Sunday, December 20, 1998

Ramadan started this weekend. Iftar at the restaurant is my favorite thing in the world: at sunset Abbu breaks his fast with a date and a glass of water standing behind the register, still taking an order on the phone, and Motin Chacha brings out a tray of piyaju (little lentil fritters) for anyone who's fasting, customers too.

The House impeached the President yesterday. It was on the TV at the restaurant all day. One of our regulars, a cab driver from Sylhet, said in Bangla, "Back home they'd have done a lot worse to him than a vote," and everybody laughed, and then everybody got a little quiet, because it's true about a lot of things in a lot of places.

Finals are done. No word from any school yet. I'm trying to fast from worrying too. It's not going well.

Sunday, November 22, 1998

Third interview, upstate, in the first real snow of the year. Six hours on the bus each way. I ate Ammu's parathas cold out of foil somewhere around Binghamton and they were still the best thing I've eaten all month.

Now I wait. Some schools decide in the winter, some not until spring.

Abbu has started introducing me to customers as "my daughter, the doctor." I keep saying, Abbu, not yet, it's not even decided, and he says "Inshallah" (God willing) and keeps doing it. The man who delivers our rice sacks now calls me Doctor Apa. (Apa means older sister. He's about fifty.)

I love them so much. And I'm so scared of letting them down that sometimes on the train I have to remind myself to breathe. Pride is heavy. Nobody tells you that. You carry it for other people too.

Sunday, October 18, 1998

I flew to North Carolina on Thursday for my second interview. (The first one, in Philadelphia last month, was fine. Nice people. I felt like a number with a nice suit.) First time I've ever been in the South. Things I learned:

1. Everybody says ma'am. Even to me. I'm 22.
2. Sweet tea is not tea with a little sugar. It is sugar with a little tea.
3. The sky is so big. There are so many trees. I didn't know a sky could be that big in a place with people in it.

The interview was in two parts. First a faculty member, a pathologist in a bow tie, who asked me about the restaurant for twenty minutes and seemed truly interested in how you keep dal from scorching in a pot that big. (Stir from the bottom. Low heat. Patience.) Then a fourth-year student walked me around. She took me past the anatomy lab. You can't go in on the tour, but you can smell it from the hallway, and I stood there and thought, "In a year I could be in there," and I got goosebumps up both arms. That's either a sign or it's the formaldehyde.

I prayed Maghrib at the airport on my jacket in a quiet corner by the windows, watching the planes, and asked for this one. I'm a little scared of how much I want this one.

Sunday, September 13, 1998

Secondary applications sent: 11. Money spent on application fees: I'm not writing it down, because what if Abbu learns to use the computer. He's been working Saturday lunch himself so we don't have to hire anybody extra. He hasn't said one word about the fees. He just pays them.

BIG NEWS: my first interview invitation came Tuesday! Philadelphia, the 28th.

Ammu has already told everyone at the mosque. All of them. The aunties are praying for me in shifts. Honestly, I'll take it.

I needed an interview suit, so Farah and I went to a department store in Midtown and found a navy one on sale. Ammu says navy is serious. Then we spent an hour choosing a hijab to go with it. Navy? Gray? Cream? We went with a soft gray. Farah says it says, "I will be a very competent doctor, and also I am calm." That's the whole goal.

Sunday, July 19, 1998

Personal statement, draft 14.

Everyone says to write about the moment you knew you wanted to be a doctor. I don't have one moment. I have a lot of small ones. Nanu's insulin, which we used to carry to Dhaka in a little cooler in our carry-on bags. Motin Chacha's wrist. Ammu going to the clinic with her friends to translate because their English wasn't good enough, and coming home tired and saying, "They need a doctor who can talk to them."

Something happened Tuesday at the hospital where I volunteer. I'm only a volunteer, I push wheelchairs and restock warm blankets. There was an old man in the ER, very frightened, who only spoke Bangla, and a nurse was trying to ask him about his pain with her hands. I asked if I could help. She said please. I knelt down next to the stretcher and asked him in Bangla where it hurt, and his whole face changed. He held onto my hand the entire time.

I'm not going to write anything more about him, because he's a person and not a story. But I think that might be my moment. It's going into draft 15.

Sunday, June 21, 1998

Scores came Friday. 33.

For people who don't know what that means: it's good. It's good enough. I read it standing at the mailboxes in the lobby of our building, and then I sat down on the stairs and put my head on my knees for a while.

Abbu wanted to frame it. I said, Abbu, you can't frame an MCAT score. He said, why not? I couldn't think of a reason. It's now in a frame on top of the TV, next to my high school graduation picture and a photo of Nanu from 1960.

Summer plan: restaurant Friday through Sunday, volunteering at the hospital two evenings a week, and the application, which is basically writing your entire life on a form in little boxes. Plus the personal statement, which is writing your entire life on one page. I've started it nine times.

Sunday, April 19, 1998

MCAT countdown: IT'S OVER.

I took it yesterday. Eight in the morning until almost five, in a big room with a couple hundred other people and a proctor who walked up and down the aisles all day in squeaky shoes. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. For eight hours. I'll hear those shoes in my dreams.

At the lunch break I found an empty stairwell and prayed Dhuhr on my jacket, because there was nowhere else. A guy came down the stairs, saw me, stopped, and very politely turned around and went back up and used the other staircase. I don't know who you are, sir, but thank you.

Ammu had a plate waiting when I got home, all my favorite things: ilish (hilsa fish) in mustard sauce, dal, fried eggplant. She didn't ask how it went. She just sat across from me while I ate. That was exactly what I needed.

Scores come in June. I'm not thinking about it. (I'm thinking about it.)

Sunday, March 8, 1998

MCAT countdown: 41 days.

My 22nd birthday was Tuesday. Farah took me for pancakes at a diner at 7 a.m. before physics. Ammu made payesh (rice pudding with cardamom), and Abbu gave me a card with fifty dollars in it and wrote inside, in English, "For books." He always writes cards in English. His handwriting is so careful, like a schoolboy's. It gets me every time.

Practice test Saturday. Verbal: fine. Physical sciences: fine-ish. Biology: good. The writing sample, where they give you a statement and thirty minutes to write an essay about it: I don't know. Mine was about whether progress always requires sacrifice, and I wrote about my parents, and then realized I had spent the whole time writing about my parents and not really about the statement.

Hours studied this week: 31. Hours slept: not telling.

Sunday, February 1, 1998

MCAT countdown: 76 days.

New year, new look! Farah says the green makes the page look like "a hospital hallway." Good. I'm practicing. I also got rid of the Comic Sans, because a girl in my physics lab saw my page and said, "Cute font," and not in a nice way.

Eid was this week, so Ramadan's over and I'm allowed to eat lunch again. Good timing, because I just started orgo II and physics II and I need all the lunch I can get. Fasting through a three-hour lab is a spiritual experience, but not always in the way you'd hope.

Every time the news came on about the President at the restaurant this week, Abbu switched the TV over to an old cricket tape he keeps behind the counter. He says it's not for the dinner hour. The regulars have now watched the same cricket match about nine times. Nobody complains.

I signed up for an MCAT prep course that costs more than Abbu's first car. He paid it without blinking. Then he went in the back and I heard him blink.