Freedom from the Forbidden: My Heartbeat

< Pre-post: Sorry in advance about the empty spaces! I'll have to fix that another time. Thanks for understanding!>

So, beloved readers, I went to visit my family last Thursday and returned Monday night. It was a wonderful time. Seeing Kashmala truly makes me happy. Not having her is simply akin to not worth living. I have these big philosophical questions like what's the purpose of life after all when I don't have Kashmala near me to pinch every other minute or to watch her do all these cute, precious, addddorable things. Really, it's just not worth it. I want to cry when I think of her. I no longer have the pleasure of looking forward to going home from a tiring day at school just to see Kashmala's face and hear her cute little talks. And it's not like I can excuse myself from my dumb work every 15 minutes to bug Kashmala now :(

I still have her in my life, and that's still something to treasure, of course. But she's not physically with me. I am over a thousand miles away from her, and I can't afford to visit her every weekend. I love her. I miss her. I need her. Seeing her last weekend felt SO beautiful. She's grown up, though -- a little bit, and she's learning to form long, complete, meaningful sentences. She's very intelligent (mashaAllah, tf, tf - akhir khwarza da chaa da, kana? :) (i.e., she is, after all, my niece -- k, kidding) charta nazara na shi), growing more and more beautiful, and is so clever she'll make you laugh like crazy with her tricks and ideas. My whole family is amazed by her. Tf, tf, mashaAllah. With my nephew, we could all understand his intelligence because he was being raised by several college-going aunts, each one with her own interests and skills to pass on to the nephew, and then a grandma and grandpa and parents who were no less valuable. But Kashmala doesn't even have all of us to educate her, so she's just turning out to be naturally intelligent and all :D She gets that from the most intelligent man alive, though - yes, that'd be my father, God bless him infinitely and give him a long, healthy, peaceful, happy life along with my mother. Aameen.

But, anyway, so I've some pictures to share with you in addition to some of the adorable and funny things she does and says that make me long for her more and more. So , here.

Kindly note her nail polish please. Thanks.

~ When she wants to tease my mom, she says loudly, "Mijee [Ammi jee, my mom] wachai daangai" and runs away laughing really hard, with my mom running after her, pretending to be about to scold her and stuff. Wachai Daangai is Pashto for an extremely skinny female (for male, it'd be wcha daanga, I guess). When I was a kid, that's what my family used to refer to me by when they wanted to hurt me. (haha. You know how that works, man.) But she seems to understand that it's supposed to be offensive, so when anyone tells her that she is the one who's wachai daangai, she says, "NO! Kashy no wachai daangai - Kashy wakh!" ("wakh" = kiddy Pashto for something beautiful, stunning, etc., and Kashy is apparently her nickanme. I don't approve of the nickname, but it sounds SO cute when she says it, man!!).

My favorite one! :D That little bear!

~ She refers to herself in third-person: Kashmala is sad, Kashmala is happy, Kashmala fell, Kashmala wants strawberries, etc. etc., she says.

~ She puts my shoes on -- and mine only. I got her a pair of hoes last year that was just like mine, but she never wore it. Oh wait, that may have been her brother; can't remember. 'Cause her brother (now about to turn 8 years old! Tf, tf!) was like this, too. He loved wearing my shoes. And my brother (now about to turn 20, da khaira), too, would put my shoes on all the time. We once got him a pair of shoes that was just like mine when he was around 3 or 4, but he still wouldn't put those ones on :D He still preferred mine ~blushing~ Kids. Them and I just have this special connection. You understand.

~ She wakes my dad up from sleep, tellimg him to sleep in another bed because she wants to put her babies (her dolls, all of whom she has named: there's Minaal, there's ABC, and there's Lilly) to sleep in his bed. Something like that, you can't dismiss as unadorable. We all watch her putting her babies to sleep, which she does so, so well (um, no, don't start telling how it's all so natural 'cause she's a girl and meant to be a mother and hence nurturous and and stuff 'cause I'll prove you wrong). She demands that everyone be quiet while she's putting them to sleep, and it doesn't matter if you're in another room and she's 3 rooms away from you. This one day, she and I were in the living room, and my brother and my nephew were in my brother's room watching something and yelling. And Kashmala yelled out to them to be quiet because she's putting Minaal and Lilly to sleep, but they didn't hear. She looked at me and said, "Shanu, hagho na qalaareegi" (Shanu, they won't stop). And I said, "Tell them again." She yelled again. Finally, she sat there looking at the floor for a good 20-30 seconds, walked near the door to the shoe rack, got my brother's shoe, went to his room, and hit my brother really hard. LOL. I watched and followed her trying rrrreally hard to control my laughter (because if she sees or hears you laughing at something she does, she thinks you're mocking her and then she says, "No! Don't laugh at me!").

~ Ot

her times, she wakes him up saying she wants to put make-up on him (which usually just means cutting napkins into pieces, which takes a lot of time and dad ends up saying, "okay,I'm gonna go now," and she yells "NO NO! I'm not done yet! You don't go!")

~ She doesn't let my dad go to work. It takes a lotta effort to get her offa him so he can leave. Lately, though, he has been telling her, "I'm going to work so I can earn money for you." And she happily lets him go then :p LOL!!!! So when someone asks her where Baba (her name for my dad) is, she says, "He's earning me money." And don't you dare confuse "earning" with "bringing" 'cause she'll correct you: I once told her, "Ahhh, I see! He's gonna bring you money?" She said, "No, no, no, he's going to earn me money." LOL. In Pashto, it's much cuter how she says it, but you get the point, yeah?

k, I'll tell you more another time, I need to get to work now. Oh, and I'll show you videos of her as well, k? But lemme first show you how she picks up the phone, k?