I've been locked out
July 29, 2005
I'm being driven out of my own home.
No, no. Let me back up. My father and sister left yesterday for a month in the US [tears...it's the first time my sis and I will be apart for this long since I moved back to Egypt. And we've grown even more tight in these past couple months, if that's even possible.] But, ANYWAY, it's just me and my Mama left here at home, and my Mama is taking this opportunity to do all the things that she never has the time or ability to do when Baba is actually here. I wish this meant that she will be taking long lunches with her girlfriends, pampering herself at the spa, or, I dunno, getting her nails done twice a week.
But in my mom's world this basically means one of two things - either it's time to study or it's time to religicize!
Since leaving Kuwait and coming back to Egypt to fulfill their lifelong dream of being shackled with even more family responsibilities - er, I mean living back in the homeland - my parents have also become noticeably more religious. Which is fine by me, because I think that they are fundamentally good, kind, responsible,
understanding people, and I see this increasingly religious turn in their lives simply as a sign that they are getting older and they know it, and they're trying to cover all their bases. While their increasing devoutness does occasionally cause a clash or two between me and them I
think my parents try to understand that the change has been in them, and not me and let me off the hook. Most of the time, anyway.
But due to my mother's new initiative I am being driven out of my own home. For months now - alongside working on getting a degree in agriculture, and certification in real estate appraisal - my mom has also been trying to learn how to properly recite the Quran [a nice combination of studying and religicizing], and she has enlisted the help of her eldest brother's eldest, most religious son, Ahmed, to do it. Ahmed is a good kid on paper - he prays every prayer at the mosque, and he is the top of his class in medical school [knock on wood], on top of which he is handsome, he writes freaking poetry, and he is very well-mannered. But Ahmed is very much aware of what a good, handsome kid he is. And I can't stand him. My mother, in her attempt to increase her good works, has not only invited Ahmed over once a week to help teach her how to properly recite the Quran, but now that the house is relatively empty,
she has invited anyone in the family who wants to learn to come too.
There are a lot of things that I don't like about religion, and some things I very specifically don't like about Islam, but for whatever reason the thing I can't stand most is the way the Quran is recited. Perhaps only once
have a I found a Quranic reciter that I could actually listen to, and frankly - aside from the fairly important fact that I'm a very non-practicing Muslim [of which my family is obviously not aware] - I'm not interested in learning to do it myself. Especially not from Ahmed who, have I mentioned, I can't stand? And especially not in front of my family, who love to take my linguistic and/or social blunders and hold them up for all to see. Seriously, they still joke about how I mispronounced "navy blue" once, EIGHT YEARS AGO. I put the wrong accent on the last syllable, and somehow they manage to bring it up at least once at every family function. So, I'm not feeling too excited about all of us sitting around, and me making mistakes in pronunciation. Especially since I have a feeling in this situation they won't so much find it funny as shameful.
Don't get me wrong - I love most of my family. I support my mother in
doing whatever it is she has to do to make herself happy as long as she's not imposing it on anyone else [which she's really not]. I even wouldn't mind learning to memorize the Quran, even though I'm not religious because, it's still some sort of knowledge, and I'm all about the knowledge.
But I don't want to do this. And so, in order to save my mother the embarrassment of having to explain why her youngest daughter doesn't want to learn how to recite the Quran, I have to instead make myself scarce for the 1 or 2 hours that they will be here every week. Today, I hit the gym for an exhausting workout. [So, hey! I guess everybody wins.] And hopefully next week they'll have it on Wednesday afternoon so I'll have the excuse of being at work, and I think that they plan to keep doing it on Wednesdays, so aside from today I shouldn't have any real problem avoiding these recitation sessions.
But - especially after having to quietly sneak out of the door today to go to the gym, because I was still in the house when my cousin arrived - I can't shake the feeling that I'm a shameful outcast being driven out of my own home.