Steel City

About two years ago, while laying out my toiletries, I had my first sensation of anti-wanderlust. Because I was in my room in my parents' house in Pittsburgh, I could unpack everything and put it away. I could dig out ticket stubs and notes and mementos from the catchall pocket of my carryon, and paste them into the growing pile of scrapbooks on the dresser. I could go to the pharmacy and buy only what I needed right then, and not worry about what I might need in three months 10,000 miles away.

A year later, when I wore the same pair of jeans for six months in London, I had the thought that it might be nice to have another pair, except I didn't have room in my bag. I have a one-in-one-out policy with clothes, that is, when I can afford the one-in.

This past November, I got back to Pittsburgh, looked inside the closet at my parents', and found that over the last six years, I've accumulated two dozen skirts (count 'em), a pile of jackets, tapestries and blankets from different parts of the world, and a satchel brimming with multicoloured pouches and purses.

Garber St. Berkeley, CA 2001

This isn't new, my collector ways. Since graduating college, I've had three flats in Philly, and three more in the Bay Area. My beds sported silk cotton sheets and canopies overhead, my walls were covered with butcher paper and hand scrawled poems, my shelves held photo albums by the dozen, and there was at least one fat candle on the window sill. I used to invite people into this packratness, concoct drinks, and make them dance with me. That Abeer used to exist. (She still does in her Pittsburgh closet.) Do you remember her? If I met you in the last 6 years, maybe not.

This last trip home, the honourable and hot Mr. Becker met me at the airport when I flew in after a year abroad. Since Alan is always online, he's one of the few friends I've been able to keep in almost daily touch with. Email is great. So is Skype, especially Skype video which I can't laud enough. But there's nothing like chatting to find out the little things that caulk a friendship. Everyone complains about Facebook statuses that tell you what someone had for breakfast and how they don't care. I don't mind in the least. In fact, if it's my friend, I want to know. Every stupid detail if you would.

Unfortunately for me, but oh so fortunate for him, Alan has quit his fancy Apple strategist job and is now on a volunteer gig in Kenya (sans regular internet access) with the amazing One Acre Fund (check them out - they're expanding to Bangladesh soon). So I don't get my daily Ano dose and am in slight withdrawal.

But before he up and offed to warmer lands, he came to see me, and additionally got to meet my beautiful Nadiya girl and her frighteningly precocious daughter, Ilana, who were visiting from Iowa for Thanksgiving (FYI: Thanksgiving is the only American holiday that the Hoques congregate for and celebrate each year).

Nadiya is a Bangladeshi writer and translator, and one of my old friends just met. We met about four years ago in Dhaka, but truth be told, we became close after I left Bangladesh and was traveling (and chatting) through South America for a few months (sorry, this blog post is turning out to be an ode to chatting). I remember sitting on the sunny balcony of a motel in La Paz, Bolivia with my laptop talking about my sexed up coked up nights, and she about her monsoon Dhaka days. Nothing like crash and burn romance to keep the conversation going. She's now living the hot single mother life in Iowa doing her MFA in fiction and managing the Bangladesh to Iowa weather change with aplomb.

The third in my welcome back party was my gorgeous architect friend Irene, who herself has only recently moved back from Barcelona where she had been living for several years. Irene and I have known each other since college and our passion for talking about amor and ambition remains unabated. So we were both psyched when she took a break from her teaching fellowship at UM Ann Arbor and drove to Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving 2010 at the Hoques was a well attended, well fed affair, as per usual, and closely succeeded by Eid which was the scene of one of the funniest Bangladeshi community events I've ever attended. I got Nadiya to come along despite her atheist ways, perhaps only because she loves to dress up. And dress up we did, in my mother's resplendent saris with blouses to match.

The original do had been scaled down from dinner and a kids' fashion show, to just dinner. This was because the Pitt university hall that had been booked had fallen through, and we were now to have dinner at the Monroeville mosque's community hall. Because it was a mosque, no music was allowed, so the kids' fashion show was summarily canceled despite weeks of practice and excitement.

No matter, because there were ideas afloat for post dinner entertainment. An aunty got up to the podium and announced that a game of "pass the pillow" would pass our time nicely. There would be four rounds, one for the ladies, one for the men, one for the older kids, and one for those under 10.

Since no music could accompany the game, the pillow passing would start and stop to the sound of... wait for it... "SPOON BANGING!"

I was sitting at the kids' table with Nadiya and my little brother Maher, and others I've watched grow from babies to babes. Ages 17 to 37, we all burst into muffled laughter. The aunty was holding two metal ladles in her hand, and explained that the pillow passing could occur as long as there was a "continuous bang" and stop when the continuous banging stopped. Naturally.

As if that weren't enough, she also said that the kids' round would be played by those under the age of 25.

Her eyes roved over our table, landed on me, and she hastily added, "or unmarried." Our table lost it.

God or magic has a sense of humour, but I still didn't win the kids' round of pass the pillow. In fact, I was the first one banged out. But Ilana made it to the finals of the under 10 round. And the food was delicious, especially the peas and paneer dish, and there was lots of Fanta. The taste of soda pop and spicy desi food are, and have always been, bound together in my mind.

The universe's sense of humour came into play again during Friday jumma prayers, which I did not even ask Nadiya to attend, and which I went to only because I cannot say no to my mother most days.

The Monroeville mosque my parents go to (and helped build along with much of the Pittsburgh Bangladeshi community) has an interesting praying arrangement for the genders. The men are on the ground floor with the imam up front, and the women are on an open mezzanine directly above them, with a balcony one could look over down at the imam (but no one does of course).

The khutba (a sermon given by the imam) was a stern affair about how listening to music is the devil's playground and how we must strive to keep our minds and hearts clean (and I suppose toneless). I swear I'm not lying, but in the middle of his rant, someone's phone went off in the male section, and the ring tone was a rap song.

The rest of my Pittsburgh time was a feast (if on the frigid side). I have four albums:
----- November 2010 including Thanksgiving
----- Kurbani Eid 2010 including spoon banging
----- December 2010 including cool old factory jaunt, and
----- March 2011 (which was still snowy! see photo above).

The December album includes photos of my adorable niece, Vesper, who was a full year older than the last time I saw her, and since she's 1.5 now, you might guess how big of a change that was. She is also (ridiculously) prominently featured in this Northampton album from January, from when I visited my sister Simi and her partner Ezra, and here again in March.

During my three visits home, my mother threw a few of her awe inspiring dinner parties where she manages to cook a tasty ten course meal for 30 people in a matter of hours (and she teaches full time). Plus she always has my favourite foods on hand, for all the in-between meals. Banana nut muffins? check. Jollof rice and okra? check. Whole wheat parathas? check. All manner of fishies? check. Korolla (karela for you Indians) with potatoes? check. Egusi? This was her first attempt at the staple Nigerian dish, and she used pumpkin seeds she had been saving up. It was so close to the real thing and so nostalgically good.

As has been long habit, I went to visit my first boyfriend's parents, Ann and Roger, who are like my second parents, and have been since 1991 when Glenn and I started college and our seven year rock and roll relationship. They're both retired now but more active than anyone else I know as they have as many kayaks as grandchildren, and Roger, who's been writing poetry all his life, has enough for three collections at this point.

For those of you who have admired my fringe scarves over the years, Ann is the maker of those wonders and a million other crafty beautiful things she's gifted me over the years. (See another scarf, my favourite, in lustrous greys and browns in the photo below with Eshadee.)

I also went dancing and shopping and lunching with my old friend Eshadee who grows more beautiful and svelte every year and every child she has.

And of course, I got to hang out with my lovely lazy brother Maher and his doggie Oreo in his big party house, just down the road from my parents' house, with the red basement and big TV and loungy couches and delectable home made meals (he is a gourmet cook, Maher mia is).

Lastly, I have to mention Pittsburgh's magnificent landscape. Not just its 2000 bridges (yes way) (more than any city in the world), its snaking rivers and snow tipped trees, its winding roads and hilly neighbourhoods - all this and I am most enamoured of da burgh's old industry.

I think Pittsburgh has done better with its image, economy, and art/lit-scape than any other city in America, given the depths of its former economic despair. When my family moved here in the late 80's, there were neighbourhoods so toxic smelling, it was painful to drive through them (let alone live there). The failed steel industry was a painful weight and you could feel it, just walking around. The city is worlds away from that now.

But there's something about old factories and machines, frozen conveyer belts, perforated holding tanks held up by giant steel beams, ladders that lead nowhere. It gets me. I've been dreaming of doing a photography project about ruin. I could start here, in Pittsburgh, and then move south by southwest to photograph old broken down barns, which I think are just about the most beautiful things in the world.

My favourite bridge in Pittsburgh is Hot Metal Bridge (and not just for its kickass name). Back in the day, Hot Metal Bridge was this rusted wonder, part disused railroad tracks, overgrown and narrow and mysterious, and part cleaned out and converted car bridge. In all the times I've driven over it, I never once stopped to walk its edge or take a photograph.

Now, the railroad tracks have been removed, the weeds and plants cleared out, and the rail section is a smooth new bike path.

Don't get me wrong. I am all for the fabulous Rails-to-Trails project (that will eventually let you bike from Pittsburgh to DC when it's done, and it's damn close), but I need to start shooting before all the old turns new.

Does a summer spent wandering and photographing the Rust Belt count as gypsying? Not if I have a home base, right? Maher says I won't be able to sign a year long lease come fall. I almost want to bet him but I'm direly afraid of both outcomes. I'll keep you posted.