Thursday, July 20, 2006
little one, little wonder.
yesterday i drank four cans of diet coke, and i thought there couldn't be life beyond this. what a stupid notion, actually it isn't a notion, it's just some random absurdity. the kellogs diet says to eat a bowl of cereal twice a day and eat a third meal and drink beverages as you normally do. i think i took that too far.
my hands smell of plastic camera lenses again, and my clear filter has dust specks and small fingerprints on it, it needs to be cleaned. i want to name my camera 'diet coke' since i like the way it sounds so much.
one of the three bestfriends has been in the states for a while now. i met her on sunday for a few hours, it was like old times, but just a constraint of time to tell each other the fine details of what had been going on in the past two years. so we decided to talk about the here and now, we have dreams and hopes for the future, that will change - for better or for worse.
she is leaving today from logan airport (boston), i haven't been there in nine years. all i remember of it is white vinyl tiles (or something like it) colorful alcohol advertisements, sparkling duty-free shops and how the blackish grey concrete looked outside while i waited for uncle ather to come pick us up. clean and spotless windows, i thought america was the epitome of perfection. khair, it didn't take me long to change my mind. i'll miss her, and now after 8pm there is officially no one to call and talk too.
i easily forget how it was to be nine years old. i still treat the little one like the two year old she once was. the plan is to paint my room mint green, with one wall in stripes. so here we are, mother and daughter using this blue tape to make stripes across this wall, my room looks like a busy street in manhattan. too much for the brain to process. the little one came up to me today and lay down with me as i read kartography. she studied the pages with me and suddenly asked me questions that i never thought in my life she'd ask.
she wanted to know, why wasn't she as white as adil and i were, why weren't her eyes as green or blue. why wasn't her hair as light or as dark as ours. and most of all, why at one passing glance she didn't look like our sister. also other things about adil and me that she didn't understand (which are alot actually). where was this coming from, i had/have no idea. i didn't answer for the first five minutes. finally i told her what i thought was reasonable, or perhaps what i believed in but never knew of, that she had the best of the both of us. actually the best of all four of us, since she was the last one of our little family. all kids who are the youngest in the family have the best of everything when it comes to the gene pool. whether they make it or break it, they always are the best. it's just how the universe works i guess.
i don't know if my parents are raising her, or heck if even i am raising her. before coming here, i remember one evening naufal mamoo's friend came over and i had to make tea and take it upstairs to his room. i sat there and talked to him and uncle azfar about random things and how we thought in ten years, we'd still be sitting like this his room (wherever that might be) and i'd still be making chai and perhaps would have learned to bake as good as my mom. it's when naufal mamoo proudly told him that i was the one who raised fatimah, since she was born. it was the first time anyone had ever pointed out such a thing. all i know is that my parents are getting old, and i don't know anything else beyond that.
one thing is for sure, fatimah will have everything i have and much more, and i'll have nothing that she has. maybe because
i'm not suppossed to have anything that she has, i'm only to give her and my family what i have or should i say give back what i took from them. if this is what it means to be a big sister, to raise a child or to be the eldest of the family, then i don't think i'm the one for the job. not a person like me.
naufal mamoo once said to me after a fight we had that he had raised me, watched me grow into the person that i am now since i was a baby, and that he knew me better than i knew myself. if i'm raising fatimah, i guess it means i should know her. but i don't, i don't even know myself.
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