by Zarqa Nawaz
That was a terrible thing to ask of someone, I thought.
“Fine,” I said, “but if I get possessed, you’ll be sorry.”
“How would we know?” asked Zayn.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll probably say crazy things and do crazy things, and you won’t really be able to understand me. I won’t be that rational.”
Zayn and Sami looked at each other.
“I think we’d all manage,” said Sami, rolling over. His snoring started again.
As I lay there watching the two of them sleep, I realized that I’d have to get my fears under control. Or else my family might stage an intervention. Or worse, let me get possessed, hoping for an improvement. But right now, I needed to pee.
I looked at the washroom. It was dark. I looked at the clock. It was only three hours until dawn. I could wait.
Eid Dinner
“What day is Eid this year?” I asked Sami.
“Google it,” he replied.
“Christians are lucky,” I said resentfully. “They know when Christmas is every year.” Even Scientologists know when to turn off the E-meter and take a break, but Muslims? It’s complicated. We still follow the lunar calendar, instead of the regular Gregorian calendar, to calculate the dates for our celebrations. And that means Eid al-Fitr, the celebration at the end of Ramadan, our month of fasting, moves up by about eleven days every year. The Jews also follow the lunar calendar but make adjustments by adding a leap month every few years to keep the dates roughly the same. But for Muslims, it takes thirty-odd years for a holiday to fall on the same date again in the regular calendar. This means that Muslims will never pull it together. Or this Muslim won’t. I have trouble remembering my kids’ birthdays, and those dates don’t wander nearly as much.
“Uh oh, I booked a laser hair removal session for that day,” I told Sami when I looked up the date.
“Mama’s not coming with us for Eid prayers?” asked Zayn fretfully.
“She’s cancelling her appointment,” Sami told him. “Didn’t you check the date for Eid before you booked that?”
“Eid is like finding a needle in a moving haystack,” I said. “Who checks the date for Eid before they book things?”
“I do,” he said. “I schedule three days off for both Eids to cover the range of possibilities three years in advance so I don’t have any conflicts.” Did I mention that there’s a second Eid—Eid al-Adha—with the same wandering date problem? Eid al-Adha celebrates the almost-sacrifice of Abraham’s son, who was saved when God decreed a ram (or goat, depending on who you talk to) be sacrificed instead. We like to keep things interesting.
“Wow, Abbu really cares about us,” said Zayn.
And Abbu’s a bit of a freak, I thought, but I was more annoyed at the insinuation that I was a substandard mother.
“Family always comes first,” said Sami. And then the words came out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“This year, I’ll cook the big Eid dinner for everyone,” I told Zayn. “We’ll invite all of your aunts and uncles and cousins to our house.”
Sami put down the newspaper. He looked worried. I felt worried. I could barely cook dinner for our family, and this was a feast for over thirty people. Why do I open my mouth? But then, suddenly, I was calm. Sami’s mother loved cooking the big Eid dinner. And she was good at it. She’d refuse my offer and I could save face while still looking like a good mother. It was perfect.
“Where’s this coming from?” Sami asked.
“From my heart, where else would it come from?”
“That’s awesome! Can I help?” asked Zayn.
“Sure, you can be my sous chef,” I replied.
“But I get to chop vegetables with a real knife?” he asked.
“Wait, my mother cooks that dinner,” said Sami. “It’s tradition. Maybe you could put up the streamers and balloons or something?”
“Well, it’s time to change the tradition. Your mother’s getting older, and somebody around here has to look out for her. After all, family comes first.” I was totally winning this. Best mother ever.
“When it comes to dinner, food comes first. And my mother actually knows how to cook.”
“I can cook,” I said.
Sami blinked. There was a look of mild panic on his face. “Eid is special. And my mom makes amazing food that day.”
“I can make amazing food too.”
Sami and Maysa looked at each other. I’d gone too far. I needed to retreat to defend my position or else they’d never believe me.
“I can learn to cook amazing food. Not knowing how to be a brilliant cook isn’t a permanent thing like not having an eye or something,” I said as I put on my shoes. “I did master the Rice Krispies square.”
“Where are you going?” asked Sami, looking concerned.
“To talk about my menu with your mother.” I replied and walked next door.
My mother-in-law listened carefully to my “plan.” I laid it all out, and then awaited her refusal. I’d offer to decorate. I had a great idea for a Kaaba made out of Rice Krispies squares as a centrepiece.
She sat down, smoothed her grey hair and regarded me for a few moments. She was preparing to let me down easy.
“I am getting tired,” she said. “It would be nice to have someone else take over.”
“Oh, of course, I wouldn’t want to hurt—wait, what?” I stuttered.
“You should cook what you know. This is not the time to experiment,” she said solemnly. I could barely hear her over the buzzing of panic in my ears. This was terrible. I had a sudden vision of forty people picking dubiously at their burnt food, whispering, “She ruined Eid,” to each other while eyeing me distastefully, and then making a pact to meet at Burger King. I needed to focus.
“Zarqa, you’re very good at making curry. I think that for your first Eid dinner you should stick to that.” She was right. If everything I made was a variation of curry, maybe I could do this. Maybe I could create a tradition of my own. Both my mother and my mother-in-law were beloved for their elaborate feasts. Why couldn’t I be beloved in the same way?
While she talked to me about logistics and strategies, I became distracted by a cooking show on TV behind her. Two women analyzed how to make a healthy version of butter chicken, the famous Indian dish. It was technically a curry but different enough to become my new famous signature dish. Only I would reverseengineer it and add all the fat back in so it would taste amazing. I came home totally confident.
“What did my mother say?” asked Sami. I could tell he was nervous.
“That she trusted me completely and the entire dinner is totally in my hands.”
“Was she home?” he replied. “Didn’t she have her wisdom teeth removed this morning?”
The phone rang. It was my mother-in-law. I gave Sami a dirty look.
“Make sure you practise your butter chicken before Eid,” she said. “Walmart is the only store that sells boneless, skinless halal chicken thighs. Your recipe won’t work with any other cut of meat. Remember, Ramadan ends in two weeks.”
“That was your mom. Just thanking me for taking over,” I told Sami.
“The novocaine might still be in her system. Where are you going?”
“Walmart. I have to buy my groceries.”
I threw the three forbidden ingredients the low-fat ladies said to omit from the recipe into my grocery cart: cashew butter, regular butter and whipping cream. I bought a package of boneless, skinless chicken thighs from the large section of halal meat to make my first sample of butter chicken. Back at home, I marinated the chicken overnight, fired up the barbecue the next day, grilled it, chopped it into bite-size pieces and then cooked it in its curry fat bath. As Zayn took the first bite, I felt as if I were a contestant on Chopped.
“It’s yummy,” he said as he chewed. I looked triumphantly at Sami.
“I didn’t even taste it,” I told him, “because I cooked it during the day while I was fasting. And it still tastes amazing.”
Zayn put his fork down after three bites.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, a little worried. “Why aren’t you finishing it?”
“I’m too full.” As the fat congealed on his plate, I realized what had happened. The curry was too rich.
“It’s not too late to decorate the house,” Sami said. “There’s no shame in it.”
“Yes there is,” replied Maysa. “Remember the year she hung dented milk jugs from the ceiling?”
“Are you talking about the bloated sea creatures?” said Sami.
“They were whales!” I explained.
“Because that makes much more sense,” replied Maysa.
In defence of the whales, the girls were young and I felt we had to compete with Christmas, the granddaddy of all religious holidays. But Muslims don’t have holiday icons like Santa Claus or Frosty the Snowman, because we have a hysterical fear of worshipping things other than God, and our holidays centre around themes like starvation and near–child sacrifice. Abraham’s almost-sacrifice of his son is much harder to celebrate with papier mâché than you might think, so I improvised. I took two-litre plastic milk jugs and transformed them into giant blowfish, or whales, depending on the angle and time of day, and suspended them from the ceiling. I thought it was inventive.
“What have whales got to do with Eid?” asked Maysa.
“The milk jugs have a natural whale-like shape, so I just went with it,” I replied.
“Moon and stars would have been more appropriate than giant mammals hanging in our living room,” said Sami. “At least there are two suras in the Qur’an named after the stars and the moon.”
For some reason, we don’t fear worshipping the cosmos, so celestial themes are all the rage in Muslim decorative paraphernalia. The moon comes from the aforementioned calculation of dates, and the stars were used at one time to aid in navigation. It’s not very mystical, but it’s what we’ve got to work with. I just hadn’t thought of them in time. But I felt a bit defensive in light of my inedible curry.
“So what? There are suras named Cow and Fig,” I replied. “Should I make a papier mâché of a cow jumping over a Fig Newton?”
“See, you don’t take the holidays seriously,” replied Sami.
“Or your religion,” said Maysa.
“Yeah, well, I take my chicken seriously. I’ll add less fat next time around and it should be fine.”
The next day, I stocked up with fresh chicken to try again. I asked Sami to clean the barbecue—I’d gummed up the grill with chicken pieces.
“Zarqa!!” I went outside and saw that the barbecue had been left on all night.
“How did that happen?” I asked.
“You didn’t turn it off,” he replied. “On the plus side, it’s much easier to clean now.” It was true. The chunks of chicken stuck to the grill were now grey ash.
“So the natural gas was on all night. There must be an automatic mechanism to stop it,” I said anxiously.
“The house could have blown up. That would have stopped it.”
“How come the grills don’t sit evenly like before?” I asked, ignoring his sarcasm.
The outside of the barbecue now bowed out slightly and the grills were on a precarious angle.
“I guess the extreme heat caused the barbecue to bend,” said Sami as he stared at his luxury, top-of-the-line natural-gas barbecue with the sadness of a man who had just lost his dog. “It’s not too late to hire a caterer.”
“You don’t think I can do this?”
“A woman’s place is not in the kitchen, it’s in the boardroom.”
“Are you saying I’m sexist for wanting to cook?”
“I’m saying your skills lie elsewhere,” said Sami. He was right. But a part of my psyche was pulling me in another direction. All my life I had been obsessed with my career, but not today. Maybe it was all my female ancestors who had grilled, roasted, fried and baked various animals into tasty dinners for their families that were calling out to me. My kids had never been as excited about my professional accomplishments as they were now that I was planning a meal. Zayn had asked to invite his friends and teachers from school. And rallied by his enthusiasm I’d asked my sister-in-law Samira to post the open house on her Facebook page. Nearly a hundred people had RSVP’d. The train had left the station. So the chicken was inedible and the barbecue was barely functioning. That didn’t mean anything. Sami could tell I was determined and wisely stopped talking to me.
As the final days of Ramadan slipped by, my mother-in-law got really worried.
“Did you go to Walmart to buy the rest of the meat? You’ll need at least thirty packages for the number of people you’ve invited.”
Thirty packages? I did some mental math—she was right. I should have been stockpiling for weeks. What if I had to debone two hundred chicken thighs in one night? I’d never deboned a single chicken thigh before. But then I thought of the large halal meat section at Walmart and relaxed. Everything would be fine.
“Just five days before Eid,” said Sami, trying not to make eye contact.
“I know,” I said breezily as I put my coat on and headed to Walmart, picturing how remorseful Sami would be for doubting me yet again.
I returned the greeter’s hello with incredible enthusiasm and grabbed myself a cart. There was no way I could carry thirty packages at once. On my way to the coolers I picked up some packages of elegant napkins and paper plates. I had this under control. I parked my cart.
And stared down at the completely empty halal meat section. A wave of panic rushed over me. Just the other day, it had been full. Why hadn’t I stocked up then? In a panic, I searched for help. I saw a man with a button that said Meat Manager. His name tag said Brian.
“Excuse me, Brian? Hi. There was a lot of meat in that section yesterday,” I pointed to the empty shelf. “What happened to it?”
Brian regarded me for a few moments. “I think people bought it,” he replied finally.
“But Eid is in, like, five days.” I could feel my heart attempting to leave my chest.
“What’s Eid?” asked Brian.
“It’s a celebration at the end of Ramadan, where Muslims don’t eat or drink anything for thirty days.”
“Shouldn’t you be dead?” asked Brian.
“Of course we eat food, but only after sunset,” I answered as patiently as I could. I think I was screaming. “But we celebrate the end of the month by eating, a lot. In fact, we eat so much food that day it probably makes up for the whole month.”
“That’s ironic,” said Brian. “Kind of defeats the purpose of fasting.” Why did I have to get the smart-assed meat manager?
“I really, really need the meat. I have a lot of cooking to do.” I lowered my voice and leaned in towards him conspiratorially. “And I haven’t even started.” The effect on him was less dramatic than I’d hoped.
“Well, that wasn’t very smart. You should really plan ahead next time. But I’ll check in the back.” He came back a few moments later.
“Nope, all out.”
“But Eid is our biggest holiday. You’re the only place that sells this type of meat!” I said.
“Really? I’ll make sure we’re properly supplied next time,” said Brian. “When is Eid next year?”
I couldn’t go into the whole lunar calendar thing with him.
“I’ll google it and get back to you,” I said.
I dialled my mother-in-law from the parking lot in a panic. I had ruined Eid.
She didn’t badger me. She was practical. I had over a hundred people coming to my house in just a few days and I had no meat. She sent me to a halal meat shop that had just opened. She’d heard a rumour that they carried boneless, skinless chicken thighs. And yes, that’s what counts as a rumour in our community.
I started the car with a heavy heart. I usually avoid halal meat stores as much as possible. They carry—and prominently display—tongues, feet and brains, pieces of meat that scare me. If I were trying to make a Frankenst
ein version of a cow, a halal meat store would be my one-stop shopping destination.
The butcher’s door chimed as I opened it. Nearly every halal meat store resembles an eccentric pawnshop; there’s meat, of course, but there are also other unusual items that regular butcher shops don’t carry, like clothes, bangles, prayer mats and tea sets. This one was no exception. I could have redecorated my living room with the trinkets on offer. The place was stuffed to the gills, and everyone wanted something that wasn’t meat. I desperately needed to talk to the owner, but he was behind the cash register talking with a man who had spotted a gilded framed photograph of the Kaaba, which was conveniently on sale.
“That’s a nice picture,” said the man.
“It’s an alarm clock,” said the owner. The man leaned in with interest. Let me explain: Muslims pray five times a day. In a Muslim country, there is someone giving the azan, the melodic call to prayer, from the top of a mosque five times a day. If you don’t want to hear the morning azan, which can be very early, too bad. But Muslims who live in a non-Muslim country have special alarm clocks that play the azan in a tinny, pre-recorded voice to announce the beginning of each prayer. And the alarm clocks are disguised as pictures of the Kaaba and the surrounding structures because Muslims have that horrible fear of accidently worshipping something with a soul. Plus we have bad taste—Muslim decorative paraphernalia is always some sort of calligraphy on black velvet, kind of like all the artwork involving Elvis. I do not have an alarm clock in my house because I value silence. I just pray when it’s time to pray. When I visit my parents, I force them to turn off their alarm clock because I’m worried I’ll have a heart attack when it goes off in the middle of the night.
“How does it work?” asked the man in front of me. Oh, no, please God save me, I thought as the owner took it down from the shelf.
The man and the owner spent the next twenty minutes wrestling with the clock’s byzantine buttons. Each clock has to be programmed, since the times for the five prayers change with the location of the sun, as well as with the latitude and longitude of the owner. I tried hard to be patient, but I was starting to get a headache from the lurching sounds of the azan as dials turned this way and that. Fasting is supposed to teach you patience, but it wasn’t really working. So to calm myself down I stared at the sparkly shalwar kameez on display. A hot-pink tunic and pant set caught my eye. Now that I thought about it, I had nothing to wear on Eid. Eventually the prayer clock proved it could provide service in any hemisphere, the man left and my turn came up.
