cousin, meet cousin.

So my cousin “Abe” texts me one day asking me when I’m going back to Bangladesh. I gave him my standard reply: “I have no idea”. There was nothing odd about that in itself, except perhaps that I had just gotten back like 3 months ago. I just thought my cousin was missing me (hey people miss me okay!). What piqued my curiosity was when he replied with “You have to come! We have to tell you what we did!”

I should probably tell you a little about my extended family at this point. Though the maternal and paternal branches of my family tree hail from opposite ends of the country, my maternal grandfather settled in Chittagong, where incidentally, dear old dad is from. This makes family visits wonderful! Everyone together. So the 2 sides of my family see a lot of each other, even when we’re not there. Abe is my uncles kid from my mom’s side. Tess on the other hand, is my uncle’s kid on my dad’s side. They are in no way related. The only common blood between them is me and my 2 siblings. That’s it. I didn’t lead with that since it might have come off as semi-incestuous. Which it is not! I assure you. So yes. This is the story about how 2 of my first cousins (from different sides!) fell in love and decided to get married. Only one of society’s biggest taboos keeping them apart. Only.

Fasting from the crack of doom. I meant dawn. Crack of Dawn.

Usually I don’t/won’t write about this stuff, but since I’m up at an ungodly hour, I thought, why not?

You may or may not know this, but starting the day-before-yesterday, muslims around the world started fasting in the month of Ramadan. Now, I am not going to tell you the history, or the where’s and why-fores  of Ramadan are; that’s what Wikipedia is for. But for those of you who are totally new to the concept, I’ll give you a brief rundown.