How I Spent Eid

I travelled a long way to New Jersey for an eid function. It was held at the Hilton. When I arrived I was quickly asked to partake of the "horse devours" .

"Aha!" I thought. "They are not only sophisticated but also have French dishes that are so delicious that even horses DEVOUR them" I thought. Turned out the "Horse- Devours" was some fancy samosa and chutney (spice and bread). I walk into the party with my eyes lowered (like I was taught to do).

Everyone was talking to everyone else. I was just trying to eat or drink something. I found that since everyone was wearing such glittering glamouring dresses I could barely look up in their direction. I was the only one dressed in solid colors (or in black if you want to be mean about it).

My host upon seeing me exclaimed "Why did you dress like that?"

"Like what ? this is my best Armani! notice how it hugs my body and buttocks ..."

"It is all my fault Shiraz! I should have told you this was a more formal event ... what were you thinking?".

So in short she made me feel right at home.

I rush into the soothing arms of alcohol. I could not find a bar. I did find a big bathroom counter - that used to be a bar. An ugly tiled table without its colorful bottles and shimmering liquids , devoid of the curves of sparkling glasses and fragile elbows resting on its edges. After all it was an Islamic holiday celebration. Alcohol MUST be removed and the bars must be converted into bathroom counters in case we have to do an emergency Wudu (abolution).

I eat and walk to this room with paintings in them. There was a corner with beautiful Pakistani women sitting elegantly in flowing transparent clothing. I could not continue eating because I was choking from staring too hard at the painting. What was it? I do not know - I know I was choking and it was all due to such provocative paintings. What should we do about such control-versal paintings?

I quickly averted my gaze from the temptations of Pakistani women and lo and behold there was a corner with big ARABic letters on canvas. I said "wah! now that arabic painting says we are really Pakistani! I bet no other country in the world could make paintings like that! Saudi ARABia could not make paintings like that, United ARAB Emirates could not make paintings like that- no other country could make paintings like that. So what, if we are the only country out of all the ARAB countries who cannot understand what the ARABic words say? atleast we can draw them ! now that is art ... wah wah!"

I was seated on a table close to the stage where some tabla-walas were playing "mera lal dupatta malmal ka" [my red veil of velvet]

\\*gasp\\* is this an Islamic function or some immoral party? Why are people singing songs when they should be reciting the holy verses of the Holy Quran? Then my wish came true and sure enough there came on stage a man reciting the Quran.

He started quoting ayats from the Quran about how sinners will be dragged through the tortures of hell. This was right before dinner.

"How very appetizing, yum, yum!" I thought, "Thinking of my intestines getting torn out really puts me in the mood for dinner".

Apparently a lot of people in the room did not agree with me. They thought it was "of bad taste". Can you imagine? Allah's Kalam (word) and bad taste ?

One doctor sahab was specially disturbed. But what do those Doctors know? do they know Arabic? or the Quran? no way! if they did they would not have such a low opinion of it. Surely someone who is reciting the Quran knows more (and has saved more lives) than those "bialogy" students! Surely "duwa" (paryers) is better than "dawa" (medicine).

Since I did not know anyone I sat there smiling at a man on stage dressed in yellow silk and pagri (big hat) hitting a big drum. I kept on smiling until he started smiling back at me. From then on he looked in my direction all evening - in a smiling way.

Then this woman came to talk to me. Her name was Catherine and like me no one was talking to her. Even her husband was ignoring her. Why ? probably because she looked so different like me. A farangi (foreign) girl in shalwar kameez (traditional Pakistani dress) and a Pakistani boy in Armani cloths.

I looked around and everyone had families and friends - except us. We had one thing in common: we were human beings. We talked for a little while until it was time for the "book reading".

What is a book reading doing on the sacred day of Eid? I wondered if it was going to be another long recital of the tortures of hell and the punishments in this world for sinners.

I go to the book reading and its a big stadium of a conference room. The author (or afsana nawees, or Kahani Baaz [ or story teller] ) was Bapsi Sidhwa - a Parsi. So! I exclaimed it is all these Parsis who are corrupting our holy ritual of Eid and bringing in our fancy "book readings" and such.

I go there and first thing this Parsi woman reads is about "genitalia". It makes me blush. I did not come for a "bialogy" lesson, did I? I thought I heard grown men giggling in the front rows.

The Parsi author shows us scenes from a movie that was adapted from her book "Earth". I was specially impressed by one scene: A Muslim man goes to a Parsi girl and goes "All hindus, sikhs, christians and Muslims are bloodthirsty animals in cages. They are just waiting to pounce at each other and kill each other the moment their cage doors are opened ... will you cage me in your love ?" I thought that was lovely pick up line. No?

Then come the question and answer session. A Pakistani boy asks a question "How come in America you can talk about genitals out loud and we cannot even read that by ourselves in Pakistan?".

Apparently the Pakistani boy never went to Jumah Khutba (friday sermons). Atleast my Imam (cleric) was quite "liberal" with words like "Nutfa" and "Zina" and how egyptian women used to chase Hazrat Yusuf (Joseph). Those stories often made me wish I looked as handsome as an Arab. Atleast the egyptian women would chase me then - for gawd knows I am not getting any chasing out of Pakistani women.

The next few questions of the "question and answer session" were long. Everyone wanted to talk about how much they earned and what they did and what great people they were - they wanted to talk about everything except talking about "the question". It was not until the entire hall started banging on tables (like good old Pakistanis") that the 'questions' were squeezed out of the questioners. All the questioners closed with one statement "I see a lot of beautiful Pakistani girls here - I know I am married and on my third wife but if any of you have any respect for our religion or culture you will let me make you my fourth wife ..."

As the book reading came to an end people went to other events. There were two events happening simultaneously - one ghazal event (reading poetry) for people who could not dance and one "dance" event for all Pakistani boys who wanted to dance with other Pakistani boys.

Dance I did. Everytime I tried to dance with the groups of girls I started having images of her father eating my kidney with a tooth pick. So I dance between the groups of boys and girls. Neither with the boys nor the with the girls. Which is by myself really. Which was come to think of it my state for a large part of the evening.

After the dance a few of my admirers (guys) clustered around me and we whined about how all the girls who dance with each other must be gay (that was me) and how there were no red light districts in New York City (actually that was just me too).

Then a strange thing happened.

I was talking with my newly acquired friends and impressing them with how bad I was at playing cricket when some guys who were doing "luddian" broke into our conversation - exclaiming wildly : "Have you seen that gay guy Shiraz? He forgot his book at the coat check ... "

I could not tell if they could see me (maybe because I was dressed in black) but I was standing right in front of them.

One of them kept on repeating "Have you seen that gay guy" while his "friends" kept rolling on the floor. He repeatedly took my name and said "gay" as though he expected everyone to laugh at his funny observations.

I felt really embarassed and ashamed. I thought to myself "how strange! I deserve it for thinking they were gay when they were only thinking I was gay ... "

Turned out they were not gay at all but just some nice boys from the Muslim Students Association who really liked dancing with each other because they were just as afraid of being stoned to death for dancing with girls.

I said "Thank you! that was a very polite way of reminding me about my book ..." and so I went in to see this "Auntie" to pick up my book who exclaimed "Was our function so boring that you had to bring a book?". To which I replied "oh not at all I was actually afraid of the long train ride I took to get here ..."