#uncoffeed...

I made a joke long ago that you could tell which Desi husbands were the most difficult and the most contrite by the number of bangles their wives wore. Pakistani husbands apologise with jewelry. Mine didn't apologize, maybe twice – once for calling me a whore, apology in email, and I still have it.  The other time is a different story. When we married, I knew there was a possibility that things could end, and even a possibility that things could end badly. So when we hit the 5-year mark, I was excited. I wanted a badge to commemorate the accomplishment. I suggested rings to my husband. “Of course,” he said.  This meant he wasn’t really listening, or interested. I really wanted a 5th anniversary ring, though, and I found something online I thought suitable:  silver Celtic rings, made in Ireland and representative of my part of our multicultural marriage. I bought one for each of us. “I don’t really wear jewelry,” he said.  And it was true; he still had th...

Despite coming off the ocean, the wind was hot. It was baked like challa and it twisted through the oven of concrete and tilted brick buildings. It bounced over the wretched pile of rocks and earth that comprised the town square after the earthquake. Nobody had the fortitude to clean it up. Squalid children played in the mudholes (there had been no rain for weeks, and thus only the very worst of possibilities as to whence the mud had come.) Dogs as dirty and thin as the children wafted in and out and over the rockpile, like physical manifestations of the devil-breathed wind. America stepped carefully between the loose bricks of the street, as though she would be able to preserve the sheen on her freshly-polished shoes.  In defiance of the heat she was fully dressed - splendidly so - in pitch black: from her patent leather shoes to her stockings to her tight-fitting dress and the hat with a blackbird sleeping on it. She did not wipe the beads of sweat that gathered under the ha...