Living with Baba

Last Baba and I lived together was when I was 13, and the relationship then was very different than it is today. Nineteen years brings with it many changes…

So to does it bring many Baba-specific idiosyncrasies.

Baba has lived on his own for the past five or six years; he’s become used to a certain flow and organization to his home and life. I was not a part of either until five weeks back when I moved in. (It was a necessary move and one that has done both he and I a lot of good, mama too.)

I’m a girl. I own a lot of crack and I have many different varieties of hand creams and face creams and shampoos and perfumes for all sorts of occasions. As girls are wont to doing, we kind of expand when we live somewhere…our items proliferate at an un-male like rate, something to which my father was not accustomed.

I NEED MORE CLOSET SPACE.

And I’ve developed some sort of bizarre turrets, but that’s really neither here nor there.

The other evening I was sitting in the living room reading when I heard my father scream: “My computer’s broken! I can’t see anything! My computer! Maha DID YOU UNPLUG MY COMPUTER? I CAN’T HEAR ANYTHING EITHER! DID YOU UNPLUG THE CABLES? WHAT’S WRONG WITH MY COMPUTER?”

I had powered off both the screen and the speakers. And by that I mean ‘I had quite nearly given my father a massive coronary with neither sound nor sight’.

Apparently, baba doesn’t turn off the screen – rather he,lets it fall asleep, Maha - and neither does he turn off the speakers because they don’t make noise when the computer’s off, Maha.

AND I COULD REALLY USE SOME SHELVING SPACE AS WELL.

On yet another evening, I was cleaning the kitchen, which is REALLY SMALL, OK. And I don’t mean that in the joking sort of haha way, I mean that in the between baba’s belly and myself, we can’t fit in there at the same time. SMALL. You can’t misplace anything in the kitchen, because if you do, you will trip over it, or it will hit you in the face.

In the kitchen and hanging from the hand of the refrigerator is baba’s kitchen towel.

D has nicknamed me The Folding Gnome because I fold everything in my path. In full Folding Gnome mode, I folded baba’s kitchen towel and hung it next to the sink.

Sitting in baba’s office my room, I heard baba scream “WHERE’S MY TOWEL? DID YOU TAKE MY TOWEL? MY TOWEL’S GONE, MAHA!”

I came running out of baba’s office my room and ran the entire 12 centimeters to the kitchen. Baba was staring at the kitchen towel while still screaming; because the towel was not hanging off of the refrigerator door but rather folded and hanging next to the sink, he was incapable of recognizing it, and the following conversation ensued:

“Baba, that’s your towel.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Why is it here? I don’t understand. It’s usually there.” (Stops, turns one quarter of an inch and points at the handle of the refrigerator before looking up at me in shock.)
“Because I folded it and placed it next to the sink where you are most likely to use it.”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“I need the towel placed here on the refrigerator. It’s been there for the last 5 years and I need it to remain there. When I need to wipe my fingers after washing something, I need the towel to be hung on the refrigerator door or else I will never be able to wipe my fingers and then I risk turning into one big prune.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Ok.”
“So leave the towel alone.”
“Ok.”
“Good.”
“Sure.”
“I have idiosyncrasies.”
“Yes. As do we all, baba.”
“Ok.”
“Ok, habibti.”
"Are you ok?"
"No, I'm feeling a little tepid."
"Maybe you should go lie down."
"Is my bed still in the same place or have you moved it too?"

And one final random: Baba has an awesome little ironing table. But no iron. It was really exciting to stare at the ironing board and think of all the possibilities and potential it held.

AND I’D REALLY LIKE A SEPARATE BATHROOM AS WELL, PLEASE.

Baba’s absolutely the cutest thing in the world…and notwithstanding the circumstances that have led me to live with him or the fact that I am no longer in my gorgeous warm cozy room that I was looking forward to for years and that took me nearly a year to decorate…I am loving getting to know baba in this way.

P.S. I am having dinner with mama tonight! Slowly, but surely…slowly, but surely inshallah.