something

Amirah

I am seriously beginning to question my sanity. At present I am sitting up in bed in the middle of the night because I can’t sleep because I’m terribly heartbroken over the loss of my cat. Amirah. She left me almost exactly a year ago. I sent her off to live with a nice family because I was coming overseas. Then three months turned in to a year.

I miss her a lot. I was cuddling my hot water bottle (winter is blowing a cool crisp gale through the slit in my window) and it reminded me of how she would curl her furry little body next to my belly for warmth at night after nosing her way under the blankets. And then , once sufficiently warmed, she would unfurl. Purring. Needing my stomach to push me onto the cold side as she lolled happily in the body heat I’d left behind. I miss her. But she’s living with a wonderful family. She has a friend (Rage). Her very own bathstool so she can play in the water. She’s outdoors. No doubt harassing the birds she could never get at though the flywire. Climbing trees. Digging up the gardens of unsuspecting neighbours. Stealing Rage’s food and battling for his share of the attention. She was a wonderful, beautiful, amazing little girl.

My God I am possibly certifiably insane! I have an excuse (many actually should you care to listen)... I’m hitting the one year wall. 2 weeks, 3 months, 6 months...the one year wall. Been here before. Not enjoying it this time round either. Funny I’m not in the slightest bothered about XH, just Amirah. I always said I cried more at the loss of my cats than XH. Funny that – guess there just wasn’t much to cry over in the end.

Playing the “nothing affects me” role at the moment – brave faces and all – quite convincingly if I may say so myself. Now I just have to work out what to do with my life.

The one year wall...

Ya Allah, take me to Palestine.

Pathways

The path to contentment is something that I have been pondering over for quite some time.

The last year has seen some large (and not so large) changes in my life and at times it has been so entirely overwhelming. I’ve found myself exhibiting an attitude of ungratefulness and it has disgusted me in my moments of clarity and reflection. I often felt that I was losing grip on the fundamentals, and as the “why?” reared its ugly and damaging head I was weak enough to take that path, but all it conspires to do is drag you lower than you have ever been before. Maybe it is only from the depths that people can really reassess things. But with every new change, new challenge, there are two paths, and the hole only gets deeper if you allow yourself to fall.

Upon hitting the bottom you realise two things:

1. Your own stupidity/recklessness/disregard/heedlessness has bought you to this place
2. Allah swt wants you to be there
   

And it is in two that you realise had you only been conscious of it sooner you would not have had to arrive at the place you are via one. However, Allah swt has placed us in the situations we are in because He knows, in his infinite wisdom, that it is the best thing for us.

You may feel like you’re drifting; your marriage has failed or has been slamming itself on the rocks for months, maybe years; you didn’t get the marks you wanted at uni – you didn’t even get in to uni; the guy you’ve been seeing who was meant to come propose never arrived on the doorstep – forget that you can’t even find a decent bloke; you can’t get pregnant and the inlaws are circling; you don’t know what to do with your life – and everything you want to do is out of the question; the sister you thought had your back stabbed it etc. Indeed it is our very human limitations, our bounded rationality, that prevents us from seeing beyond the pain of the moment and causes us to make decisions that only lengthen the fall. There is something in everything to learn from.

Patience – the favourite words of Shaykhs from all corners – is often maligned as “fake” advice. But it is only after weathering a storm made worse by none other than yourself, do you realise the virtue in patience. Patience is the only thing that breeds contentment. If you can be patient with your circumstance, accept what it is you have been dealt and play the cards with taqwa, only then will you find the burden easier to bear. And I’m not talking about the type of taqwa that requires the donning of a niqab and berating all and sundry about their kuffur-ways, I’m talking about the purest form of submission – the acknowledgement of Allah swt as the Soverign, the One, the Most Wise and Most Merciful, the Knower of All.

I once heard an incredibly wise man say that Allah swt tests us for two reasons:

1. We’ve strayed in some way and he wants us to remind us, to provide us with the opportunity to return to the path of righteousness and make amends
2. He is providing us a unique opportunity to provide for the Hereafter – a chance to raise our rank
   

Such opportunities can only be realised from a position of submission – it is only when we truly accept that Allah swt is the One, the All-Powerful in every manner conceivable, that we will be able to see our struggles for what they are – the opportunity to find contentment.

There is something very wrong with a world in which intelligent and educated women believe that they must be subservient and tolerant of blatant disrespect in order to keep their husbands happy and their marriages stable. Tonight’s dinner table conversation was initiated by a question posed to me by one of two flatmates taking a marriage course (neither of whom are married or have ever been married and for one this is like the 8th course undertaken on this topic – and no it is not about "the fiqh of"). It was a question of whether a husband telling his wife “Don’t interrupt me!” (with attitude) because he was “busy” with “something” and “not interested in her at that moment” would be considered rude.

Well, in a word, yes. The husband needs to have some sense knocked into him. Its not rude – its just downright disrespectful. But this is apparently OK. However, apparently it is NOT ok for the wife to say the same thing to her husband, but it IS a perfectly acceptable way to speak to a child: her words not mine. Sickening. I wonder if a few words of disrespect, a couple of smack downs later and some black eyes and or lost teeth would change these women’s perspective on disrespect – somehow I doubt it. How could you venture into bed with such a pig?

I don’t really care all to much if women hold the view themselves (as long as they don’t want to access state services when it all goes pear-shaped), but to promote it to impressionable and vulnerable individuals is not on. I am living in a very sick community. Actually I don’t think you can call it a community. It is a bubble. A bubble in which a select few people’s words are worth more than a milligram of common sense and where “outsiders” are being “ridden by shaytan”. Yet we are all brethren in Islam. Subhan’allah.

I’m not in the best of moods tonight – the self-righteous and condescending arguments coupled with complete inanity and stupidity with a touch of judgementalism thrown in for good measure have me wanting to kick something (productive I know). Sometimes I think that my sisters in Islam have nothing more interesting to speak about than marriage and to be honest it bores the shit out of me. If there is a gathering of more than two sisters inevitably it comes up, needs to be discussed, hashed and rehashed – you’d think world peace had been declared years ago and that it was the most pressing issue of our time. AAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

***

Anyway. There’s a film festival starting tomorrow so insha’allah I hope to attend some of it – at least interact with some people that are not bubble-bound if nothing else. Why does thins place bring out the worst in me? Why do I feel so gross about me living here? Why can’t I just get the hell out - oh wait I know the answer to that one – the dollar has tanked and I can’t afford it lol!

***

Ya Allah protect me from myself.

Contentment

I have mentioned to several different people over the last few weeks that don’t think I can return to teaching. Not because I don’t love it – I do, more than anything I can envision myself doing. But because it is unsustainable. I love my students. I love watching them learn new skills, master new content, get excited by concepts, I love having the role of potential catalyst, expanding their thoughts, opening their minds to a bigger world than many of them (many of whom have not even been outside of their own suburbs) have imagined. It is a love. A passion. Walking to tajweed class I pass by a school. Its a high school. My time of passing coincides with the change of a period. The familiar sounds of students rushing out of class – not of course in the desire to be early to the next – the calling and shouting to friends who may not be seen till lunch time, the horse voice of the teacher who calls out to remind of homework and assignments and for the room to “please be left neat and tidy” only for their calls to remain unheard, unheeded. It all brings me to a point of nostalgia. I crave to be in the classroom again – almost as much as I wish never to be enclosed by its walls again.

People keep telling me to find work in a “better” school. A school where students care. Where learning is valued, desired, realised. Where there is parental and administrative support. Where there isn’t a huge budget shortfall. Where resources are available and people are willing. It almost sounds heavenly...But where is the challenge. Where is the assistance to my own community that is so lost despite its rich heritage, that it can only be likened to a clumsy child groping in the dark for its mother after waking to realise her absence? Could I stand in front of such a class and feel that I am doing my part for my sisters in Islam who appear doomed to walk the well-trodden and oft-resented path of generations of women in their families before them? Sisters who are leaving themselves no buffer-zone, no protection. Relying on those who are not at all interested in them except for their own gain for a cursory time. But how can I drag myself to a place of no respect, of soul-destroying revelation, of pain on a daily basis? To face the anguish that invariably accompanies my witnessing of the state of our community at close quarters, having one’s heart ripped apart by it and then being denied a voice in an attempt at its correction?

***

As I walk to tajweed I come to the top of a large hill. All the way up it I am surrounded by construction, old and new. Towering apartment blocks that mirror one another in their hideousness. But at the top the heart lifts. A wide expanse which flows all the way to the northern horizon and onto another country. The rugged, barren landscape of a once fertile country, dotted with the odd small home and a plethora of minerets peeking from the white dust everywhere one looks. But amazingly, a small residence – for it cannot be called a house – sits just metres from me on the undeveloped side of the hill. It is made from odd cement blocks piled upon one another to act as walls. Off-cut timber straddles them, covered with branches (some still with green leaves) as well as tattered rugs and carpet as a roof. Within metres a donkey grazes quietly, and from a corner of the residence there is movement. Three laughing, smiling children – playing what looks like tip and falling over one another with the giggles. It is amazing the nature of the human character. It seems happiest with nothing.

And so I am wondering if that is my problem. There are too many choices. Too many things. Always perceiving there to be something better out there – always searching for it... Contentment. I wonder if it will be possible to find it in the classroom, in my old life, within the ancient and rundown university halls I love so much and long to return to. I find contentment in learning and sharing that knowledge and yet I cannot bring myself to return to the classroom. Yet I know somehow that I will, and that scares me.

***

Someone once told me that you don’t choose to teach it chooses you. And once it has you it won’t release you – not in tact anyway. Part of me remains with my students, some of which began sitting their final school exams today, and I worry about them. From thousands of miles away I wish I could hear their take on the papers, their preparation, last minute questions and cramming. Most of all I wish I could protect my little sisters from the big bad world they are running towards faster than they know.

***

Ya Allah, grant all students of knowledge in every corner of the world tawfiq in their studies. Guide them to a way that is best for them and make it easy upon them. Ya Allah guide my family and loved ones and grant them hidayah, and Ya Allah protect me from myself. Set my heart at rest and guide me to what is best for me in this life, in this din and in the akhirah. Only you Ya Allah are the Possessor of All Knowledge, the Bestower of all Bounties and the Merciful, Forgiver.

that place

Everyone has a place, a point in time that they wish they could return to. Some for experience, some to change things, say something different, do something different, and some just wish to exist in it for the peace it brings.

I was so close to that place last night that the anxiety and longing for it has been squeezing my heart all day. I sat face to face with the person who exists in that place with me. We said nothing. Just sat. And as I was leaving they told me to wait for them. “Wait for me” they whispered as I walked out. Not to take them with me there and then for that was all but impossible. But to wait. Outside. Elsewhere. Perhaps forever. To wait for them.
It was a meeting filled with unanswered questions. Questions that I will probably never find answers to. Of course I could do my best to hunt them down. But life has changed now and that place only exists in a memory of so many years ago.

The exhilaration of wearing my hijab properly for the first time. My first ever Eid prayer. The rush back to college. Getting to class late and shocking the pants of almost everyone in the room. Including my companion. They cried. May Allah swt bless them. Rejected from class by a less than impressed lecturer, we wandered over to the park. They, carrying my Eid present – a rather large box of Lebanese pastries. Me sitting in the grass, eating them. Being watched. Free conversation. Useless conversation. Words forgotten as quickly as they were pronounced. Office workers rushing by, late to start the day. Birds chirping in the trees above, all but drowned out by the incessant roar of peak hour traffic. And us. It was a bubble. Just us. I can feel the damp of the grass soaking through my jeans and laughing when I rise finding my backside is a nice wet splodge. Forgetting the damp and lying down together and watching the sky. Commenting on the clouds. Laughing at our lecturer. Silence on my transformation.

I wonder if they remember it as I do. How I wish to know how they are. What they are doing. How life has changed. Share the years that we’ve missed. Be. It was all so easy.

But all this is just a far off dream. If it weren’t for last night, maybe I could sleep. Dreams are indeed a powerful thing.

No one is promised tomorrow.

Life moves so quickly, passing one by without allowing room for breath. And when one does inhale again one finds that all that was known has all but disappeared in the folds of time. Another Ramadan has passed me by, and this one was an oppertunity wasted. Another year has passed, and I find my self reading my words, still feeling those very sentiments (well excluding the first few posts on this blog).

Much has occurred since my last post, but at the same time nothing has changed. By the grace of Allah swt I have been able to return overseas to continue my studies (I went home for the Southern Winter), but I am not enjoying it. The place I am in fills me with loathing and brings the very worst in me to the surface. I cannot wait to move onto the next place - but then I'll still be taking myself with me. I wish I could find a way to disassociate myself from me, but I can't work out just who I am. I still feel lost. Waiting. Wanting. Longing for things that are not mine to be had. When I think of these things my heart fills with sadness. I recognise someone lost, but know of know way to find that direction. Its not a religion thing. Its a "who am I" thing. Who am I? What defines me? What do I want? I see nothing. I am not individual. There is nothing that makes me "different" from anyone else. There is no definition. I feel formless but bound by something I can't see - can only feel. Am I speaking of the ruh? Do I lack the skill and intelligence to figure this out. I've been thinking on it for many months now. If you ask me who I am - I'll tell you I don't know.

Today was Eid. Subhan'allah it was truely a day of blessings. Al-hamdoulillah I made it to the masjid for the prayer and afterwards, everyone (I mean everyone - native, foreigner, guest and resident) hugged, kissed, spread the eid greetings and truely wished well for each other for the sake of Allah swt. There were about 60women in that masjid, and every single one waited to greet everyone else. No one ran away. No one seperated into their little cliques - as happens at home. It was something I may never experience again and I loved it. Islam.
Myself and the other single sisters had a delicious pancake breakfast afterwards which was followed by sleep. But upon waking I felt dull. Empty. Like there was something missing. Me?

I don't know how to communicate what it is.

XH has remarried (actually it was a couple of months ago now). Al-hamdoulillah that makes me happy and I truely hope from the bottom of my heart that it works out for him. I often wonder if I will remarry. How I would be able to trust someone. Find someone who could stand up to being all I needed them to be. I don't have a strict criteria - there are many things that don't even cross my mind. But what I do want is hard to find. And to be honest, I don't know if I really want it. There have been oppertunities, but I pass them all up. They are not the answer. Its not my time. Subhan'allah. Where am I and how do I navigate away from this loss of everything I am or thought I was? Why am I taking so long to find a path?

Oh how time only brings us nearer to our ultimate destiny - and how ignorant we are of that end. Subhan'allah.

***

No one is promised tomorrow.

***

Ya Allah, assist me in finding myself, understanding myself and healing myself. Guide me to peace and wellbeing. Provide for my family and those I love the blessing of hidayah. Draw all the muslimeen to the sirat almustaqeen and guide us to mercy between ourselves. Ya Allah assist me in overcoming myself, my shortcomings and my diseases. Assist me to a realisation that will ease the burden I am carrying. Provide me with clarity and strengthen me. Draw me near to that which pleases you and keep me far from that which causes you displeasure. Provide me with the immense fortune of seeing another Ramadan. Ya Allah allow me to truely believe and honestly life the face that no one is promised tomorrow.

~Amin

Calm before the storm

I wrote my last entry long ago (three months in fact) and never got around to posting it up. But now I’ve done so – enjoy.

Three months on from that and the stick house is still in ruins, al-hamdoulillah. My mother has moved house and spares no opportunity to tell me how much she wants me to come home – the only problem is that we can’t really be in close proximity for very long before all hell breaks loose. Subhan’allah. I’m wanting so badly to go home, but dreading it all the same. Kheir insha’allah.

I’ve been dreaming lately… of XH. It’s strange, in all the dreams we’re trying to work things out – it’s like having a conversation with someone in another dimension. I usually wake up feeling anxious and strung out subhan’allah – like I don’t want to go back there but I’m forcing myself into it. I don’t know, maybe I’m going a little nutty lol.

Still no boat. To be honest I don’t even know what I’m waiting for, wanting for anymore.

There is so much I want to say, need to say but no words with which to say it… I wish I could write like I used to.

The Fall…

You can build a house out of sticks, but when the wind blows…

It’s been a little while (ok quite some time) since I felt the need to post here (actually I’d decided that I may fall into the trap of wallowing in self-pity, and to be honest I just didn’t have the time for all that).

So I’m still overseas. My little 3-month soujourn has been extended by another three, and I’d go on adding but unfortunately the funds have dried up. Insha’allah one day I’ll be in a position to return. I’ve thought about XH and the last three years quite a bit while I’ve been here, yet I can’t say that I’ve come to any satisfactory resolutions. I don’t think things like “Oh I wish it could all be different blah blah blah…”, it’s more a kind of nostalgia for the good times, the nice memories. While my heart still seems to incline towards him with good feelings, I know that returning (indeed it is impossible anyway) would not only be detrimental to my physical, emotional and spiritual well-being (well what’s left of it anyway), but it would also require me to sacrifice far to much of myself – no person is worth sacrificing all that is one’s self for.

So on one hand I long to be married and start a little family (which incidentally had been the plan for this year, although Allah swt is the best of planners Al-hamdoulillah) I know that there would be far to many suitcases piled up in the corner of the bedroom to make it an intelligent path to pursue right now. So I’m at, what I will call, a “lull”. Where one is meant to find peace, security and tranquility from the blessing that is reflection. But for me, reflection is just bringing the dregs up to the surface, and I’m finding it unproductive. There was one a time where I prayed for all this time to think, reflect, but now I have it I’m finding that there is not to much to reflect on. I still don’t like the person I have become, and am having difficulty fixing those things I know need to be worked on. So I’m a muddle.

While other than this the last 6-months have been oddly quiet, the last week saw the destruction of the shack I’d been constructing out of sticks. My mother told me 4 days ago that my Dad has left. Now there is a history here, so let’s not all jump on the “all-men-are-bastards” bandwagon. While I’ve kind of known for many years that things may not continue the way they have always been, I don’t think I seriously (really seriously, like with my heart) considered that it would actually happen. While I know that it *may* be the best situation for them, I can’t help but think that it’s possibly not the brightest thing to do given the stage of life they are both at, and the current conditions around the world. I know, I know, a world economic crisis is not the best reason to stay married, but it sure as hell makes more sense to consolidate assets rather than divide them at this point. So begins the tedious and painful discussions about who will live where. Kheir insha’allah. I’m finding things a little hard to come to terms with (in case you can’t tell), but then I am ½ way around the world.

So, in short, my perfectly assembled stick house on the sand has crumbled and I no longer have somewhere safe to sit and watch and wait for my little boat to come in. I know I should speak to someone (professional) about how I’m feeling – if for no other reason than so that I don’t take my luggage with me if I ever get married again myself – but it’s hard to find someone (not to marry, to talk to).