How long have I lived in the US? If you know me, you know it’s been fifty plus years. So why is it that I still cannot:
Get used to
Adapt and Adopt
Forget & leave behind
And simply
Get over it.
Let’s start with what I cannot do without.
My morning cup of steaming coffee. Or my afternoon tea.
I like my coffee hot. Same for tea.
But I can never get a hot-hot cup of coffee at any café. I ask for coffee with milk or cream, and after I have poured in the cream from the carafe, I end up with a tepid cup of coffee even before I take my first sip. Five minutes later, it’s now a cold coffee.
I never have this problem at any café in Pakistan.
Why? Because there, milk with coffee is always served piping hot. Hot milk to keep the coffee hot. Hot milk to keep the tea hot.
Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
Here, milk is served freezing cold, right out of the refrigerator.
Yes, I understand the health laws, but come on! I want my coffee hot.
So I end up ordering an over-priced Latte, which is really not coffee-coffee.
Why can’t we—a nation that leads the world in innovation, Nobel prizes—come up with a work-around? As in serving hot milk while preventing bacterial contamination? No one in Pakistan has ever gotten sick after having hot tea in a café. How did that third world country get it right? Maybe Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts should take a trip to Pakistan and learn some best practices.
This is how my mom served tea:
Boil the water in a kettle.
Pour boiling water in the teapot and teacups (to warm the vessels).
Drain the water.
Add tea leaves or coffee to the warm teapot (or coffee pot).
Pour in boiling water.
Cover teapot with a tea-cozy (to keep the tea more than a little cozy).
Let it brew.
Pour the chai into the warm teacups.
Add hot milk.
Aaah!
This is how I serve tea. Come to my home and I will introduce you to my tea-cozy, and of course, serve you chai with hot milk (or coffee), and spoil you.
So, coffee with cold milk is one. Here is another trait I never got used to:
A child walks up to me and says, “Hi Sabeeha.”
I start.
I would never have done that. Never ever call an elder by their first name. It’s auntie or uncle. But I can’t say to a child: ‘Call me auntie.’ Because she is likely to say: ‘But you are not my aunt. And guess what. She is right. And if I say, ‘Just call me Mrs. Rehman,’ she is likely to give me this look, as in: That formal! So, I gulp, swallow, and say, ‘Hi Cindy.’
But there is one practice I was able to leave behind.
Ladies First.
That was the culture in the Pakistan I grew up in.
A lady walks into a room.
The men stand.
She takes her seat.
The men sit.
Dinner is served. Ladies First.
Men wait until the last of the ladies has helped herself at the buffet.
As she walks towards the dining table, a gentleman holds out the chair for her as she takes her seat.
Here, somewhere along the line, I got used to my not-so-privileged status. But I admit, that I still miss being first lady.
And every time I visit Pakistan, I relish the feeling when upon my entrance, all rise.
I guess I am cherry-picking my feminist causes.
