Fried Chicken Pedicure: Stories from a Third Culture Life Filled with Realities and Lots of Cockblocking

By Hannah Al-Kabour

"Happy, fun, puzzling, and unending, this is my life, my confusion."

Hannah Yasmine grew up in Michigan, half white American and half Saudi. Fried Chicken Pedicure is a collection of personal stories that uncover her family, identity, travel, life in college while living at her parent's house, and all the nonsense alon

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885040297

Book preview

Hannah_Yasmine_-_Fried_Chicken_Pedicure_ebook.jpg

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2021 Hannah Yasmine

All rights reserved.

Fried Chicken Pedicure

Stories from a Third Culture Life Filled with Realities and Lots of Cockblocking

ISBN 978-1-63730-687-1 Paperback

ISBN 978-1-63730-777-9 Kindle Ebook

ISBN 979-8-88504-029-7 Ebook

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Pants Swap: A Story About Loyalty

Chapter 2 Peeling Back the Veneer

Chapter 3 Baba’s Academy

Chapter 4 Cockblock Won’t Stop

Chapter 5 The Spain Trip

Chapter 6 When I Fell in Love

The Wedding Chronicles. Begin

Chapter 7: The Wax Dress

Chapter 8 The Fried Chicken Pedicure

Chapter 9 House Call

The Wedding Chronicles. End

Chapter 10 The Basement Apartment

Chapter 11 The Journey

Chapter 12: Hannah’s Embarrassment Guidelines

Chapter 13 The Ending

Acknowledgments

Appendix

Eighteen doesn’t mean anything in this house.

—Karen Elaine Keyworth

For my husband, Fehed, obviously.

And Mom, I soldiered on.

Introduction

The goal of this book is to share my stories with you. Happy, fun, puzzling, and unending, this is my life, my confusion. In this book, you may look for a resolution at the end, an arc, or some sort of growth. That’s what they’ve told me is what I need to give you, the reader. That’s what your audience will look for, I was told. As much as I want to give you what you’re looking for, I can only give you what I have. I don’t know if in my life I’ve reached an arc, if I’ve achieved growth, or if I have a resolution to offer you.

In this book, I’ll talk about my experiences, my stories, the pain I’ve faced, and the price I’ve paid for love and knowledge. Maybe it’s not a high price. You’ll see what I have now, from getting what I never wanted and what I’ve learned along the way.

This book is not a made-to-order write up. Nothing inside of it is drier or more glamorous than how I felt about it. It’s a raw, truthful, and outrageous recollection of my experiences that’s too ridiculous to invent. Some parts of the book have a bit of spice that I added myself because that’s what I do. What do you want from me? I’m a goddamn storyteller. But the core of the book is uncut.

Growing up bi-cultural you get the benefit of having first-hand experiences in both cultures.

Sweet, right? Although one hard fact is the bi part of bi-cultural: You get all and none of both. My dad is from Saudi Arabia, and my mom is a white American. I was raised in East Lansing, Michigan. Growing up mixed, I never felt a complete belonging in either place I lived. I was whiter than all my brown friends at the mosque but browner than all the white girls on my soccer team. It’s true America is home, but there was another place that was home, too, sort of. Across the world in Saudi Arabia. I didn’t really feel it until I got much older and actually moved there as an adult with my husband.

My siblings and I were a mixed bag with completely different experiences based on how the world treated us. My sister, Sarah, looks south Asian, Indian, or Pakistani. My brother, Mohammed, looks Italian with an olive skin tone. My twin sister, Maryam, and I look mostly white with a pink undertone to our skin unless we grab a tan in the summer. Then, I often look Greek, which is really just an exotic white (let’s be honest). Exotic as foreign isn’t scary; it’s sexy, just the right amount of fire and spice. White people go crazy for it. I know because growing up, when I got labeled exotic, there was a currency that came with it as opposed to foreign.

My sister and I used to play with our identity and try to exotify it, in our teenage opinion, mainly just to get boys. But if I’m being honest, it wasn’t just about boys. Growing up as a minority, I felt a constant need to seek shelter. Because growing up different in a white world, exotic had a safety appeal to it to an impressionable teenager who vacillated between embracing the difference of who I am and wanting to be the same.

My sister, Maryam, literally put Arabian European on her MySpace profile. Sarah used to say, You can’t say that. You’re not European. She was right, but I was on Maryam’s side. When you’re not one thing, you can be anything.

This identity bingo was very confusing for me, as most people just assumed I was white or European with no Arab heritage. Unless they heard my last name: Al-Kabour. No mistaking that. But Hannah?

Hannah was a really common name in my class. I was never the only girl in my grade with the name Hannah. This gave my identity a blending component compared to my clearly brown sister, who looked foreign, but with a name like Sarah, didn’t exactly sound it. Or my twin sister, who looked just as white but with a name like Maryam, always got the question from strangers, So where are you from? A question I never really got growing up. I still felt connected to my father’s culture, even though the world didn’t connect me to it. I grew up with everyone treating me whiter than I felt, which is extremely confusing.

I want to tell you stories about how it feels to be mixed, and hopefully at the end of this book you will get a closer and deeper understanding of what the Arab American mixed experience feels like. At least, what my experience feels like. There’s very little representation in the publishing world when it comes to sharing stories of third culture kids, kids of immigrants, and especially Arab-American parents.

I’m hoping what you also get out of the stories is laughter, because life is too short to take everything so damned seriously, and this isn’t a college course. So, please don’t look for deep meaning in every single sentence. Sometimes you have just got to take your pants off in the library.

Sometimes.

That’s all there is to say.

This book is a collection of stand-alone stories that include some of my bi-cultural experiences. These passages will hopefully entertain you and help you understand a bit of the world in which I live. I hope they can build some bridges, shatter perceptions, and give representation to other mixed culture kids out there. I will warn you, however, this book is not a monotone collection. Not every single story is about my bi-cultural experience. I’m not a walking talking PBS documentary. Some stories are about growing up mixed and the profound effect that has had on me. Other stories are just me, existing, totally and completely in one culture, one place, with no reflection. Just shameless Hannah out there in the world, cockblocking my girlfriends or giving unsolicited advice on how to avoid embarrassment in general.

I rag a lot about white people in this book, and that’s because, well, first: easy target. But second, they’re my people too. A lot of the things I say, I learned from white culture. Raised in white culture, I feel it in my bones. Cottage cheese on townhouse crackers with deli turkey was a meal. I went to Laura’s garden party and ate coleslaw with cucumber sandwiches. Delicious.

Karen the meme is Mom, and Debbie is my aunt.

I love these people. They’re my family, and they’re my life.

I also love eating roast chicken with nothing more than salt and pepper. We don’t need to overcrowd the pan with extra spices. That shit’s right the way it is. Leave it alone.

I also love Kabsah with black lemon, cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, and cloves. It’s all me, and some things will never change.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out who I am, and I know I’m not there yet. Maybe I’ll never get there. I’m gonna tell you stories about my life growing up. Strap in and enjoy the ride.

Chapter 1

The Pants Swap: A Story About Loyalty

I’m from a brownish family, which is great, but it would be great if I was from a British upper crust family too.

With a title styled as duchess or countess and a great big English countryside estate that comes with the title. I’ve never even been to England, but I’ve been to the movies. The estate I imagine sits in a county or town with a name like Gloucestershire, Kent, or Shaftesbury. In this fantasy, I also own a little pied-a-terre in London, just to pop into during the weekend for operas and the ballet.

That’s classy.

I am not actually graceful or classy. Even so, I try to tell myself that I come from a riding family so as to validate my blue blood wannabe feelings. Yet I still get fuckin’ haters (Sarah and Maryam) telling me that I lumber into rooms and have football shoulders. I frequently get asked to be more aware of myself and not to bump into people constantly. My hope is to achieve grace and poise. It’s still possible at thirty. I quite enjoy watching British movies with estates, horses, riding clothes, and fox-hunts. In many ways, I see myself in those movies.

Consequently, despite my short comings, the whole riding family image is technically true; my mother and aunt rode horses since they