SUN 6/20/99

Packing. Things Ammu has packed for me so far:

• 3 jars of mango achar (pickle), each one triple-bagged and then wrapped in a towel
• a rice cooker
• a prayer rug that was her mother's
• a winter coat, "in case" (Ammu, it's North Carolina)
• a pressure cooker
• 40 pounds of rice. I said they have rice in North Carolina and she looked at me like I'd said they have no air.

Rafi has seen the new Star Wars four times. He graduates from high school on Thursday, and in the fall he's starting at a college here in Queens, which means he'll be riding the same trains I rode for four years. I made him a list of which subway car to stand in so you're right at the stairs when the doors open. He said, "Apa, I've lived here my whole life." Then he folded up the list and put it in his wallet.

Five weeks until I go. I keep walking around the neighborhood looking at everything like I'm trying to memorize it: the jewelry stores with the gold in the windows, the sari shops, the sweet shop, the 7 train going over like thunder every few minutes. I'm going to miss the noise. I never thought I'd say that.

SUN 5/30/99

I graduated on Thursday! Bachelor of Science in biology, with honors, which Ammu has now said out loud to every living person in Queens.

Ammu wore her green jamdani sari, the fine woven Dhaka cotton that she only takes out for weddings. Abbu left Motin Chacha in charge for four whole hours, which may be a record, and came in his good suit, the same suit he wore to his citizenship ceremony in 1991. Rafi brought a disposable camera and took 27 pictures, and I'm scared to see how many of them are the back of somebody's head.

When they read my name, Ammu stood up and yelled "THAT'S MY DAUGHTER!" in English, which she almost never uses in public. The whole row turned around. I have never been less embarrassed of anything in my life.

Afterward we went back to the restaurant, where it was the dinner rush, and I walked in still wearing my cap, and Motin Chacha banged a ladle on a pot, and the whole room, people I had never seen before, stood up and clapped. A man at table four sent over a mango lassi. I don't even know his name.

SUN 4/11/99

The upstate school called Wednesday. I'm off the waitlist. So now I have to choose.

Upstate is five or six hours from home by bus. North Carolina is more like ten by car. Ammu did not say which one she wanted. She didn't have to. She went very quiet and made my favorite dinner three nights in a row, which is her version of lobbying.

Abbu is the one who surprised me. I was sitting at table six after closing with both letters in front of me, and he sat down across from me and said, "You told me once about the sky there." I had. Back in October, one time, after the interview. He remembered. He said, "Go where the sky is big, Ma. We have the telephone."

I sent my answer to North Carolina on Friday. Ammu cried, but in a different way than when the envelope came. Then she started making a list of things to pack. It's April.

The financial aid papers came too. The loan numbers have a lot of zeroes. I did the math on how many plates of biryani that is. It's a lot of biryani.

THU 3/11/99

THICK. ENVELOPE.

OK. Let me write this down properly so I remember it forever.

I got home from school at 4:15. Ammu was standing in the downstairs hallway of our building in her house slippers, holding an envelope with both hands like it was hot. It was from North Carolina. It was thick. She hadn't opened it. She'd been standing there for almost an hour, she said, because she didn't want to be upstairs when I opened it. She wanted to be right there.

I opened it sitting on the stairs. "Congratulations." I read it twice. Ammu read it upside down over my shoulder and started saying "Alhamdulillah, alhamdulillah" (praise be to God) and crying so loud that the old Greek lady from the second floor came out in her robe to see who died.

We took the train to the restaurant together, Ammu still in her slippers. She would not go back up to change. Abbu was chopping onions. I handed him the letter. He read it slowly, the whole thing, every word, and then he wiped his hands on his apron and went into the walk-in refrigerator and shut the door. Motin Chacha said, "He'll come out." He came out after about five minutes with red eyes and said the onions were very strong today.

He made a copy of the letter at the copy shop on the corner and taped it next to the register, right under the health department certificate.

We called Nanu in Dhaka even though it was the middle of the night there. She said, "I knew. I told you I knew." She did tell me. She told me when I was nine.

(I turned 23 last week. This is the best birthday present anyone has ever gotten.)

SUN 2/21/99

Waitlist letter from the upstate school. "Your application remains under active consideration." Farah says a waitlist is a yes that hasn't found its shoes yet. Still nothing from North Carolina.

Farah got into law school, though! We bought a whole box of mishti (sweets) from the shop next to the restaurant and ate them on the curb outside in thirty-degree weather, in our coats, getting syrup on our gloves. Joy is allowed to be cold.

Short entry. I'm going to go stare at the mailbox.

THU 1/21/99

New year, new page! I finally learned how to make a background tile, well, how to use one, anyway. It's notebook paper, because that's what my life is.

Eid was this week. Ammu cooked for two days and the restaurant fed half of Jackson Heights. I wore my new shalwar kameez (Nanu sent the fabric from Dhaka) and felt very festive for about six hours.

The part I didn't want to write: last Saturday, before Eid, the first letter came. Philadelphia. Thin envelope. "We regret." Everyone says you can tell from the envelope before you open it, and it's true.

I was fine about it for an hour. Then I was not fine for the rest of the day. Rafi, who is 17 and not a hugger, came and sat on the end of my bed and played his Game Boy and didn't say anything and didn't leave. That's the Rafi version of a hug. I'll take it.

One no. Two more to hear from.