In the culmination of a journey that began in November, I finally have an assessment of my knee from Dr. Extremely Awesome of Harvard and pro-sports patients fame.  OB’s have pictures of babies from happy parents.  Pediatricians have thank-you’s posted on their walls that are drawn in crayon.  This man’s entire clinic is cram-jammed with autographed jerseys, posters (and one basketball  signed by Hakeem Olajuwon) from happy, rehabilitated soccer, football, and basketball players, so if he can fix them, he should be able to fix me, right?

Right?  *earnest nodding*

*more nodding*

Right?

Alhamdulillah ‘ala kulli haal.  Praise be to Allah in all circumstances.  Dr. Awesome and his Head King of Physio collectively concluded:

Surgery Number 1: Unnecessary.  The surgeon says he is fixing a tear, but that’s not a tear.  He melted it back together with laser.  So he melted bits of my knee that never needed poking or melting.

(“You’re saying I have a chop-happy surgeon?”)

(“You said it, not me.  In most hospitals surgeons only get paid when they do a surgery.  In this clinic, they all earn a flat salary.”)

Surgery Number 2: Removal of problem that first surgery caused.  Failed “repair” of meniscus then leads to partial removal of meniscus.

Surgery Number 3: Clean-up of back of knee cap can be warranted following a dashboard injury, though wouldn’t do much to help other problems in knee.  Though it was nice that the crunching and grinding stopped afterwards.

The advice?  If I meet anyone else who says surgery will fix my knee, run (or hobble) the other way.  Apparently I have a combination of flat feet and knock knees that cause my legs to turn in slightly, therefore making my kneecaps rub against my femur lopsidedly.  Instead of the force being distributed evenly between the convex femur and the concave kneecap, I have a 75% destroyed kneecap (grade 3 condramalasia [sp?]) rubbing against a the same side of my knee where the meniscus is no longer present, resulting in 1+1=3.

The solution?  Very specific physio to tighten ligaments and muscles all the way up my leg with the desired outcome of properly re-aligning my kneecap so that the force is evenly distributed, reducing the pin-point wear and tear that is otherwise accumulating between my crooked knee, missing cartilage, and busticated kneecap.

I find this all amazing.  SubhanAllah.  I’m not sure how much of this is medicine and how much of this is physics, and I am even more amazed that it’s taken three surgeries and six years of physio, painkillers, and hyaluron gel injected into my knee to have- not a solution- but for once, an idea of what’s going on inside my knee.   Everything happens for a reason, that much I know for sure, Alhamdulillah.   At the very least, I got to post some cool surgery videos to my blog.  Plus any trial/affliction that a believer faces with sabr and trust in Allah helps expiate sins and increase them in blessings.  That’s a given too.  Alhamdulillah.  I’m still disappointed with the last two surgeons though.  And I can’t help but wonder why they were unable to nail the problem down six years and three surgeries ago.  It’s been six years since I’ve been able to do sajda and I miss it.  I miss my face on the floor, feeling small and vulnerable and at peace, submitting everything that is human ego, “intellect,” and self-serving justification to Rabbi al-’Alaa, my Lord Most High, before whom I am His servant, most low.

I miss being able to run, to walk any amount of distance, and it was only last year that I realized I wasn’t pressing for Hajj and Umrah because I felt humiliated by the possibility that I would do tawaaf in a wheelchair before I’m even 31.  It stings even now, thinking about it, but who am I to feel stung by what Allah has decreed?  Obviously there’s good in this for me, otherwise He wouldn’t have given me this challenge to overcome.  And I may not be happy with losing what I feel is my physical capability, but I would be an idiot if I did not try to build my spiritual strength in its place.

I’m still human.  Very much so.  And my own frailty is frustrating.  It always has been, but Alhamdulillah, I know it’s a test.  I can’t climb a mountain.  I can barely climb the stairs.  But I have other abilities and Allah has given me the opportunity to do more than many, many other people. Yeah, so one knee doesn’t work so well.  So the floor is far away and I keep my shoelaces knotted because I can’t tie them myself.  Big whoop.  I have my faith, I have my beautiful children, lovely husband and family, and the cognitive abilities to take my time and turn it into an act of service and a sadqa, InshaAllah.  I can renegotiate my surroundings without being able to physically function in them, because I don’t need to climb over obstacles when I can work around them completely.  I have resources, Alhamdulillah.  And above all, I have Allah’s promise of complete justice, equity, and compensation for patience, faith, trust and hard work.

And at least now, Alhamdulillah, I have some clarity.  There is no ‘fix’ for my knee.  There is exercise and a long road of hard work for trying to physically change how the inside of my leg works.  That’s ok.  You know what else there is?  Jannah.  Where everyone has perfect everything.  Perfect bodies and features- lovingly remade by Allah to exclude illness,tiredness, pain, and the impending doom of mortality.  Nothing but perfect everything- not in the monotonous ‘strumming of harps on puffy white clouds’ version of eternity- but perfection in a capacity beyond the best conceivable spouse with the best, most emotionally, sexually, interpersonally fulfilling relationship you could imagine in the best, most amazing abode, with the best company among humankind, with the best food and having earned the best of rewards- Allah’s pleasure.

I want it all- safe, permanent, gorgeous, spacious home- a palace, in fact- the interior decorating of which is done by God Himself, which includes gardens and pavilions in an estate so vast that you’re suddenly the inheritor of an entire world of gardens beneath which rivers flow, where your next-door neighbors happen to be Prophets, companions, beloved family members- the best of mankind in the best form they could ever be remade in, free of pettiness, dishonesty, cruelty and sin, and retaining the personalities, souls, and memories of the lives that earned them Jannah in the first place.

I want all that’s good from this world, magnified and exponentially increased without any of what’s bad.  I want an all-you-can-ea-buffet from Allah’s-Own-Catering that never causes fullness, obesity, indigestion- I want my husband six feet tall and sculpted like a work of art, I want everything that I cannot have here, the silk, the gold, the brocade, the rich carpets, the enormous estate, the wine without intoxication and the contentment without limit or end.  And if I compare all that to wanting a working knee, well then I say nuts to the knee.  I know that we’re supposed to ask Allah for everything we want or need, even a shoelace, but I’m not asking Him to fix my knee.  I want him to replace it with a better one.  A permanent one that never breaks, bruises, buckled, grinds, creaks, or aches.  And I want everything else replaced too- the flabby body, the dry skin, the filled teeth, the indigestion- and in its place, I want Paradise.

InshaAllah.

We do not yet know the gender of the baby, but for future reference, let’s call him or her Stringbean. No HF, I am NOT calling the baby Grandpa Wilkins. Yes, I know it’s a perfectly nice handle. No, I don’t want to attach it to a baby.

So yes, Stringbean. Khalid was my Jellybean. Iman was my Mysterybean because she evaded gender detection for almost 7 months via artful positioning and kung-fu fighting during ultrasounds. Stringbean is Stringbean because at my last ultrasound, the doctor took a look at the screen and said oh, that’s a long baby! I asked her what she meant. She said the head size was normal for the number of weeks of pregnancy, but the rest of the baby looked to be pretty long. This, she said, made sense because I was ‘tall too.’ I didn’t have the heart to tell this lovely, petite Asian OB that I’m only tall compared to lovely, petite Asian OB’s, but that’s ok. We have a long baby. We have a Stringbean.

When I first learned that we were expecting Stringbean, I refused to admit that I was hoping for a Boybean or a Girlbean, and I held the line that I would be happy with whatever Allah gave us and that was that. I already had Khalid and Iman, Boy and Girl, Salt and Pepper, so it’s not like I needed any specific pieces to complete the matching set but the truth is, I was in denial.  I wanted a boy, and I wanted a normal one.  I felt horribly guilty about this, and when I finally confessed this to HF one tearful night, he hugged me and asked me why I felt bad about that. Hoping for a boy, I felt, was like implying that I didn’t already have a son- like Khalid was not valid as a little male human being and I was telling the Manufacturer this one’s not working right so I want a new one.

And HF nodded and said I know, I want a boy too. And I was shocked, but it seemed less heinous coming from HF than it felt in the dark and guilty recesses of my mind, because wanting a boy has nothing to do with Khalid and everything to do with Khalid at the same time.  Wanting another son isn’t a matter of betrayal, but practicality.  Khalid is special, unique, difficult, academically advanced and socially delayed, verbally unintelligible to the uninitiated and physically confusing in his quirks and stims.

InshaAllah, he has a future and a rizq and a place in this world because Allah has written all of these things for him and is not unfair to any of His creations. But Khalid is going to need some help, and one day, HF and I are going to die. Iman will be married, and while I have no doubt that she will always share a special bond with Khalid, she may not always be in a position to support or help him when he needs it most. Or rather, let’s put it this way: Iman will have an easier time looking out for Khalid if she’s not the only one. Adding another Salt shaker to the set means that Khalid has a matching set of siblings to count on after his matching set of parents- Father and Mother, Provider and Nurturer, Protector and Soother, are gone.

The pregnancy is starting to show, and other autism mothers I meet look shocked when they hear we’re expecting our third child. “You’re so brave,” one mother told me last week, whose son was just diagnosed a month ago and who has lost seven kilos from the stress. “We want to have another baby but we are so scared. We don’t want him to be left alone when we die, but what if we have another child with autism?”

I told her, frankly speaking, that when I found out I was expecting Iman, I cried and it was NOT out of happiness. It was out of frustration and hopelessness and the feeling of failure that I felt from raising a little boy who didn’t even respond to his own name. This was before Khalid was diagnosed, we just knew that Khalid was different and difficult, and I felt like I could barely handle him, so how on earth would I cope with another one? SubhanAllah, to say the least, Iman is a blessing. When most parents of autistic children pay over 300 dirhams an hour for their child to take part in a specially structured ‘play group session’ with neurotypical children, Khalid lives with one. Iman was his first play-mate, his first enemy and the first peer he had ‘conversations‘ with. Iman taught Khalid how to pull hair, pinch, kick and run- and also, how to defend himself and rise to the defense of others.

Iman has been a challenge, a laugh-riot, a pretty pink princess crowned with ferocity, slathered in resilience, and lovingly adorned with sweet little kisses and precise deadly pinches. We will never need a TV- watching Khalid and Iman simply coexist is more hilarious, dramatic, entertaining, riveting, frustrating, and awe-inspiring than Comedy Central, Discovery, NatGeo, and Hallmark all rolled into one.

And now, InshaAllah, there’s going to be three of them. And what if the next child has autism? Well, the good news is, we already have a full-time therapist. And program materials. And a great case manager and a better idea of which nurseries, schools, play-areas, toys, people, malls, shopping-carts, are best for children with autism. So SubhanAllah, we’re better prepared now for an autistic child than we ever were with Khalid. So if Allah decides to grant us another special little child with very special needs, than I am grateful that we’ve been prepared this time.

And what if the next child is a girl?  Then I would like her to be named Khawla, after the amazing Muslim heroine that would have been completely unknown to me were it not for a cross-posting on Badass of the Week (actual site name, pardon my French).  Khawla travelled with the army of Khalid bin Waleed, ironically enough, accompanied by her brother, a commander and famous warrior-poet named Derar.  She would tend the wounded and sick, but one day, would move beyond that role when her brother went down in battle and was captured by Byzantine soldiers.  Khawla, seeing him taken from a distance, dropped what she was doing, covered her face with a strip of black cloth and her body in a shawl, and rode off, sword in hand, to go rescue him.

“Khalid watched a knight, in black attire, with a big green shawl wrapped around his waist and covering his bust. That knight broke through the Roman ranks as an arrow. Khalid and the others followed him and joined battle, while the leader was wondering about the identity of the unknown knight.”

Other soldiers in the battle saw her fighting with such ferocity that they thought her to be Khalid Bin Waleed himself, and when Khalid Bin Waleed appeared with a number of knights to reinforce Khawla, one knight turned to him and said “Who is that knight? By God, he has no regard for his safety!”

Eventually the battle was won, but her brother was nowhere to be seen. Khalid Bin Waleed demanded that the unknown knight reveal his identity, and when Khawla was discovered to be the sister of Derar, Khalid ordered his army to chase the fleeing Roman Army with Khawla leading the attack.

I won’t give the entire and seriously awesome story away, you can read the entire (and profanity-free) article here and I am not linking the place where I originally read it, due to the use of four-letter words used gratuitously, albeit, in admiration of Khawla.  But I digress.

It is a mercy, blessing, and gift from Allah that when we see things through the lens of trust and Taqwa that we have the opportunity to relax.  All good is in Allah’s hands.  All difficulty is a trial through which we may become stronger.  All ease is a blessing and there is no hopelessness for those who trust unfailingly in His will.  If our next child is a healthy, neurotypical boy, Alhamdulillah.  If our next child is a healthy, neurotypical girl, Alhamdulillah.  And if our next child is autistic, regardless of the gender, Alhamdulillah.

I am praying for a healthy boy, because Allah tells us to call upon Him and ask of Him, even for a shoelace.  He is, after all, the Owner of every treasure, known and unknown, seen and unseen, in the universe and beyond the known universe.  Hoping for a healthy boy and then not asking the One who can provide one would be a gross oversight on my behalf.  But I am also praying that Allah grant me a child who inherits Jannah, and if that means a person who is never questioned because they can never tell the difference between right and wrong, then that too is a blessing.

Alhamdulillah.

While an agnostic Jewish author doesn’t fit in the same category as Abu Huraira, this video shared by one of the MM writers is definitely worth watching.  Lesley Hazelton has an appreciation and understanding of the Qur’an that, I am sad to say, many Muslims don’t even have.  She talks about her attempt  to ‘really, properly read the Qur’an in research for an upcoming book, and the hubris of allotting herself three weeks for a task that ended up taking her three months. May Allah guide her.

Definitely worth watching, and addresses two major myths about the Qur’an- permission to kill all kafirs and 72 virgins in Paradise.

May Allah be pleased with Abu Huraira, he was an amazing man and I love his kuniya.  Abu Huraira means father of the kitten-you see, he used to have a pet kitten.  And I know I just updated yesterday, and I wouldn’t want to overwhelm my *vast* readership with such excesses as *daily* posting, but I found this gem in my email while cleaning out my inbox just now, and I want to put it somewhere where I will see it again.  So here it is- Lessons from Abu Huraira’s fingers.

“I, ya Rasulullah!” Such were the words of the great Companion, Abu Hurayrah (radhiAllahu anhu) in acceptance of the request of his beloved, when he asked, “Who among you will accept of me the following words and adopt and execute their meaning or teach someone to adopt them and act according to them?”

Then, as Abu Hurayrah recalls; “So he held my hand and counted five things according to my five fingers as follows.” Upon pondering over this sentence, one can rightfully assume that this act of the Prophet (sallaAllahu alayhe wasallam) of teaching Abu Hurayrah in such a personal manner – one by one, on the fingers of his hand – was a significant step in the effort to keep these words etched in his heart. In fact, it was a method of aiding him in fulfilling the responsibility to which he agreed to moments earlier.

So, what were these teachings that numbered the fingers of Abu Hurayrah’s hand?

عن أَبِي هُرَيْرَةَ رضي الله عنه ، قَالَ : قَالَ رَسُولُ اللهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ :
( مَنْ يَأْخُذُ عَنِّي هَؤُلاَءِ الكَلِمَاتِ فَيَعْمَلُ بِهِنَّ أَوْ يُعَلِّمُ مَنْ يَعْمَلُ بِهِنَّ ؟ فَقَالَ أَبُو هُرَيْرَةَ : فَقُلْتُ : أَنَا يَا رَسُولَ اللهِ !
فَأَخَذَ بِيَدِي فَعَدَّ خَمْسًا وَقَالَ :
اتَّقِ الْمَحَارِمَ تَكُنْ أَعْبَدَ النَّاسِ ، وَارْضَ بِمَا قَسَمَ اللَّهُ لَكَ تَكُنْ أَغْنَى النَّاسِ ، وَأَحْسِنْ إِلَى جَارِكَ تَكُنْ مُؤْمِنًا ، وَأَحِبَّ لِلنَّاسِ مَا تُحِبُّ لِنَفْسِكَ تَكُنْ مُسْلِمًا ، وَلاَ تُكْثِرِ الضَّحِكَ ، فَإِنَّ كَثْرَةَ الضَّحِكِ تُمِيتُ القَلْبَ ) .
رواه أحمد والترمذي والطبراني في الأوسط

Keep away from prohibited things and you will be the best of worshippers.
Be content with what Allah has given you, and you will be the richest of people.
Be good to your neighbor and you will be a true believer.
Love for other people what you love for yourself and you will be a (perfect) Muslim.
Do not laugh too much, for excessive laughter deadens the heart.

(Recorded by Ahmad and al-Tirmidhi)

The rest of the article is here, and a great read for anyone in need of a refresher of some fundamental standards of Muslim character.  And really, who doesn’t?

Rubaiyaat xx & xxi

i-xix here

He whispering, withdraws

To divert you from your cause

The snow-white lamb of ‘later’

Has strangely wolf-like claws.

****

He took the path of arrogance

And insists you follow suit

To plant the seed that grows the tree

That blossoms rotten fruit.

Source

Rick Sanchez was fired by CNN this month within 24 hours of his sort-of suggesting that Jews run the media.

Compare the response to that episode to the non-reaction of the media today after Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade said, “Not all Muslims are terrorists, all terrorists are Muslim.”

Kilmeade’s statement is both inaccurate and prejudiced, in a way that’s more clear-cut than Sanchez’s semi-coherent rant.

But it’s been instructive to watch how Kilmeade’s comments haven’t created much of a stir at all. Maybe it’s because this sort of thing is expected from Fox. Or maybe it’s because you can say a lot of bad stuff about Muslims with impunity.

Just in case we’re wrong about this, we’ve put in a request with Fox (and reached out to Kilmeade on Twitter) to see if the network has any comment about the appropriateness of his rhetoric.

Abez sez sigh.

A short, amazing little video.

It was bound to happen at least once this Ramadan, though I was hoping it wouldn’t happen at all- HF and I did it this morning- we slept through suhoor and Fajr both.  Not only did we miss Fajr prayer, we also missed the pre-dawn food and water that we’ve been heavily relying on for these 15 hour fasts in 40+ C heat.  That’s 104 F for those of you who don’t think in Celcius.  Yesterday that car told me it was 48.  Then, I burned my fingers on the steering wheel.   I believe the car.

SubhanAllah, what a blessing suhoor is.  For this Ramadan, HF and I have been starting our day with suhoor- not just waking up, eating, and praying, but getting dressed and going to work.  HF goes to his office, I open my laptop and clock in- I work from home- and then we stay up until the afternoon.  I take a nap at around 1 pm, HF naps when he gets back from the office at around 3.  Then we break our fast with dinner, pray, hang out a bit, pray again, and then go to bed.

When HF suggested this schedule before Ramadan, I was reluctant to try it.  In fact, he’s been suggesting we wake up at Fajr, nap in the day, and  go to bed after Isha for quite a while, but I resisted because I believed that it wouldn’t be enough sleep for me and I would be exhausted.  In actuality, I’m loving the Fajr to Isha schedule.  Yes, it puts a bit of a dent in my social life, but I don’t have much of one anyone anyway, and I don’t want much of one in Ramadan.  I’m not big on social iftars.  The variety of foods tricks me into overeating through curiosity, and then we don’t get home until 11, which makes waking up again at 3:45 quite a challenge.  That’s exactly what happened yesterday.  We had a lovely time, but we ate too much, stayed up too late, and messed up our schedules for the next day.  Considering that Ramadan only comes once a year, I can’t say it was worth it.  Even if there was caramel custard.  :p

So today, I’m hungry.  SubhanAllah, I’m not complaining. I’m reminding myself what a blessing food and drink are, and how kind of Allah it was to make suhoor part of the fast.  I’m also reminding us all that there are people in Pakistan right now who are fasting without suhoor and breaking their fasts without food.

There are 35 minutes left until iftar, and the kitchen is exuding the fragrances of haleem and biryani- I do batch-cooking in Ramadan so that I don’t have to cook every day.  My stomach is turning itself in knots, and my mouth has that gluey feeling.  May Allah increase us all in patience, and help us gain control over our physical urges to put our spiritual selves first.  May Allah feed those who are hungry, give drink to those who are thirsty, and increase us all in gratitude for His favors.  Ameen.

So, who wants some pizza in their pocket?  :p

For nearly a year ago, delivering a lecture in Dubai where he posed three questions commonly asked by atheists to argue against the existence of God, one of which was:

If God is all-powerful, can God make a rock so heavy that he can’t lift it?

I was actually asked this question by a co-worker over dinner the night before, and instead of replying with the ‘wha-?’ that went through my head the first time I heard it, I was able to smile and give the answer. See, the questions is a logical fallacy. It is constructed in a way that guarantees there is no answer that confirms God’s omnipotence. It’s like asking a man “So, have you stopped beating your wife yet?”

If you say no, it means you’re still beating her. If you say yes, you’re admitting that you used to beat her.

To the God question, if you say no, then you’re saying that God is unable to create something of that size. If you say yes, then you’re saying that God is unable to lift a rock that he himself created.

So what’s the correct answer? The correct answer is this: God can create infinitely large objects and lift infinitely large objects, rocks or otherwise. And just because he CAN do something doesn’t mean He will. He’s not illogical, even though that question is.

There were two other questions, but I can only remember one of them, which was: Can God create a triangle with more than three sides?

God could create a shape with more than three sides and He could call it whatever He wanted and you could call it a square or a pentagon or a hexagon or if it made you happy, a dodecahedron. A triangle is, by your definition, a shape with three sides. If you still want to call something with more than three sides a triangle, then that’s your problem, not God’s.

So, does anyone remember the third question?

And my camera in Oman!  Noooooooooooooooo!

Alhamdulillah ála kulli haal.  Praise be to Allah in all circumstances.

Ok, so I have interesting stories but no pictures, and on top of that, I have a week of office work pending.  So let me take care of some emails before they burn a hole in my inbox, and then I can think about blogging Oman.  In the mean time, crank it up! (voice and percussion only)

And let it down softly…