Walking for a Cure

My dear friend in Seattle, WA, will walk 60 miles in three days this coming September, to raise money for breast cancer research. Her Aunt passed away last month at the young age of 50; breast cancer was the cause. Please visit her page and donate. Help her reach her goal.

My mother is a breast cancer survivor and has been cancer free for over seven years. She used to go for radiation treatments on her lunch break, then return to work in a busy, high-stress office environment. My mom is sixty-seven years old , but runs an office like a young university graduate. She is a strong, determined woman, who by the will of God discovered she had breast cancer when it was in its early stages.

At age 35, I have already had a base-line mammogram and sonogram, and will continue to do so each year. Not every woman has the means to do this, however; we must make our health care affordable and accessible! We must put ourselves first on our lists.

Go view my buddy's page. Each one of us can contribute to finding a cure for breast cancer--this taker of mothers, wives, and daughters.

Bad for the Eyes, Good for the Thighs

This is a lengthy post and I've written it more for myself, for proof of my sacrificing ways. I might need this later when the kids are older.

This morning my eyes look like little squinty slits.

Yesterday was a prime example of the difficulty one may face when planning for any sort of semi-formal event in Jordan. The forty-five year old brother-in-law who is finally cutting the proverbial apron strings and embarking on a new life as a husband is/was the catalyst for all of yesterday's mayhem.

My search for tasteful clothing to wear to his wedding began two days ago, when I ventured out alone to a smaller mall that is known for having decent prices and a good selection. The first thing I tried on, I thought, "I can make this work. I can live with this," but the price made me choke and gag because the quality was just not there! I left without making any purchases related to my reason for shopping; I did buy an iced coffee for myself and a dozen donuts for my kids.

Yesterday's quest began early. I was at the mall when its doors opened. I found a store that sells only high-end Turkish clothing. The sales gal was very helpful, and I was ecstatic she was not a smoking man. She asked me my size. I told her. She gathered all sorts of outfits that were lovely and tasteful. I tried the first one on. It was not my size. I tried the second; again, not my size. I gave them back to her. She asked again, politely, what my size was. I added four additional numbers to the original size I had told her. (It's alright; I needed a reality check.) She brought my back the same clothing in my 'new' size. The first thing I tried on worked. She was honest. She did not make me feel like an old hag, complimented me on my bleach-stained sports pants she saw hanging on the hook, and asked me if I'd teach her English. She found my Arabic "cute" and "entertaining." I found her helpfulness absolutely priceless. Cha-ching, purchase made. And a fez tip to the Turkish, who know how ladies are built.

I quickly found shoes to match, jumped in the car and stopped by the supermarket. I ran home and put on the beginnings of lunch, ran back out and picked up child #4 from pre-school, then ran back home to check on lunch, then ran back out to pick up child #3 from her school. I drank three glasses of water and waited for the other kids to arrive.

Once lunch was finished and everyone was home, it was time to get ready for baseball practice, where they were having a good-bye gathering for one of the players and his Dad, who is also one of the coaches. Such is the life of embassy employee ex-pat types, who are bound to be re-assigned to new places. I left the Lone Ranger at practice and took the three girls to find shoes for the little ones and an entire outfit for the older one. We lucked out at "Special Italian Shoes," a store whose name always makes me laugh, as if the shoes are somehow learning disabled--either that or the shoes are for learning disabled Italians. The little girls were finished, with outfits completed, since their aunt had already sent them beautiful dresses from America several months back. Way to think ahead, sister!

This left the Lone Ranger and Oldest Daughter. She is in that in-between stage where she is young enough to be called a "girl" but old enough to wear something a bit mature. We walked and walked and walked, roaming in and out of stores carrying the most tasteless clothing. When we did find something suitable, it was either too big or too 'old.' Fruitless.

It was time to pick up Lone Ranger from practice/pizza party sendoff. We found him sweaty and full of pizza. We drove home, dropped off the two girls whose task had been completed, and flew to the nearest mall we had not yet visited. We found Oldest Daughter's ensemble in an American store whose clothing line is well-known and who just so happened to be having a sale, reducing its prices to almost affordable. She looked like a princess and I had to turn away quickly and bite my lip to fight back tears. By this time my bleach-stained sports pants were soaked with sweat, because we had literally been running for hours on end.

Three down, one to go. We meandered from store to store, trying to find a simple outfit for the boy. Everything was either for preschoolers or gelled teenagers, of which my son is neither. Farouq was limping from having pulled a muscle at practice, and he said he'd wear his old jeans to the wedding--he just did not care. I persisted. Finally I found myself drawn to a suit store. I asked the man if he carried suits for boys. He told me he did not, but a neighboring mall did, and he even knew which floor it was on. Thank you, helpful suit store man.

Back in the car, to a different mall. By this time it was already past my kids' bedtime. I was feeling shaky. We rounded the corner of the food court and found the store the man had described. I saw the prices hanging from the suits and was taken aback but I told the man, "We want a suit for my son." We found a beautiful grey one. Shirt, tie, everything. Alterations being done today, will pick up this evening. He looked so handsome standing there in his baseball cap, dirt-stained face, and brand new suit. Again, I fought back tears. The salesman felt sorry for me. I asked him if he had any idea how much money I had shelled out since 10 a.m. that day, just to get myself and four kids ready for a two-and-a-half hour event. He knocked an additional 30 JD off the price.

Today I have the remnants to buy--shoes for the boy, some accessories. Oldest Daughter kept telling me, "Remember, it's for Uncle Akram." But it really isn't. It's for them. Me. Us.

Thighs are aching, eyes are squinty, but we're going to look smashing.

Every day a beginning

I used to play this song over and over again. We did not have this particular 45 but we had the soundtrack to A Star is Born. Circa 1977. I was five years old, and that was most likely the last time I enjoyed attending a wedding, when my uncle got married.
No, wait, I do distinctly remember boogying down at my sister's wedding to The Doobie Brothers' China Grove.
Anyway, I'll be attending my brother-in-law's wedding on Thursday, where we won't be serenaded by the likes of the Barbmeister.

Desperate Measures

This explains a lot of mischief that occured when our late cat William was still alive. I'm glad we did not have a porcelain gnome outside of our door. William is the same cat who fashioned himself a hammock out of our kitchen window screen.

Snack--Back to my Roots

photo: Southern Living Magazine

I grew up eating something I believed to be called "paminna cheese." We ate it on sandwiches, celery sticks, crackers. Most of the time we bought the ready-made kind in the deli section of the grocery store. (now that I think about that stuff...ick!) When I got braces as an adult and was in great pain, unable to bite into anything, this stuff sustained me.

My grandmother used to make a batch of it at Thanksgiving, where we'd see it displayed atop the celery sticks. This was probably the one time a year I could devour several stalks of celery in a single day.

I honestly did not know that its true name was pimiento cheese until I was much older and had started studying the Spanish language. You know, pimiento means "pepper," which made it quite clear that the red stuff in a tiny jar my mother used to buy and put into the mixture was actually the pimiento part of the spread. If you are not from the southern part of the United States, you have not yet experienced the way southerners can take a simple looking word and turn it into something completely different. Case in point: pimiento=paminna. Say them aloud. Are they remotely related? You decide.

I made a big bowl of it on Friday and put it with our Friday breakfast. If you've never attended an Arabic-style breakfast, the utensils we use are loaves of bread. The only spoons I ever put on the breakfast table are the ones for stirring tea. We are scoopers and dippers.

Anyway, my kids went nuts for it. My husband likes it, too. If you've never made it, give it a try. It's a true comfort food and makes a great summertime lunch; it's also a big hit at those potluck luncheons when you do not have lots of time to prepare anything.

Pimiento-Cheese Spread

• 1 nice-sized block (8 oz.) of sharp cheddar cheese--the sharper, the better--finely shredded


• 3 tbsp. mayonnaise, Hellmann's if it is available, but others may substitute (adjust mayo according to your liking)


• 2 to 8 dashes of Tabasco or other hot sauce, depending on your preference


• 1 beautiful sweet red pepper, diced--I do this the day before, sprinkle a little salt on the diced-up pepper and cover to allow the lovely sweetness to come out


• dash or two of black pepper

Mix until the mayonnaise no longer looks like mayo; the final product will be bright orange with red specks all throughout, and it is a thickish consistency. For the perfect sandwich, choose a thick bread you can toast lightly. Sahtain wa a'afiyah.

The Best Part of Waking Up...

is, well, just waking up. I'm increasingly thankful for each day that comes, by Allah's permission.

The second best part of waking up is (non-coffee drinkers, you are excused from reading further) : coffee.

Especially the kind brought to us by traveling friends from afar, who made room in their luggage for 1.49 kilograms of ground delight.

And yes, it's Folger's, so you can sing that little jingle now.

Diaspora

Today is Blog about Palestine Day.

The following quote was taken from the war diary of David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the State of Israel: “The strategic objective [of the Jewish forces] was to destroy the urban communities, which were the most organized and politically conscious sections of the Palestinian people. This was not done by house-to house fighting inside the cities and towns, but by the conquest and destruction of the rural areas surrounding most of the towns. This technique led to the collapse and surrender of Haifa, Jaffa, Tiberias, Safed, Acre, Beit-Shan, Lydda, Ramleh, Majdal, and Beersheba. Deprived of transportation, food, and raw materials, the urban communities underwent a process of disintegration, chaos, and hunger, which forced them to surrender.”

The day the Jewish forces entered the part of Jerusalem where my husband's mother was born, she and her sister had been doing the family's laundry. Situated at a prime location in at-Toor, or the Mt. of Olives, their house held a view of the valley below, including the pathway from the top of the mountain that still winds down into the heart of the Old City. My mother-in-law was nineteen that year--the year of the catastrophe.

Her first instinct was to flee. She dropped the aluminum laundry tub where she was standing, grabbed her sister's hand, and began running down the path eventually leading to al-Aqsa mosque. Shots were being fired in all directions, making it impossible to determine who was shooting whom. They ran, cowering down as low as they could, frightened by this uncertainty and chaos in their neighborhood--perhaps the most religiously diverse and significant stretches of road in all of the Holy Land. They reached the gates of the convent run by the silent order of French Carmelite Sisters. My mother-in-law told me that these nuns used to cover their faces. These nuns provided the frantic and scared young girls a place to hide for nearly two days. She has never forgotten the sisters' benevolence.

When she and her sister Fatima left the convent and returned safely to their house, the gunshots had ceased, and the clothes they had dropped had rusted from sitting wet in the aluminum tub. The world had also changed.

My mother-in-law grew up in the Mt. of Olives speaking Arabic, Hebrew, and Spanish. Her best friends and neighbors were Jews whose origins were Spanish; they were Sephardic or from el Sefardim. Some of the Sephardic Jews boast ancestors dating back to their expulsion from Spain by the Crown in 1492. My mother-in-law roamed the markets with her Spanish-speaking friends, bought vegetables from Hebrew-speaking merchants, recognized Shabbat with her neighbors who would invite her to share their Saturday meals. Her father was much loved among the Jews in Mt. of Olives; when he died, his janazah was attended by more Jews than Arabs. My mother-in-law grew up blissfully unaware of any ideological differences between her family and the families living harmoniously around her. In fact, just last year her most loved childhood friend, now an Israeli, then just a neighbor, came looking for her. She was so happy to find out that my mother-in-law is still alive, although not living in at-Toor.

My mother-in-law is blessed to have been born in a location so dear to the three Abrahamic faiths. No real destruction of any kind has taken place in the Mt. of Olives; it is still one of the most attractive tourist destinations for people from all over the world. Her brother still owns and lives in the home in which they were born, which boasts the most magnificent view of the Dome of the Rock. The Church of the Ascension and the Church of Mary Magdalene are just blocks away from my mother-in-law's childhood home; the silent order of nuns are still where they were in 1948. Not much has changed. They are among the lucky few.

I once called in a radio program hosted by a prominent right-winger in Alabama. They were interviewing a Palestinian intellectual who had come to Birmingham to speak about the Palestinian issue. This was pre 9/11, but in Alabama one could be hard pressed to find a sympathetic general audience willing to listen to anyone who criticizes Israel and its sovereignty, much less the US government's policies regarding the state of Israel. You know, it's the only democracy in the Middle East.

Anyway, the radio host was taken aback by my analogy (and this may sound cliché) of the Mexican Army marching into Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, wiping out cities and towns, setting up its own government, denying all property owners the rights to their homes or lands, stripping the people of their citizenship, and expelling them into places that do not want them. I asked him if he thought any American in his right mind would just bow down and concede, or would it be expected for every able body to take up arms against his oppressor. "Whoa now, you sound like you're for them," he said to me.

For them. The Palestinians. One of the most displaced populations in the world. They constitute one of the largest diasporas, around six million. Six million. Six million. Six million. Six million.

Diva and The Jo Men

This, from Umm Zaid. It's all so true.

One admitted fault exposed here, one that even I cannot cover or explain away, however, is the inexplicable fondness of young men for Celine Dion. The women suffer from it too, but it’s more pardonable in a woman. It is very… interesting to go to a cafe in the richest area of town, and the young Arab kids (Jordanians, Gulfies) go “Oooh” and smile and mouth the words when the world’s favorite Canadian chanteuse comes on the track. Or when you walk past a store tended by a young pointy haired, pointy shoe’d guy (ie, the epitome of cool style here) and he’s blasting Celine. I’m not kidding.

Does anyone remember (maybe 8 years back?) that SNL actress who played Celine? I used to laugh like there was no tomorrow. Wait, I still do.