Chap. #17 the final blog!!!!!!

"My name is Aisha Hossain. And I am an illegal alien."

Finally! Aisha finally got around to saying what she really wanted to say! Nadira wanted everyone to hear it to. It's like they wanted to just blurt it out but they knew that it would coast them. In the beginning I remember that Aisha was so against letting other people know. To the point where Nadira wasn't even a loud to tell her best freind. And then Aisha goes up to recite her speech and voices her biggest secret to no one person but to basically the whole community! I really thought that she would never do that, especially (if remember a little while back) she was completely losing it. I never expected her to do that. I expected Nadira would be the one to go around and tell people but no, it was Aisha.

Chap. #16 Aisha is ungratful

Aisha flings down her dish towel, goes into the bedroom, and brings out her stack of envelopes to the dinner table. She starts ripping them in half, one by one.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Come on, Nadira. This is formality. We have to leave."
"No, the judge, he said we'd have an appeal."
"Oh please." She jerks her hand away. "You are such a baby. Do you really believe a little fourteen-year-old can make the United States government change its mind?" She tears another envelope in two and pushes chunks of ripped-up paper into a mound in the center of the table.

Okay. I officially hate Aisha with all my heart. I want to call her a lot of bad things but one: they might not be appropriate for this blog and two: I don't even think she deserves it. She just said that Nadira can't do anything to help just because she is a young teenager. I mean we have had seven year olds that have made a difference! So, hate to tell you Aisha but, your sister can kinda make a difference. in fact she is the only one out of your little pity party that is trying to save your dad. Wow.... she really gets on my nerves. I mean in the early chapters of the book she was acting more like everything would be fine in the end and now she has gone a little to far by acting like everything will go down in flames.

Chap #13-14 Maps again

"It's like a map that suddenly becomes clear - lines start feeding into each other, connecting the parts. I pull out the new fax, look again. I've go it, I think. I've got a way to get Abba out."

I picked this sentence from he chapter because it was another reference to maps. Nadira, as we know, really likes maps so I picked the sentence because of that. There really seems to be a theme in his book that has to do with water, fire, and maps. During his chapter we also heard about Nadira learning how to swim which is another connection to water, for example. Also I was so happy to hear that Nadira finally got something that might help her father. that about the best news we have heard through out this whole book. YAAAAAY!

Chap. #12 Lying is not the answer

"What did you do that for?"
She drops her hand. "Why bother? We're probably no even staying in his country. I don't want anyone o know what's going on with Abba."
"Bu what about the letters we sent? Why let everything go when there's still a possibility-"
She cuts me off. "Now he thinks it was Ma and Abba who prevented me from going. This way he won't think I'm a total flake, which would be worse."
"But you lied. You lied about them!"
Her eyes get small. "Sometime you have to," she mutters, and walks down he hall.

When I read this paragraph I swear I did about 4 double takes. Aisha lying? Since when has she ever done that? We have all known her as little miss sunshine and goody-goody two shoes but now she has just gone and lost it. She lied, about her parents. I can picture Aisha lying about some things in life... but about her parents? No way did I see that cable car coming around the corner! Well, at least Nadira got up and said 'hey dude these are our parents we are talking about her. Thats just not right!' She is at least standing up for what she believes in. Aisha how ever is has just given up and wans to live her life as one giant lie.One I think it wrong to lie about something like that and blame it on you parents just so you don't look like a complete flake, and two it is just plain wrong to lie. I think thats it's better to let someone know the truth, no matter how much it hurts them or you or someone else you know, then to let them live a lie. They might only b mad at you in the beginning if you tell them the truth but if you lie you can lose that persons trust and they will stay mad at you for waaaaaaaaay longer then they would if you told them the truth.

Chap #11 finally some bonding!!!

"I don't know. I guess before..." I pause. "Before, you always took over, Aisha. It's like you didn't leave any room for me." For an instant Aisha's eyes flash, and I'm sure she's going o say something mean, put me down. Instead she laughs and picks up the rest of her bun. "There's plenty of room, Nadira. You just have to learn how to learn how to grab it."

Okay people this our very first sisterly interaction between the two sisters!!!!! YAY!!!! they are finally starting to be nice to each other and not snapping at each other every two seconds! I thought it was a very cute paragraph. Nadira finally opened up to Aisha about how she feels. She told Aisha how she felt about the way she was being treated by her own sister. Then the most spectacular thing happened... Aisha didn't say something mean! Instead she said something that told her sister that she really does care. AWWWWWW!

Chap. #10 Tim sucks

"When Tim Joins us at the police station and hears that Uncle's already gone in for questioning, he slaps his hands against his legs. "Oh great."

Okay I have one thing to say about Tim right now... and that is even though he thinks he is trying to help out the family, he's really not. Sure he is a lawyer and everything but he is still in law school or in training. He shouldn't even be trying to do anything since he doesn't completely what he is up against. Also the way that he just storms in there saying 'oh great' isn't really helpful. He kind of said 'oh great' in a way that sounded like 'oh my gosh you people are idiots' or 'you really shouldn't have done that'. I'm sorry but if he really knew what he was doing he would have told them not to say anything while on the phone. He didn't event think of telling them that they needed to remain silent until they had a lawyer present! ARGGGG!!! He really frustrates me... >:(

Chap #9 day dream...

"All through social studies class I keep having this weird vision of a police officer showing up at school. I see his visor tipping down as he pushes through the door. He and Mr. Laird huddle together, and then their eyes comb me over. The other kids are snickering, laughing and my neck grows sticky with sweat as they pull me away from everything I know."

I think that Nadira is really freaked out right now with all thats going on. She seems to be taking this a lot worse then Aisha is. Aisha is still acting like nothings wrong and Nadira has come to face the fact that things might not be okay. I think that this daydream is what her worst nightmare could possibly be right now. She seems to not be only worried about her father anymore but now she worried about what will happen if people find out about her and Aisha. I think she is wondering what it would be like to live a pretty normal life with one huge secret and then have it revealed to everyone as you leave that old life behind.

Chap. #8 Mr. Rashid

"Aisha," he says gently. "I wish I could tell you that immigration cares about your grade point average. But this is very serious."
This made me laugh. Aisha has fianlly been told to her face that no matter how smart she is, it won't help her with the immagration problems. He said that because he trying to tell her that no matter how smart she is, it's not going to save her dad. She needs to find other ways to be strong so that she won't get her heart crushed when she finds out that she can't do anything to help because she focused on smarts to much.

Chap. #7 the killings

"The more Grandmother prayed, the worse the news became. They heard about university students shot and professors murdered on their pillows. They heard about Freedom Fighters mowed down in dirt pits, Hindu villages riddled with gunshot. Millions of refugees formed an endless, tattered stream trudging toward Calcutta, in India."
This mini-paragraph scared me a lot. Not like the horror film kind of scar but the scar where it stays with you and disturbs you for a long time. This made me repeat one question over and over in my mind 'why do we kill?' I have always been asking myself why we participate in war or why we kill people just because they are different. Either way its taking a life and adding one more dead body to the earth. It's not worth it. People do it for their own reasons that they think are good enough but there is no reason to take a persons life, even the death penalty. I don't care if they were someone who killed 20 people or someone who only killed one it just brings the body count for our government up to some other number. It's like taking away a child's toy just because one left it somewhere 20 times and the other left it somewhere once, either way it is going to make the child very upset when you take it away. Also That person that is assigned the death penalty belonged to a family. They have people that love them out there. I don't think it's right to take that person away from their family. I know I just completley rambled onto the death penalty there but I thought it was relevant. now I am also not saying that people that kill other people should go unpunished but they should not be killed. Also those people that were murdering the Hindu's, the students, the freedom fighters, and the professors should have a better reason then 'they are of a different religion' to kill them. Even then if they did find one it would still have been wrong to do.

Borders - Wetback movie and ask me no questions

WetBack - someone who came to the U.S. illegally by crossing the Rio Grande river.
I didn't know that this was method people used to cross the boarder to the U.S. I never even knew that the river went that far down so that they could us it to cross. I also didn't know that about 3,000 people immigrate from Latin America each day. I found that to be a little surprising. Also when people try to cross the boarder, some are never heard from again and others are killed and buried in unmarked graves. I think that it must be really scary having to go do that. I mean what if you get caught? What if you don't have papers? What if you have to get deported all the way back to where you came from?

In Ask Me No Questions there is a line where Aisha asks "What if they say no at the boarder?"

there seem to be a lot of questions about 'the border'. Also everyone seems to be worried about it. They have a right to be worried. I mean if they get turned away they are going to have to go back to where they came from and risk their expired visas being discovered. Plus they might get treated badly because of where they are from and what their religion is.

Chap. #6 - Lily Lee

" 'My dad went away for a whole day and came back at four in the morning. My mother went crazy and threw a lamp at him.' " and "Lily has her own secrets. Once she saw her father kissing another women in a restaurant." - page 46. Ask Me No Questions

When I read this section of the book it made me very sad. Lily really seems to "worship" her father and her mother seems to love him very much. He still cares about them and all that but why is throwing something that good away? He seems to not care about his family anymore if he is going around cheating on his wife like that. It's like he is treating her as a stuffed animal. One moment he wants it so badly and then he gets board with it. Then he just throws it off to the side, in a dark little corner, and then goes off to find a new stuffed animal. I think its just cruel. 

Aisha goes with the flow instead of against it... (extra)

"Ma calls him Bagh'a which means "tiger" in Bangla, because he's got this wide face with narrow eyes and a fearsome temper." - Nadira, Ask Me No Questions
I think it's funny that Nadira's mother has come up with a nick-name for the boy even though she dislikes him. Usually if you dislike someone you refer to them by their name, but in this case she has given him a nick-name. I dislike the fact that Aisha called him a "low-life" just because of the gossip/ information she has heard about him. She hasn't ever tried to talk to him and she is already treating him like she treats Nadira. If she took the time to get to know him she might not think that about him. He seems to want to help Nadira's family out and he is the only one standing up to do something, but Aisha just treats him badly as a result. Is that any way to treat a person when they have done nothing to you but tried to help you?

Chapter 5 significant sentence

"Boys like Tareq, they don't think. They just do. They're not good for our community. They're vultures feeding off of our fears." - Ali-Uncle from Ask Me No Questions
This sentence kinda pissed me off a little. Even though we don't know Tareq very well he is already being stereotyped as something bad. From the looks of it he seems like a pretty nice guy to talk to and has a really nice personality. Sure his background is a little sketchy (a little might be an understatement :)...) but he stills seems like he means well. He suggested trying to get Nadira's father a green card without doing the paperwork. Even though his suggestion was illegal he was the only one that was trying to do something. I mean everyone else is just sitting around waiting for it all to pass, but Tareq was actually trying to do something to help the situation at hand. I am not saying that they should have done what he has suggested but at least he is trying.

Sarah Z.'s cool blue log

I really liked what Sarah Z. said on her blog. She was able to tell us how she related to her chosen sentence and what it meant to her. I liked the part where she talked about not really thinking of the world as a place with no boundaries. I also liked the fact that she didn't use things from the book in her log. It was all about that one sentence.

Significant Sentence chap. 3-4

"What that really means is I'm supposed to do whatever she says, and she gets all the credit."- Nadira, chapter four, p.28, ask me no questions by Marina Budhos

I think that Aisha is really letting this get to her head and that she has decided to be all cocky about it. I mean she is really treating Nadira really badly. I know that if I had someone treating me like that I would probably be really mad at them and I would have done the same thing that Nadira did. I would have said no. I mean who wants to be bossed around after having your father taken away and put in detention and while your mother is in a church somewhere waiting for your father to be released? I don't. I think that Aisha really isn't thinking about how Nadira feels about this and she really should stop and think about it, because they are going to get in many more fights if she doesn't.

Significant Sentence - 1st blog

'It's hard to have a sister who is perfect.' - Ask Me No Questions by: Marina Budhos p. 3

I agree with Nadira on this subject. It must be hard having someone in your family who is perfect and then be expected to follow in their footsteps. I don't have a sister but, that's what my mom is like. She is really good at math and science and she expects me to be just as smart. I really hate it because she is always pressuring me to be the same as her. Nadira seems to be invisble beside her sister because she is not the carbon copy of her sister. Everyone is always saying great things about her sister and Nadira feels hurt because no one ever says anything great about her. Also people might be disapointed in her because she is not as smart as her sister.