No.

I want to explain. I’ve never meant to be callous. I want to spare your feelings.Somehow I knew this was coming. It’s the way you spoke to me. I tried dissuading you. I ignored your messages. I hoped you’d realise that I was not with you that way inclined. If I could redirect your question to someone who would readily accept…  You say to forgive you if you are out of line. I respect you for asking. I do. My vanity is not flattered in refusing you. But I could never possibly… No. I can’t. I won’t. I just can’t. It’s just a word. Monosyllabic. A shake of the head. Thank you for asking. I wish I could be more delicate. I take no pride in refusing you. My head is bowed, my eyes sombre, my heart breaking for you.

For sudden Joys, like Griefs, confound at first — Robert Wild

There are people in our lives, they are not the everyday fundamentals, they are a lot like film extras with occasional starring roles, but the knowledge that they are there, a phone call or road trip away enriches our lives. And just as often, these people are snatched away from us. We do not question His will, His master plan, we must learn to roll will it, be one with it, but there is that watershed moment in which we realise the vacuum created by the loss of just one person.

My younger sister is generally the better liked of the two of us among family friends. She's more chatty, more boisterous and generally better at ease. But I was Uncle Anver's favourite, so much so, he wanted his son and I to get married. We were momentarily foolish enough to like his idea and think we liked each other, thank the Lord he met Mary soon thereafter. One night , while Uncle Anver sat chatting to Mum and Dad, I offered him a chocolate and belatedly realising his diabetes told him he couldn't have it after all, he teasingly unwrapped it and told me one chocolate wouldn't make much of a difference. Four days later he was shot dead on his way home.

Uncle Hoosen was a business associate of my dad's, during our trips to Mpumalanga we looked him up, became family friends and long after the business relationship became redundant, the familial relationship stayed. During a trip out east two years ago, I remember standing on the upper deck of a restaurant on the banks of the Sabi river in the Kruger National Park. Together with my brother, we watched the hippos in the river below, a consensus of silence between us. He passed away this morning. I haven't found the space to cry, it's a little surreal, some part of me still expects him to be there when next we're out in the Kruger.

To Allah we indeed return.

I like this poem

A couple of weeks ago, Parasputin asked how I maintained my optimism. As an observation it was particularly unsettling- me and optimism? Really? Yet, I feel any semblance of glass-half-full spirit I may have had to be flagging. It's disillusionment, I think. How else could I resonate with this poem?

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

By: Edna St. Vincent Millay

Where do the squeamish go in Gaza?

When caked up, pungent rivers of blood shore up against your front door

When human waste is let out to marshal streets of destruction and woe

When children, frail and forlorn, hold on fiercely to a mother two days dead

When a father, a dying child laying limply in his arms runs to a hospital nowhere near

When a daughter returns to a heap of rubble that was home just ten days before

When that daughter finds the corpse of a child two weeks dead-

So long dead, it hasn't rated a statistic and even as a belated statistic she cannot tell whether it is a girl or a boy

When the nails from the shells flying precariously close above are as long as your hand

When a child's brain is bombed out of his head with no reference to superlative metaphor- just a grim litreality

When a brother himself no more than ten is burdened with the weight of a bleeding, burned brother

When over on the hill in the distance the fall of each bomb is celebrated by another pair of brothers

When the head of a girl protrudes from a heap of rubble like an artistic echo of the world's complicity

When the unborn child listens to their mother wailing for a husband who is never to hear the wailing of his child-

Who closes their eyes and walks away?

And then you realise, squeamishness is a privilege few can afford.

Some of 2008 Through the eye of a phone-Updated with Sameerah's wed-deeeng pictures

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5.

6

1. In the place where the sun rises, the mist swirls theatrically and the rain falls as if it were God's own fingers tapping gently onto verdant Earth

The year started off driving though a Mpumalanga cloaked in mist and rain. The sight of the rolling hills being ravaged of its trees to support our penchant for paper, initiating a jostle between my green ambitions and accumulative ways.

2. And then there were rainbows

Every year, begins with a proliferation of the promise of new beginnings, but this year, I held on to the promise of rich rewards for patience and rainbows took precedence over grey skies, 'twas the best of times'. And then the little world in my head, the kingdom I had nurtured through the preceding year crashed and crumbled, 'twas the worst of times'.

3. 'Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.' Khalil Gibran

Little Mohamed Ameen came along. Children, more than they need us, we need them. To forget the pettiness of self with which we build and stack, we need children. And so, Mohamed Ameen, came, forcing me to forget myself, my own trashed dreams, and look at the possibilities of the world. Circumstances had compouned on a relative, forcing him to ask us to take care of his one-year-old son. We took him in. I was not enjoying the hiatus between exams and results, disconcerted by having so much time on my hands, so Mohamed Ameen became an extension of me. For a little over three months, I arranged my life around him, filling bottles, waking up at ungodly hours to the sound of wailing, feeling around my room like a blind person looking for the bottle he unceremoniously chucked, carrying a napkin-laden bag on shopping trips, the sickly feeling at the pit of my stomach when he crawled into the garge and lodged himself beneath my car, the relief of getting him out unscathed, the joys of Ackermans kids department, having the Flings eaten before we get to the checkout, the weekly trips to the paediatrician, all the while watching him grow, encouraging him through his first step... And then his mum was better and I had to pack his bags and bundle him back to his parents. I really did feel like I was giving up a piece of myself, but then Khalil Gibran's words ring true.

4 &5. Everybody say, "Wed-eeeng"

It was a bumper wedding season among the residents of our little enclave. I didn't take photos at all of them, but the picture above (5) is at the wedding reception of Nabeela and Fareed. It was a beautiful wedding. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but then a picture couldn't capture the heart of the moments as they pass, they remain, within us, enclosed, like a dream.

Subsequent to me expressing my regrets for not having taken pictures at Sameerah's walimah. She kindly forwarded me some, I've posted my favourite (4). Beautiful, innit?

6.Risqué

While my confidence in my own driving abilities improved, and I clocked up a year on the licence, I took to taking pictures of the city lights from a moving car (not while being the driver of said car). The blurriness is not a token of amateur photography but rather, a metaphor of how much we actually see, when we do try to look outside ourselves without taking the time to pause. Or something like that, just stare at the words longs enough and they'll make sense eventually. Or not.

I'll stop here, practising some self-censorship. 'People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.' (Soren Kierkegaard) I'll take up freedom of thought, mindful of destroying all your well-formed opinions of me.

Rambling Reminiscence

I visited my alma mater today. The words of Nelson Mandela, 'There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered,' resonate with me during each of my visits there. Our tip-ex graffiti has long since faded, many of our old teachers have moved on to less blue pastures, but somewhere among those ancient walls and rickety floors, there is a sense of home. I really wished I had all my old friends with me to share in that feeling.

During my six month stint as an English teacher there last year, I was so uneasy about sitting in the staff room, among some of my old teachers, I spent my breaks instead with the tea lady, Aunty Esther (Allah yr7mha). I'm afraid that as time pools on my recalcitrant soul, I'll forget my time there. There's so much I don't want to forget, I have to write about it sometime, I will write about it sometime...Not today, because today, more than that sense of home, the kids, their unabashed delight in seeing me, their humbling affection, the boys, growing up now, uncertain about whether they should hug me, even the hell raisers among them, ever so polite- I can't stop smiling. Even though there were many days last year, that they made me scream and shout till I was hoarse.
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50 posts today, being an avid sports fan, I'd like to raise my bat to the oodles of free time last December that had me create a blogger account, the drama in January that had me posting a couple of times, only to leave the blog to its own devices to find people to look at it, then to Safiyyah, for starting a blog, encouraging me to start one, inadvertently reminding me that I actually did have one, sweet Don, for finding my blog within minutes of me chatting to Safiyyah, and mailing me questioning my motive in blog murder, Karolia for introducing me to blog culture, to my first commentators, Crimson Shimmer, MJ, Saaleha and Nooj, and to the friendships that have sprung from here- -- I salute you, mes amis.

Defending my Hijab-UPDATED

The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us...During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty...pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal...More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers.

(Naomi Wolf 1991 The Beauty Myth )

Ideological battles are often waged with women's bodies as their emblems, and Western Islamophobia is no exception. When France banned headscarves in schools, it used the hijab as a proxy for Western values in general, including the appropriate status of women. When Americans were being prepared for the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban were demonised for denying cosmetics and hair colour to women; when the Taliban were overthrown, Western writers often noted that women had taken off their scarves.

...

I experienced it myself. I put on a shalwar kameez and a headscarf in Morocco for a trip to the bazaar. Yes, some of the warmth I encountered was probably from the novelty of seeing a Westerner so clothed; but, as I moved about the market - the curve of my breasts covered, the shape of my legs obscured, my long hair not flying about me - I felt a novel sense of calm and serenity. I felt, yes, in certain ways, free.

(Naomi Wolf 2008 Full Article Click Here)

There's been quite a buzz about Hijab in these parts, such that it seems that the Hijab is coming under a viscious attack in a civil war, prompting Safiyyah and I to tentatively launch a Defend the Hijab campaign- Safiyyah has posted an excellent piece on the subject and I quote a snippet of her opening here-

Apparently, there is a trend amidst young Muslim girls to wear "hijab" but commit the most heinous of acts, while still trying to keep up the "innocent Muslim girl" act. This in turn, has prompted some people, to over-generalize about hijab, some even going to the extent of saying it is just a cover for carrying out sinful deeds, unsuspected. This warrants an agressive defence, of that which I hold dear to me, so I have decided to put fingertips to keyboard, and formulate my beliefs, opinions and experiences about being a Muhajiba (one who practices hijab).

(For the full post, click here)

I've been in hijab since I was thirteen years old. No, it was not forced upon me. I was covering my hair sporadically since twelve, but at thirteen, I remember waiting to see the pulmonologist, wearing an abaya over my jeans and tshirt, I felt such calm, so at peace with myself. I told my Dad that I wanted to wear an abaya 'all the time'. I've had my moments of rebellion, my fleeting attempts at higher degree of street-cred but I shan't expound on them here, because I feel some shame in them and I believe that peddling the sins, my own and others, for the entertainment of a few amounts to a seedy glorification of it. May Allah forgive us all. Remember the Hadith,

Narrated by Abu Sa'id al-Khudri: I heard the Messenger of Allah(blessings and peace be upon him) as saying: 'He who amongst you sees something abominable should modify it with the help of his hand; and if he has not strength enough to do that, then he should do it with his tongue; and if he has not strength enough to do even that, then he should (at least abhor it) from his heart; and that is the least of faith. (Muslim)

Safiyyah aptly says,

To those people who seek to malign the hijab, through their actions, remember that society might think good of you, but what of Allah? And to those who damn those who practice hijab due to the actions of a few, remember that the believers are supposed to cover the sins of their brothers and sisters, and try to change them, not expose them.

Saaleha, in her post, You know what I am before you know who I am, says, 'Ramadaan tends to froth up the visual Islam; the conventional markers of the Faith such as the hijab and the beard'. She's succinctly described the place of the Muhajiba in this society. It's easy to pick on the Muhajiba because she's easily picked out.

A final message to the detractors,

This is not an elitist club. I don't think I'm better than you. I am not perfect. Kindly do not subject my intentions to conjecture. We really are in this together. May we all find the common ground to join our hearts and minds in rendering better versions of who we are.