She turns to me. “Actually, you can save the world if you don’t cut trees.”

art and rain...

Minal and I start out the day by attending the Houston Fine Art Fair, where we see exhibition booths set up by galleries around the US. One of the highlights for Minal is an inflated sculpture by William Cannings which she can actually touch.

We spend the second half of the day grocery shopping at Central Market. As we sit down on the upstairs patio to eat a fast lunch, we witness a rainstorm, the first in Houston during one of the worst drought periods in the history of the state. In the meantime, though, we are profoundly aware of more flooding in Sindh, which still has not recovered from the monsoons of 2010.

morning meanderings with minal

I love the early hours when I drop off Minal to school. She always has new philosophies that she’s exploring, and we manage to cover a large terrain during our 12-minute drive.

Today, she asks me, “Ammi, is there a king in China?”

I respond with my standard question to her questions: “What do you think?”

She shakes her her head. “No.”

“Why do you think?”

“Because they have a president,” she says.

I lower the windows and a cool breeze blows through the car. Together, we observe the growing numbers of cars, buses and pedestrians along West Gray Street.

She pipes up again: “Why are there more poor people in Karachi than there are in Houston?”

“Hmm. Why do you think?”

This time she does not have a handy response. “Just tell me!”

We then talk about what “poverty” means and how we can identify who’s poor and who is not.

This time she has an answer: “People who are poor have sad faces. And their faces are also long.”

We have reached her school by now, and before she hops out of the car, she reads a passage from a Magic Tree House that she’s been reading. I don’t remember the details, but there’s something about how once in China, scholars were valued, and then people stopped supporting their words and their learning.

eid on hillcroft

This year, Minal participates in Chand Raat festivities. We meet friends at Hillcroft, and Minal gets mehndi on her palms. On Eid itself, I cook up a feast, and Minal collects both rupees and dollars for eedhi.

gearing up for VBB's season opener

We are gearing up for VBB’s season opener. The flinging of my chappals across the electric wires on Dowling Street is the formal launch of the project. Don’t miss the show – October 22, 2011.

my essay in dawn's books & authors

My essay “Devouring Mangoes with Gusto” appeared in Dawn Books & Author’s special Independence Day issue.

minal-isms

As we listen to Tina Sani’s new album, Bahar Aayi, with Faiz Ahmed Faiz lyrics, Minal says: “I’m so glad you were born in Pakistan so we can listen to this music.”

Earlier in the day, she comments: “How do squirrels know their partners if they all look the same?”

last morning at macondo...

As always, Macondo is a rich gathering with old and new friends. Throughout the week, we are inspired by readings and talks with Julia Alvarez, Naomi Shihab Nye, Esmeralda Santiago, Helena Maria Viramontes—and of course, Sandra Cisneros.

On Saturday morning, I walk past the ducks that squat along the banks of the Elmendorf Lake at Our Lady of the Lake university campus. I drive away, remembering Naomi’s words – “give back fearlessly” – and Julia’s advice that I will hold close to my heart—till next time: “Stay in the storm; stay one sentence ahead of the furies…“

a rough journey

Our flight did leave on time but Karachi’s international departure lounge was packed with people with barely enough standing room since all PIA flights were delayed.

By the time we landed in Dubai, it was already 3:00 am Karachi time. The airplane coasted along the airport runway for ten minutes. When the plane stopped, I noticed buses pulling up: There was no chute to connect us to the terminal and we would need to walk down the dark staircase and ride a bus (without seats) for another 15 minutes to the terminal for our onward flight. (I take back what I said in my blog-post from when we flew through Dubai a month ago.)

“Why do passengers from Pakistan have to take buses?” I asked an Emirates attendant, who helped me with my hand-luggage as I carried a sleepy Minal down the stairs to the heated tarmac.

He shrugged. “It’s random.”

“Random?” I held on to the metal rail. “I’ve never taken a flight coming from the US and had to deal with this!”

The attendant did not have a response to my anger.

Today, barely recovered from the long journey, I browse through the blog of one Pakistan’s largest English daily newspapers, Dawn, and come across an essay about Saudi discrimination against South Asians. Though Dubai is part of the U.A.E., and is in many ways different from Saudi Arabia, Asian laborers in Dubai experience similar hardships to those that Ahmed Ali Khalid raises in his blog entry. In a 2006 BBC story, reporter Masud Alam writes about apartheid in Dubai (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6171909.stm). Our experience at the airport is a microcosm of a larger story, one that hasn’t changed much since Alam’s narrative posted five years ago.