by Zarqa Nawaz
“Do you smell curdled milk?” he asked, looking around.
“It’s the cream. It’s gone bad. I need to use the facilities.” I dashed into the women’s washroom to switch out my breast pads, which were soaked. I’d forgotten to bring another pair, so I stuffed my bra with reams of toilet paper. I put some more between my bra and my shirt for extra insurance.
My film played just before another short film, Bangs, a comedy about the Chinese Canadian community by the filmmaker Carolynne Hew. I introduced myself to her.
“So we’ve both made comedies about our cultural communities,” she said to me.
“Mine is less a comedy and more an examination of social behaviour,” I responded.
As my film unspooled, though, the audience laughed at all the wrong places. I had meticulously hand-drawn the pictures of the two Muslim brothers for the wanted ad. My intention had been for the pictures to look like the ones in the Toronto Star that had inspired the film in the first place. Those photographs had broken my heart when I saw them, and now my rendering of them was making people laugh. But as I watched Jawad and Muzammal clearly overacting and hamming up my dialogue, it finally dawned on me. My film was really cheesy. In fact, it was so over the top that it seemed as if I had done it on purpose. I had inadvertently made a satire about terrorism.
Mario took us into the press room, where reporters wanted to talk to us about our films.
“Why did you choose satire as your genre?” asked one.
“Choose wouldn’t be the right word,” I replied.
“What word then?”
“I’d say I stumbled upon the genre. This is my first film, and I hadn’t really figured out my tone yet.”
“Well, your tone turns out to be comedic,” said the reporter.
Mario came up to me.
“Your mother’s on the phone,” he said.
“Is everything okay?” I asked her.
“Maysa refuses to sit on the toilet.” My mother was very annoyed.
“She has some issues with the toilet.” Like she won’t use it.
“And Inaya won’t drink milk from her bottle,” said my harried mother.
I could hear blood-curdling screaming over the phone.
“She’s starving and you have to come home now or, I swear to Allah, I will never look after another one of your babies again.”
“Mario, I have to leave.”
“There’s a television reporter who wants to do an interview with you.”
I looked down at my shirt. Milk was leaking down the front onto my pants—and pieces of wet toilet paper had started falling out of my blouse. Mario moved his expensive shoes away from me.
“Are you okay?” he asked, aghast.
“I have a four-month-old baby at home and my breasts aren’t used to being so full. I have to go now.” I grabbed my coat, covered myself up and ran out like some sort of lactating Cinderella, leaving a trail of wet tissue paper behind me.
Arriving home to my freaked-out mother and baby, I grabbed Inaya, who quickly latched on.
“Why won’t you do your poo in the toilet?” I asked Maysa.
“Don’t like the potty. Like my diaper.”
The next day Mario called again.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Good,” I replied as I breastfed Inaya. “Listen, I wanted to thank you for programming my film. It must have taken a lot of courage. I finally realized that it was a bit—a lot—amateur.”
It was as close as I could come to self-awareness. I heard a sigh on the other end.
“But it did have a certain quality to it,” said Mario. “One wanted it to succeed despite its … deficiencies.”
It was as close as he could come to praise.
“There are some reporters who still want to talk to you,” he said.
“I’m going home this afternoon,” I said. “Can they do it over the phone?”
“Sure. So what are you going to do next?”
“Figure out how to toilet-train a stubborn two-year-old,” I said, as I swatted a diaper-clad Maysa.
“No, I mean for your career.”
“I haven’t had time to think for about four months now.”
“I have a suggestion.”
“I’m listening.”
“Apply for funding from arts councils. Make another film but with real actors and a real crew next time,” he said. “And get some professional child care.”
“How was everything?” Sami asked when I returned home.
“Horrible,” I said. “Next time I get invited to a film festival, you have to come with me for the screening.”
A few months later we were both watching TV and there was a story about Taslima Nasrin, the Bengali writer. She’d just been issued a fatwa of death by some extremists.
“Muslims can be so narrow-minded,” I said to Sami.
“Don’t be too hard on us,” he said.
“I want to make a film about fatwas and death,” I said. “It’s ripe for a satire.”
“If you say so,” said Sami.
If I could complete a script and get all the funding in time, I’d be able to submit the film for the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival, which was in two years.
I took down the calendar and started counting the months backwards.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to still be pregnant when my film screens, so I don’t have to deal with a starving baby. Or a trail of soggy Kleenex.”
“We’re going to schedule a baby around a film festival?” he said.
“It’s the only way to make sure that my mother won’t get mad. And you”—I shook my finger at Maysa—”are going to learn to use the potty.”
“Don’t like the potty,” said Maysa, running away.
“Are you sure you want another baby?” asked Sami. “Because our lives are pretty crazy with these two.”
Inaya vomited all her milk on me again.
“Ugh, why does she always do that?” I asked, sighing, and gave the baby to Sami. I went upstairs to change. The phone rang. It was Mario. He was mad. As usual.
“Now what’s wrong, Mario?” I asked as I peeled off another blouse. My clothes hamper reeked of spoiled milk.
“You moved and did not leave me a forwarding number.”
“Oh yeah, sorry about that,” I said, feeling sheepish. “My brother gave you the number again?”
“Yes, we’re keeping his number in our database. He seems to be the stable one in your family.”
“That’s wise.”
“You have some reporters who want to talk to you,” he said. “Promise me you’ll be at this number for the next few days?”
“I promise.” I pulled on a clean T-shirt. I could swear that the stink of rotting milk had sunk into my skin. “Mario, can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think I have what it takes to become a filmmaker?” I asked, feeling a little vulnerable.
“You do need something that you don’t presently have. So I’m going to mail you a gift,” said Mario.
“What is it?”
“Some perfume.”
Coming Full Circle on Circumcision
I held my newborn son for the first time. He was rounder and calmer than his sisters but had the same intoxicating odour of a newborn. He was a healthy ten pounds, which had been a more challenging delivery than the girls. As I admired him, I noticed something amiss.
“Sami, look at his penis. It’s deformed—like a worm. Did you know your family had this genetic defect, because none of the men in my family have it.”
My husband looked at me with incredulity for a moment. “That is what an uncircumcised penis looks like,” he said drily.
“Really?” I knew Muslim men were circumcised, but I had never seen an uncircumcised penis, since all the penises in my life were Muslim. “I just gave birth to my very first uncircumcised penis,” I said.
Maysa and Inaya came into the hospital room t
o see their new brother. Inaya was instantly jealous, so I gave the baby to Sami while I held her. Maysa watched Sami change Rashad’s diaper. “His belly button is in the wrong place,” said Maysa, in awe of his oddly placed anatomy.
My mother, who had come to Calgary for the last month of my pregnancy, however, was not in awe.
“Book the circumcision right away,” she said.
“But we don’t circumcise girls,” I tried to argue.
“Girls is wrong, boys is right.”
“Can we at least talk about it?”
“You can talk about it all you want,” said my mother. “But he’s getting circumcised.”
I was worried. I’d heard horror stories.
“Maha told me that her friend’s great-uncle’s third cousin once removed had his penis charred like a hot dog roasted too long on a campfire,” I told Sami, trying to get him on board with at least rethinking the whole process. A newborn’s penis is tiny and delicate, and there’s not a lot of room for mistakes.
But Sami had been circumcised and he wasn’t worried.
“The process is pretty simple,” he said. “It’s very rare for things to go wrong.”
The hospital recommended Dr. Weiner, who was one of the best circumcision men in the city. As soon as we entered the office, his secretary pounced.
“The doctor’s name is pronounced ‘Wayner,’ not ‘Weener,’” she told me helpfully. Wayner, wayner, wayner. I repeated the name several times in my head so I wouldn’t screw it up. But all I could think of was burnt-up wieners.
She took us into the doctor’s office, where I was instructed to remove Rashad’s diaper and give him liquid Tylenol. I took a mental picture of the worm penis, which I was getting very attached to.
A kind-looking doctor entered the room.
“Hello, my name is Dr. Weiner,” he said.
“Have you ever lost a penis?” I asked pensively.
“I’m sorry about my wife,” said Sami.
“No worries. I get this a lot. No, I’ve never lost a penis on my watch, and he won’t feel any pain,” he answered patiently, clearly used to hysterical mothers worried about their infant sons’ tiny bits.
Dr. Weiner pulled out a small metal device that looked like a guillotine for a mouse.
“Are you sure that device won’t accidently take off the tip of his penis, because it doesn’t look very safe to me. How about we try it out on you first?”
Sami and the doctor looked at me, and then each other.
“Did I apologize for her before?” asked Sami.
“I’m used to it,” said Dr. Weiner. “But she’s obviously very nervous, so maybe she should wait outside.”
“I can hear the both of you and I’m staying,” I said. As Dr. Weiner got the device ready to circumcise my son, I closed my eyes. “Ouch!” I yelled in sympathy.
“I haven’t started yet,” said the doctor.
One more baby boy and one more circumcision later, Sami and I were watching Bones, but I was distracted. I had read an article in the newspaper and didn’t quite know how to bring it up. I was trying to focus on the maggots eating the dead body, but my mind kept wandering back to delicately framing the question. Finally I blurted, “Do you feel like you were mutilated?”
“What?” asked a flabbergasted Sami, pausing the show.
“Your penis. Do you feel like you were sexually mutilated? I read this article about a man who felt that since his foreskin was removed as a baby he never had a chance to consent. He felt mutilated and says his sex life is crap.”
Sami sighed. “My sex life is great.”
“Yeah, mine’s okay too.”
Sami looked at me.
“I mean it’s great.”
“Good.” Sami turned the TV back on.
“If you want, you could wear weights on your penis and re-stretch the foreskin. Things wouldn’t be exactly the same as before, but …”
Sami pressed the pause button again. “I don’t feel mutilated. I never think about it, and I’d really like to stop talking about it.” He turned the show back on.
“But what if our boys think they’ve been mutilated? What are we going to tell them?”
“It’s never going to occur to them unless you keep talking about it.”
I mulled this over for a while, wondering where you would attach penis weights exactly. Did they come with miniature clamps? Wouldn’t that pinch?
“Sami, can I take a quick look at your penis to see if the weights would even be possible? I don’t think there’s enough skin left to attach them.”
“Do not attach anything to my penis. And if you keep talking, I’m turning this off and we’re watching The Colbert Report.”
“So you’re not taking off your pants?”
“NO!”
I could see why Muslim men have a reputation for being mean.
We went back to watching Bones, where I was sure that Seeley, being a practising Catholic, would approve of circumcision. Neither male nor female circumcision is mentioned in the Qur’an. There are stories that the male prophets of God were circumcised and that’s where the tradition came from. But they also lived in a desert area without a lot of water, so I imagined it was also a convenience thing. Sami could tell I wasn’t focusing on the show. He sighed and paused it again.
“Trust me, if men felt circumcision was affecting their sexuality in a negative way, we would not allow anyone to touch our penises. As a gender, we may repress women, but we take care of our own.”
I decided he was right and let go of the topic. As we ate lasagna the next night, Zayn was especially excited.
“Guess what I found out today?”
“You’re a doofus?” suggested Inaya. But he was too elated to let his older sister get to him.
“My friends said they have to pull back this piece of skin before they pee, and I told them I didn’t have anything to pull back.”
The foreskin had come home to roost. I cleared my throat and gave Sami a look. I was going to handle this.
“You used to look like a worm,” I told the boys. “Your penises, I mean.”
“And what happened?” they asked.
“We circumcised you,” I said, with worry.
“So we weren’t born like this?” asked Rashad.
“Like mother, like son,” said Sami.
“But you’re okay with that, right?” I said.
“Oh please, who cares if he’s not okay with it,” said Inaya, rolling her eyes. “If you didn’t remove it, their penises would get all black from infections and fall off.”
“That can happen?” said Zayn.
“No, it can’t,” said Sami. “If you had a foreskin, you’d have to make sure it was always clean.”
“Yeah, right,” said Inaya. “They don’t even wash their faces or brush their teeth. Like they’re gonna do that.”
“What do you mean they don’t brush their teeth?” I asked in alarm. “When was the last time you brushed your teeth?” I asked Zayn.
“I did it last week,” he replied proudly.
That evening while watching Heroes, I had an epiphany.
“If we hadn’t circumcised the boys, what would that have meant?”
“We would have had to teach them to pull down their foreskins and clean underneath,” said Sami, with his finger on the pause button.
“Couldn’t do it,” I said. “It’s bad enough finding their lunches after a whole summer of decay. Cleaning out their foreskins too—forget it.”
“What if they grow up and feel like they’ve been mutilated?”
“I’ll buy them miniature weights to regrow their foreskins.”
“So you’ve come full circle on your opposition to circumcising the boys?” said Sami, finger still hovering over the pause button.
“Totally over it. I’m never going to talk about it again.”
“Good,” said Sami.
That was when the two boys came downstairs looking triumphant.
“Oka
y, we feel that we are owed reparations for things done to us without our consent,” said Zayn.
“Do you know what ‘reparations’ even means?” asked Sami.
“We googled it,” said Rashad, pulling out a piece of paper. “It means redress for gross and systematic violations of human law.”
“And we feel removing our foreskins was totally gross, so we want reparations in the form of money,” said Zayn.
“Really, you want to be compensated for the removal of your foreskins,” said Sami.
“No, we just want money,” said Rashad.
“Or the equivalent in candy,” added Zayn.
“Okay, how about this. According to your mother, foreskins can be regrown,” said Sami.
“Really?” said the boys in unison.
“Yep, I’m going to attach binder clips to your penises and hang some Wii remote controllers for weights, and in a couple of months you’ll have new foreskins again.”
“That sounds like it might hurt,” said Zayn.
“No pain, no gain.”
The boys looked at each other.
“Can we just get five dollars each?” asked Rashad.
“What are you going to buy?” I asked as Sami handed each boy a bill.
“Gummy worms,” said Zayn.
It worked for me.
Water Jug Blues
You know how Catholics have guilt for sin? Muslims have guilt for unwashed private parts. It’s almost pathological, really. We buff our twigs and berries and muffins as if they were the hood ornaments of an expensive European car. It gives new meaning to the phrase “polishing the family jewels.”
As a result, every Muslim household worth its salt and clean giblets has some sort of pouring vessel beside the toilet. And this vessel needs to be filled at a sink, preferably within seated reaching distance. This crucial feature is what brought me to haul Zayn, my eight-month-old baby, up the stairs of my partially built house to talk to a man we’ll call Doug, the supervising contractor, who was conveniently standing in my unfinished washroom. He sighed as he looked at me.
“I’m back,” I said cheerfully.
“Yeah,” said Doug unenthusiastically. “What a surprise.”
Doug had the unenviable job of building new houses for our family and for Sami’s mom and dad side by side on a lot we’d bought in the south end of Regina. I had been harassing Doug with various requests over the last few weeks. He wanted to finish this house and never see me again. I was a pain in his dubiously washed ass.
