[uncensored]: Ode to the Brothers

As salaam alaikum,

Allah (swt) has truly blessed me with a phenomenal farewell to Boston. I've made family and lifelong friends here, I've made connections here that I'll insha'Allah take with me for the rest of my professional life. This last month has been deliciously long, filled with conferences on Islam, concerts and plays (oh my!). I've had get togethers with friends that I won't see in a while, got to watch the Boston Marathon for the first time (first year, I was a nerd and stayed in class...all other years, I was unable to due to boards studying, rotations or public health school...so this was exciting). I've embarked on a weight loss journey that has me more fit and healthy than I think I've ever been, and I'm making connections for my move to Seattle. In all, alhamdulillah, it's been a great thing!

There are so many other things I want to blog about...the Expressions of Islam in Contemporary African American Communities conference, Esperanza Spalding's lovely concert at the Orpheum Theatre, seeing Fela! (finally) at Cutler Theatre after missing the show on Broadway a little over a year ago...

I'll talk about one thing, rather...one song. "Black Gold." This is my ode to the brothers...maybe moreso the brother brothers, if you know what I mean, but maybe it applies to more.

I was randomly searching for Esperanza Spalding songs to listen to on youtube when I came across a newly uploaded song from her then, yet unreleased album, Radio Music Society. The song was entitled "Black Gold." I'll put the video below:






As I watched the scene unfold with the two young black boys and their doting, attentive father, I started crying. No joke, I really did. It's such a beautiful video because I realize that it's an image that I rarely see...a black father with his sons.

There was another similar commercial that I think may have been a commercial for fabric softener, toilet tissue, something...showing a black father embracing his son after he came out of the tub.

And the message of this song is truly important. I hate youtube comments, because it's troll city, but some of those folks watching the video...truly don't get it. Probably the same folks that didn't even wonder why the only black kid in class, from the time they were in elementary school, was always getting disciplinary action...name on the board, standing on the wall at recess, put out of the class, detention, expulsion.

They figure that it's just that blacks need to get over being victims. Slavery was a long time ago and should not be blamed for our drug and violence problems, and that 1 in 4 of the black male population ends up in prison at some point in their lives is their own fault.

The problem is that slavery was not over in 1865 for everyone as the Emancipation Proclamation did not mean everything to slave owners at the time, Reconstruction never happened, blacks were never transitioned into free living, and racism remained institutionalized for some time. Oh yeah, and sharecropping? Not that far from slavery.

Slavery may be "far" away, but Jim Crow was not as far away and Redlining happened really recently. Redlining was particularly genius, and if it wasn't thought up by some evil mastermind, I'm sure they would want to assume credit. It's part of the reason that the average wealth (not income, but assets, including home equity) for white Americans is around $12,000 and that for black Americans is, like, $45. I can't remember the exact figure, but yes. Redlining, of all of the institutionalized racist practices of yore, I think has the most impact on us still, because of the impact on our wealth, the property values of the places where we now historically live, the quality of our school systems and the safety of our neighborhoods. And racism is now.

I may be leftist, but I do not remove personal responsibility from the equation. Just to let you know, though, the bootstrap theory is bullshit for the many who were systematically denied the bootstraps to pull up on...

But anyway...I digress...

This is an ode to the brothers. I also thought about this after listening to an Amir Sulaiman poem telling the young men, "We love you." How often do we say that to young black boys and to our young men? Not, "I love you, but you are..." but just an, "I love you?"

So, in her concert, Esperanza talked about how, as a young black girl (mixed girl) in Portland, OR, beautiful young college students used to come to her classroom and tell her how she'd grow to be a strong, black woman. And she appreciated this, but always wondered why there wasn't something for the boys...

And by the boys, she meant the black boys. I like how she didn't feel the need to clarify. Because while females need to be empowered, and black females especially need to be empowered...so do black men.

I mean, 1 in 4 spend time in prison. Do we turn our backs, or do we recognize our boys need help?

I love you.

There, I don't say this often, not even to my parents, so...yes, I do. I love you all. I love you as the other half of God's creation, sons of Adam, who the angels bow before, knower of the names of all things.

Satan scorns us in envy and keeps trying to keep us down, down from the state God promised us we'd return.

I love you like the boys I grew up with, from Daryll, my first grade crush whose shoulder I slept on alternately all the way to Greenfield Village on the bus one field trip, to Earnest, the class clown who I laughed with, but only on the inside.

I love you for the potential I've seen in all of the men that I've loved, because a little bit of it is there in all of you.

I love you so much, yeah, I am hard on men sometimes. I'm hard on you all of the time. I know it's because you are the focus of my quest for partnership, but I also know it because...I know how great you can be, if you just faced your fears and tried to be. If you had the role models to show you how to be. If someone would stop taking the tools from your hands and allow you to be. If you just try to be.

You don't know how beautiful you are. From a shy smile when you think no one's looking to the lines, angles and contours of your frame when you lean over, attentively, and the furrow of your brow. You don't know how much more beautiful you would be if you employed your tenor, baritone or bass to speak truth, wisdom, or even the naivete of a student enthralled in learning, trying to know...a student of anything, of philosophy, of medicine, of parenting, of husbanding, of the deen, of loving, of law.

I love you for what you are. I love you for all you can be. I don't know what I can do to change your situation, to ease your ills, as a woman that a male role model, father figure, coach, whatever, couldn't do better. But I guess my love and support is what I can give.

You are appreciated, and this is my ode to you.

Because being a man in this society does not afford the same privilege across racial boundaries, the cursed social construct that race is. Race was a very emasculating force for black men in this country, historically and not too long ago. The last black man lynched may have been officially recorded as 1981, but they continued to be beaten with excessive brutality, dragged behind moving trucks, and shot while unarmed. And even when the violence isn't as overt, a lot of the violence was internalized. Whatever all did a number on the black family unit...I don't know, I feel like I can't even begin to put it all together. It's doctoral thesis worthy.

So yes, we need to empower the boys. We need to especially focus on the boys. No matter the ethnicity of my husband, in this country, my boys will be black boys. I want to make sure that they come into a great support network that includes me and their father to prepare them for what all is raw out there for them as they become men. And I want the same for the little boys they grew up with, and the ones that came before them, and the ones that are already men and have space to change.

And yeah, that's all.

I love Esperanza's male-affirming songs. This is another one I really like:

My Music Babes

As salaam alaikum,

There are a few artists, some singers/songwriters, some vocalists, whose songs or renditions of standards have functioned like the soundtrack for my life at certain times. These are my Music Babes. The lyrical loves of my life, my vocal aspirations. These artists are (or were) prolific, soulful, genius, amazing. A unique, full, gorgeous expression of the human experience. I love them!

This is minha homenagem to them.




(1) Stevland Hardaway Morris - Mr. Stevie Wonder! He is my favorite artist of all time, and always will be. Where do I begin? Probably the first song I remember of his was my mother's favorite when I was about three years old, "Part Time Lover." Did not understand a word of it, but I can still see my mother dancing around the family room of my childhood house...especially since that moment was captured on VHS, now transferred to DVD. The next song that stands out in my memory was, "Another Star," which began with a cadence that reminded me of my brother's head. For my mother, my brother's song was "All I Do." I remember her saying how beautiful "As" was when I was in high school, but I wouldn't fully appreciate Stevie until college, when I fell in love for the first time. The theme song for that love will always and forever be "Overjoyed," a song that I faintly remembered from an 80s or R&B CD collection commercial from the 90s, such that when I hear one part of the song, I think of that blue screen that they would show at the end of the commercials. Where else do I go with Stevie Wonder? "I Believe When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever?" "Pastime Paradise?" "For Once in My Life," to go a little older? "Moon Blue," to go a little bit more contemporary? The timeless "Isn't She Lovely?" Masha'Allah! What a beautiful man!

Favorite lyrics: "We all know sometimes life's hates and troubles/ can make you wish you were born in another time and space./ But you can bet your life times that and twice its double/ that God knew exactly where He wanted you to be placed./ So next time when you say you're in it but not of it/ you're not helping to make this a place sometimes called Hell./ Change your words into Truth and then change that Truth into Love/ and maybe our children's grandchildren and their great-grandchildren will tell." - "As" (see above)




(2) Djavan Caetano Viana - Djavan! When did I first discover this musical genius, my Brazilian, seeing Stevie Wonder? I think I met him while touring Pandora sometime after I took my Brazilian history course in college. In that course, I was exposed to the song, "Haiti" by Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil from Tropicália 2. I made a station out of that, and I think songs by Djavan came up from that. The first song I really remember from him has to be "Doidice" (my upload onto youtube, gente! It wasn't there before...). I just listened to it quietly while studying during my first year of medical school, until the last verses of the song, which I recognized were in Spanish. From then commenced my absolute obsession with this song. I looked up the lyrics, translated them the best I could with my Portuguese for Spanish Speakers knowledge, ordered Bird of Paradise on CD Universe so I could own the song (since it was not available for download), opened the cover, and found the lyrics that floored me: "After I discovered that there is you, I never existed again." Damn. That was me and MTQ! I thereafter discovered that I loved Djavan as an artist in general. My favorite songs of his to sing include "Meu Bem Querer," and "Pétala." My favorite song to samba and sing to will always be "Flor de Lis," as I did many a time in my samba course. And while "Doidice" will always be my favorite, "Oceano" is I think one of his most beautiful. I'm not done learning his standards, as there are others, but this man is brilliant...Stevie Wonder agrees. They did "Samurai" together! Beautiful man in his 60s with his beautiful son, Max Viana, by his side at both concerts I went to.

Favorite lyrics: "Me apaixonei?/ Talvez, pode ser./ Enloqueci?/ Não sei, nunca vi./ Preciso sair/ depois que eu descobri que há você,/ nunca mais existi." - "Doidice" (see above)
Translated: I fell in love? Maybe, it could be. I went crazy? Don't know, I've never seen it. I need to get out. After I discovered that there is you, I never existed again.)

AND

"Assim que o dia amanheceu lá no mar alto da paixão/ dava pra ver o tempo ruir." - "Oceano" (see above)
Translated: Now that the day has dawned there in the high tides of passion, one is able to see time ruin. (So poetic!)




(3) Elis Regina Carvalho Costa - Elis Regina. Before I heard this woman's voice and knew who she was, all of my music babes had been mainly men. For this reason, my alto is the most developed, although I think I touch the range of a mezzo-soprano. Then, I hear the Portuguese version of "Corcovado" by my one of my standards, my original babes, Tom Jobim (to the point I'd consider naming one of my kids Antônio Carlos). I didn't know at the time who the female vocalist was of this song I'd heard the smokey voice of Astrud Gilberto sing in English, but I liked learning to sing along with it. She enunciated so clearly, so uniquely...it was gorgeous. I discovered later it was Elis. I wouldn't know about her until I traveled to Brazil, coming back from the public health center in São Paulo, turning on the small television in the pousada to the novela, "Ciranda da Pedra," and hearing Elis belt out "Redescobrir," which was the theme of the novela. I still get saudades when I see that opening...that was my first taste of Brazil, as I barely ate in those first few days, nervous as I was that I was in a country where I didn't really speak the language. And in a way, my finding Elis was really a rediscovery, because she died in 1982, before I was born and 26 years before I would know any of her music. But her vocal interpretations of Brazilian standards, which got her credited as creating Música Popular Brasileira, inspired me in ways that a female singer never had. I found myself aspiring to her range, her passion, her soul. I laughed with her in "Vou Deitar e Rolar," and "Canto de Ossanha." I danced gently over her enunciation in "Só Tinha de Ser Com Você," which I have vowed will be a lullaby for my children. I fell in love forever after uniquely with her interpretation of "Aguas de Março," my favorite song of all time, as well as Brazil's. And I will always be blown away and forever grateful for her rendition of a song I had known for years from Pandora, but never like this: "O Trem Azul." There are so much more of Elis I've yet to learn and hear, but with "O Trem Azul," I get a little taste of what it means for there to be life after death.

Favorite Vocals: "O Trem Azul," when she sings along with the electric guitar. Or, just listen to the song A Capella.

These are three artists whose music I have a lot of and never tire of, the songwriters and singers of the soundtracks of my life. I fell in love with MTQ over "Overjoyed," and it faded away with "Doidice." And B went away with "O Trem Azul." Just a few examples. Beautiful people with a most beautiful gift from God! Masha'Allah!

My Favorite 60s Concert Clips

 As salaam alaikum,

These 60s concert clips almost make me wish that I was born around the time my mother was (my mother said that if we were age mates, we would have been friends...yeah) so I could have attended these concerts, even as a preteen.

The first is from the incomparable Otis Redding, who was my age when he died. "Try a Little Tenderness."






The second is by Chico Buarque, a song whose first stanza I often quote, a beautiful song that expresses the frustrations of life, losing control in the course of life, with hints of the frustration of living in a dictatorship, "Roda Viva," or The Wheel of Life.




What's your favorite 60s concert moment? Haha, if you have one.

Cooking! Now I'm tired...

As salaam alaikum,

I decided to cook for the week on Saturday. Wow. I think I have enough food for the week. It took me five hours, which my roommate thought was excessive...but then again, I've never seen her spend more than 5 minutes preparing food. My other roommate usually spends an average of 15 minutes on meals, whereas I spend anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours usually because, ahem, I'm actually cooking from scratch.

Anyway, come to dinner! The menu consists of:

Burritos with chicken, butternut squash and brown rice, served with a homemade black bean salsa

Tuscan vegetable soup, with a medley of spinach, tomatoes, carrots and zucchini, served with Parmesan cheese

Mango barbecue chicken, served with my homemade, tangy mango sauce

Tropical fruit lassi, sweetened with light agave nectar, over ice

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The three recipes I have foodnetwork.com to thank for. I have a normally narrow repertoire that consists of fried rice, jollof rice, rice and stew, foo foo and soup, cabbage soup (the American kind), vegetable korma, tandoori chicken, mango lassi, fried chicken, baked chicken, pasta salad and quesadillas. Put those foods in rotation, and I get tired of them really quickly.

...I guess that's not the narrowest of repertoires, but whatever.

Oh yeah, and also Dominican rice and beans, tostones and fried plantains with mmmm batidas de lechoza (papaya) y piña (pineapple), just like I had in the DR. GOSTOSA!

Okay, so I'm not a slouch. My poor woman's attempt Indian food, my Nigerian food a la my father, Dominican standards and my very American standards and bastardizations of other peoples food. Not bad.

But I want to expand my repertoire of poultry and vegetables so that will give me greater impetus to cook food that I can carry with me and eat at school and, later, at work. I had started regaining weight...well, after a week in which my downfall was characterized by such act as eating a whole bag of jelly bellies in a day...

Womp womp womp.

But last week, I cooked on Monday and my food lasted until Friday afternoon. It was glorious! And I'm pretty much back to the weight I should be.

So, it's back in the kitchen...hmm, maybe next time I won't spend 5 hours cooking, but it took that long because it always takes a long time to cook something for the first or second time as you get used to the recipe and do things inefficiently.

However, standing on my feet for five hours without respite made my feet tired. If I'm ever the matriarch of a big family insha'Allah, I will bring a chair into the kitchen and keep idling interlopers out!

As I told my roommate, being in a relationship means my biological clock has come to a complete halt. Eerrrrrkkkk! No babies! It's like those commercials from the 90s for furniture stores. "No payments, no interest until 1998!" Okay. No babies until 2015! At least, seriously...

But I do look forward to having my own little family of cuties. :) I went to a spirituals concert last night with my public health mentor and her family. Masha'Allah she's got an adorable little family...three kids, 11, seven and three. The baby was at home and the seven-year-old was falling asleep by the end of the concert. She's an OB/GYN, clinical director of Women's Health at Children's/BWH and she works in community health centers (what I want to do, insha'Allah!). She helps me see that it can be done.

She had her first baby at 33, I think. That's a good age to start...the earliest I'm considering is like, maybe the last year of residency (thus 2015...I'll be 30...aaaaaahhhhhh!), since I want to do fellowship. Then, there would be a gap, and maybe I'd have one after in the second year of my practicing (2017-2018), so I could, like, get actual maternity leave.

That all depends on if, you know, I'm married by then, haha! B knows I'm a schemer...he'll be alright. He already said that he wanted four. He asked me how many I wanted. I said three or more.

My roommates, like my cooking time, think that four children is excessive. So do they also probably think that the meticulousness with which I cleaned the house was excessive. I do look forward to being the matriarch and sharing these responsibilities with my husband...until the kids are old enough to take over, muahahaha!

Seriously, who needs a cleaning service when you have children! Trick them into helping when they're young, and you've got service until they move out! That's my plan, anyway...

Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.


I sent B a message telling him that one day I should cook dinner for him (I already made him breakfast one day), or we should cook together. Together, we can make a poor couple's attempt at Nigerian food. Together, we can rule the world...muahahahahaha!

Just kidding.

Anyway, back to work today...sitting for hours instead of standing!

Sound Off! and In Other News

As salaam alaikum,

In my Sexuality and Public Health class, there are a couple of people intent on bashing Islam. One of my friends, also Muslim (and Nigerian!) had to stand up and defend. We have a new addition to our class, an Arab Christian lady who was the main culprit...the ridiculous things that she said were in the Qur'an! I mean, come on! You want to talk about the evil things that Musilms have done in the communities you know of, fine. I don't deny these things, I condemn them along with you. Am I comfortable with only negative examples of Muslims being shared in this faux-liberal class? No, but I'm also not comfortable with the fact that Muslims around the world are doing ignorant things, not only to others but to themselves and within their own communities, own homes such that those who will have things to voice about, noise about, fodder to bash an entire group of people based on the activities of a loud minority...

Terrorism is the obvious thing to condemn, and I believe most of us here (in the US) condemn it readily. People who say that we don't obviously do not personally know Muslims or follow any Muslim media sources, and don't care to. Others of us recognize and condemn other things. My pet issue to noise about in the past has been racism, but there are others...women's rights, for example. With the racism argument, I've encountered the defense that Muslims are humans, too, and make mistakes. I mean, obviously, but I believe that we have as much of a duty to speak out against and to inform ourself about injustices within our physical and imagined umam as we have a duty to defend injustice against us, to be chartible to one another, and all else. I believe that without the former the latter is incomplete.

People who will would find a way to bash Muslims even if evil and ignorance were being committed by 100 Muslims. There are upwards of 1.7 billion of us on this earth right now, and if as many of us were backwards as they want the public to believe, this whole place would be a greater chaos state than it is now...if I may reduce the world to a state. I despise those who, in the name of Islam, perpetuate ignorance and spread their evil works and besmirch the image of my religion, who massacre my brothers and sisters in Islam and otherwise make it harder for other Muslims to live on this earth. I despise them more, actually, than most of those in my faux-liberal class who so readily speak ill of my religion while knowing nothing about it.

Activists are sometimes funny people. They are very reactionary and use the word agency a lot. They think they are liberal but really they can be as narrow-minded as conservatives are, just on the other side of the argument. Oh liberal actvitist, you don't have the market cornered on the best way to live life and conceptualize future. To believe that you do is a type of cultural imperalism not unlike that which you would decry in the history classes about the various European colonization efforts that you may have taken in your liberal arts institutions.

Yes, hello. I am a Muslim woman. I find it funny, oh classmates, that you see abstinence as unnatural and restrictive so universally, but I'll let you have that one. But I also find it funny that you think you're so liberal in your effort to have language inclusive for people of all sexual orientations and gender identifications, but you adopt language and ideals that is not inclusive of those who choose to be more conservative with their sex, for whatever reason.

But I guess inclusivity of more conservative modes of thought is not most people's definition of liberal. I guess I was under the false assumption that being liberal meant being more open-minded, more inclusive, more accepting of differences in thought. Oops!



In other news...

An annonymous donor has contributed $30 million dollars to Harvard Medical School for primary care, and that has gone toward a new center of primary care...new, because there's not been one before, and months ago, the primary care budget was cut at Harvard, leading to an understandable unrest amongst our primary care activists. The announcement came in an email from Dean Flyer shortly after the announcement about the expansion of the immunology program, something that I'm also excited about because, personally, the immune system is my favorite system of the body (yes, actually not the reproductive system!). But this is awesome. I'm excited to see what comes about in my next year and a half at the medical school in terms of primary care and see it's implications for family medicine.

Also, after discussing with the roommates whether "in love" existed [which I think is a moot argument, kind of, in the way that they were having it...one said that the feelings existed, but in love, as in romantic love, doesn't exist, while love for family and friends is the only love that exists...I could write a whole entry about how my conceptions of love have changed over time, but yeah, that's not what this about], I went to sleep and, like a fool, had a dream about B. B, being the man that he is, neglected to tell me that when he was leaving this weekend, he wouldn't be back until...next Friday!

And I didn't see him at all after going to the Djavan concert with him (in which, admittedly, I kind of wish I could have gone alone and pretended I was Brazilian, since I can now speak Portuguese without a sotaque), because he was working on his poster.

But a whole week...d'oh! Why did you think that was okay to tell me at the last minute...we may just be friends+, but my friends tell me their plans, I expect the same of a friends+.

So then, after waxing philosophical about love and the term "romantic love"...I had a dream about him last night. I had a dream that I was in my apartment with friends, and I went to the kitchen where my roommates were, and there he was. And I ran up to him and hugged him, asked him what he was doing here. I excused the place being a sty (which it is right now), and he said that he didn't care. However, there were tampon wrappers and tampons around the living room that I tried to discreetly pick up (okay, so the apartment in real life is not that nasty...no stray tampons, mainly just papers from school). He told me that for the conference, the hotel cost more than him just commuting back and forth by bus, so he decided to come back home and commute daily (makes no sense in the dream, either, because the hotel room was supposedly only $50 and the commute on the bus was $6 round trip...I've been watching too much "Mad Men.")

So I introduced him to all of my friends, which included one of my roommates friends (who we visited last night in the upstairs boys apartment) and a bunch of other random Asians, including this girl from my sexuality class, an undergraduate at The College (hahaha, if I may). We watched this movie on the small tube television in our living room.

It became late, and one of my roommates suggested that B stay over. She then, as I imagine she would do in real life, suggest that he stay in my room. I objected, which for some reason involved me making acting out an upper case sigma with my body, at which B laughed. That was the part of the dream that made the least since...me making the sigma. That's biostats coming into my head, and the fact that I have an upcoming biostats exam.

I woke up and laughed at myself. That was a perfectly ridiculous dream.

Yesterday was my roommate's birthday. We went out with her parents to Fire and Ice, this restaurant downtown very much like BD's (Mongolian Barbecue) at home. It was fun. It was great seeing her parents...seeing where one comes from makes a lot of sense. And they paid...that was awesome.

But speaking of which, back to working out for me! I've had too much free food in the last month, too little exercise. Time to start it back up before my weight creeps back up.

Anyway...I just remembered a song my mother used to listen to that I haven't thought of in years. Wow...I don't know why I just thought of this. I think I'm in that sentimental mood right now...gah, I forgot how this feels!

{Currently listening: Brandy (I Really Miss You) - O'Jays}

Oh man! Adoro.

A Rose Much Desired is Almost Done!

As salaam alaikum,

After getting stuck on a chapter that turned out to be more important than I thought, to preserve a character that was more critical than I at first expected...I am a chapter and a half away from finishing the first full-length story that I've written as an adult. Yay!

B wants to read it. I've already given him hints, but he doesn't want to be spoiled. That's exciting, but I'm also a little nervous for him to read it, because if he only knew how much of it (especially the Desirée narration) was thinly veiled fiction, then he would instantly know tons of stuff about me.

At the same time, I'm not too concerned. I'm not worried about him knowing tons of stuff about me.

I think I'm going to go back to samba today after a two week hiatus after I twisted my ankle three weeks ago. It was a mild twist that just exacerbated an old injury, but samba for sure would have killed it. I think I'll wrap my ankle just in case, but I need to get moving again. I've also had a two week hiatus from the gym, and although I've been good at maintaining my weight so far, this week I've been a little bit of a lazy eater so it's time to get back to moving, now.

B at this time should be in DC, heading toward the rally. I would have gone, but none of my friends are going, and I figured it'd be too much if we rode the 10 hours roundtrip together, then I'd cramp his style as he was hanging out with one of his old friends. I mean, we're friends-ish, but I'm still a girl he's trying to impress, kind of, and it wouldn't be as comfortable, maybe. I don't know, I make excuses, but also I'm tired and I need to clean up my life. Tons of papers from fall 1 quarter are all around my room and I need to go ahead and put them into the binders I bought two months ago.

Yes, but RMD is almost done! Alhamdulillah! I'm going to proof it once more (because I'm OCD like that) before I give it to a couple of family members to read through. I'm nervous about this...I'm nervous that they'll say certain aspects aren't realistic, are over-the-top, or ask me why I would write about such material. We'll see. I, personally, like it a lot, but then again, I'm me.

And from there, I'm going to figure out how to get it published. A couple of my cousins are self-publishing, but I kind of want to find an agent and go from there.

But preview! I can only preview the first 120 pages or so, because around that time, the twist (!!) happens, so I don't want to give that away. But man, it's been a while since I read the first part...even though I wrote it, I forget exactly what happens. So I'm providing an excerpt. This is when Mo, very upset because he's not yet gotten into medical school, among other things, ventures over to Nisreen's apartment during her spring break, desiring to talk to somebody while all his friends are away during the break:

Nisreen steps forward, pulling the door behind her, as if ready to dismiss him. “I said, what can I do for you, Mahmud?” Mo’s scratching his head and running his fingers through his hair. He remembers he needs more gel; he didn’t have enough this morning. “You kind of caught me at a bad time. I was cleaning and didn’t expect anybody…”


“Well, you did call me a couple of days ago, telling me I should stop by, right?” He leans against the wall, supporting himself with his left arm. He watches as Nisreen gazes at this arm.

“A couple of days ago?” Nisreen chuckles curtly. “I called you a couple of weeks ago.”

Mo’s confused. Exactly how much time has passed? He did run his last gel in lab a while ago…she’s probably right. “Damn, you’re probably right. Sorry.”

Mo notices Nisreen flinch at the damn. She waves it off, though. “No need to apologize.” She’s opening the door wider and beckoning Mo inside. “What’s time, anyway, but an artificial construct to make us more comfortable in this elusive existence?” Mo doesn’t pay enough attention to Nisreen’s statement to become confused. Instead, he finds himself tracing her curves with his pupils again. Her long-sleeved shirt is clingy enough to outline the flare of her hips. He shakes himself out of it again. This is Nisreen, this is a Muslimah, a hijabi at that…if she caught him looking her up, she’d shuttle him straight out of the house and probably toss out an astaghfirullah for good measure. He’s desperate for company, so he guesses he needs to behave himself.

By the time he returns to face Nisreen, though, she’s eyeing him dubiously. Instead of apologizing, he tries to act like he wasn’t just undressing her with his eyes. He focuses on her face instead. Nisreen’s face, usually rounded because of the way she ties her scarf, is more triangular today. Her large forehead seems to shrink as she raises her eyebrows. She’s probably raising her eyebrows because he’s stood at the door to her apartment for nearly two minutes, and he’s still not coming inside.

“Mo, is there anything wrong?” Nisreen inquires, cocking her head to the side.

She called him Mo. He likes the way her O sounded, the way her lips rounded as she breathed it out. “Naw, I’m cool,” he manages to say. He swallows.

Nisreen shakes her head. “No, this isn’t right. You don’t look good at all. Come in, sit down and rest for a little bit.” Before he has the chance to protest, Nisreen grabs his left arm and drags him into her apartment and guides him to a sofa in the center of the room. Mo watches as she closes and locks the door to her apartment. She then runs into her kitchen, crashes around for a bit, and returns with two glasses of water. “I didn’t know if you prefer room temp or ice water. I’ll take whatever you don’t.”

Insha'Allah, I'll be done by this weekend!

I have tons of reading to do this weekend, and biostats homework. I plan to do the bulk of those tomorrow, returning home in time to get all spiffed up for the Djavan concert (!!) on Sunday. I'm taking B...literally, because I bought the tickets with my WorldMusic membership. Unlike two years ago, I know a few more of Djavan's songs by heart, so it will be even more of a fun concert-going experience. B is going to be surrounded by Brazilians, artsy Berklee college world music lovers, and me, the Brazil lover.

I'm also going to convince him that we should plan to have Africa Night sometime this month. He's busy a few weekends, then his birthday is coming up, then there's Thanksgiving...so I'm thinking late November we can pull something together. Either that, or next weekend. I'm not sure if my roommate's parents are coming up for her birthday or not, but then next weekend wouldn't be the greatest. Then I figure he may have stuff to catch up on, as he's in DC for the rally this weekend. I also figure he needs to be back in time to do tutoring tomorrow. I feel like he just might fall asleep during the concert. I'll have to poke him.

So, I'm happy! Yay! Not because of B, or Djavan coming this weekend, insha'Allah, or being done with RMD, insha'Allah, or having two engaging new (but reading heavy!) courses this quarter...my program planning and design course and my Sexuality and Public Health course. It's the sum of all of these!

I guess I should do more work today than I thought...I forgot I'm retwisting my hair tomorrow. That will take some time.

Suhoor Insomnia

As salaam alaikum,

These days when I'm not lazy and actually eat a full meal (more or less) for suhoor, I tend to have trouble falling back to sleep. Luckily for me, I don't have anything really to go to today in the way of orientation activities for the school of public health since it's mainly geared towards international students...and students that haven't been in the Harvard system before (I don't need to be told about financial aid...that is a depressing state of affairs!). I'm probably not going to go back to campus until iftar, insha'Allah. It should be good. It's going to be an Islamic Relief/Pakistan Flood fundraising iftar.

I hope to see some of my favorite medical school Muslims there...although no such luck seeing the sisters from my class. One is in Guatemala, and the other...I haven't really seen at an HMS iftar since first year.

HIS (Harvard Islamic Society) has daily iftars, but they didn't start until later this year because I guess they're just now starting school. I didn't make many of those anyway, as I didn't know many of the undergrads. I find HIS very South Asian (from a glance!), whereas Umich's MSA was more diverse...at least come time for mass meetings. I think we had most major Muslim countries represented at Michigan...except for sub-Saharan Africa. With 50% Muslim population but much of that population not reflected in our respective numbers in the US, Nigeria should have been repping strong...but we all know how that is.

Maybe not, but it takes too long to explain.

I can't even rep for Nigerian Muslims...I'm just a Nigerian American who happens to be Muslim. My tradition is always more with the black Muslim indigenous to the United States.

Anyway, blah blah blah.

Orientation is going well, alhamdulillah. I've met new people, perhaps made new friends...I'd make even more if my roommate and I would separate from ourselves sometimes. But it's cool. Today will be more of the same...planning out my classes, thinking about my career. Public health makes me more excited about going into medicine, actually. It makes me feel like I can have a greater impact and that if I see a health problem in my community, I can investigate it and fix it, insha'Allah.

Ramadan...is really a blessing. I can always tell where I need to focus judging on the passages of the Qur'an that stick out to me, and based on that...I think third year helped me to reach an all-time spiritual low, but insha'Allah I'm on the upswing once again. I'm feeling more at peace with myself and my way of being (current, not former) now, and I feel so differently about so many things. Clarity is here, and I embrace it.

Anyway, I'm also excited (more wordly matters ensue here) because Djavan is coming to Boston! Who is Djavan, you ask? Pssh! Only my favorite contemporary (or more so...you know I like old stuff) Brazilian artist ever! He came to Boston in June, 2008 before I went to Brazil and I forced a classmate of mine to come with me. This time...I may just have to buy tickets and go by myself, sit up front (worth the price!) and sing all of my favorite songs along with him. YES!

I know more of his songs than I did back when I went to his first concert...like Oceano. ...which I will post later. I always do a relative music fast (it used to be more strict in past years) while fasting Ramadan. I didn't intentionally do it this year, but because I have 5/6 previous Ramadans (I didn't last year because it drove me crazy to not be able to eat or listen to music while studying, so if I had to cave for one, it was music), even if I hear music this month, I don't pay much mind to it...it's not the same.

...but the music fast does not preclude my excitement for this concert. MPB at it's finest...Djavan, and hopefully he brings his son, Max...why, because I love the father/son double threat!

As I've said before, I like this singer purely because of his talent and his beautiful music...he's old enough to be my father...or my relatively young grandfather, haha.

Anyway, it's nearly 6am...I either need to nap a little bit before I actually get up this morning or do something a little bit more productive...

Oh yeah, and I'm considering one of two options for my winter public health project...insha'Allah either return to Brazil (possibly Bahia!), or...I could go to India for the first time! It would only be a three-week trip, but still...

I'll talk it over with people and see what I should do. Alhamdulillah for this life of opportunity!

[uncensored]: Obsession Circuit

As salaam alaikum,

Sometimes, my brain annoys me. The other day, I was wondering if part of my brain suffered some kind of damage from an unknown insult years ago for which I am currently suffering the sequelae. Either that, or sometime in my childhood for an unknown reason I formed a maladaptive circuit within my basal ganglia which causes me to go into these behaviors and have these thoughts against my will. Maybe that would explain my obsessive nature.

Maybe somewhere in my brain, I have an Obsession Circuit.

I mean, it's good for some things. I became obsessed with Spanish at one point, that helped me learn it. I was obsessed with getting into UCSF for medical school and that helped me get into the medical schools I got into. I certainly still obsessed with Brazilian Portuguese, and that's why I can speak it almost fluently now. So it's not a bad thing, necessarily, just a personality trait that has helped me learn and achieve certain things...

But those obsession are nothing as compared to my man obsession.

My sophomore year of college, I spent every day thinking about this man every few minutes or so. It was totally against my will, totally annoying, especially when, by the end of the year, I discovered that we would not end up together. I very much cooled down after that and recovered, but for some reason, recently, two years after this man got engaged and a couple of months after he's gotten married, he and his wife have been popping up in my dreams.

Last night, it was the fault of this guy. I went to an Erykah Badu concert [which was awesome, by the way...she is not small anymore], and there was this guy sitting two rows in front of me that reminded me of him...tall and awkward, but black, with a mohawk and these crazy glasses on. Because of this guy, I had a dream about the man last night. It's never anything sexual, and it never was...he was on the phone, talking to his wife while stuck at work, reading GQ magazine and discussing something about fashion. This time, he had the mohawk and the crazy glasses.

Later in the night, in a separate dream, his wife was on some fashion television show getting ready to be interviewed. At that point, I woke myself up and I prayed.

I take comfort that I can make du'a whenever I need it, any time or day and night. I prayed to God to abolish this from my mind, whatever this is, this obsession circuit, because this is getting to be ridiculous.

It's not even really an active thing. For years, I haven't sought him (or them) out on facebook. However, since they're both my facebook friends, yes, sometimes they pop up on the newsfeed. Besides the dream I had the day they got married (in which they were advising me about the smart way to lose weight...it's always really random with me), that's how I found out they got married.

With this whole thing, me and this guy's eventual relationship and how it didn't work out, I must say...the internet is a bitch.

So many things wouldn't have happened if it weren't for the internet...like, I wouldn't have found out that his sister told him he should befriend more Pakistani women the day after I went out with him if it weren't for the internet, so I wouldn't have been devastated and I maybe wouldn't have fallen into my obsession circuit with him, actually, which turned into a self-validation "Am I good enough" thing and had little to do with the man himself...

Actually, that's probably the main thing.

I'm tired of dreaming about him and his wife, seriously! And the dreams are always stupid? Seriously, reading GQ? An television interview about fashion?

My problem is, whether I like it or not, he was my prototype, so if I see people who remind me of him when I liked him, this piques my interest. Unfortunately for me, the way my brain works, this means that he and his wife will make cameos in my dreams.

He's never alone. Haha, because in my brain, it's improper of me to dream of a married man unaccompanied by his wife, in halal terms. My thing is, I don't find it halal to be thinking about, dreaming about a married man at all, even if his wife is always right there next to him in my thoughts, in my dreams.

Stupid obsession circuit!

One thing this has all done...it has purified my intentions for the story I'm writing, A Rose Much Desired. This man is the basis of one of the characters in the story, named Mo. When I originally wrote the story in November 2007 [National Novel Writers Month, NaNoWriMo--it was 50,000 words at the time], for Mo, I wrote this character, Maida, who he was unofficially seeing who everyone expected him to propose to. This character was based on, you guessed it, his wife. The crazy hilarious thing was...they weren't engaged yet, and I didn't actually know that they were unofficially together until they got engaged, and I was like, oooh...I'm psychic. They got engaged the next year, and I was like, well crap, if these characters seem too much like them, it would seem kind of inflammatory, like I was trying to actively say something about their relationship, which was never my intention.

So over the years I've more loosely based the characters off of these people with the knowledge that they were actually getting married, and I've altered some dialogue and plot...the main plot remains, though. That's one thing I didn't sacrifice.

So in terms of purifying my intentions...my intention is no longer any sort of bitter remembrance/calling this man out as it kind of was when I started this. My intention is more telling the story of two women, one growing up surrounded my Muslim boys and her becoming intrigued by their contradictions in spite of their religion and their culture who ultimately falls for a Muslim man, the other a Muslimah, cornering herself into isolation as the attempts to become more practicing but finding herself socially at the margins of Islam. Though Mo is the focus of one of the main narrations in the story, and although he's protagonist, his role is more supportive than anything as compared to these women.

I'll talk more about this story later, and post some excerpts once I get further in editing.

But the morning is young. I just had to post [uncensored] for a second about my ridiculous brain. Maybe putting it out there will help me overcome the insanity from within.

Off to the gym. I need to start doing crunches.