The Tyranny of Now

As salaam alaikum,

I almost have no words for this time. I'm so happy that I got to marry before the storm, in a time of relative tranquility, in the time of the first President I voted for that I was proud to call mine, flawed and polemic as some of his policies were. I was a black woman marrying a white man in the era of our first black president, born of black and white. We wed in the waning time of hope and progress. We spend our first married weeks in a time of turmoil.

My husband, bless his heart, doesn't want me to worry. My husband, accordingly, is used to compartmentalizing himself away from fear when certain things do not directly affect him. We are both citizens. We will be provided good insurance from our employers. If I want long-acting birth control, I can afford to pay $800 for it out-of-pocket, and we have no pre-existing conditions. He is not from a country on the current travel ban. If public schools go to hell, insha'Allah we'll be able to afford to get our kids into private school. We live on a literal hill, above it all, protected from flood and tsunami, protected in a way that we can be at all times blissfully unaware, if we so chose, to what is happening below.

I am not used to ignoring those things that do not apply to me. Everything applies to us all, as long as we are all human. More than any one group of people in my life, the executive actions of this administration so far has and will affect the people I trained to serve--my patients. My patients are low-income, immigrant and refugee. They are documented and undocumented. Thirty percent of them are insured by my state's Medicaid expansion under the ACA.

When I heard the election results, I curled up in a ball and cried for these people who I've dedicated this big part of my life to, for all of the rights and necessities that would be stripped away from them. In that sorrowful way, I have not been disappointed.

I hurt for my patients. I am trying to find the best ways to be active, but recognize at the same time that I am newly married and have this relationship to nurture. When my colleagues were protesting at SeaTac airport the recent Muslim ban, I was present for a business meeting my husband had at our home. I balance the desire to start a family right away with the reality that I will bring children into. Are we headed for a coup? Will the US see its first dictator? Do I want to wait (even longer than we've already waited) for things to become more stable?

I don't know.

He doesn't want me to worry. This is a man who lived in a communist country, protested as a child, lived as an undocumented immigrant in another country, immigrated legally to North America and forged a gradual road to citizenship. He has seen a lot, probably a lot worse. I respect his perspective.

But I will not sit idly by just because I, personally, will be alright. Because those who I serve will not, and to the extent that I empathize with every patient that enters my exam rooms, I will not be alright.

And this is not to speak of the friends and family members who are more directly impacted.

And this is not to speak of how, with any given tomorrow, this could be any one of us. My new Muslim surname, my old Muslim self, the daughter of an immigrant, the wife of an immigrant...anything.

It's reached the point where most happiness is hollow.

No longer a resident

As salaam alaikum,

I've been busy but not busy, if that makes any sense. I've been mentally and emotionally busy, preparing myself for graduation for residency. This included taking (and passing, alhamdulillah) my boards, getting my work schedule arranged for when I start my new job in September, tidying things up for my patients before I hand them off to the new resident, moving...

Ya girl's been busy.

There is also a lot of background noise right now, honestly, that has gone on for the last three years. My faith has been challenged in a very specific way that I have not shared on this blog, because it is a moment in progress. When this metamorphosis of sorts is complete, I will speak more openly and frankly about it. For now, sorry, you just get tidbits.

But alhamdulillah, I have completed residency and I am now a family physician practicing family medicine with obstetrics. This morning, getting up and not going to clinic, I felt starkly naked in a way I never have before in my life. I said at first that I felt naked because I was no longer a resident, but in truth, I've been a resident for only 3 years. It seems like nothing and it seems like forever at the same time.

I gaze at pictures of my co-residents and feel like I miss them already and that I never truly got to know them at the same time. They are a group of 11 people that I love and with whom I have experienced something unique that will not replicate. I feel like I've known them forever and for not that long at the same time. They are excellent people and I hope we continue our road to excellence.

I went in three years from being an insecure medical school graduate, not ready to embrace myself as a physician, to a board certified family physician with no insecurities about my capabilities. Again, alhamdulillah.

This moment, however, reminds me of a song Elis Regina sang, called, "20 Anos Blues."

Ontem de manhã quando acordei / olhei a vida e me espantei. / Eu tenho mais que vinte anos. / Eu tenho mais que mil perguntas sem respostas. / Estou ligada a um futuro blue.

Yesterday morning when I woke up, I looked at life and I startled myself. I am more than 20 years old. I have more than a thousand questions without answers. I'm tied to a blue future.

And while I do not believe I'm tied to a blue future, there were all of those ways, over the past few years, that I realized that I was not my 20 year old self. I am not who I was when I began this journey to be a physician, to be a better Muslimah, to make my own contribution to social justice.

I'm not 20 years old anymore. My grandfather is not on this earth anymore and my brother is an adult with autism who is unemployed, unskilled for most vocations and lives at home with my aging parents. I am a family physician continuing a very separate life on the West Coast, away from my aging parents and away from my brother. My personal life bears harsh realities that I did acknowledge, in a highly dramatized form at 20 years old, but that are more eminent now, as I begin to make plans for marriage and a family of my own.

At the same time, I'm not 20 years old anymore and I don't look for ways to save the world at every turn, in every crevice and with every issue. I'm looking for very specific ways I can make an impact in matters that I care most about and that I know most about.

I'm not 20 and I'm not premed, I'm a family physician. I don't love a man absently who I have no access to, I love one who is here, on earth, with me, who is not a character I created but a real man who doesn't always follow the ideal script for our lives but who is here regardless. I don't look outward for my Muslim identity, I look inward.

So I begin this two months off before starting work period resuming Ramadan (Ramadan Mubarak to all) after the Feminine Interruption. I return to focusing on The Compassionate.

When Facebook is Tragic

Salaam,

A few years ago, one of my distant cousins added me on Facebook.

Come to find out, he wasn't that distant, at least by my family's standards. He was one of my mother's first cousin. His late father was a bishop and my great uncle, one of my grandmother's 13+ siblings (the plus because she had some half siblings and I never quite know where they were in the count). My memories of this uncle were attending his church at the 1996 family reunion of my grandmother's family.

It's customary for black family reunions to conclude on Sunday, with a church service. And there are so many pastors and preachers and bishops in my extended family, it made sense that it would be at one of the family patriarch's church.

I remember taking a big family picture during that family reunion. At that time, everyone but one of my mother's younger sisters who died in a car accident years before, was alive. I was 11 years old. I was surrounded in people dressed mainly in white, I think, it must have been after church and everyone was dressed in pastels after a summer service. As we were all together, taking that picture that day, I had a virtual out-of-body experience, one of the few times in my life I had one of those. It's what I think heaven must feel like. I was surrounded by generations and generations of my family, my blood, knowing that everyone there was related to me or married to one of my relatives. It was magic, the sun was shining brightly, I didn't have a mosquito bump to scratch on my body, and nothing could have been more perfect than that moment we took a huge portrait.

My cousin and his son were probably in that picture with me. That's probably the only picture we have together.

Anyway, this cousin who friended me on Facebook was a pastor himself, like his late father and his late brother. I didn't remember him specifically, but he knew we were family. I accepted his friendship and proceeded to see all of his updates on facebook. I think we have been Facebook friends for two years. He'll post Bible quotes, posted the progress on the building of his new church, posted many, many pictures of his wife, who he is obviously crazy about, and post pictures of his children. He had two children, a son and a daughter. His son was married with two children, also a son and daughter.

I saw pictures of his grandchildren accompanying him at church, saw updates of his children preaching at his church, saw their family pictures, saw when his daughter's boyfriend proposed, saw pictures of his son with his children. Theirs were just a part of the many smiling faces and family antics that graced my Facebook on a daily basis.

 Seeing how perfect my cousin's family looked, I did wonder about those studies that state that Facebook actually makes us more depressed. No one uploads unsmiling pictures or talks about their struggles that much. That is against social media etiquette, after all, to paint a depressing picture. If you have issues and need help, you seek help in real life and don't bring everyone else down. Facebook is not a venue for you to seek counseling.

So what are you left with, if that's the attitude? Happy, smiling pictures, children with grandparents, videos of cats, pregnant bellies, diplomas, that kind of thing.

It's enough to make me, without an engagement ring on my hand, without my wedding pictures, without a pregnant belly, without babies to play with or grandchildren to give my parents feel a little bit behind at best.

And then, Saturday night, as I was at my SO's house scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed for the day. My SO was out with a friend and I was supposed to go pick him up in a few minutes. In 15 minutes to be exact, so I had time. I scrolled through the newsfeed and saw my cousin's status.

His son had been robbed, shot and killed that morning, and he was asking for prayers.

Immediately, I stopped breathing. I stopped breathing, and I got the same burning, hot taste in the back of my mouth that I do when confronted with my specific phobias, those that I cannot pronounce because it will cause that feeling. But this wasn't one of my specific phobias. I don't have a phobic reaction to thinking of my family being murdered, because it usually does not happen.

My cousin was killed on Saturday, and I found out on Facebook.

I couldn't believe it. I wanted to believe that it was a ill-begotten joke. I wanted to believe that it was maybe like that South African pastor who convinced his congregation to eat grass. In a flash I thought it was maybe my cousin speaking the unspeakable to see how his congregation would come together to support him. But it went on for painful seconds too long. I saw the responses, I knew.

And I couldn't believe it.

I scrolled back through my cousins pictures to see where the entire family had just done a photo shoot weeks before during the Christmas season. And there my cousin was, with his parents and sister, with his sister alone, with his own wife and kids. And that burning continued to drip down my throat. I had to swallow it.

My cousin, who I maybe met once in real life and didn't remember, whose picture I saw at least every week, scrolling through my newsfeed, didn't exist anymore.

He was a good man, provided for his family, was an active member in his father's church, was a believer, and he was. He's not anymore.

I told my cousin that we would pray for his family and that I would pass it on. I called my parents next, since they do not have a Facebook.



I feared picking my SO up that night. I prayed heavily that I keep my focus. I didn't want to die in a car accident. I felt this way because life felt so much more precarious when such a God-fearing young man was murdered so suddenly, his life ending in medias res. I dreamed about my cousin and how his death must have been all night that night. I dreamed of him being given time to run away, him running frantically before being shot in a field.

But this was the city, and there were no fields. He was called into the hospital early to help with a transplant in the wee hours of the morning. His car was in the shop so he took the bus to get there. On his way to the bus stop, someone robbed him, shot him in the chest, and left him for dead. And he died.



Facebook is not the same for me anymore. I can't read an article about calculating your likelihood of dying this year that was posted by one of my friends. Pictures of people's families seem dark now. Like, anyone could die at any time. And life seems more precarious now, even more than it did for me before. As I spoke to my SO about the possibility of continuing to work in inner city community health centers, he cautioned me, saying that he didn't want me to not come home one day.

And usually I would have scoffed at this comment, that I would be fine. But one of our MAs did push an intruder out of her car one day as she was leaving work. And I do walk to a pretty desolate parking lot at the end of work each day. And there have been murders in my neighborhood...

So what happens when Facebook is tragic? You see that life goes on and people are unaware and woefully unable to be empathic when someone loses a family member. And it hurts. There are little bits of light, but every time I see a post from that family, it's like darkness. It's pain, it's grief beyond measure that will not be captured in pictures posted on anyone's wall because no one posts pictures of people crying, of death, of bodies, of blood, of sorrow, of mourning.

And I find myself grieving the death of family, a man I would not have known of if his father had not friended me two years ago on Facebook.

Sad

Salaam,

Today, I am sad. I sat before an old friend of mine and I became sad. I feel like I've finally come to terms with so many things that I've given up on that maybe I shouldn't have, so many ways that I've lost faith in things that maybe I shouldn't have, at least not this early.

The world for me became a much more jagged, ugly place for me more rapidly than it ever has been before. The fact that I could read The New Jim Crow and not become enraged tells me that I am disaffected. It could be worse. I could want to do nothing about it.

But it's not as bad as it could be. It's more like the opposite. I want to do everything about it.

But I don't know where to begin.

Finish Line

As salaam alaikum,

A year ago from Monday, I was sitting in front of my classmate and former roomie's apartment building, watching runners cross St. Paul Street on Beacon while sitting on her ottoman. She swiveled next to me in her office chair. We weren't running but at least I was dripping in sweat. At the heat of the day, it was 91 degrees, and after a few hours, the sun was just so the shadow of the building behind us receded and no longer sheltered us.

I looked at the white sitting on the median with their bare legs reflecting the sunlight and wondered if their skin hurt like mine did from the direct sun. It was April and already I was getting bronze. I broke out a spaghetti string blouse that now smelled like sweaty me and probably wasn't that cute.

But it was a great day! We got there early enough to see who would likely be the winners of the marathon, the finish line less than a mile away. We saw everyone who was in it for the run, probably people who'd run it every year. I shouted "Braseeoow!" every time I saw a runner from Brasil, hoping they'd hear me. And I cheered for several groups of runners as they made their way steadily, as I saw people slow to a walk, drink water.

But honestly, I don't remember it all. I remember it was a hot day and after a while we took the office chair and ottoman back into her apartment and went somewhere to eat. Five years living in Boston and I finally had a real day off to go to the marathon that several classmates ran every year.

Monday was my brother's birthday, tax day, Patriot's Day, Marathon Day. I had friends from Boston and not from Boston running the marathon. I planned to wake up from being post call to maybe glance at who won this year, as I did last year, and recall fondly that hot spring day foreshadowing a hot summer in the city that I lived in for five years.

Instead, I woke up to a text from my mother, asking me if I had heard about the marathon bombings.

It's different when you see such chaos at a familiar site.

It happened a block from where I used to get acupuncture, a place I've walked many a day and night and felt completely secure. The thing that got me about the image of the first explosion were the flags from all of the different countries that whipped in the wind after that with the backdrop of terrified screams. It made me cry the first time.

I would never, ever expect such a thing to happen during the marathon.

Fast forward these few days, lives changed, bodies mangled, the false accusations, the brown men framed, the hate crimes, the murdered MIT police officer outside of the window were a former classmate worked, the explosives out of the SUV, the city on lock down.

I don't know what to say.

And I really don't have anything more to say than what has already been said in other blogs. Scratch that. I have less to say.

I pray for everyone affected, and insha'Allah I'll pray some more. Not only my friends and virtual fam in residency in Boston, but for everyone. I came of age in Boston. I became a doctor in Boston. I had a lot of firsts in Boston and made family in Boston. I'm all the way on the other coast and had tucked it away as a past phase in my life but I find myself wanting to call it my city. It hurt my heart to see my city without the T running, with no one at Downtown Crossing, with no one in the financial district...

That terrorists are again Muslim feels to me like all the time criminals are again black. Condemn and distance is the way to go, I feel. These days I'm not feeling like too much of an apologist. All I can say is, the reality of these people, whatever crazy thing it is, is so distant from my reality, so distant from where I was last year on a hot spring's day, sun painfully bronzing my shoulders as the runners, swift, lean and agile, dripped sweat on Beacon as they ran to the finish line.

[Music Mondays]: I Deserve

As salaam alaikum,

Nothing much. I just looked at my gchat status, which read, "Just smile for me and let the day begin," and looked at my smiling face opposite the status. It was a picture where I was tired like I am now, a third year medical student on my my medicine rotation, with more moisturized, healthier hair than I've had in a while. It was a sweet face. As much as I do admire myself when I look in the mirror, I can't say I've ever thought of myself before. And coupled with those words, all I could think was,

"I deserve to be loved."



"Just smile for me and let the day begin," is the opening stanza to Jeffrey Osborne's  "On the Wings of Love." This was one of my first favorite songs...probably third, actually. My first favorite song was "Stand by Me," by Ben E. King, especially the violin interlude. I must have been under five when I liked this song. My second favorite song was, "With You," by Tony Terry, when I was six.

When I was seven, "On the Wings of Love" was my favorite. I remember sitting on the beige couch in the living room of my childhood home, my legs hanging over the edge and not reaching the floor beneath my feet. My family didn't have our first CD player yet, not for a few more months. It was 1992. My parents were going through their records and playing songs. For some reason, they decided to play, "On the Wings of Love." I heard the song and I was instantly transfixed. I loved it. The song was 10 years old at that point, but I didn't know. I just knew it was the most beautiful song I'd ever heard, and I asked my parents to play it again, and a third time. I listened to it and stared at the dark wood paneling of our family room with a feeling of transcendence, contentment, exhilaration, like I was let into a secret at that moment that everyone comes to know in life.

And it wasn't really the lyrics. At seven, I wasn't worried about love. Not as worried as I would be at 12, maybe because of growing up with lyrics like these. But not at 7. It was the instrumentation, it was the vocals, it was sitting between my parents and them both liking the song, and me being one of them. One of the lovers of this song. It was everything at once. It was childhood being so full and new and replete for me, it was the contrast of the twinges of embarrassment I felt from my brother with autism sometimes, it was tension in the string cords, it was a pop song that was fully orchestrated like they already weren't anymore.

All things I wasn't able to put into words at 7.

It would be my favorite song until I was about 19, even after Janet got lonely, after Lauryn reminded us not to forget the deen, until Stevie suggested that I, too, should be overjoyed, the first time I would identify so completely with lyrics of a love song.



I had a hard night last night. I think the nearby recent seismic activity set a lot of women in labor. Or it was a full moon. Whatever the reason, I worked nonstop from 11:00pm to 8:30am. I saw 8 women in triage, pushed with and assisted 2 deliveries, and tended to my laboring women. I put so much into my work that I sometimes feel emotionally drained at the end of a day. I came home feeling like retreating into myself and not coming out. I imagined not talking to my friends and co-residents anymore, only being present when social activities were required. Working removes completely one of my dimensions, the dimension in which I most often reside at rest. There's little energy left for that dimension after work.

I was tired, but before I went to sleep, before I could start feeling sorry for myself and before I could, once again, begin to despise myself, I saw the Jeffrey Osborne lyric on my status, and though I know the lyric well, I had to see it completed.

And then I saw my face next to it. My tired, smiling face, probably like how I looked for much of the night. And for the first time in my life, I had a glimpse for just a few seconds of how I must look on the outside, to others.

I don't know if it was the depersonalizing experience of being a physician or the fact that I took two Benadryl just before and was getting sleepy.

Music sounds different when you're sleepy and in the dark, by the way.

But that was a sweet face of a sweet girl. And how sweet that you hover over my status and see my smiling face and get the message "Just smile for me and let the day begin." Even though most will not get the reference.

And I looked at that girl with that face and knowing as much about her as I do, all I could think was, "You deserve to be loved."

And I've never been able to say that about myself before. And I've never felt it so sincerely.

And I'm not talking about up and above the clouds love like Jeffrey belts about. Just love. Because life is precious, and by extension, so am I, and independently, by God's grace, so am I.

I can only imagine how I looked putting my hands over my patients contracting belly, breathing deeply with her, closing my eyes ans I felt the contraction to feel its strength, to evaluate her labor, and all I can think is, she deserves to be loved.

I can only imagine how I looked pulling my patient's newborn son from the birth canal, setting him on her chest on the blanket laid out by the nurse as his red lips trembled and mom trembled and as I trembled as I collected cord blood and I think, she deserves to be loved.

So, just smile for me and let my day begin. I really do love a smile.

The Only Liable Limitation

As salaam alaikum,

First of all, Eid Mubarak to my Muslim family!

In 2002, I was introduced to the hauntingly symbolic song and video by OutKast, "The Whole World." What could be dismissed as just another goofy OutKast song for me as a 17 year old was full of social commentary. The song's chorus for me symbolized the plight of the black man in the United States over time.

The whole world loves it when you don't get down...Michael Jackson, by then no longer remembered as the Prince of Pop but as a child molester.

And the whole world loves it when you make that sound...every eye-bucking, shucking and jiving or just trying to make a living in the guise of buffoonery black comedian ever.

And the whole world loves it when you're in the news...OJ Simpson (umm, who can write a doctoral dissertation on the racial dynamics of the OJ Simpson trial? Many of us can...).

And the whole world loves it when you sing the blues...

I'm not sure why it struck me so much as the black man at that time, but I realize it could also apply to other celebrities. In general, people love to be entertained by the lives and misfortunes of others. And the video, with the all-black circus backdrop and the mainly white male cooperate audience clapping in unison really gave me that feeling...

Meanwhile, while the show seems to be all for the entertainment of this off-putting audience, Dre and Big Boi (can't say much for the guest artist who wins the prize of fitting as many sexual references and as much double entendre as he can into his section) drop a lot of critical analysis at the time.

The one lyric that hit me recently that has a lot to do with where I am now, spiritually, is the following:

"The only liable limitation is yourself."

The only liable limitation is yourself, huh?

Let me tell you about me being my only limitation for becoming all I want to be...

I think that, in the years since becoming a more practicing Muslim, I've too often looked outside, to others, to complete my identity as a Muslimah. I came into practice seeking a community to help me. There were many communities that I've been a part of or was at the fringes of, but none of them in particular helped me. I tried to hard to be a part and in the process lost some of myself and my original motivation for practicing more along the way. I ended up spending many years morphing myself into what I thought others wanted me to be instead of actually nurturing my natal spirituality.

While God reminds us that we are in loss, "except for such as have faith, do righteous deeds and join together in the mutual teachings of truth," that joining together in the mutual teachings of truth does not have to be within a discrete Muslim community, and it does not have to be with Muslims only. We Muslims, after all, do not have the market cornered on Truth. Truth has many dimensions, and as a Muslim without a Muslim community at this point, it would be negligent of me to ignore those other dimensions of Truth while not in the company of my coreligionists.

I can live the Truth that is our purpose in life...to help each other through life, with others than Muslims. Insha'Allah I do this daily through my profession.

I am my own liable limitation. I should not have waited with bated breath for a community to embrace me for my identity and practice as a Muslimah to be complete.

When a community that I fit into seemed out of my reach, I then looked to marriage. I didn't need a Muslim community per se if I acquired a good Muslim husband and therefore built a Muslim family. Maybe the husband would come with a community I could thereafter fit into. Then not only would my identity as a Muslimah have been complete, but I would be fulfilling my duties as a Muslim...to marry and build a household dedicated to Allah (swt).

I didn't realize that this had nothing to do with my practice as a Muslimah, either.

I am not limited by a lack of community or the lack of a good, pious, egalitarian, professional, whatever other adjective Muslim man seeking me for marriage. I didn't seek practice as a Muslim to join a group or to get married. I thought they were necessary, but really, we are born alone and we die alone. The community or husband I wait upon to complete my life will not be there to vouch for me when I die, that I was a good Muslim. It just is and has always been me, myself and Allah (swt).

My non-Muslim co-residents, when I talked about my long-standing discomfort in praying in public places that are not mosques or my own home, offered 5 locations on campus where I could pray. And I've been using them with comfort, alhamdulillah. Some of these people who offered me places to pray don't even believe in God, and yet they respect me and my beliefs. And we can be colleagues together, living the Truth that is the guarantee of health care for all.

I love being in the company of a man who has always respected my beliefs and practices and perhaps has a greater understanding of them, having been raised with a Muslim background

It has never been more evident to me that I am my only limitation in being the Muslimah I want to be. I may never have that Muslim community or that Muslim husband that unifies my practice, but I will have a community and insha'Allah a husband that complement, not supplement, me as I nourish my natal spirituality.

I have always been my own limitation. I drew boxes on a plane in two dimensions and tried to fit myself into them, but I'm three dimensions. God have mercy on me if the way that I choose is errant and leaves jagged edges on my soul, but God please guide me aright anyway, though I err. Ameen.

Already September

As salaam alaikum,

I can't believe it's already September. I'm almost a quarter way through my intern year, and I feel like I haven't learned nearly enough yet, though I know I've learned a ton. When you're a family medicine resident, and you're switching modalities and age ranges with each rotation, it's hard to feel you have a handle on anything. I'm doing surgery now, and I'm pediatrics next. Then obstetrics. Then I'm back to our inpatient medicine, after a three month hiatus.

And then in my clinic, I see so few patients, that each patient is still teaching me something new. With a kiddo with a head full of tinea, what's the best treatment? What do I do for the woman with the threatened miscarriage? A man with acute on chronic knee injury for whom I cannot assess for ligament tears because of reduced range of motion secondary to swelling? A woman with a systolic blood pressure in the 200s in clinic who has never been treated for hypertension? Where do I begin?

I'm three months in; thankfully, I have nine months to go.

I can't believe it's already September. It's been months and I'm with a man who keeps me honest. More honest than here, more honest than ever. He's the only one who I feel comfortable telling exactly how Muslim I am, and exactly all the ways that I fall short in my own estimation.

And he knows all those ways, intimately.

I can't believe it's already September. It's 85 degrees in Seattle. I had to water my tomato plant at night because it hasn't rained in more than 40 days and if I don't water it, my late-blooming tomatoes will die. I have three of them, green and cute. I'll have to set up a temporary irrigation system those days that I go visit my parents for my first vacation. I imagined myself going somewhere on my own, like maybe California to visit friends, but I'd rather go home before I get homesick. Because at this point, it's been three months since I've seen my parents, and I'm still the same homebody as always.

It's already September and I'm trying to figure out what it all means. The initial frenzy of beginning residency has cooled to a lull and I no longer laugh when someone calls me doctor. I feel more compelled to dream, to dream up a career path for myself and aim for the stars. I feel less harried and my mind is clearer to reflect. To reflect on my friendship with this man and see if I'm at all capable of not being antsy to see where it ends. And not forcing an end.

I feel more settled and now I can make this place a home, while not forgetting where I came from.

It's only already September and I'm going home to my parents and brother and hopefully I'll return to find my road so far makes sense.

All I Want for Ramadan

As salaam alaikum,

As I approach my last two nights of the night shift, I find myself getting accustomed to being a day zombie and night warrior. And by night warrior, I mean ambling around the hospital at 2am to answer a page about a patient, wrapping my fleece around me to prevent the shivers as my body tries to convince me to sleep.

Anyway, I'll be glad when nights end. I spend most of my morning sleeping then most of my day lounging around. My seniors suggest that I do nights next year during Ramadan, because that would "be perfect." No, thank you. There are various reasons why Ramadan this year was a little haphazard (or a lot haphazard, heh) compared to years past, part of that is my fault, but night shift disrupts Ramadan for me. It disrupts the spirit of fasting if I'm sleeping part of the day away to work a 12 hour shift at night.

Plus, it's very hard to sleep during the day without taking sleep aids, and if you're fasting, you can't take sleep aids. Having to stop eating by 4:30am also means no caffeine to get you through the rest of your shift when you have to go until 11:00am (that's me on Saturday, iA!).

So no, night shift is not ideal for Ramadan. Next year, iA, I'll do an outpatient month or something. That way, I'll be sure to be able to do my reading that year. Insha'Allah I also plan to check out the mosque in Northgate at some point; looks like Eid is going to be held at a convention center. Having a car makes this easier, but working most days does not help.

Ramadan has been a little bit isolated this year because I don't have my medical school Muslim group weekly iftars or local MSA events to sample, but interestingly, it's been one of my least lonely Ramadans on record. I am super happy about my residency program, I've made family here with my co-residents, I'm learning a lot...I've given up on marriage...

And really, I could not be happier.

Ramadan for me is not only a time of reflection, of prayer, of God-consciousness, of self-control, but it's also always been a miraculous time for me. It's a time when Satan is at bay, when God will answer all of the prayers of those who fast and remember Him...and I take advantage of that every year to pray for myself and my family, about anything that's going on in the world, anything pressing.

Because while I believe that God always answers prayers, I felt like Ramadan held greater promise. Ramadan, I was more focused.

So for the last several Ramadans, many of my prayers had to do with marriage, future spouses, etc. Every salat with some istikhara in between. And every year, the same thing...no yield. But I was convinced that when the time was actually right, God would provide. I always am, always will be. Unless it is not God's desire for me to marry, which is also a possibility.

But if Ramadan is a time when all of your prayers are answered, why is this one never answered? Was I doing things incorrectly? Did I wait too long to make up my missed days from menstruation?

The fact of the matter is...Ramadan is still a special time for me, a time when God's grace feels ever nearer. But it's just like every other day of the year when prayers are not answered in a way that is apparent to you or in a time that is what you desire. Every other prayer I've prayed to God has been answered in a self-evident way. When I prayed about marriage, all I got was an empty feeling in return.

So I gave up. I prayed about it in the beginning of Ramadan, but I lost heart. I lost heart and I lost resolve. And maybe it's okay. Ramadan isn't like my personal Christmas and God is not Santa Claus. Ramadan is greater and God is Greater and why I couldn't get married is just something I'll never understand.

So I didn't want anything in particular this Ramadan, but the preservation of the blessings I've already been given. Health, vitality, that of my family and friends, safety...the ability to carry out my duties as a new physician, the intellect necessary to improve as time goes on...

And I pray for a better Ramadan next year, one that is more replete with God-consciousness and in that, blessings for myself and my loved ones. One that is more pure, not as disjoint and interrupted as this one has been. I should give myself somewhat of a break, because I changed cities and am working for the first time, but on the other hand, it's so disjoint because of deliberate choices that I've made...

All I want for Ramadan is for God to have mercy on me as I stumble forward in life, being less the woman I had the potential to be, being less the believer that I can be, making mistakes...getting lost. Being my worse enemy. Realizing my personal failure.

Ramadan and Returns

As salaam alaikum,

First of all, to all my readers and the Muslim blogosphere in general, I want to wish everyone Ramadan Mubarak! This is the first day of fasting in earnest for me, thanks to traveling (awesome camping trip with my co-residents) and one of the many pleasures of being a fertile woman, alhamdulillah. Heh, we'll leave it at that. It's kind of off-setting to begin Ramadan four days in, but insha'Allah this shall be a much needed month of spiritual revival.

Insha'Allah. Because I certainly need it!

And also, inna lillahi wa inna ilayi raji'un...

My uncle's wife, my aunt, died sometime last night after battling metastatic cervical cancer. She has a teenage boy and two young sons. My uncle and one of my aunts were there by her side. I will be praying for her and her family this Ramadan, insha'Allah. It's been a long and hard journey for the family, and this is the beginning of a new one.

Anyway, off to a doctor's appointment! My first appointment as a physician, heh.

One day, I'll stop laughing after every time I say I'm a doctor. One day...

[uncensored]: Why am I Still Single?

As salaam alaikum,

Yesterday, as I was walking with my co-residents to Pride with my rainbow-colored scarf that I never wore as a khimar at the time it was gifted to me around my neck, texting a man who is interested in me, my angle twisted on a piece of uneven pavement, and I felt myself fall to the ground.

I landed on my hands.

When you fall, people are embarrassed for you. That makes the fall more embarrassing than it otherwise would be.

But I played not embarrassed. "I'm kind of clumsy, so I'm not surprised this happened," I shrugged off. And I shut off embarrassment as much as I can, and I deny the pain of the open sore on my hand and the my ankle, which I later discover is bleeding. I'm fine, I say. I have this odd experience where I feel pain at first, then I feel numbness, then the pain is gone, I tell one of the resident's boyfriends. Maybe it's the acupuncture, I say to myself. Don't want to sound crazy in front of this new group of people. I'll wait a while longer for my eccentricity to come out, though I did allow myself to show them some samba.

I'm not sure this group can handle all that I am...nor should they. They are my colleagues, my professional colleagues. I'll save all that I am for other venues.



But I did think about why I fell. Was this a sign? Was it a sign that I'm going in the wrong direction? I don't drink alcohol, but am I around alcohol too much? I still pray, but do I not pray enough? I don't have sex, but am I flirting with the possibility too much?

Am I too much of earth, and not enough for God?



I'm so inspired this morning with all of these questions and all of these thoughts because I just watched a TED talk this morning that was assigned to us prior to the session we are to have during this block of our residency. It felt very touchy-feely at the time, but it was informative and I think important for me to reflect on.

Dr. Brene Brown discusses "The Power of Vulnerability." In brief, she talks about how those people who led the happiest lives were able to love wholeheartedly, and a big part of that was accepting and embracing vulnerability...the vulnerability of life and loving. They were also able to embrace their worthiness. They were worthy of loving, worthy of feeling connection, connection that defines us all so much.

But listen to the talk. Really. I'm not a self-help buff by any means, but it's 20 minutes, and it will help put what's coming next into context.

So I listened to this, and I was struck! That's me! Talk about strumming my pain with her fingers, singing my life with her words. This is me in a nutshell.

Necessarily, many of us who go into medicine are perfectionists. I am a diehard. To say I studied hard is an understatement. I strove to get all As at all times, and when I didn't, I beat myself up about it. I'm not that smart, because I got a 3.908 in college, and my science GPA was even lower. I knew people who got higher. I'm not that smart, because I got an 85% A in my organic chemistry class. It was on a curve, so it wasn't a real A.

I'm not that smart, because I'm not perfect, in other words. You always strive for that perfection as a perfectionist. Even if one's imperfection is good enough.

Worthiness is something I struggle with in all domains. I don't know if it's more often than not but too often, I don't feel worthy, or I at least question my worthiness. Was I worthy of being called a good medical student? Am I worthy of any type of praise? Was I worthy enough to attend Harvard, really? Am I worthy of being called a Muslim? Am I worthy before God? Am I worthy of being loved?

Because I'm not there...I'm not there.



Let's break down one of these for now. Am I worthy of being loved? I don't know. Sometimes, I feel like, absolutely. But most of the time, I feel like, the proof is in the pudding. And then I remind myself that I am loved, by family and friends...but that's not what I mean.

And all of us who wonder this know that's not what we mean. We want a partner! We want romantic love, carnal love, whatever you want to call it and whatever you want to deny. So I ask, am I worthy of being loved by a man who will marry me or am I not?

If I am worthy, then why am I still single?

Why am I still single?

"Because the right one hasn't come along yet," they all say. This satisfies me for, like, five seconds.

But what if he never comes?" I sometimes say aloud, sometimes keep to myself. But for real, though. What if he never comes? What if he doesn't exist? What if God wants me to be single for the rest of my life because that is my portion?

"God doesn't want that for us," some would say, my father, for example.

Well then, why am I suffering so much from being single? This must be a trial, and so far, I'm failing.

Failing. Failing.

There's that word that I've used so much for someone who has actually never failed. Alhamdulillah, I've never failed to fast Ramadan. Alhamdulillah, I've never failed a class or a test or anything academic like that. Alhamdulillah, I've never failed my family, let them down...

But I use that word, fail, a lot to describe myself. Failure at life. Meaning failure at love.

Am I a failure at love?

"No, you just haven't found the one yet."

The one. I don't want to believe in that shit.

It just seems like an invitation to let down, disappointment, disillusionment. It's something you can only know in retrospect.

And that still doesn't answer the question...what if I'm not going to find the one, the right, the whatever? What if no man ever wants to marry me like no man has ever (legitimately) wanted to marry me?

Online proposals from random international Muslims aside.

Dr. Brown said that we numb vulnerability, some of us with addictions to substances, food and drug. I did the food thing a little bit, but I think numbing several emotions led me, leads me, to cycle into depression at different points in my life.

I numb attraction. Before I was practicing fully, I numbed it because it was inconvenient and risky. Why allow myself to be attracted to someone if they don't like me back? Yet, it inevitably happened, but I fought it so hard.

I fight so hard.

I liked when I became more practicing an such attraction was haram, anyway. Then, I was justified in numbing, denying, and I felt like it was an act of worship on top of it to obfuscate so thoroughly. And anything else was sin. This is how God intended us to be. Fight the base way we were created in order to attain the spiritual heights to transcend this earthly world in anticipation of Heaven.

But there is no easy way to follow God.

There is no easy way because we can deny so hard in places where we deem love and attraction to be inappropriate that we don't love in the right places when it is appropriate.

Perfectionists are among us all throughout life and over time, many of them have had loud voices and have led many of us down the road to masochism, using God's name in vain.

The Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, must have been a perfectionist as well. I'm thinking of the Hadith that I love but that bites me hard at the same time. That religion should be very easy, but all we have to do is try to be as perfect as we can.

Ummmm...that is not easy. That second part. Not even very easy. Lord have mercy on me, but it's not.



Dr. Brown talks about practicing vulnerability. As my mother would say, if these people would just read the Qur'an and find Islam. It's very hard to find Islam. This world is too polluted right now by Muslims and non-Muslims corrupting Islam and obscuring the beautiful path. I pray that I'm not one of them. I'm fine with not everyone being Muslim because becoming Muslim in this country often inspires people to leave or lose sight of those principles that led them to submit to God in the first place in favor of bullshit...

But I digress.

I say all of this because practicing vulnerability is practicing Islam. Submitting to God is allowing yourself to be vulnerable to a Being that you cannot touch, who is perceivable through His creation only, who we have no proper pronouns for in our languages that are not limited by gender, who we can't help but anthropomorphize in our minds (yes, everyone, even Muslims). Submitting to a Being that we cannot sense with our five senses directly.

Trusting Him when there's no evidence (and no promise!) that you'll get what you want. Trusting that what He wants is best, even if you don't get what you want. Trusting Him that he's guiding you, although you feel like you don't know where you're going.

You know what you're supposed to do, but you don't know how to do it. This can lead you astray.

Astray. That's almost a curse word for me.

Practicing vulnerability, for me, begins spiritually, so begins with my relationship with God. Worthiness, I should seek first with God.

Because human beings, we're all guilty of this, but we'll seek these things in arms, physical arms, first. In significant others in particular sometimes...

But is my harkening so much toward God above the carnal, which calls me deeply, as is my nature, as I was created by my Creator, my attempt at perfection that cannot be achieved, due to my nature? And should I seek something unattainable? Or should I embrace my imperfections, in the name of God, and move forward?



So, why am I still single? I could say a lot of things. Part of me wants to fault myself. I'm too intense, I talk too much, I'm too ambitious, I'm too picky, I'm too...fat. Another part of me wants to fault men. They don't know a good thing when they see it, they don't value virtue (or at least its attempts), they don't value an intelligent woman, they don't value my beauty, they're emotionally lazy, they want sex and no commitment. I could do a life retrospective, and it all started when I embraced, as a practicing Muslimah, my fear of vulnerability by seeking a form of religion in which there was a straight way in life in which all good things were guaranteed, a straight way and a right way to do things so I wouldn't get hurt by a man who just desires my sex and then leaves me when/if he gets what he wants... So I didn't date, because it was haram, and so I remained single. God intends marriage to protect us from the pains of premarital intimacy with people who are not married to us under God. Just to find out that there are no guarantees, not even in marriage (and sometimes especially not in marriage), and so one of the major reasons I became more practicing is now moot, but I always have been and always will be Muslim. And a Muslimah who practices Islam who is not super conservative is hard to find a match for, when the Muslim men like her are not seeking Muslim women.

But the answer is, I don't know.

I don't know, and I'm just going to live with it.



It's time for me to get ready for work (haha, sounds funny), but this reflection is obviously not over, just as insha'Allah life isn't over. I've avoided making mistakes and I've tried to be as perfect as possible. And when I make a mistake, I don't feel comfortable pronouncing the name of God over it. But maybe herein lies the problem. Maybe I don't pronounce the name of God enough, figuratively speaking. Maybe I fear bringing God into areas of my life where I know I'm traveling a raw path. Maybe I need to come to God more often and be more frank about my vulnerabilities and when I fall into error, in the middle of it happening, instead of shutting Him out for shame that it's happening. I'm not saying sin in the name of God, but...that I need to at least hold fast to God consciousness in everything, everything, everything that I do, and not take breaks...

I don't know why I'm still single when I really don't want to be. I'm not alone. God knows, I do not. God knows why we're on this earth, and I do not. I'm going to embrace that and go about my way.

I just don't know what that all means yet.

EDIT: Hahaha, just noticed that I misspelled uncensored. This is what comes of Firefox not spell-checking my titles. That was not intentional!

[uncensored]: Whatever Happened to RMD?

As salaam alaikum,

Mo’s so light he feels like flying yet he knows better than to grin wildly at this point. This is no smiling matter, less a laughing matter, and he finds himself another night trekking home with clothing improper for the chill of the evening, his mind fixed on her.

He slipped a while back because they’ve had a freak ice storm and it’s hard to tell the black of the ice from the black of the asphalt and the sidewalks are even worse. He steadies himself and resumes his resolute pace. 

Mo stares at his feet and about four feet before him to ensure that he doesn’t slip on yet another ice patch. He also notices that he swings his left foot out farther than his right when he walks. He forgets the ice and finds himself zeroing in on his left foot and contrasting its swing to that of his right.

Nisreen’s laughing at him. “What is it?” he asks, turning back. It’s one of the warmer days, and she’s wearing a light-weight pink blouse with a neckline low enough that it’s showing her chest a bit whenever the wind blows her scarf. She’s standing near the front door to her apartment building, and he can hear her cackle despite the whirring of the wind that is whipping about them. 

“I’ve grown accustomed to your stride,” she remarks as he returns with her mail in one hand, her mailbox keys in the other.

  

“How’s that funny?” he inquires, as she holds the screen door open for him. She follows closely behind him.

“I don’t know.  It’s just so characteristically you,” she answers, giving him a halfway grin. “You kind of have a clumsy way of going about it, like you’re involuntarily throwing your left foot from beneath you.”

This is an excerpt from RMD that I may or may not have posted before. For my readers who have come along post-RMD mention, RMD, A Rose Much Desired, is the first novel I've actually competed as an adult. I try to get my family members to read it before I do my next round of major edits, but no one seems to get through it, so I've nicknamed it "The Brick."

To give a little bit of background of the story, I first dreamed up the plot for RMD during a creative writing class my senior year of college. I was struggling writing short stories for this course, partly because of a teacher who brought her own personal opinions on the character's motivations dominate during the discussion of the writing. RMD started out as an assignment to practice writing enthralling first-paragraphs of stories. I thought, what if I wrote a first paragraph for a story in which a practicing Muslim wakes up from a one-night-stand.

Thus was born Mo, afraid of the woman that he'd just slept with as he recognizes that she's awaken and is staring up at him.

After reading the paragraph out-loud (which was difficult for me, as a then-hijabi and one who doesn't curse in public, to read aloud the word "shit"), my instructor questioned the motives of the female involved. Why is she angry, she asked? She did it, didn't she?

Seriously, professor? You do not think that anger is a probable emotional outcome of a one-night stand? The character is not you, after all.

I ignored that comment, but began imagining the story more. Who is the woman behind the one-night stand? Who is Mo? What led them there? What is their story?

I began sketching out the short story, which I called, "Agent," as a possible short story for the second half of my semester in creative writing. I didn't get "Agent" done in time enough, so I instead wrote a story called "Drinking Water," a play off of Tom Jobim's "Agua de Beber," but it was a story based in the DR, with a character, Jannah, based on me, trying to figure out where her morals lay, from her mode of dress to whether she dances in public, while on the island of Hispaniola, while being courted by a friendly Dominican man.

It was okay at best.

But, it was the first semi-autobiographical piece I had written. As I'd noticed in my freshman year creative writing class, the story that I wrote in which one of the characters was closer to myself got more of a response (Gloria in "Garota" was both me and my best friend, who had recently come out to me...my depression and my best friends attraction to women). There was something more authentic about the whole piece if at least one of the characters was real, in a sense.

And so I went back to the drawing board on "Agent," after the class was over. I began writing scenes, while flying to medical school second-looks, while taking a trip with my parents to Disney, during the break between lectures...anytime I got. I was beginning to fall in love with the story of Mo and the difficult woman that he made the mistake of sleeping with.

Except, the character I chose to make myself was that woman...

I put myself in that woman's shoes, the woman who awoke angrily to a Muslim man after a one-night stand, and wondered what I would have done. The story blew up after that, took on a life of it's own. "Agent" became a novel and "Agent" was no longer a proper name for a novel, so I brainstormed before I came up with the perfect name: "A Rose Much Desired."

I think I came up with the name only after I began outlining the plot of the story, only after a blogging friend of mine recommended that I do National Novel Writers' Month in November of 2007. Since RMD was growing, I took that as an opportunity to push myself to write my first novel. It grew to three narrations. "Agent," was the story of Mo, "Desirée" was the story of the woman he was sleeping with, and how she became so enamored of Muslim men that she specifically sought Mo out, and "Muslimah" is the story of Nisreen, the Muslim woman who sees Mo's distress and embarks on a journey to help him out of what she feels is a spiritual deficit.

I "won" NaNoWriMo, writing over 50,000 words in one month (while learning anatomy), and added bits and pieces to the novel (I really was in the last quarter of the book and got writers block). I wouldn't finish RMD until November 2010, three years after I began.

I had declared a "Center of Awesomeness," that can be seen in my journal at the time. I was going to finish the story! Around the same time, I met who would become my notorious ex, Ex the Prototype. He was gentle and kind, and passive in his attraction to me, and I think that was why I let him in. He didn't have the underlying voracious sexual energy that other guys who liked me had, so I was less threatened by him. Honestly.

And let me not front, we had a lot of other things in common...besides, of course, religion, which I worried about.

But while that was worrying me, I finished RMD, finally. I printed it out at the medical school, while we still had unlimited printing, I edited it by hand and then edited it on the word-processor. This was not my first of may edits to the text.

I prepared my family to read it, and my best friend...and then Ex the Prototype wanted to read it.

It required a lot of trust to email him that manuscript, but I did.

Meanwhile, my mother declared that she couldn't read it after only getting past the first chapter, that she didn't like Desirée and if it weren't my writing, she wouldn't care any more about her to continue reading. And, she said when she read Desirée, she just saw me, and it was distracting.

Which is effective, because Desirée is me.

And other comments that were marginally constructive criticism. She then pointed me to one of her favorite authors, Eric Jerome Dickey, and I was a little taken aback. She didn't get far enough into the story to realize that that was not the kind of novel I was going for, but okay.

Then none of my cousins and friends could complete the story.

The final sinker was the ex. And this was in a time (while he was still with me) that I really hung on his every word. He said he was distracted because the guy didn't sound like a guy in the first chapter, that it was "weird," but he'd try to keep reading. Then, a few days later, he told me, regrettably, that he wouldn't be able to read it.

I was sad. I didn't really mind that my mother couldn't read it...it is awkward to read a story about a character that seems like your daughter in a sexual situation. Sorry, Mom. But my ex, who usually liked my writing (campy things like my skit for the Second Year Show included), couldn't get through RMD?

Maybe I didn't write Mo realistically. I really needed people to get through half of the story to realize what I was trying to do with the three narrations, the three central characters...but no one ever did. And Ex the Prototype's comments were the most paralyzing.

...even though he also made these comments before getting through the story.

And then he broke up with me about a month later (no, not because RMD was that bad, haha), and I was devastated for a long time, mainly because I had wasted my time on him, had been so ambivalent about him and how being with him would affect my faith, making so many compromises and then he just made the unilateral decision that he was no longer satisfied with the relationship, no longer attracted to me, and bounced.

But for months afterwards, I still took his criticism of RMD seriously.

And I haven't touched it since.

I told myself it was because family members couldn't read it, that I was waiting for someone to finish it, but honestly, none of them ever will. Over a year and a half has passed since I emailed them the manuscript. The beginning of the story is harder to read than the second part because I wrote that part in one month, and while I did the most edits on that part, there are major things that need to change, I recognize.

It's just hard, because the story gets so much more dynamic after that...I really needed people to get to the turning point and tell me what I can do to facilitate the reading of the first part.

I guess I need non-related reviewers, as well.

But if I'm honest with myself, I also didn't touch RMD because I started applying to residency, and since then, I've been busy interviewing, wrapping up medical school, and now moving across the country.

Even though I don't care for Ex the Prototype anymore, and have successfully cut him off from all contact, I still took his criticism seriously.

But then, I think about other things he's said.

Although he claims that he respects women and many of his political and activist role models are women (one of the thing that initially endeared him to me, despite my initial lack of attraction for him), he also made gender-divisive comments through the course of the relationship. Things like, "Well, I'd expect you to say/feel that way, because you are a woman."

The sinker was actually after our relationship, when I was, against my will, flying next to him to our mutual friend's wedding in St. Louis. He was reading, for the first time, Chimamanda Adichie. He talked about how he usually doesn't like reading fiction about women or written by women. It doesn't appeal to him, but he was able to read Chimamanda, maybe because she wrote about Nigeria, but she was just...different.

That gave me insight into his being unable to read RMD at the time...because it was written by me, a woman, unapologetically woman with what could be considered stereotypical female tendencies and sensibilities that are also evident in my writing. My characters are introspective. Mo is, yes, minimally introspective and tries to interpret female's faces, but so did the man that Mo was based on, a man who wrote once that he was struck up a conversation with "the girl" sitting next to him in the computer lab, and as she sorted through her album, she had that "crooked smile that girls get when they're looking at pictures of people they love."

(We used to read each other's journals, back in the day...this is how I had access to things like that).

So while he was unable to connect with Mo because he was not introspective, not particularly empathic, all of which allowed him to break up with me so awkwardly...he also was one of those men who insisted that women didn't make sense to them. Men who don't try hard enough to see the humanity in their female counterparts.


He was not my audience. So why did I worry so much about what he thought?

Because I once respected him. And even after he told me mean things about my body, I still held on to that part that I respected. It took me a long time to not internalize his criticism and give up RMD for shelved, lost, still my baby, but maybe not worth the fight to perfect it.

And maybe it isn't worth the fight, but it damn well won't be because of that ex.



I'm still reading this Jennifer Weiner piece about supporting women writers, but as usual for me, I'll read something, get a sudden inspiration, and have to write it immediately. I can't believe that I internalize a feeling of inferiority about the issues that concern me as a woman, and what I write about, in comparison to the writings of men. There are other men, authors, who have, similarly to my ex, proclaimed the superiority of male writing, saying men have more depth than women. As an unabashed writer of chick lit, she speaks out for the right to write as she pleases.

That's right!

Would the world be a better place without chick lit? Only if you consider those who read chick lit dispensable. And though, admittedly, I don't think I've ever read anything that could fit into that genre (probably, as a preteen and teenager, I've read enough young adult novels that would grow up to be chick lit), I'm not mad at it. To express distaste and disdain about someone else's writing as a fellow author is either ugly pretentiousness or just straight hating.

For example, I tend to be a little hipster and I don't like reading the most popular series. I tried Harry Potter, and it was okay to me. Just not my thing. Heard about Twilight. Not into that. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and etc? Not where my interests lie. But I don't go around dissing the authors.

There's something out there for everyone, and nothing is for everyone. RMD may insult male sensibilities because it's driven in parts by introspective monologues. The man that characterizes something as inherently female and thereafter relinquishes all attempts to understand it are not my audience and besides basic cordiality I have nothing to say to them, either. They obviously don't see me.

I'm reading this in the wake of reading the piece in the Atlantic about not being someone's wife but being perceived as such in the workplace (which makes me wonder if some men just have five schema for adult women: slut, wife, mother, grandma) and how that impacts women's ability to be promoted. I also read this piece about how women physician-scientists are paid markedly less than their male counterparts, and it's not all about being wives and mothers, either.

And, after talking to a friend of mine who reminds me of Ex the Prototype in the way he always is sure to define for me what is a female sensibility, and therefore what he doesn't understand.

Some of the things are not that hard. Seriously, like, "I don't understand why females are so into clothes." Really?



So, for reasons other than it needs a lot of work, haha, RMD is going into hibernation. If I have downtime while I'm a resident, I'll revisit it, make some drastic rewrites in the first half of the story, try to get my fam to read it again. Maybe I'll find someone else who'll want to read it, but I really need to fix some of the writing before I send it off. But I shouldn't be ashamed any more that I write female-centered stories, of my "feminine" sensibilities, or anything else. Yes, my blog is kind of pink and only women seem to read it, but so what?

The worst thing that could happen to any of my writing is me changing it up so I'd think a man would want to read it as if seeking validation.

Now! time for me to get ready for my day! I'm going to the mall to buy some new flats and some dress blouses to make up for the ones that FedEx lost.

American Gender, Part IV

As salaam alaikum,

I think I started this series after reflecting about the quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that I posted a bit ago in my journal. I'm so used to interpreting quotes that say "man" as "humankind," and so used to, as a woman who is not a wife and mother, positioning myself in what may be regarded as a man's place because I don't have those two very important responsibilities...that it sounded daunting to me. There are quite a few truths to be stood for today...why wasn't I standing for them? I rationalized that, by choosing to go into medicine in spite of the fact that the system is very broken, going into primary care as many threaten that it may be a thing of the past for physicians, I am standing for one of those truths, although in a very passive way.

Should I take a more active stance, stand out in the street, yell, scream and demand justice? Should I not fear for my career, my safety? Should I not fear indefinite detainment with no trial?

Or was King's message only for men, really?

As a woman at 27 who prefers to keep herself safe, to secure her career, rather than put my career and freedom on the line to speak for these truths in the face of tyranny, corruption and greed in this country and indeed the global economy...am I dead at 27? Or does my gender not carry with it the same obligation?

Despite being a woman whose primary aspiration for so long has been marriage and child-rearing, I must say...the idea that I am exempt certain obligations because I am a woman, and especially those ideas within Islam, have been, admittedly, hard to palate. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand it, and it makes logical sense. Say I were a mother right now. No, absolutely not will I take to the streets without fear of my fate while leaving children behind. And to require that of mothers would be illogical and immoral on several levels, but at base it would be harmful for the sake of society. I totally understand that.

But what about me? I am unmarried (and not for lack of trying, haha!) and I have no children. Is the exemption from obligation just for the sake of that essential societal role that we play in production and maintenance of the next generation? Or, to be blunt, is it the fact that I have a fertile womb that determines my exemption, regardless of whether or not I am a mother?

I'm not trying to be flip. I'm trying to understand something that bothers me...my relative complacence. Complacence in the face of what? Injustices that we all should be taking to the street for, but most of us don't...most of us, unfortunately, out of ignorance. Because we're kept dumb by reality television, and the various media that should inform us misinforms us. If we knew all that was going on, we'd be taking to the street...

...so, does my gender dictate that I should protect myself? For the sake of myself, my childbearing potential, the future of the human race? Is that really what it's all about? That it takes less than the sperm on the head of a pin to fertilize a bunch of women (I forget the stat, haha) but with a paucity of wombs, what is the race to do?

I don't know.

After so long of not limiting my career aspirations because of my gender, while tailoring them because of my desire to raise children in a similar way that some of my male counterparts have tailored their careers...it seems so weird to consider myself exempt from such an important social responsibility, just because.

I don't think it's just because, of course. There is eternal wisdom hidden beneath tradition and cultural influence that governs how most of our societies determine gender roles. A lot of us look for it, and in trying so hard to see it, to see God's face, I think we err on the sides of extremes and fail to realize the flexibility there actually is in the roles that we adopt for our specific family's, community's and society's needs.


So, in the post-apocalypic society that I created in the story for my friend, the character A was just one of several other women who aspired to join their nations' militias to battle for prominence in the land. She was seen as no more or less woman for the choice she made in fighting over remaining home with children, protecting them as the nations battled in close proximity to the settlements. Her activism was clear. C took on another type of activism, opting for peaceful abstention from the battles, taking societies of mainly women and some children away from the warring nations, salvaging parts of the old world in hopes of creating something sustainable, and fiercely defending themselves from being violated by the men of the nations.

In the story, A and C's suitor end up close battle partners, and C gives her suitor up for lost. Not that A and the suitor have a romantic relationship, but A takes a place with the suitor that C cannot, the love of battle, and she knows that she would never feel as if she were sufficiently relating to the man without being able to share with him this element that is very important to him. The suitor gets so caught up with his new battle partner, his nation's new secret weapon, that he doesn't even notice that C's dropped him, as her society moves on. And A, while thankful to her childhood friend, barely has time for a goodbye as she realize her dream. C takes her society on to safer, higher grounds.

And she's seen as no more or no less of a woman than her childhood friend.



My friend, who was A, is now the only female orthopedic surgery resident in her class at her program. She got her masters in engineering, so she's used to being in a male-majority field. The little warrior that she is, she had some setbacks, fretted over her shortcomings, but was able to match at a great program in the end and is on her way to become an orthopedic surgeon. It works out. She's a former jock. She fits right into the stereotype.

After a fairly smooth academic course, majoring in biology and Spanish in college, I am on my way with my public health degree in tow to become a family physician. I look forward to delivering babies, attending to pregnant and new mothers, promoting women's health and providing competent care to people and families of all ages who need it the most.

I think our roles in the story were pretty accurate of who we would grow up to be.

And these were expressions of my American gender.

American Gender, Part II

As salaam alaikum,

It's interesting to think back to the plot of the story I planned to write for my friend and to think of what it reflected about my conceptions of gender at the time. In the story, as I note in the previous entry, Part I, two young women lead two very different lives and have different aspirations in a post-apocalyptic existence. The character A aspires to join a militia and triumph, bringing her nation into prominence, lording over other nations and ultimately surviving to reign over what will be the new world. My character, C, does not believe that war is the way and leads groups of primarily women and some of their children away from the battlefields, caring for the wounded and salvaging pieces of the old world, aspiring to make new civilization. In this post-apocalyptic world, neither A or C is regarded more or less woman than the other. They are both women who believe differently and have different strengths, and that manifests into their actions and aspirations.



For a moment when I was young, my parents upheld very traditional gender roles. My father was the breadwinner and the sole working adult in our household. He sustained the four of us on his salary as a chemical engineer. My mother was a stay-at-home mother and dropped off and picked up my brother and I from school, sometimes volunteering at our school by participating in the reading groups in our classroom. My mother did all of the cooking and cleaning, until I learned to help (which was pretty early on) and made sure my father's food was ready, hot when he wanted it after a long days' work...and his days were often really long, given his one-hour commute.

On the surface, my family setup would seem like a relic of earlier times, or someone else's culture. It helps that my father was a strong Nigerian man who very much believed in those roles--man as sustainer of the household, woman as upholder of the home. However, my family was not always structured that way, nor would it always be.

When I was born, my mother was the only one employed full-time. My father was still working out immigration work issues at the time. He wouldn't have his job until the month after I was born, and for a while my mother was the breadwinner, even while on paid maternity leave. My mother was a clinical social worker in neonatology at the local university hospital. She had worked for five years by the time I was born, and she loved her job. Prior to meeting my father, she didn't even imagine herself having children. That was not her aspiration. She aspired to be professional and though it was a challenging balance, she never imagined leaving her job for the sake of child rearing.

That is, until my brother came along.

My brother presented our young family with many challenges. He was diagnosed with autism a little bit after his second birthday, after months of suspicions. My mother distinctly remembers the devastation of that time. Coupled with troubling politics at her job, she made the decision to go from full-time to part-time social work, eventually leaving her job altogether when I was almost six years old. I had no idea all that was going on with my mother, of course, at that age. I was just happy when the babysitter no longer was the one dropping me off at kindergarten. It was my mommy now.

And that's how things were for a while. Having my mother at home during my school-age years I think was critically important to my development, even more than if she had been home with us when we were babies. We definitely bonded in this time. My mother returned to the working world when I was 13, working two jobs at once to help pay for the family's move to a new house in a new school district. She settled into a program funded in part by the intermediate school district and has been with that project to this day, which helps parents and educators of children with special needs. It's not the social work she once new, but she's gotten a chance to use some of her counseling skills.

She jokes that she's no longer the breadwinner, that she's the "appetizer winner," but she's very happy to make a small contribution to the family's budget. Other than that, not much has changed in terms of the roles in my parents' home. My father still comes home and expects to stretch out his feet and receive his hot food, but he cooks the rice and stew sometimes. He also washes and irons his own clothes lately, whereas that used to be all my mother...or me. I used to do the family laundry sometimes, when I lived at home.

There are some quirks about the gender roles I learned from my parents. For example, if my father is in the car with the four of us, he must be the one driving. He does not allow my mother or I to drive him anywhere unless he's under the influence of anesthesia and the doctor orders him not to operate heavy machinery.

So, as a three year old, when asked if I ever wanted to learn how to drive, I replied simply, "No, the daddy will drive." I assumed that this was just the way things were.

Then somehow, by 15, I had wised up and I clutched the keys of my driver's ed Ford Taurus in hand eagerly as it was my turn to drive on Huron River Drive. I scoffed at anyone who reminded me of my years old declaration and enthusiastically took the road.

So, what changed between my parents' house and my car? The main thing was that my parents weren't the only influence on my perception of gender. I will say that, because of my parents, I would insha'Allah be more comfortable with a marriage that demanded more traditional roles than maybe some of my peers would. For example, I would not be opposed to be the one primarily responsible for cleaning and cooking, cleaning and child rearing activities. However, I did learn from my parents' marriage that gender roles are not absolute or static. The roles of either member of the couple should change in accordance with life circumstance. My father's immigration status prevented him from working for a short time, so my mother sustained them. My mother needed to stay at home for the sake of my brother and I, and my father was the sole provider for the family. My mother returned to work and my father took on more household responsibilities. And the list could go on from there.

The other thing that influenced me was that my perception of gender were shaped by forces outside of my parents house. Influenced by everything from my grandparents' home to The Cosby Show, my American gender was not to be confined to the household sphere and transcended the examples set in my parents' house.