GHOULISHLY GOOD TIME?

I forgot about Halloween. D-WORD I keep forgetting about American holidays. I had a piece of Yemeni candy made from Tahini paste- the crucial additive to hummus- which is almost the same thing as going to a bunch of Halloween parties, wearing absurd costumes, trick or treating, and eating those mini candy-corn pumpkins until I lie in the fetal position moaning and writhing. I almost remembered about it, almost. About three days before the big holiday, a bunch of the YES alumni (the students who had previously spent a glorious year in an American high school usually someplace god awful like Mississipi) approached me about helping them plan a Halloween party at Amideast.
Initially I was HIGHLY skeptical- I have previously been approached on numerous occasions for help with similar activities, all wonderful in theory, but in their exuberance they forget one crucial thing: we’re in Yemen. “Taryn! Help us form a co-ed baseball club!” Awesome! Except…. There aren’t any fields or even open spaces…. Baseball doesn’t exist here…. We would have to order equipment from another country…. It would be too dangerous for the girls to play in their abayas and hijabs…. Young boys and girls should NOT be running around together in public… and its effing hot.
As I continue to take pains not to let my rather antisocial, introverted nature become public knowledge, I of course feigned enthusiasm, and gave my hearty assent.
They wanted to make this party at Amideast, and force all the ACCESS students to attend- so we would be forcing an American holiday on about 220 people. Hmmmm.

Soon we started talking logistics- not only is this holiday HIGHLY haram, but there isn't the slightest bit of Halloween decoration for thousands of miles in any decoration. Do you think Saudia Arabia celebrates Halloween? The Kingdom is our closest neighbor.
I came up with QUITE a list of possible G-Rated Halloween party activities culled from the vast wealth of knowledge I gained at King’s West’s yearly “Harvest Festival.”
-shredding up cotton balls in lieu of spider webs
-scary music
-black garbage bags covering the walls to make it dark
-paper ghosts hanging from the ceilings
-scavenger hunt around the school
-food and drinks- I wanted to freeze a latex glove full of red food coloring, and then float it in the punch bowl. I also wanted to spike the punch but I didn’t make that suggestion out loud.
-That gross/scary food guessing contest- peeled grapes are eyes, cold spaghetti are the guts!
-make carmel apples and popcorn and bob for apples (sorry girls, no burkas in the communal bobbing water) When I suggested this they said, “Oh? What’s bopping for apples?” There is no “p” in the Arabic language, they simply substitute it for the letter “b” and Yemenis confuse the hell out of the two. Puttering their pread, or going to the clup or peach.
-I asked all my students where I could find a pumpkin and they were like, why at the fruit stall across Shabbat of course! But then we reached the mutual conclusion that I was talking about a pumpkin and they, in fact, were talking about a watermelon. So okay, why not? Let’s have a watermelon carving contest.
-trick or treating around the classrooms
-costumes competition- I figured this would be the first party in the history of Halloween parties whereby the teenage girls weren’t going to dress up as sex kittesn and naughty school girls.
-raffle
-haunted house in a classroom.
-a cake walk! (A.Kuske and I OWNED the cake walk at Family Fun Night at King's West)
I made about one-million suggestions and then was like “okay! Good luck!” but eventually the ULTRA-HARAMNESS of Halloween in Yemen proved an insurmountable obstacle and the whole thing was canceled. And so three days later, Halloween, just another day under the fiery Yemeni sun.

Attention Mom, Dad, and Kallyn- If this post reminds you of another young girl of our acquaintance, a young girl who also had trouble remembering the difference between two letters- this is neither the time nor the place!