Eating Out

What is your favorite restaurant?

There was a time when I used to enjoy eating out. My late husband didn’t. He would get annoyed at the very idea. So day in, and day out there was no respite from cooking. I didn’t mind cooking for us, but cooking for un expected guests was always a chore not liked by me. I would have preferred that he get the food from outside, but that simply wasn’t the done thing at our home.

My favorite restaurant is Ali Baba in Dallas. There is such a wide variety of food there, that making up your mind at what to eat makes it a difficult choice. The food is yummy, and delicious. If you book earlier….. good, but you are there at a last minute decision, there is a long wait.

I have come a full circle now. I love to have home cooked meals. There is such a flavor which you will never get at a restaurant. I prefer to eat at home rather than going out to get food.

Identity

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My identity as a wife ended five years ago with the death of my husband. My identity as a mother continues……

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DAILY PROMPT

Identity

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Sympathy

There are some people who play up in front of an audience. If you are gullible you may think that they genuinely mean what they say, but the smart ones among us can get their true intentions.

When my late husband who died from stomach cancer was put to rest, I came face to face with quite a few of them. Many of them though living in the same city never came, never called us even, through the horrific period of his illness. If his illness was contagious, I would have understood. It wasn’t, and I felt betrayed by their utterly untrue sympathies. 

Why show up when the person who needed you in life to cheer him up is no longer there? Please spare us from false platitudes. 

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DAILY PROMPT

Sympathy

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A New Set of Wheels

Late husband had set his mind on buying new wheels meaning a new car despite the opposition from my side. We didn’t need one. The car belonging to him had barely done eleven thousand miles. It was a very comfortable car. 

I thought it suited us fine. Dear husband refused to be convinced on the merits of his car. While I remained opposing buying a new one, he kept trying to change my views. He didn’t had the heart to go against my wishes. A day came when my resistance crumbled.

He sold it to delighted new owners who were really happy to get our car at a bargain price. The day they drove away in it, they were grinning from ear to ear, and while they were buying it they kept exclaiming over the almost new condition of the interior of our car.

The new car met with an accident within a month of R’s acquiring it. A truck banged it in the rear, badly denting it. We had it repaired, and used it for almost two years. I sold it after his death. My children wanted me to keep it, and sell mine, but his was costlier, and I needed the money to pay taxes. They didn’t want a part of their father to let go.

The day I parted with his car was a sad day for me. It was like losing him all over again. While the car was standing in the garage, it seemed he was still there. It was the awful realization he wasn’t coming back, and will never be among us.

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DAILY PROMPT

Wheel

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Volume

When I’m excited over something, my voice rises in volume. My late husband didn’t like it. I would come rushing inside his sanctuary (where he was lost to me at all times) with a voice loud enough to wake up the dead.

Dear husband would totally inflate my spirits with a stern admonition — Pipe down! Do you want to tell me, or you want the whole neighborhood to hear?

That would dampen me down considerably. It was like being doused with a bucket of ice cold water. My voice would chasten to a murmur with the immediate effect of his words.  Over his objection to my loud voice, I would forget what I had come forth to babble, and would leave the room in a huff.

That huff used to be forgotten in a hour, or so, and I would return to hound him again.

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DAILY PROMPT

Volume

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Distant

Coming August will mark the fifth death anniversary of my late husband. With passing on of the years my late husband is becoming a distant memory. I feel more of his presence in both homes in Peshawar, and the village home than here in Houston.

One reason can be that his photos hang in my own homes. They keep his memory alive. The photographs mark happy times in our lives with no shadow of death looming over them. They evoke happy times. The one hanging in the hallway shows him dressed in his military uniform, and looking totally handsome, and beguiling. The other one has both of us, covers a wall in the large kitchen in our Peshawar home.

My Quran teacher said that dead people’s photographs shouldn’t be displayed in our homes. That is one reason there is a small photo of my husband only on the fridge which son has pasted, and I have not hung any others here. Anyway the home I share with son is his, although all the furniture, and things belong to me.

I am not going to remove the photographs in my own homes. It maybe wrong according to my religious teacher, but I can’t deny the comfort they bring to my heart when I look at them. Maybe God won’t disapprove, and look over my misdoing.

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DAILY PROMPT

Distant

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Vivid

While in Peshawar, I kept seeing my late husband in vivid dreams. After months of absences, suddenly he kept appearing almost every night. In the beginning I would forget the dreams once I woke up, but there was a strange sequence to them.

In all of them he looked annoyed. Previously in my few dreams (since he died), I always saw him smiling, talking in the background to other people. He never spoke to me directly except for one time. (I wrote about it in the beginning of my blogs).

Coming back to the recurring dreams he stopped facing me. He stood with his back towards me, all the time radiating his annoyance. I couldn’t fathom the cause. I had paid a visit to his grave after reaching Peshawar along with my daughter. Had given alms in his name. Held Quran Khawani for him, and distributed food in his name. I couldn’t find any wrong.

And then it dawned on me. Due to shortage of time in the morning, I had stopped saying my duas for him after my Fajr prayers. 

Oops!

 May God Bless him. Ameen.

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DAILY PROMPT

Vivid

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Living With A Lizard

I dislike lizards bordering on vengeance. They are so creepy, and hideous. If they didn’t try to get inside the house, I wouldn’t have disliked them that much. Somehow they find their way in.

When my husband R was alive, at least I could count on him to get rid of them. Now that I live alone, I get heart attacks every time I see one, especially when I am chasing it with a broom, and it gets entangled with my foot. I make  so much noise like someone is about to murder me. I won’t like my neighbors to hear me shrieking, but that’s what I do.

Why can’t they stay outside? With colder months coming they hide near doorways, and get inside the minute you open the door. Once they hide inside they are difficult to find except when you see them on the roof. It’s a heart stopping moment.