Posts
''
''
I had the distinct, though rare pleasure of my friend M’s company for brunch recently while I was visiting in Chicago. Something like the following conversation ensued, which in turn had me remembering the episode described below.
M____: “I went out to put quarters in the meter and told my sister to look out for a girl with really short hair, in case you came in before I got back.”
Me: “Yeah, it’s a lot longer than the last time you saw me.”
M____: “I really like it this length.”
Me: “I like how people react to me more now that it is this length. But I feel more like myself when it’s short – I like being mistaken for a man.” (this last said jokingly)
M____: “Ha! Well, I suppose that says something about you.” (also, jokingly)
**********
I’d grown up dissatisfied not with my gender itself, but with the life that came along with it. An example: my older brother, an adept whistler, was allowed to fill our home with beautiful, complex music from noon until night, while any such behavior on my part elicited immediate admonition from whichever parent was closest at hand – girls did not whistle. Of course my desire tripled as soon as I was prevented, and I pursed and blew constantly as if all of my present and future happiness depended upon it (which I realize now, without exaggeration, that it did – breaking gender norms early was important, and made possible my life thereafter). I whistled nonstop, until I could mimic any and all tunes I knew or heard regardless of complexity or key.
This was not the only symptom of my early rebelliousness against the niche that Arab culture had carved out for me and my sex organs – I was a tomboy through and through. I’d enjoyed, for a brief stint at the beginning of my life, the dresses and skirts and pretty patterned things that my mother bought for me, but in subsequent years, retired them out of my wardrobe in favor of unisex clothing which interfered less with my chosen lifestyle of eight-year-old-boy. The only Barbie I owned was stripped of her decorative clothing, and featured in my play-acting only as the kidnapped victim my GI Joes had to rescue from the mad scientist (forgive me, women everywhere, for my sexist Hollywood-influenced playacting).
My one surviving domestically-themed memory from those years is of an experiment with custard. My mother, without fail, brought in to my father’s bedroom elaborate breakfast trays every single morning, which he consumed during his hour-long morning ritual of shaving dressing mousse-ing blow-drying (for he was a meticulous man). Included in these would be a dessert selection, for what is breakfast without something to sweeten the tooth for a day’s beginning? At least, that’s how the thinking went in my family before the entire world turned against the unfairly and much-demonized carb(ohydrate).
On a certain day, unremarkable to me, some internal alarm clock began beeping in my father’s head, and he decided that it was time for me to do something that women did. I was thence given the task of custard. I was to prepare my father’s dessert cups for the week.
I was little over eight years old, and so it is no surprise to me that the results were disastrous. Indeed, what seemed surprising was that nobody else had anticipated the failure of my culinary skills, even if the custard was boxed in just-add-milk powder form. Boxed custard, you will find, when entrusted to an eight-year old very quickly morphs into a nightmarishly inconsistent texture, lumpy, hard, unevenly flavored.
My father ate every single cup of it I made for breakfast-dessert, lunch-dessert, and dinner-dessert, saying nothing that wasn’t either encouragement or silence. Was he dutifully eating the fruits of his own ill-advised labors? In a sense, was my unwittingly patriarchal parent consuming the custard of his own bad judgment in attempting to engender gender too early? Or was he swallowing it down in silent encouragement, to show me that I’d successfully performed the first dry run of my destiny as an Egyptian female, one who makes things for others’ palates and tastes? I don’t know the answer to that, but smile to remember my father’s magnanimity, his silent, uncomplaining, and likely joyless consumption.
At any rate, I must have been given reprieve after that, for I remember being able to go happily back to my life as a tomboy who only ate in the kitchen: one who made nothing in it. I had no girl-friends, and enjoyed the company of boys, as well as the scabbed knees, the play-playground-fights, and the rough and tumble that came along with their company. My twin brother was a constant companion, and my older sisters were older enough that they were more like guardians than peers. Our two best friends, who lived only in the next building over, were both boys with whom we rode bikes, played Doom, and bickered both verbally and physically over Atari, Sega, and Sean Michaels WWF wrestling cards. I remember standing with my music teacher (a favorite, since in her class I got to sing to my contentment) and telling her how I wished for boy-ness. She said that being a girl could also be fun. I looked at her, shaking my head internally, bemused with her British naiveté at life – she had obviously learned very little in the many years separating us. It is not that I wanted to be a boy, but that I wanted to be free like one. And that was not possible in the Arab world.
I never knew my parents to be conflicted about how I should act (clearly, like a woman-to-be) or why (because), but for one rare episode:
The sporting club was where the Egyptians went on their weekends, being an island of staid respectability, and just as importantly, affordability in Kuwaiti social life. My father was a distinguished man, who took very particular care of his appearance. This care never came across as being symptomatic of a vain disposition, or of a desire for public approval – rather, he appeared to dress to impress only his very own impeccable and highly exacting standards.
This meant that even in the sporting club which we and other expat families favored, he would appear as if dressed for work, minus perhaps - and only on the hottest of days - his suit jacket, and even then only when he was expecting little company but for ours, his twin children. He was old-school, the kind to put a tie on for a trip to the store for milk. We were a study in contrasts.
The adults chitchatted politely about this and that – “this”, and usually “that”, all being events or gossip taking place back in Egypt, that had little to do with their everyday expatriated lives. While they did this, the children took advantage of what limited entertainment the sporting club offered. Those were days when the big wide world still remained closed and unfamiliar to us, and our attention spans had yet to be been corrupted by its diverse wiles. Therefore, the swimming pool, swing sets, game room, and tennis court (for running and other random playful acts, for none of us could play actual tennis) all seemed to be more than enough distraction.
We spent the day at the sporting club from early morning until the sun had long set, and the mosquitoes had gathered in enough numbers to be unbearable. The lunch meal was the only time the children and parents spent time in each others’ collective company. I had just finished a game of something or another that had me dusty, sweaty, and stained. I walked over to my father, whom I adored, and beamed at him. It was lunchtime. He was in the air-conditioned cafeteria, looking as collected and coiffed as ever, and was tamping some tobacco into his pipe. I slid my chair closer to him, for I liked the smell and his proximity. To me, it seemed a feat of magic that only my father was capable of, to light a fire and make it smell like cherries. When my mother lit the stove, it smelt like nothing.
My father was sitting with his friends W____ and N_____, a married couple, and was laughing huskily and quietly in his reserved way. He was commentating on my appearance, on how unladylike I could be. I grinned mightily, these being complimentary utterances to my ears even though I knew they were not intended as such. I sat down with my order of pounded breaded chicken and French fries, listening to my father recount a playground episode of mine that had not stuck in my own fleeting, childish memory, but that he remembered distinctly and with great detail.
“She asked me if she could go over and play soccer with the boys. I suggested instead that it might be nicer for her to do something else – skip rope, go on the swings. But you know Mariam. She kept insisting and I told her to go ahead. She is young, there is no harm in it. I told her she could play as long as she was goalie and not out in the field. I watched her for a little bit then went for a walk around the track.”
Here his voice swelled with something like pride.
“I came back, and found her not only to have completely abandoned her goalposts, but to be actively directing every single boy on her team and the other’s, including her twin brother. They all listened to her, I don’t know why. I started to call her over, but stopped myself and just watched”. Here he chuckled again, and grew quite, looking at me.
M____: “I went out to put quarters in the meter and told my sister to look out for a girl with really short hair, in case you came in before I got back.”
Me: “Yeah, it’s a lot longer than the last time you saw me.”
M____: “I really like it this length.”
Me: “I like how people react to me more now that it is this length. But I feel more like myself when it’s short – I like being mistaken for a man.” (this last said jokingly)
M____: “Ha! Well, I suppose that says something about you.” (also, jokingly)
**********
I’d grown up dissatisfied not with my gender itself, but with the life that came along with it. An example: my older brother, an adept whistler, was allowed to fill our home with beautiful, complex music from noon until night, while any such behavior on my part elicited immediate admonition from whichever parent was closest at hand – girls did not whistle. Of course my desire tripled as soon as I was prevented, and I pursed and blew constantly as if all of my present and future happiness depended upon it (which I realize now, without exaggeration, that it did – breaking gender norms early was important, and made possible my life thereafter). I whistled nonstop, until I could mimic any and all tunes I knew or heard regardless of complexity or key.
This was not the only symptom of my early rebelliousness against the niche that Arab culture had carved out for me and my sex organs – I was a tomboy through and through. I’d enjoyed, for a brief stint at the beginning of my life, the dresses and skirts and pretty patterned things that my mother bought for me, but in subsequent years, retired them out of my wardrobe in favor of unisex clothing which interfered less with my chosen lifestyle of eight-year-old-boy. The only Barbie I owned was stripped of her decorative clothing, and featured in my play-acting only as the kidnapped victim my GI Joes had to rescue from the mad scientist (forgive me, women everywhere, for my sexist Hollywood-influenced playacting).
My one surviving domestically-themed memory from those years is of an experiment with custard. My mother, without fail, brought in to my father’s bedroom elaborate breakfast trays every single morning, which he consumed during his hour-long morning ritual of shaving dressing mousse-ing blow-drying (for he was a meticulous man). Included in these would be a dessert selection, for what is breakfast without something to sweeten the tooth for a day’s beginning? At least, that’s how the thinking went in my family before the entire world turned against the unfairly and much-demonized carb(ohydrate).
On a certain day, unremarkable to me, some internal alarm clock began beeping in my father’s head, and he decided that it was time for me to do something that women did. I was thence given the task of custard. I was to prepare my father’s dessert cups for the week.
I was little over eight years old, and so it is no surprise to me that the results were disastrous. Indeed, what seemed surprising was that nobody else had anticipated the failure of my culinary skills, even if the custard was boxed in just-add-milk powder form. Boxed custard, you will find, when entrusted to an eight-year old very quickly morphs into a nightmarishly inconsistent texture, lumpy, hard, unevenly flavored.
My father ate every single cup of it I made for breakfast-dessert, lunch-dessert, and dinner-dessert, saying nothing that wasn’t either encouragement or silence. Was he dutifully eating the fruits of his own ill-advised labors? In a sense, was my unwittingly patriarchal parent consuming the custard of his own bad judgment in attempting to engender gender too early? Or was he swallowing it down in silent encouragement, to show me that I’d successfully performed the first dry run of my destiny as an Egyptian female, one who makes things for others’ palates and tastes? I don’t know the answer to that, but smile to remember my father’s magnanimity, his silent, uncomplaining, and likely joyless consumption.
At any rate, I must have been given reprieve after that, for I remember being able to go happily back to my life as a tomboy who only ate in the kitchen: one who made nothing in it. I had no girl-friends, and enjoyed the company of boys, as well as the scabbed knees, the play-playground-fights, and the rough and tumble that came along with their company. My twin brother was a constant companion, and my older sisters were older enough that they were more like guardians than peers. Our two best friends, who lived only in the next building over, were both boys with whom we rode bikes, played Doom, and bickered both verbally and physically over Atari, Sega, and Sean Michaels WWF wrestling cards. I remember standing with my music teacher (a favorite, since in her class I got to sing to my contentment) and telling her how I wished for boy-ness. She said that being a girl could also be fun. I looked at her, shaking my head internally, bemused with her British naiveté at life – she had obviously learned very little in the many years separating us. It is not that I wanted to be a boy, but that I wanted to be free like one. And that was not possible in the Arab world.
I never knew my parents to be conflicted about how I should act (clearly, like a woman-to-be) or why (because), but for one rare episode:
The sporting club was where the Egyptians went on their weekends, being an island of staid respectability, and just as importantly, affordability in Kuwaiti social life. My father was a distinguished man, who took very particular care of his appearance. This care never came across as being symptomatic of a vain disposition, or of a desire for public approval – rather, he appeared to dress to impress only his very own impeccable and highly exacting standards.
This meant that even in the sporting club which we and other expat families favored, he would appear as if dressed for work, minus perhaps - and only on the hottest of days - his suit jacket, and even then only when he was expecting little company but for ours, his twin children. He was old-school, the kind to put a tie on for a trip to the store for milk. We were a study in contrasts.
The adults chitchatted politely about this and that – “this”, and usually “that”, all being events or gossip taking place back in Egypt, that had little to do with their everyday expatriated lives. While they did this, the children took advantage of what limited entertainment the sporting club offered. Those were days when the big wide world still remained closed and unfamiliar to us, and our attention spans had yet to be been corrupted by its diverse wiles. Therefore, the swimming pool, swing sets, game room, and tennis court (for running and other random playful acts, for none of us could play actual tennis) all seemed to be more than enough distraction.
We spent the day at the sporting club from early morning until the sun had long set, and the mosquitoes had gathered in enough numbers to be unbearable. The lunch meal was the only time the children and parents spent time in each others’ collective company. I had just finished a game of something or another that had me dusty, sweaty, and stained. I walked over to my father, whom I adored, and beamed at him. It was lunchtime. He was in the air-conditioned cafeteria, looking as collected and coiffed as ever, and was tamping some tobacco into his pipe. I slid my chair closer to him, for I liked the smell and his proximity. To me, it seemed a feat of magic that only my father was capable of, to light a fire and make it smell like cherries. When my mother lit the stove, it smelt like nothing.
My father was sitting with his friends W____ and N_____, a married couple, and was laughing huskily and quietly in his reserved way. He was commentating on my appearance, on how unladylike I could be. I grinned mightily, these being complimentary utterances to my ears even though I knew they were not intended as such. I sat down with my order of pounded breaded chicken and French fries, listening to my father recount a playground episode of mine that had not stuck in my own fleeting, childish memory, but that he remembered distinctly and with great detail.
“She asked me if she could go over and play soccer with the boys. I suggested instead that it might be nicer for her to do something else – skip rope, go on the swings. But you know Mariam. She kept insisting and I told her to go ahead. She is young, there is no harm in it. I told her she could play as long as she was goalie and not out in the field. I watched her for a little bit then went for a walk around the track.”
Here his voice swelled with something like pride.
“I came back, and found her not only to have completely abandoned her goalposts, but to be actively directing every single boy on her team and the other’s, including her twin brother. They all listened to her, I don’t know why. I started to call her over, but stopped myself and just watched”. Here he chuckled again, and grew quite, looking at me.
I imagined I could see possibility in his eyes…but older-me thinks that maybe that is only what I wanted to see. Any sense of the possible would have inevitably ebbed as his fancy was brought back down to earth, back down to his own expectations of the unmistakable girl smiling back at him. At the time, I am sure she recognized the ebb for what it was. She finished the remainder of her fries both quickly and quietly, and then it was time to go home.
'
'
0 comments:
Post a Comment