Salaam,
Me apaixonei?
Talvez, pode ser
Enloqueci?
Não sei, nunca vi
Preciso sair
Depois que eu descobri
Que há você
Nunca mais existi
I fell in love?
Maybe, it could be
I went crazy?
I don't know, I've never been there
I need to get out
After I discovered
That there is you
I never existed again.
I told the story of this song before. How I heard this song on my "Haiti" playlist on Pandora in 2008, how I excitedly ordered a CD imported from Brasil with the song on it since I couldn't download it on the internet, how I read the insert in the CD to find a translation of the song, and how I realized that the song put into words what I could not.
I fell in love with a man and then I never existed again.
Alas, the very thing I prayed to God wouldn't happened had happened. I fell in love with a man who would not be mine. Why? Why would God allow it?
Over 11 years later, I still don't know. But this song reminds me of that place.
No song that exists on earth speaks to me more than this one. No artist has more quickly become my favorite than Djavan for the fact that he wrote this song. Talk about killing me softly.
There was a time where I couldn't complete a task without thinking about how this man would be proud of me, as he said he was. Proud of how smart I was, amazed at how smart I was. "I amazed him," he told me once. I had never been admired so brightly and so earnestly by a man. It had to be love.
I was so convinced and he was so emblazoned into my person for years that the best way that I could put it is that I wasn't myself anymore. The me that I was before had stopped existing. I became other. And I never existed again.
I was never the same. I have not existed again. He's since married the woman I knew he would end up with. Years after I was over him, his wife came to me in a dream, and described what he was like at their wedding.
I did not know until days later that I dreamed of her on the day they married. I would later see a Facebook post in which she described him exactly as she described him to me in my dream--serious in the face of his upcoming responsibility as a married man.
It's been 11 years since I first fell for him, and I've moved on. We are at two opposite sides of the country living separate and completely full lives, but I had to dream about him to congratulate him on his son. I hadn't dreamed of him in years, but I guess that was an occasion.
In every manifestation of his life, I can now see that he was meant for her, and she was meant for him. I don't know why I ever came into the picture and interrupted destiny. And I don't mean that to be self-deprecating, because the whole thing sure as hell interrupted my life.
The piece in the anthology only tells part of the story. I was too shy to write about the raw obsession and the pain of disillusionment when I found out he had no idea that I liked him, let alone that I stopped existing because of him.
The best that I can say did come out of the whole experience in the manuscript that I'm gearing up to edit.
I can't believe it's been 11 years. We were two different people then. Now, we're doctors. He has a family, and I'm at the precipice of marrying, at least I hope. When we met, we had no idea where we'd be, what we'd be able to do. We were just two nerdy kids in an organic chemistry class.
He didn't know a black girl could be so smart. I didn't know that the annoying, boisterous kid who I dreaded seeing in class every week would change my life.
The me before I met him never existed again. I wanted that someone who felt so important in my life to remain in my life, but only God knows.
Showing posts with label anthology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label anthology. Show all posts
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Happy Father's Day to my non-Muslim Father
As salaam alaikum,
First, a shout-out to one of the editors of Love, InshAllah, Ayesha, and the ladies of the anthology (and their fathers) as mentioned in this HuffPost piece, "Father's Day: A Love Letter to Muslim Fathers." This is a lovely piece about real Muslim fathers, real Muslim men who are loving, compassionate and accommodating of their daughter's loves and aspirations. And though I love my Christian father like none other and could not love him any more, reading the piece made me feel the continued void of Muslim men, real Muslim men, in my life.
My grandfather was the primary Muslim man in my life, and even then, his practice has always been very private. The only other practicing Muslim man in my family growing up was one of my uncles, my mother's youngest brother. But growing up, when I visited my family in Flint, the Muslim men I saw praying were the men at the Islamic Center and the local masjid were all unrelated black men in the community. But I was mostly exposed to practicing Muslim women...my grandmother, one of my aunts in particular, and my mother. These were the people I witnessed pray the most, read the Qur'an the most, reflect on their spirituality the most...
I was, however, exposed to the praying, beliefs and devotion of a Christian man. No, my father did not attend church, which is considered by most Christians to be integral to one's faith. But as a child, I watched him read his Bible, his King James, Jesus (as) text in red Bible, I watched with him sometimes his favorite televangelist, Reverend Price (Evidence! Evidence!), I listened to his Mormon Tabernacle Choir some Sundays, I prayed with him as he led prayers over our food and before journeys. My father is, in fact, the most practicing religious man that I know.
And yet, I aspired to marry a Muslim man, without too many examples of Muslim men in my life. I do, however, have an example of a good man in my life, and that is my father. A man who loves God, who is humble, sometimes to the point of being self-deprecating, one who is striving actively in the way of God as he believes to be fit, who provides for his family, who loves us all dearly, who is dedicated to his responsibilities as husband and father, who is a diligent and tireless worker, who is fiercely intelligent to the point where I'm convinced he's a genius (and I'm not just saying that because I'm his daughter), who is patient, who is gentle, who loves and respects my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as his own blood...
And so many other attributes. I never demonized my father for being Christian, though I am often frustrated by his seeming intolerance of my being Muslim sometimes. As a matter of fact, as a gift to him on father's day, I'm listening to several of the sermons from his church, as he always wants me to do, so we can discuss it if he wants. I couldn't help but open my Islamicity Qur'an search to find those parallel ayat in the Qur'an that speaks to essential theological differences that scream out to me as I listen to his pastor. I can't fault him. This is the man who taught me to blow my nose in a very specific way...closing one nostril and then blowing out one, then repeating on the opposite side. Because he blows his nose that way and he was convinced that was the most efficient and effective way to do it.
Of course he's going to try to expose me to his way of believing and approaching God, because he is my father.
I do sometimes, often times, wish I had more good Muslim men in my life, including a Muslim husband. But, no contest, I'd rather have my father in my life, exactly as he is, and as he's always been.
I love you, Daddy. Happy Father's Day.
First, a shout-out to one of the editors of Love, InshAllah, Ayesha, and the ladies of the anthology (and their fathers) as mentioned in this HuffPost piece, "Father's Day: A Love Letter to Muslim Fathers." This is a lovely piece about real Muslim fathers, real Muslim men who are loving, compassionate and accommodating of their daughter's loves and aspirations. And though I love my Christian father like none other and could not love him any more, reading the piece made me feel the continued void of Muslim men, real Muslim men, in my life.
My grandfather was the primary Muslim man in my life, and even then, his practice has always been very private. The only other practicing Muslim man in my family growing up was one of my uncles, my mother's youngest brother. But growing up, when I visited my family in Flint, the Muslim men I saw praying were the men at the Islamic Center and the local masjid were all unrelated black men in the community. But I was mostly exposed to practicing Muslim women...my grandmother, one of my aunts in particular, and my mother. These were the people I witnessed pray the most, read the Qur'an the most, reflect on their spirituality the most...
I was, however, exposed to the praying, beliefs and devotion of a Christian man. No, my father did not attend church, which is considered by most Christians to be integral to one's faith. But as a child, I watched him read his Bible, his King James, Jesus (as) text in red Bible, I watched with him sometimes his favorite televangelist, Reverend Price (Evidence! Evidence!), I listened to his Mormon Tabernacle Choir some Sundays, I prayed with him as he led prayers over our food and before journeys. My father is, in fact, the most practicing religious man that I know.
And yet, I aspired to marry a Muslim man, without too many examples of Muslim men in my life. I do, however, have an example of a good man in my life, and that is my father. A man who loves God, who is humble, sometimes to the point of being self-deprecating, one who is striving actively in the way of God as he believes to be fit, who provides for his family, who loves us all dearly, who is dedicated to his responsibilities as husband and father, who is a diligent and tireless worker, who is fiercely intelligent to the point where I'm convinced he's a genius (and I'm not just saying that because I'm his daughter), who is patient, who is gentle, who loves and respects my grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins as his own blood...
And so many other attributes. I never demonized my father for being Christian, though I am often frustrated by his seeming intolerance of my being Muslim sometimes. As a matter of fact, as a gift to him on father's day, I'm listening to several of the sermons from his church, as he always wants me to do, so we can discuss it if he wants. I couldn't help but open my Islamicity Qur'an search to find those parallel ayat in the Qur'an that speaks to essential theological differences that scream out to me as I listen to his pastor. I can't fault him. This is the man who taught me to blow my nose in a very specific way...closing one nostril and then blowing out one, then repeating on the opposite side. Because he blows his nose that way and he was convinced that was the most efficient and effective way to do it.
Of course he's going to try to expose me to his way of believing and approaching God, because he is my father.
I do sometimes, often times, wish I had more good Muslim men in my life, including a Muslim husband. But, no contest, I'd rather have my father in my life, exactly as he is, and as he's always been.
I love you, Daddy. Happy Father's Day.
Monday, April 16, 2012
[uncensored]: I'm on the radio!
As salaam alaikum,
Yesterday was my brother's 25th birthday. I called to wish Big Head happy birthday, and he answered the phone with, "Today is my birthday."
D'oh! No surprises there.
But anyway, woohoo, Nura and I were on Muslim Street Radio last night for an interview about Love, InshAllah. It was awesome to be able to participate, and awesome to be on the radio for the first time, though nerve wracking, too, because...they asked tough questions!
Like, about my using alternative names for "Sadiq" and "James," and the fact I've told neither about the telling of the story. Nope...I barely told all of my classmates who "James" really is...I'll wait until I move away.
Like I told "Sadiq" only after I was sure I was leaving Ann Arbor that I liked him...yep! Too bad he's now in Boston...and with any luck, I'll never see him! It's easy to do in Boston.
Anyway, if you're interested in hearing, the podcast for the April 15 show is here. The interview is in the second half.
And, if you're interested in the show, as you can see, there are other podcasts available as well! I now have a new radio show to listen to!
Today is Patriots' Day, also known as Boston Marathon Day! I get to watch the marathon for the first time. I think I'm going to park my tukhus at Beacon St, I think, so I can see the runners as they make their way to the finish. I'm too lazy to go to Reservoir or any other such place. This is the first time I don't have class or a rotation, so I'm excited to watch!
It's supposed to be 87F today, so ay ay...hope everyone stays hydrated. But, if anyone passes out...I am ACLS certified! I can help in resuscitation efforts!
...or, keep my happy tail on the sidelines, because undoubtedly they have other people there to help.
Yesterday was my brother's 25th birthday. I called to wish Big Head happy birthday, and he answered the phone with, "Today is my birthday."
D'oh! No surprises there.
But anyway, woohoo, Nura and I were on Muslim Street Radio last night for an interview about Love, InshAllah. It was awesome to be able to participate, and awesome to be on the radio for the first time, though nerve wracking, too, because...they asked tough questions!
Like, about my using alternative names for "Sadiq" and "James," and the fact I've told neither about the telling of the story. Nope...I barely told all of my classmates who "James" really is...I'll wait until I move away.
Like I told "Sadiq" only after I was sure I was leaving Ann Arbor that I liked him...yep! Too bad he's now in Boston...and with any luck, I'll never see him! It's easy to do in Boston.
Anyway, if you're interested in hearing, the podcast for the April 15 show is here. The interview is in the second half.
And, if you're interested in the show, as you can see, there are other podcasts available as well! I now have a new radio show to listen to!
Today is Patriots' Day, also known as Boston Marathon Day! I get to watch the marathon for the first time. I think I'm going to park my tukhus at Beacon St, I think, so I can see the runners as they make their way to the finish. I'm too lazy to go to Reservoir or any other such place. This is the first time I don't have class or a rotation, so I'm excited to watch!
It's supposed to be 87F today, so ay ay...hope everyone stays hydrated. But, if anyone passes out...I am ACLS certified! I can help in resuscitation efforts!
...or, keep my happy tail on the sidelines, because undoubtedly they have other people there to help.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Muslim Women and the Challenge of Authority Conference
As salaam alaikum,
This weekend, I attended this conference. What can I say, except...wow! What an awesome conference! It definitely helped exercise the humanities side of my brain that I haven't used in a while (except, to blog, heh), but it brought up key issues about what it means to be a woman in Islam domestically and internationally and some of the things that are holding us back. I would probably write more about it if I hadn't reflected extensively with two of my friends the day of the conference, but suffice it to say, I really enjoyed it.
Plus, I got to meet one of the contributors to the anthology. We totally missed our photo opportunity because I had to run out of the conference for a previous engagement...
But this was the third sign I got this week that my next spiritual endeavor will be exploring my role as a woman in Islam. The first sign was the finale of Big Love, which pertained to Barb's quest throughout the season (if not also the season before) to be a priesthood holder. The second sign was one of my best friends asking me if I ever considered becoming an imama, and how loaded of a question that was for me that brought questions into my own mind about Muslim woman leadership and my...being too intimidated to talk to most imams about anything...
And then this conference brought it all together for me.
And I'm not talking...I want to go out, attain some scholarship and become an imama right now. No. Alhamdulillah, I accept that medicine is my field and a worthy career and I'm sticking to it. I'm just talking about ways in which I think, consciously and subconsciously, my own religious pursuits were curtailed because I learned that there are certain things that women aren't required to do...in the sense that we are "spared." Oh, well, you don't have to go to Jummah like men do, and it's a mercy for you. This article in Altmuslimah on Islam and menstruation also gave me pause, and the fact that some men consider our spirituality inferior because we have to break salat and fasting for something that enables us to, oh, I don't know, carry children, the most important part of carrying on the human race as God intends?
Because really, when I'm menstruating during the year, what comes of that week? We're given little guidance about what we can do to not wreck our spiritual continuity during time of menses. I guess it's up to us to come up with that on our own, but I feel like on this and many other issues, we Muslim women are left to fend for ourselves in ways that seem incongruous to the amount of guidance other aspects of our daily lives is afforded in practice.
One woman in the audience talked about making Hajj and being in a women's tent where they were left alone to perform prayers. As you know, according to one's madhab, some women opine that a woman should not lead a congregational prayer, even of other women. So eventually, the most learned woman among them took over the leading of prayer. However, she had several rules for herself...that her voice should not be raised beyond a certain decibel because of her consideration of the female's voice as awrah, thus making it impractical for her to lead prayers because no one could hear her. Another woman was a hafiza and did not want to lead prayer because she believed she could not recite the Qur'an out loud as a woman. I guess they eventually figured something out...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
That story was heartbreaking. Here are women on Hajj who could not accomplish something as simple as salat because we have been so limited in our practice...we are to avert our eyes, not raise our voices, be unassuming and sit behind curtains in the masjid so men cannot see us...or better yet, stay in our homes! What do we do when we are alone?
When I learned that there were women of some madhab who don't subscribe to women praying together, I was heartbroken. Really? So I can be in a house of sisters and we all pray separately. What happened to the blessings of praying in jama'ah? Is that, too, only for men?
Yes, I remember hearing this, when I was coming into Islam and I was sweating about the fact that I hadn't attended Jummah since I was 11 years old, and I didn't know how to go about it...what it entailed, proper Jummah etiquette, etc. I looked it up on the internet to learn before I went to the first campus Jummah to find an article that said that Jummah was only obligatory for men and optional for a woman. They believed this to be so to not be a burden on women who had children at home to tend to. It went as far as saying that a woman perhaps attained greater blessing if she stayed home.
And me, confused, but too embarrassed or intimidated to ask anyone, gave in, and the time for Jummah came and went and I didn't go to campus Jummah.
And in my learning about Islam, which was very much online much of the time because I am not a convert and I was embarrassed to ask the very basic things that I felt like I should know...I read a lot of things like this that yes, curtailed my practice. Though me not making Jummah these days is more about my not being able to leave my hospital or rotation to get to a place...what if I were a practicing male Muslim student? I would have felt a greater obligation to talk to my course directors to make allowances for my religious beliefs, right? And this would probably make me more comfortable about piecing out at opportune times to pray in the hospital's chapel...
In the end, I'm not really blaming my own deficiencies in practice on the complex (and corrupt) gender politics of Muslims. More, I'm recognizing how they influenced me and I will shape my future practice being mindful of the fact that this particular gender politic is not absolute and not necessarily condoned by Allah (swt).
The conference was excellent. It began with the story of Khawla bint Tha'labah, her questioning of the Prophet (saw) and what that should mean we as Muslims should do in the face of contemporary problems in our society. The first panel was on Qur'an hermeneutics, a word that I have never used and will never use again, probably. Panelists spoke about ayah 4:34, what it means to be a Muslim feminist, if that is the correct term to use at all, and of feminist interpretations of the Qur'an, leading me to have to read Dr. Amina Wudud's book, Qur'an and Woman. My favorite paper in the panel was by Dr. Aysha Hidayatullah and her piece "Women's Experience as a Source of Scriptural Authority." There, she set up an argument that we as Muslim women, and indeed, we as Muslims period, are well within our right to question, discuss and challenge interpretations of the Qur'an because the Qur'an, though our ultimate textual authority, is not to be equated with the Word of God inasmuch as we recognize that the Qur'an is, in fact, limited as we humans are limited. It's limited by the language and is also limited by the time and context in which it was revealed, whereas the Word of God is Greater and is beyond all of the wisdom in the Qur'an. A powerful concept, but a difficult one to swallow and one I would most certainly not offer in mixed Muslim company, haha!
Next was an excellent keynote address by Dr. Amina Wudud. Just a word here...I haven't yet read any of Dr. Wudud's work because, coming into Islam, I immediately understood her to be controversial and one overstepping the bounds. Why was she pushing so hard to be an imama? I believed that God laid out the gender roles clear in Qur'an and Sunnah, and if we follow these sources so closely in determining how we pray, why should we then disregard them when it comes to female's role. I just understood that my role as a Muslimah was not to be one of leadership in the Muslim community, and that Dr. Wudud was creating fitna at the very least.
Having now lived as a practicing Muslimah for almost 9 years and feeling my practice curtailed by other things I'm supposed to do or not do, supposedly in the name of God...I have been questioning things as late. This is, after all, the religion of those who think...
The next panel was on Prayer and Authority. This panel may have been the most relevant to me. Dr. Aisha Geissinger discussed the history of texts about how woman should pray, something that I've always wondered about. I've seen so many different sources discuss how women's salat is different than men, and in relearning salat from the way my mother did it, I learned to keep my fingers closer together and bear my body closer to the ground than my mother did, because I thought this is what women were supposed to do. Dr. Geissinger discussed this, the separation of men and women in prayer spaces over time since the time of the Prophet (saw) to the periods after, and traced the gradual increased separation of the sexes more. At the end, she offered that she was a historian and not a theologian to be able to speak about "what was right," but just hearing this history makes me wonder if these were not differences that weren't just arbitrarily chosen over time in an act of relegating the female body...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
Chaplain Bilal Ansari's work for helping to enable worship for practicing Muslim female inmates really brought out why the prevailing Muslim gender politic is is impractical, if not dysfunctional.
On a side note...arrrrgghh! I know Muslim men shouldn't wear gold, but can you wear silver instead? I feel like it's wrong for brothers to not wear some sort of wedding band...anyway, hehe, digression...
The next panel...yeah...the next panel was the Pious Movements Panel, which was a very interesting look into Muslim female leadership into various religious movements overseas. The last panel was on Sufi women and leadership. Both panels brought up the interesting question of whether these women, in denying at all being feminist organizations, had a sort of agency and what this agency took the shape of. One of the presenters, Dr. Joseph Hill, posited that the women, in assuming what could be construed as "traditional," deferent roles in the community and their own homes (ex. woman as homemaker) were actually, covertly, expressing their agency...as if they were pretending to go along with the gender-role program while, within these confines, being somewhat revolutionary.
The whole while, I was thinking about a story idea that's been brewing for a while whose working title is "Black Widow," which will likely morph into something else. It's precisely about a woman who assumes a very deferent role in her marriage but in fact each of her actions, decisions and attitudes toward her husband are coolly calculated...or, at least the way her daughter sees it. ...anyway...digression again. This is why it's hard for me to read books. I get my own ideas and then I want to run off and write...
And those two panels concluded an excellent conference!
I'm still processing what all of this meant for me and will mean for me. It will probably be a topic in this blog for days to come. Stay tuned!
This weekend, I attended this conference. What can I say, except...wow! What an awesome conference! It definitely helped exercise the humanities side of my brain that I haven't used in a while (except, to blog, heh), but it brought up key issues about what it means to be a woman in Islam domestically and internationally and some of the things that are holding us back. I would probably write more about it if I hadn't reflected extensively with two of my friends the day of the conference, but suffice it to say, I really enjoyed it.
Plus, I got to meet one of the contributors to the anthology. We totally missed our photo opportunity because I had to run out of the conference for a previous engagement...
But this was the third sign I got this week that my next spiritual endeavor will be exploring my role as a woman in Islam. The first sign was the finale of Big Love, which pertained to Barb's quest throughout the season (if not also the season before) to be a priesthood holder. The second sign was one of my best friends asking me if I ever considered becoming an imama, and how loaded of a question that was for me that brought questions into my own mind about Muslim woman leadership and my...being too intimidated to talk to most imams about anything...
And then this conference brought it all together for me.
And I'm not talking...I want to go out, attain some scholarship and become an imama right now. No. Alhamdulillah, I accept that medicine is my field and a worthy career and I'm sticking to it. I'm just talking about ways in which I think, consciously and subconsciously, my own religious pursuits were curtailed because I learned that there are certain things that women aren't required to do...in the sense that we are "spared." Oh, well, you don't have to go to Jummah like men do, and it's a mercy for you. This article in Altmuslimah on Islam and menstruation also gave me pause, and the fact that some men consider our spirituality inferior because we have to break salat and fasting for something that enables us to, oh, I don't know, carry children, the most important part of carrying on the human race as God intends?
Because really, when I'm menstruating during the year, what comes of that week? We're given little guidance about what we can do to not wreck our spiritual continuity during time of menses. I guess it's up to us to come up with that on our own, but I feel like on this and many other issues, we Muslim women are left to fend for ourselves in ways that seem incongruous to the amount of guidance other aspects of our daily lives is afforded in practice.
One woman in the audience talked about making Hajj and being in a women's tent where they were left alone to perform prayers. As you know, according to one's madhab, some women opine that a woman should not lead a congregational prayer, even of other women. So eventually, the most learned woman among them took over the leading of prayer. However, she had several rules for herself...that her voice should not be raised beyond a certain decibel because of her consideration of the female's voice as awrah, thus making it impractical for her to lead prayers because no one could hear her. Another woman was a hafiza and did not want to lead prayer because she believed she could not recite the Qur'an out loud as a woman. I guess they eventually figured something out...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
That story was heartbreaking. Here are women on Hajj who could not accomplish something as simple as salat because we have been so limited in our practice...we are to avert our eyes, not raise our voices, be unassuming and sit behind curtains in the masjid so men cannot see us...or better yet, stay in our homes! What do we do when we are alone?
When I learned that there were women of some madhab who don't subscribe to women praying together, I was heartbroken. Really? So I can be in a house of sisters and we all pray separately. What happened to the blessings of praying in jama'ah? Is that, too, only for men?
Yes, I remember hearing this, when I was coming into Islam and I was sweating about the fact that I hadn't attended Jummah since I was 11 years old, and I didn't know how to go about it...what it entailed, proper Jummah etiquette, etc. I looked it up on the internet to learn before I went to the first campus Jummah to find an article that said that Jummah was only obligatory for men and optional for a woman. They believed this to be so to not be a burden on women who had children at home to tend to. It went as far as saying that a woman perhaps attained greater blessing if she stayed home.
And me, confused, but too embarrassed or intimidated to ask anyone, gave in, and the time for Jummah came and went and I didn't go to campus Jummah.
And in my learning about Islam, which was very much online much of the time because I am not a convert and I was embarrassed to ask the very basic things that I felt like I should know...I read a lot of things like this that yes, curtailed my practice. Though me not making Jummah these days is more about my not being able to leave my hospital or rotation to get to a place...what if I were a practicing male Muslim student? I would have felt a greater obligation to talk to my course directors to make allowances for my religious beliefs, right? And this would probably make me more comfortable about piecing out at opportune times to pray in the hospital's chapel...
In the end, I'm not really blaming my own deficiencies in practice on the complex (and corrupt) gender politics of Muslims. More, I'm recognizing how they influenced me and I will shape my future practice being mindful of the fact that this particular gender politic is not absolute and not necessarily condoned by Allah (swt).
The conference was excellent. It began with the story of Khawla bint Tha'labah, her questioning of the Prophet (saw) and what that should mean we as Muslims should do in the face of contemporary problems in our society. The first panel was on Qur'an hermeneutics, a word that I have never used and will never use again, probably. Panelists spoke about ayah 4:34, what it means to be a Muslim feminist, if that is the correct term to use at all, and of feminist interpretations of the Qur'an, leading me to have to read Dr. Amina Wudud's book, Qur'an and Woman. My favorite paper in the panel was by Dr. Aysha Hidayatullah and her piece "Women's Experience as a Source of Scriptural Authority." There, she set up an argument that we as Muslim women, and indeed, we as Muslims period, are well within our right to question, discuss and challenge interpretations of the Qur'an because the Qur'an, though our ultimate textual authority, is not to be equated with the Word of God inasmuch as we recognize that the Qur'an is, in fact, limited as we humans are limited. It's limited by the language and is also limited by the time and context in which it was revealed, whereas the Word of God is Greater and is beyond all of the wisdom in the Qur'an. A powerful concept, but a difficult one to swallow and one I would most certainly not offer in mixed Muslim company, haha!
Next was an excellent keynote address by Dr. Amina Wudud. Just a word here...I haven't yet read any of Dr. Wudud's work because, coming into Islam, I immediately understood her to be controversial and one overstepping the bounds. Why was she pushing so hard to be an imama? I believed that God laid out the gender roles clear in Qur'an and Sunnah, and if we follow these sources so closely in determining how we pray, why should we then disregard them when it comes to female's role. I just understood that my role as a Muslimah was not to be one of leadership in the Muslim community, and that Dr. Wudud was creating fitna at the very least.
Having now lived as a practicing Muslimah for almost 9 years and feeling my practice curtailed by other things I'm supposed to do or not do, supposedly in the name of God...I have been questioning things as late. This is, after all, the religion of those who think...
The next panel was on Prayer and Authority. This panel may have been the most relevant to me. Dr. Aisha Geissinger discussed the history of texts about how woman should pray, something that I've always wondered about. I've seen so many different sources discuss how women's salat is different than men, and in relearning salat from the way my mother did it, I learned to keep my fingers closer together and bear my body closer to the ground than my mother did, because I thought this is what women were supposed to do. Dr. Geissinger discussed this, the separation of men and women in prayer spaces over time since the time of the Prophet (saw) to the periods after, and traced the gradual increased separation of the sexes more. At the end, she offered that she was a historian and not a theologian to be able to speak about "what was right," but just hearing this history makes me wonder if these were not differences that weren't just arbitrarily chosen over time in an act of relegating the female body...
"...although they had almost left it undone!" (2:71)
Chaplain Bilal Ansari's work for helping to enable worship for practicing Muslim female inmates really brought out why the prevailing Muslim gender politic is is impractical, if not dysfunctional.
On a side note...arrrrgghh! I know Muslim men shouldn't wear gold, but can you wear silver instead? I feel like it's wrong for brothers to not wear some sort of wedding band...anyway, hehe, digression...
The next panel...yeah...the next panel was the Pious Movements Panel, which was a very interesting look into Muslim female leadership into various religious movements overseas. The last panel was on Sufi women and leadership. Both panels brought up the interesting question of whether these women, in denying at all being feminist organizations, had a sort of agency and what this agency took the shape of. One of the presenters, Dr. Joseph Hill, posited that the women, in assuming what could be construed as "traditional," deferent roles in the community and their own homes (ex. woman as homemaker) were actually, covertly, expressing their agency...as if they were pretending to go along with the gender-role program while, within these confines, being somewhat revolutionary.
The whole while, I was thinking about a story idea that's been brewing for a while whose working title is "Black Widow," which will likely morph into something else. It's precisely about a woman who assumes a very deferent role in her marriage but in fact each of her actions, decisions and attitudes toward her husband are coolly calculated...or, at least the way her daughter sees it. ...anyway...digression again. This is why it's hard for me to read books. I get my own ideas and then I want to run off and write...
And those two panels concluded an excellent conference!
I'm still processing what all of this meant for me and will mean for me. It will probably be a topic in this blog for days to come. Stay tuned!
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
[uncensored]: Interfaith Marriage on a String
As salaam alaikum,
(X-Posted)
“All is change with time / the future none can see / the road you leave behind / ahead lies mystery!” – Stevie Wonder, “All in Love is Fair.”
My mother told me the other day, “You know, I think your brother’s autism saved our marriage.”
Being single in a time of intense want—for a fulfilling relationship, my own marriage, my own family—has made me hyperaware of other people’s marriages. Over the years, I’ve noticed that many marriages, at one point or another, hang by a string. Sometimes the couple recognizes this fragility and this motivates them to make it work. Sometimes couples don’t even know that they’re there, and it comes and goes without their knowing.
I feel like my parents are there right now.
My mother is Muslim, my father is Christian. They met as part of a blind date, became friends who discovered they loved each other. My father’s visa expiration and a youth service obligation led him back to Nigeria, leaving my mother in the United States to pine over him and wait with bated breath for his letters for the next three years. And they married upon his return to the United States. They were Muslim, several years converted from the Nation of Islam, and Christian, the son of Nigeria’s head of the Faith Tabernacle Church, but love conquered all and brought them together.
My mother later told me that their shared values and their conviction against the need to attend a “religious sanctuary” were some of the key practical elements that made the interfaith aspect of their marriage work early on. This was less romantic to me, but it seemed to work out.
Growing up, my parents never argued, at least not to our hearing. My mother sometimes lamented not going out as much as they used to, and my father sometimes complained when his food wasn’t ready when he came home from a long day of work, but that was it. My mother prayed and read her Qur’an daily and my father watched his favorite televangelist, and everything was fine.
They maintained this balance in our home until the summer in 2005. I was 20 when I came home from college and decided, in the worst of ways, to tell my father that I was Muslim. I told him, between tears and snot, that “I will never be Christian.”
And things were never the same in my parents’ house.
During the worst of times, when I was home for New Years’ that same year, my father blamed my mother for my brother’s autism. “If the family had been united in faith and prayer, he could have been healed.” It was surreal to watch my mother run up to their room, weeping. My father seemed unrepentant. He returned to his office in the basement without a word to me. My parents never argued like this. My father had never said such mean things. I had never seen my mother cry. What was happening?
What did I do?
I initiated the stringing of my parents’ relationship. My being Muslim is unacceptable to my father. He’s embarrassed by it. When he goes to church these days and they ask where his family is, he gives an elaborate excuse and tells them that I am Christian when they ask.
I’m sorry he feels that way. I find God best in Islam. This is how he allowed my mother to raise me. This was the way my extended family practiced. I wish my father would accept me.
He loves and accepts my mother. He reflects with sadness that there were some churches he couldn’t attend because some would not consider him Christian because he had a Muslim wife. And I told him that there are Muslims who would most certainly question my mother’s Islam in the same way. But my father loves my mother, and my mother loves my father, and they are dedicated to each other and to their family, both my brother and me.
He loves me, but he does not love my Islam.
My father was so upset to tell his elder brother, my uncle in Nigeria, that I was “leaning toward Islam.” He told him two weeks ago. He can’t bring himself to ever call me Muslim.
“This is huge!” my father told me. “You don’t understand…Nigeria is a big country but mine is a small community. What would people think? They would think this isn’t me. They would think that this can’t have come from the son raised by his father, the son who sat at his feet for every sermon. After the way that I was raised…”
It’s also that I’m Muslim, as were the people who killed my people just prior to the civil war in my country. My father doesn’t understand how I can be Muslim when “The Igbo and the Hausa do not see eye to eye.”
I try to fix it sometimes. Maybe I shouldn’t be so loud about being Muslim. I told my father, “I’m sorry. If I had known it was such a big deal…”
“It’s not a big deal.”
But Daddy, it is a big deal. All you described to me are big deal things….
It’s my fault. Sometimes I feel like my brother really is the unifying factor. My parents may argue sometimes, but if my brother misses his medication and has a seizure, my parents will run to the scene, catch him as he falls and pray over him for the duration of his tonic-clonic convulsions and post-ictal state as he struggles through slurred speech to tell them that he’s okay.
My Islam reminds them of their difference, the very real theological difference between Jesus as personal savior and Prophet Jesus, between God in three persons and God, the one, the only.
“You know, I think your brother’s autism saved our marriage.” my mother told me last week. She then explained that the social isolation from the Nigerian network in our state probably kept her from having uncomfortable run-ins with Christians who would disapprove of her Islam. It probably saved her from arguments with them that may have jeopardized her relationship with Daddy. But she can’t know that…
…and I actually don’t believe that to be true. Their love has always been more than shared aversion of religious sanctuaries held together by my brother’s autism and epilepsy. They are each other’s best friend. They don’t pray the same but they do pray together. They have similar dreams and goals for their children and they love us more than they are able to express. They came together in strength following a diagnosis that was all the more devastating in the 1980s when professionals knew so much less about autism. They’ve stayed together in a marriage unmarred by infidelity and separations, physical or emotional violence or any real discord. They did it! They are achieving interfaith marriage!
It wasn’t just autism. I realize my mother just said that because their marriage is hanging by a string right now, and they don’t know it. It’ll pass. I don’t know how or when, but inshAllah it will. Both love and are dedicated to this family too much, to my brother too much. Maybe one day inshAllah I’ll get married and leave my father’s figurative house and my father won’t feel so responsible for my being Muslim anymore. He can concentrate on loving his Muslim wife instead of trying to convert his Muslim daughter.
Marriage is hard, and interfaith marriage is just one type of hard that a couple can face, that I may face one day, whoever my husband may be. There is no one way to do things, so there is no how-to. This is just one way. It may hurt to tell it sometimes, but this is actually a story of success. Success…on a string.
(X-Posted)
“All is change with time / the future none can see / the road you leave behind / ahead lies mystery!” – Stevie Wonder, “All in Love is Fair.”
My mother told me the other day, “You know, I think your brother’s autism saved our marriage.”
Being single in a time of intense want—for a fulfilling relationship, my own marriage, my own family—has made me hyperaware of other people’s marriages. Over the years, I’ve noticed that many marriages, at one point or another, hang by a string. Sometimes the couple recognizes this fragility and this motivates them to make it work. Sometimes couples don’t even know that they’re there, and it comes and goes without their knowing.
I feel like my parents are there right now.
My mother is Muslim, my father is Christian. They met as part of a blind date, became friends who discovered they loved each other. My father’s visa expiration and a youth service obligation led him back to Nigeria, leaving my mother in the United States to pine over him and wait with bated breath for his letters for the next three years. And they married upon his return to the United States. They were Muslim, several years converted from the Nation of Islam, and Christian, the son of Nigeria’s head of the Faith Tabernacle Church, but love conquered all and brought them together.
My mother later told me that their shared values and their conviction against the need to attend a “religious sanctuary” were some of the key practical elements that made the interfaith aspect of their marriage work early on. This was less romantic to me, but it seemed to work out.
Growing up, my parents never argued, at least not to our hearing. My mother sometimes lamented not going out as much as they used to, and my father sometimes complained when his food wasn’t ready when he came home from a long day of work, but that was it. My mother prayed and read her Qur’an daily and my father watched his favorite televangelist, and everything was fine.
They maintained this balance in our home until the summer in 2005. I was 20 when I came home from college and decided, in the worst of ways, to tell my father that I was Muslim. I told him, between tears and snot, that “I will never be Christian.”
And things were never the same in my parents’ house.
During the worst of times, when I was home for New Years’ that same year, my father blamed my mother for my brother’s autism. “If the family had been united in faith and prayer, he could have been healed.” It was surreal to watch my mother run up to their room, weeping. My father seemed unrepentant. He returned to his office in the basement without a word to me. My parents never argued like this. My father had never said such mean things. I had never seen my mother cry. What was happening?
What did I do?
I initiated the stringing of my parents’ relationship. My being Muslim is unacceptable to my father. He’s embarrassed by it. When he goes to church these days and they ask where his family is, he gives an elaborate excuse and tells them that I am Christian when they ask.
I’m sorry he feels that way. I find God best in Islam. This is how he allowed my mother to raise me. This was the way my extended family practiced. I wish my father would accept me.
He loves and accepts my mother. He reflects with sadness that there were some churches he couldn’t attend because some would not consider him Christian because he had a Muslim wife. And I told him that there are Muslims who would most certainly question my mother’s Islam in the same way. But my father loves my mother, and my mother loves my father, and they are dedicated to each other and to their family, both my brother and me.
He loves me, but he does not love my Islam.
My father was so upset to tell his elder brother, my uncle in Nigeria, that I was “leaning toward Islam.” He told him two weeks ago. He can’t bring himself to ever call me Muslim.
“This is huge!” my father told me. “You don’t understand…Nigeria is a big country but mine is a small community. What would people think? They would think this isn’t me. They would think that this can’t have come from the son raised by his father, the son who sat at his feet for every sermon. After the way that I was raised…”
It’s also that I’m Muslim, as were the people who killed my people just prior to the civil war in my country. My father doesn’t understand how I can be Muslim when “The Igbo and the Hausa do not see eye to eye.”
I try to fix it sometimes. Maybe I shouldn’t be so loud about being Muslim. I told my father, “I’m sorry. If I had known it was such a big deal…”
“It’s not a big deal.”
But Daddy, it is a big deal. All you described to me are big deal things….
It’s my fault. Sometimes I feel like my brother really is the unifying factor. My parents may argue sometimes, but if my brother misses his medication and has a seizure, my parents will run to the scene, catch him as he falls and pray over him for the duration of his tonic-clonic convulsions and post-ictal state as he struggles through slurred speech to tell them that he’s okay.
My Islam reminds them of their difference, the very real theological difference between Jesus as personal savior and Prophet Jesus, between God in three persons and God, the one, the only.
“You know, I think your brother’s autism saved our marriage.” my mother told me last week. She then explained that the social isolation from the Nigerian network in our state probably kept her from having uncomfortable run-ins with Christians who would disapprove of her Islam. It probably saved her from arguments with them that may have jeopardized her relationship with Daddy. But she can’t know that…
…and I actually don’t believe that to be true. Their love has always been more than shared aversion of religious sanctuaries held together by my brother’s autism and epilepsy. They are each other’s best friend. They don’t pray the same but they do pray together. They have similar dreams and goals for their children and they love us more than they are able to express. They came together in strength following a diagnosis that was all the more devastating in the 1980s when professionals knew so much less about autism. They’ve stayed together in a marriage unmarred by infidelity and separations, physical or emotional violence or any real discord. They did it! They are achieving interfaith marriage!
It wasn’t just autism. I realize my mother just said that because their marriage is hanging by a string right now, and they don’t know it. It’ll pass. I don’t know how or when, but inshAllah it will. Both love and are dedicated to this family too much, to my brother too much. Maybe one day inshAllah I’ll get married and leave my father’s figurative house and my father won’t feel so responsible for my being Muslim anymore. He can concentrate on loving his Muslim wife instead of trying to convert his Muslim daughter.
Marriage is hard, and interfaith marriage is just one type of hard that a couple can face, that I may face one day, whoever my husband may be. There is no one way to do things, so there is no how-to. This is just one way. It may hurt to tell it sometimes, but this is actually a story of success. Success…on a string.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
I Will Not Always Love You
As salaam alaikum,
Sisters! If you ever get caught up in a relationship that didn't work out towards marriage or in fact never was any sort of relationship at all, and you feel like you'll always love the man...it's not necessarily true! Allah (swt) can act through His agent, life, and you may come to see things very differently in time. Life circumstance may change, or you may just mature. I wrote this about MTQ almost 7 years ago to the day. I had no idea that I'd barely think of this man, 7 years later, except if talking about the anthology. I had no idea I'd rename him Sadiq and publish this story for the whole world to see. I had no idea.
If I can get over a man once loved, so can you! If I got over one once, I can do it again. And you'll come out better women on the other end, I tell you.
Same for you, too, brothers who have loved!
I found this because I suddenly remembered MQ awkwardly asking me, as we hung out at his friend's house after our first not-date, if autoimmune disease ran in my family, because it seemed to run in his. What was probably an innocent question from a premed student who wondered if autoimmune diseases ran in families turned into me wondering if he was asking as if looking at me as a potential spouse. His friend, who he probably just wanted me to get to know, turned into a chaperone so that we wouldn't spend time outside of a public place alone, and at 19 and having not really ever dated before, yeah, that was confusing.
I just remembered that...I hadn't thought about that interchange in years. Here is an entry during my sophomore year, and I believed I still loved him. This is from my personal journal:
Sisters! If you ever get caught up in a relationship that didn't work out towards marriage or in fact never was any sort of relationship at all, and you feel like you'll always love the man...it's not necessarily true! Allah (swt) can act through His agent, life, and you may come to see things very differently in time. Life circumstance may change, or you may just mature. I wrote this about MTQ almost 7 years ago to the day. I had no idea that I'd barely think of this man, 7 years later, except if talking about the anthology. I had no idea I'd rename him Sadiq and publish this story for the whole world to see. I had no idea.
If I can get over a man once loved, so can you! If I got over one once, I can do it again. And you'll come out better women on the other end, I tell you.
Same for you, too, brothers who have loved!
I found this because I suddenly remembered MQ awkwardly asking me, as we hung out at his friend's house after our first not-date, if autoimmune disease ran in my family, because it seemed to run in his. What was probably an innocent question from a premed student who wondered if autoimmune diseases ran in families turned into me wondering if he was asking as if looking at me as a potential spouse. His friend, who he probably just wanted me to get to know, turned into a chaperone so that we wouldn't spend time outside of a public place alone, and at 19 and having not really ever dated before, yeah, that was confusing.
I just remembered that...I hadn't thought about that interchange in years. Here is an entry during my sophomore year, and I believed I still loved him. This is from my personal journal:
Saturday, March 12, 2005 • I Still Love Him
I still
love him. I know I do, because I still
get that silly little feeling in my gut when I think about warm weather and my
looking forward to seeing him, and my hanging on his every word, my counting on
our awkward, one minute conversations.
I know I
still love him, because I saw him this Tuesday, going to his class, and he said
hello. And I said hello, and we talked
as we used to. And it left me with the
same glowing feeling, and I hoped my face didn’t show it, but that maybe I
transferred vibrations so that he could feel the same way too…again.
And
sometimes I just go through my journal, and look for the mention of the little
moments we shared. And I look for the
place where I first liked him, back when I didn’t know I liked him, but I did. And then when I realized that he was Muslim,
and I freaked out. And that one day in
SSG that he was kind of flirty, I think…I don’t know, but I had a good time, we
had a good time, just me and him…and Jessica remembers that I should remember
him…
And I just
feel light…and this is probably why I am warm right now, just thinking about
him, and what I thought I had with him, and what I want to share with
him…everything about me, and the rest of my life…and how I want to be
everything that he wants out of me, and I want to give everything he wants to
need from me, and more that he would have wanted if he knew it could exist.
And he saw
me, and spoke, and it was like…old times.
I realize now that I had my hood on, so he couldn’t see my hair, as my
theory was that he estranged himself after my hair changed, but no. He first spoke to me when I didn’t have that
much hair…so that must not have been it.
I don’t know what is up or down anymore, I just know that he spoke, and
I knew he hadn’t written me off. He’s
studying for the MCATs, and he said he was going to kill himself, and I told
him not to…and I wanted to add, “Just for me,” but I wasn’t so swift. And I had to turn my back and grin widely.
I still
remember all of the things that he said to me.
From asking about the history of autoimmune disease in my family to
saying that they didn’t teach what to say after a kiss in Organic Chemistry
while watching Office. And saying that
he laughed the hardest he ever had in his life when he heard my mole day story,
to telling me “Tu es mi amiga, Chinyere.”
Even though the Spanish was off.
And telling me all of the jokes…to cheer me up and make me feel
better. And knowing what I was doing,
because he had read my away message…and reading my journal…
And of
course my favorite, “I’m gonna miss you, Chinyere.” Even though he butchered my name, I wonder if
he knew I was giggling because I liked him so much.
I still
love him. I know I always will, but
somehow I’m okay with that. I think I’m
fine with that because I realize that he will always be a beautiful human being
to me, and I’ll always feel like I could have been something great to him, as
long as he accepts…because I would. I
will love him and everything is fine, and remembering that feeling is much
greater than waiting for it to return…
And the most telling part of this all is...I didn't remember most of this, I didn't remember how this felt. I take my own word for it, but I'm as moved on as they come. I'm grateful for having lived this experience for so many reasons...mostly that it helped me gain my first publication and was the muse for my first completed novel as an adult, whether I publish or not. It also taught me about characteristics I actually do want in a mate, even though they weren't really in this poor brother.
It reminded me when my ex hurt me that I had once known a greater love. It was an invigorating love that I can remember faintly and even still know, through pain, that my life is not over.
So no, I did not always love him. I do not love him. And for all other hims that will come and go within my life, without staying, except for those who pass on to the Hereafter by God's leave...I will not always love him.
And so can you!
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
[uncensored]: Breaking the Fourth Wall
As salaam alaikum,
So, I started up this blog, and it's predecessor, (the xanga version), with the intention of living Islam in every aspect of my life, including my blog. If I intend to submit my entire self to God, I figured, and if I wanted to be able to do nearly everything in my life in the name of God, then what I blog about should be no exception. I wanted a place where I was comfortable reviewing what I was learning as a Muslimah (the original, xanga version) and just reflecting on my life through my Muslim lens (this blog).
Sometimes, I have these entries called [uncensored]. I never really explained them, but I will now. I usually label entries as [uncensored] when I feel it's important to express myself in a raw way without employing my usual purity, my Muslimah censor. That includes using curse words on occasion if my spirit so moves me. That includes talking about things I wouldn't usually talk about, or revealing details about my life that I usual don't. I hadn't done one in a while because I didn't feel so inclined. I was happy about life and possibilities seemed to abound.
How fickle that feeling is.
So, in this entry, I need to vent. I'm breaking the fourth wall. What does this mean? You can wikipedia it, but I learned about it in the context of television shows. Will Smith on Fresh Prince broke the fourth wall a few times, notably when the actress for Aunt Vivian changed or when baby Nicky grew up form an infant to a preschool age child in one season. Perhaps one of the most famous instances in television history of breaking the fourth wall (and also in the literal sense) was when Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad danced off the set of The Cosby Show on the last episode, revealing to the television audience for the first time what the set looked like.
I still get emotional when I see that! That show brought so many happy memories for me, though surprisingly, has little (consciously) to do with me wanting to practice obstetrics.
So that's breaking the fourth wall. So now I'm going to break the fourth wall, if just for one entry. Because there are just some things that happen in my life as a Muslimah that I either censor or omit, and I just have to be real for a little bit.
Before I decided to become a better Muslim, I was known as the sweetheart. The good girl, don't ever change type of deal. I still am, I guess, but it's brought me mostly pain and isolation.
Being a good Muslimah in the way I see most fit has brought me mostly pain and isolation. I pray to God for solace, and maybe it is that I'm getting it, and things would have been much worse if not.
Maybe.
Like my story in the anthology, most of the time, I feel like I'm an unfortunate, hybrid bird doing his mating dance alone in a field, and any mates that would have otherwise been interested are passing me by. The one thing I struggle with in my faith is believing, and actually believing, that someone, one day, will love me for who I am, for all of who I am. I struggle believing that. I so struggle believing that. I always have.
I have faith in God when it comes to my career, residency, all of these things. I have faith in God when it comes to the future of my family, my parents and my brother. My faith is weak when it comes to my future, wanting to have a family of my own, my own children. And it causes me a lot of despair, because I know how much I want it and I feel like God may not want it for me, and I don't understand why, but I feel trapped. I feel like I'm trapped in a world where I may really want something and God, in His infinite wisdom, doesn't want it, and I'll not know why until I return to him.
And it's so painful, and I'm so lonely.
I've hoped and prayed for so many things. I've hoped and prayed for my husband to fall out of the sky. I've searched for my husband in some of the men I've known. I've been rejected in a way that was really painful for me. I've been passed over. I've been ignored. All the while I've been lonely, hoping for the companion that I could share my Islam with, hoping for a companion that I could share my life with.
And I guess I'm only 27. This is a wait that really has no bounds. This is a wait that has no limit. And that's maddening to me. Absolutely maddening. It's one of those things I wonder why and I despair because the only answer I have is that God "knows what [I] know not."
I have to repeat to myself, over and over, "Consider the bright morning hours, and the night as it grows still and dark. Thy Sustainer has not foresaken thee, nor does he scorn thee. For, indeed, the life to comee will be better for thee than this earlier part [of thy life]! And, indeed, in time will thy Susatainer grant thee [what thy heart desires], and thou shalt bee well-pleased." (93:1-5)
The truth is, I'm despairing because I finally just cut B out of my life. I just had an elaborate dream about all of the possible women his new girlfriend could be. The reality is, I was talking to a Muslim man, Y, who I thought was interested in getting to know me for possible marriage. He called me last night, and I didn't pick up, because he informed me that he's talking to another woman and his ex is back and wants to learn about Islam. I talked to his ex about Islam. What else is there for us to say to each other?
The truth is, I struggle in a world where Muslim men will perhaps disapprove of me for the way that I practice, the way I comfortably do not don the hijab and would not do so for a future husband, the way that I do not really believe in the obligatory-recommended-discouraged-forbidden scheme of things when it comes to my religion and depend on saying salat "because I want to because God knows what's best for me." I struggle in a world where my pool is small. I struggle in a world where I am open to non-Muslim men, but where they are basically looking for free sex and are disappointed when they find they won't find it in me.
There's no place that I can look to find a future husband. I'm afraid that no one will accept me as I am. I am a 27-year-old Muslimah. I've never had sex but, God have mercy, I have known some intimacy with men. I was in a short relationship with a non-Muslim man who randomly was no longer attracted to me, and I suffered from that rejection. My Islam is simple and organic, more spirituality than law. I don't like living strictly by dos and don'ts and I live in a way that makes sense for my well-being, with the spiritual wisdom of revelation. I have no doubt that people who don't call themselves Muslim who believe in God and are good people and do good deeds overall will have a place with my Sustainer in the Hereafter along with me, insha'Allah, so that one says it's obligatory for me to do X, Y and Z as a Muslimah doesn't make sense to me if I know believers of other faiths who do not do this will also have their place with my Sustainer. It is obligatory, or what? It is a sin if I don't do it? Obligatory or hellfire? Is it that they don't know better, but I do? It could be. But the God I grew up with, the God that my mother taught me about...isn't like that.
Allahu a'alam.
We all try to do our best, anyway. I've tried to do my best as I've come into Islam and formed my own opinions of things. I've tried to do my best to understand why God wants me to be single right now and why I stumbled in a past relationship instead of finding a man who fit in my life. I don't understand. I struggle to understand. I struggle.
It was something I needed to live, that relationship. Something I needed to get out of my system. I had a pent up notion of sexuality and a pent up sexuality that I thought I needed to validate that I needed to get out of my system before I could begin healthy abstinence, meaningful abstinence and a healthy relationship with someone else.
I know that.
I wondered why, when I looked at him, I had this feeling, "You're going to end up with him." I was surprised, because he wasn't my type, and distressed, because I didn't get a sense of timeline. I just knew we were going to be in a relationship, but I didn't know how long it would last. I just heard it like a voice, like I've heard other things that will perhaps materialize, surprisingly, in my life. You're going to end up with him, the voice said, and I recorded it in my old journal back in April 2010, and I tried to ignore it, deny it.
And there it was. It happened. Now what?
So I'm breaking the fourth wall. I struggle with my beliefs. I'm an invisible Muslimah because I don't wear the scarf and there's not a lot of other ways that you could recognize that I'm Muslim, besides the times I may disappear for salat, but I usually pray when no one is around. Besides the content of my character and the goodness of my heart, masha'Allah. Besides my sense of justice and charity. But you can't see those things on the outside. So maybe I'm still invisible.
I struggle with trying to find what I feel is the purest sense of my religion and the purest way for me to live in this society. I believe in ways people will disagree with because of my trepidation with the law. I struggle to believe that God wants for me what I want, even though it's half of my religion, simply because it's not come yet and I have no signs of it. And I've touched men before.
This is me, breaking my fourth wall. This is me, no longer just reflecting on the more halal parts of my life. This is me being rough around the edges as I always was, and always will be. This is me taking a break to be human.
This is me imploring God for guidance, as always, and hoping that, every day a little bit, and cumulatively to the end of my life, that He is pleased with me.
This is me.
So, I started up this blog, and it's predecessor, (the xanga version), with the intention of living Islam in every aspect of my life, including my blog. If I intend to submit my entire self to God, I figured, and if I wanted to be able to do nearly everything in my life in the name of God, then what I blog about should be no exception. I wanted a place where I was comfortable reviewing what I was learning as a Muslimah (the original, xanga version) and just reflecting on my life through my Muslim lens (this blog).
Sometimes, I have these entries called [uncensored]. I never really explained them, but I will now. I usually label entries as [uncensored] when I feel it's important to express myself in a raw way without employing my usual purity, my Muslimah censor. That includes using curse words on occasion if my spirit so moves me. That includes talking about things I wouldn't usually talk about, or revealing details about my life that I usual don't. I hadn't done one in a while because I didn't feel so inclined. I was happy about life and possibilities seemed to abound.
How fickle that feeling is.
So, in this entry, I need to vent. I'm breaking the fourth wall. What does this mean? You can wikipedia it, but I learned about it in the context of television shows. Will Smith on Fresh Prince broke the fourth wall a few times, notably when the actress for Aunt Vivian changed or when baby Nicky grew up form an infant to a preschool age child in one season. Perhaps one of the most famous instances in television history of breaking the fourth wall (and also in the literal sense) was when Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad danced off the set of The Cosby Show on the last episode, revealing to the television audience for the first time what the set looked like.
I still get emotional when I see that! That show brought so many happy memories for me, though surprisingly, has little (consciously) to do with me wanting to practice obstetrics.
So that's breaking the fourth wall. So now I'm going to break the fourth wall, if just for one entry. Because there are just some things that happen in my life as a Muslimah that I either censor or omit, and I just have to be real for a little bit.
Before I decided to become a better Muslim, I was known as the sweetheart. The good girl, don't ever change type of deal. I still am, I guess, but it's brought me mostly pain and isolation.
Being a good Muslimah in the way I see most fit has brought me mostly pain and isolation. I pray to God for solace, and maybe it is that I'm getting it, and things would have been much worse if not.
Maybe.
Like my story in the anthology, most of the time, I feel like I'm an unfortunate, hybrid bird doing his mating dance alone in a field, and any mates that would have otherwise been interested are passing me by. The one thing I struggle with in my faith is believing, and actually believing, that someone, one day, will love me for who I am, for all of who I am. I struggle believing that. I so struggle believing that. I always have.
I have faith in God when it comes to my career, residency, all of these things. I have faith in God when it comes to the future of my family, my parents and my brother. My faith is weak when it comes to my future, wanting to have a family of my own, my own children. And it causes me a lot of despair, because I know how much I want it and I feel like God may not want it for me, and I don't understand why, but I feel trapped. I feel like I'm trapped in a world where I may really want something and God, in His infinite wisdom, doesn't want it, and I'll not know why until I return to him.
And it's so painful, and I'm so lonely.
I've hoped and prayed for so many things. I've hoped and prayed for my husband to fall out of the sky. I've searched for my husband in some of the men I've known. I've been rejected in a way that was really painful for me. I've been passed over. I've been ignored. All the while I've been lonely, hoping for the companion that I could share my Islam with, hoping for a companion that I could share my life with.
And I guess I'm only 27. This is a wait that really has no bounds. This is a wait that has no limit. And that's maddening to me. Absolutely maddening. It's one of those things I wonder why and I despair because the only answer I have is that God "knows what [I] know not."
I have to repeat to myself, over and over, "Consider the bright morning hours, and the night as it grows still and dark. Thy Sustainer has not foresaken thee, nor does he scorn thee. For, indeed, the life to comee will be better for thee than this earlier part [of thy life]! And, indeed, in time will thy Susatainer grant thee [what thy heart desires], and thou shalt bee well-pleased." (93:1-5)
The truth is, I'm despairing because I finally just cut B out of my life. I just had an elaborate dream about all of the possible women his new girlfriend could be. The reality is, I was talking to a Muslim man, Y, who I thought was interested in getting to know me for possible marriage. He called me last night, and I didn't pick up, because he informed me that he's talking to another woman and his ex is back and wants to learn about Islam. I talked to his ex about Islam. What else is there for us to say to each other?
The truth is, I struggle in a world where Muslim men will perhaps disapprove of me for the way that I practice, the way I comfortably do not don the hijab and would not do so for a future husband, the way that I do not really believe in the obligatory-recommended-discouraged-forbidden scheme of things when it comes to my religion and depend on saying salat "because I want to because God knows what's best for me." I struggle in a world where my pool is small. I struggle in a world where I am open to non-Muslim men, but where they are basically looking for free sex and are disappointed when they find they won't find it in me.
There's no place that I can look to find a future husband. I'm afraid that no one will accept me as I am. I am a 27-year-old Muslimah. I've never had sex but, God have mercy, I have known some intimacy with men. I was in a short relationship with a non-Muslim man who randomly was no longer attracted to me, and I suffered from that rejection. My Islam is simple and organic, more spirituality than law. I don't like living strictly by dos and don'ts and I live in a way that makes sense for my well-being, with the spiritual wisdom of revelation. I have no doubt that people who don't call themselves Muslim who believe in God and are good people and do good deeds overall will have a place with my Sustainer in the Hereafter along with me, insha'Allah, so that one says it's obligatory for me to do X, Y and Z as a Muslimah doesn't make sense to me if I know believers of other faiths who do not do this will also have their place with my Sustainer. It is obligatory, or what? It is a sin if I don't do it? Obligatory or hellfire? Is it that they don't know better, but I do? It could be. But the God I grew up with, the God that my mother taught me about...isn't like that.
Allahu a'alam.
We all try to do our best, anyway. I've tried to do my best as I've come into Islam and formed my own opinions of things. I've tried to do my best to understand why God wants me to be single right now and why I stumbled in a past relationship instead of finding a man who fit in my life. I don't understand. I struggle to understand. I struggle.
It was something I needed to live, that relationship. Something I needed to get out of my system. I had a pent up notion of sexuality and a pent up sexuality that I thought I needed to validate that I needed to get out of my system before I could begin healthy abstinence, meaningful abstinence and a healthy relationship with someone else.
I know that.
I wondered why, when I looked at him, I had this feeling, "You're going to end up with him." I was surprised, because he wasn't my type, and distressed, because I didn't get a sense of timeline. I just knew we were going to be in a relationship, but I didn't know how long it would last. I just heard it like a voice, like I've heard other things that will perhaps materialize, surprisingly, in my life. You're going to end up with him, the voice said, and I recorded it in my old journal back in April 2010, and I tried to ignore it, deny it.
And there it was. It happened. Now what?
So I'm breaking the fourth wall. I struggle with my beliefs. I'm an invisible Muslimah because I don't wear the scarf and there's not a lot of other ways that you could recognize that I'm Muslim, besides the times I may disappear for salat, but I usually pray when no one is around. Besides the content of my character and the goodness of my heart, masha'Allah. Besides my sense of justice and charity. But you can't see those things on the outside. So maybe I'm still invisible.
I struggle with trying to find what I feel is the purest sense of my religion and the purest way for me to live in this society. I believe in ways people will disagree with because of my trepidation with the law. I struggle to believe that God wants for me what I want, even though it's half of my religion, simply because it's not come yet and I have no signs of it. And I've touched men before.
This is me, breaking my fourth wall. This is me, no longer just reflecting on the more halal parts of my life. This is me being rough around the edges as I always was, and always will be. This is me taking a break to be human.
This is me imploring God for guidance, as always, and hoping that, every day a little bit, and cumulatively to the end of my life, that He is pleased with me.
This is me.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Nem é Direito / Not Even a Right
As salaam alaikum,
O que será...que nem é direito ninguém recusar. - Chico Buarque, "O Que Será (À Flor da Pele)
(What could it be...that's not even a right for anybody to deny).
I've decided that I'm not reading the comments for articles posted about the anthology anymore. Nope. The negative comments come in two types: Islamophobe or Concerned, Ashamed Muslim Individual. Islamophobe...we all know what those are. These women are brainwashed into wearing tents and being submissive. Of course they're all terrorists. They're un-American (for US sources) or shouldn't they be stoned for what they're doing according to their religion? These are people who, of course, are missing the point and as long as they let their ignorance sustain them, they always will. They will simply look towards media sources that confirm their beliefs. Their loss, and only God knows how much of a loss it is.
The comments that pain me more, that are fewer, are the Concerned, Ashamed Muslim Individual comments. And of course there would be these comments, whenever the stories that make the headlines about the anthology are the more controversial ones, the stories of the contributors who are lesbians and those who had premarital sex. And then, they think it's a book about Muslim women committing zina and other haram. Or, some actually try to read the book, and are disgusted by those stories and fear for the upbringing of their children, that they'll become nominal Muslims like a couple of the contributors who identify more with Islam culturally than religiously.
I think the criticism of those who read the anthology and cannot handle it is fair, for sure. I'd rather those who decry it now read it and see what they think afterwards. It's so interesting how strong the repulsion can be to stories of premarital sex in particular that a Muslim would not even want the anthology in their home! Everyone has different sensibilities, and I respect that.
Why does it bother me, though? Some of these people were the very types of people I looked to when I first came into practicing Islam. I looked to other Muslims with conservative religious values as the ideal. It was their voices of condemnation, yes, and their voices of celebration of God, that formed me into the Muslimah I was my junior and senior year of college, especially, when I first donned hijab. These are the types of Muslims that I hungered for approval from...and I found that I still do.
Every review that's written about the anthology, I read it, hoping someone mentions my piece. They usually don't...it's a little bit too complicated to be succinctly summarized, I supposed, and isn't quite a headliner. The one sister who did mention it in her review on tumblr came to a conclusion that I did not agree with...that my story came to the conclusion that converts must "flirt-to-convert" in order to marry.
She made an assumption I never suggested in the story...that I wanted to convert "James." I come from a household where my father is Christian and my mother is Muslim, I mention in the beginning. Am I a convert by lineage? I've never understood this. No offense to converts, but I just find it amazing how people consider me a convert despite being raised Muslim by my mother. Anyway...no, there is no compulsion in religion, and if I started seeing a non-Muslim man, it would not to be to convert him. It would to be with him for who he is.
Astaghfirullah, I know, I know...
But anyway, I digress. I looked in the reviews, still, some validation of my Muslim identity, some mentioning of my story as a voice not often heard...but I'm wondering if my story didn't resonate with certain readers who just take my "not being Muslim enough" in my story with MQ at face value and assume it's true. It's a very interesting thing. I know from the reading that it resonated with a lot of the sisters (and brothers) who did not think that way, and that's what matters. I wish I could have gone on more of the book tour and reached out to more audiences...that was fun!
But yes, it stings to see negative reviews from Muslims who are ready to dismiss the entire project as haram because it feels like being rejected, yet again, from the Muslim community. Another reason that it stings is that they see all of the Islamophobic comments around, and they don't care.
I mean, no, I don't defend myself against Islamophobes. The few times someone came into my site with some hateful message about Muslims, I simply do not approve the comment, delete it for good, and perish the thought. But to me, if I were a self-righteous (or maybe just honest, practicing) Muslim and I saw that most of the comments were coming from people disrespecting my faith, I would reach out in support of my sisters, though not agreeing with everything in the anthology (because, just because we contributed doesn't mean we ascribe to the beliefs of all other contributors, duh), see how I could help.
I mean, I would much rather see a comment of, "Subhan'Allah! There are so many issues in the Muslim community that we need to address, and so many women are lost, misguided and falling into haram in search for a love that is best within Islam. Let us set up an effort to help these sisters."
But then, Muslims wouldn't be human if you didn't have a preponderance of the other comments.
And that's the thing! Muslims are humans! We are humans entitled to our opinions as much as Islamophobes are entitled to theirs.
For that reason, because it's so painful for me to read, I will not read any more reviews of the anthology, and I will not read any more comments to articles. It's too much.
It's hard for me, but no more looking to other Muslims for validation of my Islam, not even a potential spouse. As the lyrics above say, it's not a right that anyone can deny. My Islam, no one can deny. It's not a right to be denied. One could kill me, and though they may believe it to be true, they have not killed my Islam, but were God's agent to bring me closer to Him, though you may believe I'm closer to Satan.
No one can take this from me, no matter how good of a Muslim or bad of a Muslim they judge me to be. God promised me His mercy as long as I believe and do righteous deeds, which far outweigh my bad deeds. Really, what more do I need? What more do I need as encouragement to keep living as I do, striving as I do?
Alhamdulillah, and I'm done.
O que será...que nem é direito ninguém recusar. - Chico Buarque, "O Que Será (À Flor da Pele)
(What could it be...that's not even a right for anybody to deny).
I've decided that I'm not reading the comments for articles posted about the anthology anymore. Nope. The negative comments come in two types: Islamophobe or Concerned, Ashamed Muslim Individual. Islamophobe...we all know what those are. These women are brainwashed into wearing tents and being submissive. Of course they're all terrorists. They're un-American (for US sources) or shouldn't they be stoned for what they're doing according to their religion? These are people who, of course, are missing the point and as long as they let their ignorance sustain them, they always will. They will simply look towards media sources that confirm their beliefs. Their loss, and only God knows how much of a loss it is.
The comments that pain me more, that are fewer, are the Concerned, Ashamed Muslim Individual comments. And of course there would be these comments, whenever the stories that make the headlines about the anthology are the more controversial ones, the stories of the contributors who are lesbians and those who had premarital sex. And then, they think it's a book about Muslim women committing zina and other haram. Or, some actually try to read the book, and are disgusted by those stories and fear for the upbringing of their children, that they'll become nominal Muslims like a couple of the contributors who identify more with Islam culturally than religiously.
I think the criticism of those who read the anthology and cannot handle it is fair, for sure. I'd rather those who decry it now read it and see what they think afterwards. It's so interesting how strong the repulsion can be to stories of premarital sex in particular that a Muslim would not even want the anthology in their home! Everyone has different sensibilities, and I respect that.
Why does it bother me, though? Some of these people were the very types of people I looked to when I first came into practicing Islam. I looked to other Muslims with conservative religious values as the ideal. It was their voices of condemnation, yes, and their voices of celebration of God, that formed me into the Muslimah I was my junior and senior year of college, especially, when I first donned hijab. These are the types of Muslims that I hungered for approval from...and I found that I still do.
Every review that's written about the anthology, I read it, hoping someone mentions my piece. They usually don't...it's a little bit too complicated to be succinctly summarized, I supposed, and isn't quite a headliner. The one sister who did mention it in her review on tumblr came to a conclusion that I did not agree with...that my story came to the conclusion that converts must "flirt-to-convert" in order to marry.
She made an assumption I never suggested in the story...that I wanted to convert "James." I come from a household where my father is Christian and my mother is Muslim, I mention in the beginning. Am I a convert by lineage? I've never understood this. No offense to converts, but I just find it amazing how people consider me a convert despite being raised Muslim by my mother. Anyway...no, there is no compulsion in religion, and if I started seeing a non-Muslim man, it would not to be to convert him. It would to be with him for who he is.
Astaghfirullah, I know, I know...
But anyway, I digress. I looked in the reviews, still, some validation of my Muslim identity, some mentioning of my story as a voice not often heard...but I'm wondering if my story didn't resonate with certain readers who just take my "not being Muslim enough" in my story with MQ at face value and assume it's true. It's a very interesting thing. I know from the reading that it resonated with a lot of the sisters (and brothers) who did not think that way, and that's what matters. I wish I could have gone on more of the book tour and reached out to more audiences...that was fun!
But yes, it stings to see negative reviews from Muslims who are ready to dismiss the entire project as haram because it feels like being rejected, yet again, from the Muslim community. Another reason that it stings is that they see all of the Islamophobic comments around, and they don't care.
I mean, no, I don't defend myself against Islamophobes. The few times someone came into my site with some hateful message about Muslims, I simply do not approve the comment, delete it for good, and perish the thought. But to me, if I were a self-righteous (or maybe just honest, practicing) Muslim and I saw that most of the comments were coming from people disrespecting my faith, I would reach out in support of my sisters, though not agreeing with everything in the anthology (because, just because we contributed doesn't mean we ascribe to the beliefs of all other contributors, duh), see how I could help.
I mean, I would much rather see a comment of, "Subhan'Allah! There are so many issues in the Muslim community that we need to address, and so many women are lost, misguided and falling into haram in search for a love that is best within Islam. Let us set up an effort to help these sisters."
But then, Muslims wouldn't be human if you didn't have a preponderance of the other comments.
And that's the thing! Muslims are humans! We are humans entitled to our opinions as much as Islamophobes are entitled to theirs.
For that reason, because it's so painful for me to read, I will not read any more reviews of the anthology, and I will not read any more comments to articles. It's too much.
It's hard for me, but no more looking to other Muslims for validation of my Islam, not even a potential spouse. As the lyrics above say, it's not a right that anyone can deny. My Islam, no one can deny. It's not a right to be denied. One could kill me, and though they may believe it to be true, they have not killed my Islam, but were God's agent to bring me closer to Him, though you may believe I'm closer to Satan.
No one can take this from me, no matter how good of a Muslim or bad of a Muslim they judge me to be. God promised me His mercy as long as I believe and do righteous deeds, which far outweigh my bad deeds. Really, what more do I need? What more do I need as encouragement to keep living as I do, striving as I do?
Alhamdulillah, and I'm done.
Friday, February 24, 2012
In Wait for Mr. Right
As salaam alaikum,
After the thing with Y didn't work out (long story...long, happily hilarious story, haha!) I suddenly felt free! It was inexplicable. Instead of my usual moping after the end of a relationship (or not-relationship, as this case was) and believing that "no man likes me," I went to sleep, had a crazy dream where I felt freer than I ever have (but, for the sake of self-censorship, haha, will not reveal), and woke up and had an awesome day.
There was something liberating about not waiting around any more for this man to decide if he wanted to be with me or not, or get things started. There was something liberating about trying to make him fit in my man paradigm just because he was the one who liked me. Especially after I made the declaration "No more Nigerians!" (not that I'm excluding my motherland brothers entirely...but the record, brothers and sisters, has not been good), I felt especially free!
I realized that feeling lonely is one thing, but feeling like only one type of man or one group of men will likely end up marrying you is another feeling of desolation all together. Don't get me wrong, I love my heritage! I just don't think that ending up with a Nigerian man (and if Allah (swt) wills it, who am I to dispute it!) is necessarily the best fit with all that I am. I am Nigerian, but my tradition in Islam is more that of African Americans and not Nigerian Muslims, for example. I'm most Nigerian in my body type (apparently) and my food palate, but the second pais do meu coração is Brazil! I keep imagining instances in my life in which I could just pick up and live there, maybe in Salvador, for years. I clearly know more Brazilian music than Nigerian music. I don't speak Igbo...I speak Spanish and Portuguese. If I had to choose a hemisphere longitudinally, I would stay on this one. The family I grew up with is here, Latin America is here.
As I say in "The Hybrid Dance," I am more than an Igbo who is not Christian, more than an African American Muslim. I am a Muslimah, first and foremost, independent of my culture and ethnicity. I am Igbo Nigerian American, black American and a lot in between. I was born a daughter, a granddaughter a cousin and a niece, and I became a sister along the way to a very special young man who I tease but who has all of my heart. I am also a sambista, a noveleira, a future family physician and public health practitioner. I am a creative writer, a música popular brasileira singer! I am a nerd! I am a hispanohablante and a lusoparlante. I am a soul sister, loving me my soul music throughout the years.
And all of these things I am and all of these things that I have done, I've done by the grace of God without a partner in life, sometimes in wait for him and sometimes not. But I've become this full person not to thereafter mute parts of myself to fit with a man who likes parts of me and doesn't care about the rest. That is not why Allah (swt) gave me this time on earth to develop my interests, my career, my tastes. That is not why God has me waiting now, in wait of my Mr. Right. For me to act like I didn't have this time to become everything I dreamed and never dreamed of becoming just to throw it away for a man who is not it!
No! If that were the case, I could have met said man a long time ago, and maybe I wouldn't have been some of the things that I am. And that would have been okay, but that's not the reality.
No. I may be in wait for Mr. Right, but it isn't a twiddling-my-thumbs kind of wait. It's a Center of Awesomeness kind of wait. It's a me doing my own thing, taking care of my physical and emotional health and my hair health type of wait. It's me loving and living with those in my life type of wait. It's a me continuing to develop type of wait. Because, insha'Allah, I'm graduating from medical school this May with my MD and MPH, and I'm going to begin the transformative process of residency, iA. There is so much more that I'm going to be, iA, if he continues to bless me with the full life I've already had.
And Allah (swt) will provide for me a worthy partner, as I will be a worthy partner for him. Insha'Allah.
I know I'd be more content with myself, in and of myself, if I didn't have this strong need to share myself with others. I think the reason I've always wanted a partner is that I've wanted someone constant, who as long as he lives and as long as we are together, is going to be in my life. And even in times of absence, I'll know he'll be back. He'll be that person that I can share all of my life with, who doesn't move on with his life like friends will, who isn't my parents. I love the times I am alone, just me, writing or chilling or listening to music, but even with music in the background, it's quiet.
My friends know from the way I blab, I love to share my life. And I get lonely when there's no one to share my life with. But lonelier is the feeling that who you may be accepting into your life as a partner may not share. May not let you live in his blue.
É, você que é feito de azul, me deixa morar nesse azul...
I'm in wait for that man made of blue...or yellow, or magenta, or cerulean...or cinammon, or milk chocolate, or cream...of gold, whatever color he may be. I'm in wait for someone who lets me live all up in it, as I'll let him in my burnt orange!
After the thing with Y didn't work out (long story...long, happily hilarious story, haha!) I suddenly felt free! It was inexplicable. Instead of my usual moping after the end of a relationship (or not-relationship, as this case was) and believing that "no man likes me," I went to sleep, had a crazy dream where I felt freer than I ever have (but, for the sake of self-censorship, haha, will not reveal), and woke up and had an awesome day.
There was something liberating about not waiting around any more for this man to decide if he wanted to be with me or not, or get things started. There was something liberating about trying to make him fit in my man paradigm just because he was the one who liked me. Especially after I made the declaration "No more Nigerians!" (not that I'm excluding my motherland brothers entirely...but the record, brothers and sisters, has not been good), I felt especially free!
I realized that feeling lonely is one thing, but feeling like only one type of man or one group of men will likely end up marrying you is another feeling of desolation all together. Don't get me wrong, I love my heritage! I just don't think that ending up with a Nigerian man (and if Allah (swt) wills it, who am I to dispute it!) is necessarily the best fit with all that I am. I am Nigerian, but my tradition in Islam is more that of African Americans and not Nigerian Muslims, for example. I'm most Nigerian in my body type (apparently) and my food palate, but the second pais do meu coração is Brazil! I keep imagining instances in my life in which I could just pick up and live there, maybe in Salvador, for years. I clearly know more Brazilian music than Nigerian music. I don't speak Igbo...I speak Spanish and Portuguese. If I had to choose a hemisphere longitudinally, I would stay on this one. The family I grew up with is here, Latin America is here.
As I say in "The Hybrid Dance," I am more than an Igbo who is not Christian, more than an African American Muslim. I am a Muslimah, first and foremost, independent of my culture and ethnicity. I am Igbo Nigerian American, black American and a lot in between. I was born a daughter, a granddaughter a cousin and a niece, and I became a sister along the way to a very special young man who I tease but who has all of my heart. I am also a sambista, a noveleira, a future family physician and public health practitioner. I am a creative writer, a música popular brasileira singer! I am a nerd! I am a hispanohablante and a lusoparlante. I am a soul sister, loving me my soul music throughout the years.
And all of these things I am and all of these things that I have done, I've done by the grace of God without a partner in life, sometimes in wait for him and sometimes not. But I've become this full person not to thereafter mute parts of myself to fit with a man who likes parts of me and doesn't care about the rest. That is not why Allah (swt) gave me this time on earth to develop my interests, my career, my tastes. That is not why God has me waiting now, in wait of my Mr. Right. For me to act like I didn't have this time to become everything I dreamed and never dreamed of becoming just to throw it away for a man who is not it!
No! If that were the case, I could have met said man a long time ago, and maybe I wouldn't have been some of the things that I am. And that would have been okay, but that's not the reality.
No. I may be in wait for Mr. Right, but it isn't a twiddling-my-thumbs kind of wait. It's a Center of Awesomeness kind of wait. It's a me doing my own thing, taking care of my physical and emotional health and my hair health type of wait. It's me loving and living with those in my life type of wait. It's a me continuing to develop type of wait. Because, insha'Allah, I'm graduating from medical school this May with my MD and MPH, and I'm going to begin the transformative process of residency, iA. There is so much more that I'm going to be, iA, if he continues to bless me with the full life I've already had.
And Allah (swt) will provide for me a worthy partner, as I will be a worthy partner for him. Insha'Allah.
I know I'd be more content with myself, in and of myself, if I didn't have this strong need to share myself with others. I think the reason I've always wanted a partner is that I've wanted someone constant, who as long as he lives and as long as we are together, is going to be in my life. And even in times of absence, I'll know he'll be back. He'll be that person that I can share all of my life with, who doesn't move on with his life like friends will, who isn't my parents. I love the times I am alone, just me, writing or chilling or listening to music, but even with music in the background, it's quiet.
My friends know from the way I blab, I love to share my life. And I get lonely when there's no one to share my life with. But lonelier is the feeling that who you may be accepting into your life as a partner may not share. May not let you live in his blue.
É, você que é feito de azul, me deixa morar nesse azul...
I'm in wait for that man made of blue...or yellow, or magenta, or cerulean...or cinammon, or milk chocolate, or cream...of gold, whatever color he may be. I'm in wait for someone who lets me live all up in it, as I'll let him in my burnt orange!
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Too Much
As salaam alaikum,
In life, there is too much to do, too much to be, too much to start and too much to read. You should never be bored, ever.
Never!
I'm reading two books at once, each one changing my life as I read. I'm reading, Love, InshAllah (in order...I'm not reading my contribution yet!) and I'm reading Muhammad by Martin Lings. Wow. Our Prophet (saw) was gorgeous, masha'Allah, in a way that it's taken me all these years to know, because it's taken me all these years to get this book. I think it's a must read for all Muslims, especially those of us with no aspirations to be scholars. I feel like it's something we should know and it will challenge and deepen our faiths.
Next, I'm reading The Veil and the Male Elite, just to variar.
And after this, I'll need some good fiction to read. Any suggestions would be awesome! I especially need to read more stuff with multiple narrators. I may reread Delirio by Laura Restrepo (in Spanish), since it was the inspiration for the way I lay out RMD, but I need to see more examples of this to make it work.
I have two other story ideas brewing...one, of course, is The Misadventures of Nisa, which has accompanying music I'm composing, and another, which does not of yet have a working title. That's three projects! My first is always RMD, for now Nisa is just me working on the music (and then researching how to write a screenplay). The other one, I'll be plotting out as I go...it's just in the imagining stage, as RMD was after I wrote the paragraph for a crreative writing class this time in 2007 (five years ago!).
There is yet still much more for me to read about, learn about, become and pray for. There is too much of the world to begin! People like to cry out for the end of times, but instead of worrying about that, let's do more than just making due with what we have! Let's do what God set us here for, which is not to mope about the present and hasten, as if our will had anything to do with it, the Day of Judgment.
The Center of Awesomeness is in full bloom, and I pray that it never leaves me.
And while it feels like so much now...there's so much more. And I'll take it!
...and I'm sorry, I had this song in my head, too...
In life, there is too much to do, too much to be, too much to start and too much to read. You should never be bored, ever.
Never!
I'm reading two books at once, each one changing my life as I read. I'm reading, Love, InshAllah (in order...I'm not reading my contribution yet!) and I'm reading Muhammad by Martin Lings. Wow. Our Prophet (saw) was gorgeous, masha'Allah, in a way that it's taken me all these years to know, because it's taken me all these years to get this book. I think it's a must read for all Muslims, especially those of us with no aspirations to be scholars. I feel like it's something we should know and it will challenge and deepen our faiths.
Next, I'm reading The Veil and the Male Elite, just to variar.
And after this, I'll need some good fiction to read. Any suggestions would be awesome! I especially need to read more stuff with multiple narrators. I may reread Delirio by Laura Restrepo (in Spanish), since it was the inspiration for the way I lay out RMD, but I need to see more examples of this to make it work.
I have two other story ideas brewing...one, of course, is The Misadventures of Nisa, which has accompanying music I'm composing, and another, which does not of yet have a working title. That's three projects! My first is always RMD, for now Nisa is just me working on the music (and then researching how to write a screenplay). The other one, I'll be plotting out as I go...it's just in the imagining stage, as RMD was after I wrote the paragraph for a crreative writing class this time in 2007 (five years ago!).
There is yet still much more for me to read about, learn about, become and pray for. There is too much of the world to begin! People like to cry out for the end of times, but instead of worrying about that, let's do more than just making due with what we have! Let's do what God set us here for, which is not to mope about the present and hasten, as if our will had anything to do with it, the Day of Judgment.
The Center of Awesomeness is in full bloom, and I pray that it never leaves me.
And while it feels like so much now...there's so much more. And I'll take it!
...and I'm sorry, I had this song in my head, too...
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
My Vision
As salaam alaikum,
I woke up from a series of weird dreams with a vision in my head. As I've gone throughout the day, that vision has grown in my mind and it's almost exploding in my chest right now! I had to write it down, but I end up gchatting with a friend about residency and the infamous (at least to us) rank list, and I didn't get to spend as much time with Martin Lings' Muhammad as I wanted to (and as I've wanted to for years, but always forget to pick a copy up when I have free time to read). Instead, I ended up doing a lot of facebook posting about the anthology, looking up details about the residency programs, and also looking up random things, like family medicine in Brazil and information on adopting children in Nigeria...
But my vision for my life from this moment onward is now in place!
I mean, huge disclaimer...I realize that the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a gley. I realize this. Yet, I'm the same 19-year-old girl who mapped out her entire four years at Michigan with about three different combinations of double majors and minors before deciding on my double major, and then stuck pretty closely to the schedule of courses I thought. I am not comfortable unless I plan out my life for a good chunk of time in the future, even knowing that plans are subject to change.
That's why the whole being single thing is so distressing to me. I'm like, what, I can't actually control that? I mean, of course I know I can't...but that really puts a monkey wrench in my emotional time and energy. It always comes when you least expect it, everyone says...thus throwing a monkey wrench into your other plans, too. But when you are looking to a relationship for half of your religion, let alone emotional fulfillment, companionship, partnership in life...and yet you have to keep on living with that being a grand question mark over your head, what do you do? You have to put the emotional energy you would normally put into stressing about that into something else!
Thus, my vision! Or visions, as they may be...
My career is going to be full, insha'Allah. I hope to become a family physician who has a maternal-child health practice and also participates in community health projects in my community, while having my foot occasionally abroad, later hoping to do some more work at the state or national level in terms of public health...but that later part is too far into the future. Like my said, if it were just for my career, my hands will be full, but my career is not enough to "belly-full" me, as my father would say...
I mean, alhamdulillah, it's quite a blessing to go into a career that I love so much and that I can use to serve others and will be part of my worship in the end, but I am more than medicine and public health.
I'm also writing, fiction and non-ficiton, evidenced by the fact that this exists! Alhamdulillah, the anthology is arrasando so far, even before it's available for purchase, but I also do eventually want to publish A Rose Much Desired as well as I want to work on a screenplay or two, one of course being "The Misadventures of Nisa," for which I'm writing music! I know residency will be busy, especially if I try to have community projects (required or not) alongside my work, but I want to keep writing part of my life and I always want to have at least one writing project going at any given time. Insha'Allah, I hope the anthology is just the first of more publications to come!
And of course, I wanted it all! My career, my greatest hobby (not to mention my other hobbies of singing Brazilian music, samba dancing and keeping in shape otherwise...), and a family! And yet, as I said before, while all things are blessings from Allah (swt), this is the thing that I can control the least. So I can't worry about that. So instead, if I feel like I have space still that I would prefer to fill with family life, I will fill with other things.
First of all, I do plan to eventually have a family, insha'Allah. If I am still single in six years (that's three years, insha'Allah, after I'm a practicing physician after residency), I do plan on becoming an adoptive mother. I've started looking up adoption options right now, because I understand it can take some time, just to know a little bit of background and what my future self will be getting into. I might adopt from the US as well as I may consider adopting from abroad. I'm also encouraged by seeing more writing by Muslims about adoption in Islam. God in the Qur'an mentions so often about caring for orphans...so insha'Allah, if I can't have children of my own, this is what I will do. This is my plan, and I pray that it will sustain me in the moments that I despair about being single!
But the main thing that I realized that I could do, through writing, through blogging, whatever, that I can help out other burgeoning Muslims or Muslims on the fringes. I realize that in MSAs, in a lot of the popular blogs that we read and other places, the Muslims we see are Super Muslims. At least that was my perception of it. At my MSA, the leaders were mainly people who were majoring in AAPTIS (Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Turkish and Islamic Studies) and were all planning to become scholars in their own right. Even if they weren't on the Islamic scholarship road, they were people who were well-read in scholarship and were taking advanced courses in Arabic, all things that I was miles away from doing as a Spanish and Cellular and Molecular Biology major. I didn't even have space in my schedule for introductory Arabic courses, something that I lamented.
But now, I'm finally okay with that.
I was surrounded by future Islamic scholars in college, yes, and people who were on their game in terms of their deen, but that didn't mean I had to be there, or that's what (or all) that I should aspire to.
No. I was an aspiring physician, and insha'Allah I'll be graduating from medical school this May. There are other worthy ways I can strive as a Muslim in this world without acquiring fluency in Arabic, without being able to read large sections of the Qur'an in Arabic, without becoming a scholar. And then some, but I don't think many of us who are striving in the beginning or reverting early on know that it's okay to strive for "less."
The fact is, we need people to be physicians, dentists, and lawyers...businesspeople, nurses, authors and actors...many other occupations that will not allow us to be mini-scholars and many worthy occupations that will require a lot of our time and energy during training. And these are worthy forms of worship as well. Yes, worship...ones career can be made an act of worship just like having sex with one's spouse can be an act of worship. Yes, sex. We pronounce bismillah before salat and bismillah before so much else in life, and especially if we have service careers and especially if we work in our career for the good of not only our ummah, but humankind in general...this is worship. This is greatness.
So, I'm going to continue to do what I'm doing now. I am going to blog. I am no scholar nor will I ever be, insha'Allah, but I am a regular, everyday Muslim who is striving in my own way, taking my own steps, realizing my own dreams, hopefully in accordance with what God wants from me. I believe I am realizing just one way to be Muslim that we have been blessed with the freedom (by God) to realize, and I want to be there with others who are along a similar path as me...I want to learn with others who are on a path similar as me.
For now, I'll do this through blogging. Insha'Allah, I could expand this...who knows better than God?
So, these are just some of my visions...things to keep myself busy in ways that I alhamdulillah have more in my control and insha'Allah will have more in my control for time to come. If I do end up marrying, then alhamdulillah, but I can't count on that or hope for that anymore without despairing too much for it to be helpful. It's time for me to move on...
New Center of Awesomeness continues!
I woke up from a series of weird dreams with a vision in my head. As I've gone throughout the day, that vision has grown in my mind and it's almost exploding in my chest right now! I had to write it down, but I end up gchatting with a friend about residency and the infamous (at least to us) rank list, and I didn't get to spend as much time with Martin Lings' Muhammad as I wanted to (and as I've wanted to for years, but always forget to pick a copy up when I have free time to read). Instead, I ended up doing a lot of facebook posting about the anthology, looking up details about the residency programs, and also looking up random things, like family medicine in Brazil and information on adopting children in Nigeria...
But my vision for my life from this moment onward is now in place!
I mean, huge disclaimer...I realize that the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a gley. I realize this. Yet, I'm the same 19-year-old girl who mapped out her entire four years at Michigan with about three different combinations of double majors and minors before deciding on my double major, and then stuck pretty closely to the schedule of courses I thought. I am not comfortable unless I plan out my life for a good chunk of time in the future, even knowing that plans are subject to change.
That's why the whole being single thing is so distressing to me. I'm like, what, I can't actually control that? I mean, of course I know I can't...but that really puts a monkey wrench in my emotional time and energy. It always comes when you least expect it, everyone says...thus throwing a monkey wrench into your other plans, too. But when you are looking to a relationship for half of your religion, let alone emotional fulfillment, companionship, partnership in life...and yet you have to keep on living with that being a grand question mark over your head, what do you do? You have to put the emotional energy you would normally put into stressing about that into something else!
Thus, my vision! Or visions, as they may be...
My career is going to be full, insha'Allah. I hope to become a family physician who has a maternal-child health practice and also participates in community health projects in my community, while having my foot occasionally abroad, later hoping to do some more work at the state or national level in terms of public health...but that later part is too far into the future. Like my said, if it were just for my career, my hands will be full, but my career is not enough to "belly-full" me, as my father would say...
I mean, alhamdulillah, it's quite a blessing to go into a career that I love so much and that I can use to serve others and will be part of my worship in the end, but I am more than medicine and public health.
I'm also writing, fiction and non-ficiton, evidenced by the fact that this exists! Alhamdulillah, the anthology is arrasando so far, even before it's available for purchase, but I also do eventually want to publish A Rose Much Desired as well as I want to work on a screenplay or two, one of course being "The Misadventures of Nisa," for which I'm writing music! I know residency will be busy, especially if I try to have community projects (required or not) alongside my work, but I want to keep writing part of my life and I always want to have at least one writing project going at any given time. Insha'Allah, I hope the anthology is just the first of more publications to come!
And of course, I wanted it all! My career, my greatest hobby (not to mention my other hobbies of singing Brazilian music, samba dancing and keeping in shape otherwise...), and a family! And yet, as I said before, while all things are blessings from Allah (swt), this is the thing that I can control the least. So I can't worry about that. So instead, if I feel like I have space still that I would prefer to fill with family life, I will fill with other things.
First of all, I do plan to eventually have a family, insha'Allah. If I am still single in six years (that's three years, insha'Allah, after I'm a practicing physician after residency), I do plan on becoming an adoptive mother. I've started looking up adoption options right now, because I understand it can take some time, just to know a little bit of background and what my future self will be getting into. I might adopt from the US as well as I may consider adopting from abroad. I'm also encouraged by seeing more writing by Muslims about adoption in Islam. God in the Qur'an mentions so often about caring for orphans...so insha'Allah, if I can't have children of my own, this is what I will do. This is my plan, and I pray that it will sustain me in the moments that I despair about being single!
But the main thing that I realized that I could do, through writing, through blogging, whatever, that I can help out other burgeoning Muslims or Muslims on the fringes. I realize that in MSAs, in a lot of the popular blogs that we read and other places, the Muslims we see are Super Muslims. At least that was my perception of it. At my MSA, the leaders were mainly people who were majoring in AAPTIS (Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Turkish and Islamic Studies) and were all planning to become scholars in their own right. Even if they weren't on the Islamic scholarship road, they were people who were well-read in scholarship and were taking advanced courses in Arabic, all things that I was miles away from doing as a Spanish and Cellular and Molecular Biology major. I didn't even have space in my schedule for introductory Arabic courses, something that I lamented.
But now, I'm finally okay with that.
I was surrounded by future Islamic scholars in college, yes, and people who were on their game in terms of their deen, but that didn't mean I had to be there, or that's what (or all) that I should aspire to.
No. I was an aspiring physician, and insha'Allah I'll be graduating from medical school this May. There are other worthy ways I can strive as a Muslim in this world without acquiring fluency in Arabic, without being able to read large sections of the Qur'an in Arabic, without becoming a scholar. And then some, but I don't think many of us who are striving in the beginning or reverting early on know that it's okay to strive for "less."
The fact is, we need people to be physicians, dentists, and lawyers...businesspeople, nurses, authors and actors...many other occupations that will not allow us to be mini-scholars and many worthy occupations that will require a lot of our time and energy during training. And these are worthy forms of worship as well. Yes, worship...ones career can be made an act of worship just like having sex with one's spouse can be an act of worship. Yes, sex. We pronounce bismillah before salat and bismillah before so much else in life, and especially if we have service careers and especially if we work in our career for the good of not only our ummah, but humankind in general...this is worship. This is greatness.
So, I'm going to continue to do what I'm doing now. I am going to blog. I am no scholar nor will I ever be, insha'Allah, but I am a regular, everyday Muslim who is striving in my own way, taking my own steps, realizing my own dreams, hopefully in accordance with what God wants from me. I believe I am realizing just one way to be Muslim that we have been blessed with the freedom (by God) to realize, and I want to be there with others who are along a similar path as me...I want to learn with others who are on a path similar as me.
For now, I'll do this through blogging. Insha'Allah, I could expand this...who knows better than God?
So, these are just some of my visions...things to keep myself busy in ways that I alhamdulillah have more in my control and insha'Allah will have more in my control for time to come. If I do end up marrying, then alhamdulillah, but I can't count on that or hope for that anymore without despairing too much for it to be helpful. It's time for me to move on...
New Center of Awesomeness continues!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
MQ
As salaam alaikum,
Hah! After I try to invite more men to read my site, I launch into an altogether more girly topic. Oh well.
I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, and somehow, we got on the topic of my college crush, MQ. As if I haven't exhausted the subject of that then-boy now-man for my entire lifetime, what with the hundreds of pages of journal entries I've written about him, the obsessive thinking about him my sophomore year fading to the daily praying for him during Ramadan 2005. MQ, also known as MTQ, is the basis for the character Mo in my story, A Rose Much Desired, and is renamed Sadiq in my essay in Love, InshAllah. How I felt about him was so adeptly characterized by Djavan in "Doidice" that I listened to that song over and over again the spring of my first year of medical school.
Me apaixonei? Talvez, pode ser...
I wrote a poem in one sitting the first time I got a whiff that we would never be. I still remember most of it. "I wish I would not melt into you, my oblivious haunter, as you whisper to me of Some Enchanted Evening that exists not in reality but it's alternate..."
I didn't memorize it. I lived it. It was so real for so long it went without saying.
But my friend had never heard the whole story. At the time I met her, I was still embarrassed by the details. I was embarrassed that a big girl like me could have fallen so hard for someone who in real life did not completely exist as I'd imagined them. But time has passed and he's been married for some time and I've since been in a relationship of my own and I finally felt at liberty to describe him.
And it was amazing, I think one of the most beautiful experiences of the year for me of many more.
I usually do year retrospectives, but doing a retrospective of a year that began happily and then ended in a confusing and terribly disappointing breakup, a year that was unfortunately stained by that incident although everything else in the year was excellent...just seemed a bit depressing. I ended up thinking of B and crying really hard the other day as I thought of all I had hoped we would be, what we were, what we realistically could have been, my loneliness.
But I told my friend, I didn't even love B as much as I loved MQ. And, as she is wont to do, she asked why.
I hadn't thought about it in a while. In fact, my editors for "The Hybrid Dance" asked me to expand on what it was about Sadiq that I liked, and I felt embarrassed because, at the time, it didn't seem like enough...
But then I described MQ to her, and what it was about him...and it all seemed plain to me.
We were talking about B.
Her: "It's good that you didn't get swallowed in because some can't see through the pain, sadness, disappointment..."
Me: "No, did that once when I wasn't even in a relationship. Didn't even touch the man. Took me three years to get over him. A 280-page novel with a character based on him... For as much as I came to love B, I dind't love anyone like MQ, for whatever reason."
Her: "Hmm...do you ever wonder why?"
Me: "No. I know why. I loved the idea of MQ, perhaps who he wasn't. I knew B...I never idealized him."
Her: "Why did you love the idea of him? Could it have been anyone? Or was there something about him in particular?" (My friend asks a lot of questions)
Me: "No, just him... I liked him because he seemed to like me. And it seemed so unlikely that this guy liked me, and he was so unlike anyone I'd met before...I was fascinated by him. I mean, now, I know tons of Indian guys who like hip hop and R&B, so it's no longer a novelty."
Her: "Hahahaha."
Me: "Haha, but I read so much into it at the time. I mean, he was also Muslim, funny...he was different."
Her: "What do you mean by different?"
Me: "He was unlike any guy I met at the time. He was loud and boisterous, had a great sense of humor, he was like, over 6 feet but he was a teddy bear. He loved kids... But at the same time, he cursed a lot and had a quick temper... He was loud and awkward. He was a cutester, although his face was not that attractive to me... I liked how he talked to me, related to me... He told me that I amazed him... How awesome I was, how smart I was..."
Her: "Awwwww."
Me: "He always assured me that everything was going to be alright... [I] wasn't as happy as I was with him until B."
Her: "Were you two pretty close?"
Me: "Umm, after the summer after my freshman year, not really. I once went 5 months without seeing him. But I thought about him every day, almost every 10 minutes my sophomore year after that summer. Cried many nights to sleep, and cried myself awake on the last day of the semester when I realized we would never be. I wanted to be everything he wanted, and I sought to find out what he wanted. It became an obsession, for sure."
Her: "Did you tell anyone?"
Me: "I talked to no one about it. I didn't have a friend close enough to talk to about it..."
Her: "What about [your best friend]?"
Me: "A little bit. She knew the most about it, for sure...but after the first semester of sophomore year, I didn't tell her anything else. I never told anyone the depth of it. I was afraid."
Her: "Afraid of what?"
Me: "I was afraid they'd tell me I was crazy, that he never really liked me, that I needed to get over it."
Her: "Did you ever consider telling him your feelings?"
Me: "I did tell him...halfway. I told him I liked him back that summer after my freshman year...by email...after I graduated. He told me he had no idea I liked him, and nothing more...that he was flattered. And every year thereafter, he's told me happy birthday on facebook. Probably this was the last year, since he's doing residency."
Her: "Did you think about doing it earlier and in person?"
Me: "No, I never wanted to do it in person...I didn't want to if it were possible he didn't like me.
Her: "Oh...I can understand that."
Me: "Yeah, the thing was...at one point, I was convinced that we were going to get married. Like, as sure as I am that I will graduate from med school right now."
Her: "Wow!"
Me: "I didn't want to tell anyone because I was afraid they'd tell me it was impossible, improbably, or just plain crazy."
Her: "You really liked this guy!"
Me: "Told ya! I really held back with B, and every other man. I've never really liked anyone like him since...and I really don't want to."
Her: "Why?"
Me: "I have great potential to be a crazy woman and drive myself crazy. No one has compared to what I saw in him... I'm not sure anyone ever will. But that's okay. Because it may not have been real. I thought that he was transcending cultural norms to like someone like me. I thought he understood a bit about the history of black plight in this country with his love of socially conscious hip hop. I thought he looked thorugh my short, kinky hair and brown skin (we were the same brown) and saw me...and liked me... And that may have never been true.
[...]
"Gosh, I talk about him and I feel 19 again...crazy."
(Yes, this was a texting conversation...and yes, I write grammatically correct texts. I cannot but write everything as if I were writing a composition! I've done that since the days of AIM."
I go on to talk about why nothing happened between MQ and I...I think we may have liked each other at some point, but I didn't go forward because I was just beginning my quest to Islam my freshman year of college, and I didn't know how to not make the whole thing haram...and I didn't know what his standards were, and I was afraid of getting to close to him because I was afraid I wasn't Muslim enough...
And I told my friend that he probably did like me at that point, told his sister about it, and after our first "not-date," that's where the "You should meet Pakistani girls" comment came from, and we may have failed because neither of us thought that we really liked each other...
Which was...meant to be.
As I learned later on, if something doesn't work, it doesn't work. Neither of us would have been mature enough to carry forward, and I had to work on discovering what it meant for me to be a Muslimah, and getting a boy mixed up in that would have resulted in great confusion.
My friend also remarked how much I've grown since then. And I said, yes, it was almost 8 years ago that this all came to pass.
I also called to her attention how the attraction was not sexual at all...I told her that a lot of the physical attractiveness was secondary to my liking who he was. And that is what happened with B...besides the base attraction things, I liked and came to love the person, and any physical attraction was secondary. That's the way I operated, so to think of doing things any differently down the road didn't make sense to me.
But the remarkable thing was...after I talked about MQ, years after the last time I pined for him, years after the last time I prayed that one day, we'd be married...I forgot the pain of being alone, the pain of the dumping, which is now 10 months ago, the pain of the remembrance of B. It was irrelevant. I had a greater love, although it was a love for someone who ultimately was not really real, who effectively did not exist...
And I toyed with the thought that I'd feel this way about someone again, but in an actual relationship...I don't know, but even if not...I've felt more strongly about someone than B, and got over it completely. It took years, but I did. Ten months out and I almost have to be reminded of B's last name. I loved him not nearly as much. I'll be fine.
So, instead of a year in review, because a lot has happened but it's been stained by the memory of a man whose actions do not deserve to be remembered, I will do this incident in review, this love in review, the love of an imagined man that I modeled off of a friend, a love unparalleled whose aftermath I never want to live again, a love that was so hard to get over and give up for never again, but a love that I've thrived so well without time and time again.
And so shall be every other love I live in this life.
So many people like to say we are born alone and we die alone. I don't like that. We are born surrounded by our mother, literally, at the very least, and without the early love of that mother or a caregiver to feed us at the very least when we could not feed ourselves, we wouldn't live to die. And many do not die alone. It just doesn't feel right. We are born by the grace of God and surrounded by God, and we die by His leave and return even closer to Him. I have felt lonely without the physical or emotional presence of another but I've never been alone.
God was with me as I was a silly 20-year-old girl crying over a man who would never love me, a love that would never be. God saw me through to be the 26-year-old woman I am now, who never cried herself to sleep over a love that was not to be again.
God is with me now, and will be with me this new Gregorian calendar year, 2012.
Happy New Year.
Hah! After I try to invite more men to read my site, I launch into an altogether more girly topic. Oh well.
I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday, and somehow, we got on the topic of my college crush, MQ. As if I haven't exhausted the subject of that then-boy now-man for my entire lifetime, what with the hundreds of pages of journal entries I've written about him, the obsessive thinking about him my sophomore year fading to the daily praying for him during Ramadan 2005. MQ, also known as MTQ, is the basis for the character Mo in my story, A Rose Much Desired, and is renamed Sadiq in my essay in Love, InshAllah. How I felt about him was so adeptly characterized by Djavan in "Doidice" that I listened to that song over and over again the spring of my first year of medical school.
Me apaixonei? Talvez, pode ser...
I wrote a poem in one sitting the first time I got a whiff that we would never be. I still remember most of it. "I wish I would not melt into you, my oblivious haunter, as you whisper to me of Some Enchanted Evening that exists not in reality but it's alternate..."
I didn't memorize it. I lived it. It was so real for so long it went without saying.
But my friend had never heard the whole story. At the time I met her, I was still embarrassed by the details. I was embarrassed that a big girl like me could have fallen so hard for someone who in real life did not completely exist as I'd imagined them. But time has passed and he's been married for some time and I've since been in a relationship of my own and I finally felt at liberty to describe him.
And it was amazing, I think one of the most beautiful experiences of the year for me of many more.
I usually do year retrospectives, but doing a retrospective of a year that began happily and then ended in a confusing and terribly disappointing breakup, a year that was unfortunately stained by that incident although everything else in the year was excellent...just seemed a bit depressing. I ended up thinking of B and crying really hard the other day as I thought of all I had hoped we would be, what we were, what we realistically could have been, my loneliness.
But I told my friend, I didn't even love B as much as I loved MQ. And, as she is wont to do, she asked why.
I hadn't thought about it in a while. In fact, my editors for "The Hybrid Dance" asked me to expand on what it was about Sadiq that I liked, and I felt embarrassed because, at the time, it didn't seem like enough...
But then I described MQ to her, and what it was about him...and it all seemed plain to me.
We were talking about B.
Her: "It's good that you didn't get swallowed in because some can't see through the pain, sadness, disappointment..."
Me: "No, did that once when I wasn't even in a relationship. Didn't even touch the man. Took me three years to get over him. A 280-page novel with a character based on him... For as much as I came to love B, I dind't love anyone like MQ, for whatever reason."
Her: "Hmm...do you ever wonder why?"
Me: "No. I know why. I loved the idea of MQ, perhaps who he wasn't. I knew B...I never idealized him."
Her: "Why did you love the idea of him? Could it have been anyone? Or was there something about him in particular?" (My friend asks a lot of questions)
Me: "No, just him... I liked him because he seemed to like me. And it seemed so unlikely that this guy liked me, and he was so unlike anyone I'd met before...I was fascinated by him. I mean, now, I know tons of Indian guys who like hip hop and R&B, so it's no longer a novelty."
Her: "Hahahaha."
Me: "Haha, but I read so much into it at the time. I mean, he was also Muslim, funny...he was different."
Her: "What do you mean by different?"
Me: "He was unlike any guy I met at the time. He was loud and boisterous, had a great sense of humor, he was like, over 6 feet but he was a teddy bear. He loved kids... But at the same time, he cursed a lot and had a quick temper... He was loud and awkward. He was a cutester, although his face was not that attractive to me... I liked how he talked to me, related to me... He told me that I amazed him... How awesome I was, how smart I was..."
Her: "Awwwww."
Me: "He always assured me that everything was going to be alright... [I] wasn't as happy as I was with him until B."
Her: "Were you two pretty close?"
Me: "Umm, after the summer after my freshman year, not really. I once went 5 months without seeing him. But I thought about him every day, almost every 10 minutes my sophomore year after that summer. Cried many nights to sleep, and cried myself awake on the last day of the semester when I realized we would never be. I wanted to be everything he wanted, and I sought to find out what he wanted. It became an obsession, for sure."
Her: "Did you tell anyone?"
Me: "I talked to no one about it. I didn't have a friend close enough to talk to about it..."
Her: "What about [your best friend]?"
Me: "A little bit. She knew the most about it, for sure...but after the first semester of sophomore year, I didn't tell her anything else. I never told anyone the depth of it. I was afraid."
Her: "Afraid of what?"
Me: "I was afraid they'd tell me I was crazy, that he never really liked me, that I needed to get over it."
Her: "Did you ever consider telling him your feelings?"
Me: "I did tell him...halfway. I told him I liked him back that summer after my freshman year...by email...after I graduated. He told me he had no idea I liked him, and nothing more...that he was flattered. And every year thereafter, he's told me happy birthday on facebook. Probably this was the last year, since he's doing residency."
Her: "Did you think about doing it earlier and in person?"
Me: "No, I never wanted to do it in person...I didn't want to if it were possible he didn't like me.
Her: "Oh...I can understand that."
Me: "Yeah, the thing was...at one point, I was convinced that we were going to get married. Like, as sure as I am that I will graduate from med school right now."
Her: "Wow!"
Me: "I didn't want to tell anyone because I was afraid they'd tell me it was impossible, improbably, or just plain crazy."
Her: "You really liked this guy!"
Me: "Told ya! I really held back with B, and every other man. I've never really liked anyone like him since...and I really don't want to."
Her: "Why?"
Me: "I have great potential to be a crazy woman and drive myself crazy. No one has compared to what I saw in him... I'm not sure anyone ever will. But that's okay. Because it may not have been real. I thought that he was transcending cultural norms to like someone like me. I thought he understood a bit about the history of black plight in this country with his love of socially conscious hip hop. I thought he looked thorugh my short, kinky hair and brown skin (we were the same brown) and saw me...and liked me... And that may have never been true.
[...]
"Gosh, I talk about him and I feel 19 again...crazy."
(Yes, this was a texting conversation...and yes, I write grammatically correct texts. I cannot but write everything as if I were writing a composition! I've done that since the days of AIM."
I go on to talk about why nothing happened between MQ and I...I think we may have liked each other at some point, but I didn't go forward because I was just beginning my quest to Islam my freshman year of college, and I didn't know how to not make the whole thing haram...and I didn't know what his standards were, and I was afraid of getting to close to him because I was afraid I wasn't Muslim enough...
And I told my friend that he probably did like me at that point, told his sister about it, and after our first "not-date," that's where the "You should meet Pakistani girls" comment came from, and we may have failed because neither of us thought that we really liked each other...
Which was...meant to be.
As I learned later on, if something doesn't work, it doesn't work. Neither of us would have been mature enough to carry forward, and I had to work on discovering what it meant for me to be a Muslimah, and getting a boy mixed up in that would have resulted in great confusion.
My friend also remarked how much I've grown since then. And I said, yes, it was almost 8 years ago that this all came to pass.
I also called to her attention how the attraction was not sexual at all...I told her that a lot of the physical attractiveness was secondary to my liking who he was. And that is what happened with B...besides the base attraction things, I liked and came to love the person, and any physical attraction was secondary. That's the way I operated, so to think of doing things any differently down the road didn't make sense to me.
But the remarkable thing was...after I talked about MQ, years after the last time I pined for him, years after the last time I prayed that one day, we'd be married...I forgot the pain of being alone, the pain of the dumping, which is now 10 months ago, the pain of the remembrance of B. It was irrelevant. I had a greater love, although it was a love for someone who ultimately was not really real, who effectively did not exist...
And I toyed with the thought that I'd feel this way about someone again, but in an actual relationship...I don't know, but even if not...I've felt more strongly about someone than B, and got over it completely. It took years, but I did. Ten months out and I almost have to be reminded of B's last name. I loved him not nearly as much. I'll be fine.
So, instead of a year in review, because a lot has happened but it's been stained by the memory of a man whose actions do not deserve to be remembered, I will do this incident in review, this love in review, the love of an imagined man that I modeled off of a friend, a love unparalleled whose aftermath I never want to live again, a love that was so hard to get over and give up for never again, but a love that I've thrived so well without time and time again.
And so shall be every other love I live in this life.
So many people like to say we are born alone and we die alone. I don't like that. We are born surrounded by our mother, literally, at the very least, and without the early love of that mother or a caregiver to feed us at the very least when we could not feed ourselves, we wouldn't live to die. And many do not die alone. It just doesn't feel right. We are born by the grace of God and surrounded by God, and we die by His leave and return even closer to Him. I have felt lonely without the physical or emotional presence of another but I've never been alone.
God was with me as I was a silly 20-year-old girl crying over a man who would never love me, a love that would never be. God saw me through to be the 26-year-old woman I am now, who never cried herself to sleep over a love that was not to be again.
God is with me now, and will be with me this new Gregorian calendar year, 2012.
Happy New Year.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Representing Muslims
As salaam alaikum,
So, if you're reading this, I encourage you to go back and read my last two entry series, especially Single Invisible Muslimah, but Paradigm is also cool, too. It's all about recognizing that I'm more myself than I have ever been and how to love the stage that I'm in. For the longest, the latter especially was easier said than done, but I always felt like there was an answer, and if not an answer, a more correct way of seeing things. No one seemed to have the answer. No one can arrive at the answer but you, however, especially if no one else can quite understand where you're coming from but you.
I've been under and incredible amount of peace this entire week after I had these two realizations...epiphanies, if you will. It's not that there haven't been times when I've been lonely or been surrounded by married people. I just go back as frequently as I need to what I wrote and it reminds me of how I've reshaped my paradigm and come to accept (and am growing to love) my time as a single Muslimah.
In other news, there's been big uproar in the virtual Muslim community about TLC's "All-American Muslim." A lot of Muslims feel shortchanged, that they are not represented...from levels of practice to ethnic groups. I can't say I'm surprised at how Muslims are represented on that show (shhh...I haven't watched narry an episode!). First of all, if they're sticking to Dearborn, MI, yes, most Muslims in Dearborn are in fact Arab-American. The most prevalent ethnicity in Dearborn is Arab. Does it problematic to represent Muslims who are "not practicing?" It may feel polemic, but it's fair. Practicing Muslims need to recognize that, for as much as one tries to represent the "ideal" face of Islam, there are others who are presenting a face that is more in-line with the secular ideal of nominal religiousness. They've got as much of a right to identify as Muslim as practicing Muslims do.
I believe that, starting with college MSAs and going on up, the MSAs are often only open for the most practicing and learned of Muslims. Like, when I joined the MSA, I was having to relearn the Arabic for salat. I didn't know what tajweed was. I hadn't read through the entire Qur'an in English yet. I felt out of place because they were sprinkling their speech with Arabic words I didn't know and explaining what the words meant as if everyone who didn't understand what the words meant were not Muslim.
We're all in different stages. A Muslim does not become relevant only after he or she attains a certain number of completed prayers, a certain number of Ramadans, a certain amount of understanding of the Qur'an and Sunnah. No. But some of our strongest Muslim organizations do not allow space for such Muslims, unless the Muslim transforms to this face of what they expect Muslims to be.
And at the end of our lives, we may not all be in the same stage, but that doesn't mean we were not Muslim, one who submits to God, because by nature of us being human beings, we will never be those who perfectly submit to God. God is the one who will judge us on that in which we differ.
And my thing is now, you don't see yourself represented on television or movies? Represent yourself! My hero in this is Qasim Basir, who is the writer and director of MOOZ-lum, an ambitious, semi-autobiographical film about a young black Muslim man who struggles with the demons of his past -- an authoritarian father and a religious school where one of the headmasters physically abused him -- while being introduced to the secular world of teenage revelry at college. It represented black Muslims seemlessly, not ever making an issue of them being black and therefore the minority, while alluding to their black nationalist history. There was a lot going on in the film that could have been compartmentalized, but I liked it because it reminded me of RMD.
If brother Basir can represent himself in his films, I can represent myself. I can't speak for other black Muslims, but my voice will be out there.
I think I'm going to give it some time, and then I'll rewrite RMD. A lot of stuff is kind of stylized and abstract that I think I'm going to make more concrete...I'm no longer afraid of doing so. We'll see.
And then there's the anthology...
We can be represented! We can represent ourselves! Will it be as mainstream as a TLC show? Maybe not, but the more the voice is out there, the more people will pick up on it.
I am very happy with who I know and who I am. I am very happy that I have access to both Muslim and non-Muslim circles, because I know for sure that I have introduced more non-Muslims to Islamic principles than they otherwise would have known, because either their other Muslim friends are nominal or they are so religious that they avoid hanging out with non-Muslims. My experience as a Muslim, because of my associations, will be different than others, but it is rich, it is my own, and as the book I'm reading states, I Speak for Myself.
Non-Muslims, Muslims are not all the same. Muslims, Muslims are not all the same. And especially to the Muslims...now that you recognize the levels of practice there is within the actual Muslim community, which extends beyond the imagined ummah, what are you going to do? Are you going to ignore these Muslims, say they don't represent "true" Muslims, reach out to these Muslims, try to be more inclusive and invest in social programs that would help these Muslims find a firmer footing in their religion?
Now that we've met each other, what are we going to do?
Hehehe...
Now that we've found love, what are we gonna do...with it?
I realize this was an O'Jays song, but the sample is hot. RIP Heavy D.
Muslims!We diverge! We're different! We're progressive, we're conservative, we're everything in between. Let's speak for ourselves, represent who we are, show how wonderfully diverse we are in our preferences, our likes, our dislikes, our practice, while most of us are in line with the unity of God. You want to see yourself represented? Be the one to do it!
And then you'll represent so many more of your other brothers and sisters!
So, if you're reading this, I encourage you to go back and read my last two entry series, especially Single Invisible Muslimah, but Paradigm is also cool, too. It's all about recognizing that I'm more myself than I have ever been and how to love the stage that I'm in. For the longest, the latter especially was easier said than done, but I always felt like there was an answer, and if not an answer, a more correct way of seeing things. No one seemed to have the answer. No one can arrive at the answer but you, however, especially if no one else can quite understand where you're coming from but you.
I've been under and incredible amount of peace this entire week after I had these two realizations...epiphanies, if you will. It's not that there haven't been times when I've been lonely or been surrounded by married people. I just go back as frequently as I need to what I wrote and it reminds me of how I've reshaped my paradigm and come to accept (and am growing to love) my time as a single Muslimah.
In other news, there's been big uproar in the virtual Muslim community about TLC's "All-American Muslim." A lot of Muslims feel shortchanged, that they are not represented...from levels of practice to ethnic groups. I can't say I'm surprised at how Muslims are represented on that show (shhh...I haven't watched narry an episode!). First of all, if they're sticking to Dearborn, MI, yes, most Muslims in Dearborn are in fact Arab-American. The most prevalent ethnicity in Dearborn is Arab. Does it problematic to represent Muslims who are "not practicing?" It may feel polemic, but it's fair. Practicing Muslims need to recognize that, for as much as one tries to represent the "ideal" face of Islam, there are others who are presenting a face that is more in-line with the secular ideal of nominal religiousness. They've got as much of a right to identify as Muslim as practicing Muslims do.
I believe that, starting with college MSAs and going on up, the MSAs are often only open for the most practicing and learned of Muslims. Like, when I joined the MSA, I was having to relearn the Arabic for salat. I didn't know what tajweed was. I hadn't read through the entire Qur'an in English yet. I felt out of place because they were sprinkling their speech with Arabic words I didn't know and explaining what the words meant as if everyone who didn't understand what the words meant were not Muslim.
We're all in different stages. A Muslim does not become relevant only after he or she attains a certain number of completed prayers, a certain number of Ramadans, a certain amount of understanding of the Qur'an and Sunnah. No. But some of our strongest Muslim organizations do not allow space for such Muslims, unless the Muslim transforms to this face of what they expect Muslims to be.
And at the end of our lives, we may not all be in the same stage, but that doesn't mean we were not Muslim, one who submits to God, because by nature of us being human beings, we will never be those who perfectly submit to God. God is the one who will judge us on that in which we differ.
And my thing is now, you don't see yourself represented on television or movies? Represent yourself! My hero in this is Qasim Basir, who is the writer and director of MOOZ-lum, an ambitious, semi-autobiographical film about a young black Muslim man who struggles with the demons of his past -- an authoritarian father and a religious school where one of the headmasters physically abused him -- while being introduced to the secular world of teenage revelry at college. It represented black Muslims seemlessly, not ever making an issue of them being black and therefore the minority, while alluding to their black nationalist history. There was a lot going on in the film that could have been compartmentalized, but I liked it because it reminded me of RMD.
If brother Basir can represent himself in his films, I can represent myself. I can't speak for other black Muslims, but my voice will be out there.
I think I'm going to give it some time, and then I'll rewrite RMD. A lot of stuff is kind of stylized and abstract that I think I'm going to make more concrete...I'm no longer afraid of doing so. We'll see.
And then there's the anthology...
We can be represented! We can represent ourselves! Will it be as mainstream as a TLC show? Maybe not, but the more the voice is out there, the more people will pick up on it.
I am very happy with who I know and who I am. I am very happy that I have access to both Muslim and non-Muslim circles, because I know for sure that I have introduced more non-Muslims to Islamic principles than they otherwise would have known, because either their other Muslim friends are nominal or they are so religious that they avoid hanging out with non-Muslims. My experience as a Muslim, because of my associations, will be different than others, but it is rich, it is my own, and as the book I'm reading states, I Speak for Myself.
Non-Muslims, Muslims are not all the same. Muslims, Muslims are not all the same. And especially to the Muslims...now that you recognize the levels of practice there is within the actual Muslim community, which extends beyond the imagined ummah, what are you going to do? Are you going to ignore these Muslims, say they don't represent "true" Muslims, reach out to these Muslims, try to be more inclusive and invest in social programs that would help these Muslims find a firmer footing in their religion?
Now that we've met each other, what are we going to do?
Hehehe...
Now that we've found love, what are we gonna do...with it?
I realize this was an O'Jays song, but the sample is hot. RIP Heavy D.
Muslims!We diverge! We're different! We're progressive, we're conservative, we're everything in between. Let's speak for ourselves, represent who we are, show how wonderfully diverse we are in our preferences, our likes, our dislikes, our practice, while most of us are in line with the unity of God. You want to see yourself represented? Be the one to do it!
And then you'll represent so many more of your other brothers and sisters!
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Single Invisible Muslimah, Part I
As salaam alaikum,
I don't know how I missed this article at AltMuslimah...it's totally what I needed to read, always.
"[...] as a community, we are so focused on grooming our women to be wives and mothers that we lose sight of the fact that this is not even our number one role.
"Servitude to Allah (swt) is our number one role. We need to use what He has given us, the means that we have at the moment we have, to worship Him in the best of ways."
Preach it, Sister! See the full article here: Wifehood and Motherhood not only ways to paradise.
This paragraph was also encouraging:
"God, in His Wisdom, has created each one of us differently and in different circumstances. Some recognize this, love any stage they are in, and develop their abilities to the fullest. Let us, too, use the time and abilities God has given us to maximize our worship to Him and work for the betterment of society and humanity as a whole. If wifehood or motherhood comes in the process, then at least we were using all of our ability to worship Him before it came and can continue to use the training and stamina we gained before marriage to worship Him with excellence once it comes along."
Ameen, sis!
The article starts out with a Muslimah aimlessly making her way through college, really just buying time until she finds a husband and marries so she can have children. In my heart of hearts, I felt like this was me.
No one else sees me this way, and when I talk this way, it seems incongruous with who I actually am.
I am the 12-year-old girl who helped her mother copy articles for her Auntie Florence's dissertation in Nigeria and aspired someday to attend graduate school. I am the 12-year-old girl that, in researching careers, was choosing not only between medicine and architecture, but considered specifically the specialty of OB/GYN. I am the 13-year-old girl who took two math classes in middle school so she could be in the advanced science-math track. I am the 15-year-old girl who participated in a conference and initiative to try to address the achievement gap with black American students. I am the 18-year-old girl who graduated in the top 5% of her high school class after taking 7 AP tests, all 4s and 5s, and had gotten into all of the colleges she applied to with a full tuition scholarship to the one she would eventually attend. I am the 17-year-old girl who definitively embraced Islam and decided to become more practicing once in college.
I am the 18-year-old girl who entered college toying with the idea of becoming an MD/PhD, focusing on genetics. I am the 18-year-old girl who fasted Ramadan for the first time. I am the 19-year-old girl that started to develop her social consciousness and the idea of entering medicine as a service career, serving Allah (swt) through serving fellow human being. I am the 19-year-old girl who found a dream medical school and began to develop myself in college to be able to gain admission there. I am the 19-year-old girl who decided to double major in Cellular and Molecular biology and Spanish. I am the 20-year-old girl who juggled her double major, working in the lab, volunteering in the Children's hospital, tutoring students in Spanish and helping Latino children and adults increase their literacy all the while delving into Islam head-first. I am the 21-year-old girl who began wearing the khimar, traveled abroad for the first time and applied to medical school all in the same year. I am the 22-year-old girl who graduated with a 3.9 and accepted admission at Harvard Medical School with aspirations to attain her MPH.
I am the 22-year-old woman who made the very hard decision to shed the khimar and find alternative ways to assume her Muslim identity.
I am the 22-year-old girl who thrived upon entering medical school. I am the 22-year-old girl who started writing her first novel, A Rose Much Desired, during anatomy class, where she sawed off a human leg. I am the 22-year-old girl who aspired to publish at least one work while in medical school. I am the 23-year-old girl who wrote her first story to be published, insha'Allah, which was renamed "The Hybrid Dance." I am the 23-year-old girl who co-directed a cultural show with her classmates that celebrated the African Diaspora and was musical director for her second year show, realizing the dreams of performance that she never allowed herself while studying through college. I am the 24-year-old woman who studied for and conquered USMLE Step 1. I am the 24-year-old woman who decided not to miss Ramadan because of tough coursework and fasted successfully through her OB/GYN rotation and still got her desired grade. I am the 25-year-old woman who survived third year of medical school. I am the 25-year-old woman who fell in love with family medicine. I am the 25-year-old woman who realized her aspiration and matriculated into the school of public health, studying family and community health and maternal child health. I am the 26-year-old woman who was an intern for a project to find solutions for homelessness of transition-age youth in Massachusetts. I am the 26-year-old woman who is applying to residency and interviewing across the country as I type this.
I am the 26-year-old woman who has made mistakes in the course of life but always has her home in Islam, alhamdulillah.
None of this is the mark of a woman who has been ambling through life, aimlessly waiting for her husband to come along. No. I don't know why I though that.
I don't generally like to lay out my life in this way, but for my own purposes, I had to. I had to slap myself in the face and see, in fact, that I've made some very purposeful decisions in my life, academic and leisure and otherwise, to achieve my goals.
As the quote above says so nicely, we are created differently and we are born into different circumstances. Some of us recognize this and love the stage we are in and develop our capabilities to the fullest. I think I recognize that we are born into different circumstances and I have developed my capabilities. What has not happened is that I have not loved the stage I am in.
I was constantly trying to be something else, be somewhere else. Thus the movement of I am more myself now than I have ever been.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
I don't know how I missed this article at AltMuslimah...it's totally what I needed to read, always.
"[...] as a community, we are so focused on grooming our women to be wives and mothers that we lose sight of the fact that this is not even our number one role.
"Servitude to Allah (swt) is our number one role. We need to use what He has given us, the means that we have at the moment we have, to worship Him in the best of ways."
Preach it, Sister! See the full article here: Wifehood and Motherhood not only ways to paradise.
This paragraph was also encouraging:
"God, in His Wisdom, has created each one of us differently and in different circumstances. Some recognize this, love any stage they are in, and develop their abilities to the fullest. Let us, too, use the time and abilities God has given us to maximize our worship to Him and work for the betterment of society and humanity as a whole. If wifehood or motherhood comes in the process, then at least we were using all of our ability to worship Him before it came and can continue to use the training and stamina we gained before marriage to worship Him with excellence once it comes along."
Ameen, sis!
The article starts out with a Muslimah aimlessly making her way through college, really just buying time until she finds a husband and marries so she can have children. In my heart of hearts, I felt like this was me.
No one else sees me this way, and when I talk this way, it seems incongruous with who I actually am.
I am the 12-year-old girl who helped her mother copy articles for her Auntie Florence's dissertation in Nigeria and aspired someday to attend graduate school. I am the 12-year-old girl that, in researching careers, was choosing not only between medicine and architecture, but considered specifically the specialty of OB/GYN. I am the 13-year-old girl who took two math classes in middle school so she could be in the advanced science-math track. I am the 15-year-old girl who participated in a conference and initiative to try to address the achievement gap with black American students. I am the 18-year-old girl who graduated in the top 5% of her high school class after taking 7 AP tests, all 4s and 5s, and had gotten into all of the colleges she applied to with a full tuition scholarship to the one she would eventually attend. I am the 17-year-old girl who definitively embraced Islam and decided to become more practicing once in college.
I am the 18-year-old girl who entered college toying with the idea of becoming an MD/PhD, focusing on genetics. I am the 18-year-old girl who fasted Ramadan for the first time. I am the 19-year-old girl that started to develop her social consciousness and the idea of entering medicine as a service career, serving Allah (swt) through serving fellow human being. I am the 19-year-old girl who found a dream medical school and began to develop myself in college to be able to gain admission there. I am the 19-year-old girl who decided to double major in Cellular and Molecular biology and Spanish. I am the 20-year-old girl who juggled her double major, working in the lab, volunteering in the Children's hospital, tutoring students in Spanish and helping Latino children and adults increase their literacy all the while delving into Islam head-first. I am the 21-year-old girl who began wearing the khimar, traveled abroad for the first time and applied to medical school all in the same year. I am the 22-year-old girl who graduated with a 3.9 and accepted admission at Harvard Medical School with aspirations to attain her MPH.
I am the 22-year-old woman who made the very hard decision to shed the khimar and find alternative ways to assume her Muslim identity.
I am the 22-year-old girl who thrived upon entering medical school. I am the 22-year-old girl who started writing her first novel, A Rose Much Desired, during anatomy class, where she sawed off a human leg. I am the 22-year-old girl who aspired to publish at least one work while in medical school. I am the 23-year-old girl who wrote her first story to be published, insha'Allah, which was renamed "The Hybrid Dance." I am the 23-year-old girl who co-directed a cultural show with her classmates that celebrated the African Diaspora and was musical director for her second year show, realizing the dreams of performance that she never allowed herself while studying through college. I am the 24-year-old woman who studied for and conquered USMLE Step 1. I am the 24-year-old woman who decided not to miss Ramadan because of tough coursework and fasted successfully through her OB/GYN rotation and still got her desired grade. I am the 25-year-old woman who survived third year of medical school. I am the 25-year-old woman who fell in love with family medicine. I am the 25-year-old woman who realized her aspiration and matriculated into the school of public health, studying family and community health and maternal child health. I am the 26-year-old woman who was an intern for a project to find solutions for homelessness of transition-age youth in Massachusetts. I am the 26-year-old woman who is applying to residency and interviewing across the country as I type this.
I am the 26-year-old woman who has made mistakes in the course of life but always has her home in Islam, alhamdulillah.
None of this is the mark of a woman who has been ambling through life, aimlessly waiting for her husband to come along. No. I don't know why I though that.
I don't generally like to lay out my life in this way, but for my own purposes, I had to. I had to slap myself in the face and see, in fact, that I've made some very purposeful decisions in my life, academic and leisure and otherwise, to achieve my goals.
As the quote above says so nicely, we are created differently and we are born into different circumstances. Some of us recognize this and love the stage we are in and develop our capabilities to the fullest. I think I recognize that we are born into different circumstances and I have developed my capabilities. What has not happened is that I have not loved the stage I am in.
I was constantly trying to be something else, be somewhere else. Thus the movement of I am more myself now than I have ever been.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Saturday, October 15, 2011
New Center of Awesomeness, Part II
As salaam alaikum,
Ahem.
So, after a year-long detour, I am resuming the construction of my Center of Awesomeness. A little over a year ago, I had given up on the chase (the chase for men) and I decided to focus on my writing projects while in public health school as the thing that I did and who I was outside of medicine.
And then, there was B.
And then, B did me wrong.
And for months, I suffered the consequences of that...
Well, no more! I'm going back to my Center of Awesomeness as my thing outside of medicine. I still have a feeling that my life is going to change sooner than I'm ready for, actually, in the relationship department, but in the meantime, I must be productive.
...because sometime earlier this year I felt light, like I knew that soon the person was coming. I had that feeling that I couldn't deny...
But I don't know when. So I'm hanging tight.
In the meantime, the Center of Awesomeness continues! I'm composing music and writing songs for my next story idea, "The Misadventures of Nisa." Insha'Allah I'll finally get to do more final edits on RMD. I'm waiting for family to read it and give me feedback...it is 280 pages long in manuscript form. I mean, it's a novel, not a short story...I don't know what they're expecting.
But yes, my writing projects will be my Center outside of medicine while I wait for God to provide me with who will be my husband so I can start my family. I don't know how long it will be, but I was told that it won't be too long.
There are a few songs I'm working on right now. They're all 80s-style songs (I Love the 80s!). The first one is the theme song, called "Anisa Taylor." It's by this recording artist who moved to the City (I think I'll make it New York) to go to performing arts school and left behind his childhood friend, Anisa. He's forming his career as a recording artist after a little while behind the scenes doing songwriting (one of the songs whose working title is "I Make Love through the Night" that I'm writing right now) and then he spots Anisa in the city. And he writes a song about what it's like to see her after 10 years. And it becomes his first hit single.
Oh yeah, it's set in the 80s. Thus the 80s theme. That'll be the hardest part to write...setting it in the 80s.
I wish there was a website or something that characterized people's diction at the time. I'll just watch 80s movies, haha.
Yeah, I'm writing a campy musical. But it's fun! Composing music is a lot of fun! I love listening to what I have so far of "Anisa Taylor," the theme song. It's great to listen to in headphones.
So yes, this is, again, my new Center of Awesomeness. And I'll be doggone if, within days of writing this, someone else comes along...because that's what happened last time. But I doubt it. I don't feel it in the air like last time. My goal is to compose these songs by the end of the year...
...while studying and going on interviews for residency, of course. :-D
So on the block for the upcoming year...The Misadventures of Nisa, RMD (hopefully), the publication of "The Hybrid Dance," and maybe a new story idea.
As for a preview, all I have to say is...
Nisa, Na-na-na-na-nisa, Na-na-na-na-nisa! :)
Ahem.
So, after a year-long detour, I am resuming the construction of my Center of Awesomeness. A little over a year ago, I had given up on the chase (the chase for men) and I decided to focus on my writing projects while in public health school as the thing that I did and who I was outside of medicine.
And then, there was B.
And then, B did me wrong.
And for months, I suffered the consequences of that...
Well, no more! I'm going back to my Center of Awesomeness as my thing outside of medicine. I still have a feeling that my life is going to change sooner than I'm ready for, actually, in the relationship department, but in the meantime, I must be productive.
...because sometime earlier this year I felt light, like I knew that soon the person was coming. I had that feeling that I couldn't deny...
But I don't know when. So I'm hanging tight.
In the meantime, the Center of Awesomeness continues! I'm composing music and writing songs for my next story idea, "The Misadventures of Nisa." Insha'Allah I'll finally get to do more final edits on RMD. I'm waiting for family to read it and give me feedback...it is 280 pages long in manuscript form. I mean, it's a novel, not a short story...I don't know what they're expecting.
But yes, my writing projects will be my Center outside of medicine while I wait for God to provide me with who will be my husband so I can start my family. I don't know how long it will be, but I was told that it won't be too long.
There are a few songs I'm working on right now. They're all 80s-style songs (I Love the 80s!). The first one is the theme song, called "Anisa Taylor." It's by this recording artist who moved to the City (I think I'll make it New York) to go to performing arts school and left behind his childhood friend, Anisa. He's forming his career as a recording artist after a little while behind the scenes doing songwriting (one of the songs whose working title is "I Make Love through the Night" that I'm writing right now) and then he spots Anisa in the city. And he writes a song about what it's like to see her after 10 years. And it becomes his first hit single.
Oh yeah, it's set in the 80s. Thus the 80s theme. That'll be the hardest part to write...setting it in the 80s.
I wish there was a website or something that characterized people's diction at the time. I'll just watch 80s movies, haha.
Yeah, I'm writing a campy musical. But it's fun! Composing music is a lot of fun! I love listening to what I have so far of "Anisa Taylor," the theme song. It's great to listen to in headphones.
So yes, this is, again, my new Center of Awesomeness. And I'll be doggone if, within days of writing this, someone else comes along...because that's what happened last time. But I doubt it. I don't feel it in the air like last time. My goal is to compose these songs by the end of the year...
...while studying and going on interviews for residency, of course. :-D
So on the block for the upcoming year...The Misadventures of Nisa, RMD (hopefully), the publication of "The Hybrid Dance," and maybe a new story idea.
As for a preview, all I have to say is...
Nisa, Na-na-na-na-nisa, Na-na-na-na-nisa! :)
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
26 / It's a Thin Line
As salaam alaikum,
Happy birthday to me! I'm twweeeennttty-three...plus three. :)
Okay, so yes, I'm 26. Twenty-six. Veinte seis. Vinte seis.
When I turned 25, for about three months leading up to it, I lamented the meaning of the year for me, my becoming older, more adult, exiting the 15-24 youth demographic for good (yes). But so many good things happened to me during this past year, I mean, alhamdulillah!
No more doom and gloom, I can look at 26 with a lot more optimism. In spite of myself and what experience I now have under my belt, arguably I have become more idealistic than I have been in past years. I have a better vision of what I want for my life and all I want to achieve. Whereas I said with my lips or in my head, maybe, before that anything is possible in God's world, I now believe it to be true. With one more year marking one more year of experience, of knowledge of the evil that is rampant in the world, perpetuated by the beings that God created to inhabit it, with a greater awareness of atrocity and injustice...I look back in the mirror at myself, alive, bright eyed and invigorated.
The implicit loss of innocence with age and experience does not weigh on my soul as I thought it would. Instead, it makes more real, more alive to possibilities to make right what is wrong and is in my power, to work together with others who I'm discovering share my ever-developing vision and fulfill the purpose of my life. It's made me more adventurous, more gutsy, more willing to err in order to learn, in order to consider myself, as I always was before, among the truly repentant.
Except now, everything is more real to me, because I understand more its nature, and I understand more the actual process of life.
So, in summary...(wry smile)...26 is like I've aged back a little bit. It's like I turned 24 from 25 and will be going backwards. It is enlightened, it is innocent and starkly aware even more of this innocence, the persistence of this innocence always, if protected. Twenty-six is like my first birthday as a real adult, if I hijack that 15-24 youth demographic designation and launch into 25-44. I feel like I'm new again, it's my first birthday again, and as someone no longer clinging to a emotionally turbulent but necessary adolescence, I can move forward to be actually who I've always wanted to be.
Insha'Allah.
But it's a thin line. What's a thin line? Sigh.
I logged on to FB to see all of the people who left me birthday wishes on my wall. A lot of people have. And I know, as someone who scans to see who's had a birthday on facebook and sends out messages based on that (albeit personal messages), this is no big issue.
However, and unfortunately so, I was softened when I saw that MTQ had left me a happy birthday wish.
I had to step back like, errrkkk, what's going on with this? I have B now (though he has yet to tell me happy birthday...not that I'm keeping track, but my dentist office told me happy birthday before he did...they sent a cute e-card and everything! It made me want to set up a dentist appointment when I go home in a month...but I digress). I am happy. MTQ is history, only to be revived as the character Sadiq in "A Man's Hands," and as the basis of Mo in A Rose Much Desired. Heh.
So why did I soften? Why was I happy that he has kept up the annual tradition since I told him that I liked him by email after I had graduated college and was sure I was never going to see him again? Because it's true...he didn't tell me happy birthday on facebook (though we've been facebook friends for the same period that we've been friend friends) before I told him that I used to like him...back in the day...
And the answer is...it's a thin line. What, between love and hate? No...a thin line between forgetting and not forgetting, between importance and insignificance. Misguided as it was, and as much as I realize what real love and an actual relationship is now, and as much as he is sho-nuff married now...he's still going to make me smile. He's still going to be somehow special to me. That's it, flat out, end of story, boom.
And I think the more and the sooner I realize that, the sooner I'll desist with the self-floggings.
Seriously. Yes, I'm with B, and he's awesome and here. He fits more into my life, we're both grown folks so we know more what we're doing and what we want. That's excellent. But a first love(-ish...if I don't count, you know, the loves of childhood) is always going to be that. The memories of good times, the memories of imagined significance, and the overall good person that MTQ actually is.
It made me smile that he still made an effort to wish me a happy birthday, and that he has for the past three years, even when belated.
Es tan corto el amor, y tan largo el olvido.
Because you'll never forget. And old habits (of thought) die hard.
Happy birthday to me! I'm twweeeennttty-three...plus three. :)
Okay, so yes, I'm 26. Twenty-six. Veinte seis. Vinte seis.
When I turned 25, for about three months leading up to it, I lamented the meaning of the year for me, my becoming older, more adult, exiting the 15-24 youth demographic for good (yes). But so many good things happened to me during this past year, I mean, alhamdulillah!
No more doom and gloom, I can look at 26 with a lot more optimism. In spite of myself and what experience I now have under my belt, arguably I have become more idealistic than I have been in past years. I have a better vision of what I want for my life and all I want to achieve. Whereas I said with my lips or in my head, maybe, before that anything is possible in God's world, I now believe it to be true. With one more year marking one more year of experience, of knowledge of the evil that is rampant in the world, perpetuated by the beings that God created to inhabit it, with a greater awareness of atrocity and injustice...I look back in the mirror at myself, alive, bright eyed and invigorated.
The implicit loss of innocence with age and experience does not weigh on my soul as I thought it would. Instead, it makes more real, more alive to possibilities to make right what is wrong and is in my power, to work together with others who I'm discovering share my ever-developing vision and fulfill the purpose of my life. It's made me more adventurous, more gutsy, more willing to err in order to learn, in order to consider myself, as I always was before, among the truly repentant.
Except now, everything is more real to me, because I understand more its nature, and I understand more the actual process of life.
So, in summary...(wry smile)...26 is like I've aged back a little bit. It's like I turned 24 from 25 and will be going backwards. It is enlightened, it is innocent and starkly aware even more of this innocence, the persistence of this innocence always, if protected. Twenty-six is like my first birthday as a real adult, if I hijack that 15-24 youth demographic designation and launch into 25-44. I feel like I'm new again, it's my first birthday again, and as someone no longer clinging to a emotionally turbulent but necessary adolescence, I can move forward to be actually who I've always wanted to be.
Insha'Allah.
But it's a thin line. What's a thin line? Sigh.
I logged on to FB to see all of the people who left me birthday wishes on my wall. A lot of people have. And I know, as someone who scans to see who's had a birthday on facebook and sends out messages based on that (albeit personal messages), this is no big issue.
However, and unfortunately so, I was softened when I saw that MTQ had left me a happy birthday wish.
I had to step back like, errrkkk, what's going on with this? I have B now (though he has yet to tell me happy birthday...not that I'm keeping track, but my dentist office told me happy birthday before he did...they sent a cute e-card and everything! It made me want to set up a dentist appointment when I go home in a month...but I digress). I am happy. MTQ is history, only to be revived as the character Sadiq in "A Man's Hands," and as the basis of Mo in A Rose Much Desired. Heh.
So why did I soften? Why was I happy that he has kept up the annual tradition since I told him that I liked him by email after I had graduated college and was sure I was never going to see him again? Because it's true...he didn't tell me happy birthday on facebook (though we've been facebook friends for the same period that we've been friend friends) before I told him that I used to like him...back in the day...
And the answer is...it's a thin line. What, between love and hate? No...a thin line between forgetting and not forgetting, between importance and insignificance. Misguided as it was, and as much as I realize what real love and an actual relationship is now, and as much as he is sho-nuff married now...he's still going to make me smile. He's still going to be somehow special to me. That's it, flat out, end of story, boom.
And I think the more and the sooner I realize that, the sooner I'll desist with the self-floggings.
Seriously. Yes, I'm with B, and he's awesome and here. He fits more into my life, we're both grown folks so we know more what we're doing and what we want. That's excellent. But a first love(-ish...if I don't count, you know, the loves of childhood) is always going to be that. The memories of good times, the memories of imagined significance, and the overall good person that MTQ actually is.
It made me smile that he still made an effort to wish me a happy birthday, and that he has for the past three years, even when belated.
Es tan corto el amor, y tan largo el olvido.
Because you'll never forget. And old habits (of thought) die hard.
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