squeezed carrot juice. Sabrina Khala noticed and said, do you want one too? Or would you like one of apple? Or a mix? That's kind of how my life is. I barely voice an appetite, and it is immediately satisfied.

Dhaka is tremendous, overwhelming. Its population has doubled in the last few decades and it shows. The city is spreading, virus-like, in all directions. It never stops. The weather is pretty perfect right now. Neither hot nor cold. The pollution has somewhat abated from the conversion of the black smoke belching 3 wheel baby taxis to CNG (compressed natural gas). The traffic, however, is worse, if that's possible.

Last night I saw Dr. Muhammad Yunus speak at the star studded 15 year anniversary gala of the Daily Star, the largest English daily in the country (that's printed a number of my stories). Dr. Yunus is the genius inventor of the concept of microcredit, which gives small loans to poor village women to start businesses. He found that these women were the most likely of all demographics to 1) do good with the money for their families, and 2) pay the loans back on time. It was such a simple idea that in the beginning no one believed it would work. It is such a powerful idea that it has spread to every part of the world. And he is more humble and earnest than you can imagine.

To celebrate their anniversary, the Daily Star put out an anthology of Bangladeshi writing in which my story, "The Straight Path," is the lead. I sort of hope no one reads it because it's on the unstraight side (who'd have thought?). Mahmud also has a strange surreal sharp little story in the anthology. Naeem has translated a couple of Syed Mujtoba Ali's famous Bangla stories. And my gorgeous cousin, Rubaiyat, has both a poem and a short story in it. I am not so secretly glad that Rubaiyat's story is also on the racy side. She says we'll get called the bad cousins, and so I don't have to stand alone.

However, I do stand alone, in one respect - my hair. When I first got here, I wore my green Vietnamese scarf so that my dad, who doesn't like extra attention, wouldn't be annoyed by all the staring. I've continued wearing it on many occasions because the staring is insane. When my head is uncovered, you can be pretty sure that 99% of the people around me, which can easily number into the hundreds depending on where I am in Dhaka, are watching. This triptych I have of black roots, green streaks, and blonde curls, it's still startling to me even. And in Bangladesh, where (as Jules pointed out) even the trannies have dark hair, it seems an 8th wonder (or fright) from the blinkless gazes. The tranny photos linked above were taken by a photographer I met at New Age, the newspaper where Rubaiyat works. Akash, who is soft spoken and unspeakably talented, lived for a year among the transsexual community, photographing them. Pretty fucking cool.

Also cool is Naripokkho, the women's organisation, where I've started volunteering. They are committed to building, linking, and empowering activist groups around the country, all for the betterment of women's rights. The people who work there are dedicated and so very sweet. I've started editing their annual report, and last week, I gave a short workshop on writing.

On Wednesday, February 8, I head to Kolkata, India for 8 days. The first 3 days I will be hanging out with micropixie who is spending a month in West Bengal to learn music and such. Sabrina Khala joins me on the 11th, and we'll go tour Tagore's birth place (Shantiniketan), Coffee House (where all the literati hang out), sari shops, Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa's organisation), the National Museum, Victoria Memorial, the Marble Palace, College Street, and anywhere else that strikes our fancy. I've never been to the Bengali part of India - Kolkata used to be the capital of old India, and still remains a cultural and literary heavyweight, and so I am hugely excited.

I've had some bandwidth issues uploading, organising, and labeling my photos from here. Broadband in Bangladesh is not quite as broad as it should be. A 1-2 mb photo could take anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes to upload, and since I take a ridiculous number of photos, you can imagine my frustration, and your relief. About half of what I want is uploaded (though not organised or labeled), the rest to slowly slowly follow.

And, lastly, for those of you with any concern for my chaste state (ok, maybe I'm the only one who cares), I've discovered that one doesn't need a boyfriend in Bangladesh if one can afford a full body massage at Bliss Salon. If I wasn't sure I was in prudish Bangladesh (and after all of Thailand's "special" massages), I'd be suspicious. Full on T&A ministrations. Dude. In addition to the usual. Of course, it's not sexual (other than my dampening panties) but I'll take it any day. And I do. Hee hee.

Why brazilians aren't good for Bangladesh

Sorry for all the euphemisms, but it's just too much if I say it bald. When I first embarked on the "gaze in awe at the hairless baby" plan this December in San Francisco, I asked for a lot of advice. Because I was afraid. While I have waxed and shaved and tweezed and threaded almost every other part of my body, my box has remained the way God imagined it. Well, except for the buzz cut. But since it was my mother who told my sister and me to trim down there, after our periods, for hygienic purposes (don't ask; I didn't), I feel as if that's close enough (ahem) to God.

That state of nether affairs was just fine with me for the last two decades, as I'm not into pain, down there. But when my courtly cunning linguist requested a brazilian, minus the landing strip, for his ease of access and my ease of pleasure, I thought, well, I'll try anything once, especially when I'm promised thrice the linguistics. Anyway, this story isn't about whether it was worth it or not (sorry, kids), but about why brazilians and Bangladesh don't go together.

So one of the funnier pieces of information I got was from a lawyer turned candy flipper. She said she learned the hard way that squatting over public toilets becomes a splattering hazard when one were depilated down under. I immediately understood what she meant because I've often guessed that if it were not for the bush, the bird would fly in 2 to 5 different directions. What was eye opening for me was the reaction I got from men when I mentioned this possibility. A businessman turned gambler asked, askance, you mean the stream actually wets the reeds? Obviously, an eye opener for him too, but fucking a, penis-heads. Do you have any sense at all? A dancer turned art saviour said she's always thought that guys don't think through things as much as women do, especially when the things don't directly concern them.

But back to the brazilian. Since I've used squat toilets pretty much all my life, though only in South Asia, I've found them to be hygienic and easy to use (apart from that one time I was recovering from a knee surgery. Then it sucked). However, I am adding another time when squat toilets are not the way to go - when you have a spattering hazard and your feet and flipflops are exposed. Every third time I go, I have to finish by washing my feet and footwear. Sure it's not painful, like hyper-bending your knee when your ligaments are still in repair-mode, but it's definitely not fun. And though I am highly enjoying my time in my father's village in Noakhali with my kind and cordial cousins and their clever, silly wives and the adorable vibrant kids, I am looking forward to returning to Dhaka, where they have sitting toilets, and I can have dry feet again.

So I did have dry feet my first 4 days in Bangladesh, which were spent in Cox's Bazaar, in the south of Bangladesh, on the longest unbroken stretch of beach in the world. We took a train part way down there, which was fantastic. I do so love train rides. And Cox's Bazaar was gorgeous: sunny, breezy, remarkably clean, with powder soft sand. I was vacationing with my relatives (from my mother's side), the Islams. Nibras, the youngest, is now 17, and a towering 6 feet tall. He is hardly seen without white headphones or black hoodie. Buneka's hair is still stunningly red/orange from her fall dye job, and she's about to graduate from Penn this spring. Raiyan, the oldest, is working his butt off in one of his father's businesses in Dhaka and preparing to apply for MBA programs in the US. Sayeef Uncle is ever the charming world conqueror, just done with his stint as the president of the Chamber of Congress and looking to move up. And Sabrina Aunty just won the woman entrepreneur of the year award in Dhaka. She knows pretty much everything about everything, and she's barfy nice too. They are all fun and silly and sharp and funny and intense, and I loved being with them. We slept late, lazed on the beach, went for long drives in the countryside, ate fabulously well, and generally had a remarkable time.

One of the best things we did was try to find the waterfall at Himchori (a trickling underachiever) and the beach at Inani (an isolated rock studded wonder). We took along the Islams' trusty Pajero, lots of snacks, and our sense of adventure. We offroaded, drove on deserted beaches, forded little streams with the windows down, split up, got back together, took lots of photos, skipped stones, got wet, drank coconut water from freshly picked coconuts, and drove back through a stunning skyfull sunset.

January 11th was Korbani Eid in Bangladesh. I was in my father's village for the holiday. Everything seemed faded there. Worn, tired beyond their years, despite the brilliant colours with which they were born. Even the people. But the agedness and the enshrouding winter dust doesn't diminish how beautiful it all is. My eyes cannot stop looking.

On Eid, all over the country, men went to prayers, and then returned to slaughter thousands and thousands of cows and goats. I was called multiple times to watch the slaughter of our own purchase, a large brown cow, in the front yard of my father's childhood home. My brother took lots of photos at a safe distance (they will be (password protected) on his jollybengali.net website soon). My father watched from the even safer distance of the house. I sat in my little bedroom, on a blue cotton bedcover with hand embroidered flowers, not watching at all.

Afterwards, we discussed various aspects of the ritual. For example, is it really humane, as is much proclaimed, to slit the throat of an animal and let it bleed into the bloody ground? Or, why is it that sacrificing a cow saves the souls of only 7 human beings (a goat saves only 1)? And, where does it say that the killing must be done year after year, family after family, in a country where so much hunger and poverty abounds?

My father says the Qu'ran only says to sacrifice an animal if you go to Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca), and then only if it's within your means. And it says nothing about how to do it, other than humanely (not that that's rather possible, but let's not quibble over details).

The hadiths, the supposed sayings of the prophet, Muhammed, are another matter, and expound in great detail and at great length about all sorts of ridiculous rules. Like how thick a stick you can use to beat your wife (the width of your thumb). Or that Muhammed used to dye his beard red (and so you should too). And why sacrificing a cow every Kurbani Eid will bring you that much closer to God. Well, my sacrifice was not to eat any meat. Scant, I know, but we do what we can.

One highlight of my village trip was the meeting my father called the night before Eid, with all my cousins and their wives and me and Maher. He started by saying he had some land in Savar, outside Dhaka, and since it was unlikely that any of his children or he and my mother were going to use it, he was giving it to my cousin brothers and sisters. They could not sell it, but were to split it evenly among themselves. He said that Islam had a notion to split things differently by gender (this led to my first profound disillusionment with religion approximately 16 years ago), but that the Hoques were setting a different mandate.

To that end, he said also that none of them who had daughters (which is almost all of them) were to marry them off before they finished school. He said it would be a great disservice to them to do so, and that the world was unfair enough already, and they should do their part to see that the girls in our family got all the support and opportunity they needed. His words were far more eloquent, of course, and in Bangla. Something about giving one the means to, at the very least, know her destiny.

Abbu went on to say that since university education was going to be ever more important in our world, my cousins were to provide all their children with a rigourous and equal education. He ended the meeting by writing out a cheque with enough money to start a seed money college account for each of the ten children in that generation. Each account was to be opened immediately, in the name of the child and the respective mother, and added to as often as possible.

I love my dad.

We're back in Dhaka now, and I'll upload Cox's Bazaar and Noakhali photos as soon as I can. My internet connection is going to be spotty since I'll be relying on internet cafes for some of it. But I'll probably check close to daily, so don't be an electronic stranger. I have a cell phone now too in case you're so inclined. Email me for the number.

All my spinster love. Hee hee.

Getting what you asked for

My 32nd year is turning out the way my 28th was supposed to be, Saturn returning at the end of four 7-year cycles, bringing monumental change and all that kabosh. I guess the least of what that proves is that I am (at least) 4 years late in everything. 4 years too long in a business Ph.D. program. 4 years past adulthood before my first good cocktail or girlfriend. Much more than 4 years to understand how to please myself in the boardroom (thank you, God of the Corporate Quitters) and in bed (thank you, Jellyfish, Stoic, Ano and everyone in between). Not love though. I have never been late for love. On the contrary.

This spring, when I caught my hair on fire, showed up to work hung over and witchy, quit my job, and lost my apartment, all in one fell swoop of a week, I still didn't realise that it was the beginning of the beginning (I'm apparently slow on the pick up too).

I spent this past December in the States after 3 amazing months in Thailand. Most of that time was in San Francisco, but I also went to Pittsburgh for 10 days with my beautiful mother (Abbu and Maher were/are in Bangladesh). You may notice that Pittsburgh looks remarkably similar in black and white photos as it does in colour. It was also cold as hell. Even the Pittsburghers were nonplussed (or were they?). I broke out my old swimming parka from high school because that knee-length, red-vinyl-coated, fake-fur-lined contraption is a wonder, despite making me resemble a giant red condom. I used to wear it freshman year in college. I'd put on my bathing suit, throw on the parka and sneakers and run to the gym with nothing else on, swim for an hour, towel off, and then run back home, dripping, red condom like, but warm. Hot, right? Glenn hated it so much, I put it away soon after. Luckily, my parents' basement is a bastion of old belongings, and 14 years later (Jesus, has it been that long since freshman year?) the parka was still on the same rack that it ever was.

Speaking of Glenn, I also got to see my first love, who got married this past summer, and pregnant this past summer (baby to be born 4 days before my 33rd birthday). Since I had spent 7 Xmas Eves with the Desy family during the 7 in-love years, it didn't seem that strange to be there again, in their wonderful cosy house with butter rich cookies lining my tummy and presents lining my pockets, even if I am the evil ex-girlfriend. Ho ho ho.

I had a grand time hanging out with my mom. She invariably cooks me all my favourite dishes (fish, squash and shrimp, banana bread, home made yoghurt, fish, shondesh, black eyed peas, bitter gourd, and did I mention fish). She's also happy to watch all the cheesy romantic $1 movies at Maxi Saver, and she lets me drive almost as fast as I want. And while I got almost no writing done at home (where does the time go, for God's sake), I did have lots of good deep conversations, slept tons, ran on the rickety treadmill, and generally had a lovely relaxing time.

San Francisco was its usual blur and brilliance, despite the ceaseless rain. I did my reading in late November which went famously. I got another story accepted, my first non-chaste one (exciting and frightening), at 580 Split, a Bay Area lit mag. I danced. A lot. I kissed. A lot. I sang at Jules and Christian's beautiful San Francisco wedding. I biked all over the city, even up over Divisadero (going down was actually harder/scarier than going up - I thought I was going to topple over and crash out). I spent a lovely week with Simi. I got wet, and then some. I ate burritos in the Mission and the stellar no-cheese pizza from Atlas Cafe. I got play from a doctor, a dancer, and a decoder. I got tested (I'm clean). I hugged all my West Coast friends. I tripped over New Years Eve and arrived, surreally, in 2006. I loved every moment. Even the unlovely ones. It's hard not to when you get everything you ever asked for.

So now, I'm in Taipei's international airport, sitting in the swanky China Airlines Dynasty Lounge. 40,000 miles on their frequent flier program gets me free wireless, comfy chairs, snackies, and juice. It had better score me a free flight or two as well, since I am doing my part to keep the airline industry afloat. I am en route to Bangkok for a day, then to Bangladesh. I will be in Dhaka for less than 7 hours before I leave for the south of Bangladesh (Cox's Bazaar) and then to my father's village in Noakhali for Eid. So possibly no internet access til mid January. But I'm here. And you can see my vision.

Good night, Bangkok

I have to come back to Thailand. The last time I made a promise to come back to a place, it was the summer of 1995, and I was in Barcelona. I didn't realise it would be 11 years before I'd return to Spain (April 2006, baby). I hope I'm not 43 the next time I'm back in Thailand, but if that's what it takes, then I'll take that too.

It's Wednesday, the day of my KQED podcast, and I'm in Chiang Mai, in the North of Thailand, lounging in the backyard of the most wonderful hotel in the world, River View Lodge. The owner just told me that if I had come 2 months before, I would have seen her sunflowers in full bloom, but one of the floods had destroyed them. Her garden is incredible. It's exactly the kind of garden I would want. Shady trees, reclining Buddha child statues, old wood furniture, blue green pool, lilies in pots of water, river sliding by. The halls and stairways are lined with bookshelves, large comfortable chairs, and climbing plants. The air is like San Francisco, but warmer, unhumid, still. I would like to live here for a few months. Write some short stories, eat spicy vermicelli with vegetables and oyster sauce for lunch, swim in the afternoon, watch dance shows at night, drink wine, sleep late.

You can see my Chiang Mai photos here - complete with a running commentary in the titles/descriptions, so I'm not going to do a separate post for it.

I'm heading back to San Francisco soon (click here to listen to a podcast of my Tanenbaum Award reading), but I wanted to write about my last days in Bangkok. I spent them in violently different ways. Either, I didn't leave Mark's apartment for up to 24 hours at a time and I sat in my room and wrote, or I stayed out 24 hours at a time, sightseeing, walking around, and of course, dancing. It's probably no wonder that all 4 of us (Mark, Jim, Amy, and I) have all come down with various degrees of dysfunction. My cold is thankfully on the wane, but Mark's stomach is still in rebellion. Amy is hacking through her 10 day Tai Chi course. And Jim is dead drunk and passed out. Of course.

So, Bangkok. Of all my nightclub experiences, only one, the last one, exhibited any hope of banging cock (Dave, that joke never gets old!). I'll start with that night, my last night out in this crazy brimful city. Novotel Hotel is a fancy crashpad in Siam Square with a sprawling disco in its basement, mysteriously named CM2. Five nights of the week, they have a hugely entertaining live act called the All Stars which features a gorgeous skinny Asian woman, a breakdancing black guy, and a skinny gangsta wannabe white boy. So far, so 90s, right? But they totally rocked! They basically sang their way through a DJ dance set, complete with transitions and choreographed dance routines.

During my four hour flail, I was hit upon by a Korean German (Steve), a Nigerian (Emeka), an Indian (Raj), and an American (name unknown). However, while Jim went home with a girl called Guitar who asked him to pay for her dental bills in exchange for getting to third base (I kid you not. And he did not (pay her dental bill, or get to third base)), I did what I've done my entire three months in Thailand: danced alone, went home alone, used my right hand alone (can you tell I hope that my parents aren't reading this, but just in case), and slept alone.

This scenario might sound pathetic, but I actually don't mind in the least. I might be setting myself up for a lifetime of singlehood, but I think it's the way of the world that you get more particular as you get older. Of course, I think I'm girl enough to drop everything (including my principles) for the next lovecrush of my life, but right now, as I sit by a slow brown river, 12,000 miles from almost everyone and everything I know, it seems rather unlikely that I'll find someone...you know, the someone who will properly appreciate a brown girl with green hair who travels cheap but sleeps in lux hotels, forgoes museums for oceans, can't live without email or her camera or her phone (or dancing or friends or a good margarita, with salt, on the rocks), wants an orgasm for every one of his/hers, wears only cotton underwear, watches gay porn and indie movies with equal relish, is strident, bossy, foolish, abrasive, inconsistently idealistic, rabidly feminist, anti-religion, impulsive, curious, obsessive, restless, eager, wanton, and willing. That could be my personals ad, right? Well, it sort of is, but hasn't done me any favours yet.

But let me tell you, why every other club in Bangkok has proved favourless as well. Angels Disco in Nana Hotel is a prime example. Here, they let all Thai girls in for free, though everyone else has to pay. Because of this, there are a billion Thai girls, in all their skinny slight slinky sexy shy smiled glamour. I think they are also all "working girls." And while there are the requisite plethora of gross old white men, I was surprised to find an excellent selection of hot boys in my age bracket (ish. This bracket, if you know me, ranges widely in both directions).

Due to my spoiled adult years (not to be confused with my invisible teenage years), I was hard pressed not to be upset by the (almost total) lack of attention I received that night, and pretty much any other night at any other club in Bangkok. I mean, I understand - I appreciate femaleness as well as the next teenage boy. But this is femaleness for sale. That changes everything. And sure, for men who've never been lucky at love or sex, I can see why they would find this kind of attention irresistible (despite the rings on their fingers). But hot boys? Come on. You, with the yellow shirt, quick smile, and sweet dance moves. Or you, Roddick look alike with a body to match. Or you, frat boy with chiseled face and laughing eyes. What the fuck are you doing? Maybe you don't know that the liquid eyed woman all over you wants money in the end. Maybe you're wasted and figure, it's Bangkok, and boys will be boys. Maybe you just don't know what everyone should know - that you're beautiful, and so is she, and it doesn't have to be this way.

In any case, I managed to convert my jealousy to anger to resignation to dancing. What else is there? It's Bangkok, after all, and I loved every minute and every mile. The food, the bookstores, the temples, the flowers, the heat (even the humidity), the colours, the culture, and most of all, the shiny happy people. Kapoonkraa, Thailand. I had a fucking blast.

Viet Nam

I cannot properly explain how viscerally Vietnam struck me. I was immediately felled. Our taxi ride from the airport to the capital city of Hanoi took about 45 minutes, and I think I took like a photo every 45 seconds (don't worry, I've pared them down some).

The motorcyclists, the red flags, the tall narrow finicky beautiful French architected buildings, but with their multi coloured paint jobs and tasseled pointy Asian roofs, the pho, the wok hats, the rice paddies, the carved wood furniture, the bustle, the ancient gnarled trees, the women selling hot French bread at every intersection, the leaf-lined avenues, the pedal rickshaws, the horns, the bicycles, the museums, the lakes, the crammed corner shops, the fresh spring rolls, the heat, the rain, the limestone cliffs, the green green water, the seafood, the sea, the sky.

Mark, Amy, Jim, and I narrowly escaped death several times on the way to the water puppet theatre in Hanoi. The city traffic is insane. We held hands and ran, screaming, between the dashing daredevil rickshawallahs and motorcyclists. Part of the problem is that the sidewalks are so often choked with street stalls and stores spilling over and parked motorcycles, that one is forced into the street. And there are no traffic lights. Or at least none in the Old Quarter that anyone pays attention to.

But this is the thing - Andrew Pham had the right idea when he hit Vietnam on 2 wheels. Not that I had the courage to rent a bicycle and brave the streets myself, not after 24 hours of observing Hanoi hustle. But speeding around on the back of a motorcycle through ... fucking awesome. I took a moto from the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, 9km from the city centre, and I had a total blast. My only regret was that I had my bag all zipped up and strapped in, and we were weaving in and out of traffic so closely that I couldn't take any photos (probably a good thing as my driver didn't need me fidgeting while he made his insane turns through traffic).

The Ethnology Museum rocked. I had no idea that Vietnam had 54 different ethnic minorities spanning 5 separate language families, each with their own gorgeously distinct dress, traditions, skills, art, music, agriculture, architecture, and so on. I learned how batik is made by the Hmong (with a copper pen filled with wax), the way the Black Thai mark social hierarchies (through rooftop and window ornamentation), and which US president is a model for one of the funeral statues of the matrilineal Giarai people (I swear it's him).

But the coolest thing was the museum's outdoor exhibit. There are 5 beautiful houses on the museum grounds along a lovely winding maze like garden path. Each of them has been built in the tradition of a different minority and is beautifully and authentically executed and explained. For example, one of the (most spectacular) houses is the communal house of the Bahnar. It is built on stilts 19 metres high, uses all original material faithfully (rattan and bamboo), and 42 villagers from Kon Rbang village in Kontum Town came to construct it in Hanoi in 2003.

Of course, true to my ribald ways, all I could think of (other than taking photos) while wandering around by myself is what perfect make out spaces these lovely, empty, bamboo scented, precise, and delicately built houses would make. Ha.

Because of our weekend trip to Halong Bay (more on this next) and a suddenly busy week in Hanoi, Jim and I ended up having to stay in a different hotel 4 of our 5 nights. Our last hotel room was on the seventh floor of an Old Quarter hotel and had the most stunning 180 degree view of Hanoi from its massive balcony. I sat on this balcony on our last day in Hanoi and typed up most of this post until the sky suddenly turned black and started to pour. So I went inside, locked up the heavy carved wood doors (the furniture here is so beautifully wrought and ornate), and continued writing on the bed while the rain rushed down. Later, when it seemed to be clearing, I thought I'd take a walk outside and get some lunch. I jumped off the bed, into a full inch of water! Some egghead had decided to build our balcony without any drainage, and somehow I had not noticed our room slowly flooding over the course of an hour! Luckily, I had not left anything on the floor. My camera had been sitting on the ground the entire night, right next to my battery charger, but I had put them both on the table earlier that morning - phew!

Of course, Jim was not so lucky (is he ever?). He had left his shorts on the floor, with his money and (yes, you guessed it) his phone in the pockets (he slept through this entire episode, by the way). This time, his cell phone did survive the immersion (see our Diving and Full Mooning trip for his first phone baptism), and he only had to dry out his money and pants for a few hours.

As an interesting side note, many Hanoi restaurants are not serving chicken or other fowl products right now because of the bird flu scare. Not that you can get bird flu from eating birds (as Sunshine just informed me), but to lessen the contact that birds have with humans (ie, to protect the chicken handlers, and transitively, the eaters). While this must be devastating the chicken farmers, the chickens are probably psyched.

Our magnificent 2 day side trip from Hanoi involved heading due east several hours to the Gulf of Tonkin to check out the mystical Halong Bay. Halong means the dragon's descent to the sea. Legend has it that a flaming dragon came roaring out of the mountains, gouging out the earth with his tail, and when he dove into the sea, the rifts and valleys in his wake filled up leaving only the high land above water.

Our ancient wooden boat creaked and drifted though hundreds and hundreds of tiny islands in Halong Bay, for more than four hours, on our way to Cat Ba Island. It had been raining just before, and so the islands and our vision were clouded with a blue grey mist. We spent most of our time on the top deck of the boat, listening to music, taking photographs, playing spades, and lounging under the wide wet sky.

I love when something (like a four hour boat ride) takes so much time, you can't help but pay attention. You must notice that only the clouds in the Northern sky are flecked with gold. That Royskopp and Primal Scream are the perfect operatic trancy soundtrack for when you are salty, sticky, and seawindblown. And that imagining yourself magic is as easy as opening your eyes to the blue.

I'm back in Bangkok now, for just a week and a half more. Wah:( I've got one more trip to make (Chiang Mai next week), a short story to finish, and then the first leg of my B-trip is done. I'm going to miss this place terribly. But I'm excited to be going on to Bangladesh and Barcelona (my exact itinerary is on olivewitch.com). And between now and mid April, I'll also be visiting SF, Boston, NYC, and Pittsburgh - so hopefully a city near you. Come find me. I'll be the one dancing. Love.

PS: My favourite Jim quote of the week: "I threw her off me and went straight to the Internet."

Back in the City of Dreaming

When I first moved to the Bay Area, I'd walk outside each day and the stillness of the air and the quality of the light got me every time. I exclaimed to Simi about it, and she'd say, oh yeah, it's cool here, isn't it? I thought I'd stop noticing, but 4 years later, I'm still ajoy.

This October, I stayed in the basement hobbit hole of Arshad's fire house in the Mission for 2.5 weeks and I had a total blast. I even had to start using my computer's iCal program, because I had so many delicious things / people / places to see / do / eat, and I couldn't keep it all straight in my normally organised and spreadsheeted brain. Of course, my crazy crammed schedule is nothing new to any of you who know me:)

Half an hour after getting off the plane from Bangkok, I was having a toxic blue drink in celebration of the lovely Laura's birthday. The next day, I spent a few hours wandering Mission bookstores, clubs, galleries, and the like for the annual Lit Quake Pub Crawl. The sidewalks were packed with people who were on their way into and out of readings.

"Honey, was the poetry thing at 6:30?"
"Should we go see Robert Coover or Scott Keneally? (I went to see Scott.)

Every single place I went to was PACKED. I *love* that. People excited about literature. I also bumped into my favourite hot sexy dancy silly sharp MFA girlies, Myryah and Julie. Together, we attended (my amazing brilliant cool writing advisor) Stephen Beachy's reading and then went dancing at Amnesia. By the way, check out Stephen's thrilling true life detective story in New York Magazine.

Around 3am that night, Myryah and I tried to get into the brand new deYoung Museum (they had an opening weekend gala), but there was a freaking 2 hour line at that hour, if you can believe that. I love that too. People excited to go to museums. We turned back, but I went back later in the week with Stephanie to check the place out. It has a very interesting structure and hyper cool inner spaces. Steph and I also had a romp through the always breathtaking dahlia garden.

Of course, the main logistical reason I came back to San Francisco was for the Tanenbaum Awards on October 18, 2005. However, it was not the slimy networking deal I had been promised by Intersection for the Arts and the San Francisco Foundation. I had made up these sweet business cards (thank you, my uber talented and artistic sister, Simi) to hand out, but ended up just giving them out to 25 of my dearest friends at an intimate ceremony downtown. Which, of course, I had planned to do anyway, but I was hoping that I could have spread the Abeer-love into uncharted territories. Maybe at the reading (which you are all invited to: Tuesday, November 29th, at the Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, at 7:30pm).

However, there was a silver lining to spending $750 for my ticket, even if I didn't land an agent, or try to, at least. Ok, many silver linings. First, my cutie dad came out west, met all my friends, stayed an extra day to play in the Bay Area, and that was fabulous. I rarely get my father all to myself, and so I was really psyched about that.

Second, I got a radio spot with KQED's new show, Writers Block. It's actually a weekly podcast, rather than an on-air kind of thing, but still exciting. I recorded my Swing State piece, and they are going to post it the Wednesday before the Nov. 29 reading. Don't worry - I will be mass mailing all of you to remind you to look for it.

The funny thing is I had initially sent them my online dating story because they said they were looking for fun hip young pieces, and I thought that story would be perfect (if you've read this story (and you're welcome to email me for it), then you know what it's about). The return email from the producer of the show was hysterical. He said that while they personally enjoyed your average roll in the hay / gay / trans / drunken / masturbation fantasy, they were still trying to get funding for their show (even though he thought the piece would probably get them a huge audience and fast), and so would I please send something else? Haha! I also got a rejection from Playgirl around the same time that said that they were about to publish a similar piece. I'm still convinced I'll get it printed somewhere (at the cost of immediate ostracisation from my family).

I spent my 2.5 weeks biking everywhere, doing Bikram, running, dancing, all my usual antics. In addition to this, I spent two full days driving all around the (gorgeous gorgeous) hills of Sonoma. This was part of a field work effort for Martin Trso, my Czech geologist boss. I was given maps, a GPS unit, and a clinometre, and instructed to find, measure, photograph, and record road cuts, ditches, gullies, stream crossings, bridges, and culverts. I know, I know... clino-what? Google, and now I, can tell you that it is a device that tells you the incline of any slope. Very cool.

Of course, I didn't know anything about any of the rest of it either. And while at the end of the 2 days, I was able to spot a culvert from blocks away, I also realised that I am terrible at judging volume. Martin's super power is that he can tell you the distance or depth of pretty much any object within a few hundred metres. I, however, have to climb into a ditch to ascertain that it is as deep as I am high. It was an exhausting and exhilarating trip. Lucky for Mr. Trso (and me), he found an editor who also loves to drive, can navigate with maps (even when the roads aren't all marked properly), and enjoys tromping around in the rain. One doesn't often get asked to do unfamiliar things after a certain age. But it's good for you, on so many levels.

This October, I also did something I've been wanting to do for years, ever since I chopped off my foot long braids in 1998 - bleach and then dye my hair a punky colour. I chose Manic Panic's Green Envy because I thought it would look good against my skin (versus blue or purple or yellow). I LOVE it. Not everyone does. Sheba said, your hair! and nothing else. Haha! And my parents don't know. But both my siblings (including my brother who was downright disparaging of the idea at first) appreciate it, and so do a good number of my friends (although both Scott and Alan brought up matching the curtains with the carpet (in case you're curious, they don't).

Speaking of Alan, I made an impromptu trip to lovely Evanston, IL, and it was really lovely. For at least 68 reasons, not including the incomparable colours of fall, and homecooked fake meat meals. Yum. Thank you, Alan.

Lastly, but not leastly, Marshad and Mara's Halloween party was one of the highlights of my trip. Those firehousers know how to throw a good bash. And since San Francisco is a city waiting for any slip of a reason to costume up, there was plenty to look and laugh at.

I'm back in Bangkok now. For a too short 3.5 weeks. I have 2 stories and a poem to write. Vietnam and Chiang Mai to visit. And of course some fish to eat. Ok, a lot of fish to eat. It's 90 degrees today and I only want Juicy. More soon.

Red Light Special

So sometime last week, during a crazy sudden monsoon shower, Hardik, Jim, and I decided to visit Patpong, the red light district in Bangkok. Just to check it out, you know.

Our taxi driver dropped us off at the Patpong night market which was housed under a tarp that was in serious danger of collapsing under the weight of the water collecting on top of it. The 2 seconds it took us to get from the taxi to the swayback dripping tarp soaked us, not to mention the gushing black water gutters we stepped through. Yeah, let's not mention that. So far, I have not developed ringworm or any other rashes, knock on wood.

We were immediately set upon by several touts who waved laminated fliers in our faces. These fliers can be summarised thusly:

banana pussy
ping pong pussy
dart pushing pussy
candle blowing pussy
etc.

It was a bit much, I thought, but I hadn't seen anything yet. Luckily, Jim sensed my apprehension, or more likely he got hungry, and so we ducked into a nice air conditioned cafe filled with other farangs to wait out the rain and figure out the plan. The highlight of that hour was our paper ball throwing contest, and Jim's observation that we could easily have mistaken our surroundings for somewhere in San Francisco, except there'd be more Asians.

When the rain abated, we entered a place called Super Pussy. I had no idea it had a name and was sorry I hadn't been paying more attention to the other names. As soon as we sat down, we were surrounded by women who proceeded to massage us thoroughly. At first, we were very pleasantly acquiescent until we realised that every motion or glance on our parts required payment. My masseuse was no less vigilant in her efforts, but upon my insistence that I had no money, she finally left me alone.

The red light district in Patpong has become more of a show for farangs than an actual pick up joint for either Thais or farangs. Of course, there is much picking up to be done if you wish, but mostly the women do their thing on stage and then collect baht in a grimy bucket marked "tips for the pussy."

The most surprising thing to me was the utter and complete blase boredom in their body language. The faces of the women on stage were absolutely blank, but not in a sullen or sad way, just bored. Their bikinis were sometimes pulled aside to expose nipples and pubic hair, in a careless, fuck if I care way. Some of them wore white athletic socks, like those western career women who wear sneakers to work and switch into heels, but as if they had forgotten to change.

The women pulled strings of flowers and hankerchiefs from their nether regions, shot precision darts to burst balloons tied to the ceilings, blew out candles on a fake cake, inserted mini peeled bananas and squirted them great distances, all while slouching and shrugging and sighing. The younger and prettier the woman, the less likely she was to perform any interesting acts, or any acts at all.

The strangest act was the 40-something woman who came out with two bottles. One was filled with water. The other was empty. She suctioned the liquid from the water bottle up her vagina. Then she expelled it into the other bottle, except it had turned black somewhere along the way. As the ladyboy attending to Jim explained (more on this in a moment), that was her trick: in goes water, out comes coke. My only theory for how she might have accomplished this feat was that she had black dye in her vagina which coloured the water on its way out. Any other guesses?

So the ladyboy with Jim. The last few days Hardik and I had pointed out several women who Jim had claimed were actually men, much to our disbelief. So when Jim told me the woman to his side at the Super Pussy bar was a man, I wasn't convinced. Until the cost of her operation came up. Apparently, 100,000 baht, or about $2500, will buy you a sex change in Bangkok. The ladyboy (who objected to this term vigourously when Jim used it) was pretty funny actually, and quite beautiful. She refused to leave Jim's side the entire night, despite Jim's protests that he wasn't interested. And when Jim told her that she was making his girlfriend jealous (I guess that would be me), she looked at me and then laughed and said to him, She know I don't want you, your dick too small. And she held up her pinky. Haha!

We found out the prices to some other activities along the way. Hardik attempted to get a massage (really) from a woman who was arguably the hottest and certainly the least bored looking woman there, other than the ladyboy. The hottie (Alissa) asked if he would prefer a blow job for $20. He didn't and settled for a topless lap dance for $12.

At some point in the night, I was suddenly hit by one of the mini peeled bananas. I was going to die from the grossness until Jim told me the woman had thrown it from the stage by hand, not by vagina. Still, right? But before he revealed this, he exclaimed, "Hey, it's not that bad!" As Hardik and I turned to look, he was holding what looked like a half eaten banana in his hand, and he was chewing. I couldn't even speak from horror and Hardik almost lost it screaming. Of course, Jim finally put us out of our misery by showing us the piece he had broken off the banana and thrown on the ground.

We all agreed that this would be a good time to leave. I'm sorry that I have no photos from this particular night, but no cameras are allowed in red light establishments (more's the pity because there were some great potential shots). But here's a link to my third Bangkok photo set - that include close up shots of the insect guy's food cart (gross!), Jim's new Japanese punk boy hair do, several beautiful Bangkok temples, a karaoke session, dancing at Bed Supper Club, and general horsing around with silly friends.

Additionally, here's a link to Phuket photos from our jaunt there last weekend.

And lastly, a hail to micropixie's new album, alice in steviewonderland, which is totally fabulous and funny and deep and warm and bouncy and silly and serious and clever and all of the rest. Go buy it now on her (super cool) website: www.micropixie.com

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

So a week and half ago, Jim and I decided to go to Cambodia, over land. You can fly there in less than an hour for $250 roundtrip (this is what Mark decided to do). Or for $100 roundtrip, you can travel from Bangkok to the Thailand-Cambodia border via minivan for 4 hours, go through 2 checkpoints and 1 visa office, walk across the border into the wild west town of Poipet, get scammed by the visa officer into hiring a beat up Toyota Camry taxi over the other perfectly new looking Camry taxis, be transported for 4 hours at the nerve wracking speed of 40km/hr on a road that hasn't been repaved since before the Khmer Rouge, complete with car-sized potholes and spine shaking bumps, break down, wait an hour by the lily pond while the village mechanic replaces the shocks in the pouring rain, and then drive another 2 hours to Angkor Wat. Oh and did I mention that the taxi had no working seat belts?

Yeah, I know. What was Mark thinking?

But believe it or not, while I might not do that particular route again, without buying a back brace anyway, I didn't regret it in the least.

Cambodia was poor and hot and dirty and desperate and hot and scammy and humid and did I mention hot? I had a great time. During our time there, we saw Angkor Wat's gorgeous ruined jungle temples (the largest religious structure in the world), ate French-Cambodian food from both fancy restaurants and street stalls, and according to Mark, facilitated the mob's hold by buying bracelets and trinkets from the children plying the Angkor Wat crowds. One night, we also got foot massages and club hopped from foreigner frequented clubs to Cambodian only clubs. The latter disallowed guns, knives, and thongs, and played an irresistable acid pop trance music that I couldn't stop dancing to. Fun!

One of my favourite mob child conversations went as follows:
You buy? Buy Buddha statue?
No, I don't want one.
Ok, you don't want one. You buy two?
You're pretty clever, but no, I don't want any statues, at all.
You buy for your boyfriend?
I don't have a boyfriend.
You buy Buddha, and you get boyfriend...
(Abeer laughing so she can't respond.)

Another lovely interaction was with a little boy who had enlisted his younger brother to help him collect patches of moss. He then proceeded to build a conical structure and pad it painstakingly with the patches of moss. When I asked him what he was building, he said, Angkor Wat. These two also relieved me of two of my Muji pens. I really hope they use them for some academic or creative activity as they claimed was their need, rather than selling them or something.

On the second day, when I set off on my own, because Jim was "all templed out," I got lost at Preah Khan. The path outside the temple split in two, and I took the one that seemed to go in the wrong direction but looked more interesting. Halfway in, the trees bowed over my head into a tunnel of green and light, and the crickets could drown the sound of your kisses. But then I crossed a wooden bridge nailed over a dry stream bed, and the wrong path joined the right one, and I was being whisked away by my tuk tuk driver to the next destination.

My favourite temple of all was Ta Prohm which has been taken over by the jungle and displays an organic and forboding sense of nature eclipsing man.

This is another curious thing. Cambodia's economy is in such dire straits, and they depend so heavily on tourist income that all commerce deals in US dollars. All the restaurant menus in Siem Reap (the nearest town to Angkor Wat) list their offerings in dollar prices. Even the beggars ask for dollars, although they will also accept Thai baht. I had one crazy exchange where I bought some (sweetly tart) pineapple from a roadside stand. The price was given in Cambodian rials. I paid in Thai baht, and received US dollars in change. Pretty crazy. Altogether a fascinating and unrepeatable experience.

I'll stop here because it's been more than a week since I've gotten back from Cambodia, and I have new stories (including some hysterical and incredible moments from Bangkok's red light district) that I have yet to write up.

More soon, love.

Diving and Full Mooning

I am now a PADI certified open water SCUBA diver. I have to admit, I had reservations about the sport, even after our first day of diving in Koh Tao, known to be one of the best dive spots in the area. It's expensive, requires massive amounts of training and care, takes forever to plan and to clean up afterwards. You could spend hours and hundreds of dollars for a measly one hour dive.

But on our second day, when I had a better handle on the process of gearing up and it didn't seem like such a chore, it was all different. Southwest is all underwater, and so the boat seemed to anchor in the middle of nowhere, after bouncing along for 3 hours in the empty ocean. But we jumped in, and voila, a totally wild and alien world. I'd do it again in a heart beat. Once I've saved another few hundred dollars.

In Chaweng, where we stayed the first night, most of the restaurants prominently display their seafood outside, on trays, fresh from the sea. You select your meal and how you want it cooked. I chose white snapper and soft shell crab, and Jim got lobster and squid. Yum. Chaweng was also where I had the best marguerita ever. I was sitting on the beach, the waves crashing at my feet, and I don't think I've ever been happier.

We topped off our jam packed 5 days in Samui by going to a full moon party at Koh Phangan, a nearby island, which apparently started the whole full moon party craze that now goes on all over the world. Lonely Planet says between 3,000 and 10,000 revellers descend on Hat Rin Beach each month to dance the full moon night away. We got there around 11pm and it seemed as if there were probably a couple of thousand people on the beach already. Each of the clubs blasted music onto their patch of sand while people thrashed and flailed. Most of these people were boys, white boys, to be specific. A massive selection. None, however, particularly caught my eye. But the ripped, thin, lithe, laughing, fire dancing Thai boys...

I got myself all decked out in glow-in-the-dark paint and danced for hours and hours. Around 3am, when Jim and I finally decided to return to Samui, we threaded our way through the unconscious bodies on the beach to the pick up point. The Petcharat speedboat staff checked our tickets and then pointed at our speedboat. It was floating about 50 metres away. A string of people, their clothes hitched up, shoes in hand, were wading out toward it. Since I had dressed for the full moon party as if I were going to the beach (duh), this was no problem.

Jim, however, was wearing sneakers. So he took them off and while taking his socks off, the tide came in and swept his sneakers out to sea. I of course was laughing too hard to help. I think the scores of people standing on the beach must have been cracking up too. He was about to give up on footwear for the weekend when the sneakers swept back towards him (the tide is like that). His troubles weren't over though. As he followed me into the sea, clutching his soaking sneakers to his chest, he felt a burning sensation on his leg. It was his cell phone, slowly filling with water and spontaneously combusting. I swear, if it weren't for Jim, I'd not get my daily laugh or ten.

I'm back in Bangkok now, trying to plan the rest of my time here (only three weeks! Thank God I'm returning in November). I have my Princeton Review class to teach tomorrow, a possible weekend trip to Angkor Wat, my new short story to work on, revising the last one, and maybe I can finally do some volunteering. I just met the lovely sharp Guy at dinner tonight (for Sheba, we had great Thai food at Lemongrass on Soi 24 in Sukhumvit. The best dishes were a sun dried green curry beef and roasted chicken) Guy works at UNICEF, currently doing tsunami relief work. I'm hoping he can hook me up with something interesting and useful to do.

I'll leave you with one of my favourite quotes from Shantaram, a 1000 page book that Shreyas recommended to me in Bangalore last December, and which I finally finished last week (I really enjoyed it, by the way):

"News tells you what people did. Gossip tells you how much they enjoyed it."

PS: If you haven't already, you can see my latest Thailand photos here.

Secret Places

I don't know how people say you can't stay more than three days in Bangkok. I thought at first those people weren't city people, but then some of them had lived and loved in NYC. Of course, New York is incomparable, but there's that thing about big cities that's the same the world over. The dirty street gutters, the pushing people, the tiny crammed corner shops, the shining department stores, the jammed traffic, the air and noise pollution, the street vendors, the all night cafes, the crowded night spots, the sexy girls, the leery boys, the musty bookstores, the unexpected parks, the restaurants from all over the world, the secret places, the overexposed, the light, the loneliness, the lack of sky. Three days. I could stay here for months, years.

I'm sad I'm leaving so soon. Six weeks is not nearly enough time, even if it is three times the average annual vacation an American takes. And there are so many trips I want to take – scuba diving and sunning in the South, trekking in the North, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam. I might have to return after my awards ceremony. It'd probably cost $700, and I'd only have three weeks in Thailand before I'd have to return for Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh and my reading for the Tanenbaum Award (November 29th at the Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco, if anyone's inclined), but it might be worth it. Should I do it?

Friday night, I went to an opera with Marco at the Thai Cultural Centre. Madame Butterfly, my first opera. At the end of the first act, I was about to write off opera. It was the Hungarian Opera Company, singing in Italian, with subtitles in Thai and (incomplete, typo-ridden, distracting, cheeser, poorly timed and written) English. Their voices were quite good, although I’m no expert. But I couldn't seem to make myself understand the music-ality of it. It seemed haphazardly trilling and then low. And of course, that tiresome fellow, melodrama, is opera's forte.

The story is about an American sailor, Pinkerton (good god), who falls in lust with a geisha, Butterfly, and marries her in Japan. She forsakes her religion and family for him, but he leaves her soon after their wedding. He returns after 3 years with an American wife to find that Butterfly and he have a son. His solution is to take the son back to America with him (his new wife is very accommodating on this front). Butterfly's response is to acquiesce and kill herself. Tra la la.

I suppose I could feel sympathy for her tragic plight (I am no stranger to being in over my head when it comes to emotion), but when love is translated as being "bright as the stars in the sky, sweet as flowers..." I want to gag. Despite this, the second act, where Butterfly mourns her poverty and missing husband and fatherless child and lost religion, it moved me. The duets she sings with her loyal maid, Suzuki, were wonderful, and her grief is in her voice. So, I'm glad I went (thank you, Mark, and sorry for being so ungracious. Hee hee).

Thursday night, I walked along Sukhumvit Road from Soi 55 to Soi 4 (about 30 blocks). It was one of the best walks I've taken, in a life series of them. I remember another night walk I made, across town in New York, at 3am, from 7th Ave. to 1st Ave. and then down a bunch of streets, in the rain, in spring. I had on a waterproof jacket, dancing shoes, my mp3 player, and my Nikon that takes phenomenal photos at night. Sometimes, I don't think I need much else in life.

This time, in Bangkok, I had no jacket though it was raining, and no music. But I had my camera, and my Chackos, which I've worn everyday since I got here. (I think the $300 for 3 pairs have almost been worth it - Jules, what do you think? Joe? If I can hold onto this pair for a bit longer, I'll feel better about it...)

Jim and I have begun sampling from the street vendors, now that we're a bit braver. And you can't argue with a redolent, tasty meal that puts you out a dollar and change, if that. There are two street fares we have been warned against. The first is something I would never have even thought of trying – they are large cockroach like insects that are roasted, and apparently are often killed with DDT like substances and so can be toxic when consumed. I saw them on a food cart last night and was so grossed out by their roach-likeness (and they're like 2-4 inches long!) that I couldn't even walk close enough to take a photo. Jim said because they don't have that iridescent shiny back shell of cockroaches, and because they have long locust-like back legs, they don't look as horrible as actual roasted roaches might. I beg to differ.

The other thing to avoid is something that given his penchant for anything fried or hot dog like, Jim would probably have tried if not for Lonely Planet's warning that it might give you tape worm - pickled Thai sausage.

That said, we have tried lots of other things, and have determined that I am less picky than Jim. I prefer to think of it as having wider range. Our recent meals have included salty orange yolked eggs (no clue from what animal), balls made out of shrimp, chicken, fish, pork, or beef, sizzling grilled chicken, whole blackened fish, fresh squeezed juice from tiny mandarin oranges, sliced guava, spicy papaya salad, mango smoothies, and there's so much more that remains.

There are almost as many flower sellers on the streets as food vendors. I think they're for various spirit temples and other sacred offerings, and they're beautiful. They remind me of Bangladesh and weddings – the tightly woven fat luscious endless strands of flowers. I might start buying a corsage a day so my skin can smell like something else under the dirt and sweat.

I now have a proper Thailand job. And by that, I mean an American company with a franchise in Bangkok that teaches Thai students how to get into American colleges and graduate schools. My particular role at Princeton Review is even more hypocritical. For 3 hours a week, for the next 5 weeks, I'm teaching analytical writing to people trying to get into the kind of school I crashed and burned out of. However, my business degrees still maintain their stain, I mean stamp on my CV, and are helping me earn 800 baht an hour. Thank you, Wharton, for funding my trip next week to Samui Island for some scuba diving.

Last night, I went out dancing. You know what this means to me. I had the best fucking time (as I always do when I'm in the flail and fling). We went to Q Bar, one of Bangkok's hot spots. It was 600 baht to get in, which I thought was pretty pricy even if it did include 2 drink tickets. They had a fabulous DJ, stiff vodka tonics, a huge selection of white boys, and fabulously hot dancing Thai girls (Yun has my number, if you know what I mean).

However, the night ended a bit off kilter. No, I did not wake up the next morning with chewed but unswallowed chicken in my mouth, though I sort of wish that had happened instead. Instead, around 2am, Julie asked me to chug 3 drinks to prove how much I loved her, and I did this despite being at my limit (which last night happened to be 8 drinks), and then left the club, got in a cab with Jim, jumped out of the cab almost immediately (Simi, I completely understand motion sickness now), puked on the sidewalk, and then by some hand of God, found my stumbling way home.

I should add that Jim attemped to follow me, but in fumbling for money for the cab lost sight of me and ran around Sukhumvit in vain before finally going back home to find me passed out on the bed.

I am so nauseous right now. If you know me, you know I almost never get hung over, and so I am always surprised how much it sucks. It really does. I don't even want to take the briskly air conditioned smooth running Sky Train today but I have to.

The last thing I'll tell you, because this post is long and gross enough already, is about the baby elephant we saw ambling along the sidewalk the other night. Their handlers were pushing some snack on Jim to feed him and Jim hadn't seen the elephant yet and so didn't understand why they were handing him anything. The elephant was about my height and had large fluffy hairs all over its body. Pretty freaking cute. Jim thinks it has a pretty good life, wandering the city, getting fed, but I still think animals and cities aren’t good matches.

That's all for now. Til we’re together again.

Walking, walking

It's a Tuesday, day of grace, and I'm hot. When I walk outside each day, I think, oh, it's not as bad as it was before. But then an hour later, I'm exhausted and squinty eyed.

I ate 3 whole (baby) fish today for lunch. Yum. I was too full just a few hours ago, but I'm hungry again now (I know you approve, Maher). The food here is phenomenal. I should probably stop raving about the food, before everyone gets tired of hearing it, but I cannot wait for each meal.

Jim and I got hour long foot massages just now at a place right near Mark's house in Paholyothin (I still can't say this without hesitation, despite practising). They cost $5 each, and my feet, which looked dessicated and squished after hours of walking in Chackos on concrete, look healthy and curvy again. We also got full body Thai massages (which range from $3-$20 depending on where you get them) and those were also supreme. Simi, I wish you could be here so you could actually follow Krishan's "massage every 4 days" advice. It's so easy. Every thanon and soi (street and lane) has an offering.

On Wednesday (day of woe) at noon, I'm cutting all my hair off at the salon in Chit Lom that Buneka and Sabrina Aunty love. Because of the heat, I have to wash my hair more frequently, and it's a huge tangled frizzy mess every time. I don't know if I'll do my 1999 haircut where it was all half an inch off my head (Jim is in favour of this but I'm not sure I'm brave enough). It's either that or something just long enough to tie back. Perhaps I will ask Odd, my stylist, what he thinks.

Yesterday, we found a kick ass pad for Jim to live in for the next 3 months. It's near the Nana Sky Train station in the Sukhumvit neighbourhood, and has lots of cool shops and bars around. I'm bummed I have to leave Thailand after only 1.5 months because otherwise, I would have split some even phatter pad with him. However, I will get to see so many of my beautiful states-side friends when I return (mid October, Chellis, so yes I'll miss the Love Festival), so it will not be any real hardship.

We also wandered around Khao San road, which is also known as the backpackers' ghetto. You can do all sorts of things there like get ripped off, find a wedding dress (Jules - there were so many bridal shops I couldn't stop thinking of you), buy jewelry, get a tattoo or braids, haggle for cheap clothes (Cynthia - I got you a pair of pants but I'm not sure they're the right kind - I'll send you a photo), make international phone calls, drink and eat on the cheap, and so on. There were certainly more white unwashed pack toting tourists than anywhere else we'd been. Jim said he felt at home there. I decided to get my arms waxed.

Last night, after dinner, we took a wrong turn trying to find the Sky Train station to go back home, and ended up walking along Ratchadamri Road where it turns out you go if you're looking for some action from young unstably high heeled Thai women (girls?). As we walked, a few cabs with lone SWM's in the back seats slowed down as girls stepped off the curb and waved discretely. None were picked up while we were there.

Monday night, we checked out a packed Thai night club on Sarasin Road where everyone was dancing and laughing in what seemed to be an overly hilarious manner. Jim said I was being cynical, and that they were probably on yahi (Thai for ecstasy). For you non drug users, this might not count as being less cynical. haha! So far, I have managed to keep Dave Toc's rule about not banging cock in Bangkok (Dave, that still cracks me up), and plus everyone looks like they're 12 years old to me. Obviously I haven't yet calibrated for the Asian race's youthful glow.

I now have a cell phone! And have already been