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Guest Post #1: The Puppets Want to Talk About The Children

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Deonna Kelli Sayed and her handsome son, Ibrahim. Deonna Kelli Sayed is an American-Muslim writer, author and cultural commentator.

Today, the Karagoz puppet troupe and I are so very honored to share an essay written by our e-friend, Deonna Kelli Sayed.  Deonna was kind enough to offer to write a guest post for me while my shoulder/writing capacity heals.  I am very moved by this act of kindness and sharing but even more moved by her incredibly thoughtful critical consideration of what it can mean to be a transcultural or cross-cultural child in the United States of America – and a bit about what it can be like to be the Mom of that child (or in her case, the Farsi Nanna).

I should mention that my M. (along with my internal puppet, Yehuda Rebbe, the wise man) was stopped in his tracks by her writing as I read it aloud to him last night – and immediately went to read more of her stuff.  She’s a powerful writer!  Although I have never met Deonna in person, I feel she is a kindred spirit and soul sister of some sort.  Thank you so much, Deonna!

Here is her bio: Deonna Kelli Sayed is an American-Muslim writer and author of Paranormal Obsession: America’s Fascination with Ghosts & Hauntings, Spooks & Spirits. She is also included in the New York Times featured anthology, Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American-Muslim Women. Visit her at deonnakellisayed.com and her blog at deonnakellisayed.wordpress.com to learn more. She is also on Twitter @deonnakelli and Facebook at DeonnakSayed.

And without further ado, here is her essay, entitled “The Puppets Want to Talk About the Children”

___________________

I call on Yehuda Rebbe as my muse for this blog, for he is of the world and he is wise.

And, Yehuda Rebbe is appropriate because my son’s name is Ibrahim, as in Abraham-Prophet-of-Monotheistic-Faiths. Plus, it is important to reveal at this moment – if the puppets will allow me – that Ibrahim’s nickname is “Hebrew.” I cannot tell you how, why, or when this particular nickname started. Nor can I suggest that it is wise calling a little brown, multiraced Muslim child “Hebrew” in public. It is not meant to offend. What such a name suggests is how complex and global a child is when he arises from multiple cultures, and his mother named him in hopes he would embody the best of all faith traditions.

Odd little creatures emerge when spawned by and in-between the precious spaces of language, geography, and identity.

Yehuda Rebbe nods in approval regarding my son, Ibrahim, being Hebrew by name. He also approves of complicated, culturally complex offspring. His nose wrinkles a bit when he reminds me that such children are the future of America — and also of the world.

Ibrahim is an American-Afghan-Muslim boy aged ten years old.  According to the US Census, he is Asian-American of mixed race heritage. His mother is an effervescently white American-Muslim (christened Methodist, raised Southern Baptist, Muslim long before marriage) who has lived around the world. His father is light wheat-colored man from Afghanistan who currently lives in Sudan. Ibrahim was born in Baku, Azerbaijan in an elite women’s hospital where the toilet tissue was the shade and texture of soft sandpaper. By the time he was six, he had more passport stamps than George Bush, Jr did when he took office.

I mention skin hues not because they carry great philosophical importance, but because his mother, born and raised in racially segregated part of the rural South, has reared a boy who does not identify with America the same way she does.

This is a good thing. Many of us are assigned our race and cultural status at birth, even if we do not agree with such labels. It is rare that we jump ship. But some do circumvent such assignments, either through marriage, travel, or general life experience.  Then there are the children who are products of cross-cultural marriages. They get to write a whole new identity all for themselves; to discard that they don’t want, to keep what they do.

They get to make brand new puppets.

Ibrahim was four years old and attending a preschool in Bahrain when I first asked him what color he was.

“Brwown,” he said.

“Umm, you mean, you aren’t white?” I asked.

“No nanna, I’m brwown.”  (Yes, he calls his me nanna, because his father used to tell him to go find his nann-id, “your mother,” in Farsi. So my son essentially calls me what is equivalent to “granny” in some languages around the world). Of course he saw himself as brown. He went to school with Arab and Pakistan kids with names, foods, and a families that looked more like his own than those of his blond, British classmates.  His cultural experience wasn’t like the other white kids.

It was seven years ago that he decided to be brown. Not much has changed, although he has upgraded to “tan.”

Ibrahim knows that he is different.  “I’m a really complicated person,” is his 10-yr-old way of saying he is transcultured. He has lived and traveled around the world. He spent this past summer in Africa with his father.  The interesting thing about being a child conceived between multiple cultures (and I say between, because he is not a product solely of America or Afghanistan; he is a creation of many cultures) is that he understands that he is always bigger than the moment; that there are always another contexts to consider.

Some people will spend a lifetime before they learn that one, tiny little lesson.

Two years ago, I asked him to list all of his ethnicities, just to see how informed he was of his genetic and cultural profile. He held up both hands and starting counting on his fingers.

“I am Afghan and American. That is two. I am also Pashtun, so that is three. I am Azerbaijan, so that is four….”

“Honey,” I stop him, “American and Azerbaijan aren’t ethnicities. They are countries.”

“I know,” he says, “but they are in me.”

He continues, “And I’m part British, Irish, and Native American from your side, and I’m Red Neck from grandma…”

I interrupt him again, “Ibrahim, redneck isn’t an ethnicity or a race. What race are you?”

“But that is part of me!” He threw his hands down, overwhelmed by the task. “You know what? I’m just part of a human race. That is all.”

People from different cultures sometimes meet and fall in love. They often have children. Sometimes these children turn out to adopt the Jersey Shore parts of American culture just to rebel against the parents. Perhaps this aspect of America is easier to obtain that the other parts. But then, some of these offspring create a brand new cultural space; they redefine the very meaning of cultural identity in a global society

**

Ibrahim’s parents are no longer together. His father is abroad doing United Nations work; his mother is raising him as a single Muslim woman and trying to find her place in the world. What she misses most is the nicely shaped cross-cultural box that married provided.  Being married to someone from another culture and being Muslim made you Super Othered, and by some accounts, Super Cool. Now, the mother is just a globally-nuanced white woman working a low-wage day job with an interesting son who doesn’t see himself as part of white America.

The son knows that he has an Afghan father and a culturally complex American mother.  Who do you most identify with, the mother asks?  The son looks up at her with his big brown eyes, “Well, pader is from one culture, but you are from, like, many different cultures, so I see myself more like you,” he comments, before he returns doing his very American, very 10 year old Minecraft.

I can hear the puppets applauding now. Yehude Rebbe even speaks: “Score one for the white Muslim girl.”

—————-

Deonna Kelli Sayed is an American-Muslim writer and author of Paranormal Obsession: America’s Fascination with Ghosts & Hauntings, Spooks & Spirits. She is also included in the New York Times featured anthology, Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American-Muslim Women. Visit her at deonnakellisayed.com and her blog at deonnakellisayed.wordpress.com to learn more. She is also on Twitter @deonnakelli and Facebook at DeonnakSayed.

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The oppositional Q, or, “only Allah is perfect”

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My very own "oppositional Q" in an embroidery sampler, made when I was 8 years old, in 1977

It was midnight, I couldn’t sleep, and cleaning out my closet seemed like a very good idea for what to do with myself. At the back of the closet, I found a set of framed photos, silk-screened prints and paintings that had never made it onto the walls of our home – and I also found an alphabet-themed sewing sampler, completed by me at the age of eight.

Picking it up and dusting it off with a soft cloth, I marveled at the different colors of each of the letters of the alphabet – brought to life through embroidery floss across a rainbow spectrum.

I remember that autumn day, after an especially nice after school snack on the warm stones of the back steps with my Mum. I had a hot mug of milky tea in hand as she pulled out a new sampler from a crinkly blue and white Aegean-colored paper bag from Woolworth’s. “It’s a sewing sampler pattern, Liz, it’s an alphabet! Perhaps we can practice your vocabulary words while you sew one letter per day, let’s get started today!”

I don’t recall my reaction, but there I was, minutes later, sitting in the bright yellow flowered chair, freshly-pressed sampler cloth clicked into the embroidery hoop, needle at the ready.

All of this came flooding back to me, now a 43 year-old adult in a mango-colored room in the middle of the night, just 12 miles away from my childhood home. Wrapping a blanket around my shoulders in the chilly New England winter, I plopped down into a comfy chair and stared at this window to my childhood. I began to remember sewing one letter per day, while my Mum quizzed me on vocabulary words starting with that very same letter. While I later bombed my standardized math tests, I aced the vocabulary one. I also remembered her reading to me from Vladimir Nabokov‘s Speak, Memory! in which Nabokov relates with great zest his childhood conversations with his mother about how the colors of the alphabet on his wooden blocks were just, well, all wrong. We read that section of the book over and over again, debating the colors of the alphabet – before choosing the color of the embroidery floss to be used on the next letter in the sampler, the next day.

Noticing that my cold toes were calling me with ping-y chills, I curled my legs underneath me on the pillowy chair, and as I shifted my weight, all of a sudden I saw it, the letter Q. There it was, that letter Q, sewn in a burgundy to coral spectrum-toned embroidery floss, perhaps a queenly-choice for color? I can’t remember. But more important than the color, was the shape of the Q itself, plastered to muslin cloth in an eternal unhappy embrace. The shape of the cross-stitches does not belie the grumpiness and anger and resentment that must have coursed through me that day. Short crosses, long crosses, out of the line crosses. I was clearly not a happy camper when that Q was stitched.

Looking at that oppositional Q, I began to remember the arguments that led to my begrudging give-in to sitting and sewing that preceded the alphabet discussions ranging from Wordly Wise vocabulary quiz-books to Nabokov. In retrospect, I am sure Mum was trying to engage me by “starting where I was at,” given that my love of words, etymology and collecting alphabet books had already manifested as a young child. Also, this was also a very l-a-d-y-l-i-k-e way to spend one’s time, something to be encouraged.

Come to think of it, the "S" looks pretty oppositional and surly as well

So, there it sits, the Q that symbolizes the height of my childhood protests against the way things must be – and against the attainment of proper behavior, maintained honor and overall ladylikeness (Kenne, the Karagoz Puppet who is the Queen of Manners and Maintenance of Ladylike Behavior sniffs her disapproval at this moment).

From now on, I decided in that midnight moment, I am going to call it “The Oppositional Q Sampler.” It was that very Q that ended my potential to be a fabulous seamstress. And it all ended through what I had learned from my Father, the important life lesson that nobody is perfect – or as they saying goes amongst carpet weavers - “only Allah is perfect.”

But let me start before the moment The Oppositional Q was born and go back to my earlier childhood in New England – not the expected place where a few of the more informal tenets of Islam might be taught during the 1970s. Many Saturday nights were spent sitting by the old stone fireplace with my family, the glowing coals of a perfect fire heating the tips of my toes as the deep blue dusk crept across the windows and up onto the roof in wintertime. We spent so much time sitting in that space, atop one of my parents’ prized Persian carpets.

“We bought this carpet for you two,” my Father would say, looking at me and my sister, “because it has patterns to stimulate your imagination.” Leaning back in his chair to watch us play, curls of blue-grey cigar smoke curling into S-shapes before him, he might gesture over to the other side of the living room to the other carpet, saying “and that one, that one is a renegade carpet that we purchased for you as well – as it is covered in humans and animals in a Persian hunting scene – which is apparently unusual, to show life forms when, after all, only Allah is perfect.”

“Only Allah is perfect.” I grew up hearing this phrase from my Father, so it was a familiar one by that point. Now, what is odd about this is the fact that my Father is not a Muslim, nor has he ever lived in or even visited a Muslim country, to my knowledge. I doubt that my Father even knew much about Islam before I met M. and decided to become betrothed to the tall man from Turkey and we all got a little bit more interested in Turkey, the Middle East and Islam. Let me tell you that my Father is an old-school New England Yankee, with frugal Unitarian roots, but somehow, he and my Mum became enthralled with Persian carpets.

And it was in the study of Persian carpets (as everything in my parents’ life appeared to involve a passion for learning and studying) that my Father learned the phrase “only Allah is perfect.” And it stuck in what I consider to be the most pure and true of ideal cross-cultural moments that move on to last a lifetime. Apparently, as I have learned from my Father in later years, and later confirmed with a rug salesman during a Turkish translation that M. facilitated, all practicing Muslim rug-makers leave a purposeful imperfection in their artistry when weaving carpets. Presumably an effort to rein in the potential for hubris. Usually, my Father would restate this phrase when something had gone wrong – and I think it was a brilliant way to try to instill a very good message to what must have been a very tense young girl.

So, I can remember the phrase being issued quietly from the olive-green silk chair where Dad smoked cigars (which had to be when I was very small as both the chair and the cigars were none too long for the world based on our protest). I remember him intoning this phrase when I was battling a perfectionist moment in house-of-cards building and when I failed to ace my Mother-provided daily vocabulary quiz or struggled with a math problem. Mum had a passion for etymology that I have inherited, and I think that maybe she didn’t quite embrace the “only Allah is perfect” vibe as much as my much calmer Father did. She was a good Episcopalian after all. ;)

Example of the kind of embroidery sampler my Granny would have made while growing up in rural Spain - and it would have been per-fect.

The phrase was bandied about a lot, as I recall. We were a very imperfect family (and which family is not). The use of this phrase had its limits, though, when it came to my mother. In order to explain this, I have to take you into back into the realm of embroidery. You see, my Granny, a lady of a different era than we might be able to imagine today as coming from our lifetime, had grown up in southern Spain, in the town of Aguilas by the sea.

Raised by British nannies in a cool, dark stone house that protected her fair skin from the ravages of the sun, she grew up in the shade of the home’s inner courtyard, making lace and embroidering her trousseau to the sounds of the Mediterranean across the street. Her only schooling outside of the home consisted of a 6-month stint at a girl’s finishing school in Liverpool, England.

When I first went to this house in Aguilas in the year 2000, I stood in that courtyard and closed my eyes, listening to the progeny of my Granny’s waves still just on the other side of the courtyard wall, almost 100 years later. I kept expecting to see some errant embroidery, left behind on the garden wall, or on a marble side table.

This is a happy girl engaging in some after-school embroidery. This is NOT me as a young lady.

Granny, the ultimate lady in every respect, was perfection when it came to sewing, lace-making or embroidery – and she passed this on, perhaps one degree less, to my own Mum. And it was, therefore, a necessity that I too should engage in this activity. The problem was, as I realize now, I hated it. Hated. It. And the other problem was, both my mother and my Granny, they didn’t care that I hated it. Each day after school (or after swimming, in the summer months), they would sit me down for sewing hour.

I would rather have been anywhere else – preferably reading, as I recall, up in the tall hemlock tree in back of the house – away from everything and able to spin magical tales in my mind after finishing book after book. When I was done with the books, I would drop them to the hemlock-needle-padded floor below before climbing down again. But there I stayed, embroidering, the good girl, boiling inside with resentment and sharp anger like the accidental pricks of pins into my finger tips as I held my embroidery loop. I only mastered the cross-stitch – which sewing enthusiasts will tell you, is the bottom of the barrel.

And this brings us back to that oppositional Q and the big secret of the way the sampler was finished. I don’t recall exactly why I was so out of sorts on the day the Q was being sewn, but I do recall my Mum’s increasing frustration with me. Perhaps it was a bad day for both of us, lord knows, there were a lot of tough days while growing up. After finishing the Q, I turned to my mother, and likely spat out the words – “there, it’s done. Can I read now?”

What I recall are her protestations at the messiness of the Q and her request that I cut out the stitches to fix it in a more proper manner. As if my soul was a firehose ready to pressure-push out my feelings, I turned to my Mum with what can only be described as a “wicked pissed” look, in New England parlance, and gave this retort “Only Allah is perfect, Mum.”

I think my Mum gave up on her efforts to get me to embroider that day, some might say, her efforts to fit a square peg (me) into a round hole (ladylike behavior). The horrible truth is, she finished most of the rest of the sampler for me and we never discussed it again. She had it framed and I have dutifully carried it with me from home to home for the rest of my life, never putting it on my wall. And there it sits, in my closet, the oppositional Q, reminding me now, in my mid-life challenge time, “only Allah is perfect.” I am sure there is a lesson to be found there whenever I need one.

Likened to a Taliban on the cross-town bus: A sparkly response

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The inspiration for today’s pit-stop on the cross-cultural road trip of this Turkish-American marriage sprung up while we were watching a re-run of the television sitcom “Seinfeld.” Let me explain that almost 20 years after moving to the United States, M. experienced cable TV for the first time in our home – when I plugged the cable sticking out of the wall into my TV (he didn’t have one before) to see if it still worked. We only had access to the Food Network, and it was love at first viewing. However, once we purchased cable services, M. fell truly, madly and deeply in love with Seinfeld.

Now, Seinfeld, of course, is an American sitcom that is best known for both “being about nothing” as well as its fabulously over-the-top stereotypes of a raggedy bunch of crass New Yorkers. The puppets are learning a lot about American life through this television show – every night at 7 pm they are lined up behind M. to watch the re-run. I am not sure what I think about this, but try to join in once in a while in order to share in the learning experience. I feel as though M. is catching up on a lot of what has already been “culturally said” and perhaps is culturally obvious to me…just as I might while watching Turkish drama series episodes from over his shoulder on the laptop (if I understood Turkish better).

So perhaps it was the Seinfeld-infused environment that led M. to share what happened to him on the bus today as he knows this kind of thing makes me nervous. The puppets, of course, saw this coming down the pike, and all put their hands to their ears and leaned in towards M. as he plopped down on the couch saying “you’ll never guess what happened to me on the bus today.”

If anything, M. looks like Hamid Karzai, but with hair – and Hamid Karzai is certainly not a Talibani

[Cross-cultural interlude for explanation: Now let me interrupt myself now and say that it took about 5 minutes from this point to the heart of the story. I don't know if it is M. or all Turks, but the telling of a story starts at the veeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrry beginning (e.g. I took the 8:35 bus instead of the 8:17 bus, so I didn't know the people) and goes through allllllllllllllllllllll the details on the way to the point. I sat, nodding my head, as if making my way through an asteroid field of detritus in the form of non-relevant information (or so my overly analytical and American to-the-point mind things).]

Finally, just as Karagöz fell over onto my shoulder in an active listening stance, M. got to the point of his story. “So these two ladies,” he said, gesturing wildly like a somewhat subdued Kramer character on Seinfeld, “they were in their forties – and they were looking at me and whispering.”

Nodding my head as Esma the hippie tolerance-minded puppet cued me, I murmured “Mmmmm hmmm,” waiting for the other shoe to drop.

M. pointed his finger up as he said “I heard them say – ‘he looks like a Taliban!”

Now this, this is my personal stereotype of a Talibani (image from The Nation)

If my eyebrows could rise any higher than they did, they would have. All of the puppets cried “shiver my timbers” as they fell backwards in shock. Karagöz did a power whoop. Yehuda Rebbe spluttered in shock, holding his head in his hands. I mean – M. looks nothing like these four dudes on the left, maybe a bit like Hamid Karzai or a younger :) version of the gentleman on the bottom left, but I would never, ever liken him to a Talibani.

[Cross-cultural context-setting moment: Now let me set the stage a bit. We live in a town that is often referred to with "the People's Republic of..." before it, indicating that it is a very left-leaning, diversity-accepting town. Now, we know that this is often a load of malarkey, given some world-famous racist cop-related events over the past year or so - not to mention our own experience with ethnic stereotyping about M. But, still...I just wonder at people's observational powers sometimes, really.]

Bringing my mind back to the couch, where I was sitting with M. as he was describing his bus ride. it was then that I noticed the wicked sparkle in M.’s eye. “Oh no,” I said, “what then?” Karagöz was already jumping up and down in anticipation – he and M. are at times like peas in a pod. They love moments like this – moments when the potential for shock factor is almost appropriate. “So I turned to them, and I said – ‘but I’m a good one!” His speech glittery with pride at his mastery of the moment, he continued “They were so embarrassed that they looked away with a studied desperateness” and I imagined the women, like little baby goats clambering up a rocky hillside on a rainy day.

OK, I have to admit this Hazara Talibani does bear some resemblance in the beard department…but still…

Now, on the face of it, this sentence doesn’t make all that much sense, as M. is not a Talibani at all – and I would argue does not look anything like one. However, his point was to let them know that he had heard them – and to shock them a bit (Karagoz inserts this as he reads over my shoulder “damn tootin’”). It’s all about taking it in stride, and taking control of what you can, in these moments, I suppose. Kenne, the Queen of Manners was not even aghast at his bold and brusque behavior – calling attention instead to the not-so-subtle women. “Of course,” she sniffed, “making an observation about a person is not a crime…but to do it so brazenly? That is not polite, given the stereotypes people have about the Taliban – as terrible as they may be.”

Taking it in stride is what I love about M. – even though I fear for the chance that he will run into a less-friendly audience in some wrong place, wrong time kind of way…I guess I would need to make mirth out of it too if I were M., bravo!

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