OVERHEARD (YSWC Day 2)

 

 

It’s different here she asserts

it’s cold in here he insists

 

have you eaten? (she)

I had to turn the heat on in the house today (he)

 

I’m going out of town this week (he)

See, I—(she)

 

I’m visiting my son in Cincinatti (h)

Yes, you said so this morning (s)

 

I like travelling (h)

I do too. (s) (I do too.)

 

Where is the-- (mumble)

You could look in the-- (something)

 

Don’t worry about it.

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YSWC (Day One)

exciting

lightning

 

like flash

like forward

 

like brilliance

and burn.

 

torque

makes of torture

talk

like revolutions. 

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Zizek describes the Israeli occupation as Kafkaesque

He misspells Saree Makdisi. But nevermind that, he says this: 

On Israel’s end, what goes on is the incessant slow work of taking the land from the Palestinians in the West Bank: the gradual strangling of the Palestinian economy, the parcelling of their land, the building of new settlements, the pressure on farmers to make them abandon their land—all supported by a Kafkaesque network of legal regulations.

I'm still puzzling out this sign-off statement which has the ambitious glaze of greatness about it: 

And, to avoid any kind of misunderstanding, taking all this into account in no way implies an “understanding” for inexcusable terrorist acts. On the contrary, it provides the only ground from which one can condemn the terrorist attacks without hypocrisy.

The "only" ground? Is he sure? There appears to be plenty of other "grounds" for condemnation.

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Explaining 9/11 to a Muslim Child

Over at NYT's Motherlode parenting blog, regular Lisa Belkin turns the climacteric responsibility of explaining 9/11 to a Muslim child over to a Muslim mother bringing up her child as a Muslim. 

Belkin's well-intentioned side-step aside, the article itself is quite unsatisfactory. Moina Noor, the guest blogger, merely gives her child and her readers an unsatisfactory recitation, "bad guys attack, buildings collapse. Don’t worry, I assured him, we’ll get the bad guys so they won’t do it again." 

The child is eight, that he is only now curious about this phrase so rife in the public imagination, is indicative of the protective bubble that Noor considers necessary to Muslim parenting. That she describes it in such cartoonish terms gives him no respect. Or protection; it does not prepare the child for either playground taunts or religious school misinformation.

The hermeneutic guilt, media-assigned and Muslim-internalized and the resultant contrition, extraneous and so unnecessary,  is writ so large in the Muslim consciousness, and in Noor's, that she fails. She is so busy explaining her Muslim upbringing ("devout but weren’t necessarily interested in teaching their neighbors about Islam."), Defensively interpreting her Muslim faith, ("We are like you. Islam is peaceful."), Vigilantly establishing her motherhood ("how do I, as a parent, explain the slaughter of innocent people in the name of a religion that I am trying to pass on to my boy?"), that there is little time or space left to formulate any real argument. Yes, the article lacks value, but it is because American society has decided not to value its Muslim citizens to such a dimension that this woman is unable to speak directly to her projected readers or honestly with her child.

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I think he's ready for his man-card

At begging us to let him change the baby’s diaper:

C’mon guys, I can do it,  I want to be a man!!

 

On hearing why I didn’t want to go to the pool:

Really? You have your period? But you’re not at all grumpy or anything.

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Show us yer tits

Nope this is not about posting an FB profile picture of me that Li’l A took in which, what I took to be a long strand of hair was actually considerable cleavage. Nope.

 

It’s Baby A’s language. She needs someone better than her current giggly family to teach her that it’s just not okay to yell “TIT!”

 

Although to be fair, “tit” functions as a sort of suffix in her vocabulary right now.

Blantit = blanket (you can see how anyone could make this mistake.)

Naptit = napkin (it’s a bit of a listening comprehension fail here.)

Motit = monkey (and yes, it is pronounced “more tits.”)

Waltit = Walter, the protagonist of this book (how I knew she had a problem.)

 

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In which the family’s ethnic affiliations are laid bare

A few weeks ago, just as we were getting used to the summery warmth, just as we were getting used to waking in the mornings knowing that we wouldn’t need our winter jackets, the days where we lay newly awakened with half smiles, exulting that perhaps we could pack winter jackets away, we were visited. By ants. Big, jet-black ones—the kind we used to call “bully ants” in the home country.

And while I’m prone to getting a bit mommy tiger when they get too close to chubby (yet such delicate) baby extremities, I nevertheless wanted to be somewhat Mother Earth about finding a non-chemical way of warding them off. And after a week in which I did nothing, Big A showed up with ant traps. And then gave us a lecture on the proper usage of said traps.

“Do not kill any more ants,” he said. Hmm, I was thinking—may be these traps have shrill, high-frequency beeps to send the ants as far as possible from where we live with kids who wear as few clothes on as possible. No.

“You can’t kill the ants, because the way this works is that one ant is tempted by the bait and becomes covered in it. Then he has to go back to the ant colony so that the other ants can get poisoned too. That’s how the colony dies off.”

Li’l A and I are shocked:

This doesn’t feel wrong to you? It’s like giving them small-pox blankets.

Yeah, dad—it’s a genocide.

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