A Chat with Lubaba Fakeih
A Chat with Lubaba Fakeih
Seeing things in a new light, engaging with the world in a rational way, and stories that made us cry
It was such a pleasure to get to know
. A geospatial analyst, trained in architecture and urban design, whose research area will soon be on how to use technology to improve the way people interact with urban spaces.(This piece is a supplement to issue no. 5. Informal, one-on-one chats are a reward you can unlock by referring friends to the newsletter.)
Ali: Firstly, thanks so much for sharing the newsletter far and wide. I was on a call one morning, and my watch kept going off. Then the call ends, I check my phone, and I see that you’ve unlocked all three referral awards in one go. :)
Lubaba: You got it. I like to promote things I enjoy.
Seeing things in a new light.
Ali: Was there an experience in your life that changed the way you look at something?
Lubaba: There was. One time I was reading something about how people categorize themselves based on their attachment to things and to people, and that got me thinking about my own relationships to people, and how they’re all free from any sort of conflict. Be they platonic or romantic ones. I wondered why that was. And then I realized it’s because I’ve setup a whole system that anticipates and prevents something like conflict from developing. I try to be rational in the way I deal with things, including feelings. So if I determine an incompatibility between me and someone, I’d deal with it in a rational way before it progresses to something unwieldy.
Ali: You know, the only time I ever learned to face conflict was when I became a manager at work. Before then, my approach was avoidance. So not at all as rational as yours. More of a copout. But the silver lining was that my crutch—writing—eventually developed into something I realized I enjoyed doing.
Lubaba: How about you, what was an experience that made you see something in a new light?
Ali: I can’t remember an exact event, but I remember the general feeling of realizing that people can be unpredictable. I was probably in middle school when it hit me that you can say something to someone and get a certain reaction. And you think, great, A causes B. And then you do A again, and B happens. And that confirms your model of the world. And then one day you do A, and B doesn’t happen. C happens. And then the next day, you do A, and D happens. And then you’re all confused and you think, how on earth am I expected to figure out people if they’re so unpredictable.
Staying close to our kids as they grow older.
Lubaba: You dedicated Loaded Language to your dad. What is your relationship with your dad like?
Ali: It’s really close. My dad was going through surgery around the time I was finishing up that book. And the thought of something going wrong terrified me. I’ve idolized him my whole life. For him to not have been born into means, and to have done so much with so little, and with such quiet demeanor throughout, has always been something I’ve admired. He’s attended to people quietly, all his life. One-on-one, far from any limelight.
Lubaba: My relationship with my dad is also very close. I think that’s important for a person, especially as they’re growing up, to have that sort of open channel with their dad. Where no matter what happens in the child’s life, and there will be ups and downs, to always know they can go back to their dad. Knowing they’re an unconditional source of love and support. Kids are going to rebel, but they need to know they can always go back to someone who’s there for them.
Ali: Kids do want to test boundaries at a certain age. Mine’s getting to the age where I’m told that it’ll start happening more.
Lubaba: Growing up, every time I’d rebel, I remember, I’d go back to my dad and talk things through, and our relationship would actually get stronger after each time. So that’s an important lesson in our own relationships with our kids.
Ali: Agreed. My daughter, who’s in middle school, will say something I don’t agree with, like wanting to go into some profession that I’m not too excited about. And though I won’t say anything out loud, she can immediately sense if I’m being ambivalent. So I have to remind myself that I can’t decide her life decisions for her, but I can be there for her to try and guide and support.
Lubaba: What’s your favorite thing about having a middle-schooler?
Ali: The walks, definitely. On weekends, usually, or during summers, it can be any day, we’ll just go for a walk along the bay and talk for an hour or two. There are depths in a middle-schooler’s psyche that I feel you can’t get to unless you gave them 45 minutes or so to first talk, unconstrained. What’s your favorite thing about having lower schoolers?
Lubaba: They’re surprisingly rational. Like the other day, one of them tells me, “You’re the best mom in the world.” And I said, “You don’t know all the moms in the world, so how could you know?” And she says, “No, of all the moms I’ve had, you’re the best.” And I thought, yep, this kid’s logical!
A favorite, recently published book?
Lubaba: Of the questions you shared with me ahead of time, the one I didn’t have an answer for was what my favorite food is. That’s a tough one.
Ali: Yeah, I realized walking back from the cafe this morning that if I had to answer those questions I sent you, I’m not sure I’d have good answers for some of them.
Lubaba: Like which ones?
Ali: What my favorite recently published book is, for instance. I think the last non-fiction book I read was Bad Blood. And the last fiction book I bought was The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom, and though it’s a short read—I bought it for a flight last winter—I still haven’t finished it. Some months, I just can’t read, it seems. And some months, I can only read.
Lubaba: I find it hard to pick one book that’s my favorite. It’s easier to pick a type that I’m drawn to. One I’d highly recommend is Flatland. I absolutely love the author’s writing style and voice.
Ali: Gosh, I remember that book. You know, you might enjoy The Dot and the Line.
Lubaba: I haven’t heard of it.
Ali: It’s by Norton Juster, who wrote The Phantom Tollbooth. I like books that have novel approaches.
Lubaba: Talking of writing styles, you know what I dislike most about some authors’s writing?
Ali: Uh-oh.
Lubaba: It’s when an author pretends to know who I am and how I think. They’ll say something like, “I know you’ve never thought about such and such”, and I’ll go, how on earth do you know I’ve never thought about that? Do you know me?
Ali: Oh, man. That’s hilarious.
Lubaba: Or when an author is writing about something they’re clearly not knowledgable about.
Ali: Self-help-type books, I’ve found, are sometimes amenable to that sort of thing. I might take a local experience and then generalize it. And look for examples and data to confirm and corroborate that generalized model. There’s that risk with that genre.
Ali: I’ll tell you what my biggest fear is when I’m writing.
Lubaba: Tell me.
Ali: Two things. One, of being perceived as talking down to a reader, which I never want to do.1 And two, of sharing some study from, say, the ‘80s, and then of being found out that I’d not done my diligence and realized that the thing was debunked since, or that there’s some added nuance or color I missed. Or something like that. So I try my best to research, as much as I can, everything around the thing I’m writing about. But it still keeps me up at night.
We then talked about how commuting and traveling had helped us get more reading in. I forget who said what. The general gist was that commuting can be an inconvenience, but it can also be a blessing in disguise. You have that chunk of time that constrains you, and sort of forces you to do something like read or listen to an audiobook. And you don’t realize its value until it goes away, and then you stop reading or listening to audiobooks as often. You create an association between an activity and a habit, and once the activity goes away, sometimes the habit does too.
Stories that made us cry?
Ali: Was there a story you read that stuck with you?
Lubaba: I’ll go with Sophie’s Choice. It’s really good, though heartbreaking. Especially if you have kids.
Ali: I haven’t read it. I know of Sophie’s World, which is a book about philosophy told in narrative form.
Lubaba: Read it, I highly recommend it. But it will make you cry.
Ali: I’ve got a recommendation for one that’ll make you cry. Two movies, actually. One is Interstellar, and the other is Arrival. On both occasions, I left the movie theater sobbing.
Lubaba: The point of going to the theater is to have fun, not to cry!
Ali: Agreed! I felt hoodwinked, both times. Stories about children getting sick or parents and their kids being separated are tough.
Pandemic hobbies.
Ali: Any hobbies you picked up during the pandemic?
Lubaba: I picked up yoga during lockdown. Though I’ve since stopped doing it.
Ali: Never tried yoga. But I have started doing assisted stretching, which I really like. It helps with post-workout recovery.
Lubaba: Isn’t that like a massage?
Ali: Well, no, actually, it’s very different, you see … it’s … well, yeah … in a way, I guess.
It was lovely getting to know Lubaba, who got me, in turn, to see several things in a new light. Especially, how self-awareness can sometimes mean noticing an absence (e.g. conflict) and asking why it’s so. We talked about the thinking questions in the newsletter. The idea for that comes from an ethics podcast for kids called Short & Curly, where they pose a question mid episode and ask you to pause the episode and think about it. We also talked about how one remembers past experiences like living in certain cities, and how some people might remember only the good times whereas others might remember only the bad times. And the sorts of things that can influence how we recall a memory.
I enjoyed the chat so much that I forgot to take notes, I’m embarrassed to say. So the above is recollected from memory. I’ll do a better job remembering to take notes next time.
Books and podcasts mentioned in this piece
Last year, I experimented with getting GPT to tell me if a piece of writing was pretentious or patronizing. That was useful, I felt. To get that instant feedback on style and voice.