My little one,

I see your wide eyes that soak in your surroundings, and those ears that pick up words and make them form on your little lips as though you had been studying them for months. I can see my own reflection in your stare, the depth of emotion and thought that are developing in you astound me daily.

I wonder who you will be, whose heart you will touch (and perhaps which hearts you will break). I hope that you lift and touch more hearts than you break. And I feel that you will, because you are my daughter. And you are your father's daughter. He was a heart-mender, a kind soul - and you are like him in a way. Your face as you sleep is peaceful and expressionless, your eyelashes curl up sweetly and your closed lips look as though you are keeping a delicious secret. All like your father.

But you are stubborn. You do not cease to try at something, or to pull at my leg until you've gotten what you came for, or until you've succeeded in your goal. You will knock on the door not until you become fatigued, but until it is opened for you. Be stubborn, little one. Do not cease to try to be better and do better and achieve better, even if those around you attempt to pull you down. You are my daughter. And I will not cease to try to make YOU better until I am buried in the earth.

You are us, my cherub. You have the sweet but fiery temperament of your father. His humour and mischievous eyes. You have my stubbornness. You have my love.

But you are also so different. Your soul is unique, and though I do not know who you will be or what you will do, I have faith and hope in you. Not that you will become a doctor or business owner, although you can if you want. But I have hope that you will leave the world better than you found it. This is your purpose, this is who you were meant to be, because this is who we were all meant to be.

Love,
Mama

Sometimes I wish I had more time to write, and not just little bursts of opportunities when my daughter decides to take a nap.

Grief is a strange thing. It leaves you in peace for some moments and comes back with a vengeance at the drop of a hat. Things that used to be easy are difficult now. And things that used to be difficult don't even matter anymore. I supposed priorities are deeply changed when your life partner is no longer by your side. The things you thought mattered just don't anymore. There isn't a more eloquent way of saying that...it's just that simple.

It's strange to try to imagine my future now. The future has always been uncertain, but I came to expect at least a little bit of predictability. Now I constantly wonder where I'll live and what I'll do for the next few years. And more than anything I wonder if I'll go back to a life of mediocrity or if I'll make a difference in the world.

My heart breaks at the idea that I may live in mediocrity.

Grief does not cease when it should, or when it is expected to. It doesn't bow to your will. It hides and disguises itself as contentment, as stress, as hunger. It lets you sleep for a moment or two. It lets you understand that life has gone on and will continue to go on. It lets you do all of these things, and for that you are grateful.

But it returns, and that is okay. It is okay, I tell myself, to have grief, to live with pain. It is okay that making myself a cup of tea hurts because I remember how Amr like three spoons of sugar in a cup. It is okay that I place my head and cheek where he used to sit and wait, just wait to see if something different will happen, or if the couch will absorb some of this love that is going to burst from my chest.

It's fine for things to make perfect sense in one moment, and then feel chaotic and aimless the next.

I remind myself that I am only human, not angel from light, not devil from fire. Just human from the earth. The earth shakes as does my heart, it flips and is flooded and is snowed and rained upon. It is beautiful and frightening. It is never just one thing.

I am never just one thing.

To you who disbelieved at the moment you pointed and shot her baba...

Every time Ruqaya looks at a man on TV or in a book and points to him, saying "baba?" - may God strike in your heart the same pain as my heart is stricken with for my baby.

I dreamt I was swimming in the ocean with you, it was nighttime and the water and sky were dark, black. There was a light shining from above - I could see the shadows of fish and strange creatures lurking below the surface. But I wasn't afraid. We swam until we reached the shore of an island and entered the home that was there. Waking up from this dream was difficult. I wanted to hold on with everything I had, I wanted it to be real, I wanted to feel safe again instead of feeling like I'm floating in dangerous waters with no anchor.

Above all, my greatest fear is to forget. To go on as though my life wasn't touched by unselfish love. I fear waking up and looking Ruqaya and saying to myself my daughter is beautiful, instead of saying our daughter.

I fear I will go back to wanting everything right in this world and not caring about the next, or not carrying out something of significance. I fear that you will have died fighting against injustice, and I will die in my bed, contributing little to the world. I fear being ashamed on the day that people's faces will be dark and shamed. And looking at you from afar to see you under the shade of God's throne. I fear that all the pain of this world will not bring me closer to you, and closer to You.

I spend most of my days in fear now, fear that I am not doing enough, being enough, caring enough. I wish that my fear would be alleviated and that I could be free.

Running between Graves

Yesterday I was driving my mother somewhere and when I got to the car I realized that I forgot to bring my wallet with my driver's license and insurance. So I left her in the car and ran back through the building so that she wouldn't be late. As I was running, I suddenly remembered the last time I ran so fast was the day of my husband's janazah, 7 weeks ago.

For anyone who doesn't know, I'm referring to the fact that thugs were running after us (they specifically wanted to hurt the family of the "sheikh") right after my husband was buried, in the graveyard.

All the thoughts that were going through my head at the time came back to me just then. I remember that I didn't really know what was going on, I was just running forward, hearing really loud bangs and screams behind me. I can't remember the last time I was in a graveyard, and it seemed so odd to be running there, of all places. There was an old woman in front of me who was also running with much difficulty, I passed between many graves of people I didn't know. I squeezed through small openings between them and hurried through paths that were dry and dusty. I didn't see who it was, but someone hurled a stone at me and I was hit on my cheek. I still have a small scar there.

I was separated from everyone I knew, and I escaped out of the graveyard into a side street. Someone I didn't know told me to run and just hide in the entrance of any building, but I didn't hide. I just kept running on that side street without looking back. I remember almost not caring whether I lived or died at that point. I only asked Allah in my heart to let me go on for the sake of my daughter, and He did.

I eventually ran into my cousin and brother-in-law who came out of the same entrance, they helped me home.

It's strange to think about it now, it almost seems like it's some scene from a movie instead of something that actually happened.

Although I didn't get a chance to visit my husband's grave that day, I went a week later, and saw where he had been buried. There was a stark contrast between the chaos of his burial and the day I went to him. It was calm and quiet that day. And I stood at his grave and said salaam to him, and I wondered so many things, like how it was that he got to escape from the prison of this world, and how if he were alive and saw how badly his friends and family were being treated, his heart would've been broken. When I think about him now, I know that he escaped from something that the rest of us have to live with, and I say Alhamdulillah for his sake, and I believe that God was truly merciful towards him in that he did not have to experience the grief of the Egypt that he left behind.

At the end I pray that he is in a better place, and that he is at peace. I pray to be reunited with him again in the next life.

And now I know the worthlessness of this world. We sell our souls to achieve status in this life, but we are all already walking through a graveyard, towards the spot we will be buried in, we just don't know it yet.

Dua of the Oppressed

My mother called me when I was still in Egypt, a few days after my husband was killed. She was very worried about me - she thought that the Egyptian police would find me because I was speaking out against what they and the military scum did to my husband. She thought they would find me and then who knows what they'd do. My response to her was "what can they do to me, omee, that they haven't already done? What else can they take from me? If they kill me, that would be a mercy."

And that's what I feel now, what else can any person do or say against me that is worse than murdering the person I loved most in this world? I'm not scared of speaking my mind and telling the world that the Egyptian military killed my husband in cold blood. I'm not scared because when they took him from me, I felt I had nothing more to lose. Nothing more to fear.

I actually feel sorry for the people in Egypt who are doing and supporting the killing, perhaps it's an odd emotion to pity someone who has oppressed you. But in those first days after finding out what happened to my husband, I reached deep into a place in my heart that I didn't even know was there. A place that was reserved for this moment...I made the kind of duaa against them that they should fear every waking moment, because in that moment I was oppressed - they had unlawfully taken something that didn't belong to them, they had spilled a Muslim's blood. Our prophet (pbuh) said: "Fear the supplication of the oppressed, for there is no barrier between it and Allah."

To that soldier who aimed at my husband and pressed the trigger as though he was playing a video game, I asked God to make his every waking moment full of despair, torture, and the kind of pain that he made me feel. And I asked God to punish him eternally in hell - him and all those above him who gave the orders to kill unarmed protesters with no mercy or warning.

And every mother, father, spouse or child who lost someone they loved dearly, I know in my heart that they made the same duaa as I did. And because of that, I feel sorry for people who think they are above the control of God. Because there is no barrier between what we asked and Allah. And Allah is Al-Mujeeb, He is the One Who Responds to the caller when he calls upon Him.

Ya Allah, answer my duaa and leave none of them on this earth except that he or she is tortured just as they have made my heart and those of thousands upon thousands of families tortured. Ya Allah bring them to their knees, and let them feel the despair that they brought upon themselves.

There is truly no one to fear in this world above Allah.

Settle.

Let the dust settle at your feet, don't remove sand particles from your shoes because that's the sand from the graveyard. It lines the insides of your soles. Let the sadness settle in, let it find the parts of your heart it hasn't yet touched simply because there was no time. Let it invade, let it be as though you never felt happiness before. But then let it go.

Let your husband's perfume sit on the shelf in your closet so that your daughter can know how he smelled. Let his slippers lie in front of the bathroom so you can make wudu with them. Read from his pocket-sized Qur'an. Look through his wallet and remember the times he got his driver's license and library card. Wear his wedding band and smile at the thought of you both picking it out together.

See the gold coloured half-moon in the sky, believe it is made gold for him.

Asmaa, would you mourn a bird who is released from its cage and now roams freely in the heavens?

Anger

I have a lot of anger seething inside of me, anger that I have to subdue because I don't want to wreck my relationships with important people in my life, anger that I have to quell because I have a child that needs me to be happy and take care of her well, anger that if tested would likely spill over the edges and burn whatever it touches.

I've been in Egypt for the past two months, I've seen the president get forcibly removed from his position, detained, and likely imprisoned for a long time (if not worse). I've seen photos and videos of people getting shot between their eyes and through their hearts for not being okay with a military coup, for daring to protest against the "great" Egyptian military's decisions. Women were killed, babies were killed.

Far worse than this (and from where my anger truly stems) is not the indifference of Egyptians to what is happening...rather, the sense of pride they have that their military is ridding Egypt of "terrorists" and those who wish to "destroy our country." It makes me physically ill thinking that respectful, educated people don't give a damn that their own people are being massacred in cold blood. The media, naturally, is to blame for this blindness that people seem to be suffering from. Since a member of the Muslim Brotherhood was elected as president, they have been spending every waking moment demonizing him and his party, blaming them for every possible thing wrong with the country (past, present, and even future). Many Egyptians who I considered (past tense) to be intelligent and respectful people are under the impression that the media can say and do no wrong, and that the military should go ahead and just kill anyone protesting against them (when asked "what about women, what about children?" they reply "it's their fault that they are there").

I can't even begin to understand where these people's hearts have gone, I suppose they've gone with their minds into some black hole in the universe. Who knows if they'll ever come back from this.

I'm angry that every time my (bearded) husband leaves the house, I wonder whether he'll come back to me alive or if he'll be the victim of the crippling anti-religious fervor holding the country. I wonder if we'll ever escape the dirty looks we get when walking together. I wonder if Egypt will ever be the same again, or if it will now be worse for a religious person to live here than any given non-Muslim country. Honestly, current Egypt makes me miss the political apathy in Canada.

I just don't know how long the anger can stay here before I burst at the seams.

Uproot

Lately I've been thinking about how people change over the years - the people I have known for ages, some since I was a child. Logically and morally I know that when people change something about themselves (especially in the religious sense), I should not be quick to judge them or the reasoning behind those decisions. But recently I've noticed a lot of my peers (and by peers I mean females of a similar age and with similar education) starting to become more liberal about their religion (as well as other things).

And while I know that religious decisions are deeply personal, I often wonder at the trends that I've been observing amongst my peers. I've noticed that as the years progress, many of them slowly start to detach themselves from their Muslim identities. The more they venture into higher education, the greater their separation from Islam. Obviously this isn't the case for all or even most women, but it has happened enough for me to notice it as a pattern.

I can't help but feel that as your education is furthered, there is an intense pressure put on you to adopt a code of thinking that favours self-taught knowledge over traditional teachings (traditional in the broadest sense of the word). I remember while I was in university, I always had this drive to continuously prove to my classmates and professors that I was an open-minded person, not tightly bound by traditional thinking. I desperately needed people to see me as something other than just a Muslim.

When I was pursuing my masters, my attitude changed - I don't know if this was because I had grown more experienced in life, or whether it was just because I sort of stopped caring about how other people perceived me. Instead of pushing my Islam out of the classroom, I made it the topic of my research papers and my presentations. I wrote about my personal journeys and my relationship to others being defined by my relationship to God. I came to terms with the fact that in a stand off between myself, my beliefs, my essence, and the system of education I wasn't going to be the only one to change.

I consider myself to be lucky that I didn't bend to the will of a higher education that claims to be inclusive but actually mocks most, if not all traditional types of knowledge. A lot of people are getting lost in the education system, they are trying to pull out their roots and plant them someplace else, they are distancing themselves from who they once were, as though to say I'm ashamed of my past. But I can't think of anything sadder or harder on the soul than giving up what you once were to be someone who only seeks acceptance and value from other human beings.

In my nostalgic moments, I sometimes rifle through my old poetry and blog posts, and I came across something from 2010 that made me grin:

there is a secret urge
that lays beneath my skin
to bury these old skeletons
and the coffins that they’re in

I’d take my trusty shovel
and dig throughout the night
and wipe my sweaty brow
with the garments of my plight

every speck of dirt dislodged
will remind me of your dead heart
and your ugly mangled faces
I was so fortunate to depart

but alas I do fear
that my stamina is low
so my shovel shall remain hidden
underneath my vengeance’s glow

and once my chance comes yet again
oh yes, that day you’ll see
the mercy that I once gave you
will be as scarce as a December bee.

Growing up with Baby

Observing baby's different milestones reminds me of how God taught man that which he knew not (96:5). She was born as a 6 pound, and now she's learning things so quickly that it's rather shocking. She'll literally be able to do something today that she couldn't do yesterday. Like randomly reach up to touch my face in an inquisitive manner - my chin, then lips, then nose (then naturally my glasses to try and pull them off).

But the truth is, I think I may be learning even more than her. I'm learning how to be a different human being - one who doesn't have the luxury of being selfish anymore. I'm learning a lot about love and fear and parental paranoia. God is teaching us both how to be new and different every day. We are both growing up.

Life Lessons for Baby

Though she's only 3 months old, once in a while I like to talk to my baby as though she's an adult. Instead of singing her the ABCs, I just level with her about life issues that she should know about as she grows up. These exchanges usually take place as I'm changing her diaper.

Today's life lesson was about knowing yourself and being true to yourself through honesty:

"Ruqaya, you need to know that the most important thing in life (after worshiping God, of course) is knowing yourself and being true to yourself through honesty. While growing up, you need to come to understand and appreciate yourself and your emotions. Never set aside your emotions in order to please someone else. For example, if someone has upset you or hurt your feelings, you need to be honest and tell that person how their actions have affected you. Your heart is the most important organ in your body and above all, you need to protect it (baba might say it's your brain that's the most important, but between you and me, it's your heart). In order to have true, honest, loving relationships, you need to first love yourself and then your heart and mind will be ready to love someone else."

Something tells me she agrees with me.

More Baby

I can hardly be surprised that I haven't posted for the last 2 months. Having a baby is an all-consuming life choice. I'm either feeding her, changing her, putting her to sleep, playing with her, or thinking about the challenges of raising a child to be a decent human being. And then there's the not sleeping at night thing which is as bad as it sounds.

I suppose the scariest thing of all is knowing that this is your life from now on, you can't change your mind and return to sender. That being said, I love her and she's precious, and seeing those first few smiles kind of makes me forget all the pain and sleepless nights.

I suppose all we can do is pray for our children to become good people, and try to post on our blogs in the short in fleeting intervals of free time we have.

And now I have to stop because my baby's hands are cold and that situation needs to be rectified.

Nov 10, 2012

Friday, November 9

My husband and I went in to the hospital for me to get an ultrasound, then we had some errands to run afterwards. But once we were done and heading out of the room, the doctor came to us and said "where do you think you're going?" and proceeded to explain to us that I had to be induced due to some concerns with the baby's movements in the womb (or lack thereof).

I remember that moment sitting in the hospital room, my heart dropping, my anxiety crashing through the roof. My husband was calmer, but that was only because he needed to balance me out. I'm pretty sure his blood pressure was also spiking to abnormal levels at the time.

So I filled out some forms, got checked in to the hospital and put into a labour and delivery room. I changed into a hospital gown. I made my husband miss Jummah prayer to be with me, which he did without hesitation.

Lying in that hospital bed, with an IV needle in the vein of my right hand, I felt my mind go blank. I wasn't ready for this, I thought I had at least another 2 weeks before I had to change my whole life for a baby. I was also in a constant state of worry - what if the baby wasn't okay? The doctor had mentioned that there was a 50% chance I would end up having a C-Section if the baby's heart was in distress.

After getting the epidural (which was an excellent decision), they started me on the drugs that would make my contractions begin. For the next several hours, the doctor would come in and check on me, looking at the baby's heart beat and seeming concerned. It seemed like an endless number of hours passed this way, with me not being able to move much, lying in bed with God knows what thoughts running through my mind.

The doctor finally came in as midnight approached and said the baby was not going through the contractions well. His heartbeat was getting low after each contraction, and if that continued for the next 30 minutes, the doctor would have to perform a C-Section. The nurse stopped the IV flow of the induction fluids. Now it was a waiting game.

By some miracle, my own body took over and I started having normal contractions which the nurse and doctor where very happy about (as was I). The baby's heartbeat went back up to normal since natural contractions are much less stressful on baby. And in the next hour or so, after much confusion, pain, and praying, my baby was born.

After 9 months of thinking it was a boy, at 12:42 am, the doctor pronounced "it's a girl." I remember the first thing I thought was "SHE WOULD BE!"...any daughter of mine would have to start off in this world as some kind of trickster. They cleaned her up while I was in a state of shock, my whole body shaking for no apparent reason. They handed her to me, and after all the worry that the doctor had instilled in our minds, there she was, a 6 pound and 5 ounce piece of perfection. We called her Ruqaya.

--

I now live in a kind of zone where time doesn't exist. Night and day are one. Sleep and wakefulness are not determined by the time on the clock. The whole purpose of my life is to keep this little being alive and fed and clean. And as difficult as it is at times, it's also the most valuable experience I've ever gone through. Your whole life changes permanently. Your perspectives change. Even your personality changes.

As scared as I was (and still am) to be a mother, I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Alhamdulillah for the miracle that is life.

swollen

These days I mostly think about how much I've disappointed myself, and probably lots of other people in my life. A large portion of my time is also spent wondering how I'll ever be a mother even half as good as mine. I don't know that I have it in me. I feel frazzled, I feel like my life is made up of a lot of loose ends that I can't seem to get tied together. My head is a messy bundle of misplaced thoughts, nothing more. I want to close my eyes and disappear to someplace better, less full of pain and stress and worry. I want to not be stuck.

the only help is God's

I recently came across this quote while reading something online:  

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

I supposed I remembered it because I can't help but feel that in all the bustling of life, we are infinitely alone. When I came back to Toronto from Egypt, I hoped and even expected that I would get help from people that I knew and loved with certain things. And over the past month and a half I have come to realize that most people live only for themselves, and have little or no desire to lend a hand to someone else (regardless of his/her affinity towards the other).

I don't claim to be the one person out of one hundred that actually helps people when they are in need, but I always thought of myself as someone who, when given the opportunity and means to help someone, would do so.

The fact that people can feign concern for you and your well-being in such a seemingly genuine way, then discard you when you're in a time of need disturbs me. It makes me question many things that I thought I knew. It makes parts of me that I didn't realize could hurt, hurt.

At the end of everything, it's truly only God that you can lean and rely on. No other person can give you what He does, or plant the seeds of serenity in your heart. But I wish I could see more good in people, too, because the more selfish and uncaring humans that I come to know, the more I fear I may be just like them.

on being late

It has always made me wonder - the fact that your life can be so full of things and people, but still feel lonely and without meaning. I've been building my whole life in the hopes that one day I would be someone, do something. But mostly I feel that I've disappointed myself and the people around me.

I know that the absolute truth should always make us realize that God always has a plan for us beyond our own limited imaginations. Perhaps my life was not meant to have significant meaning in and of itself. Maybe my son or daughter is meant to be someone, to do something. Perhaps the meaning of my life is tied to that of the billions of others who have passed and are passing through this world without really touching the ground with their bare hands to understand truth and pain and life.

The older I grow, the more I come to know that more things inside me are broken than I can fix.

yeah