Brazil, pt 1

Sometime early last year my dad’s job relocated him to Brazil.  It was a stinking tragedy to have him move away from all of us, and then to have my mommy leave, too.  Since then my chances to hang out with them at any length have been few and far between.  And usually when I did get a chance to see them it was always for a special circumstance–wedding, baby, funeral, etc; so for the most part they were always preoccupied.  Our parental-baby time was usually pretty short.

So imagine my delight when I was asked to come visit them for 2 1/2 weeks in Brazil!  The excitement was primarily to spend time with them and secondly to get to see Brazil.  The past 8 days have been a blast.

Saturday– We arrived at the airport a little past fajr and quickly collected all our luggage.  We breezed through customs, which was a small miracle considering 2 out of 4 suitcases were packed with food items and other assorted things for ammi. When we got home, I finally got to see their house.  It’s so nice!  I had only seen it in pictures, or had random glimpses of it through ammi and abbu’s webcam.  The real deal is awesome.  It’s just the right size for my parents and any guests they need to accommodate. It has a pool and really pretty flowering trees.  And the best part–all the bathrooms have power lotas

I took a nap on the couch when I first got home–that was one thing I missed doing at my parents’ house.  It was very satisfying. I  woke up to the smell of fresh rotis and chicken ka sahlun–man oh man, I was soo excited to eat ammi’s kaana!  It is something that I missed so so much.  It hit the spot and was perfect.  Pretty much everything ammi has made has been awesome and hit the spot The rest of the afternoon kinda drifted away and then we went to the masjid.

I’d been hearing about the masjid and all the people who go there for quite some time.  It was nice to finally see this small building where Muslims gather to remember Allah.  Talk about… weird:  when we got there they were having a halaqa.  Seems like a pretty standard activity at a masjid.  I sat down and then realized how strange it all was–the halaqa was in Portugese!  Okay, okay, I get it… obviously it’s going to be in Portuguese if we’re in Brazil, but it was so weird to hear people talking about Allah, Rasulullah, the Qur’an and Islam in a completely foreign language!  Islam really is everywhere, and it touches everyone wherever they may be

We stayed for kaana and then on the way back we dropped off a girl at her friend’s house.  We stopped for ice cream at a place called Gelaguela and I ordered the flavor flocos which is chocolate chip.

Sunday– Ammi and abbu had invited the local masjid girls over for lunch and dinner.  They all trickled in slowly after 11AM. Ammi made chicken salad sandwiches and soup, I made roasted potatoes.  I think I went a little overboard with the salt, but they all seemed to like it.  Apparently in Brazil people like their sweets SWEET and their salty foods SALTY!  Anyway, at night we ate pilau, shami kabob, karahi chicken, and bangun raita.  I stuck myself in the kitchen for some of the evening because I just cannot speak or understand Portugese, and to be quite honest–I don’t want to learn.  I know this is a very American thing to say, but what’s the point?  I’ll suck at it, and no one is going to understand me anyway.  I’ll stick to my English, Urdu and broke French, thanks yous very much!

Monday–This was a pretty relaxing day.  I woke up, ate a parata, and went swimming!!  Ammi and abbu’s pool is awesome.  It’s 5 feet deep throughout the whole length, so there’s no fear of “the deep end.”  I managed to remember how to swim pretty quickly and have been having fun in the pool since then.  Sometimes when I’m soaking up the sun outside I randomly exclaim, VACATION!  I told Fati that this is what I’ll remember when my students are giving me a hard time in the fall:  blue skys, green palm trees, chirping birdies, mama sitting poolside, and me in the pool.  I think that’s a pretty good stress relieving scene to remember?

The rest of my day I spent either lougning around on the couch, or just helping ammi out here and there in the kitchen.  I think we had left overs for kaana so as a treat we hit up this dessert place called Vanilla that is close by.  Uhh… I thought only Americans serve obscenely huge proportions.  I guess I was wrong!  We ordered three different slices, and it took the four of us two days to finish all of it.  Once slice was chocolate with strawberry cake, the second slice was croquante which is like chocolate, caramel and nuts, and third slice was some lemon pie.  It was all very very yummy!

Tuesday–Another day in the pool and lounging around the house.  Abbu got a half day off at work because it was Brazil’s big debut in the World Cup.  He came home and he and Fati went to a local place to watch the game.  I stayed home on account of being too tired, but I still managed to follow along the game.  How did I manage to do that without a TV?  The entire city ERUPTED with cheers anytime Brazil scored a goal.  So with the way things sounded I knew that Brazil had scored twice–and I was right

At night we went to eat kaana at a local pizzeria called Celeiro.  They make thin crust pizza in a wood-burning oven.  It’s ready in like 5 minutes because the oven is so hott and the crust is so thin!  It was yummy.  We ordered a pizza margherita and devoured the entire thing.

Wednesday–Another day in the pool and lounging around the house.  If this is beginning to sound repetitive, trust me it isn’t boring at all.  This is what I came to Brazil to do:  hang out at my parent house, be a bum, go swimming and get a tan.  All the excitment I need in a day can be found in going to the grocery store at night.  It was a giant mega mart called… Atakado.   I have no idea what that means, but it was enormous and they sold everything you could think of.  It smelled a little funky here and there, especially by the fish area, but otherwise it was an interesting place.  A lot of the other shoppers were staring at me, ammi and Fati like we were from a different planet–planet Islam where modesty is important.  I think for the locals to see a woman with all her skin and *gasp* her hair covered it doesn’t equal oppression and terrorism, it is equals, “WHAT ARE YOU????”

Thursday–We called over one of the local masjid girls, Mona, to join us for lunch and dinner.  She came just as we were done swimming, so we ate lunch.  Fati made Tuna salad sandwiches and we enjoyed them with local Doritos.  They are really good!  They actually taste like a real corn chip with actual cheese on it!  At night I made Chinese food for her.  On Sunday when she first came over, she sounded very surprised to hear that ammi knew how to make Chinese food.  So I thought it’d be nice to make some for her–fried rice, chicken lo mein, and sweet and sour shrimp.  It all turned out yummy.

Friday–I was CRANKY when I woke up.  The nights were getting way too restless.  Between having to turn over constantly because I couldn’t get comfortable, or having to get up to to go the bathroom, and being eaten alive by mosquitos, I was getting hardly any sleep.  By the time it was Friday I was at my wits’ end.  I just wanted to sleep, soundly, through the night, and wake up without a million new bits all over me, IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR??

We went to the masjid for jumuah, which was exciting and anti climatic.  Exciting because, hey, it’s jumuah!  Anti-climatic because the khutbah was in Portuguese, and might I add REALLY long.  I think I dozed off a few times.  Woops, forgot to ask Sh. Yaser about that in Divine Link, “Ya Shaykh, if the khutbah/khateeb is extremely boring, and I doze off, or rather blink for 20 seconds at a time, does that invalidate my salah??” It’s a valid question to ask especially when a khutbah is hard to find.

Friday night we went out to eat at  a place called Ki Mukayka.  They specialize in Bahiana food which is a mix of local fare and western African cuisine.  I think I went on a seafood overdose, and have banned all seafood from my diet until further notice.  It’s a little unreasonable considering if we go out the only thing we can order is seafood, but I guess that just means I have to stick to vegetarian options.

Saturday–The old brother in law showed up in the afternoon, finally.  I say finally because the poor guy was the victim of flight delays, cancellations, and missings altogether.  Of course with that combination up his sleeve, he had no luggage when he did arrive, 12 hours after his original time of arrival.  Poor guy.  I feel bad for him.

Hopefully ammi’s food made him feel better.  She had made Biryani that night and for some reason it was extra dee-lee-shush!  It hit the spot, and to be honest, the past few times I’ve had biryani, it’s been a little off, or I just haven’t enjoyed it much.  The last time my mom made biryani was the day before she left back to Brazil back in April–I was busy barfing my brains out with a stomach bug so I didn’t eat any then.  I’m glad I had to wait until now, because I enjoyed it that much more

Sunday– Yesterday we had a big Brazilian day out.  We all woke up, put on some shade of green and yellow and headed out to the Bahia Plaza.  We ate lunch at their buffet, and I got to eat Spaghetti… A+!  Then ammi and I went for a walk on the beach, and it was awesome… there was no one there!  Apparently this is a blessing because most of the locals don’t wear much when they do go to the beach.  Anyway we came back to the hotel and watched the Brazil game with complementary popcorn.

Dude, futbol players are a bunch of pansies!  Call me American, but I think the name foot fairy really suits them.  Talk about DRAMA.  If a player eve got touched at all, he was doing back flips, and pounding on the ground, “in pain,”  crying his eyes out.  Waaa Waaa Waaaa, giant babies!  Get a life.

After we came home from watching the game, we all headed out to a local grocery store and picked up some produce and then came home to enjoy a nice giant pot of nihari… wow, Ammi is really killing these dishes… or maybe I’ve just been so deprived of my mother’s cooking that EVERYTHING tastes amazing.  It’s a scarcity thing?