Meme + Danu-related stuff
1. I don't have a middle name. I use my father's first name as a middle name.
2. I'm crazy about kiwi juice [no, not the bird... the fruit!].
3. When I was a toddler living in Nagpur, India, I fell into a sewer and almost died.
4. I speak 3 languages [English, Hindi/Urdu and Gujraati] and can read/write 5 [English, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Hebrew].
5. I have 3 little pine cones on my computer/study desk.
6. I feel nice when I kill ants with a vacuum cleaner.
7. I have two copies of the Qur'an [co-incidentally spelled K-O-R-A-N on both the copies] and a copy of the Bible [New International Version] among the books on my study desk.
8. I'm big fat F·R·I·E·N·D·S fan and I often quote lines from the show.
9. I'm dying to visit Israel and see Jerusalem.
10. I think Ofra Haza had the sweetest voice ever.
11. I go jogging every other day, even though the kids on Street 13 can't stop staring.
12. I have a magazine cut-out of an eye stuck to the inside of my wardrobe's right door.
14. I have Physics homework to complete.
15. My cell phone, Nokia 5100 [the most durable cell phone design that Nokia could make], has a huge crack on the screen because of my clumsiness.
16. I'm an Internet-addict trying to cut down on my Internet usage.
17. I think Daffy Duck has a hilarious accent.
18. I've played Juliet in a play which was not even remotely related to Shakespeare.
19. I like to sit and simply breathe inside the church that's near school.
20. I skipped # 13, if any of you have noticed.
Last night, we drove all the way to Sharjah to attend a tijiya dinner. Among Bohri Muslims, when a person dies, there's a tradition to invite everyone to dinner on the day that the a person dies, on the third day after the person dies [the tijiya], on the tenth day, twentieth, thirtieth and finally fortieth day. Most Bohris do only the first two and the last one, though.
Anyways, so since everyone in my family [except Abeer and me] is Bohri, we went to this tijiya dinner because my father's aunt had expired in India. Even though I didn't know the lady, I was still considered one of the ta'ziyat-daars [person who must be condoled]. After the madrasah's [Islamic religious school] headmaster had read the necessary things, dinner was served. At any Bohri dinner/lunch, food is served in a huge, round metal dish called a thaal around which a maximum of 10 people can sit. Carrying it was no easy task. I finally had dinner on a normal plate with Abeer and another cousin, Tanya.
I sometimes wonder what happened to that die-hard Bohri boy who lived in me more than 5 years ago. I wonder from where this zit-faced, Israeli-music-listening, religionless, bisexual fellow popped out. All that happens, happens for the best, I guess. I have no regrets about who I am today. I am me. In the words of a voice in an Egyptian valley that spoke to an 80-year-old Semite, "Ehyeh asher ehyeh." ... I will be what I will be.