Home for the Holidays
There’s a story I heard growing up, about a woman who always turned in the sides of her roti before baking it on the stove. When her daughter asked her why she did it, she said it was the way her mother had done it. “Good question, though,” she said. “Let’s ask grandma why she did it.” So they went to grandma who said, “I don’t know, that’s how my mother did it.” Luckily, the great grandma was still alive, wizened and long out of the kitchen but available to answer the burning question. She said, “Oh, that’s because griddles were much smaller back in our time so you had to fold the roti in. Not sure why you do that anymore.”
I thought of this fable last week, while trying and failing to make good bhindi. My attempts at bhindi are so consistently bad that I built in an entire Thanksgiving scene into my novel, American Fever, about a young woman’s disastrous bhindi masala. My biggest issue is that the oil never separates the way it does back home. Generally, I have decided that I am a mediocre cook, and my emulsified curries are, to me, the biggest proof of this mediocrity. While eating the bhindi, my husband and I talked about what I did wrong; as a much better cook, he loves diagnosing exactly how I mess up with every dish I make, naively hopeful that the prognosis will help things along. He said I had not cooked down the onions enough, or then perhaps just not added enough oil. We talked about how the separation of the oil, and the general abundance of oil in Pakistani food, is likely a preservation technique from older times. Suddenly, I had a great grandma moment. Why was I, sitting in urban New Jersey in 2022, trying to copy a method that made sense in pre-refrigeration Punjab?
I write this the day after Thanksgiving, known in America as the notorious Black Friday, the day that many folks let themselves abandon the restraint they have so far exercised. It is the official start of Christmas season, when families buy and decorate their trees and Mariah Carey is officially let loose on airwaves the way Shaitan is let loose after Ramzan. I’m not going to lie. I love Christmas. Love everything about it. The cheesy songs. The ornaments. The smell of pine, of coffee on Christmas morning, of the wine-soaked French toast my husband’s grandfather makes for Christmas eve. Once, while we were setting up the tree with our firstborn, hot chocolate in hands, godamn Wham! playing in the background, I turned to my brother, who was visiting, and wistfully asked, “What is our equivalent to this?”
Now, I know that a big reason for the exceptional festivity of North American Christmas is the uncanny American ability to turn every occasion into themed consumerism. But my brother simply, exasperatedly said, “Why do we need to have an equivalent?”
“Because this is so fun,” I replied. “What is our version of this much fun?”
“Maybe we’re not that fun.”
Okay, so, fine. Maybe we’re not, and like, I’ve always been okay with not being fun. I’m game for Islam being the weird, edgy cousin in a perpetual goth phase. But the thing I’m slowly realizing, with a 2.5 year old currently sleeping with a toy Santa tucked in his hands, is that kids love fun. And the way you make them love cultural activities is mostly by providing them with a great time. And if you’re thinking, don’t bribe your child, try having one.
But also, the smartest ones of us know that culture is nothing but a way to solve conflict and subdue nature, and cultural difference simply the divergence in how various groups do that. So then, how can you reproduce culture in the absence of context? How can I make traditions I grew up with as fun for my children without the community and lexicon that scaffolded them? And what is the need?
The last one is a silly question. The need, obviously, is the selfish one at the heart of all parent-child relationships. Know me.
Any thought followed to its logical conclusion leads to an abyss. Maybe things will change. We are witnessing a rise in transnational Islam, similar to the pan-Islamism of yesteryears but more diffuse and defanged. You know what I’m talking about, you know the cornerstones. Palestine. Biden said Inshallah. I give up alcohol for Ramadan. The Muslim bro. I’m a spiritual Muslim. Islam as culture and not religion. Islam as a vibe. A patina, an accent like the Old Country parents had but like, cool. The 9/11 generation has come home to roost, trauma congealed into treacly pride, and they’re fiercely protective of Islam, despite its ugly manifestations back home. But no matter, because home is even more diffuse, a place of the mind, excavated of any materiality.
Recently, I’ve been nerding out on Ric Burns’s classic PBS documentary on New York, a masterclass in how to build a narrative that, if spun powerfully enough, can override not just the truth but even the listener’s desire for truth. “Of course,” I nod along. “Of course, New York is singular and a city like it has never existed anywhere else.” In the episode detailing Irish migration into the city, an interviewee says that the Irish came to New York with nothing but their songs and their church. Maybe that’s all that can travel to diaspora—song and church.
The Ironbound section of Newark, where I live, is Catholic country. Christmas appears in the form of Portuguese chestnuts sold by the pound at the grocery store, chocolates and marzipan in Spanish language packaging. The overlap with World Cup season means that the grocery store is lined with both Christmas decorations and flags of all teams represented in the neighborhood—Brazil, Portugal, Ecuador, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, and, in what seems like a case of checkbox inclusion, USA. In the aisles, men walk around in jeans stained with paint—construction workers. Other men take off ski masks as they parked their bikes in the parking lot—deliverymen. In this working class neighborhood, perhaps some will get to go home for Christmas on the planes that take off from the nearby airport. Others will celebrate it right here, in packed apartments that they share with roommates from la patria.
The first Christmas in Irish tenements must have been a lonely one. The first Eid in Cordoba, Eid along the Silk Routes, the first Eid in Java must have been full of longing for other places. And look at Java now. History is the push from periphery to center and back.
This was the first installment of Palavering, a newsletter (mostly) on literature, culture, and parenthood. Happy to have you here, and Merry Christmas.
Another amazing piece!! Enjoyed the hallmark of your writing-ease and flow inconnecting worlds, cultures, languages and experiences.
Amazing!