As salaam alaikum!
It's done! It's done! Yes yes yes done done done!
What's done? My story, of course!
A Rose Much Desired is done! Yayayayayayay!
I was kind of dizzy because I haven't eaten all day...not because I spent all day writing this, nor am I fasting right now. It was unwise of me to not eat in my condition wink wink ladies you know what I'm talking about wink, but I had tons of stuff to do, wanted to finish my work for my sexuality class early, cleaned my pigsty of a room while listening to Pandora, all of this stuff...and then I just decided to sit down at about 3:30pm to finish the story, now that I'd come up with an idea for the second-to-last chapter, and I just went for it. The last chapter was very quick to write, because I've known what happens in the last chapter forever, and there it was!
I was finished as of 5pm tonight. After three years (because I started writing it November 1, 2007, right?), 256 pages 10 point Verdana double spaced, 93,000-some words, the first novel that I've ever written as an adult is finished. Alhamdulillah!
...now, for the gargantuan task of editing it...a second time. The first read through of it started in May, as I was starting my family medicine rotation. I've spent the last three or four months writing the last 40 pages or so, and now, it's done!
Woohoo!
Editing it will take me a little bit of time, and then after I edit through it once, I'm soliciting my cousins, my mother and B to read it. B...hahaha, we'll see what he thinks of me after he reads it, but he wants to read it, so I'm like, ohhh-kay...
And then, while folks are reading it, I'll look into this publishing thing...I just want to try my hand at getting published, just once!
...now, here's hoping I don't hate it when I read it.
I hope I can get it published so everyone who's known I was writing it can read it! Yayayay!
It's a celebration!
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
[uncensored]: Self-(dis)respect
As salaam alaikum,
I don't know much what to say to this. It's a surprising thing. Being with B so far has taught me that...I guess I didn't expect myself to be respected in a relationship with men. In fact, when he didn't disrespect me, I got frustrated.
I wanted him to disrespect me! I expected it and have indeed incorporated into my conception of a man so that being with him didn't feel right, a little bit...
This all sounds very cryptic. Let me expand.
For example, one day he was walking me back to my place (where he very respectfully sees me off from the lobby of my apartment building and then walks away), and he repeatedly censored himself, I noticed. Then he mentioned that he'd started cursing more since he's been in graduate school for some reason, after he hadn't cursed before. I found this intriguing, but I informed him that he could curse if he wanted to, and he said, nah, that he doesn't really curse anyway.
I was a little put off by the fact that he didn't curse. I mean, I don't curse, either...unless no one is around. Little known secret, I can actually curse very well. I learned it from my mother, ironically, who learned it from her mother (my grandmother doesn't believe that ass and shit are curse words...ass is in the Bible and Qur'an, she says...and I guess that shit is ubiquitous). But I cannot find a reason to curse when around others...
But I wanted him to curse. Boys and men used to excuse themselves around me when they cursed around me, and I liked that for a time...then they didn't, and I came used to it. I came to actually believe that cussing around me was kind of hot. Or, if I may, it was kind of hott.
And still, he censors himself so much! He won't curse around me, although I'd almost prefer that he did.
And I was like, shit, what is this? Haha, if I may tongue-in-cheek it right now...
I realize in my expectations of his behavior, to cursing to trying to forge a physical relationship, I expected to be disrespected, and became frustrated when I'm not. I think I wanted to be the gatekeeper to his actor...I wanted to be the one to draw the line, to defend myself, to keep things (relatively) halal...but he seems intent on respecting my face and not forcing anything.
He's keeping things (relatively) halal and he's not even Muslim! What?
I'm trying to figure out where he's coming from. He doesn't curse, doesn't drink, says grace over his food, gives charity, volunteers his time, but he's not "religious?" Say what now?
And he respects me apparently more than I respect myself.
My friend, whom I talked to, said, "Yes, you deserve the best."
I was like, oh, wow, I forgot that this was supposed to be good.
It reminds me of this conversation that these older girls were having when I was in the band in high school. I was maybe 16, they were 17. They were both Catholic. The 17-year-old was saying that she didn't really aspire to marry a virgin, because she felt like guys weren't really virgins anymore. Her friend, also 17, told her that she shouldn't sell herself short, that she'd marry a virgin.
Of course, me at 16 was thinking, why would you want to marry a virgin? Wouldn't you rather have someone with experience so you wouldn't be both inexperienced people? In my mind, I actually preferred that the guy wasn't a virgin.
And I think that was just the beginning of this curious pattern of what I guess is self-disrespect.
I guess I expect a guy to be loud and boisterous, curse a lot, have happy hands that I have to bat away, someone I have to physically push away, repeatedly tell no...someone who is stubborn, who has his own agenda, his own direction, and expects me to come along for the ride, with me being the regulator...
But I guess I'm supposed to want a man to be even mannered, to censor himself around me, to restrain himself around me and respect my space and my pace, someone who is considerate and takes my opinion into account as we travel together though this part of life, both of us actors and self-regulators...
I have to get used to this!
...seriously, it's hard for me. It's not that I have any doubt about how he feels about me, but...I think I'm just the product of a society in which women are disrespected on the regular, and some of us have come to anticipate it and enjoy it. Is it adaptive? I don't know.
I don't know...
I don't know much what to say to this. It's a surprising thing. Being with B so far has taught me that...I guess I didn't expect myself to be respected in a relationship with men. In fact, when he didn't disrespect me, I got frustrated.
I wanted him to disrespect me! I expected it and have indeed incorporated into my conception of a man so that being with him didn't feel right, a little bit...
This all sounds very cryptic. Let me expand.
For example, one day he was walking me back to my place (where he very respectfully sees me off from the lobby of my apartment building and then walks away), and he repeatedly censored himself, I noticed. Then he mentioned that he'd started cursing more since he's been in graduate school for some reason, after he hadn't cursed before. I found this intriguing, but I informed him that he could curse if he wanted to, and he said, nah, that he doesn't really curse anyway.
I was a little put off by the fact that he didn't curse. I mean, I don't curse, either...unless no one is around. Little known secret, I can actually curse very well. I learned it from my mother, ironically, who learned it from her mother (my grandmother doesn't believe that ass and shit are curse words...ass is in the Bible and Qur'an, she says...and I guess that shit is ubiquitous). But I cannot find a reason to curse when around others...
But I wanted him to curse. Boys and men used to excuse themselves around me when they cursed around me, and I liked that for a time...then they didn't, and I came used to it. I came to actually believe that cussing around me was kind of hot. Or, if I may, it was kind of hott.
And still, he censors himself so much! He won't curse around me, although I'd almost prefer that he did.
And I was like, shit, what is this? Haha, if I may tongue-in-cheek it right now...
I realize in my expectations of his behavior, to cursing to trying to forge a physical relationship, I expected to be disrespected, and became frustrated when I'm not. I think I wanted to be the gatekeeper to his actor...I wanted to be the one to draw the line, to defend myself, to keep things (relatively) halal...but he seems intent on respecting my face and not forcing anything.
He's keeping things (relatively) halal and he's not even Muslim! What?
I'm trying to figure out where he's coming from. He doesn't curse, doesn't drink, says grace over his food, gives charity, volunteers his time, but he's not "religious?" Say what now?
And he respects me apparently more than I respect myself.
My friend, whom I talked to, said, "Yes, you deserve the best."
I was like, oh, wow, I forgot that this was supposed to be good.
It reminds me of this conversation that these older girls were having when I was in the band in high school. I was maybe 16, they were 17. They were both Catholic. The 17-year-old was saying that she didn't really aspire to marry a virgin, because she felt like guys weren't really virgins anymore. Her friend, also 17, told her that she shouldn't sell herself short, that she'd marry a virgin.
Of course, me at 16 was thinking, why would you want to marry a virgin? Wouldn't you rather have someone with experience so you wouldn't be both inexperienced people? In my mind, I actually preferred that the guy wasn't a virgin.
And I think that was just the beginning of this curious pattern of what I guess is self-disrespect.
I guess I expect a guy to be loud and boisterous, curse a lot, have happy hands that I have to bat away, someone I have to physically push away, repeatedly tell no...someone who is stubborn, who has his own agenda, his own direction, and expects me to come along for the ride, with me being the regulator...
But I guess I'm supposed to want a man to be even mannered, to censor himself around me, to restrain himself around me and respect my space and my pace, someone who is considerate and takes my opinion into account as we travel together though this part of life, both of us actors and self-regulators...
I have to get used to this!
...seriously, it's hard for me. It's not that I have any doubt about how he feels about me, but...I think I'm just the product of a society in which women are disrespected on the regular, and some of us have come to anticipate it and enjoy it. Is it adaptive? I don't know.
I don't know...
Monday, November 8, 2010
Realization and Sexuality
As salaam alaikum,
First, this, the translation I remember my mother reciting:
By (the token of) time (through the ages),
Verily man is in loss,
Except for such as have faith, do righteous deeds,
and (join together) in the mutual teaching of truth
and of patience and constancy.
- Al-'Asr, A. Yusuf Ali
I made a realization that I've made many times before. I can't live this life alone. I can't live Islam as I see fit without a partner at least, without a community. The Qur'an and Sunnah provided us information on how to live together as Muslims, not on how to be an isolated Musilm in a secular community and society. I've stressed so much about this and wonder why things were so hard sometimes, but this is it. The nature of our realities on this earth is that we are products of our environment arriving to Allah (swt) at the end of it all by his grace alone, but there are means and agents of this process. Why else is it important for us to build strong communities except for us to come together and help guide each other? Because looking out at the world of Muslims today, a lot of us need guidance...and I'm not talking about guidance on frivolous things on which so many of us are unfortunately fixated. There are bigger fish to fry!
I often feared that I wasn't being a proper Muslimah, that I wasn't living up to a proper moral standard within Islam, but I realize that if I'm not interacting with other Muslims, many of those standards are virtually meaningless (not before Allah (swt), of course, but in social dealings). I realized that in the Dominican Republic, when I was the only Muslim in the region I lived in. I wore hijab. When I walked down the street, it meant nothing to the men. I was cat-called or harassed as much as the women in my group who wore their capri pants and tank tops, although I was also called Maria on occasion because of the misperception that I was a nun.
This is not me resigning myself or anything, it's just a realization. Islam makes the most sense in at least a partnership or a community context, as a means of governance of human relationships. It encourages faith as a group enterprise. It's not a magical thing that jammah salat is important...praying in a community of like-minded individuals, coming together united like that takes on greater meaning than always praying alone. I know...I usually pray alone.
Where did this come from? I was reading for my Sexuality and Public Health class (hundreds of pages of reading weekly, ladies and gents!), and I just made a realization. I was reading about social constructionism, that operates on the assumption that reality is a social construct. Extrapolating that to attraction and sexual orientation as the article was, it is impossible to segregate whatever biological meanings these two elements may have because they take on distinct meanings depending on one's culture. While an evolutionary theorist (or an essentialist) would posit that there are natural forms of attraction or sexual orientation (very Platonic of them), a social constructionist would argue that these two things are influenced by social circumstance.
For example, in some cultures, romantic love does not exist. They also gave the example of a culture where males are initiated into sexual activity with men only, get married and continue sexual activity with men while having sex with their wife, but are expected to only have sex with their wife after the birth of their first child. In this culture, there is no conception of homosexuality (which I tend to shy away from such declarative statements of what does and does not exist in one culture unless I am actually a part of said culture).
Anyway, with all of this...I thought of something I often say. I often say that our reality on this earth is actually our realities, and they are subjective. Even so, I believe in a singular reality of things, which is reflected in my belief in Islam. I believe that we each live separate realities in our heads, though these realities may be close matches in certain contexts (cultural and religious), they're all unique. There is a singular reality, a singular truth to all things. Some approach this Truth with theory, some with worship, some with both. Some ignore it for the sake of the reality of this life.
The article was trying to argue that an essentialist view and a social constructionist view were mutually exclusive, but I think it depends on how you define these terms and what elements of life you apply them to. For example, I am essentialist in the sense that I believe that elements of sentiment on this earth, such as mercy, truth, etc. are reflections of the more perfect forms of these attributes that are Allah (swt). Do I apply essentialism to attraction? No. I am social constructionist when it comes to those things.
For example, for my roommate, romantic love is not romantic love but sexual desire given the name love. For me, romantic love is not romantic love but the elation of imagining oneself married to a potential spouse, spending the rest of your life with them, having children, what the children will be like, etc. My roommate has no schema for this.
My view of romantic love is a reality for me, a subjective reality but a reality. It was formed by living in a society in which romantic love exists, and I'm influenced by that. But, being a Muslimah, it is unacceptable to me to place the cognitive meaning of romantic love on sexual desire as my roommate did. I wouldn't, after all, want to marry someone if I was influenced by that type of romantic love! So instead, I placed romantic love on another cognitive attribute...the desire to marry, spend the rest of my life with, and raise children with...whomever. It is not sexual desire...I've heard Muslims before equate sexual desire with the desire to marry, which I think is just as problematic (though not inherently wrong, just problematic) as equating romantic love with sexual desire.
I think what people define as love is different. It may be a mainstream US thing to equate some part of sexual desire with romantic love. As an American Muslim, I took my two paradigms (or three paradigms, if you include my black subculture) and that is how I define romantic love. It's based on finding one who understands, who you can talk to about anything, who is caring, compassionate...basically a bunch of characteristics that would also make a good husband. Romantic love for me is this growing realization that you could marry this person and the wonder of spending the rest of your life with another person, growing to know them and fit your life with them.
Sex...I usually have a hard time imagining sex. My roommates find this perplexing. Social constructionist theory also argues that sexuality is a social construct. Since my social influence is not strictly US culture, but also draws from my upbringing and my immersion in Islam...yeah, I can see that. People in my class would see my state as unnatural (abstinence), but really, sexuality as one experiences it is not a universal experience. People are interestingly egocentric when it comes to that...but I never assumed my sexuality was universally experienced by most other women, so it's surprising to me that other people believe so...
Anyway...I'm taking this class because sexual and reproductive health are my favorite topics ever, so yes...the theory behind these things is interesting. We'll see if I'm able to apply anything back to the clinic and wards...
Time to catch the shuttle in the midst of this Nor'easter!
First, this, the translation I remember my mother reciting:
By (the token of) time (through the ages),
Verily man is in loss,
Except for such as have faith, do righteous deeds,
and (join together) in the mutual teaching of truth
and of patience and constancy.
- Al-'Asr, A. Yusuf Ali
I made a realization that I've made many times before. I can't live this life alone. I can't live Islam as I see fit without a partner at least, without a community. The Qur'an and Sunnah provided us information on how to live together as Muslims, not on how to be an isolated Musilm in a secular community and society. I've stressed so much about this and wonder why things were so hard sometimes, but this is it. The nature of our realities on this earth is that we are products of our environment arriving to Allah (swt) at the end of it all by his grace alone, but there are means and agents of this process. Why else is it important for us to build strong communities except for us to come together and help guide each other? Because looking out at the world of Muslims today, a lot of us need guidance...and I'm not talking about guidance on frivolous things on which so many of us are unfortunately fixated. There are bigger fish to fry!
I often feared that I wasn't being a proper Muslimah, that I wasn't living up to a proper moral standard within Islam, but I realize that if I'm not interacting with other Muslims, many of those standards are virtually meaningless (not before Allah (swt), of course, but in social dealings). I realized that in the Dominican Republic, when I was the only Muslim in the region I lived in. I wore hijab. When I walked down the street, it meant nothing to the men. I was cat-called or harassed as much as the women in my group who wore their capri pants and tank tops, although I was also called Maria on occasion because of the misperception that I was a nun.
This is not me resigning myself or anything, it's just a realization. Islam makes the most sense in at least a partnership or a community context, as a means of governance of human relationships. It encourages faith as a group enterprise. It's not a magical thing that jammah salat is important...praying in a community of like-minded individuals, coming together united like that takes on greater meaning than always praying alone. I know...I usually pray alone.
Where did this come from? I was reading for my Sexuality and Public Health class (hundreds of pages of reading weekly, ladies and gents!), and I just made a realization. I was reading about social constructionism, that operates on the assumption that reality is a social construct. Extrapolating that to attraction and sexual orientation as the article was, it is impossible to segregate whatever biological meanings these two elements may have because they take on distinct meanings depending on one's culture. While an evolutionary theorist (or an essentialist) would posit that there are natural forms of attraction or sexual orientation (very Platonic of them), a social constructionist would argue that these two things are influenced by social circumstance.
For example, in some cultures, romantic love does not exist. They also gave the example of a culture where males are initiated into sexual activity with men only, get married and continue sexual activity with men while having sex with their wife, but are expected to only have sex with their wife after the birth of their first child. In this culture, there is no conception of homosexuality (which I tend to shy away from such declarative statements of what does and does not exist in one culture unless I am actually a part of said culture).
Anyway, with all of this...I thought of something I often say. I often say that our reality on this earth is actually our realities, and they are subjective. Even so, I believe in a singular reality of things, which is reflected in my belief in Islam. I believe that we each live separate realities in our heads, though these realities may be close matches in certain contexts (cultural and religious), they're all unique. There is a singular reality, a singular truth to all things. Some approach this Truth with theory, some with worship, some with both. Some ignore it for the sake of the reality of this life.
The article was trying to argue that an essentialist view and a social constructionist view were mutually exclusive, but I think it depends on how you define these terms and what elements of life you apply them to. For example, I am essentialist in the sense that I believe that elements of sentiment on this earth, such as mercy, truth, etc. are reflections of the more perfect forms of these attributes that are Allah (swt). Do I apply essentialism to attraction? No. I am social constructionist when it comes to those things.
For example, for my roommate, romantic love is not romantic love but sexual desire given the name love. For me, romantic love is not romantic love but the elation of imagining oneself married to a potential spouse, spending the rest of your life with them, having children, what the children will be like, etc. My roommate has no schema for this.
My view of romantic love is a reality for me, a subjective reality but a reality. It was formed by living in a society in which romantic love exists, and I'm influenced by that. But, being a Muslimah, it is unacceptable to me to place the cognitive meaning of romantic love on sexual desire as my roommate did. I wouldn't, after all, want to marry someone if I was influenced by that type of romantic love! So instead, I placed romantic love on another cognitive attribute...the desire to marry, spend the rest of my life with, and raise children with...whomever. It is not sexual desire...I've heard Muslims before equate sexual desire with the desire to marry, which I think is just as problematic (though not inherently wrong, just problematic) as equating romantic love with sexual desire.
I think what people define as love is different. It may be a mainstream US thing to equate some part of sexual desire with romantic love. As an American Muslim, I took my two paradigms (or three paradigms, if you include my black subculture) and that is how I define romantic love. It's based on finding one who understands, who you can talk to about anything, who is caring, compassionate...basically a bunch of characteristics that would also make a good husband. Romantic love for me is this growing realization that you could marry this person and the wonder of spending the rest of your life with another person, growing to know them and fit your life with them.
Sex...I usually have a hard time imagining sex. My roommates find this perplexing. Social constructionist theory also argues that sexuality is a social construct. Since my social influence is not strictly US culture, but also draws from my upbringing and my immersion in Islam...yeah, I can see that. People in my class would see my state as unnatural (abstinence), but really, sexuality as one experiences it is not a universal experience. People are interestingly egocentric when it comes to that...but I never assumed my sexuality was universally experienced by most other women, so it's surprising to me that other people believe so...
Anyway...I'm taking this class because sexual and reproductive health are my favorite topics ever, so yes...the theory behind these things is interesting. We'll see if I'm able to apply anything back to the clinic and wards...
Time to catch the shuttle in the midst of this Nor'easter!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
And now, for something completely different...
(Salaam)
And it's not a man with three buttocks!
Only my favorite cartoon when I was a kid (about 6-8 years old). Having a major saudade fest right now! Disney used to make quality children's programming. I don't even know what kids watch these days.
And it's not a man with three buttocks!
Only my favorite cartoon when I was a kid (about 6-8 years old). Having a major saudade fest right now! Disney used to make quality children's programming. I don't even know what kids watch these days.
Sound Off! and In Other News
As salaam alaikum,
In my Sexuality and Public Health class, there are a couple of people intent on bashing Islam. One of my friends, also Muslim (and Nigerian!) had to stand up and defend. We have a new addition to our class, an Arab Christian lady who was the main culprit...the ridiculous things that she said were in the Qur'an! I mean, come on! You want to talk about the evil things that Musilms have done in the communities you know of, fine. I don't deny these things, I condemn them along with you. Am I comfortable with only negative examples of Muslims being shared in this faux-liberal class? No, but I'm also not comfortable with the fact that Muslims around the world are doing ignorant things, not only to others but to themselves and within their own communities, own homes such that those who will have things to voice about, noise about, fodder to bash an entire group of people based on the activities of a loud minority...
Terrorism is the obvious thing to condemn, and I believe most of us here (in the US) condemn it readily. People who say that we don't obviously do not personally know Muslims or follow any Muslim media sources, and don't care to. Others of us recognize and condemn other things. My pet issue to noise about in the past has been racism, but there are others...women's rights, for example. With the racism argument, I've encountered the defense that Muslims are humans, too, and make mistakes. I mean, obviously, but I believe that we have as much of a duty to speak out against and to inform ourself about injustices within our physical and imagined umam as we have a duty to defend injustice against us, to be chartible to one another, and all else. I believe that without the former the latter is incomplete.
People who will would find a way to bash Muslims even if evil and ignorance were being committed by 100 Muslims. There are upwards of 1.7 billion of us on this earth right now, and if as many of us were backwards as they want the public to believe, this whole place would be a greater chaos state than it is now...if I may reduce the world to a state. I despise those who, in the name of Islam, perpetuate ignorance and spread their evil works and besmirch the image of my religion, who massacre my brothers and sisters in Islam and otherwise make it harder for other Muslims to live on this earth. I despise them more, actually, than most of those in my faux-liberal class who so readily speak ill of my religion while knowing nothing about it.
Activists are sometimes funny people. They are very reactionary and use the word agency a lot. They think they are liberal but really they can be as narrow-minded as conservatives are, just on the other side of the argument. Oh liberal actvitist, you don't have the market cornered on the best way to live life and conceptualize future. To believe that you do is a type of cultural imperalism not unlike that which you would decry in the history classes about the various European colonization efforts that you may have taken in your liberal arts institutions.
Yes, hello. I am a Muslim woman. I find it funny, oh classmates, that you see abstinence as unnatural and restrictive so universally, but I'll let you have that one. But I also find it funny that you think you're so liberal in your effort to have language inclusive for people of all sexual orientations and gender identifications, but you adopt language and ideals that is not inclusive of those who choose to be more conservative with their sex, for whatever reason.
But I guess inclusivity of more conservative modes of thought is not most people's definition of liberal. I guess I was under the false assumption that being liberal meant being more open-minded, more inclusive, more accepting of differences in thought. Oops!
In other news...
An annonymous donor has contributed $30 million dollars to Harvard Medical School for primary care, and that has gone toward a new center of primary care...new, because there's not been one before, and months ago, the primary care budget was cut at Harvard, leading to an understandable unrest amongst our primary care activists. The announcement came in an email from Dean Flyer shortly after the announcement about the expansion of the immunology program, something that I'm also excited about because, personally, the immune system is my favorite system of the body (yes, actually not the reproductive system!). But this is awesome. I'm excited to see what comes about in my next year and a half at the medical school in terms of primary care and see it's implications for family medicine.
Also, after discussing with the roommates whether "in love" existed [which I think is a moot argument, kind of, in the way that they were having it...one said that the feelings existed, but in love, as in romantic love, doesn't exist, while love for family and friends is the only love that exists...I could write a whole entry about how my conceptions of love have changed over time, but yeah, that's not what this about], I went to sleep and, like a fool, had a dream about B. B, being the man that he is, neglected to tell me that when he was leaving this weekend, he wouldn't be back until...next Friday!
And I didn't see him at all after going to the Djavan concert with him (in which, admittedly, I kind of wish I could have gone alone and pretended I was Brazilian, since I can now speak Portuguese without a sotaque), because he was working on his poster.
But a whole week...d'oh! Why did you think that was okay to tell me at the last minute...we may just be friends+, but my friends tell me their plans, I expect the same of a friends+.
So then, after waxing philosophical about love and the term "romantic love"...I had a dream about him last night. I had a dream that I was in my apartment with friends, and I went to the kitchen where my roommates were, and there he was. And I ran up to him and hugged him, asked him what he was doing here. I excused the place being a sty (which it is right now), and he said that he didn't care. However, there were tampon wrappers and tampons around the living room that I tried to discreetly pick up (okay, so the apartment in real life is not that nasty...no stray tampons, mainly just papers from school). He told me that for the conference, the hotel cost more than him just commuting back and forth by bus, so he decided to come back home and commute daily (makes no sense in the dream, either, because the hotel room was supposedly only $50 and the commute on the bus was $6 round trip...I've been watching too much "Mad Men.")
So I introduced him to all of my friends, which included one of my roommates friends (who we visited last night in the upstairs boys apartment) and a bunch of other random Asians, including this girl from my sexuality class, an undergraduate at The College (hahaha, if I may). We watched this movie on the small tube television in our living room.
It became late, and one of my roommates suggested that B stay over. She then, as I imagine she would do in real life, suggest that he stay in my room. I objected, which for some reason involved me making acting out an upper case sigma with my body, at which B laughed. That was the part of the dream that made the least since...me making the sigma. That's biostats coming into my head, and the fact that I have an upcoming biostats exam.
I woke up and laughed at myself. That was a perfectly ridiculous dream.
Yesterday was my roommate's birthday. We went out with her parents to Fire and Ice, this restaurant downtown very much like BD's (Mongolian Barbecue) at home. It was fun. It was great seeing her parents...seeing where one comes from makes a lot of sense. And they paid...that was awesome.
But speaking of which, back to working out for me! I've had too much free food in the last month, too little exercise. Time to start it back up before my weight creeps back up.
Anyway...I just remembered a song my mother used to listen to that I haven't thought of in years. Wow...I don't know why I just thought of this. I think I'm in that sentimental mood right now...gah, I forgot how this feels!
{Currently listening: Brandy (I Really Miss You) - O'Jays}
Oh man! Adoro.
In my Sexuality and Public Health class, there are a couple of people intent on bashing Islam. One of my friends, also Muslim (and Nigerian!) had to stand up and defend. We have a new addition to our class, an Arab Christian lady who was the main culprit...the ridiculous things that she said were in the Qur'an! I mean, come on! You want to talk about the evil things that Musilms have done in the communities you know of, fine. I don't deny these things, I condemn them along with you. Am I comfortable with only negative examples of Muslims being shared in this faux-liberal class? No, but I'm also not comfortable with the fact that Muslims around the world are doing ignorant things, not only to others but to themselves and within their own communities, own homes such that those who will have things to voice about, noise about, fodder to bash an entire group of people based on the activities of a loud minority...
Terrorism is the obvious thing to condemn, and I believe most of us here (in the US) condemn it readily. People who say that we don't obviously do not personally know Muslims or follow any Muslim media sources, and don't care to. Others of us recognize and condemn other things. My pet issue to noise about in the past has been racism, but there are others...women's rights, for example. With the racism argument, I've encountered the defense that Muslims are humans, too, and make mistakes. I mean, obviously, but I believe that we have as much of a duty to speak out against and to inform ourself about injustices within our physical and imagined umam as we have a duty to defend injustice against us, to be chartible to one another, and all else. I believe that without the former the latter is incomplete.
People who will would find a way to bash Muslims even if evil and ignorance were being committed by 100 Muslims. There are upwards of 1.7 billion of us on this earth right now, and if as many of us were backwards as they want the public to believe, this whole place would be a greater chaos state than it is now...if I may reduce the world to a state. I despise those who, in the name of Islam, perpetuate ignorance and spread their evil works and besmirch the image of my religion, who massacre my brothers and sisters in Islam and otherwise make it harder for other Muslims to live on this earth. I despise them more, actually, than most of those in my faux-liberal class who so readily speak ill of my religion while knowing nothing about it.
Activists are sometimes funny people. They are very reactionary and use the word agency a lot. They think they are liberal but really they can be as narrow-minded as conservatives are, just on the other side of the argument. Oh liberal actvitist, you don't have the market cornered on the best way to live life and conceptualize future. To believe that you do is a type of cultural imperalism not unlike that which you would decry in the history classes about the various European colonization efforts that you may have taken in your liberal arts institutions.
Yes, hello. I am a Muslim woman. I find it funny, oh classmates, that you see abstinence as unnatural and restrictive so universally, but I'll let you have that one. But I also find it funny that you think you're so liberal in your effort to have language inclusive for people of all sexual orientations and gender identifications, but you adopt language and ideals that is not inclusive of those who choose to be more conservative with their sex, for whatever reason.
But I guess inclusivity of more conservative modes of thought is not most people's definition of liberal. I guess I was under the false assumption that being liberal meant being more open-minded, more inclusive, more accepting of differences in thought. Oops!
In other news...
An annonymous donor has contributed $30 million dollars to Harvard Medical School for primary care, and that has gone toward a new center of primary care...new, because there's not been one before, and months ago, the primary care budget was cut at Harvard, leading to an understandable unrest amongst our primary care activists. The announcement came in an email from Dean Flyer shortly after the announcement about the expansion of the immunology program, something that I'm also excited about because, personally, the immune system is my favorite system of the body (yes, actually not the reproductive system!). But this is awesome. I'm excited to see what comes about in my next year and a half at the medical school in terms of primary care and see it's implications for family medicine.
Also, after discussing with the roommates whether "in love" existed [which I think is a moot argument, kind of, in the way that they were having it...one said that the feelings existed, but in love, as in romantic love, doesn't exist, while love for family and friends is the only love that exists...I could write a whole entry about how my conceptions of love have changed over time, but yeah, that's not what this about], I went to sleep and, like a fool, had a dream about B. B, being the man that he is, neglected to tell me that when he was leaving this weekend, he wouldn't be back until...next Friday!
And I didn't see him at all after going to the Djavan concert with him (in which, admittedly, I kind of wish I could have gone alone and pretended I was Brazilian, since I can now speak Portuguese without a sotaque), because he was working on his poster.
But a whole week...d'oh! Why did you think that was okay to tell me at the last minute...we may just be friends+, but my friends tell me their plans, I expect the same of a friends+.
So then, after waxing philosophical about love and the term "romantic love"...I had a dream about him last night. I had a dream that I was in my apartment with friends, and I went to the kitchen where my roommates were, and there he was. And I ran up to him and hugged him, asked him what he was doing here. I excused the place being a sty (which it is right now), and he said that he didn't care. However, there were tampon wrappers and tampons around the living room that I tried to discreetly pick up (okay, so the apartment in real life is not that nasty...no stray tampons, mainly just papers from school). He told me that for the conference, the hotel cost more than him just commuting back and forth by bus, so he decided to come back home and commute daily (makes no sense in the dream, either, because the hotel room was supposedly only $50 and the commute on the bus was $6 round trip...I've been watching too much "Mad Men.")
So I introduced him to all of my friends, which included one of my roommates friends (who we visited last night in the upstairs boys apartment) and a bunch of other random Asians, including this girl from my sexuality class, an undergraduate at The College (hahaha, if I may). We watched this movie on the small tube television in our living room.
It became late, and one of my roommates suggested that B stay over. She then, as I imagine she would do in real life, suggest that he stay in my room. I objected, which for some reason involved me making acting out an upper case sigma with my body, at which B laughed. That was the part of the dream that made the least since...me making the sigma. That's biostats coming into my head, and the fact that I have an upcoming biostats exam.
I woke up and laughed at myself. That was a perfectly ridiculous dream.
Yesterday was my roommate's birthday. We went out with her parents to Fire and Ice, this restaurant downtown very much like BD's (Mongolian Barbecue) at home. It was fun. It was great seeing her parents...seeing where one comes from makes a lot of sense. And they paid...that was awesome.
But speaking of which, back to working out for me! I've had too much free food in the last month, too little exercise. Time to start it back up before my weight creeps back up.
Anyway...I just remembered a song my mother used to listen to that I haven't thought of in years. Wow...I don't know why I just thought of this. I think I'm in that sentimental mood right now...gah, I forgot how this feels!
{Currently listening: Brandy (I Really Miss You) - O'Jays}
Oh man! Adoro.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
My Cousin in Hijab
As salaam alaikum,
I was just cruising facebook before I went to sleep to see that Deval Patrick was re-elected...then I checked Michigan's results and saw that Bernero was not elected. Although I tend to vote pretty strictly Democrat because I've never been impressed with various Republican's platforms in terms of their stance on poverty and disparities and issues that effect the working class, including black people...I didn't have time to form strong opinions in this election. I think I would have been better off registering to vote in Massachusetts instead of holding on to my Michigan residence.
[I realize that I never vote for the candidate who has my specific interests at heart...because seriously, my parents are upper middle class, I'm about to be a physician...my greatest plight would be taxation. I always vote for the candidate that will do the most for "my" community and my patients. Honestly, few candidates fully fit these interests of mine...]
My permanent residence is still listed as my parent's home, even though at this point I live in my apartment in Boston more than I live at home, ever since medical school. I don't know...living in a place for 22 years of your life, you kind of have the feeling you'll be back, and it was such a big part of you, you don't want to give it up...something.
Anyway, I was cruising down, seeing a picture of a friend who I think was trying to look like a South Asian Don Draper (I love Mad Men, by the way...that show a little bit genius), I saw a picture of one of my cousins. She was wearing a scarf.
My cousin was donning hijab.
At first, my breathing arrested. I was surprised and a little bit concerned. But then, I just had to smile. I don't know if she was just taking the picture for facebook of her in hijab or if she's going to become a muhajaba for real, but...it's a good look. I like it.
Of all of my cousins who are Muslim or Muslim-leaning, she would be the only one besides me to ever observe hijab, only the second of our generation. Of my mother's generation, she and my eldest aunt had done hijab, though my aunt still does, and my grandmother still does, somewhat, although the scarf has not been simplified to this little black turban she used to wear around the house.
If she is actually donning hijab, I will definitely offer my support and congratulations on making the decision. I don't feel any pangs about it, you know, in terms of me not wearing the scarf any longer. I don't feel pangs because I know that my chosing not to wear the scarf is not a permanent decision, and knowing that I don't regret having worn the scarf when I did. I think it'll be a wonderful experience for my cousin...whether or not men or a man is in the picture...
So it was the surprise for the evening. After that, one of my classmates, who's currently doing a rotation in South Africa, caught me on Gchat. I spent all evening twisting my hair (it took 7 hours, easy...so essentially from 5pm to midnight), which is quite a time investment but it saves me from the grief of grooming an afro and keeping it hydrated, which usually means major shedding...but yeah. She says we should set up a phone date later...that sounds good.
So nothing really in particular to comment on. I just really liked seeing my cousin hijab. I think it was important for me, too, because...so many of my cousins are nominal Muslims or not-there-yet Muslims, but besides some of my male cousins, none of the females were practicing, really, except for me. So now, even though we're in different states and probably will not see each other for months or years at a time, I don't feel as lonely in my family.
Anyway, I'm sleepy.
I was just cruising facebook before I went to sleep to see that Deval Patrick was re-elected...then I checked Michigan's results and saw that Bernero was not elected. Although I tend to vote pretty strictly Democrat because I've never been impressed with various Republican's platforms in terms of their stance on poverty and disparities and issues that effect the working class, including black people...I didn't have time to form strong opinions in this election. I think I would have been better off registering to vote in Massachusetts instead of holding on to my Michigan residence.
[I realize that I never vote for the candidate who has my specific interests at heart...because seriously, my parents are upper middle class, I'm about to be a physician...my greatest plight would be taxation. I always vote for the candidate that will do the most for "my" community and my patients. Honestly, few candidates fully fit these interests of mine...]
My permanent residence is still listed as my parent's home, even though at this point I live in my apartment in Boston more than I live at home, ever since medical school. I don't know...living in a place for 22 years of your life, you kind of have the feeling you'll be back, and it was such a big part of you, you don't want to give it up...something.
Anyway, I was cruising down, seeing a picture of a friend who I think was trying to look like a South Asian Don Draper (I love Mad Men, by the way...that show a little bit genius), I saw a picture of one of my cousins. She was wearing a scarf.
My cousin was donning hijab.
At first, my breathing arrested. I was surprised and a little bit concerned. But then, I just had to smile. I don't know if she was just taking the picture for facebook of her in hijab or if she's going to become a muhajaba for real, but...it's a good look. I like it.
Of all of my cousins who are Muslim or Muslim-leaning, she would be the only one besides me to ever observe hijab, only the second of our generation. Of my mother's generation, she and my eldest aunt had done hijab, though my aunt still does, and my grandmother still does, somewhat, although the scarf has not been simplified to this little black turban she used to wear around the house.
If she is actually donning hijab, I will definitely offer my support and congratulations on making the decision. I don't feel any pangs about it, you know, in terms of me not wearing the scarf any longer. I don't feel pangs because I know that my chosing not to wear the scarf is not a permanent decision, and knowing that I don't regret having worn the scarf when I did. I think it'll be a wonderful experience for my cousin...whether or not men or a man is in the picture...
So it was the surprise for the evening. After that, one of my classmates, who's currently doing a rotation in South Africa, caught me on Gchat. I spent all evening twisting my hair (it took 7 hours, easy...so essentially from 5pm to midnight), which is quite a time investment but it saves me from the grief of grooming an afro and keeping it hydrated, which usually means major shedding...but yeah. She says we should set up a phone date later...that sounds good.
So nothing really in particular to comment on. I just really liked seeing my cousin hijab. I think it was important for me, too, because...so many of my cousins are nominal Muslims or not-there-yet Muslims, but besides some of my male cousins, none of the females were practicing, really, except for me. So now, even though we're in different states and probably will not see each other for months or years at a time, I don't feel as lonely in my family.
Anyway, I'm sleepy.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
I'm So Little
Salaam,
I'm sitting here, reading for my Program Planning and Design course, one of the courses that I felt I most needed and was most excited about taking in my public health curriculum, and at the end of the chapter about needs assessments, which is the only thing I'm used to doing in the realm of public health, I found myself suddenly saying, "I'm so little."
I am so little.
I'm 25. I'm starting a relationship that I realize, and startlingly so, may become serious enough to end in marriage. Or maybe he won't (a la Andre 3000, "if not, you are the prototype.") He's not Muslim, but he's not any religion, but he gives charity regularly, volunteers, doesn't drink and says grace over his food. He believes in God and he doesn't try to convert me. But I don't know what it all means. At my 25 years, I feel foolishly young when it comes to this whole relationship thing.
And I'll be 26 in February.
But in the face of all I will be...insha'Allah someday a wife, a mother, a physician...I'm so young. That over which I will feel the greatest sense of productivity is into the future and indeed, not guaranteed. And yet I feel like I've lived so much life, so many different lives...I've been a musician, a newspaper editor, a lab tech, a tutor, a Spanish-speaker, a researcher, a medical student, a junior clinician, and now I'm about to be a junior public health practitioner. So many different ways of unpaid life...and yet my goals lie before me, not even realized yet. And that's why I'm so young.
And I think of what I want to do with those three things that I'll be...a wife, a mother, a physician. As a physician, I want to be one who is involved in my community, able to assess the needs of the community I work in and perhaps help to roll-out programs for the benefit of my community in addition to being a practitioner for the families in these communities. It's simple. I don't want or need necessarily to be a part of my city or state public health department, but I don't exclude that as a possibility for my future. But there are so many things, so many determinants that will lead to this, my future, that I haven't even touched yet. I've not even finished my fourth year of medical school. I'm not even in my intern year of residency. What will make me the physician I will come to be is at least four years away from me right now. I have little idea about it. I have little idea how I will make my dreams in my career come true. I'm trying to affect a community that I don't yet know exists, and it's just a community but it is so much larger as magnified by future possibilities. I am so small.
Not even to speak of my potential as a wife and mother. I don't even know about these anymore, other than my wanting to be both, not so much out of sense of duty but out of want of challenge, to realize my emotional and physical capabilities as so many women before me have done, but I know it has to be more than that. It has to be more, but I've grown enough to recognize that this will happen along the way. I feel so naive, still, because I want what I don't know. O povo sabe o que quer, mas o povo também quer o que não sabe...
So this all comes together with me being so little. I will graduate from medical and public health schools with debt to pay, not just monetary, but an expectation that I'll somehow affect change. My aspirations as a college student entering into professional school were absent and fanciful. We all come into medical school wanting to help people, many of us with dreams to change the world on the low. But this is really hard, and not all of us have the innate ability or natural skill set to do what we want to do.
But we make due, because we have to. Whether we succeed or not, we have a debt to pay.
I'm so young, so much life insha'Allah ahead of me. I'm so small, in the grand scheme of life and in light of all I want to impact. I'm so naive, in that I want what I know little about. I'm so little.
But Allah (swt) is infinite in His expanse.
So I walk along on my merry way, so little, but not insignificant, at liberty to dream and aspire, rightfully hoping and praying for a meaningful future, the one that I intend and the one that is best for me, when the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Tiny.
I'm sitting here, reading for my Program Planning and Design course, one of the courses that I felt I most needed and was most excited about taking in my public health curriculum, and at the end of the chapter about needs assessments, which is the only thing I'm used to doing in the realm of public health, I found myself suddenly saying, "I'm so little."
I am so little.
I'm 25. I'm starting a relationship that I realize, and startlingly so, may become serious enough to end in marriage. Or maybe he won't (a la Andre 3000, "if not, you are the prototype.") He's not Muslim, but he's not any religion, but he gives charity regularly, volunteers, doesn't drink and says grace over his food. He believes in God and he doesn't try to convert me. But I don't know what it all means. At my 25 years, I feel foolishly young when it comes to this whole relationship thing.
And I'll be 26 in February.
But in the face of all I will be...insha'Allah someday a wife, a mother, a physician...I'm so young. That over which I will feel the greatest sense of productivity is into the future and indeed, not guaranteed. And yet I feel like I've lived so much life, so many different lives...I've been a musician, a newspaper editor, a lab tech, a tutor, a Spanish-speaker, a researcher, a medical student, a junior clinician, and now I'm about to be a junior public health practitioner. So many different ways of unpaid life...and yet my goals lie before me, not even realized yet. And that's why I'm so young.
And I think of what I want to do with those three things that I'll be...a wife, a mother, a physician. As a physician, I want to be one who is involved in my community, able to assess the needs of the community I work in and perhaps help to roll-out programs for the benefit of my community in addition to being a practitioner for the families in these communities. It's simple. I don't want or need necessarily to be a part of my city or state public health department, but I don't exclude that as a possibility for my future. But there are so many things, so many determinants that will lead to this, my future, that I haven't even touched yet. I've not even finished my fourth year of medical school. I'm not even in my intern year of residency. What will make me the physician I will come to be is at least four years away from me right now. I have little idea about it. I have little idea how I will make my dreams in my career come true. I'm trying to affect a community that I don't yet know exists, and it's just a community but it is so much larger as magnified by future possibilities. I am so small.
Not even to speak of my potential as a wife and mother. I don't even know about these anymore, other than my wanting to be both, not so much out of sense of duty but out of want of challenge, to realize my emotional and physical capabilities as so many women before me have done, but I know it has to be more than that. It has to be more, but I've grown enough to recognize that this will happen along the way. I feel so naive, still, because I want what I don't know. O povo sabe o que quer, mas o povo também quer o que não sabe...
So this all comes together with me being so little. I will graduate from medical and public health schools with debt to pay, not just monetary, but an expectation that I'll somehow affect change. My aspirations as a college student entering into professional school were absent and fanciful. We all come into medical school wanting to help people, many of us with dreams to change the world on the low. But this is really hard, and not all of us have the innate ability or natural skill set to do what we want to do.
But we make due, because we have to. Whether we succeed or not, we have a debt to pay.
I'm so young, so much life insha'Allah ahead of me. I'm so small, in the grand scheme of life and in light of all I want to impact. I'm so naive, in that I want what I know little about. I'm so little.
But Allah (swt) is infinite in His expanse.
So I walk along on my merry way, so little, but not insignificant, at liberty to dream and aspire, rightfully hoping and praying for a meaningful future, the one that I intend and the one that is best for me, when the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Tiny.
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