…and I say inallilahi wa ina ilahi rajioon – unto God we belong and unto Him we return.
A friend came by and right before she did, I had just checked my email. The news blurb as I logged in said Michael Jackson suffers a heart attack. By the time I logged out, the news flash said Michael Jackson dies of cardiac arrest.
Of course there was sense of huh? which I had to chase away with the reminder that he was a human belonging to God and as such, was called back to Him. While I wasn’t originally (growing up) a fan of his music, I had come to realize his talent – perhaps even more so now against the current backdrop of a lack of iconic musical talents. It was also interesting to see how many young people now were beginning to rediscover MJ’s music. (At our school’s talent show, choreography set to MJ’s Thriller won the best overall prize – voted by the students).
After I told my friend the news and watched her face go through the same look mine did (”didn’t we grow up to his music?”), we discussed the Muslimness of MJ – or more specifically, my friend wondered the veracity of the claim that he had converted. I don’t doubt the veracity of it. People had wondered about Dave Chappelle’s conversion for a while (perhaps, and rightly, due to the nature of his previous shows) but I saw him on stage (at a Muslim event) where he admitted and spoke candidly about his struggles practicing Islam while in the shady world that is show business. God gives each of us our own struggles and Michael certainly had his. And God knows best.
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God when they’re starving or freezing or so very poor
No one laughs at God when the doctor calls after some routine tests
No one’s laughing at God when it’s gotten real late and their kid’s not back from that party yet
No one laughs at God when their airplane starts to uncontrollably shake
No one’s laughing at God when they see the one they love hand in hand with someone else and they hope that they’re mistaken
No one laughs at God when the cops knock on their door and they say “We’ve got some bad new, sir,”
No one’s laughing at God when there’s a famine, fire or flood…
- regina spektor, Laughing With
Only Yusuf Islam could do a love song to his spouse and God (second part) all in one. I’m missing my husband as he is out of town for a few days and this song just so beautifully captures the Islamic view of love between spouses… It’s from his new album, Roadsinger.
I went to an impromptu dinner with a few friends tonight and this was one of the topics of our conversations. Thanks S for sending us this.
Risk
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.
Anais Nin
The topic I’ve wanted to blog about for so, so long – muslim women, marriage and the turning upside down of all that we’ve grown up being massaged into buying by the many things we’ve read, watched, drooled over, eavesdropped on and imagined can be summed up almost perfectly in the above poem.
I want to write so much on this topic (on which I’ve read so many sister bloggers weigh in but on which I’ve never found that I’m in agreement with any of them) but I’m sure I’ll become verbose so I’ll succintly just state my thesis: A good man is not at all hard to find – if you take the risk of opening your good heart.
I hope to write more on this as I’m often running into the opposite of the sentiment I just wrote.
can you taste the buttery, creamy, homey-ness? you can – if you read my recipe and make it for yourself…
I made shepherd’s pie – a fiesta version (well, actually, since it didn’t have minced lamb, just beef, it’s supposed to be called “cottage pie”). My simple, extremely simple, accomplishment for today, alhamdulillah. Here is the recipe:
1 lb lean minced beef
1 smallish onion
3 cloves garlic pressed through my favourite kitchen tool in the world: a garlic press
1 small jalapeno pepper diced
7 medium potatoes
salted butter
some carrots cut up like coins (i used those “baby” carrots – which are just big carrots cut into cutesy little ones. Humph.)
canned unsalted, unsugared, peas (the canned ones are cuter) – not the whole can and please drain it!
1 can of corn, drained (creamed or regular – I like the regular as it’s not as sweet)
milk (i don’t know how much)
salt to taste
Oh, yeah, chilli pepper and roasted cumin powder (i wasn’t going to tell my husband about this since he’s into purity cooking (i.e. keep most things culturally separate [if you ask me that sounds fishy coming from a french-anglo-saxon guy who married an indian girl]) but since he found a cumin fleck in his food, I had to blurt out my “fusioning” secret).
Defrost 1 lb of lean minced beef 1 hour before your husband (or wife) comes home from work. Peel 7 medium potatoes with a knife NOT a peeler because then you can pretend you’re a carver instead of just a wife cooking. Next, put it (the potatoes, cubed) into a pot of salted water to boil. Dice an onion (smallish) and sweep it (with your voilà-ing knife) into a pot with 2 tablespoons of salted butter because your husband likes things cooked in butter not oil. Put the pressed garlic in too. Then add the diced jalapeno. Add the carrots when you’ve cooked the garlic and onion enough (like 3-4 minutes); you might need to add more butter or wait, I know when my husband reads this he’s going to say, YOU HAVE TO LOWER THE HEAT. Ok, so do that. Add the beef into this after a bit and cook until it’s not pink. Cook it a bit extra (and shh, add a bit of salt here but don’t let my husband know!) While it’s cooking add some chilli powder (shhh) and roasted cumin powder (shhhh) in. When everything looks good, add the peas. Okay you’re done with the beef so line the bottom of a lasagna pan with it. Add a layer of corn on top.
Set the oven to broil at 450 degrees.
I hope all you sisters and brothers who don’t know how to cook for beans or how to cook beans either, are following all this. The potatoes, now. When the potatoes are all done (when your voilà-ing knife can pierce right through a piece and it’s like so simple to do so) then drain it but leave a little bit of water in. Add a biggish chunk of butter into the pot of potatoes – like about the size of 3 baby carrots put together – and then add some milk while you’re mashing the potatoes with your potato masher:
or use a wooden spoon. Mash it all up until it’s MASHED POTATOES the way you like it. Now add the potatoes as neatly as you can (do it in bits) on top of the corn, brush some butter on top of the potatoes and put the whole thing to broil in the oven. Check it after about 5 minutes – if it’s lightly browned here and there, it’s ready.
Let me know if anyone tried zis simple, humble, fusion-fiesta pie.
Who knew Jury duty could open up your (my) eyes to the hundred and one things you could be doing had you not been on Jury duty? Once released, I sprang upon my soul’s artistic pangs (and dramatic pangs) and fiddled with my husband’s photography (see below), fixed up some decoupage I had done on my daughter’s allowance box (see below), fonted a mug for my brother, bought a spring coat, edited my dad’s writing super-quick and met/caught up with 3 friends. All in one day.
I promise, absolutely promise, insha’Allah to record what tomorrow brings. I am positively itching to do something dramatically artistic.
the lilacs are coming, the lilacs are coming
this is one of my all-time favourite pictures. like dandelions, seagulls are much maligned. here, they are given their rightful glory.
i like decoupaging. she’s from the swinging somethings (2o’s, 30’s, 80’s, take your pick)
At this ripe ol’ age of mine , I’ve discovered that science rocks! Science is actually an ibadat – to examine, realize, understand and uncover the magnificence of Allah’s creation is so invigorating.
I say this after having worked with my science-loving 8 year-old daughter on her science fair project. She insisted that she wanted to find the cure for cancer…I was like ok, I know it might be part of your genetic make-up to whip up last minute stuff (having a mother who started and finished a year’s worth of a 30 page research paper in 2 days while 7 months pregnant with a strange kidney ailment), but I don’t think we can pull THAT off in 5 weeks. So instead the focus shifted to cancer prevention.
Her interest in science excites me because everyone else in my family and her dad’s family are pretty much arts-oriented. My uncle with the 3 doctor (and 1 dentist) children would often ask my dad, what happened to your kids? How come everyone ran away from the “hallowed” field of science?
If anyone could have done it, my sister, with her ever-inquiring mind and earnest quest for new research (and ability to retain it) would have made a fine doctor or researcher. Instead, she opted to follow her older siblings down the artsy route. I think once in a while she sighs about that decision.
As for me, I laugh at my inability to understand science – especially biology and chemistry – in the olden days. It felt so dead. I hated it. I struggled to come up with experiment ideas for classes and actually handed in an experiment on whether ice melts faster in open hot water or sealed cold water when I was in GRADE SEVEN! I laugh now but I cried then when I received a D on that ground-breaking project. It reminded me of a brilliant speech I heard from a science educator at a conference. He was speaking about how by junior high, science is not often taught in meaningful ways:
“If you ask a child in grade 1 to tell you about science, they answer it’s butterflies and water and windmills and if you ask them in grade 4, they answer it’s making cars and castle doors that move and if you ask them in grade 8, they say it’s period 7 on Mondays and Wednesdays.”
So, now as I see this awakening interest in science in my daughter, I hope to welcome and encourage it – and to engage in it with her (so that I can learn a thing or two myself). It is so exciting…did you know that I finally understand the scientific method?
* If you can, check out the Sultans of Science exhibit at the Ontario Science Center. It’s amazing and only on until the beginning of May.
Patience: the quiet road to wisdom.
“Burlap is a very itchy fabric.” – Jez
“Does it matter how beginnings begin?” – me
“The beef stew better be good.” – Jez
I have given myself the next two weeks to figure out next year. Starting officially in September of next year but technically in June of next year insha’Allah, I start a sabbatical of sorts – 1 year off work, paid (through a partial salary-deferment plan). Originally, my intention in enrolling in the plan had been to go back to school to study documentary film-making. Hence, the two week window to figure things out as graduate program application deadlines loom in the near horizon.
But recently, I’ve become unsure if that’s the way I want to go. So now I’m mulling:
1. documentary film-making
2. art school
3. holing myself up – literally, figuratively – to write full-time
4. starting a publishing venture
5. doing nothing except everything for those in my life (i.e. housewife-supermom extraordinaire)
I’m not really worried that I won’t come to a conclusion on what should be done; on my Umrah trip two years ago, I made extensive dua seeking guidance from Allah for my year off so I trust He will direct me to something worthy of my time and efforts. In His name, we live, struggle and die.
Moving on, I don’t know if it’s just the much anticipated time off work – it being the holidays – but I’ve been really itching to write again. Like a long story. So I’ve begun reading again in bits – offline, cozy in my bed, curled up with a book, south african dried pears and coconut water. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m finally trying Life of Pi. Other books in my reading line-up (I hadn’t noticed that I’d suddenly become a nibbling reader – a little bit from this book and that – as opposed to the inhaling-one-book-at-a-time type I was previous to matrimony entering my life once again) include the latest David Sedaris, the latest fluffy Sophie Kinsella, the Qur’an ‘f course, a book of award winning magazine feature articles and various women’s mags to get me re-excited about making dinner left-overs re-exciting for the fam. Besides the Qur’an and the book of meritorious articles, it’s all light fare. Will this mix of readings vault me to my writing space which has been inaccessible for a long while now? I don’t know.
And perhaps, you don’t care so…
I move on, further, to my six-word challenge. A challenge to myself firstly and then to others who may be in the writing rut I’ve been in a long time. Or you might not be in a rut just very busy as well. Here it is: I perchanced only recently on what others may have known about for a while now: the six word memoir and so, I challenge us to commit to writing at least six words a day, everyday. It could be to sum up the day, life or a teeny tiny thing.
My six words for today:
Hey, I actually just wrote something…
…I’ve been busy
1. being in love (go ahead, say/think/groan/spit out the AAAAWWWW).
2. avoiding writing report cards (that’s as of this minute)
3. reading-laughing and sharing Asmaa’s latest blog post with the hubby. Asmaa you are very funny.
4. watching my amazingly creative and handy husband transform our shared space into a comfortable, organized dream home.
5. cooking. And learning to tone down my spices and try different things. And learning new dishes from the husband. Who cooks. Like really really cooks.
6. being in love.
Besides all this, I’ve been blogging a lot in my head. And then I start talking about my writing ideas with my other half. And it all comes out and we discuss it and then it’s gone. The urge to write is gone.
Hmm, is being in love killing my blog?
“What will happen if I take my hijab off…?”
Dear sister (I think it was a sister) who typed this into a search engine which directed it to my blog somehow, I will try my best to answer this question…
If you take your hijab off and step outside, the wind (if there is one) will most probably sift through your hair.
As you sit there typing this question, “what will happen if I take my hijab off”, you are probably feeling anxiety, a small amount (or large) of guilt and true confusion. You have sought something…you wish to know what is right. Period. ?
I feel like being philosophical and theoretical now. I feel like telling you about the things I’ve learned about women, men, beauty, sex and beer. I feel like writing a Dove commercial for you. But if I tell you these things, it will feel like I am hitting you over the head with something.
Instead I can tell you what it feels like to be confident.
The confidence I feel when I am unhijabed is spectacular. It is as thick as mascara and yet as light and flippy as fringed-to the-side-hair-bangs. It’s as tight as my gym membership. It feels so good to know wearing the right cut and moving the right way has such a powerful effect. But I have to tell you…it is mostly based on the things I stroke on, point out to my hairdresser and fork out to the curiously capitalist yogis. It comes out of bottles and is continuously re-defined, matched to the undulating forms in magazines, screens, celebrity-sighting restaurants and the weirdly captivating mannequins at Zara. But, I am a woman with a penchant for such things so I exult in this confidence…only I am choosy.
I know me and I know if I choose to spent my whole time unhijabed, I will drown in my own confidence. I’ve almost literally drowned once when I was a child so I know the feeling of almost utter suffocation – except in this case, it would be suffocation by self-absorption. I know I will eventually forget God. So I quietly wrap a cloth around my head, adjust various clothing items, utilize some safety pins and step out of the realm of the manufactured into the realm of the simply refined. My thick, light, flippy, tight unhijabed self is shelved, reserved for the ones who truly will enjoy it the most – myself and my man.
The confidence I feel when I am hijabed is spectacular. It appears so slight in its stance but its fortitude is often unmatched in a room of other women. We, hijabis, know this secret – the ones other women tell us: we are the strongest, most confident women they have ever met…we? Yes, we walk in a train of women who wind around the world and fade back in time into the streets of Yathrib and beyond. Wearing the hijab, I always remember I belong to a sorority of women who believe. And who buy in to certain things – lots of things in fact…but mostly we buy into the fact that the Creator of our bodies, hair, beauty and femininity knows about them the most. He knows about its use and abuse – by others, by us, by society.
He knows about women, men, beauty, sex and beer. And about Dove commercials. And about how much we women have bought into the idea that the use of our sexual beauty is our single most powerful tool. It is a powerful tool but, publicly, only in the hands of those who are endowed with it and endowed with it in its current en vogue model – full lips? check, long legs? check, flat chest? strike.
Instead, I choose to buy into His idea of leveling ourselves…of using our covered beauty to collectively wield a more powerful tool: that of autonomy over the swaying, constantly changing, ghettoing definition of womanhood. Oops, I’m sorry if I slipped into the theoretical and the philosophical…
The confidence I feel wearing the hijab is my confidence-of-choice. It is the one I select to utilize in moving through a world so fragile in its perception of the goals of life. Should I have chosen the confidence of my unhijabed self to manoeuvre through life, it would have been harder for me to hold on to this deen and its single most beautiful goal: to earn His pleasure through worship and through serving His creation.
So sister, if you take your hijab off and step outside, the wind (if there is one) will most probably sift through your hair. Simply because the merciful Creator of that wind let it be so.
At our little wedding reception, we got a gift which included a CD on gratitude to Allah. Tonight as I was listening to it with my children, I remembered the little blog my sister and I had started a long while back to log gratitude – mine, family’s, friends’, anyone’s…but which ran into some technical glitches – again a while back – and which then fell away from my list of to-be-tended-to-items. It was originally at www.favrs.net but is now to be found at www.favrs.wordpress.com. I think I’d like to keep it going, Insha’Allah.
Having gratitude on my mind, it was nice to read this post by my friend, S.W. on her blog…
Yesterday, I had one of the more beautiful mornings ever. It started off all frustrating but my son saved the day. God Bless him.
I am one of those people who for the most part keeps her home organized, but I have my moments. I have this one Tupperware cupboard that is a disaster. Every time I open it, stuff falls out. I tidy it up from time to time, but it just seems to go back to what it was, no matter how many times I clean it up.
Yesterday, I was running late. I was packing lunches. I needed Tupperware. I opened the cupboard, and a bunch fell out. On my head. I was frustrated, but I ignored it and put the Tupperware back. Then I realized I forgot to take out one for the children’s lunch. So I open the cupboard again and you guessed it, they fell on my head again. This time I was VERY frustrated, but tried to stay calm. (The children, were after all, sitting in the kitchen, eating cereal and watching me).
I put the Tupperware away (neater this time), and I closed the cupboard. I then realized that I left the lid in the cupboard, and I open it and….you guessed it. A Tupperware fell on my head.
Now normally I would laugh it off, but I was:
- Late for work
- Still had to pack lunches
- Frustrated at myself for letting this happen a third time
- Annoyed that I don’t have more cupboard space.
So what do I do? I shout. “OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. GIVE ME A BREAK ALREADY!!!”
I turn. I look at the children. I turn back. I put the Tupperware back in the cupboard. I feel a tug on my sleeve. I turn, I hear music. I see my son standing before me. He went to the CD player and put on one of my favourite songs.
It was Louis Armstrong, It’s a Wonderful World. I get teary eyed. I look at him. He smiles. “Don’t worry mommy. Just start the day over”.
I smile. I hug him. I tell him how much I love him.
He made my day. I’m so glad to have him in my life.
Ahem, I think/hope I am back to blogging. After a hiatus/partial-hiatus of many moons of busyness, I hope (my fingers, legs and eyes are crossed on this one!) to show some real commitment to mon blog.
So I’m gonna begin the blog revival by introducing Jez B. Gariepy – a Montreal photographer/designer I met some time back in…hmm, I think it was on the last day of the year 2007 at 10:24 p.m. and 14 seconds (roughly). You can see his photography at his flickr account: Jez Gariepy. His work ranges from shots of nature in its serene stillness and in its engrossing activity to wide-ranging and misty landscapes to… my favorites – gritty urban scenes and abstract fragments. He…I mean, his work, is awesome. Word has it that he’s in the process of setting up a site for his photography and design work. Stay tuned.
Okay I’ll ‘fess up – he’s my hubby! Now I’m blushing so excusez moi…
Looking forward, insha’Allah to many things…getting married, blending families, sharing and more sharing. Also, looking forward to Ramadan, the most beautiful of months which is just around a-not-so-distant corner. And I just love this ultra-cute children’s video of one of the blessings of Ramadan: increased time at the mosque.
The moment you walked inside my door
I knew I need not look no more
I’ve seen many other souls before
Ah but Heaven must’ve programmed you
~ Yusuf Islam Heaven/Where True Love Goes
*see Soulmate or Strollmate (But I believe Allah in His infinite mercy and exquisite grace has granted me a Soulmate AND Strollmate).
Here they are, our caterpillars all grown up.
Then letting them free:
Then freedom for a while…
This video on Muslim fashion designer Rabia Z is interesting, entertaining and will make you wanna run back to your ol’ sewing machine trailing interesting fabric and stuff behind you (if you were a wanna-be fashion designer back in the day like I was). I like the way she sounds confident in her ideas and beliefs. And she won the International Young Fashion Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2008! By designing modest clothing! In the fashion industry!
And I hear through the grapevine, having been too busy to check it out myself, that everyone’s favorite Hijabi clothing/hijab store, H&M (Hijabs&ModestClothingAvailableToo), has some really cool new scarves…
I think it’s time H&M actually gave in to reality and start putting signs in their red font that say: 
right above all those…those…hijabs. I mean have you really seen the rest of the world that interested in scarves as accessories…yes, besides the keffiyah-as-fashion-statement-or-political-statement controversy…it’s Muslim women that are keeping the scarf sales ringing, H&M. (And I can sell you the above sign at a modest, hijabi price.)
There are exactly 16 and a half teaching days of school left before the summer and I find myself thinking of friendships. Especially that moment when you realize someone has moved into the real friend territory of your heart; that part reserved for people who get you even with only a few words.
Some of my closest friends are those I speak to once a year or two if I’m lucky…but it just picks up where it left off, seemingly from the moment we met in grade 10.
I was thinking of this as I watched one of my students – a polite, but extremely quiet boy – strike up a very close friendship with a sweet, precocious (in a sweet way) girl in my class – only now, at the end of a whole school year. I just realized how inseparable they were getting today when she was worried about where he was at recess time. What an oddly nice couple, I smiled to myself.
Besides the season of friendships, this is the season of caterpillars once again in my classroom. We await their transformation and of course I have to think of that old saying, “just when the caterpillar thought its world was over…it became a butterfly.”
Here are some pics of the process so far:
each student got their own to observe
the leftovers
the leftovers as pupas (right now)
Those of you who are squeamish about these sort of things, I’m right with you there! I had to force myself, bravely in the name of grade 2 science, to get over my caterpillar phobia (it’s those zillion legs amidst the tarantula-like fuzzyness that does me in). Besides a slight shake to my hands as I do all the handling, my students would never know that 3 years ago I would have screamed had one landed on me.
When they become beautiful Painted Lady Butterflies and we release them to the sunshine, rainbows and sharp-eyed birds, I will post the captivating pics insha’Allah.
I’m still a bad, bad blogger it seems. Something is seriously going down if I can’t find the time to write. All I know is that for 2 weeks now I’ve been officially starting my days at 4:30 a.m. in order to get everything squished in. And still, I can’t find the time to write. So let me share instead…
I don’t know how I missed this neat entry into that (old) Muslim film contest (onenationforall.org/LinkTV) but I did. I like it because it resonates if you’re a-pray-any/everywhere-kind-of-muslim. And ain’t the ending just the nicest thing?
And, (Asmaa), here’s a peony 
grown. harvested.
Since I’ve been a bad, bad blogger for a while now (only blogged twice in April?), I’m going to try to be a superblogger and blog every___! (If we were playing hangman, you would be really wrong if you guessed the letters D, A, Y.)
‘kay, it’s spring and what am I thinking of? I’m thinking of all the times my former would pull the car over from wherever we were headed if I spied FLOWERS (wild) anywhere. Like anywhere (legit). I’m thinking of that scene in Sense and Sensibility where the younger sister, recovering from an injury, gets that wildflower bouquet from the wrong guy and how she’s so swoony about it (he picked it himself) vs. the wrinkled nose she gives the haute purchased bouquet from the (legit) guy. I don’t know if the two thoughts are related in anyway except that they both involve flowers. And guys?
Flowers. How can you not believe in a beautiful, benevolent God when you see such creations? Like the afterthoughts, embellishments that make the raison d’etre of a work of art truly reach hearts.
I was an active flower child – my mother would plan in advance to shield my sight from them if she saw flowers before I did; otherwise I would be in the midst of a field, lot, jungle, bull-grazing ground etc gathering them. I’ll never forget the day my grandfather’s mighty strong bull decided to give my flower-love a test run. I’ve never run so fast in my life and don’t think I ever will again. And all for a single vivid exotica-specimena of the type-I-don’t-knowus.
Since I’m not good with the holding-memory (i.e. I can’t remember boring detailed stuff), I often never knew what the names of my favorite flowers were. I just knew I loved the full-beautiful-rose-looking-ones-with-a-million-soft-petals; you only needed ONE of those to gaze at and be happy. So what a gift from God when at a very sad time in my life, I discovered, in the garden of the house we bought in the fall…poking their strong green foliage up from the ground in May (and every May after), bushes and bushes and bushes of…my favorite flowers. I decided then and there to become better at remembering boring detailed stuff (become a gardener) and found out it was peonies (paeony) that I had loved for so long.
Taking part in the work of planting and tending to of flowers brought me to a new space in terms of enjoying their beauty. Now I’m okay if I’m not trying to reach for that tiny lily-looking flower in a shallow swamp while swatting at the leeches crawling up my legs. Just because something is utterly beautiful doesn’t mean you need to hold it or have it or have your blood sucked out for it. Somehow that last statement didn’t sound as Zen as I wanted it to sound.
If you wanna know, some of the best flower shops in Toronto (in terms of price, variety) are on Avenue road. I discovered this when I was in charge of making the table arrangements for a friend’s wedding. He was on a tight budget and yet wanted something artsy, different. I worked all night to deliver something different and because I forgot that I was allergic to a certain type of different flower (that holding-memory problem again), I was shocked when my sister woke up to look at my handiwork and instead of ooohing and aaahing, looked alarmed. I had to go to the wedding armed with artsy, different table arrangements and an artsy, different face – one decorated with hives and the biggest-puffiest (anjelina jolie-ish?) lips. But, yeah, stop by the Avenue road shops if you’re thrifty and love flowers.
And, I leave you with that important reminder: just because something is utterly beautiful doesn’t mean you need to hold it or have it or have your blood sucked out for it.
Omar Khadr: how to explain, convey the multitudes of stories, emotions, takes… on Canada’s forgotten one?
While I don’t think I’ll be able to read Michelle Shephard’s new book, GUANTANAMO’S CHILD: The Untold Story of Omar Khadr - emotionally, I can’t handle detailed accounts of American duplicity (I’m STILL recovering from Abu Ghraib) – I’m hoping that it will generate more interest (leading to action) into the case of what essentially is the plight of a boy whose parents made the decision to transplant their family into the thick of things. How does a child pay for the decisions of his parents?
And perhaps more pressingly, how can Guantanamo be justified by anyone who claims to be a proponent of a way of life that upholds justice for all? There’s some noise made about how Khadr is the only Westerner left at Guantanamo; while it is true that this is pointed out to put pressure on the Canadian government, I wonder about all the other forgotten souls who weren’t so fortunate to be born on Western soil.
There’s a great review of Shephard’s book by Ziyaad Mia in the Globe and Mail which brings up some of the multitudes of stories, emotions, takes on Omar Khadr, his family and Guantanamo. I read it on the weekend and was shaken by how easy it is for us to forget “yesterday’s” injustice.
‘We’ve got to spend time in the shadows. … It is a mean, nasty, dangerous dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena. … We need to make certain that we have not tied the hands … of our intelligence communities in terms of accomplishing their mission.” That was U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney on Sept. 16, 2001, explaining what visiting the “dark side” would involve. One manifestation of Cheney’s ominous prediction is the Guantanamo Bay naval base-cum-detention centre, which has been called a “legal black hole” by Lord Johan Steyn of Britain’s House of Lords.
Guantanamo has been famous for decades as a U.S. military base in Fidel Castro’s heartland. Today, it is emblematic of all that is wrong with President George W. Bush’s war on terror: It is the most famous node in a global torture network, and it is an affront to the rule of law.
Guantanamo’s Child tells the story of Canadian Omar Khadr, the sole Westerner remaining in Guantanamo. The book wrestles with contradictions and absurdities. The base is home to iguanas protected by law from molestation. However, the human detainees are less fortunate than the reptiles; it is a place where, according to one of Khadr’s military lawyers, “there are no rules.”
to continue: The Globe and Mail Book Reviews
April’s here again…and I just wanted to share what I’ve always thought to be one of most beautiful (if not the most beautiful) guitar work ever…
and later,
I spent earth hour at the home of the high mistress of candles: my sister. Sure enough we were bathed in the light of numerous wax creations – which still wasn’t enough light for my sister. So she periodically made quick forays into the kitchen to furtively open the fridge door to bask in its eerie unearth-houry glow. For tsk-tsking her breaching of the sacred earthing hour rules, I got called an Earth-Hour Nazi.
We were both supposed to be spending the evening at a get-together for a friend getting married soon but exhaustion got in the way. So it was nice to spend some time relaxing in the dark – me curled on my sister’s couch, her cat (Luna Kukaracha) curled on an opposite chair lazily watching my daughter trying to hypnotize her with a fake plastic candle and my sister in the kitchen sneaking gulps of fridge light. The rest of the fam were all out for dinner. It was prime re-coup time and worth every minute of that 59 minutes of power-free time. Yes, my sister put the lights on 1 minute early.
And no, I’m not an Earth-Hour Nazi.
I’m a jumble of random, eclectic interests so I will succumb to myself and write about…
1. I didn’t think Maclean’s had it in them… but having given up on getting any sense of balanced news from the mag for a long while now, I was surprised when a brother from work indicated there was something worthy in the Feb 25th issue. Page 16 features an interview with ex-CIA spy Graham Fuller which tells it like it is. Apparently Fuller has an article in Foreign Policy under the provocative title: A World Without Islam which further describes his views.
2. Wilson Bentley. He spent his adult life taking pictures of snowflakes using a special microscopic camera. His work helped show that no two snowflakes – because of moisture, temperature, wind differences – were ever alike. “I found that snowflakes were masterpieces of design. No one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted…just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.” His work – painstakingly photographing snowflakes in the late 1800’s – was an attempt to capture a record of the Divinely designed.
Wilson Bentley
a modern interpretation
3. I smiled a tiny smile to myself today at school. We’d been studying black civil rights leaders and how they held on to their dreams for a better world. The students worked on imagining and recording what these dreams must have been on a sheet that had pictures of the leaders as youngsters in one corner and then them as adults in the opposite corner (all smiling because some of their dreams had come true!) As a follow up, the students were to record their own aspirations for the world on a sheet with actual photos of them now and imagined, drawn pictures of them as adults. One of the girls came up to me and asked me how do you draw a hijab? I showed her and then asked her why? Because, she said, I’m going to wear one when I’m an adult so I need to draw it on my later picture. I smiled into my dark blue hijab.
One of the March Break Madness events we took part in was Visiting Friends’ Houses. VFH is a big deal for my daughter because of the H part. We are among the few she knows who live in a non-House. She always makes it a point to go up to the VFH host and say, “I really like your house.” What she means is “I really like ANY house.”
She was too young to remember that we lived in a house once a long time ago. A house in a very nice part of Ottawa with a swing set in the backyard and an old piano in the dining room. With pick up baseball games in the park nearby, family biking trails right beside the house and neighbors who had cute little dogs. And white peonies, white lily of the valleys and white sweet peas in the garden (beauty: white flowers on dark green foliage).
That white-picket experience was one of the many diverse home situations I’ve experienced in my life and at the end of it all, I like the simplest home experience of all. I like not having to feel that I need a new this or that – besides saving money, it saves valuable energy and head-space trying to keep up with the Hassans (with apologies to all the Hassans out there). And I find it exhilaratingly challenging to my interior-design loving brain to make the things I have look good together somehow. As a good friend who came by and looked around yesterday said: only you artsy types can put together stuff like this (stuff like what? un-cookie-cutter, mismatched, weird? fusion, that must be it) and make it work.
Now I finally get to try to put William Morris’ rule to use: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. It’s been a LONG LONG time since I bought anything for the condo. As for near future plans: a coat of white paint and 2 chairs re-covered and I’m done.
It’s only when we’ve been VFHing that my daughter starts wistfully talking about a white picket life. At all other times, she’s grateful for the making-art space I set up in the corner of the living room and most especially, for the sunlight which always visits and crowds our condo – the most beautiful interior design of all.
As I’m sitting here, I’m listening to the Awakenings. Slowly, the stirrings of six girls waking up are filtering into my firmly closed bedroom. THEY are waking up – whimper…the BFF girls are waking up in my living room after sleeping for exactly five hours and 30 minutes.
Can you be exhausted from March Break? I have dark circles under my eyes which rival my exam-cramming days. Yet I know I’ll be sadly missing all this action when my kids go to their dad’s for the next four days.
Yesterday night (8 hours ago), I told the BFF what was supposed to be a goodNIGHT story. They were all spread there in their sleeping bags clutching various dolls, teddy bears and in my daughter’s case, a big Buddhist panda named Stillwater. The story was typically absurd, involving:
* a niqabi woman (the thief of a faberge hijab) with the longest eyelashes in the world
* a fourteen year old boy with a full beard and a full colorful superhero outfit under his slick black clothes
* a girl dedicated to finding a cure for boils (they made her boiling mad)
* a newly married Praying Mantis researcher with a husband who curiously resembled her favorite insect…yes, he spent his nights in Tahajjud …you get the absurd picture…
and was too scary for the youngest girl who would periodically say “can this story end right here?” and hauntingly right for the others. Every time the story was requested to be ended right there, I had to think of a hugely funny thing to throw it off its gothic route (”can this story never end?”). I was so exhausted from thinking up all the up and down drama that I couldn’t wait for the Praying Mantis husband to speak the final and best line in the whole tale: (after missing all the action including his wife being narrowly killed by a brain-numbing poisoned arrow [this was a PG-13 story]): “Darling, I’ve been praying for you the whole night.”
The Awakening is in full swing now. I’d better go and tend to the BFF before I get too cozy in my BFS – Bedroom Firmly Shut.
…did I say I was hoping to blog more this week? *tiptoeing away*
