The Difference

Tonight, Barack Hussein Obama won the presidency of the United States of America. After spending five hours glued to the television in anticipation of results, I viewed the thousands of people standing at Grant's Park in Chicago to see their new president, the masses cheering in Harlem, in Atlanta, in Times Square - tears, screams and smiles dressing the entire country.

What surprises me most is that on the other coast, my parents were both eagerly watching the same acceptance speech. My parents - who came here in 1990 as immigrants without experiencing the "American dream", who have no U.S. citizenship and who have previously shown no political inclination - tonight they were just as joyous and excited as their four children. Obama's victory tonight, I think, was an attribute to the other side of the U.S. that they had heard about but unfortunately never experienced. That is, the other side of America that does not make one cynical about being an immigrant or minority in this country, but points to hope, optimism, and - finally, tonight - reality.

In one of my earlier blog posts, I had rambled about balancing duty with free will, and finally doubting an individual's ability to break from his own history. History goes something like this:

"We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, or Kurt, wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it would because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, and because of that fundamental power he held over you, because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclination, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning. In fact, you couldn't even be sure that everything you had assumed to be an expression of your black, unfettered self - the humor, the song, the behind-the-back-pass - had been freely chosen by you. At best, these things were a refuge; at worst, a trap. Following this maddening logic, the only thing you could choose as your own was withdrawal into a smaller and smaller coil of rage, until being black meant only the knowledge of your own powerlessness of your own defeat. And the final irony: should you refuse this defeat and lash out at your captors, they would have a name for that, too, a name that could cage you just as good. Paranoid. Militant. Violent. Nigger."

That was written by Barack Obama more than ten years ago. The same man, who today, tells us this:

"Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope. For that is the true genius of America - that American can change. Our union can be perfected. And what we have already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow."

Perhaps my parents joined me in my eager and breathless phone conversations tonight because they also recognized that it's not just a country that changes, but people as well and the destinies that are expected of them. Someone commented on Obama's speech saying, "Regardless of what you might believe, we didn't elect a black man to the Presidency tonight. Rather, I submit to you that tonight we elected a man to be President who happens to be black. The difference therein is great and we must never confuse the two." Is it? Is the difference great? Obama didn't grow up in Harlem, nor was he as underprivileged as most African-Americans in this country. But he did recognize a feeling of defeat in his life - a feeling of being black and being put into cages of labels. Tonight, a man broke from the history and future written for him. And tonight, there is no difference between the man the US elected who happens to be black and each person who believed they were destined to be trapped in cages. 

double-standard honor?

Last week, a friend of mine sent out this article to a small group of people. A woman in Lucknow, India severed a man's head when he tried to rape her while she was cutting plants. My friend later told me she thought carefully about who to send it to given what type of responses she may get in return from some of her friends. Despite the censorship, she was still taken aback by some of the comments. The general responses found the article laughable - the thought of a woman beheading a man and then carrying his head through town is a ludicrous image, I'm sure. But why laugh at a woman trying to defend her honor? Although we may not condone it, we at least take seriously honor killings that occur by men. Women burned with their husbands, women killed after being raped - they're disgusting but they're not comical. Is it because we are accustomed to men doing the killing in the name of honor? Perhaps this is a generalization, but most women think about and understand (consciously or not) that they represent the honor of the family, community and culture. And while they are vulnerable to their honor being tainted, it is the men whose place it is to traditionally defend it. Is there something humorous, then, about these roles becoming convoluted and a woman deciding how she will defend her honor and dignity - as horrific as it is? One of my friend's characterized the incident as "a real honor killing". Horrific, yes. Humorous, hardly.

you were supposed to dance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4

clean slate

I didn't mean for there to be such a long hiatus since my last post, but here we are, another late night, another city...and another computer. I'm currently borrowing a friend's computer, given that mine is currently inoperable. This past week, my hard drive crashed and I lost five years worth of writing, music and pictures. It's one of those events that make you realize, there's more to life than your computer. Oh, sure there is BUT I know that as soon as koobi (jr) is back, I'll be putting the rest of the world on a pause. I had been pretty down about losing my writing - it meant losing papers, some poetry, free-writes, starts of stories, letters, and probably a file of ideas. It's a lot to lose; they were evidence of thoughts and feelings and knowledge - essentially, they were parts of me on paper. But, as I was telling a friend, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise. I had become too accustomed to my writing, and was having a difficult time letting some go. With writing, as with other things one can do, there is always something to improve on. The crash forced me to let go and start again with a fresh mind - certainly it helped me to not be tied to stale ideas and styles of the past.

It's 3.26 AM and I can no longer churn out my best piece of work at this hour of the night. Unfortunatley I think graduating from college means they take away that power. LifeasIknowit in the middle of the semester in the middle of the night in a sentence summary: cold feet about journalism; excitment about classes; letting go (or, as Adrienne Rich would say "stepping backwards"; too bad she didn't write it about computers); dreams of brunch; intention of drawing again; potential photography.

sickening

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26223335/

Cruelty meets beauty for Pakistan burn victims
After acid attacks, women find refuge, independence as beauticians
By NAHAL TOOSI
The Associated Press

LAHORE, Pakistan - Saira Liaqat squints through her one good eye as she brushes a woman's hair. Her face, most of which the acid melted years ago, occasionally lights up with a smile. Her hands, largely undamaged, deftly handle the dark brown locks.

A few steps away in this popular beauty salon, Urooj Akbar diligently trims, cleans and paints clients' fingernails. Her face, severely scarred from the blaze that burned some 70 percent of her body, is somber. It's hard to tell if she's sad or if it's just the way she now looks.

Liaqat and Akbar are among Pakistan's many female victims of arson and acid attacks. Such tales tend to involve a spurned or crazy lover and end in a life of despair and seclusion for the woman.

The two instead became beauticians.

The women can't escape the mirrors or pictures of glamorous models that surround them, but they consider the salon a second home and a good way to make a living. The two also serve as reminders of that age-old lesson on beauty — a lesson that, needed or not, they learned the hard way.

"Every person wishes that he or she is beautiful," says Liaqat, 21. "But in my view, your face is not everything. Real beauty lies inside a person, not outside."

"They do it because the world demands it," Akbar, 28, says of clients. "For them, it's a necessity. For me, it isn't."

Liaqat and Akbar got into the beauty business in the eastern city of Lahore thanks to the Depilex Smileagain Foundation, an organization devoted to aiding women who have been burned in acid or other attacks.

About five years ago, Masarrat Misbah, head of Pakistan's well-known Depilex salon chain, was leaving work when a veiled woman approached and asked for her help. She was insistent, and soon, a flustered Misbah saw why.

'A girl who had no face'When she removed her veil, Misbah felt faint. "I saw a girl who had no face."

The woman said her husband had thrown acid on her.

Misbah decided to place a small newspaper ad to see if others needed similar assistance.
Forty-two women and girls responded.

Misbah got in touch with Smileagain, an Italian nonprofit that has provided medical services to burn victims in other countries. She sought the help of Pakistani doctors. Perhaps the biggest challenge has been raising money for the cause, in particular to build a special hospital and refuge for burn victims in Pakistan.

Her organization has some 240 registered victims on its help list, 83 of whom are at various stages of treatment.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan found that in 2007, at least 33 women were burned in acid attacks, and 45 were set on fire. But the statistics are likely an undercount, since many cases go unreported for various reasons including out of fear of their attackers, or because the victims can't afford the legal bills.

The victims Misbah has helped need, on average, 25 to 30 surgical procedures over several years, but she soon realized that wasn't enough. Some, especially those who were outcasts in their families, had to be able to support themselves.

To her surprise, several told her they wanted to be beauticians.

"And I felt so sad," Misbah says. "Because beauty is all about faces and beautiful girls and skin."
She helped arrange for 10 women to train in a beauty course in Italy last year. Some have difficulty because their vision is weak or their hands too burned for intricate work. But several, including Liaqat and Akbar, are making their way in the field.

Images of beauty and brutalityThe salon in Lahore is not the usual beauty parlor. There are pictures of beautiful women on the walls — all made up, with perfect, gleaming hair. But then there's a giant poster of a girl with half her face destroyed.

"HELP US bring back a smile to the face of these survivors," it says.

Working for the salon is a dream come true for Liaqat, whose mischievous smile is still intact and frequently on display. As a child she was obsessed with beauty. Once she burned some of her sister's hair off with a makeshift curling iron. She still wears lipstick.

Akbar, the more reserved one, also carries out many administrative and other tasks for the foundation. One of her duties is collecting newspaper clippings about acid and burn attacks on women.

Both say they are treated well by clients and colleagues, but Misbah says some clients have complained.

"They say that when we come to a beauty salon, we come with the expectation that we're going to be relaxed, in a different frame of mind," Misbah says. "If we come here and we see someone who has gone through so much pain and misery, so automatically that gives us that low feeling also. They have a point.

"At the same time, there are clients who take pride in asking these girls to give them a blow-dry, or getting a manicure or pedicure taken from them."

Sometimes they ask what happened.

According to Liaqat and a lawyer for her case, she was married in her teens, on paper, to a relative, but the families had agreed she wouldn't live with him until she finished school. Within months, though, the man started demanding she join him.

One day at the end of July 2003, he showed up at their house with a package. He asked her to get him some water. He followed her to the kitchen, and as she turned around with the water, she says, he doused her with the acid. It seared much of her face, blinded her right eye, and seriously weakened her left one.

Liaqat shakes her head when recalling how a few days before the incident she found a small pimple on her face and threw a fit. After she was burned, her parents at first wouldn't let their daughter look at a mirror. But eventually she saw herself, and she's proud to say she didn't cry.
"Once we had a wedding in the family. I went there and all the girls were getting dressed and putting on makeup. So that time, I felt a pain in my heart," she says. "But I don't want to weaken myself with these thoughts."

Her husband is in prison as the attempted murder case against him proceeds. The two are still legally married.

Akbar says she found herself in an arranged marriage by age 22. Her husband grew increasingly possessive and abusive, she says. The two had a child.

About three years ago, Akbar says, he sprinkled kerosene oil on her as she slept and lit it. A picture taken shortly afterward shows how her face melted onto her shoulders, leaving her with no visible neck.

Akbar has not filed a case against her now ex-husband. She says she'll one day turn to the law, at least to get her daughter back.

Both women were reluctant for The Associated Press to contact their alleged attackers.
Liaqat and Akbar have undergone several surgeries and expect to face more. They say Misbah's foundation was critical to their present well-being.

"Mentally, I am at peace with myself," Akbar says. "The peace of mind I have now, I never had before. I suffered much more mental anguish in my married life."

'Strong girls'Bushra Tareen, a regular client of Liaqat's, praises her work.

"I feel that her hands call me again and again," Tareen says. She adds that Liaqat and Akbar remind her of the injustices women face, and their ability to rise above them.

"When I see them, I want to be like them — strong girls," she says.

Liaqat is grateful for having achieved her goal of being a beautician. She worries about her eyesight but is determined to succeed.

"I want to make a name for myself in this profession," she says.

Akbar plans to use her income one day to support her little girl, whom she has barely seen since the attack.

"I'm independent now, I stand on my own two feet," she says. "I have a job, I work, I earn. In fact, I'm living on my own ... which isn't an easy thing to do for a woman in Pakistan, for a lone woman to survive."

12.12 reading

I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.

-- Stanley Kunitz, "The Layers"

on [writing]

A couple of headlines that caught my eye today (from the Daily Star):

"Thousands of Pakistanis demand public hanging of Musharraf"

"Israelis call for attacker's home to be razed"

Since when has being so bloodthirsty and vengeful become so normal? Can't really imagine what satisfaction someone would gain, or what a country would accomplish, by destroying another home or publicly hanging a President who doesn't have much power left anyways. I find a huge contradiction in Lebanon. While there is a general anti-Israel and anti-Syrian (it's worse to be Syrian than it is to be Israeli) attitude in the country because of all the oppression Lebanon has endured at the hands of the two powers, the state and the people here are quick to oppress others. Although the massacres of Palestinians in Lebanon happened during the civil war, now Palestinian refugees are completely ignored. They cannot get jobs, they have no rights, they are not talked about, essentially they do not exist. Meanwhile, Africans and Philippine men and women take up jobs here as janitors, maids, nannies, and other menial jobs. They get low pay, and are not well respected, and in some cases they have their passports taken away, are beaten, and worse... I also hear that during the 2006 war, while many Lebanese families fled into the mountains, they locked their maids inside the apartments. This is not new, but hearing about a people who oppress others complain about being victims of force is almost laughable.

I'm not quite sure what "peace" gains either with headlines like these:
"Israeli Military starts to exhume bodies of Lebanese fighters"


When I was young, I was told there were some things I could not talk about. When I lived in Coalinga, I knew there were taboo subjects that should not be discussed at school. This is what had excited me about journalism, and probably what I like about writing: the prospect of finally saying anything you want. I know there are restrictions in many countries when it comes to journalism, like there are in the U.S. as well. But this summer I have been disappointed in: Al J's refusal to talk about homosexuality, something that can't and should not be ignored for long; Iran's new attempt to try to pass a law that would give death penalty to bloggers if they are seen as a threat; Lebanon's refusal to talk to any Israeli citizen because they are in a state of war. These are not surprising, obviously, but they do mean that alot of problems that these countries and the region wants to overcome will not go away anytime soon. Being here has confirmed that there is a big gap between politics and people, and what makes the news doesn't necessarily reflect what's happening on the ground. Which is why I find the fact that Lebanese newspapers will not talk to any Israeli citizen to get better perceptions of their sides of the story a bit absurd. At this rate, the two countries will always be in a state of war. This makes me a bit disheartened about the idealism I have put in journalism. But it has also encouraged me to start writing more (blogs, poetry, fiction, articles, etc.)

In the meantime, however, if you want to see what not talking gains, read the headlines.