No One's Ever Thrown Me A Surprise Party Before

I turned 21 in Amman, Jordan, on a Tuesday. The store that supposedly sold the "best milkshakes in the Middle East" didn't have any milkshakes, so we went to a tea shop in the middle of downtown Amman with a bunch of people I had just met three weeks ago. There was not much fanfare, but the tea was decent. We went home early to study for our history midterm the next day. In the following week, I came down with a case of Hepatitis A. It was not a miserable birthday, but it could have been better.

I turned 18 at a Buca di Beppo's somewhere in LA with people I had just met in my dorm, the first year of college. It was nice to get out of the dorm, but I'm not sure we had much to say to each other. There was a lot of, "So! This is pretty good food." "Yeah, I've never been here before." "Yeah!" "Yeah." Not miserable, but not really fantastic.

I turned 24 on a rainy day in Adams Morgan, and most of the people I had invited to dinner were sick/out of town/lazy/stuck in Alexandria/whatever. The people I ended up sharing it with were wonderful, but there were only four of us and a lot of mojitos. Again, not miserable, but I can't say it wasn't lame, either.

Not to say I haven't had some good, fun birthday parties: I turned 23 at Mama Ayesha's after living in DC 9 months and accumulating enough friends to make it a true birthday quorum. We ate Arabic food. We went salsa dancing afterwards. Some of us drank mojitos. I met Anthony, who now has surpassed me in Arabic skills and remains one of my dearest friends, despite the difficulty of the weekly Arabic quizzes he administers (Well, I had met him before, but not really.)

And I kind of assumed that birthday parties diminish in quality as one ages: nothing will ever compare to the fantastic day that was my 6th birthday party. Not only did we have a TEDDY BEAR PICNIC, but we also wore PARTY DRESSES and FANCY HATS to said teddy bear picnic. It was pretty much 6-year-old heaven.

So I came back from Geneva on the 13th of September, after exchanging a few e-mails with Lisa and Anthony, "We should do something for your birthday! But I'm busy. How about Sunday?" I had a vague impression that something would be happening Sunday despite the fact that my birthday was on Saturday, which as everyone knows, is the PRIMO BIRTHDAY PARTY day, especially if it is actually the day OF your birthday. I half-heartedly attempted to arrange something, but people were vague/busy/disinterested, so I gave up and decided that going to a war protest would have to suffice as a birthday celebration.

I went to the protest, my first protest ever. I ... am not a protesting person, but it was a liberating experience, and Sasan bought me a nice bumper sticker, so ... that was nice. The weather was beautiful. The crowd was energetic.

On the way back from the protest, Sasan insisted we go to Trader Joe's: "You SAID we could go to Trader Joe's!" ...what's the big deal? I thought. But fine, sure, we'll go to Trader Joe's. He bought nuts and chips and LOTS OF SALSA. Because he really likes salsa, and he goes through it so fast (?) Ok, fine. And I believe I made a comment on the way home about how I Don't Want To Have A Lame Birthday wah wah wah. I believe I also thought, Wouldn't it be nice if someday someone threw me a Fun and Exciting Birthday Party, with friends and family and food and if it were a surprise, wouldn't that be even better! Maybe next year.

We went back to my apartment to drop off the groceries, and I still had the vague idea that we'd be going to Busboys and Poets later on for a Brazilian carnival thing. Sasan declared that it was a Persian tradition to clean up the house/apartment on one's birthday. "It's like starting the new year off, you have to clean your house. However your house is on the first day of the year, that's how it will stay the rest of the year and besides, it's not NICE to be in a messy apartment." And I protested. I don't want to clean my apartment I want to go do something who wants to spend their birthday cleaning the apartment that's so lame. But we cleaned despite my protests. And then he declared another Persian tradition: To take pictures on your birthday. We have to take pictures every year so that we remember the years blah blah blah. He says this to me, in my undone hair and ratty T-shirt. So of course, I go to change. I take my time. We don't have to be at Busboys til 10. It's like, 8:30. Sasan hurries me along: But no we have to go now because we have to walk to Busboys afterwards and we need plenty of time let'sgolet'sgolet'sgo.

He runs me to Dupont, where we took precisely one picture. I was annoyed: WHY ARE YOU WALKING SO FAST. GEEZ. He slowed down. "Ok, I should buy you dessert, it's your birthday. Where do you want to get dessert?" We were walking down 19th street. "Fondue!" I said as we walked by the Melting Pot. I love fondue. "Ok." He steered me in, and I protested, again. "Um, isn't this expensive? We can't just go in an order dessert fondue...um...Are you sure? We can just get ice cream." "Let's just SEE." He said.

So we walked through the dining tables to the corner. I was looking at the various fondue selections, the steaming pots on every table, the couples cuddling and feeding each other strawberries dipped in chocolate. Then I looked up and the first thing I saw were balloons...then I heard a crowd, "SURPRISE!" ...then I recognized Lisa, in the middle of the crowd, and I realized that I was The Surprised One. I was the surprised one.

And then everything made sense. Lisa didn't have a prior engagement. It was a foil to prevent me from planning anything on Saturday night. Sasan didn't need 5 jars of salsa. It was for the party afterwards, when we migrated from the fondue to my apartment. Cleaning one's house on one's birthday is a bogus Persian tradition (although cleaning on the new year is not.) And the picture ploy was just to get me to go willingly to Dupont. He had planned and executed it all, the whole program, designed to the last detail (he even e-mailed my parents to warn them in case they had conflicting plans with me.) He predicted my reaction to people's inquiries about what I'm doing for my birthday, knowing that I shouldn't think that everyone's forgotten, but I should think that it's really not that big a deal to them. He anticipated my reaction to friends', "What are you doing to celebrate?" verbatim: "I guess we're doing something Sunday night...?" He combed through mass e-mails to find friends' contact information.

Sasan gets the gold star.

Carolina brought a decadent chocolate cake, Melissa brought balloons. Anthony brought paper plates. My cousin was there, Kutaiba was there. They had all arrived on time (we had not: I took too long figuring out what to wear.) and were waiting to celebrate MY BIRTHDAY. Because they are the best friends ever.

Carolina, Leila, Azucena, Katie, Melissa, Me, Sasan (Project Manager Extraordinaire), Lisa, Christina. The photographers: Jason, Anthony

If You Forget Me

Just because I like it, here is a lovely poem by Pablo Neruda.

---

If you forget me
I want you to know one thing
You know how this is

If I look at the crystal moon
At the red branch of the slow autumn at my window
If I touch near the fire the impalpable ash
Or the wrinkled body of the log
Everything carries me to you
As if everything that exists - aromas, light, metals
Were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me

Well, now
If little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you, little by little

If suddenly you forget me
Do not look for me
For I shall already have forgotten you

If you think it long and mad the wind of banners that passes through my life
And you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots
Remember....
That on that day, at that hour
I shall lift my arms, and my roots will set off to seek another land

But... If each day, each hour
You feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness
If each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me
Ahh my love, ahh my own
In me all that fire is repeated
In me nothing is extinguished or forgotten
My love feeds on your love, beloved
And as long as you live it will be in your arms
Without leaving mine

How Taking Taxis Improved My Spoken Arabic

When I was wandering around the Levant during my junior/senior/whatever year of college, I took a lot of taxis. In Beirut, I carried around a pack of expensive cigarettes and offered them to the cab driver if we were taking a long enough ride to warrant a cigarette. Although I can't condone smoking, it was an extremely easy way to make quick friends with the driver, and sometimes he counted that as payment, which always gave me the thrill of a Good Deal. They're going to smoke anyway. I may as well get a cheap cab ride out of it.


Without losing much time, most cabbies steered conversation to one's personal life, things one would not dare ask in an American taxi, questions which were endlessly amusing to answer, but sometimes crossed into the terrain of the Intrusive. If you speak Arabic, so much the better, because then you are instantly intriguing. It's excellent practice. Where are you from? (America/Canada) Are you married? (...yes.) Where is your husband? (He's in America/Canada/Portugal, he's coming to meet me here shortly.) Do you have babies? (...no.) Why NOT?! (...)


The best answer to "Why NOT?!" is to say that you've only been married 4 months. This usually calms them down because then they can't say that you're not TRYING, and it's possible that you could still have a baby within an acceptable time frame.


If a young single American doesn't say she's married (i.e. if she tells the truth) she will probably notice his ears perk up slightly. "Why aren't you married! It's better to be married!" To which she may respond, "...I don't want to be married yet," or, "I don't know anyone I want to marry," or, more amusingly, "I don't need a man to make my life complete." Any one of these may inspire an incredulous stare in the rearview mirror. And any one of them may inspire a proposal, which may be dismissed by something as simple as "I don't want to marry a Muslim," or, "I'm not interested," but more often was persistent. "I make good American husband!" many claimed earnestly. "It is PERMISSIBLE for a Muslim man to marry a Christian woman!" (...yeah, but it's maybe not permissible for the Christian woman to marry the Muslim man. What about that?) "You want to live here? I marry you, you stay here. It's beautiful." I once heard a despairing cabbie's woeful tale of converting to Islam in order to marry a Muslim woman, only to have her call off the engagement and leave him stuck with a religion he didn't really believe and couldn't legally denounce. His solution: marry me, move to America, forget about Islam. My solution: Tip him and get out of the cab.

After the first few proposals, I began wondering: what response did they really expect? Did these cab drivers (who were, I'm sure, friendly, hard-working, upstanding citizens) understand the absurdity of their suggestion? Did they think it was possible, or likely, that a single American girl would find love, or at least, a mutual admiration, with a cab driver in an Amman suburb and just decide, in the time it takes to drive up one of Amman's rocky hills, to change her previous plans, marry him, and stay there?

I guess people do that. I guess it's conceivable that one would be so taken with the city, so enamored of the jasmine wafting through the valleys, so flattered by the prospect of a sudden relationship with a dark man in a new country, that one would shrug off her previous life and transplant herself to foreign soil. Conceivable, but not very likely for a free and easy college-educated girl in her young 20s whose possessions fit in one large, wheeled duffle bag.

This is not an easy concept to explain in halting Arabic. I did my best. I'll never forget the words for "My husband is in another country right now," "No, I don't have babies," "I don't want to marry you," "You've got to be kidding," or "That's not important. I'll get out here."

So the moral of the story is that public transportation helps your vocabulary.

Stolen from Lisa, who stole it from Paul.

If your life was a movie, what would be the soundtrack?
Instructions:

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend your cool... & a lot of the songs fit with
the setting"


Opening Credits:
Quequ'un M'a Dit, Carla Bruni.

(I like it!)

Waking Up:
Freylekhs (Joy) from Songs of My People, Simon Wynberg

(This is a very perky song. It's an appropriate waking song, I think.)

First Day At School:
Amor Verdado, Afro Cuban All-stars

Falling In Love:
Dudu, Tarkan

(hahaha. I do love this song, and it kind of makes me want to fall in love, but I think it's about him being sad that he's not loved back, yes?)

Fight Song:
New York Gotan, Gotan Project

Breaking Up:
I'm No Angel, Dido

Prom:
Route 101, from the Definitive Hits, Herp Albert

(Sounds about right, yeah.)

Life:
Carmen Suite -- Aragonaise, LA Guitar Quartet

(This is one of my favorite songs ever. I would be happy to have it be my life soundtrack, so long as I end up better than Carmen did.)

Mental Breakdown:
You Know I'm No Good, Amy Winehouse

Driving:
It Had Better Be Tonight, Lena Horne

Flashback:
When You Called My Name, The Newsboys

(This works. I like it.)

Getting back together:
Besame Mucho, the tango version by Mantovani

Wedding:
Complainte de la Butte, Rufus Wainwright from the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack

Birth of Child:
Nekreh El Keld, Souad Massi

Final Battle:
Somewhere, Leonard Bernstein, West Side Story (Sung by Tony as he's dying. Sad. Maybe better for after the battle?)

Death Scene:
My Baby Needs a Shepherd, Emmylou Harris

Funeral:
No Jive, De-Phazz (Hotel Costes, Vol 1.)

End Credits:
Sadani Khalas, Amr Diab

Very appropriate end credits song.

Captain Obvious

Here is an actual question asked to Bill Clinton by Tim Russert on Meet the Press.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you ever think of the historical significance, a husband and a wife both being president of the United States?

...

Bill Clinton has probably never ever thought of that, no.

I think Clinton's response should have been, "...Whoa! You know, you're right! Dude. That's deep."