💾 Archived View for gemlog.blue › users › mutova › 1596132991.gmi captured on 2024-08-18 at 20:39:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2020-09-24)
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Enisa studied astrophysics, then aeronautical engineering, works for a consultancy, and is bored. She says she’s introverted and doesn’t really like people. I ask if she wants to get coffee and learn that she doesn’t drink coffee out of principle. “All that men do here is sit around and drink coffee and talk about nothing at all. They always ask me to have coffee with them but drinking coffee takes forever and then I’m stuck with them and have to talk about whether I have a boyfriend. I say I only drink orange juice. You can drink a glass of orange juice very fast and leave.” So we meet for juice or meet for hookah. She wears a headscarf but thinks it’s bullshit. I learn about Muhammad’s first wife and that true Islam is feminist. She tells stories of having to explain basic math and physics to incompetent men in charge of guiding airplanes.
When I make burek up for the first time, I excitedly tell Enisa about it. She says she doesn’t know anything about baking, especially burek, and never wants to learn. Her grandmother wants to teach her because a good wife and good mother knows how to make burek. “Not learning how to cook is the best way for me to avoid having to get married.” She invites me to come get out of the city with her and a friend. “Where to? — Doesn’t matter, my friend and I just want to drive.”
Two days later I get picked up in the rain and we drive off. I’m glad to find that singing along to pop music in a car with friends transcends cultures. Her friend and Enisa don’t get to hang out as much as they’d like and these trips are the only way of ensuring they’re far away enough from family and acquaintances that nobody can just pop by and intrude. They take me out for lunch in a restaurant in the mountains.
Enisa calls something “communist” when it’s depressing. “Abandoned factories are communist.” Grey skies. The government. Working at a hotline for abused women is communist, and she stopped after a year because it made her hate men too much. She worries that she’s good at everything and ambitious about nothing. She says she’s not a warm person.