Thought that it would be appropriate to put this in, since I had mentioned earlier about how Uzbek men, many of whom are only nominally Muslim and observant of the Muslim tradition, shave their public hair.

When I worked up the guts to ask one of my Uzbek friends why he did it, he told me in a sort of mystical, religious sense that it was to get rid of little goblins and ghosts that lived in the hair. My friend drank and womanized, and I think never went to the Mosque.

The Muslim tradition to shave pubic hair got some media attention after the September 11th attacks, when the preparations of Mohammed Atta to crash American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow
Why do suicide bombers shave their bodies?
By Juliet Lapidos
Updated Tuesday, March 25, 2008, at 6:31 PM ET
http://www.slate.com/id/2187383/

U.S. Forces raided a suicide-bombing network in Iraq over the weekend, killing 12 men in the process. Six of the dead had shaved off their body hair, which military officials said is "consistent with final preparation for suicide operations." Why would a terrorist shave before blowing himself up?

So he's clean when he enters heaven. Traditionally, Muslims purify corpses by washing the skin and nails and sometimes by shaving the pubic hair. But suicide attackers are deprived of a proper burial, since there are usually no remains. To compensate, the attackers shear themselves ahead of time, both to guarantee some level of cleanliness at the time of instant incineration and to prove extreme devotion to personal purity. Some scholars offer an alternative explanation: They believe that suicide terrorists adopted the no-hair practice from the Pashtun tribesmen of Afghanistan, who shave their bodies before going into battle.

Hair removal is mentioned in Islamic law as a method of maintaining personal hygiene. In addition to nail clipping, the sunnah instructs Muslim men and women to shave or trim pubic hair regularly and to remove underarm hair. Men must also clip their mustaches. In some circumstances, Muslims are encouraged to shave their heads. For example, Al-Bukhari, a ninth-century Muslim scholar who spent years collecting hadith, quotes the prophet as saying "May Allah bless those who shaved" during the Hajj (pilgrimage); and the Quran states that "ye shall enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills, with minds secure, heads shaved, hair cut short, and without fear."

Readers may recall the shaving custom from the media coverage of 9/11. In the aftermath of the attack, law enforcement agents discovered a four-page document in Mohamed Atta's baggage. He instructed his followers to "shave excess hair from the body and wear cologne" on the "last night." The application of perfume, like shaving, is often part of postmortem treatment in the Muslim world.  ¶ 10:40 PM 0 Comments

  There's something about being in a bar in New York City, with so many attractive people around and tall people towering over you, that is so tempting and alluring. And yet, for some reason, I found it to be repugnant. I felt out of place and wondered if I'd always felt this way in New York. I remember that I had always been consumed by wanting things, looking at other people's things, desiring things. There were so many good things in New York to want and to covet. It could be a person, a better job, a nicer apartment. All the things that it seemed like everyone else seemed to have, but I didn't.

In Tashkent, there was really not very much to covet. There was little apparent beauty surrounding me there, in all honesty and I was better off than most people there, leaving me feeling pretty content about my own situation. If my hair was washed, if I managed to stay in some semblance of shape, if I wasn't hungry, had a comfortable home, I was better off than most people. In this respect, life there was much more simple for me than life here. Here, the bounty and the quality astounded me, such as a walk through the supermarket here seeing, for example, an entire aisle devoted to a variety of pet foods; who needs all this, I thought? In Tashkent, food was harder to come by; there were supermarkets where I could find nothing more than scarcely stacked aisles of vodka, cottonseed oil, and assorted condiments. The things I needed, like oatmeal or milk, came in no variety, there was no choice and therefore no decisions to be taken. I'd learned to accept what was in front of me without grudge; I'd stopped knowing how to respond to bounty and variety, say, in the supermarket, not to mention, in a bar full of attractive men.

I wished there was someone around me to tell about these thoughts. Not Mario beside me, who was clearly not interested in hearing from me, hadn't even uttered anything that could be conceived as interest in my life. I hated my awkward solitude in my corner with my glass depleted of vodka tonic, only lemon rind and straw. I glanced at the newspaper sticking out of his briefcase pocket, pulled it out, opening it randomly to the page with the article that I'd read earlier in the day. "Did you read this article about the new wave of HIV in the gay community? Is it real," I asked him, "or is this just some hysteria cooked up by the media."

He turned to me soberly, "what rock did you just climb out from under?" I could see from the corner of my eye, since I felt unable to look at him directly, that he was very bored with me.I felt the cell phone vibrating in my pocket, grateful for something with which to occupy myself, since every attempt I made to engage with Mario only got me into trouble, earned me censure. I took out my phone, heard a hissing sound and some garbled voice, which turned out to be Henrietta shouting my name and saying, "I miss you."

I gushed, so relieved to hear a friendly voice, missing her, missing Tashkent. "What time is it there, my chicken?"

"It's early, I'm still at home waiting for the driver to take me to work, but he's late, so I just wanted to say hi." Each time we'd say something, there would be a pause or delay, and we'd step on each other's conversation. So, we would have these pauses after each sentence. "We went to Ali's relatives last night and ate all this plov," she said referring to the traditional greasy rice dish. "And today, I'm all plugged up and have massive gas. I'm afraid to even leave the house, like I'll embarass myself at the office or at my meeting at the ministry today." We were quite open in Tashkent about personal things, like the gastro-intestinal ailments that we all shared.

The music blared behind me loudly, and it was impossible to walk through the crowds to find a quiet spot, so I spoke loudly. "Honey, if you're afraid of farting at work, you should do fifty deep knee bends before you leave the house."

"Does that really work? That's what Steve said he does too."

Mario, standing beside me turned, rolled his eyes, "you're a freak. Can you keep your voice down?"

"Would you shut up," I turned to him and someone accidentally spilled something on me. Then he began to wipe it off. "Not you," I said into the phone.

"Where are you anyway?" she asked lowering her voice. "Who are you with?"

"Don't ask. I'll tell you later. Is Ali around?" I knew that her husband hated when she phoned me.

"He's still sleeping. He quit his job last week."

"Why did he do that? You helped him get that great job."

"I miss you, chicken. I wish you were here. We should talk. Ali's driving me insane. And then last night, with the relatives and all the unsolicited advice about how I should get pregnant." For as nostalgic as I felt about Tashkent, there were always these things, that drove us all crazy. We were and always would be outsiders. We thought differently than the people there, we were always going to be looked at a little suspiciously for the way we were different.

"Honey, don't let it get to you. I'll be back next week. Do you want me to bring anything?"

"Yes, bring sugar. I haven't been able to find any in the bazaar now for three weeks and we've been out for a week. No one can. Can't borrow from the neighbors because they don't have any either. There's some kind of sugar supply issue. Sometimes I can find sugar cubes, so at least there's something for the coffee. I should go, Ali's waking up." She sounded apprehensive, but quickly added, as she did to all my phone conversations, "did you dump that prostitute that you're sleeping with yet??"

"I will, I will. Don't worry. Big kiss." I put away the phone.

There was a tall and attractive man standing beside me who I hadn't noticed before, except that he had been drying my arm. "Sorry about that," he said smiling.

"No problem," I said. Mario had disappeared. I thought maybe I'd slip away and go home. But this tall man had piqued my curiosity.

"This guy," he said, pointing out Mario, "is he your friend? Or is he just clinging on to you the way he's clinging on to my friend?"

Mario was to a rather young handsome blonde guy. "Your friend must be Jared."

He nodded,"and he's not interested in your friend."

"Oh, I know that...and you know that. But the tragic thing is that he doesn't know. You see, he has a problem -- he's usually turned on by guys he can't have, or who aren't interested in him at all."

"Isn't that everyone's problem?"

"Tragic," I said shrugging my shoulders. I seemed to look down on the problem just as I looked down, in the crowd, at Mario, looking like a hamster running on the wheel chasing a morsel of feed. This kind of problem didn't seem to be my problem any more. My time of deprivation, lack of choices, I came to think of as having mellowed, subdued my desire. My needs were simple now. It was a pleasant feeling, almost an epiphany that being away like this had changed me, that I was content not having the things that I had once wanted or even still wanted. It was either an epiphany or the vodka tonic hitting me, but I felt relaxed and a surge of confidence that I was able to strike up a conversation with this rather attractive stranger standing beside me. I looked at my watch. It was already getting close to midnight and the crowd showed no signs of subsiding. "Don't people have jobs to get to tomorrow?"

"Well, it is Tuesday," he said.

"Is that right? I was just told that Tuesday is the new Thursday. Or something stupid like that."

"You're not from here, I take it."

Mario reappeared at my side, giddy and quite friendly, unlike before. "Do you have anything like this out there?" he asked drunkenly, interrupting my conversation with my new tall acquaintance.

I turned to him and answered quickly, "no. It's a poor country. We don't have things like that. And, homosexuality is illegal there." I turned back to my tall acquaintance, "I'm visiting from Uzbekistan."

"Central Asia?"

"Yes," I smiled coyly,"very good."

"I listen to the news. We're at war in that region. Don't we have an airbase there? Is it possible that I recognize your voice?"

"From the radio," I said, revelling for a moment in my minor celebrity.

"Can you imagine leaving this?" Mario said, more to himself as me and my tall acquaintance didn't pay him any mind.

"I'm Evan," he held out his hand for me to shake. "Perhaps it's something else that's keepign your friend there."

"What keeps you there?" Mario asked. And I continued to look at Evan, as though the conversation were between us.

"I don't know, I just like it. It's hard to explain."

"He probably found someone special there," Mario added with a touch of bitterness.

"No," I said. "Actually, that part of my life is pretty underdeveloped. But it's ok."  ¶ 8:25 PM 0 Comments

  I walked into the bar where Mario said he would be. Unlike most bars I'd been to for a while, it was crowded. It was smoke-free and well air-conditioned. Its clientele drank beer or cocktails, rather than straight spirit. Finally, it was gay and not the gay meant by the novice English speakers in Tashkent, educated from old Soviet textbooks that taught a very un-ironic proper British English. It was a 21st century New York gay, which is serious, like an old fashioned university mixer, if the university were single-sex; with men with fine white teeth and loosened ties tied around starched collars, sport jackets removed in after-work casual and draped over worked-out forearms. They stood in group formation, talking to one another though with the eyes never quite settling on those of the interlocutor's. Occasionally, you could find one holding court before several others. All spoke loudly over a powerfully percussive remix of a Pet Shop Boys tune. To my long untried eye, everyone seemed to look strikingly the same or uniform, like the stereotypical lack of discernment one has when encountering the natives of a foriegn country, another race of humanity, that prompts you to dismiss them with something like, "they all look the same."

Happy hour, I thought. I should be much happier. In Tashkent, I could only dream about finding myself here, having been deprived of precisely this; there, at best, I could enjoy a furtive glance across the Lucky Strike. I searched through the heavily scented forest, squeezing through the sea of bodies, almost giving up on trying to find Mario, when finally I spotted him. He was hard to recognize for some reason, something was different about him, smoething that I couldn't put my finger on. Perhaps that he looked so much like everyone else here, with his workshirt and tie, drink in hand, red face, mouth wide open in laughter at the chatter of one of his cohort. Had he changed, I wondered, continuing to remind myself that just because I had been gone didn't mean that peoples' lives hadn't stopped. As I came approached, he reached over drunkenly as though to kiss me on the cheek.

"Ugh, you're so sweaty," he said and then began to introduce me to the people standing around us as, "my friend who's just come back from Russia."

"Why are you saying Russia? It's not Russia. It's Uzbekistan," I corrected him.

"Well, most people never heard of Uzbekistan."

"So? That doesn't make what you say any less incorrect."

One of the guys who either I'd just been introduced to, or was standing nearbye and listening in chimed in, "that's where Cher is from, right?"

"That's Azerbaijan," responded another.

"Azerbaijan, how could I forget that," he said. "I need another cocktail."

"I need a cocktail," I said forcing conviviality. "Do you think they could give me something straight up."

"No," Mario said, his eyes rolling. "That isn't done here."

The place was so crowded, there was no place to escape and hide, there was no barman in sight. It would be challenging to leave, let alone get to the bar.

"Do you like it there in Ur-Pakistan?" another asked. He was clearly trying to flirt with me, I decided. Not really interested in wherever it was I lived.

"Yes," I responded and turned to Mario and lowered my voice, "do you think we could find another place to go? It's a bit loud, no?"

"This is the place to go on Tuesdays. Tuesday is the new Thursday," he said again, as he had on the phone earlier. "In a few hours, it will be the place to be. You will see everyone -- everyone comes here."

"Everyone?" I was slightly consoled by the appearance of a waiter who took my order. They could not serve me a shot of vodka with a tonic chaser. However, they could bring me a vodka-tonic. It is the same thing, I wanted to say, but less work; but the waiter had no patience for me.

"Though it does mean we run the risk of seeing Jared. I told you about him, right?" He said.

"Which one is that?" I asked. We hadn't talked for a while, hadn't caught up. Once, we were the kinds of friends who had spoken every day, knew everything about each other and talking came easy. Today, it felt strained. I didn't know who Jared was, but I knew Mario well enough to guess what the story was; time had passed since we last saw each other, but he'd hardly changed.

"Come on, I just told you about this guy... The really cute blonde guy with the great body -- who I would keep seeing at these gay MBA meetings. And I thought that there was really some chemistry there. Finally, we decided to go to dinner together on a Saturday night a few weeks ago -- on what I thought was a date, I mean, we said that we were going to do it again, perhaps the next weekend, but I got the flu. Long story short, he never called and doesn't even return my calls. I mean, who does that?"

I tried to look attentive, interested, sympathetic, as he spoke, but could not respond. His head looked big and round to me, like the shape of Charlie Brown's head, out of proportion with the rest of him. Why had I never noticed that he had a big head before?

With drink finally in hand, I made the mistake of starting to think aloud. "He we are, we're 30 and discussing the problems that seem like they should be a teen-ager's problems. I live in a place where people ask me why I'm so old and don't have a wife and two-three children, like them. Of course, I'm not like them, but it does make you think about things and what's important..."

"You," he said with a squinted, condescending eye, "don't live in the real world." Then he continued to ramble on about frustrations he had at work, about being "on the beach," not being put on good projects, about feeling underappreciated. I held my tongue, sucked more vodka tonic from the tiny cocktail straw, bit into the slice of lemon hugging the edge of the glass.

Labels: Entering the bar

  ¶ 4:49 PM 0 Comments