I like to travel, read, write, dance and pretend. At the moment I am suffering an insufferable phase of self-aggrandizement, premature maturity and lack of wit.
If you think you can help me out of this funk, write me at idaman.z@gmail.com
"My father, in his haste to thwart my grandmother Fatimah's plan to name me after the prophet's wife, raced while appearing not to race the older woman to the nurses' station. Aware of Jebat's ardent desire to trounce hers, my grandmother decided to amble on at a most unhurried pace, which had the effect of both slowing down her son-in-law and driving him batty.
As most life-shaping moments go, the one that shaped mine was not overly momentous. While keeping with the old lady's jaw-grindingly slow pace, Jebat glimpsed, within the gaping maw of Fatimah's Makkah-bought bag, a kitab, its pages soft from frequent turning and aggravatingly smug in its righteousness. The sight propelled onto him a vision of foreboding proportions in which he saw, should his mother-in-law have her wish, his child's perfectly toed feet growing to fill the mold of Fatimah's god-fearing, holy-land pilgrimaging footprints, and to that he said Hell No.
And so, abandoning all pretense of propriety, my father bounded ahead of my grandmother to the nurses' station and bestowed upon his firstborn daughter, under the dismayed gaze of Fatimah, the gender amorphous, faith ambiguous name of Timur Jati."
