Blue

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Exactly one year ago, down to the day – 20 September 2023 – my mother passed away. 

Except there is no way it has been a whole year because it can’t possibly have been that long. 12 weeks? Maybe. But 12 whole months? Come off it, Mr. Dent!

I have no idea why the calendars have suddenly decided to lie, but someone definitely needs to alert the local galactic time council ASAP because time has clearly gone all wibbly wobbly. 

If it had actually been 365 days, surely some of this would have started to make sense by now. But it still makes no sense. None whatsoever. Life itself no longer makes sense. Neither does the universe and everything. What even is the point of all this? Why are we here? Why must we go? Is a hot dog a sandwich? Why a duck? And what do you get when you multiply six by nine?

All valid questions to which I still have no answers. Except the last one, of course, the answer to which is obviously 42. 

But my point is, it still doesn’t feel real, yet it still hurts. Boy does it hurt!

Everything that happened a year ago – allegedly a year ago – keeps going round and round and round in my head. Every detail remains etched in my mind, every recollection stings. A memory can randomly float into my brain and instantly wreck my head. A sight, a sound, a smell, a phrase … anything can trigger an eye-water tsunami. I can go through the five stages of grief, sometimes all in one day, often several simultaneously, and then end up back at square one.

The person who loved me the mostest is gone and there is nothing I can do about it. There is a vacuum where she once was. I want to tell her things; I want to ask her what to do; I want her to hug me and tell me everything will be ok, that I’ll be ok. But she isn’t there. No matter how many times I replay those last few days in my mind and think of how differently things could have gone, I can’t change what happened. Her heart stopped; mine’s still beating. She’s gone; I’m still here. And everything still keeps making my eyes leak. A lot. 

Before my grandmother passed away, she told my mother that “akalmand loag sabar kartay hain, bewakoof loag rotay hain,” [intelligent people have patience, idiots cry] in response to which my mother promptly informed her that Mom fell in the second category. By grandma’s metric though, I am clearly bewakoofoon ki sardar [emperor of idiots]. Like, if crying was an Olympic sport, Pakistan would have had not one but two gold medallists this year. Imagine the glory I could have brought to the country and go petition the IOC to hold crying competitions henceforth. At this point, I can confidently assure you I will deliver.

As cool as being a champion crier may sound though, I realize this is, in fact, a very uncool admission. For our #HumbleAndBlessed generation, the show of any kind of weakness – emotional or otherwise – is frowned upon. But our manicured appearances and curated profiles are only leaving us feeling isolated and disconnected to the point that we end up collectively trauma dumping on a Muppet who just happened to ask how everybody is doing. 

Because it’s so hard to tell someone around you how you are doing. 

It’s hard to find people. The right people. The ones who actually care. The ones who will answer your blubbering phone calls in the middle of the night, who will hear you whine about the same things over and over and over, and who will not judge you when you are a complete and utter mess. 

But bless their hearts, they exist. They are there. And through all my crying, I have been fortunate enough to – more often than not – have a shoulder to cry on. From the lovely cousin whose literal shoulder became the receptacle for my tears minutes after my mother’s passing (and who very patiently pretended like my incoherent babbling was making perfect sense), to the bestest of buds who have offered virtual and real company at the worst of times, I’ve been getting by with more than a little help from my friends. 

Has it still sucked? Very much so. But just being able to tell someone how much it sucks has taken away some of the inherent loneliness that comes with an experience like this. 

Losing a loved one is the hardest thing you will ever go through. And it will be awful. Super hella awful. If you have never experienced it, I wish I had something more profound to say that could reassure you, but I have nothing. Mostly because there really is nothing profound to say. The only advice I have for you is: just be lucky. Be lucky enough to find the right people who will help you get through this awful time. The people you might feel you don’t deserve but who are still there for you anyway for some reason. The kind who never leave a message unanswered and never tell you you’re a burden; the ones who will send you food to make sure you eat, and bake you a water lily birthday cake in reference to your mom’s name, honouring her memory. Better still, be that person for someone else. Help them through the crap life throws at them, and do it without judgement. Don’t deride others for being a mess. And feel free to be one yourself. Be ok with not being ok. It’s fine. How you feel is valid.

Different people grieve differently. A dear friend’s partner went to work the day after his father died. Another friend teared up telling me about his mother’s death, 30 years after she passed away. There is no “one size fits all” approach to coping with grief. And there is no timeline; don’t let anyone pressure you into thinking there is. Just do you.

And do yourself a favour and accept the fact that it will probably always suck. Time’s healing powers have been greatly exaggerated. You will adapt to the loss, sure, but it will randomly punch you in the gut whenever the hell it feels like it. It will suck when you lose someone close to you. It will suck a year later. It will suck 30 years later. As it should. Because the foundation of grief is love. And even though your person is no longer there, your love for them will live on in this realm till the moment you take your last breath. 

- By Sameen Amer

Us Magazine, The News - 20th September, 2024 *

Call me by my nickname

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A rose by any other name may smell just as sweet, but would you really be inclined to smell it if it were called a skunky-mcdurian instead? 

By A girl named Sameen

Once upon a time – back when people liked sporting hairstyles that were visible from outer space, music was trapped in rectangular plastic contraptions with ribbony tapes that were more likely to get tangled than play your favourite tunes, and slapping your wrists with fabric-covered steel strips was considered cool for some reason – I was born.

My very excited khala, legend has it, called my very excited naani from the hospital and delivered the very exciting news of my arrival. “Beti hui hai. Bohot piyari hai, bilkul guriya jaisi,” she said (or so I’m told; I was too busy screaming and shouting at the injustice of having to exist to pay the slightest attention to other people’s feelings about my existence.)

Doll-making, name-giving ancestors

It took my parents a few days to decide what my legal name would be. After a false start with “Farnaz” (the Persian for elegant, charming), which was discarded quickly because they didn’t want people to end up calling me “Nazi” (because yikes!), they – and by “they” I mean my mom and a copy of the Feroz-ul-Lughat – landed on the name “Sameen”, a Persian word for precious, invaluable.

(The fact that Sameen is a boys’ name clearly did not dampen my parents’ christening spirits. Either that or they intentionally picked a boys’ name because this world is rough and if a woman's gonna make it, she's gotta be tough, and I ought to thank them before I die, for the gravel in my guts and the spit in my ey … never mind.)

By the time the name was finalized though, another moniker had very empathically laid claim to my person – the descriptor from the original proclamation about me joining the land of the living: Guriya.

I was, apparently, a cute baby, so the name applied. And then it stuck, even when it didn’t apply anymore (unless the guriya in question was the Bride of Chucky).

So pretty much from day one, I was Guriya to everyone around me. Or at least everyone close to me.

My parents called me Guriya. Unless they were mad at me. If you heard either of them shouting “SAMEEN!” in my general direction … safe to assure I was in some kind of trouble.

My grandmother, our neighbours, the maids – they all called me Guriya.

But then there were the relatives and acquaintances who knew full well what my nickname was and chose not to use it, calling me by my real name instead. I know not the reasoning behind their choice (my inability to read minds can be so infuriating sometimes), nor do I want to hazard a guess. But how it felt to me was this: odd.

I’d grown so accustomed to being referred to by my nickname that being called by my real name almost felt (and still feels) a little jarring. And it also seemed like the person who was choosing to use my full name was trying to show that they wanted to keep me at arm’s length and didn’t want us to be close.

(It also didn’t help that after I started writing, the more I saw my name in print, the more I dissociated from it. ‘Cause “Sameen Amer” was obviously, like, this cool chick who was mingling with the famouses and getting Tomatometer approved. Meanwhile, I was just silly old me. So I clearly wasn’t her.)

But anyway, my lovely friends more than made up for any wet blankets by making sure they referred to me by any name but Sameen.

My name came with a built-in nickname, lucky for those who didn’t know my childhood moniker. I was Sam to my class fellows. And Sammy to my close friends. And Sammy Wammy Supergirl of the clan McAwesome to my sister.

There have, however, been some holdouts along the way, even in my close circle. Two to be precise.

One is my “childhood” friend Xulfi. He has known me for two decades. He has been calling me Sameen for two decades. Despite the fact that he knows I don’t like it. Which is ironic for a guy who is known to virtually everyone by his nickname. In retaliation, I decided I’d call him what literally no one else calls him: Zulfiqar. Turns out he loves it. So that kinda backfired.

The other is a friend who calls me Sameen because he says "Sameen is hot". Which ... yes I am, but what does that have to do with my name? (Also, he thinks “Guriya” is “uncool”. Le gasp! Like, how dare he?! Off with his head!)

Unlike these two, however, most people close to me have simply chosen their own monikers for me, without any prompting. And this love of nicks, by the way, runs in my family and my friend circle too. Everyone close to my mom called her Nili instead of Nilofar. My sister Anne is my Anny Bananny (sorry girl!). And Xulfi is, you know, Xulfi.

Come to think of it, it’s not just us. Destiny Hope legally changed her name to her childhood nickname, Miley. Chloe Celeste became Dove as a tribute to her late father, who called her that as a nickname. We all know Peter Gene as Bruno, a moniker given to him by his father. And where would Jimmy McGill be if he hadn’t turned into Saul Goodman? Ok, he’d probably be in a better place, but I digress.

It's all good, man

So anyway, short story shorter: have name, don’t like being called by it.

It is a very pretty name though. It’s unique; it’s musical; it has a lovely meaning. But to me – and it might just be based on my very individual experiences – there can sometimes be so much more apniyat in a nickname.

So if you must, call me Sameen. But if you love me, might I suggest Guriya?

- By Sameen Amer

Us Magazine, The News International - 24th November, 2024 *

Once upon a time...

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On an otherwise uneventful morning of an otherwise unremarkable year in the late ‘80s, a single-digit old me was busy throwing a tantrum over having to go to school. Usually a rather placid child, I only had two major sources of grievance in life: 1) socks, which were a plainly uncomfortable and ridiculously unnecessary part of day-attire in non-winter months, and 2) school, which made me wear socks as part of the day-attire in non-winter months. My parents, not the biggest fans of my periodic protests against these major inconveniences in my largely pleasant existence, understandably preferred the more agreeable version of their only offspring, and to calm me down on that particular morning, my dad offered me an incentive: if I’d stop whining and go to school, he’d get me a special present when he picked me up from school that afternoon.

I did, eventually, go to school that day and, quite predictably, had a thoroughly rotten time. And when dad came to take me home that afternoon, I was in total sulk mode and had completely forgotten about his promise, but turns out he hadn’t. Waiting for me on the front seat of our car was an assortment of big, brightly coloured (and insanely expensive) children’s storybooks. The very sight of the grand bound-paper creations achieved their purpose: the brooding was immediately suspended, replaced first by the simple excitement of getting a present, and later by immense awe – for someone who was still learning to read, the whole concept of words coming together and opening doors to enchanting worlds of endless imagination was an entirely fascinating discovery. And that is how I fell in love with books.

The book-reward program ended up becoming a semi-annual tradition of sorts; at the end of every school term, my parents would take me to the biggest book shop in the city where I was allowed to go crazy for about half an hour, after which I’d blatantly refuse to leave, and would eventually have to be dragged out of the place, half a dozen books clutched firmly in my little hands. Deciding which books to choose out of the thousands on display was the hardest decision this kid ever had to make, although there were some standard favourites – I’m fairly certain my parents helped put Enid Blyton’s grandkids through school.

But a few years later, my obsession with books had started to dwindle. The middle/high school curriculum – clearly put together by someone who hated books and wanted everyone else to hate them too – left me with too much printed material to peruse. Additionally, I was being subjected to supposed English classics, which were so interesting for ten year olds (or at least this particular ten year old) that they always made me think about how doing something (anything) else, like repeatedly slamming my head against the wall, would be a more constructive and enjoyable use of my time.

I don’t remember reading many non-schoolbooks during my early teens, in part due to the immense popularity of the Sweet Valley series at the time which I’d somehow (without reading a single volume) decided I thoroughly disapproved of, but more so because I’d ended up becoming a bit disenchanted with books due to their correlation with school, and how they’d become a representation of both competition and conformity, both of which I thought the world would be a saner place without.

Then one day, probably in the tenth or eleventh grade, I found myself in temporary possession of a PG Wodehouse novel. I’ve never been sure how or why I ended up borrowing that book; not fond of being quiet unless I want to be quiet, the school library wasn’t exactly my favourite place on the planet and keeping a disapproval-induced distance from the room was a standard practice. Yet, as a result of some inexplicable and since-forgotten series of events, I was the confused keeper-for-a-week of a Mike and Psmith omnibus – a series I’d never even heard of by an author that I knew nothing about. It turned out to be the single most delightful thing I’d ever read. Reading that book reminded me of why I’d fallen in love with books in the first place and why they’d meant so much to me as a kid, inspiring the same awe, although in a completely different way, as the stories from the children’s books from when I was still learning to read.

After finishing the three omnibus editions available in the library, I ransacked a hitherto ignored bookshelf in my house that had been home to my parents’ literary collection, largely made up of books my mum had bought when she was young. She’d read each of them, and then relayed the entire story to my grandmother (which I’m sure must’ve been considerably less torturous than all those times I’ve sat my mother down and made her listen to Nirvana). I’d been told I could find a lot of Wodehouse there, but was disappointed to find only one, Code Of The Woosters, because apparently when people borrow something they don’t put themselves through the trouble of returning it. So I decided to nick some Ian Fleming instead. And then borrowed some Archer from the library. And bought some Salinger and Adams and Grisham and Hornby and Fforde and Ludlum and Tolkien. And eventually even made peace with the classics. Yes, I was hooked, and I still am to this very day. The ride that started with children’s stories has since given me a chance to discover things that I couldn’t possibly have imagined, and led me to worlds I would’ve otherwise been oblivious to. And it’s made life – even the parts of it that I’ve spent with my feet trapped in disagreeable foot hosiery – a lot more fun.

- By Sameen Amer

Us Magazine, The News - 27th March, 2009