Preordained?

When I was 11 years old, I prayed for my husband. I prayed hard for him, every single day, for weeks on end.

I wasn’t praying to GET a husband. Or to find one or to obtain one. I was praying for D____. My current husband.

He was not sick, I was not married. I did not pray for him like old women pray for people in books.

I just got on my knees daily and said, ‘Oh dear God, please please let me marry D____ when I grow up.‘

Just like that.

I have no idea why I did that. I knew him since I was 4 years old. He was just my friend’s older brother. He had this huge smile and these really white teeth, and the blackest hair you ever saw.

When I was eleven he ceased to be just someone I saw from time to time. I was so in awe of him that I could barely look at him. And so I totally ignored him, did not look at him, and just prayed every single day…

Dear God, please, please let me marry D____ when I grow up.

And then, just as suddenly as the crush overwhelmed me, it was gone. I grew up. Grew older. Grew taller. My prayers were peppered with other dreams, possibly equally as fleeting. I moved across the globe. I fell victim to dastardly plots. Miserable schemes. I obtained an education. I did regretful things. I totally forgot about him.

And then I married him. It was a sudden thing too. It felt pre-ordained. I always tell him it is that big smile of his. The minute he smiled at me like that, when we were both adults, my heart did a funny funny thing in my chest.

It was a courtship and a marriage. We were both so young and so…. small.

We have a photo book of every year of our marriage and in our first year, 7 years ago, we looked like children. Heck, we WERE children.

Green as green can be.

A few months into the marriage I was standing somewhere, and he was walking towards me, and he smiled that big smile of his, and suddenly, as though it were an echo through time, I heard my own little voice say, ‘Dear God, please please please let me marry D______ when I grow up.’

I was pretty shaken up to be honest. I had completely forgotten about that episode in my life. Some things are fated to be.

This year was a pretty tough year on our marriage. When I wrote my 7 Year Anniversary post in January, I had no idea what was about to implode. We are not a soppy pair. We are pretty regular and don’t really do public displays of affection. I think I might have put D____ on a pedestal a bit. Something which has certainly crumbled this year. When you forget each other, negative things are bound to creep into a marriage.

I think, in my hopeful and growing mindset, that I finally understand what those old couples who have been together for decades and decades mean when they say ‘love takes work, love means sometimes turning a blind eye, love is choosing each other despite the heartbreak and pain.’

Some things are preordained.

I don’t know what possessed me to pray relentlessly for my husband.

But I guess and hope I will be doing that until I die. Pray for him, that is. In the way old women pray for people. YOU know, like in books. Pray for their souls and whatnot.

Unless he does something truly truly awful and he knows what it is already as I have vividly described the scenarios to him.

Dear God, please please please let me marry D_______ when I grow up. And let this marriage work.

Do you pray? Do you believe things are preordained?

Wisdom (teeth and lemons)

One of my biggest pet peeves is when young people write ‘wisdom’.

It annoys me on so many levels.

Level 1: They are way too young to have accumulated such an insane amount of wisdom (see: ’25 things I have learned in 25 years on this planet). Level 2: Wisdom is more impactful in smaller doses. Level 3: It’s irritating and assumes people will want to hear what a green, relatively inexperienced young person has got to say about life. Level 4: If you overlook all the previous levels and actually delve into what they have to say, you will more often than not discover that they have listed the most mundane, common sense things ever.

So it might appear ironic that I am here today to list some things that I have learnt from other people.

I don’t pretend to think that my things are of any value to anybody but myself. But I like that I have learned them, and wonder at what others might think of them.

Are they mundane?

Are they common sense?

Do they mean anything to anybody?

Who knows.

Thing One: My mother taught me through words and actions that people will like you much more if you don’t take yourself too seriously. You see, growing up, my sister and I were lemons. Oh, such lemons. It shames me to remember it. If we were at a gathering, even if the party was full of people we knew, we would just stand there and wait for people to socialise with us. We never thought to join a group and attend the party properly. My mother, a social butterfly, would become so impatient with us. She would flit from group to group leaving laughter in her wake. We felt awkward and shy and socially inept. Complaining to my mother about my inability to make friends or be happy socially, she told me it was because I took myself too seriously. Let loose. Laugh at yourself a little.

I am still trying to learn how to do that.

Thing Two: My father taught me about faith. Real, sincere faith. This thing is perhaps an incredulous thing to believe, if ye are of little faith. Or not religious at all. I am religious. Not fanatically, but respectably so.

My dad has such strong, unwavering faith. He always says to me in Arabic, ‘you will see wonders’ (If you have faith), and I always see goosebump wonders happening to him. Once his car got stolen. Somebody broke into our home, stole all the keys and phones, and took the car from the garage. We reported it to the police, nothing. It was a Chevrolet Suburban, and our first big car since the seven of us used to cram into my dad’s ’89 caprice. We loved it. I was in tears. My father, however, was stoic. You will see, he told us, it will come back. I have strong faith. It’s in God’s hands. God has never let me down. Two days later, my father received a phone call from an old man who said, Your car is outside my house. It was the strangest story. The old man had noticed this strange new car outside his house for two days, and on the second day went out to investigate. He said he found the car keys under the car, and when he got inside it he found some of my father’s work papers with his work number on and gave that a call. The car had cigarette butt stains on it and the seats were a little torn, but was otherwise in perfect condition. This is not the only story I have about my father’s faith, there are many more, but this one has stuck in my head for 12 years. You could call it luck, you could call it coincidence, but I have never seen anybody as sure as my father that he would get his car back. And he did.

Thing Three: My sister in law taught me to wash the dinner dishes, clean the counter and broom the floor in 15 minutes. Look at the clock, she would say, porcelain arms slipping into rubber gloves, in 15 minutes, I shall have finished everything and will be sipping my tea. Then she would daintily, yet efficiently wash everything up, wipe the counter with a furious deftness that was fascinating to watch, and then neatly broom the floor and empty the dirt into the bin with a little flourish. Gloves off, neatly and quickly draped over the tap, feet sliding out of slippers, cup of tea in hand, little tidy dance, arms out, hands elegantly swaying. It all looked so neat and tidy and efficient and deft and, dare I say, exciting. A challenge. So that is what I do now. And seeing a tidy kitchen in the morning makes me more likely to have a productive day. Also my sister in law is a little sparrow and makes me laugh, so it’s nice to remember her as I deftly and neatly scrub away at my kitchen counter.

Image Credit: Elizabeth Floyd. Check out her beautiful website!

Yellow Girl

Back in the day, there was a reason for everything.

A well-thought-out reason.

A reason pondered over cups of tea and reams of warm conversation, preserved with ink and sailing thousands of miles to each correspondent.

Hostility ran wild, self-preservation ran amok.

There were sheep, and cows, and acres and acres of land. Empty land, up for… well, grabs, really.

People called themselves Frontiers, revolutionists, fighters for freedom, tea planters, imperialists, soldiers, White Man was superior to the darkies.

Everywhere.

From Africa to India to Australia to America.

White Man was superior to the Negro, never mind the latter outnumbered the former.

White Man was superior to the Red Indian, never mind they weren’t from India.

White Man was superior to the real Indian, who was awed by their white skin and cowed by their division to conquer.

White Man and his delicate White Woman were superior to everybody, so they built a separate toilet for the black woman who cleaned their shit.

There was religion, and the up-holding of one’s values. There was chastity, minor hand-holding before marriage, and many bibles. People were appropriate and went to church where they preached hypocritically, then went home where the Help had bathed their babies and were now preparing their dinners, heads down, skin not worthy of the same quality of life. Church. God loves everybody. Just not black people.

it’s true!

God says white people are better. It says so right here in the bible, Master Johnny. Right here. Them black slaves were born for it.

And that you may tie to.

There was primitivism and people were less intelligent than others, because they had darker skin.

And that, was a fact.

Oh, yes, a fact.

They couldn’t possibly be half as intelligent, Harry, because, look, they have spears and boomerangs! We must teach them the ways of civilisation. Why, they are mere savages.

The man taught the white children from Academia. He taught the half-castes how to run a farm, and he taught the darkies how to make saddles.

Oh, why? Why! Why even ask, the whites were far more intelligent, of course!!

Let’s built our homes here because we found this land. Right here, Laura, right here, my little half pint. Never mind those nasty Indians with their wide faces and black hair and harsh, glittery eyes.

Eyes of humanity and hope and fear and loss and fierce love.

We feel this way, we are human, they couldn’t possibly.

Oh certainly we shan’t have sugar, we are rationing, didn’t you know? Here’s an orange. Just for you.

Oranges grow in Jamaica and Florida.

The French and the Irish and the Danes and the Scots and the English and the Germans.

My grandad was Irish and my grandma was Scottish.

But I am American.

Yes this is my country but my ancestors came from Europe, and get those damn immigrants out of my country they are taking all our jobs.

In sunny Florida.

And oranges grow in Florida, where the white man rules.

oh why, why do the black communities have so much poverty?

why are they like this?!

Oh.

Shithole countries.

Oh.

Why?!

I don’t know, maybe because they were stripped bare. They froze for two hundred years to serve your pasty arses. Then they got rid of you but were ruined and stripped.. bare.

Diamond mines in India for little Sarah Crewe from England.

Diamond mines in India for little Aditi Kapoor. Diamond mines made of broken glass and corrugated pipes. 

Maybe I’ll marry a yellow girl.

Yes, marry her. Have some half-caste children. Let the Americans be scandalised by your brutishness. You brute man. Then a white girl comes along and you don’t have to divorce the yellow one, and she shan’t complain, because you are a white man, and you have the right to do with her as you please.

 

A Small Thought

I don’t have a favourite colour. I never have had one. I just tell people its blue, but when I picture blue in my mind it doesn’t please my guts.

Lately I have been saying it is metallic pink. Everything I own now is metallic pink. Even the shoes I am wearing. Deichmann, 19 quid.

I don’t particularly like metallic pink but it pleases my gut, so there must be some sort of spark there.

I think some children are embarrassed to talk about marriage and children. It’s a strange phenomenon. An eight year old boy I was teaching was trying to explain storytelling through the generations, and he said, ‘When I’m, well, when I have a child of some sort. Well, a small cousin of some sort, I will probably have a lot of stories to tell too.’

I chuckled at that. I was like that. I told my mum flat out that I would never get married. Ever. That it was a ridiculous notion and intolerable to me, at age eleven. Secretly I was crushing hard on my now-husband. He was fourteen and quite dashing. Did I tell anybody? Of course not. And I was quite cruel to him too. He must never be allowed to find out. I even prayed that when I was older, he would want to marry me. I actually got on my knees and prayed.

I said, ‘Oh dear God, please let me marry him when I am older.’ Every day for two months. I didn’t even say, ‘please let him be my boyfriend.’ I wanted something more solid than that, I suppose. Something in writing. 

Then I forgot, of course. Or it didn’t matter to me so much. My attentions were drawn elsewhere. Life. Exams. Stories to write and read. Exciting social events. Friends. Everything took over.

I even deviated a little and lead myself astray by mixing with some Bad Folk. Let us not tread those waters.

But at eleven, I prayed for him. So weird.

Seven years later, though, I married him. I guess prayers are answered. I married him after only four or five dates. That is weird. But I so wanted to. And I still want to. And I would do it all over again and get really excited to.

I have also never told anybody this. I fear I will appear a fool.

If I ever get to be old, I want to be old with my husband. I want to sit on a bench and stare as the world rumbles by. I believe it will be rumbling by then, not screeching as it is now. My hearing shan’t be as clear as it is now so that might contribute to the rumble.

Who knows.

All I know is that we are here on earth, and earth is fleeting. The people we meet and live with and accompany will leave us, will die, will be separated from us.  All I know is that we are still whole, with or without our loved ones, and that one can love wholly and completely without giving a piece of oneself away.

And that is what I am trying to do.