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I have a dream...that one day, all women's clothing will be equally accessible and equally fabulous.

In my dream, fat women will no longer have to be super-resourceful outfit hunters.

They will no longer have to put together an outfit with a dress from bandlu.com, a shrug from Lane Bryant, a belt from Rainbow, a pair of shoes from Torrid, and tights from Target.

Although, to be honest, I don't think that cobbling together of gear is too tragic.

In my dream, I own a nationwide green business that caters to fat women too old for Torrid and too young for Lane Bryant.  This store will be called something like Fuschia Frenzy. 

Each store will have a small cadre of seamstresses, who will adjust and hem skirts so they hit the right length, jackets so they hug the right curves, dresses so they dip just enough, and blouses so the buttons don't create ugly gaps.

In my store, the lighting will be soft and the music will be hype.  There will be no pictures of models: the customer is the gorgeous model.

In my store, there will be a different room for everything.  A room-full of shrugs.  Pink shrugs, leopard shrugs, zebra shrugs, polka-dotted shrugs, black shrugs with ruffles and without. 

Picture a room-full of inexpensive but fabulous Eastern and Southwestern-inspired accessories: huge earrings, rings, necklaces, hair accessories, hot socks, tights, glitter, hats, tiaras, and wands.

There will be a room-full of dresses. Short and long, tight and loose, solid and print, denim and poly, cotton and silk.  The dresses will be fifties style, twenties style, and timeless. 

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I never want to be pregnant again. I already have a child. This just happens to be the year he's decided to go live with his dad. The year he's decided to do this, all my friends are getting knocked up, instead of helping me pound back shots of tequila in downtown clubs.

It started with my friend E. She called me one day and said, "I have some news for you!" I already knew what it was. She had been married a year. And the law of deduction states that when someone who's been recently married says they have news, it means they're pregnant.

"You're pregnant?" I said.

"Shut up! How did you know?"

"Lucky guess," I said.

I was happy for her.

A few days later, my friend E2 and her husband were out to dinner with me and my husband. It's what Dave Chapelle calls a "neutered date."

"We have news!" they said.

"Congratulations!" I said. "You're pregnant?"

A few days after that, I went to a local farm with my friend Z. We were watching my friend Z's toddler play with a sand truck, while a punk rock chicken strut her stuff. That's when my friend Z. said, "I'm pregnant."

At this point, I was going to explode.

I dropped my friend off at her house and she insisted I keep her son's car seat in my car. I drove off, and now, every time I look back to check my blind spot, the empty child seat greets me.

A few nights ago, I was sitting around the living room, reading Woody Allen's short play, Death Knocks: a schlubby middle-aged man receives a visit from the Dark One, who is clumsy and cranky. The man convinces Death to play a game of gin-rummy, and Death agrees, despite the absence of any fun snacks in the apartment. As I read it, I wondered what it would be like if Death visited an Arab woman in Dearborn, Michigan, home to the biggest population of Arabs outside the Middle East. I present you with my short homage to Allen's play: Death And the Sheesha.

Umm Ali: Oh, who is zat? Why my batio door is open?

Death: It's me, Karima, let's go.

Umm Ali: Karima? No one calls me that. I'm Umm Ali. Where your manners?

Death: Sorry. Umm Ali. Time's up. Come with me.

Umm Ali: Where we going so fast?

Death: Where do you think?

Umm Ali: But my hair is not blow dried and I am wearing house clothes.

Death: Your dress is pretty and your hair looks great. Let's go.

Umm Ali: No, no, Um Ali not gonna leave the house looking like maid.

Randa Jarrar is our guest blogger during the week of September 8th. If you have any questions for Randa Jarra, add a comment to any of her posts. Here is some more information about A Map of Home:

From America to the Middle East and back again— the sparkling story of one girl’s childhood, by an exciting new voice in literary fiction

In this fresh, funny, and fearless debut novel, Randa Jarrar chronicles the coming-of-age of Nidali, one of the most unique and irrepressible narrators in contemporary fiction. Born in 1970s Boston to an Egyptian-Greek mother and a Palestinian father, the rebellious Nidali—whose name is a feminization of the word “struggle”—soon moves to a very different life in Kuwait. There the family leads a mildly eccentric middle-class existence until the Iraqi invasion drives them first to Egypt and then to Texas. This critically acclaimed debut novel is set to capture the hearts of everyone who has ever wondered what their own map of home might look like.

About Randa Jarrar

Randa Jarrar was born in Chicago in 1978. She grew up in Kuwait and Egypt, and moved back to the U.S. at thirteen. She is a writer and translator whose honors include the Million Writers Award, the Avery Hopwood and Jule Hopwood Award and the Geoffrey James Gosling Prize. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares as well as in numerous journals and anthologies. Her translations from the Arabic have appeared in Words Without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers; recently, she translated Hassan Daoud's novel, The Year of the Revolutionary New Bread-Making Machine. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. A Map of Home is her first novel.