I sometimes wonder if it might be a good idea to institute a rating system for khutbahs, basically as a guidance for those preparing their sermons. I can’t remember the last time I felt so awkward at jum’a that I stopped looking up at the khateeb just to avoid eye contact. Actually, I do sort of remember, but I was sorry to have to do this again today. Honestly, the last thing I ever want to hear in a khutbah is how people should remove hair from the armpits and “shave the pubic area.” And this applies to both men and women, it was promptly clarified. (more…)
Do the halal butchers have any reason to be thankful to the New York Times? Indeed, they do. For apparently goat meat is the new fad, and of course our Muslim brothers have more goat than your average grocery in America. I remember reading Henry Alford’s funny article (“How I Learned to Love Goat Meat“) in the NYT a couple of months ago, but did not realize it’s actually affected the New York eating scene, as evident from this writer’s confession to his new “culinary obsession.” But for my desi friends, I’ve just got to quote the following from Alford:
When New York magazine proclaimed eating goat a “trendlet” last summer, one reader wrote on the magazine’s Web site, “Here are white people again!!!! Acting like they invented goat meat.”
LOL. To be honest, I have a love-hate relationship with goat meat. There’s no denying that Bengalis consider it a bit of a delicacy. Whenever I go home, my mom likes to plan out all my few days there just so she can make sure I get to eat all the things I “need to” (according to her), and that includes a fine khashi’r gosht dish at least once during the trip. But there’s an art to the whole thing, from the quality of meat you manage to buy to the way you cook, and so just like bad art, it may turn out to be rather unappealing if there’s a glitch at any stage of the process. You have to, for instance, bring the right balance to your eclectic mix of spices, achieve the right tenderness, and get rid of the notorious smell (Apparently, even “Chaucer said they ’stinken,’” like six centuries ago). Suffice it to say, I trust my mom to handle it much better than my relatively inexperienced cooking hands.
crhad Goat Meat
As I procrastinate writing a paper on Abbasid history, I thought the following may be a source of some amusement:
Al-Fadl ibn al-Rabi’ said, “When Muhammad al-Amin succeeded his father Harun al-Rashid as Caliph in the year 193 [809], he ordered me to count the clothing, furnishings, vessels, and equipment in the stores. I summoned the secretaries and storekeepers and continued counting for four months, during which I inspected treasures which I did not dream the caliphal stores contained. Then I ordered them to set down a total for each kind. The list of contents was as follows:
- 4,000 embroidered robes,
- 4,000 silk cloak lined with sable, mink, and other furs
- 10,000 shirts and shifts
- 10,000 caftans
- 2,000 drawers of various kinds
- 4,000 turbans (more…)
Filed under: Trivialities
Have I ever mentioned that the folks at KabobFest totally rock? And they’re hilarious. Especially when they illustrate and advise you on the thirteen kinds of Arab men you should never date. Check it out! Since this was on guys who live in the States, my long-time blog-friend Roba offers a follow-up guide to Arab men in the Arab world that you shouldn’t date.
Filed under: Trivialities
Am I the only only one who did not know that Steve Jobs is half Arab? His biological father was a Syrian immigrant dude. A cousin just happened to mention it as a random fun fact (adding that “no wonder he looks so Middle Eastern”). Here’s a bit about his mythic background I found in a profile from The Observer:
The first unlikely player in the story is Abdulfattah John Jandali, from Syria, a political science professor who went to San Francisco. In 1955, his relationship with student Joanne Carole Schieble produced a son, whom she put up for adoption on condition that he be adopted by college graduates. A lawyer and his wife were selected, but decided at the last minute they actually wanted a girl. So, in the middle of the night, a call was made to would-be adopters Paul and Clara Jobs: ‘We have an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?’ Yes, they did. Only later did it emerge that Clara never graduated from college and Paul never graduated from high school. Schieble refused to sign the adoption papers but gave in a few months later when the working-class couple promised that the boy would one day go to college.They kept their promise, at the cost of their life savings, only for 17-year-old Jobs to drop out after six months. He slept on friends’ floors, returned Coke bottles to earn five cents so he could buy food and walked seven miles to town every Sunday to get one decent meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. ‘However,’ Jobs says, ‘I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life.’ ["The non-stop revolutionary," The Observer. Jan 29, 2006]
Filed under: Trivialities
While looking up the word Streichhölzer on an online German-English dictionary, I came across the phrase bengalisches Hölzchen that was listed there as well. It apparently means a “Bengal match,” which I’ve never heard of before. On further investigation, I came across this webpage where various people offered translations for bengalische Fackeln, meaning Bengal torches/flares. According to wiki, a Bengal match is apparently a “a firework producing a relatively long-burning, coloured flame.” I wonder how these got to be named after Bengal.
So, y’all know how Facebook has this new feature in your homepage called “People You May Know”? (basically just a strategy for FB’s hegemonic empire to further encroach upon our lives). Well, occasionally it does show people I know, though most of them are ones I don’t know well enough to be FB-friends with. So today it showed this one person whose last name happens to be the same as that of a very famous artist, who I happen to be a fan of. It’s not a rare last name, but just out of curiosity I clicked to open up the profile, where I noticed that this person’s high school is in the same city that the artist lives in (a city that is also very much at the heart of said artist’s work). So as an expert researcher, the next thing I did was to quickly open up the wikipedia entry for the artist, and voila! Artist has a child of the same first-name as this person on Facebook! Small world, eh?
Filed under: Trivialities
Can jinn be gay? Believe it or not, someone actually googled that odd but incredibly amusing question and ended up on this blog sometime last week. Not that I ever pondered such queer [sic] and important matters, but the search engines have obviously noted the occurence of both keywords in my past writing. I found it so hilarious that anyone would even think of such a question, that I decided I must devote an entire post to the various search strings that have led people to this humble blog.
There is something strangely voyeuristic in the enterprise of recording web referrals (precisely why we bloggers are so keen on tracking our visitors!), but it is also immensely enlightening, albeit somewhat disturbing. Of course, we all know what most people are looking for on the internet. But behind the facade of such ‘perversions’, we don’t always notice the more fascinating people–like the ones in quest of our invisible homosexual friends residing inside obscure magic lamps.
Someone landed on my blog when they googled this: “bengalis eat fish thats why they are intelligent.” Hah: well, I’m Bengali and I don’t really eat fish, but I suppose it’s flattering that people do think Bengalis…are intelligent, whatever the cause! Indeed, someone else once found my blog using the search string: “bengalis are intelligent” (Seriously, not helping our ego!). One person, however, was more on the side of inquiring than of confirming: “are bengalis intelligent“? Well, I do hope they found the answer! Someone else, on the other hand, seemed more bothered about “why bengali people eat fish more“!
Someone was wanting to know “how to fold a vermeer turban.” I found this quite amusing, and I’m sure this blog came up on Google because I once wrote about Girl with a Pearl Earring. Someone searched “‘the chinatown bus’ orientalism“! I often take the inexpensive Chinatown bus from Boston to NYC, but I never wondered about possible Orientalist implications!? Following are some other funny and curious search strings that have led people to this blog:
- indian girl jewish boy
- narcissistic feminists distorted world views
- tortilla vs. chapati
- airport taxi prank phone call desi
- being a male
- were the poeple in egypt white
- uncircumcised infidel
- do recyclabes get recycled or trashed in austin
- white supermacist organization
- marrying a phd guy
Homosexuality is a popular topic of concern. Someone asked Google, “how does lesbianism existed“? Ha ha ha: that’s definitely one of the funniest ever! Related, and perhaps the longest search string I’ve encountered, was this: “islamic jurisprudence generally considers that attraction towards beautiful youths is normal and natural.” (If you’re wondering if that’s true, see this post). Someone else was looking for “gay pakistani men UAE“. Sorry to disappoint, but I suppose they should be looking on Craigslist or something?
It seems that my post on sex with jinns had stirred quite a lot of interest, and consequently ‘jinn’ is now one of the top keywords leading to my blog. Here are some related search activities:
- are jinns real
- does jinns have females
- marriage with jinns
- djinn rape
- those who uses jinn for personal uses
- muslim sex with a jinn
- jinns sleeping
- getting jinns off you
LOL, whoever’s trying to get a sticky jinn off their back, I hope they’ve had luck!
Now, on to the more disturbing ones. Someone was looking to find out “how to make rope for execution“! Perhaps worse, “clean and quick hanging execution“! Someone else wanted a “drop chart for execution.” While I hope none of these were suicidal excursions, I certainly hope I didn’t inadvertently help somebody figure out how to hang a person!
And, last but not least: sex! Unfortunately, I’ve been getting an overwhelming amount of traffic from people searching Google Images for cute or hot or sexy “indian girls.” The reason, I realized, is that I once blogged about the two British Bengali girls who acted in a Harry Potter film and had included a photo from Dan Radcliffe’s website. The sad reality, of course, is that the more that some people follow these specific search results to land on your blog, the more and more it happens with other people as well. Some people, however, have rather specific interests: there have been those looking for “indian girls in dubai” or, more often, “indian girls in UK.” Below are a few notable sex-related search strings:
- moghul emperor sex
- woman has sex with sleeping man
- fiqh of sex
- hijabi sex blog photo
Perhaps the most disturbing of all time was this: “hot sex with hot grand ma in bangladesh“!! And on that twisted note, I’ll end here.
Filed under: Trivialities
The other day I learned for the first time that you should apparently never open an umbrella indoors or you’ll bring bad luck to everyone around! First, one of my colleagues was literally shocked that I did precisely that, and second, they were all really surprised that I never knew this before! A friend later verified that this is in fact one of the most oft-quoted superstitions, in addition to the one about the ladders. I tried recalling other such culturally-specific beliefs that I’m aware of, but realized that I have a rather poor memory when it comes to superstitions (although I do know about the bad luck surrounding the jharu, or household broom, in the Bengali imagination).
I found this good webpage that attempts to trace the history of the umbrella superstition. All this talk of umbrellas reminded me of the time in high school when some of my friends and I, in usual rhetorical buffoonery, would often talk about the “upside-down umbrella” — in reference to the fact that umbrellas are always carried upside down. For some reason or another, we found this observation rather intriguing, and probably even debated whether umbrellas had a legitimate top or bottom! Sometimes I’ve even found myself pondering the unusual ridiculousness of the sight of an umbrella flipping outward when caught in a storm. There’s either the mild embarassment when it happens to ourselves, or, when it happens to someone else on the street, it’s us secretly laughing at the vulnerability of the other. This probably also goes back to the cartoons we grew up watching: I don’t know if others agree, but I think this was a ubiquitous funny scene in many cartoons.
Considering the ugly weather we’ve been having lately in Boston, it’s only natural I should waste so much time thinking or writing about umbrellas…!
Filed under: Trivialities
Here’s a quick e-mail exchange I had the other day with this guy. I wrote:
Hi,
I am one of the current tenants at … …, and I got your e-mail address from … I was wondering if you guys still had a spot left to sublet for the summer, so I could continue living here through then. That would really save me a lot of trouble. Unfortunately my plans for the summer weren’t quite confirmed until recently, so I couldn’t get acting on this earlier.
Please let me know either way. Thanks!
And here’s the reply I got in less than one minute:
Yes, there is still a spot. You see you problem with you subletting the summer. I’m forwarding your email to …, who is taking care of the subletting stuff.
Glad to hear from you.
Italics mine: this was incomprehensible to the point of being funny, and I actually found myself laughing as I read it. I’m generally pretty good at deciphering typos and misphrased language, but if anyone can make any semblance of meaning out of that sentence, do let me know!
