<<     September 2006     >>

Tangerine, or, You Are What You Eat

I wanted to start this with "I used to..." but there is no such thing anymore.

He listens to me. He really hears me - when I'm anything you can imagine: happy, sad, sane or otherwise - he listens.
This is the man that I married.
Amazing, my luck - the way the universe nestled me into the place I'm meant to be.

I'm blending into another person the way people and love and futures are meant to, and I'm happy...and when I'm not; when I'm not sure because we've been here too long and things are too hard - there he is with that whole angel-thing going on and I'm more in love with him every day.

Living reflection of a dream.

Miss Jess

Oh, when will we have a day with just you and me and a bottle of good red wine?

The closer I get...the more I miss you.

War Games

Watermelon seeds make excellent bullets when propelled in large quantities from the mouth.
Our house is covered with them at the moment.
Tomorrow I will sweep the carpet of dried seeds from the floor, scooping the many little weapons of minimal destruction into the garbage.

We order huge fresh watermelons for delivery - partially to satiate my addiction and appetite for literally kilos and kilos of fruit every day and partly to fuel my small spitting army.

Actually, Hamid started it well over a year ago one night while we were sitting nicely watching a movie together until he turned, mouth stocked with the little black pellets, and shot them straight into the side of my unsuspecting face.

Of course, I retaliated.

Three for three

Not only do we have hot water today, but the electricity and internet are well-connected and freely flowing.
Ordinarily we assume we will be granted the gift of ease with only one of these three things - today we've really scored.

On the one hand, it can be so annoying to wake up to cloudy skies and realize that our bathwater (heated on top of our house in a solar water heater) will be the same temperature as the air outside, especially on the rare occasion we actually have to be somewhere - and on the other hand it lends itself to my ever-growing patience with life.

My darling is already on that page, likely he was born there - patient with just about everything and putting me to shame in the tantrum department (Hamid - maybe 2, Tess - 3 billion 6 million 896 thousand 579.3)

Taxation without representation

We really should be used to it by now - the illegitimate gouging of our pockets by various Indian police and government officials.

Hamid's visit with the Home Department (as mentioned in the last post) was very, very profitable - for the official. He'd originally quoted us a very specific 200 rupees for processing and receiving the document we need but upon spying the thousands of rupees that Hamid brought forth from which to extract the fee, quite suddenly a thousand was due, and we were sent on our way with instructions to pay the two hundred at a different office.

We've spent the last few days running between there and a number of other places with this or that paper for this or that official, trying to figure out how best to negotiate this ridiculous bureaucratic maze they've set up, but to no avail. We've to play their game and pay ridiculous fees in order to make any progress at all.
So far we've shelled out well over a thousand U.S. dollars to nearly everyone we've had to deal with (on top of the regular fees) just to get them to do the job they are supposed to do in the first place.

At the Police Commissioner's office on Infantry Road there is a sign on the outer wall of the main building requesting any foreigners 'having any problems arising regarding any business with these offices' to contact yet another office to lodge a complaint.
I took the address down as a matter of course, planning to write a very nasty letter upon our departure from India (when we no longer need anything from them) but have a hunch that unless my letter is accompanied by some crisp new bank notes it will make no impact at all other than to add to the piles of garbage adorning Bangalore.

Here we go again...

The United States Embassy has not disappointed; just two weeks after our initial visit we received the invitation to gather another set of paperwork together and return for a personal interview that will allow the final decision to be made on Hamid's visa to the States.
It's a wonderful relief to once again be dealing with government offices that get things done, and get them done efficiently although sometimes I do feel as if the entire process of application is just a test - I imagine if the applicant is intelligent and organized enough to successfully negotiate the paperwork there are a certain number of points assigned in their favor.

Unfortunately, in order for the required folder of documents to be complete we must acquire one paper from the local Bangalore police department, via a larger Indian government office called the 'Home Department' - whatever that is exactly, I don't know...all I know is this is the office we are dealing with before we can move forward with our application (I wonder if the Embassy gives extra points for difficulties such as this?):

Getting here

Of course now that we have a sense that we're leaving India sometime in the near-ish future I am able to love being here just a little more, again.
My mistake, to have been living ahead of myself - poised to get-out-of-here and aiming my focus strictly on the exit, admittedly missing much of what's going on around me in the process; certain I will eventually look back on the experience quite fondly and miss it all very, very much.
Our life here is literally ten times simpler than it will be in the States - at least everything from rent to transportation costs about ten times less here and I do wonder sometimes how we will manage this life at 10x after such an extended holiday from any of the serious business of it all.
Finding the right house in the right neighborhood, helping my darling transition while managing the promise of a legal maze that is his immigration paperwork, expanding our happy little business, and transitioning myself - because I do feel like an alien at this point, gone so long into a life that barely required shoes, much less any other semblance of real-life or responsibility - I am giddy in both directions, good and bad, at the thought of our rejoining the other side of the planet. Like the hermit who preferred a cave, I've become satiated by my self-induced excommunication from the west. Comfortable with what has become normal for me even while I crave what was, or rather, what will be.

Well, what really was anyway?
My life before India, before Hamid, was more like a prayer to consumerism and the drug of the almighty shopping bag than anything else, a credit-fueled blueprint for the rest of my life: empty but decked out. I held a firm belief that everything was for me - with or without repercussions or recourse. I was messing around with life from the perspective of a seemingly invincible youth and beauty with nothing more to worry about than what to wear and where to wear it to.
But it was that same disconnect that allowed me the freedom to drop it all in favor of something that looked better, if even just for the time being. It was what had been pinned to me: "irresponsible" and "spontaneous" that I found to be my greatest assets over the past few years living abroad - for what real adventure can you ever hope to have if you aren't even a little bit of these things? If it is wrong to quit university, work, relationships, and all the rest of it in order to see more of the world, to let go of the idea that the cel phone is a lifeline, to stop letting pointless pricey stuff stand in as a backbone, to shed the-wrong-kind-of-people, and to better realize what it is that actually makes me happy in life rather than referring to the measuring stick of 'what is expected of me' then I'm guilty as charged but not feeling so bad about it in the end.

Looking forward, while trying harder to be very much here, exactly now, I am most concerned, not by the idea of managing that new life we will occupy, but maintaining the aspects of myself that have been fortified by this three+ year sabbatical from the real world and in keeping a safe distance from those aspects purposefully shed.

Don't hate the player, hate the game

With Annan practically begging for those in charge to begin acting in a way that embodies peace Ahmadinejad quite rudely was not even present for George Bush's statements to the United Nations (which, I hesitate to admit, for once actually struck a positive chord with me) and the American UN seats were also notably empty as the president of Iran spoke later in the day.

I find it ridiculous that the two nationheads should act in this way, fighting like a bitter divorced couple - unable to be in the same room together even for the sake of the rest of the family. As far as I can see there is no solution on the horizon and everyone else seems quite tired of the bickering, the threatening, the backhanded statements written and delivered with intelligent malice and a smile that vaguely dissuades immediate reaction.

They don't agree? Fine. Don't like eachother? Fine. Don't want to work together? Fine.
Stop wasting time and just give someone else the job.

Quitter

It always seemed to me spectacularly moronic to smoke cigarettes while living in Bangalore - smoking is clearly not the most intelligent choice to be made to begin with...but just being in traffic here one is essentially smoking all kinds of noxious garbage. Lighting a cigarette while in traffic behind kilometers of openly putrid autorickshaws, third world personal vehicles, and a fleet of city busses with ages-old smoke-billowing engines was kind of like crossing my heart and wishing for an early death.

I honestly have no idea why I started smoking in the first place - statistics tell me I probably thought that it looked cool? Really? I mean, am I, have I ever been such a complete sheep? Whatever the reason was I laid it off enough to have quit some time ago, just like that, for about five years. I literally dropped those cigarettes one day, along with all meat and dairy, and spent the next five years tuning up.
Somehow my lifestyle in India didn't really sum that up nicely though and I ended up on the enabling end of the filter yet again.

Since then I've reminisced many times about the day I decided all in the course of ten seconds never to touch another cigarette again (and didn't, though admittedly 'forever' lasted only five years) - recounting for Hamid how ridiculously easy it had been to quit them and with the same breath inhaling one freshly-lit, further embellishing it all with a comment on what a yuck smoking is.

I finally decided that every time I actually said or thought how disgusting it is while smoking that would be the moment to put the damn thing out. I mean, who can hold a cigarette in one hand, despising it, and still smoke it?

And voila, I've quit.
And I'm quite certain that forever will last a whole lot longer than five years this time.
I spent plenty of time running around discotheques and parties with a drink and a smoke in each hand, creating whatever the image is that goes along with being a young urban social butterfly - but I'm much more interested now in cultivating my image as a young-ish urban wife and maybe even more importantly, a mother.
I always said that I would quit all the bad habits at least one year before I wanted to get pregnant - and it's about that time.

Plus, there is no species on Earth more perplexing, disturbing, or just plain icky than the 'smoking mommy.'

Enter stage right, and cough

Whenever I was sick during the past few years I would just stay home and take care of myself. Flung onto the bed and melting with fever all alone. There was no audience so I didn't complain.
But now that I'm married? I'm whining and whinging all over the place. It's a very odd habit I've developed, playing sweetly pathetic into Hamid's ready attention - my drama enhanced by what I know is an attractive blush brought on with flu.
But he plays right back and loves me like crazy.
I think this is the thing that cures...the way he loves me.
It's a thousand times stronger and more effective than Nyquil.
Love: the coughing, achey, stuffy head, fever - so you can rest medicine.

New Delhi, India

No autographs please...

Every so often I get a glimpse of what it's like to be married to a celebrity:

Once, we'd crawled out of bed mid-afternoon on a lazy Sunday and made our way by motorcycle through the heat and traffic to the big Bangalore garden, Lalbagh, and I was looking forward to a quiet hideout in the shade somewhere, lounging with my darling (who was not yet my husband). Instead, before we could even get off the bike we were engulfed by the screeching, giggling contents of one tour bus full of little children, followed instantly by the outflow of yet another tour bus, this one populated by grown men.
All of them stood around H and I twittering and buzzing among themselves, trying to place him, trying to figure out who he was.
Our weak attempts at shooing them off only brought them closer, until the park with its arboretum, flower gardens, and pathetic aquarium full of terminal fish no longer interested them. H was the center of attention.
I extricated myself from the middle of the dustbowl thrown up in the parking lot by the frenzy and watched, half amused, half jealous pouty face, as H handled the crowd and sweetly allowed some of them to snap a photo with him even though he'd assured them time and again that they did not recognize him from anywhere.

I'm not necessarily a high maintenance kind of girl - it takes me about an hour start to finish to be ready to go out somewhere - but how is it fair that he can wake up with messy hair and a smile and look gorgeous enough to inspire an impromptu fan club at every corner and red light - but I wake up with messy hair and a smile and I look like I really need that hour.

Cue jealous pouty face.

Um, is there a handbook?

My parents split their time between two houses in two states, they spend approximately two seasons in each - they follow the sun but avoid the worst of the summer heat and completely forego winters save for the occasional Christmas in Seattle.

Now, Hamid and I are looking at basically the same scenario, but want all four seasons and two countries.
I was born in the States, there is no trying to find myself in that relationship - it is Iran I am mentally grappling with.

My stay in Iran was amazing and wonderful and in some ways very challenging. But because I honestly don't have a grasp on what depth of perspective is appropriate to write about considering the legal issues that can come with publishing such things I didn't always give voice to the entire experience. I may be American, but I am married to an Iranian, I have an Iranian identity card and sometime in the next few months will have a passport - all of the rules apply to me now regardless of where I happen to be writing from.

I find it impossible to imagine anyone admonishing me for exploring the ways in which I interact with Iran, both literally and figuratively, positive or negative. I am simply a person of one culture experiencing another. And yet I'm still holding myself back when it comes to writing about my experiences there - evidenced by the four or so half-written and unpublished posts that have piled up in my blog program since our return. My experience was unique and I find it both frustrating and sad that I'm now standing on some invisible line of self-expression, afraid to cross it. I am stranded by my own ignorance (What are the laws regarding self expression and Iran?). I've got this amazing opportunity to write about my relationship to Iran via internet technology coupled with a very rare perspective but I don't want to cross whatever that line is - I don't want to be misunderstood.

I am connected to Iran for the rest of my life, and this is truly a wonderful relationship for which I am grateful - I guess it's just a matter of figuring out how my voice, trained by 32 years of life experience to be confident and unafraid, fits in with all that.

Dreamer's Disease

I know now for certain that my predisposition to live life based on dreams and hope will continue to serve me well. I gave my anxiety the courtesy of recognition, but the feeling I nurtured, held onto, and relied on was one of persuaded confidence in the universe to continue to follow the rule we agreed to long ago: "Everything is the way it's supposed to be."

Six to nine months.
That's been my stock answer as we planned the potential timeline for a move back to the States - and now that our forms I-130 and G-325a's and reams of supporting paperwork and pictures have been expeditiously accepted at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, it's a schedule I can cut in half and look forward to with real expectation rather than just in estimation.
I may pick on my government when it comes to international relationships (and that probably won't change anytime soon, considering recent news) but I've to give credit where credit is due: We were treated like VIP's during our visit, a mere two hours on technically American soil. Everyone we met with at the Embassy was incredibly nice and helpful in a way I almost didn't recognize after the past years of dealing with local Indian government...and now we wait for the second stage of the application process.
Within a month we can expect to receive a letter requesting our presence for a personal interview, a few more forms, and a few hundred more dollars.
Another month after that, I imagine we'll have the necessary visa plastered into Hamid's passport and we'll be on our way home (if there is such a thing).

And if my dreams are reality as they so often prove to be, there is...there is a little house in Portland with room for our as yet imaginary babies and our as yet imaginary dogs and all the shoes I'm mentally hoarding. There is a little American dream, complete with darling husband - nevermind I've had to go to the ends of the earth to find him.