Eli and Alice

I know I can blog and write my novel at the same time . . . . and do all the other stuff, mine and my mother's. I have just got to distribute my time better. But since chaos always has reigned over order (except when it came to arranging my bookshelves and records), life smashes whatever goalposts are set.

But as Chumbawamba sings, I get knocked down, but I get up again. You're never gonna keep me down.

***

Eli and Alice is a work in progress. It began on a blog. I decided to terminate the blog, and put the novel on hold while working on another project. Then went back to it, and have been working on it with other interruptions

. 

I began listing various dates as deadlines. Now, it will be done (whatever that means) when it will be done (I won't say the ooparwaala's will be done). It is the baby not quite ready to exit the womb just yet. 

Khair without further ado, an excerpt:

Mera chopaan – Yasmeen

Elisheba was glad that she had opted out of teaching this summer. She had thought of writing another collection of stories but she had not been able to concentrate much since the assault. The bandages were finally removed and she joked about how she always had wanted to wear a turban.

At night, she still saw masked men in her dreams and the last thing she remembered from those ghastly visions was darkness. Alice offered to stay in her room at night but what could she do? How could she stop the fear that Elisheba could not shake every time she opened her eyes to black silhouettes? In those moments, she would remember the twenty-third Psalm. Her mother recited Khudavand mera chopaan hai during her moments of terror and all Elisheba could recall besides The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want was Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. She repeated those words until sleep returned.

As she ate half a pita with feta for breakfast, she thought it was strange that prayer had reentered her life after so many years; years where she knew it took a little more than good friends and good luck to get her through the troubles that had gripped her throughout her adult life. Even an excellent friend like Alice could not keep her from the depression that began in early childhood and resurfaced several times, some worse than others.

There were moments when she was pushed to the brink, when she felt this force like a magnet, or the bottom of a vacuum cleaner, pull her in the middle of the street with a semi headed straight for her, or towards a window on the seventh floor. When that happened, when she really thought she would act on her suicidal tendencies, there was another force that kept her from doing that. Different names could be given this, God, conscience, Alice, her mother. Elisheba decided one day that she did not want to die before her mother. Not by her own doing, at least. How many times had she heard anguished mothers say, “the hardest thing in the world is to lose a child.”? This was something she did not want to put her mother through. These self-destructive moments were her Goliath to fight (perhaps Voldemort was a better moniker).

She came across people at college who told her that faith would save her in her difficult times. Elisheba wanted to believe that, but she did not want it thrust upon her. She did not want the born-agains to tell her how fucked up her life was. As if their triumphalist, judgmental attitude was any better. She was not a person completely devoid of faith. She simply was not impressed with what certain people said and did in the name of God, and deen which they superimposed upon country.

Her thoughts went back to prayer. As a teenager, she sometimes negotiated bargains with God. If the Omnipotent kept her mother from being hurt, she would go to church. She would pray more than once a day and before all meals. She would be good. How utterly preposterous that seemed now, decades later. Elisheba had tried to be good though in order to spare her mother pain. Ultimately she would learn that it did not matter if she did everything her parents expected to or not. Whether she was good, or not, it had no effect on those who caused pain for they would continue to do so, irregardless.

She stared at the photo of Yasmeen that was the wallpaper on her laptop screen. Before Yasmeen was born, it was not just the possibility of spina bifida that frightened her. She wondered if she was truly parent material. What if she was more of an authoritarian than authoritative? And she certainly did not want to make up for parts of her own childhood by being permissive. Was reading book after book about parenthood really going to help once this flesh and bone image was before her? “It couldn't do any harm.” Alice told her. “Then you read them!” Elisheba pushed various texts towards her.

Yasmeen was born in the first month of the 21^st century. And within days of her birth, Nick, who was now married to Anna, and his parents were by her side, coaxing her into letting them make preparations for baptism. Elisheba adamantly refused. Alice jumped into this circus as well by confronting Nick, “Is this really what you wanted? What's next? Are you going to bring in the priest and lawyers as well?”

Her fury stung him. He never had seen her this angry with him. Not even after the break-up with Elisheba. “Yasmeen is my daughter too, Alice. I should have a say in how she is raised.”

“I get it.” Alice kept her gaze locked on him. “You couldn't mold Eli into what you wanted, so now you want to do this. You left Elisheba long before she ended your relationship because you could not accept how she felt, what she wanted, and vice-versa. So now you want to fight with her about this?”

“Alice, really, this is none of your business.” He spoke through gritted teeth. Alice looked to see if anyone was watching them, then quickly pushed Nick against a wall. “If you ever loved Elisheba at all, you will think about what it is you're doing.” She saw the pain in his eyes, released him, and walked away. She did not speak to him for a long while after that.

She did tell Elisheba about that exchange of words, and for a brief time, Elisheba wavered. Perhaps she should let him do what he wished, and let his parents and Anna be responsible for the spiritual upbringing (and the worldly one) of their child. On the other hand, Elisheba did not want Anna involved. Yasmeen was her daughter. She had just as much right to raise her in the way she saw fit.

Maybe she should have read a book that prepared her for this struggle. Even if she had, it could not have helped much in the emotional attachment that Elisheba still had where Nick was concerned.

Yasmeen was baptized in the Greek Orthodox church. The priest's wife, Presvytera Irini, would be her nouna, her godmother. Every Sunday, for the first five years of her life, she received communion, and spent the entire day with Nick's family, which now included Demetri, a year younger than her. Yasmeen and Demetri never achieved that bond that Nick hoped they would. As much love as Yasmeen wanted to shower upon someone she saw as her brother, Demetri rejected it. It was troubling to everyone, particularly Anna who feared that this would create a huge rift between father and son. No one, not his papou and yiayia, or his parents could convince him what a good person Yasmeen could be in his life.

Partly as a result of this tension, Yasmeen began to spend less time around her father and his family. She also was becoming aware of the differences between her mother's life and Alice's, and her father's. She did not like the things Anna said about Alice (“that lesbian cannot be a good influence on your daughter.”), or what she overheard her grandparents say about her mother. She had not heard the word lesbian before. It was never used at home.

One afternoon when the three of them were having lunch together, Yasmeen blurted out, “What's a lesbian?” She noticed that Alice almost spat out the water she had just sipped.

Elisheba was thoughtful for a few moments before she answered, “Meeni, a lesbian is a woman who loves other women. A woman who is with another woman not just as a friend but in the way your father is with Anna.”

“Anna said that Alice is a lesbian.” Elisheba and Alice exchanged looks. They could imagine what else Anna said about her. Alice cleared her throat.

“I am, jaanu.” She said quietly.

“Is it bad to be one, Alice?”
“Well I don't believe it is. But certain people do. Like Anna.” Elisheba gave her a warning nudge. They had agreed not to influence Yasmeen in any way with whatever bothered them about the Nikopoulos family.

The five year old Yasmeen's curiosity grew, “Why does Anna think it is bad?”

There were hesitations before answering these questions. They knew that they would come up, but Alice had wanted to tell Yasmeen herself. Damn that Anna or whoever it was!

Elisheba volunteered to tackle this one. “In the eyes of many people, from the beginning of when the holy books like the bible tell us the world was created, man was made, and woman was made to be with man. For a man to be with a man, or a woman to be with a woman is looked upon as a sin, something that is very wrong and hurtful not only to that person, but to the community in which we live.”

Yasmeen slowly drank in this information. Alice watched her before she continued, “And because of this idea that for a woman to be with a woman is hurtful, even dangerous, men and women either have had to hide the fact that they love men and women, or they have been open about it and punished for it.”

Yasmeen became panic-stricken. Visions of various punishments entered her head, “Mommy, are you a lesbian too?”

Elisheba laughed, “No, baby, I am not. But I don't think there's anything bad or evil about being one. Love, true love that exists between two people, be it a woman and a woman, or a woman and a man, can never be wrong or evil.”

They sat quietly for a while. Yasmeen ran her fork through the rice, scattering the grains all over her plate.

“I don't want to go to baba's house anymore.” Her face was lowered, almost touching the table. Elisheba and Alice both moved their chairs closer to her. They could hear the sniffling, see the giant teardrop that plopped on her food.

Alice put her arms around her, “Meeni, your baba gets to see so little of you as it is. This will hurt him. And your baba loves me. He has ever since I was a kid. So don't think badly of him, eh?”

“But Demetri is still so mean. And everyone else . . . .”

“Everyone else is going to think what they think. You cannot change that jaanu, not always.” Elisheba put a napkin to her daughter's nose. “All you can do when someone says something bad about Alice, or me, or anyone for that matter or something you do not like, is to point out more than one good thing about them. And then walk away. And let me tell you something, little one. Walking away is the hardest thing to do. But the earlier you learn how to do it, the better.”

Alice caressed her hair, “Do you think I am bad, Meeni?”

Yasmeen put her little fingers under her chin, “When you don't give me what I want, yes.”

“Uff, pagli!” She hugged her even tighter. Everyone laughed.

Elisheba stared at her daughter's photograph. The image of her eleven year old was the only thing she saw from the moment the masked men (were they all men?) assaulted her to the time she collapsed in the emergency room after having been semi-conscious in the siren roaring van. Her hand reached to touch the back of her head. It was not only the head for which she was taking painkillers, but also her legs. She tried to close the memory of having her legs kicked and pulled. Her lower back, one of the most sensitive parts of her body was spared but that mattered little considering the battering she received elsewhere.

Alice and Yasmeen had been with her in the hospital every day. So had her mother. Nirmala wanted to stay longer to take care of her but Elisheba insisted if anyone needed help and care, it was Nirmala. Javed was there at the beginning, for a couple of days, then returned later to collect their mother.

Brother and sister had not been very close since their childhood years. He would not voice it to anyone but Nirmala and Elisheba; he thought Alice shared responsibility in what happened to his sister. What if Yasmeen had been in the apartment? He tried to relate this in a manner that did not involve Elisheba putting up the wall she did during most of their conversations.

“It is not Alice's fault that there are people in the world who do not know how to deal with situations they do not like without coercion or violence.” Elisheba countered weakly. Javed flung his arms in the air and part of his response to her was the usual line he used to remind her of her thoughtlessness in matters. “Think of what this is doing to our mother.”

Nirmala Gill, who loved Alice like a daughter, did not attach any blame to her. She struggled with the idea of Alice being a lesbian as had her own parents but she had seen what her husband did to their children and she did not want to do the same with Elisheba or Alice. Unlike her husband, or her son, she did not think Elisheba was a lost cause. They had spoken on the phone earlier in the day. Daughter reassuring mother that everything was fine. Everything was going to be alright. She did not know how that was going to be, but she had to hold on to that hope. As long as Yasmeen was in her life, hope was a must.

© Naveeda Valentina

Homonym?

We used to fight over a particular spot in what we called the TV room. It was the edge of an armless sofa that was closest to the television. The fight was one of many my youngest brother and I had. Our sister and brother were away in boarding school, and there were hardly any neighborhood children to befriend. My youngest brother was not always appreciative of the fact that I wanted to tag along with him, or tell him what to do.

That room, which became our haven, used to be part of the longish covered verandah that stretched from one end of the house, continued behind the drawing room, and ended behind my bedroom. A sparse, uninviting porch most times, save for the money plant vines and the ping pong table we inherited from the previous residents. It was the section behind my room that was converted into the place to watch television, rather than the recently redecorated elegant drawing room. A great place to hang out in the hellishly hot Lahore summers because that was where the air conditioner was.


My brother and I were watching television that night, one of us not wanting to rise from that coveted spot for fear that the throne would be usurped. It did not matter that we shouted out "same places!" before going anywhere.

Mommy walked into the room, beautiful as ever in a caramel colored shalwar kameez, with her favorite shade of red lipstick and her Madhubala looks. Or was it Meena Kumari? Some men in the street hollered one actress' name while others called out another. She was followed by this thing flitting in the air, this insect flapping its transparent wings to and fro as it hovered around her. The parvaana to her shama.

We saw how it wanted her, and how oblivious she was to it. Her mind was preoccupied as always with so many concerns besides her ailing mother who was in my room. We jumped up and down in front of her, pointing at her, shrieking, "Mommy, moth! Moth! MOTH!"

Mommy was horrified. The patient, smiling face was replaced by fiery eyes, her voice changed from melodic to deafening.

"Chup karo!" She shouted, "Why are you screaming that word? That is a terrible thing to say to your mother. You should not be talking about such things anyway; you are far too young!"

I did not know about my brother, but it dawned on me why she was upset. Especially with Naniji in the next room. We were still getting over the loss of Nanaji, only to see the woman he loved weakening every day; that courage and will we all thought propelled by her faith diminishing in some of our eyes.

"Mommy, we were pointing at the moth flying around you. Not maut. The moth." I explained, my voice up a few notches. She calmed down, finally saw what the ruckus was about, and let out a hum of a giggle. We laughed with her. She left us to check on her mother.

My brother and I went back to our television viewing, and quarreling.

Monster Boxes

It took a while for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was a sliver of light which pierced through the thick curtains and shone on the black and white tile on the ground. The cold checkered surface on which she sat made her shiver. She could not remember how she got to the floor from the large bed that she shared with her brother and sometimes her mother when their father was out most of the night. Almost every evening, Rakhil and her brother Jibreel massaged their mother's legs, and took turns walking on them. It gave great comfort after a long day of being on her feet doing the housekeeping and keeping an eye on two small children.

Rakhil could not stand and had to crawl. Her body moved only a few steps when a giant cardboard box blocked her path. She tried pushing it aside but it would not budge. Going in another direction did not help as another box kept her from advancing. Fear took over as another attempt was made only to be thwarted by another container and another, and yet another. 

She rolled back to where she sat with bottom on floor and legs arched. All she could see around her was a moving coil of monster boxes. Trapped, she felt as if a drum was pounding against her insides. There was nowhere else for her to go. She sobbed quietly, covering her eyes with her tiny hands.

Unaware of how much time had passed, Rakhil opened her eyes to the brightness of the day. She was back on the bed. Her mother caressed her curlytop head, It's okay baby. Everything is going to be fine. Mommy looked beautiful. Her red lips curved upward and her thick black wavy hair freed of its usual ponytail, was a halo framing her face.

Tears still slid out of the corners of Rakhil's eyes. It took her some time to erase the notion that the monster boxes of the previous night were real.

Copyright Naveeda Valentina

On waiting in vain

He who has waited long enough, will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.

Samuel Beckett. Malone Dies. (1951) 

Reading, Writing and sometimes Arithmetic

NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The "No" in NaNoWriMo could also be for November, as this is the designated month for it. Run by a small non-profit called the Office of Letters and Light, it is an excellent way to push writers to begin, continue, finish that novel they just cannot seem to get done (or am I projecting again?!). An excellent way to share your creativity.

I tried NaNoWriMo before, I think it was two years ago, and life as usual, got in the way. This time around with over 17,000 words (the target is 50,000), a dent has definitely been made, and the novel's characters are pushing me to go on. They have been trapped long enough in my muddled head. Picture that video of Queen, cross-dressing, with the great Mercury singing I want to break free!

Oh, man, now I am singing NaNoWriMo to the refrain of Yah Mo B There. Stop in the name of  . . . !!!

***
I just finished reading Abraham Verghese's The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss. It was one of those books I found difficult to put down (though I had to. These days the only time I read is either in the wee hours of the morning, or right before I sleep). I have yet to read My Own Country, but did read excerpts from it. And if I can get Cutting for Stone through inter-library loan, I cannot wait to read it.

The Tennis Partner tells the story of Verghese's friendship with a former professional tennis player now medical student David Smith in the early years of the nineteen nineties. Verghese is the careful considerate teacher, guiding Smith through his internal medicine rotation. On the tennis court, Smith is the teacher, steering Verghese on how to improve his tennis game about which he remains rather self-conscious. These are the things that bring them together, but their friendship is solidified by the loneliness of two men who are both dealing with dark spots in their lives. For Verghese, it is his failing marriage. For Smith, it is his cocaine addiction and his relationship with his girlfriend(s).

--

I find it interesting to read about doctor's lives and their work, just as much as I enjoy watching television shows like E.R., House M.D, and Doc Martin. One of my parents is a doctor, and reading this book, I could not help but think of my father's life, and wonder whether he found that being in the medical profession fostered a certain loneliness or not. How that may have contributed to his relationship with us, in his choices.

--
It was difficult not to think of Eve Sedgwick and the homosocial as I read Verghese's thoughts and feelings towards Smith. One instance was David's feelings for Gloria, and Verghese's resentment towards her for the hold she had on him during their relationship. Homosociality is not to be confused with homosexuality or even bi-, as Verghese also wonders about Smith being bisexual and does not necessarily want to face that possibility.

--
These next few passages really hit close to home as I read them this morning (warning: spoilers!).

I have formed my own opinion. David's illness was far removed from the mere act of sticking a needle in a vein. I can only imagine that his disease began in childhood, and that it was a disease of the soul. I know almost nothing about his childhood, but I know that what he felt was universal. A child will always feel insufficient and powerless in a world of adults.

We grew up, and on the surface, we left our childish ways, overcame these feelings. Then, in the middle of the journey of our lives, we found ourselves, like Dante, on a dark path. It was there my road diverged from David's. My dark path, no matter how many times I relive it, would never have led to suicide. There was too much I believed in, too many things I held sacred. My escape from the dark path came from reaching out, primarily to him, but also to my parents, my brothers, my friends, a network of human connections. It was David's hand more than any other that pulled me free, set me back on my feet, made me feel I was not alone. Gratitude for that is at the root of my love for him (p. 340).

Doctors see themselves as healers (and some have a God complex), but here is a very successful doctor who openly talks about the "dark path" he walks on, even as a healer, and how friendship and human connections can and do pull one off said path. These human connections are one (not the only) alternative to suicide when one finds that life is not worth living and one is completely alone in the world.

There are friends of mine who have committed suicide. One perhaps may not have intended to do so, even, but in returning to using (in his case it was heroin), overdosed on alcohol and heroin at a very depressing and painful time in his life. A time in which a number of us who thought we were his friends were not there, and perhaps could not have stopped him from the horror.

Human connections are not always enough, sadly, when one has divorced himself or herself from humanity (or believes that humanity has divorced itself from him). Secrets do not protect anyone. Certainly not those being kept in the dark, but especially the holder of a painful one. One can never completely heal from self-destruction if one does not let go of his or her secrets, and is able to face the world once they are released.

I could not help but thank Abraham Verghese while reading the above passages, because my own dark path has pushed me towards the brink, more than once, and I have been saved by the very things that have been important to him. The Tennis Partner is an excellent read. It shows Verghese as a brilliant diagnostician (we need more doctors like him!). It analyzes a close and beautiful friendship in a topsy turvy world -- its highs, its lows, the things we hold on to, and the things we let go. And it breaks open a world many of us know so little about - the world of medicine. Its ability to heal others, but not always the healers.

  

Dawn in Paris

The previous day, I enjoyed watching a documentary on PBS - Paris The Luminous Years:  Towards The Making Of The Modern. It originally aired almost a year ago but I had not seen it before, and watching just a few minutes, I was drawn in to the lives of the artists and writers who called Paris their home. I loved re-visiting Sylvia Beach and Shakespeare and Company. And seeing the works of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Derain, Braque, and many others.

I learned of the modernist movement through Romance Language literatures (French and Spanish) at first, but later mainly through British literature. It remains one of my favorite periods because of the break with the past not only in terms of writing, but art in all its forms, whether it was the stream of consciousness of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, or the effects of industrialization in the novels of D.H. Lawrence and his depiction of relationships. Or the cubism of Picasso and Braque.

This documentary mainly focuses on Paris, and its importance in shaping the direction in which modernism was moving. Also other than Sylvia Beach and Gertrude Stein who were incredibly influential in the span of time of the "luminous years" (1905-1930), most of the artists discussed in this film are male. We learn of the relationships between artists, between artists and their champions. Would Ulysses, shocking for its time, have been published had it not been for Sylvia Beach? It was during these years that Americans as different as Ernest Hemingway, Langston Hughes and Josephine Baker also arrived in Paris.

It also explains the roles that cafes played in the life of these artists, and of Paris altogether. I found it eye-opening to learn that public gatherings were interdit in Paris during a certain period of time and it was in the cafes where artists arranged to have their work exhibited, or meetings were fixed. Hubbubs of artistic and political discussions and ferment, I do not know that that has changed in Paris all that much where cafes are concerned.

***
What also came to mind while watching the documentary was the book I chose as my project for my Feminist Criticism class: Writing For Their Lives: The Modernist Women 1910-1940. Djuna Barnes is not mentioned in the documentary, but she was also in Paris in those luminous years and had met and interviewed James Joyce. She also became a friend of Gertrude Stein. Writing For Their Lives analyzes the works of women writers such as H.D, Bryher, Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore among others and how they fit into the avant-garde modernist movement. Many of these women also befriended one another, supported one another, were lovers and inspirations to one another. These are not writers that one sees often in the canon; it was great to see how these women were no less ground-breaking than their male counterparts like Joyce. I have yet to read Women of the Left Bank, but I can say that Writing For Their Lives is also an important work in examining Modernism.

***
I have yet to see Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, and its back to the future theme by going back to the Lost Generation. As I watched Paris The Luminous Years, and the reactions to the "new" (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Ulysses), I thought about the time we are living in today. A time in which supposedly modernism is dead, and that which followed. Is what replaced it any better? I cannot say for certain, but what I do hope is that there is still something we can learn from the modernists. Think of how often we still quote some of them, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, from lectures to characters in television series. I hope we never reject some of the artists, thinkers, writers completely as we continue into the future.