Begum Nawazish Ali: The Drag Queen of Pakistan?

In the Music/Gender class, we were discussing masculinity this week, and I was able to introduce Begum Nawazish Ali, apparently the most popular Pakistani talk show host who hosts this show called Late Night Show with Begum Nawazish Ali. Begum Nawazish's real name is Ali Saleem, is a male (and man), but enjoys performing femininity by playing the role of Begum Nawazish Ali, a Pakistani middle-aged widow of a colonel. She claims she is just doing it for entertainment, but I think there's much more to it than just entertainment and fun -- and anyone would think this. There are thousands of videos of hers on Youtube, including Interviews and, as of recent, a report of his (Ali Saleem's) imprisonment after he abused his mother.

I prefer to refer to Begum Nawazish in the feminine all throughout this post because I'm interested in her femininity. I refer to her in the masculine only when talking about Ali Saleem, not the character. I avoid referring to her as a dragqueen, which is what her act will be interpreted as in the U.S., because I don't know how dragqueening and dragkinging works in Pakistan--yet. Oh, and at the end of this post, I also share two Youtube videos of hers, one an excerpt from her show and the other an Introduction (teaser, really!) to her appearance on Big Boss, another popular talk show.

Debating Well

(I'm posting this here because it turns out that there's no need for it to be in the top Pages section. If you commented, don't worry - I'm going to copy/paste your comments below in the Comments section. Thanks for understanding!)

Pre-pre-post: I'm not sorry for the length. I believe it was necessary.

Pre-post: This should be helpful most for Pashtuns and Muslims. Why? Because, apparently, one Muslim represents ALL of Islam and ALL Muslims; and just one Pashtun represents everything about Pashtuns! That’s just how life works, especially for minorities (Muslims being a minority in the west, that is).

Before you involve yourself in any discussion, be it religious or political or social or of any other sort, please try to remember that not all those who belong to your religion/race will have the same beliefs as you do. That doesn’t mean you get personal with them or play the role of a judge and decide who’s right and who’s wrong. Also keep in mind that we all need to know how to have discussions before we get into them.Why?

A 9th grade English teacher who wished to make his students fit for healthy and intellectual discussions once said to his shy, uninterested-in-talking class, "I think women lack the intellect of men."
And that got everyone talking. As we talked, he listened to us, would nod at times, and then let another person talks as she/he would raise her/his hand.
Once the discussion was over, he said, "I do not personally believe that women lack the intellect of men; I said that only to push you all to talk, to see if you can support your arguments and views or not. We will do this frequently in this class."

The Purpose of Debates? 
Unlike many people, I do not believe that debating has to always come to "common terms." Why does it have to? Doesn't that mean one side has to submit to the beliefs of the other side, or be convinced by it? If "coming to common terms" means, however, that they agree to disagree while trying hard to understand each other in order to respect and tolerate each other, then good; that's fine. But otherwise, no.

I Miss My Mother.

I terribly miss my mother (no, alhamdulillah, she is alive, but it's just that I'm living about a thousand miles away from her right now). I want to go home right now and hug her tightly and just serve her for the rest of my life. You know how when you're away from your mom or dad or someone else you love too much, you think about all the bad things you've done to them? Yeah, well that's what I'm going through right now. I remember all the worst of worst things I've done in front of my mother. All those times I yelled at her; all those times I expressed my disagreement with her violently and in a loud voice; all those times I pushed her aside when she tried to support me by going to the bus stop with me but I didn't want her to go with me because I was a stupid, selfish teenager who thought she was too good to have her mother by her side, but she stayed there anyway until my bus came and she waved goodbye at me and made sure I was safely on the bus; all those times I denied her something she wanted; all those times I couldn't appreciate her when she took best care of me when I was ill,  ruining her own health by not getting enough sleep just to make sure I'd get my health back.

What was wrong with me? What is wrong with every human who can't appreciate their mother? What the hell makes us think we're too good to take perfect care of the ONLY reason we're alive today? If our mothers hadn't existed, if they hadn't chosen to give birth to us, we wouldn't be here. I don't want to assume (and I don't) that everyone's mother is as wonderful, as amazing, as caring, as beautiful as my one (God preserve her and grant her a long life of good health, happiness, and peace), but I sincerely believe no one has a right to disrespect or otherwise offend or hurt their mother. I don't think it matters how your mother treats you. And, yes, I'm fully aware that there are mothers in this world who abandon their children; I think they're wrong in doing this, but I don't know whether it's still okay for the child, when it grows up, to mistreat its mother. But I'm talking about those mothers who are so good to their children, but their children are so selfish and unworthy of the love their mother gives them. Because I believe in the power of good communication and understanding, I believe our problems with our mothers can be solved if we sit them down and get them to understand whatever it is that we want them to understand. Believe me, I know exactly what it's like to disagree with your mother on virtually every single thing, and I know what the consequences of this may be. But none of that matters even a little bit when you think about how much you owe your mother.

Swati Malala Yusufzai, Child Nominee for an International Peace Award

This girl makes me so proud! I can't wait to meet her one day, ka khairee. Keep it up, guley! Qurban de shama!

She has been nominated for International Peace Award, one of the five children worldwide, and it gives me such pleasure and brings such happiness to me and I'm sure all other Pukhtuns that this girl is from Swat. God preserve her boldness, strength, intelligence, and passion for peace! We love you, Gul Makai!

This video is in Pashto, but I just saw an Urdu version of it as well. Only, that one's not available on Youtube yet. In the video, she expresses her feelings about having been nominated for the award, a friend of hers talks about how happy and proud all her friends are of her, and her father says that she represents all Pukhtun girls, especially in Swat, and that all have the intelligence to be like her, that all are indeed Malalais!

I truly now believe that there's some magic and power to the name "Malalai" because there is (not was; is) the Malalai of Maiwand who fought against the British in the Second Anglo-Afghan War between 1878 and 1880; then we have Malala Kakar who was killed in October 2008 by the Taliban in Afghanistan because she, a police officer,  bravely imprisoned men who beat up or otherwise abused their wives; and then we have another contemporary Malalai, Malalai Joya, an ex-parliamentarian in the Afghan government, dubbed "the woman who will not be silenced," constantly receiving death threats from her own people. 

I am going to name my first daughter Malalai. And her last name will be her maternal last name. For many reasons. Ka khairee.

Now, enjoy the following! And remember: You have a voice, women!

How I Define the Educated

I've been wanting to write on this ever since the third or fourth week of my Music/gender class, taught by an amazing, generous, and open-minded ethnomusicologist. If you asked me, I still don't know what "open-minded" would be defined as, since I think it can be very relevant at times, but I know what "educated" means now. I know what an educated crowd looks like. I know what what the impact of an educated society would be like. I know what education has the power to do to you and others around you. Of course, I can't explain all of this in just one sentence or one definition--so prepare for another lengthy post of mine, dear readers!

As I may have mentioned in other blog posts, I'm taking three classes. One is the music/gender/sexuality one I mentioned above and that I'm writing the Gender Performance paper for; another's sort of an Intro to feminist/gender studies for graduates; and the last but never least is the Self and the Other one for which I'm writing that Pashtun Identity/Pashtun Nationalism Online paper.

Pamela Geller and the Halal Turkey Issue

Pamela Geller is one of the most ignorant influential speakers out there. It is truly depressing that she's popular and widely-read. It makes me fear the future of America more than the thought that Herman Caine is running for presidency (seriously, who convinced him to run?! What's wrong with you, folks?)  But I'm sure as heck grateful for people like the Keith Olbermann to respond to her ignorance. Enjoy!

Research Methods: Gender, Sexuality in Ethnographic Fieldwork

So! I'd like to share here some questions that I compiled for my Music, Gender, and Sexuality class for tomorrow's discussion. I wish I had the time to share all the other discussions we have in class, but that'll have to wait for another lifetime or something. The texts we're using for this week are cited below (albeit the citation is inconsistent. That's okay - you'll live with it.) Oh, and this week's theme is research methods and gender expression/performativity in ethnographic fieldwork. 

Music, Gender, and Sexuality
November 22^nd, 2011
Discussion Questions – Research Methods: Gender, Sexuality in Ethnographic Fieldwork

1.       Warm-up questions/thoughts: current events in Egypt and Pakistan. Recently, 20-year-old Egyptian feminist-activistAliaa al-Mahdy posted fully naked pictures of herself on her blog and incited the anger of not only conservative Muslims across the world but also many liberal and feminist Muslims.
Recently, also, the Pakistan Telecommunications Authorities (PTA) released a list of over one thousand English words and phrases and over 500 Urdu words and phrases that it will no longer permit during Text messaging. For the list of English words, please click here, and for some news articles on the issue, please click here or here.
The former matter appears to be a response to the suppression of sexuality in the society (for both women and men) and the latter to the expression of sexuality. Discuss.

2.       In “Can there be a Feminist Ethnography?” Lilah Abu-Lughod insists that her essay will not be written in her usual narrative style in which she shares stories and anecdotes from her interactions with Egyptian women. Yet, she shares several such interesting anecdotes and refers to some of them again at the end of her article. Why do you think she does this?

3.       Abu-Lughod points out that to ask the question of whether feminism can make a difference in anthropology provokes “a reconsideration of the problem of ‘objectivity’ since if objectivity is the ideal of anthropological research and writing, then to argue for feminist ethnography would be to argue for a biased, interested, partial, and thus flawed project.” She later adds that “If, as anthropologists, we know what we know through emotionally complicated and communicatively ambiguous social encounters in the field, then certainly objectivity is out of the question and anthropology is not to be likened to science” (10). Yet, anthropology is considered a science. How is science defined, and what makes anthropology one? More importantly, Abu-Lughod writes that “feminist theorists have argued that objectivity within science is both part of a dualism that is gendered and is a mode of power. Some argue it should be abolished, some argue it should be reformed.” To what extent, do you think, is the former statement true, and what is your position on the latter? Moreover, what is the difference between being objective in a science like engineering (or biology) and in a science like anthropology?

4.       What is the (or an?) alternative to feminist ethnography? If a feminist ethnography centers on the lives and experiences of women, what do other forms of ethnography center on? Is the label “feminist ethnography” possibly redundant, when/if feminism by definition or inherently aims to highlight the issues, concerns, and experiences of women and other marginalized groups of people?

List of Words Pakistan Will Ban in Texting

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

On MeherJaan - Part 2

So, in my last post on MeherJaan, I provided a summary of the film and promised to write more on it eventually. Here, I hope to continue my rant. Thanks for reading.

The actors' performance:
I found the "actress" Sarah (the daughter of one of the raped victims) to be completely un-talented, lacking all skills of acting and performing. She made the film almost unbearable for me to watch. I wish I could show you a clip of the movie with her in it. She does a horrible job. Most of the rest of the performers are not too bad (Jaya Bachchan, as we all know, acts quite well, and she plays the role of the old Meher Jaan, who's telling the story to Sarah).

Pukhtun Hospitality - Best Thing Ever!

So, as some of y’all know, I spent this last Eid at a Pukhtun friend’s hous. We met on Facebook some years ago, and we’ve been in touch ever since. When I told her I’m moving to this state, she and I were really excited about finally meeting! (You know how you’ve got lots of Internet friends now, and you know that most likely, you won’t ever get to meet a majority of them? The feeling sucks, I know.) Maybe we can talk about Internet Friendships some other time, but for now, lemme talk only on the famous Pukhtun Hospitality, something that Pukhtuns are universally recognized for and something I live every day of my life—and happily so.

So, my friend, whom we’ll call A., had been telling her family I’ll be coming over one of these weekends, so they’d been waiting for me to visit them ever since I moved here (August 20^th-ish). I just had to find a friend who lives there and goes home for the weekend so I could accompany them.  That way, I wouldn’t be inconveniencing anyone by asking them to take me. A couple of my friends are from there and go home regularly or visit friends/families there.

My God, when I got there, I can never forget the respect they gave me! It was beautiful!  A’s mother is so sweet and beautiful and kind, and, yet, her extreme generosity and love surprised me! And her dad, too! It was like talking to my own dad. I felt comfortable and happy, as if I was at my own home, you know. A’s mom was really excited and talked about all that she wanted to cook the next day and the day after and where we’ll eat and how it all will be :) I was so happy that I could bring excitement to someone else’s life just by existing.

My Take on "The Kite Runner" - Part I

For my Identity: Self and the Other course, we were asked to think of and discuss something, preferably pertinent to our research interest if not to the course readings we've done so far (all of which have this idea of a Self and an Other, often a Western other, one of which is better and the other not; one's the ideal, one's the reality; etc.). Immediately, I thought of the Kite Runner, one of my favorite novels. I loved the book. I loved the movie, which I watched last night to prepare myself for a discussion on the story. In this post, I won't talk about who the Self and the Other are; I might do that some other time, especially because I've a lot to suggest for Pashtuns as I see their negative response to the book. In particular, we had a discussion on it over a year ago on an online Pashtun community, and the sort of responses received are very interesting--but intellectually empty: No one answered my questions of why they didn't like the book and how Hosseini represents Pashtuns. I won't say the "debate" was a waste of time, since I'm gonna paste my responses to that thread here, but I do think it's silly when people talk about a book they actually haven't read -- and claim they don't want to read it because "It's not worth reading." If it's not worth reading, why are you debating about it, then? How do you have an opinion on it, then? I still cannot forget an epic line from that discussion: "Qrratugai, here, please read this article written by my friend, a Pashtun with a PhD in Chemistry, who is saying how stupid the book was." Or something equally silly. The message I was supposed to get from that "argument" was this: "Qrratugai, you and all of us need to follow the opinion of this guy who has a PhD in Chemistry." I still smile when I think of this. It's such an innocent thought. Since when did people with PhDs gain authority over Qrratugai? Since when did I ever give them the right to think for me, to tell me what's wrong or what's right or what kind of an opinion I should have on a book?

Khair, I'll post here my thoughts. They haven't changed since then -- in fact, renewing my thoughts on the Kite Runner have strengthened those previous opinions I expressed in that "discussion."

Post 1: Question for those who didn't/don't like Hosseini's The Kite Runner: Can you give specific examples of how the author presented Pukhtuns in his book?

Every author writes what she/he *believes* is true, or what makes sense to her/him. Hosseini had his reasons for writing that novel and for giving the view of Pukhtuns that he did. If it was a Pukhtun author writing it, it would obviously have been a different perspective. I don't think it's fair to condemn him for his view at all. The portrayal MAY have been his personal experiences, it MAY have been based on his observations, it MAY have been what others told him -- it was certainly inspired by *something*, whatever it was.

To those Pukhtuns who don't agree with it, I suggest this: Write a novel in which you -- a Pukhtun -- give a better view of Pukhtuns. How many contemporary Pukhtuns have published any novels? How many of us find our representation in other people's novels/books intolerable? And how are we responding to it? How many wars have we witnessed? How much suffering have we lived and tolerated? And how much have we written on it? What have we told the world *about* ourselves? It's not Hosseini or anyone else's responsibility to write good things about Pukhtuns; it's *ours, the ones who ARE Pukhtuns and live Pukhtun lives and know Pukhtuns better than any non-Pukhtun ever might.

It's Raining Here!!!

You guys!!! Rejoice with me! 'Cause it's raaaaaaaaaaaaining in this stinky old ever-dry, ever-humid state!! First, it stopped raining in my home state for several months - then I go to Pakistan, and God forbid it rain there when I was there :@ Lotsa tease-storms, though. Teaser storms or whatever - you know, like when God just sends these seductive winds and you get ALL happy and excited, thinking it's gonna rain, and then it actually doesn't rain? Yeah, like that. Then I go to Jordan, and, again, God forbid it rain there while innocent me is there. Then I come here, and - you guess it - God forbid it rain ANYWHERE where I am! I sometimes feel like God really enjoys teasing me. It's okay, though, I suppose.

I tell friends that when I grow up, I'm going to live in London, Seattle (Washington, USA), or Malaysia because it rains there alllll the time, almost every day, I hear. (NOTE: These might be stereotypes, eh.) And I mean this. I'm going to live somewhere where it rains a lot, ka khairee inshaAllah.

So, thankfully, it's raining at last! I am so happy!!! Alf alhamdulillah (a thousand times alhamdulillah!)! I love rain so much! The last time I visited home, I tried to book my flight for a weekend when it was supposed to rain, but -- that's right! -- it didn't rain, damnit. Khair, I'm enjoying it now. It's so beautiful, so peaceful, so romantic. I don't even use umbrellas when walking in the rain. This morning, when I was leaving for school, my roommate is like, "Do you have an umbrella? It's gonna rain today." And I brightened up and said, "Ohhh! I'd forgotten it'll be raining today! No! No, I don't have an umbrella, and I don't use one :D." So while in class, we heard thunderstorms, and... omgosh! Everyone was so scared and excited, LOL. I mean, it hasn't seriously rained here for the last several months, so no one knows how to respond to it :p You'd think we've forgotten what it feels like to rain, what we're supposed to wear, what we're supposed to do. But me, I had this huge smile on my face and walked from class to the bus stop, intentionally taking a long route so I could relish in the delight! Ohhh, it's so beautiful! My favorite kinda weather is this, and couple it with threatening skies and ohhh you've given me heaven! I'm sure I look crazy (in a good way, of course. You understand) smiling like that while walking in the pouring rain, but heck if I care. Rain truly makes me happy. My heart feels lighter, my mind's at ease, my soul literally feels purified. It's as if the rain is literally washing my tension, problems, whatever else away, cleansing me of all the dilemmas I always find myself in. It's as if my heart is enclosed by the dirt of these petty issues, and the rain washes away this dirt, literally cleaning my heart. And so, when it rains,  I'm like, "What? What problems? I have no problems. I was born a happy person, and I'm going to die a happy person." And next thing I know, I'm smiling and everyone walking by smiles back, and I feel even more content with life and everything around me. Really, rain is SO beautiful.

k, I have to go to class now. Enjoy the rain if you're being blessed with it as well!

OR! You could read this old poem of mine and see how much more I love the rain!