Birthdays

Hello,

I find people’s obsession with birthday celebrations slightly embarrassing, which likely has to do with my family’s utter disregard for birthday parties growing up. My father let us wish him a Happy Birthday on the wrong day for about 3 decades before off-handedly telling us that his ‘real’ birthday, as opposed to the one stated on his ID card, was a month later. When I called him, apologizing profusely for having forgotten to wish him the previous day, he said, “Don’t worry about it, beta, my birthday’s actually in February.”

After the call ended, I had to go sit in a corner for a while, dumbfounded, waiting for the world to recalibrate.

For the children, there were a few memorable celebrations, and those live on in film photographs of my two brothers and I blowing out the candles (it didn’t matter whose birthday it was, everyone blew the candle; sometimes, when a close relative like my grandfather was visiting, it would be extemporaneously decided that we should have a birthday party, no matter what month it was). Once, while visiting home for spring break during college, I pointed to my father that for my past two birthdays, I had happened to be in Pakistan. In the moment, it had felt like a matter of great, sentimental coincidence.

“For my past two birthdays, I’ve been here,” I said.

He thought about it for a second before replying, “For your past two birthdays, I’ve been here too.”

So now, when anyone over the age of 10 takes their birthday very seriously, staggering celebrations across multiple events / weekends, I can’t help blushing on their behalf, like I just caught them sucking their thumb to sleep. That said, it has come to my attention that this year, my birthday will fall during Ramadan. The last time this happened was when I was 2 years old, according to an online calendar converter. I was born in Ramadan, 13 days before Pakistan won its first, and last, ICC World Cup Trophy in cricket. The Islamic calendar, based on lunar cycles, is roughly 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar, and thus repeats itself every 33 years. This means that over three decades, one gets to experience Ramadan throughout the Gregorian year, with the vicissitudes and reliefs attendant to each season. When I began fasting as a kid, Ramadan would fall during November or December, and so those early memories are of cold wake ups before dawn, shivering as we sat on the dining table. The sky would be deep blue still, with the slightest intimation of white. The plates had been set at night before bedtime; it was decided that they would be placed with their faces down, I remember, after a house gecko was found napping cozily inside a soup plate. In the early 2010s, my mother was studying for a ph.D. at the University of Glasgow; in that decade, Ramadan fell in the summer months, and in high-latitude Glasgow, that meant interminably long days, the sky never fully committing to the veil of night. Back home in Pakistan, the days were shorter, but the fasts more brutal—one sat down to break the fast in the evening and merely chugged glass after glass of water.

Anyway, if you want to read more ruminations, I wrote a piece on Ramadan for Aleph Review a while back.

In other news, my second novel, A Splintering, now has a cover!

UK pre-orders for the book are now open; I’ve been told Blackwell’s offers free international shipping. A Splintering is the story of a young woman who trades rural poverty for the urban middle class, but finds out that her thirst for wealth and prosperity is unquenchable. The novel follows her as she explores the limits of all she will do in this pursuit. It is set between 1988 and 2007, and thus also traces the social and political upheavals of those two decades.

In January, I was deep inside edits for the book, and now finally have the time to read again. I’m tremendously enjoying How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair, a memoir of growing up in Montego Bay, Jamaica in a Rastafarian family. It’s a story of female striving in a place where the ghosts of colonial rule haunt everywhere; it’s sincere, and poetic, and a wonderful antidote to the unearned, empty ennui of many recently anointed metropolitan female characters in English language fiction.

If you’re in the New York area, I’m having a celebration for the paperback release of my debut novel, American Fever, on March 19th. It’s going to be a chill event, two short readings by me and my friend Aube Rey Lescure, author of the fantastic novel River East, River West, followed by a few hours of hanging out. There will be refreshments. If you’d like to come, here’s the free registration link, so we can keep track of attendees.

x,

Dure