What greater blessing than to lie down next to him each night, than to breathe him in with every tired breath?

Sasural gainda phool

Indeed.

Sometimes they make me wanna scream. An over protective mother defends hypocrisy and ill behavior in a beloved daughter who, with her twisted Islamic dogma and holier than thou facade, punishes people for no good reason other than the fact that they didn't read her mind for what she wanted. spoilt much? Oh, and i'm supposedly included in the silent/bitch treatment by said sister by virtue of belonging to her ( not so guilty either) brother. Innocence kills too sometimes, and being a martyr to my own kindness is my very favorite well rehearsed act.

Sigh.

Patience. Cook clean kill your dreams your voice and make submissive everything you ever held dear. And when they invade your space, hide in your little hole whimpering injustice.

Such is life.

Atleast the husband is a sweetheart.
#consolation.

-eeda

Marriagethings.one.

Can there be anything sweeter than the sound of his somewhat labored breathing while I lay on his forearm?

Yaqeen nahee ata.

On a side note, installed blogger app on phone...I might just come back alive.

ehem.

this post has nothing to do with an update, to warn loyal readers who've been nudging me out of darkness.
but it is, quite literally, a clearing of the throat to maybe get me started...i don't know why my voice has dried out in the first place.
can happiness choke vocal chords into all-consuming golden silence?
maybe it has.


ach aawaz phir ruk gayee.
bye.

(hubs is here)
-eeda

I have

forgotten how to write in paragraphs.
maybe phrases. stories.
words let t e r s ....

things are fragmented in my mind. i write, wrote, for an audience and then i promptly
became overburdened uninspired old and
stopped
writing explaining expressing the overwhelmingness chaotic inside me.

am i destined to be forever this way? curse of the poetic or is it, me? bad decisions. rashness and life and all its tests.

is it me, ya Allah?

this year by all means has been..tumultuous?
i met a lot of old friends, i renewed a lot of relationships that had stagnated in empty pools in my heart. lammy, hinny, rima, shifoo,...sandy, in a few weeks.
i have had an overwhelming urge to write about my last few months, but somehow i couldn't. they were so much of a roller coaster, ..so intensely great and so intense...a sense of loss..

why is there no sense of gain? i have gained a whole family, adopted a husband..so to speak..but that feeling of euphoria is just translating to dread and fear and nervousness..apprehension..
is this anxiety? me? normal?

i feel like a dictator about u. puppeteer towards moral and rational good and i don't want to feel this way. i don't want to dictate moves, decipher intentions and actions and teach, teach TEACH oh.
why must u not. why must i always ALWAYS.
why can't i stop!!!!
let.you.be.

if people  are truly compatible, does that mean they let each other be? or is ur purpose in life to fixguidelead someone else towards a path that is more...just better.
but by whose what standards?

i shouldn't be thinking these things. not right now.
or saying them, even to myself.
or even whispering them in the darkest corner of my heart where the trespassing arteries carry the torturous whispers back to unsuspecting ears.....heart.

suchay huge decision eeday. kia soch rahee thi? kiun dimagh chal para tha. kiun NAHEE chal raha tha would be more contextually appropriate.

sleepytime. at least the ice has cracked.

welcome back, world.



-eeda

of apples, and direction.

want to write but im not sure of what.

the person you love and the person you marry may or may not be the same person,
and i wonder sometimes what am have i getting gotten myself into?

do you only ever understand the singeing consequences when you have achieved what it was you so wanted to achieve?
why do we never listen to Adults when they tell us otherwise.

i see glimpses of you sometimes in our conversations, but most other times i see a Stranger i don't know. Most definitely not the person i intended to marry and yet it is his voice on the other end of the phone, dictating, almost always dictating in matters which do not suit him well. the tiny stubborn particularities with which his family is well-acquainted and i, once, had the power not to bow down to but now i don't, or didn't need to.

the exclusionary principle has already expired, ladies and gentlemen; a most thrilling show.

(and a most difficult life person)
.................................

they say original sin was not in the eating of the apple but of Eve's intense yearning that her subconscious belove, Adam, eat of it. i went along for the ride and you were Eve and this apple maybe i was not ready for.

what to do what to do what to do. to go on and have faith or set boundaries right now? to ask to be respected or to bow down just to end the conflict?
..................................


it is an open field. most romantic visuals show you this. or how stories start always with 'once upon a time' and 'the end' (almost always happy) and the many cliches with which we surround and fool ourselves.
nonetheless, it is an open field. wheat grass goldenbrown waist-high and blue blue brightbabyblue sun. knee-high boots and mud in hair and white wheat clouds and staring at an infinite heaven.
there is no end to this visual. it just exists in my head rolled up next to other mental happyjars.
.............................

desi people tend to interfere too much. its not your shaadi its mine, so keep your in-my-face-religious-dogma only-recently-discovered to yourself and let me find my God my own way. would that be okay Allah? i hope so. i think so.

when will i EVER be allowed to be my own person?
..............................

i wish i could run away. to an open field. lie in mud without having my almost ocd cleanliness perfectionism not haunt me but just let me be at peace with beetles, bugs and the blueblue sky.
..............................

i can never look you in the eye again until you tell me you loved me once, despite making me feel insignificant as a child, and that was the true reason for our friendship and your invasive almost concern. i cannot stand dishonesty and it lurks in the walls in your basement room below me. come clean to me, your lies haunt my mind.
............................

there is no innocence. not even in open fields. there is something sinister in the very earth we live in, the earth of which my flesh is made. i feel earthquakes when no one does, the earth shivers for the lies we stamp on its face, the hypocrisy we feed into its soul.
.............................

yeh kahan agaye hum? this is NOT where i intended to be.

this is Not where i intended to be at all, S.




-eeda

conversations....

....between married folk.....


.................................
S- hey baby, whats up? such a hectic day, sooo busy..what're you upto?

Me- nothing much, just tackling the to do list. tired. how're you?

S- to do list for what?

Me- nani's visa, mom's child tax benefit payment, N's phone bill payment, internet phone line bill for home, magazine re-subscriptions, car fine payments, etc

S- I think you just turned me on...

Me- AHAHAHAHAHAH.. and here i've been spending money on lingerie, when it was PAYING BILLS. should've known.

S-lol i'm kidding, i'm impressed you're taking care of all that. so iss-mart. You are the swiss army knife of a pakistani wife. Love it.

.................

Swiss army knife of a wife?
BAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

i love the S to itsybitsyies. esp when he's weirdfunny like that.

-eeda

we

found love in a hopeless place.

.................................
some said i was an (early) settler.
perhaps. people may say. maybe i say it too, to speak the lie i have been told.
but truth be told, while i did have the wild romanticism needed to keep the core of my poetic soul in tact;
i also knew the ways of the world and kept my reality in check. i knew my values, i knew my worth, and while i may not have known exactly what i wanted, you knew. enough for you and for me and for the both of us. enough to tease the misgivings out of my mind and light my eyes with inspiration. enough, to get us here.
and somewhere, somehow, something in us ticked in together.
.............................

there were no starbursting violins when he spoke or when our eyes met, but digital media can do that to relationships. there was however, harmony. and peace.
and while there wasn't surprise fireworks, or fancy dinners or bollwoodesque romantic escapades, there were escapades.
real, firmly grasping onto this world escapades. where we did sit by lakes and held hands like an old married couple. or walked to the petrol station at 5 am for candy, or had you sweep me off my feet for piggy back rides, or watched movies huddled in blankets over shared styrofoam platters of leftover boiled rice and chicken kebabs.

this is reality. real love, not mired in fairytales and grime.
i could've kept waiting for prince charming. and violins. and red tipped roses. someone who sang prosaic verses to my soul and stared me down with amber eyes and amber lips, serenading my secrets in kisses across my skin.

but this happens in our minds and heart. or also in reality. but us, tortured romantic perfectionists, so caught up in fine-tuning the details of our 'love', we forget what is happening is just that..love.
albeit not the love we wanted but the love that is. the love in the eyes of my lover, husband, best friend, when he says that he hates mondays. it is when he miss me the most.

there is nothing hollywood about that. but my heart feels the eerie squish.
and sometimes, you don't need the roses for this feeling.
.......................................

i used to wonder how someone could understand me when i hadn't myself felt that instantaneous affirmation that my own soulstrings had unbounded to let him in. but he says so. and he proves me wrong everytime the little hesitant nag goes off in my brain screaming, but how Could he know me so well?
well he does. somehow.

and he knows me well.
.........................................


life teaches you interesting lessons when u have faith. u live in black and white hoping for technicolor, but it is only when u re-examine past memories does everything glare up in colors brighter than you could imagine. you feel that sweet awakening, perhaps, it really was as sweet as you had hoped it to be..only in hindsight.  had you not been directing this one-person romance you would've felt his presence. resting his eyes on the fallen trees behind you but always with the protective grip around your waist.

in hindsight.
....................................

quite the learning experience it is. love. what intrigues me to him, and to it, is that it is nothing i imagined before. and everything i had hoped it would be. in its own way.
only once you have your peace with its free-flowing uniqueness do you begin to appreciate the technicolor dreamrealities of love. and of companionship.
....................................

i miss you hugging me outside home depot and the Italian cafe as we waited for our take-out. i miss squinting in the sun in your arms, laughing and kissing you and holding you away from the world.
it may take me time yet, to know you, to let us evolve into one, but bear with me, as i know you will and as i know you have. you may not serenade with violins, but you are always there for me with your patience, faith,stability and above all, the most tender of loves.
..................................

i could list down my most favourite memories with u over my trip to newyork, last month's 21st, but i wouldn't know where to begin. the forest, or seeing the deer, or holding hands by the lake, or the ride to LI from NJ, or the room, or..the car. the intensity in your eyes. the most heartfelt of a goodbye.

all i know is, it IS beautiful with you. and while i acknowledge the rocky climb we left behind and one which still lies ahead, that is what makes for the most beautiful and most valuable of journeys..

in short, i love you Husband. here's to nearly two months of official, and 3 and half years to the unofficial Us.

-eeda


ps. a little unsolicited advice-> you don't need two fully trusting hearts in love to have faith. faith alone will bring the love you both desire.

fragments

(truth)
they sat in an empty parking lot of... a church? community center. just off wyndhurst drive, new jersey.
she was crying onto his white shirt, mascara running down her face, telling him to be real to her.
in a way in which he wasn't absorbed by his surroundings, eating him alive, puffed out in grey spirit smoke.
she would miss him.

the song played in the back, we learnt to love in uncertain times.
uncertain times indeed.
.......................

(fiction)
she lives in a one bedroom apartment in manhattan, with her scholarship, her cup of coffee, and her loneliness. another taste at freedom, this is what she was born to do, not a domesticated humble entity.
alternate reality. they had foretold her, in her childhood,
you will either choose to pursue your talent and thus pursue greatness. or you will be a nobody like everyone else. 
she wonders if, what if, she was that nobody. the domestic, married. in a house somewhere close.

Brooklyn..Queens...no, a little more suburban.
Long Island? yes. Long Island.



if.
..............................


do you ever feel like you've become the worst version of yourself?

no. but close.
i need to dream again.

..............................


-eeda

When

did you stop fighting for me, and just started fighting With me instead?












can i have my old S back? please
please


Please.

dont get me

wrong, i dont mind having a rock (several) on my hand which tell the world im married.

but its not just a label or a change of last names...it IS a lot of..responsiblity?
and i havent even moved in yet.

my husband. (wow that sounds weird) is a great guy. but he isn't the guy i saw across the room the day before we got married, in his sherwani doing a bhangra at our dholki. he is, but he also isn't. i don't know how else to explain it.
we grow old in seconds, not years, as people and life will have you believe. we grow old when we look into the eyes of our newlyborn for the first time, we grow old when we cross the podium at convocation, we grow old when we are done writing our last undergrad exam, we grow old when we get our driving license for the first time....and then we spend the rest of our lives trying to find ways to grow young.

but life WILL tell you that that doesnt happen.
not so easily anyway.

my husband is a great guy. he is, in ALL meanings of the phrase, my better half, my opposite. he is responsible, when i am not, organized to the T, when i am not, steady and stable, when i am spontaneous and floating... at times endearing...at times, it is most irritating. most overwhelming. we really are yin and yang in ways people will not believe, but we do come together and join seamlessly when we have to.

i love the metaphor used in the Zahir by paulo coelho about marriages and railroad tracks..but let's say with our marriage, we are two stokes of a wheel driving the wheel in two opposite directions.at least, with me i am.
it leaves me weary, the push and the pull. you must do this, you must do that, you must do this. i would let him be, but then the world wont let Me be. and at the end of the day, he is a better man for it, he knows it, his family knows it, and adores me for it.

but, it leaves me weary. the pulling, and the pushing.
i guess. but i have to clarify, for myself, for the audience, for the future me and for my child-to-be, he never pushes me to change, nor does anyone ask him to make me change, aside from my family (the in-laws think im perfect) and i dont want to think believe embrace that at all, because it leaves me cockysatisfied with no room to grow. i am, however, ever so grateful for it. mA

still. it takes patience being a wife. waiting for your husband to come home, being cheerful when he is down, being upbeat when he is depressed, being seductive when he, caught in the stresses of everyday life, barely responds. its only been a month, and it worries me that we are already old. but then, in hindsight, its been 3 years, not a month. not much should change or could change, given the distance.

he always says its the distance, he doesn't feel married. i do. something changes when you sign your name down for life, tenderness...love...protectiveness.
it was there, but now its more. and trapped in me.

there is a red indent in the finger where the ring is. it reminds me the fairytale happened, but not MY fairytale. not the roses, the proposal, the fireworks or the balloons, the surprise visits and the romance. things happen as you want, but not exactly what you want, and maybe that's popculture/holly-bollywood/magazine trash for you. my rational mind refuses to believe i would wish for these things, but the hearts mutters a tentative, embarrassed nervous yes, i do. i want the small, the simple and the sweet.

i guess it is the distance, it will be better when we are together. for now as the responsibilities and the workload, the upcoming event and the huge bill stands on his stressed shoulders, as our movie-nights and song-nights and romance-nights on weekends and the weekday 2 hour conversations dwindle to 10 minute daily conversations with weekend fights and makeups,  i just need patience and patience, and patience.

the little girl in me needs to be silenced so i can be the woman for the man he is and has to be for his family.

strength, ya Allah.
thats all.
-eeda

never thought

id be writing my next post as a married woman.. (can i correct this to married girl?!|)

i did it..it happened. 3 years of chasing and fighting and pushing and waiting and deliberations and confirmations later...i married him...i dont know why, whether it was the security, whether it was him, whether it was the love, the kissing of the eyelids or the infinite pecks on the fingers, the unwillingness to let go? i cant pinpoint to a single reason..
my brains a mush ball right now...nothings maing sense..it seems like a dream i am trying to wake up from...theres pictures of me on facebook dressed as a bride...i dont recognize myself. theres him, and that scent of him..and the hugs...theres my parents approval, albeit hesitant, to let us go on halal dates now...i can sneak in with him to a house full of people and everyones okay with it! i think that the most shocking part of it somehow, the fact that there is no sneaking anymore..everyone know about him, everyone adores him and that we're somehow..miraculously....married.

someone up there had a field day writing my life out.

i cant believe its the same guy..we would go out to lakes and have lunches and dinner and ehem 'fun' in the backseats of cars..and i keep looking at him in..awe? wonder? horror? shock....who is this guy..did i marry him..do i love him..is he the same person, the same drug i wrote about 3 years ago..something irreparably changes the second u say the i do's, and i cant explain it here somehow..something of that willful soul of reckless abandonment u have as a dating couple changes once ur married, perhaps because theres no ticking clock anymore to measure out the existence of 'us', and ur left with a serene eternity to look forward to ...
we're tired and blessed......so we sit silently by the water, looking at geese and ducks and the blue sky, holding hands, humming, dancing silently on rocks with the water lapping at our feet..in awe and awe and awe...

i guess it will take time to realize and comprehend.....but i still feel, despite the inner chaotic,...that i am blessed, blessed, blessed...Alhamdolilah..he treasures me, and he is ALL mine :) i hope Allah swt. keeps this spark of trust and love in us throughout the struggle ahead, i hope our kids see it but more so, feel it..i hope it inspires and uplifts, despite my depressive tendencies..i hope neither of us forgets where we came from and what it took to be with each other..even if it seems like a dream....Ameen.

in the meantime, im going to miss him like crazy (he left yesterday) and will badger him like a true wife to come back soon ish :)

all for now, updates later..
eeda

(so much more natural to record the Tragic.)

mom and S sang out alternate verses of kisi roz tum se mulaqat hogi 3 nights ago..could i ask for more bliss to hear her singing from behind the bathroom door while he poured out music through one end of his vocal chords and out the speaker phone on my cell?
or when he calls mom 'ammi' and abbu 'dad' and when miy dad actually asks me 'hows mubashir?, u are blessed to have him'
or when ammi says 'i think if we had picked out a guy ourselves, it would not have been better than you'

the end of the storyline. end of the tragic. if this s Allah's (Swt) reward for patience then i'd go through the two years trapped in my Vancouver cell with a smile on my lips and a wrinkle-free brow.
a little faith goes a longggggggggggggg longgggggggggg way...


is my Dadu-angel still watching over me? it feels like it.

older writings remind me of a more inspired eeda with moonbeams in her voice and starshine under heavy-lidded eyes... why did all of it die in
side despite the lyrics cascading off the wallpapered walls, women singing merry congrats to the bride when i feel like a giddy little child on the outside and stunned little girl on the inside?


23/24th July 2011- yet another move. 
24 B1 7th East Street, Karachi, Pakistan (1989)
to Jubail, Saudia Arabia (1) to Jubail, Saudia Arabia (2) to
24 B1 7th East Street, Karachi, Pakistan (1995) to
P-14/II 9th East street, Karachi, Pakistan ( 2000) to
W-44 Regatta Tripoli, Libya (2002) to
U.S {D.C, NY, N.J, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virgina}; (August-November 2006) to
W-44 Tripoli,Libya (November-December, 2006) to
P-14/11, Karachi, Pakistan. (December, 2006) to

V6P6L2 Vancouver, Canada (2007) to
L5M0H2 Toronto, Canada (July, 2009) to
M3J0A8 Toronto, Canada (November, 2009) to
L4Z4C7 Toronto, Canada (August, 2010) to
924 Focal (2011).
Home.

(until NY next year that is.)

a move every summer for the last 4/5 year, and numerous before. tiring....
i leave a little bit behind at every place I stay; that's why i remember houses..addresses,..they become the person i was at those places..
or maybe its the house itself that chooses the identity it likes, and keeps..even past when uve moved out.

i see the blank shutters in my old house and i see the old most recent eeda standing at the window sill; and i know EXACTLY how she's feeling and what she's thinking.

the new house hasn't chosen a 'me' yet. i don't know who to be or how to be or what identity to create.

in other events....
last day of class and last presentation--21st July 2011;
'you are the best group leader i have ever had' 'you bring people together..synchronize them in a way that is impossible' 'quality work..you speak so well' 'very well presented' 'you're leaving?! congratulations! i wish you the very best' 'you stayed behind class and taught me how to speak..thank you so much'
beautiful parting words..i want to change lives. i know i can.
end of 4 years of ....cannot capture essences in words...

oh. and 39 days to a Mrs.

milestones milestones milestones.

i erect graveyards of old me's and thread air cradles for the welcoming..

let it begin,begin,begin

-eeda

fairytale endings are tricky little things.

at what point does the fairytale end? when u sign the marriage contract and reality begins? what is the end of the forever?
i think its the time between first meet to the actual wedding. maybe the last night of the honeymoon. who knows?
maybe im being the dubious old me again and i nee to have cheenifaith.

that's the other thing. u get so engrossed with fine-tuning the details of your happy endings you start getting the E word (expectationsss) which kills relationships.
why am i hung up on the finer details? the proposal or lack of. the roses or lack of. when all the love love love is all there in the 4 am i miss u phone calls and the 10 am are u awake yet jaan messages?
smaller things in life eeda.

i had my first dholki on 2nd of july 2011. first public appearance by the boy and myself. got some really nice surprise compliments.
ruby k and other 'aunties' outspoken approval of him. why not? he's the stereotypical handsome fair-skinned gorgeous-smiled well-mannered goodboy. (i pick well. well no, he picked me but we can forget the order for a little bit)
interesting what muz bhai said.
'before i met him i used to think he was the lucky one to have you..now that i have met him i have to say ur the lucky one'

dunno how thats supposed to make me feel.

we signed and applied for the legal marriage license on july 4th. yes, every year america will celebrate with fireworks what is truly not hers, but ours. technically we can apply for a certificate of marriage with the documents and be legally married, but untechnically there's a tiny little portion that the maulvi and witness can optionally fill out if we have the religious ceremony. which we are.
less than. 35 days away.

oh gudness.
its funny how the dates lined up too. we met on the 5th, legal signing on the 4th, nikkah on the 3rd. in reverse order.

still seems like a peachy fuzz dream with maggots. wedding details are maggoty. preparing for a wedding alone is.....hell. dealing with a stubborn mom who insists u wear green when green has reminded u of nausea since u were 5 years old and have never worn green ur whole life...can get tricky.
and other details. but i push along. school S nikkah details clothes mine his and families exams papers in-laws moving houses applying for graduation paperwork finding videographer makeup artist ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
i am swamped. no, swept away by lists and lists and lists running around like robotsquirrels in my mind.

all the poetry and romance seems to have leaked out of me; just tuning the fine details now.

enough vent-ation. more later,
and to those with the wishes and the love. thank u thank u thank u. its been an incredible 3 years and incredibly, this blog has all the details of it. :)
speaking of, i was thinking of proposing to my man. why not? he deserves something special in his life. i need ideas... help!? :)

love,
-eeda

bulawa

(names removed for protection)

yes i drew it myself. and the blue thingy on it. and that is the color combo for the evening.
and u are all invited in spirit.

gooseybumps. is it real?!

-eeda