Love from a to Z

ODDITY:
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
How do you decide you like or don’t like someone? Like, when you meet
someone, there’s a point when you form one of two thoughts: I like this
person enough to want to know them a bit more or STOP! Go no further in
your attempts to know this person.
For me, it takes at least four times being around someone. I like to let
things unfold, so I rarely rely on first impressions. I’m generally a four-
impressions kind of guy.
First impressions don’t reveal anything. They’re just about you—well,
the person looking at someone, listening to them, observing them—
projecting your own self to assess another.
I guess I’m trying to say it’s okay I didn’t get her name.

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ZAYNEB
FRIDAY, MARCH 8
ODDITY:
THE COLD
B
Y THE TIME
I 
WOKE
up, I was in a better mood. The uneventful flight from London
to Doha—uneventful except for the fact that the cute guy from the airport
said salaam to me!—and the three episodes I’d watched of Sweet Tooth, a
dessert-making show where there’s no talking, just music and people
making complicated desserts step-by-step, had calmed me down a lot.
Then, to see Auntie Nandy! The hug she wrapped me in as soon as I got
out of arrivals had almost swept me off my feet.
Auntie Nandy was Mom’s younger sister, but she was taller and had a
more squarish face, with a prominent jawline and a big smile. Ever since I
could remember, she’d worn her hair in a pixie cut.
She was no-nonsense but in a super-kind way.
The entire ride to her place from the airport had been me listening to
testimony of how much she’d missed me, how she’d watched every
Instagram story I posted (mental note: remember this), sometimes several
times, and how she’d felt like she’d won the lottery when my parents
agreed to let me come visit her earlier.
Basically, I was engulfed in love.
Cute guy saying salaam, eating desserts with my eyes on the flight over,
Auntie Nandy professing her love—this almost erased the dumpster fire
Tuesday had been.
But while Auntie Nandy is warm and cheerful, her apartment isn’t.
Exhibit A: Cold spaces.
Her place is hard and crystal clear and unforgiving. Each room has
windows from the ceiling to the marble-tiled floor, with glass tabletops and

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steely reflective surfaces everywhere to further emphasize the clean, cold
clarity of the space.
It’s like a crisp-suit-and-cufflinks-wearing stern man lives here instead of
a smiley, talkative aunt who calls me Zoodles.
Last night I’d rolled my luggage into the minimalist guest bedroom—
white-duvet-covered bed framed by a huge, mirrored wardrobe, sleek with
no knobs or handles—and promptly unzipped my carry-on suitcase to pull
out some essentials.
I knew it had been a good idea to pack Binky and Squish.
The cuddly factor was a must in this place. Especially after my soul had
been drained over the past few days.
As I set Squish on the night table, I realized on first sight of it, someone
might gag and pick it up with two fingers to hurl it into the nearest garbage
can. But if they looked carefully, past the matted brownish-gray fur and
squished ears (hence the name), five letters would come together to form in
their heads: L-O-V-E-D.
Squish is not a stuffed animal per se but some sort of cross between a
puffer fish (round and spotty with bulging eyes and knowing lips), an
elephant (longish snout), and a cat (perky ears—well, previously perky,
now loved to nubbins).
Squish was my first stuffed being.
I have no idea whether someone weird gave it to me as a baby or whether
Mom and Dad found Squish at some stuffed animals–factory mishaps sale
(they don’t remember its origins either), but the most important thing about
Squish is it’s the first thing I learned to love—after Mom and Dad, I mean.
Before my sister, Sadia, or my brother, Mansoor, took shape in my eyes
as beings, Squish was there, squat and dependable for tears-and-fears duty,
for soaking up rages and confusions.
• • •
I lay in bed now, not ready to completely wake up to a new day just yet, and
saluted Squish on the night table, and pulled up Binky the blanket, my
second cozy must, to my chin.
Sigh. Old, soft, and comfortable. Like Daadi, my grandmother, Dad’s
mom, who’d knit it for me when I was five.
Who passed away in October in Pakistan.

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My whole life, she’d lived six months of the year with us in Springdale
and six months in Pakistan. Every year she’d leave us in November to
spend the winter months there, but last year she’d wanted to go earlier in
order to attend a grandniece’s wedding. Even though Dad had not wanted
her to.
He always worried whenever Daadi did something different. Like leaving
the city of Islamabad, where she lived in Pakistan, for any reason—out-of-
town wedding or not.
I don’t know the exact details of how she passed, but I know it had
something to do with a car accident. Dad and Mom claim they don’t know
everything.
I wonder if they’re just protecting us kids.
Our entire family was wrecked for months.
I closed my eyes and brought the bunny-white, bunny-soft blanket up
over my nose, even over my eyes, trying to hold Daadi’s face still in my
head. Graying black hair loosely parted and spun daily into a slack knot at
the back; quiet, studying eyes; and a small, ever-present smile—these
features wove in and out of my mind’s canvas.
But the image of her hands stayed static and accessible. Because those
hands were always moving. Toward my face to cradle it in gentle greeting
when I came home from school. Holding out food for me to try. Knitting
me winter things in a mix of Gryffindor and Slytherin colors, like I’d
request whenever she asked me what I wanted.
And, before that, knitting me Binky.
I wondered, if I’d seen her before I left home—if I’d felt her arms around
me—would I have cried so easily on the plane here? Would her hug have
transferred some of her calm—because she was the essence of peace itself,
being the purest, softest, gentlest soul?
I miss her so much.
• • •
Exhibit B: Cold food.
Just as I was getting ready to fall back to sleep, Auntie Nandy, not only
taller than Mom but louder, too, startled me by singing something about
someone who left her, who hurt her, who was now back, but She Will