Abez sez Assalamualaikum!

Author: Abez

  • Greetings from Captain Snot-tastic

    The space-ship Cognition navigates through a dense, interstellar mass. The ship’s thrusters sputter and choke on what appears to be a green, swirling entity of viscous goo. The engines stall and the ship, drained of power, begins listing starboard in the sticky mass. The camera zooms out and pans away as the ship begins its eternal drift, lost in the Snot Zone.

    So yeah, I had a Thought, but it got lost in my head- my head being full of snot. I seem to have a semi-regular occurrance of the Uncommon Cold- at least once a year I will be invaded, commandeered, and ransacked by a horde of germs so vile and so crafty that they could not possibly be of this earth. So I’ve decided they’re from space.

    *fits tinfoil more snugly over head*

    The aliens are getting their kicks by turning up the space-ship’s furnace and then turning it suddenly off again, so the poor crew is first all sweaty and then all cold. Alhamdulillah, the Germs seem to have spared Bebeface from the invasion, and HF seems well too. I’m the only one in the house who’s sick, which leads me to believe that my immune system must have betrayed me, and I’m wondering which of the bits sold out. Traitors.

    I have a date to go play at The Chateau (the magical castle where Owlie and Momma live) but I’m thinking of postponing it for yet another day. It’s not nice to come bearing germs, especially alien germs. And it’s also not nice to use up all the tissues in the house. And it’s even worse to use up all the toilet-paper when the tissues have all been used. And I had a thought, but the aliens have it now.

    So I’m going back to bed. Captain Snot-tastic, over and out.

  • Ten, err, five things you didn’t know about me. But now you do. So there.

    1. I am copping out of a real post and instead doing a five minute post while simultaneously rocking Bebeface to sleep and also needing to clean the house as soon as he finally decides to snooze.

    2. I hum X-mas carols. All year long.

    3. I once sewed a pair of pants that had one leg stitched on the wrong way- Up.

    4. I am the daughter of a practicing, Sunday School teaching infidel, hehe. (Hi Mom! I love you!)

    5. I need to vaccum. Bebeface is asleep and it’s time to clean ze house now, hooray!

    This post will be continued later. In the mean time, have some doggerel, fresh from the pound. :p

  • Ew…

    Ah, the shy, sweet smile of a child who has just covered your left shoulder in baby-splat. heh

  • The Bebe Files: Eight Weeks

    Here’s to eight weeks, SubhanAllah, of my silly little son.

    Here’s to his tiny hands and how diligently he tries to cram both of them into his mouth.

    Here’s to his precious, wrinkled feet and the day he learned to kick- he lay on the carpet for half an hour first extending one leg and then the other with complete concentration.

    Here’s to the number three, which is how many times he wakes up in a night to be fed. It used to be five. Three is a much lovelier number.

    Here’s to his senses, which have him currently convinced that anything that gets close to the mouth must be for licking- bath water and shirt collars included.

    Here’s to his soft, dark hair, and how it’s only growing back on the top of his head. He looks like a chubby little monk.

    Here is to life lived in a series of increments, in bursts of activity that must be achieved before it’s time for BebeFace to wake up again.

    Here’s to the fussing and the wiggling and the crying.

    Here’s to gripe-water and anti-gas drops that I took to the Chateau and now can’t seem to find.

    Here’s the to the complete reliance of one helpless human on another.

    Here’s to the perfect honesty that a baby regards you with.

    Here’s to the sincerity in a baby’s tears.

    Here’s to my baby, whose sleeping and waking are the constantly repeating events that I mark time with, whose tiny hands open wide to hold whatever he can.

    Here’s to the way he holds onto my shirt for no reason.

    Here’s to the smile, the beautiful, innocent gummy smile he greeted me with this morning that renewed me, that refreshed me in a way that two months of cat-naps at night could never do.

    I’ve never been a fan of sugar coating, I find it unfair to whoever bites in and then finds the inside sour. It’s true, a baby is a challenge beyond what you could ever expect. If you thought standing in line for half an hour was tedious, try standing for two hours, rocking a fussy baby to sleep for three nights in a row. If you thought eating cold food was annoying, try eating cold food, standing up with one hand long after dinner time is over because you alone can feed the baby and there’s no way you’ll make your child wait just so you can have yours first. If you thought four hours of sleep was impossible to work with, try 2.5.

    Everything you ever though impossible can be done, Alhamdulillah.

    Hug your mom. Now.

    Now now now. And then hug her again.

    And when you have children hug your wife, and don’t ask her why she looks more like a bag lady than the woman you married, tell her that the circles around her eyes are beautiful. Don’t ask her if she’s tired, take the baby from her and tell her to lay down. Tell her she looks adorable in pajamas, because not much else will fit her yet. Tell her she’s doing a good job, because it will be a while before the child could ever say that, and chances are it never will. Not until it has children of its own anyway.

    And never, ever sass your mother.

  • We are the champions, my friend…

    When they ask whether you’re ready to be a parent, what they really mean is, “Do you know any lullabies?” Apart from the weirdly morbid “Rock a bye-baby” and a few lines of “Go to Sleep,” that were reworded to sing at summer camp, it turns out that I am sadly lacking in the lullaby department. Instead, I maintain a maternal jukebox of Yusuf Islam, Dawud Wharnsby Ali, a little bit of Bob Marley, and some Freddy Mercury that would make Queen flinch.

    (We will, we will BURP YOU!)

    A while ago someone asked me what being a mother was like. I thought for a bit, and the most honest thing I could say was that it was like having a gigapet that you can’t turn off. Of course, that’s not the whole truth, because your brain is not hardwired to pop out of bed like a piece of hyperactive toast at the gigapet’s tiniest little beep, twenty-four hours a day. And a gigapet cannot melt you with its first sloppy, lopsided smile. And a gigapet won’t bury its warm little face in your shoulder and sigh with contentment when it’s full, and a gigapet won’t fall asleep on your stomach and look so perfect and so peaceful that you sit watching it for the next half an hour out of awe.

    So ok, motherhood may not really be like owning a gigapet, but what else could I have told the guy? I might have said that it was like emotional bootcamp, but then I would be neglecting to mention the immense emotional returns, and when’s the last time a drill sergeant made you feel all warm and fuzzy?

    Heh.

  • The Husband Files: Insert rimshot here.

    Photobucket

    Me: (pointing to pile of shirts) The room is a mess and it’s all your fault, we live in squalor!

    HF: No, we live in the UAE.

  • The Baby Files: One Month, Alhamdulillah

    If you went to an electronics store and the salesman tried to sell you an expensive piece of equipment that came with no manual, required round the clock maintenance and would not perform anything except very basic functions for the next three years, would you buy it? And yet we have children, because they are the embodiment of love and the promise of future. They are tiny, beautiful, vulnerable extensions of our own selves. They are us, reborn. They give us the ability to remake ourselves through them, hopefully this time with less mistakes, and hopefully with better looking ears this time.

    It’s been four weeks of being a Momma now, and I’m not sure where to start. I’m exhausted but coping. I’m emotionally depleted but have discovered new reserves. I haven’t had a full night’s rest for a month now, and the circles under my eyes are looking permanent, but SubhanAllah, SubhanAllah, I am happy.

    I find it amazing, no, awing that every single mother goes through this. Rather, ever single blessed mother goes through this, because Alhamdulillah, my child is blessed to be without disability or illness that would make this process even more difficult than it is. Taking care of a newborn has, like the pain of delivery, pushed me farther than I thought I could ever go. I never thought I could survive, thrive even, on a series of naps for an entire month. Khalid never sleeps for more than three hours at a time, and he usually sleeps for much less, and that means I do too. Once upon a time if I had less than say, five hours of sleep it would be difficult for me to function. Now I dream of getting five hours, and although I miss rest and sleep and waking up naturally, I don’t hold this schedule against my son. My tiny little boy has a tiny little stomach, and he can’t sleep when he’s hungry. I can’t either, actually.

    I miss keeping in contact with my friends, but my son is more important than email. I miss getting dressed and feeling like a presentable human being, but I have a limited amount of time and getting dressed has fallen rather low on the list of priorities. Khalid comes first, after that comes the husband and the house and food and laundry and hey, yesterday I had ten minutes free so I washed my face and made the bed. It felt nice.

    There’s a pulled muscle in my right shoulder, just where it joins my neck, that’s been killing me for three days now. I don’t have the option of going easy on it, because I need my right shoulder.

    And my left shoulder.

    And a third shoulder would be helpful.

    I think that instead of getting fat while pregnant I should’ve put my effort into growing another arm. You need one when the baby comes, trust me. You only make the mistake of taking a wet baby out of the bath without having a towel ready once. After that you learn to lay the towel in your lap before even putting the baby in the bath so that your naked little Bebeface doesn’t start crying and shivering when he’s taken out of the warm water.

    (Either that or you grow a third arm so that you can hold the baby with two hands and open the towel with the new one.)

    Please remember us in your duas, pray that God gives my son a character that He loves and makes the road to righteousness smooth for him. Please pray that I grow a third arm.

    Peace & Chikken Grease
    -Abez

  • Ook, ook?

    Good news: I’m wearing a pair of my old jeans.
    Bad news: I can’t feel my legs.

    I am, at the moment, 25 pounds away from my previous weight and I don’t feel intimidated by the challenge. I have rediscovered an old superpower- I am the Captain of My Stomach.

    My position as Captain was awarded years ago, but I had let control of the ship slip into the hands of the monkey that just happens to be aboard all self-respecting pirate ships. Incidentally the monkey (like all self-respecting monkeys) wanted nothing but bananas. The monkey didn’t care whether the way it was going was dangerous or unhealthy or silly looking in jeans that fit just last week, it just wanted bananas.

    It’s not like monkeys can read, so of course the monkey wasn’t using a map (stupid monkey) so the monkey was steering the ship into Thar Be Monsters but the Captain (who had just eaten an extra helping of bananas) was too lethargic and too out of shape to do anything about it.

    After a time we found ourselves in the uncharted waters of 50 pounds overweight.

    Don’t get me wrong, I like bananas too. Who doesn’t like the occasional chocolate-dipped banana? And who wouldn’t want that chocolate-dipped banana to be rolled in peanut butter and deep-fried?

    I digress.

    As Captain of my Stomach, I had to take the ship’s wheel away from the unruly stomach-monkey. (Who in their right mind lets a monkey steer a ship anyway?) It was time to try and eat according to the Sunnah.

    No human being fills a container to worse effect than he fills his own stomach. It is sufficient for a human being to have a few bites to keep himself fit. If he must eat then let him use one-third for food, one-third for drink and one-third for breathing. -Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.

    Have you ever tried to eat according to the Sunnah, filling 1/3 of your stomach with food, 1/3 with water, and leaving 1/3 empty? It’s surprisingly difficult to tell yourself that you’re done eating long before you feel full, and that the whole idea is that you never feel full because you never fill yourself to capacity. Our whole lives we’re told to eat until we’re full (Are you done eating? Are you full?) and we celebrate by stuffing ourselves because a full stomach is equated with happiness and contentment. The truth is that a full stomach means you’ve eaten about double what you needed to, and caving to the demands of you appetite means that your brain (who knows better) is subservient to your stomach monkey (who demands more).

    For me, humoring my stomach is a form of weakness, a lack of will power, and a backsliding into jaahil eating practices that took years to train out of me. Eating according to the Sunnah is not a diet or a temporary change of habits, it is a permanent way of rethinking your relationship with food and how much you need of it. Try it, and when you finally succeed, you’ll be amazed by how light, how alert, and how extremely different you feel. It will take some doing, but come on, who’s in charge, you or the monkey?

  • Two Minute Blog: My son the lethal weapon.

    Yesterday BebeFace sneezed with the pacifier in his mouth. Rather, the pacifier had been in his mouth until it was shot out at a dangerously high velocity, landing on the opposite side of the bed. Apart from devious and well-aimed peeing skills, my son has now developed the ability to launch projectiles. My boy.

  • Hair today, gone tomorrow?

    I gave my son a mohawk today. True, he was defenseless at the time and true, it may have been flagrant abuse of my status as the more mature one, but it was too easy and too tempting to resist. He looks like the tiniest little rock star. 🙂

    Soon he’ll be as bald as a potato- his head will be shaved in accordance with Sunnah, with the hair weighed and an equal weight of silver given in charity. What then? I’ll have to try styling his eyebrows or summat, hehe.

    In the mean time, BebeFace is shedding his skin. Where he was once an underwater-type creature, he is now turning into a land-based baby, and that includes and change of skin as well as pink dots. His belly-button fell off too. Or rather, his umbilical cord. I tell you- kids these days have no durability. Bits of my son have been falling off left and right ever since we brought him home. What’s next, his ears?

  • Khalid is Born

    Khalid is Born

    I was going to title this blog “A week in the life of” but it occurred to me today that it’s been more than a week since some amazing madness took place. So let us begin from the beginning, the beginning being about, errr… nine days ago? Ten?

    Once upon a time at 3 am, after I had just finished assembling the crib, rearranging furniture, moving a rug and reorganizing storage, I went to sleep on the sofa. I was waiting for HF to return home. He did come home, and he brought me a surprise cup of Chai. No, not the kind you drink, this one. Chai, my homey who was presumably nowhere near this part of the earth at the moment. And there was much rejoicing.

    Props to HF and Chai, it is NOT easy to surprise Abez. Also, it is apparently not easy to induce early labor either. If moving furniture and arranging a nursery and being surprised nearly to death at 3 am aren’t enough to do it, I don’t know what does.

    Day two: Owlie, Momma and Daddy (of Chez Daddy) arrive as per a pre-planned lunch. Owlie, being traffic-weary and in a frazzled mood moans, “I need a cup of chai!” Chai, of her own theatrical volition (and what theatrical volition it is) then runs out of the room and exclaims, “Someone said they wanted Chai?” which gives Owlie several small happy heart attacks. The rest of day two is spent in shopping, showing Chai around, and getting ourselves ice-cream drunk from the Marble Slab Creamery. The evening is spent playing Scrabble and eating popcorn and jellybeans while watching Howl’s Moving Castle. There is much rejoicing.

    Day Three: there is more out & about as we again fill Chai full of ice-cream, take her shopping and then return home to grab her luggage. I am left at home due to logistics. Had I come with Owlie and Chai to the airport, then Owlie would have had to double-back to drop me off before driving home again. Chai is delivered to the airport. HF returns from work and we take our sleep-deprived, over-funned selves out to a friend’s for dinner. We get home around midnight and collapse into bed.

    Day Four: Khalid is born, 3.45 kg, or about 7 1/2 pounds, at 5:30 pm SubhanAllah, with his eyes open and his little fingers and toes wiggling. I’m not sure where to begin with this. SubhanAllah, my limits of pain and tolerance were pushed farther than had I ever thought possible. Then suddenly the pain ended and the nurses placed my tiny, precious, amazing, perfect little son on my stomach, and the threshold for love and emotion and overwhelming joy was pushed farther than I had ever thought possible. These emotions were not just for Khalid, but for my loving, amazing, wonderful HF, who was not technically allowed into the labor room but kept me company on my cell phone, and who so endeared himself to the staff that they even snuck him in to be with me during the most difficult stages. If you thought you loved before, try being a parent, try going through nine months with the best man you’ve ever met to give birth to the most beautiful little man you’ve ever seen. Everything before that is just the first stage of understanding how deep, how overwhelming, how desperately in love you can feel for someone.

    Day Five: Khalid and I are discharged from the hospital. Before we even clear the delivery ward, he manages to work his hands free and grab big handfuls of both his own cheeks. (Hey, what are these, and who put them on my face?) We decide we need baby nail clippers very soon.

    Day Six: Khalid and I spend the day sleeping. We’re both exhausted. Me, from the delivery, him from all the effort required to repeatedly escape his swaddling and wave his arms around. His face is less swollen, and he develops the ability to open one eye at a time while sticking his tongue out, my cheeky little son.

    Day Seven: Khalid looks decidedly yellow, and a visit to the pediatrician confirms that he is jaundiced. He is admitted to the pediatric ward where he will spend this and the next two days being gently roasted under a phototherapy rotisserie to help clear the biliruben from his system.

    During his baking period, he will discover, and later master, the art of removing the cover that protects his eyes from the ghostly, electric-blue light. He will also establish himself as a baby evil genius, and be pitted against his mother for the first time. Momma vs. Khalid, The Mask Battle. I eventually won the battle by taking a baby hat and cutting the band loose. I fitted that over his eyes and challenged him to work that off. I won. Ha!

    Day ummm… Nine? Khalid and I return from the hospital around 9 pm, and it is like the first homecoming again. I am exhausted from 3 days of waking, feeding, changing, and turning Khalid every two hours, and Khalid is looking less yellow and quite happy to have escaped captivity. I check my email and discover over 25 unread messages, none of which are spam. I write one letter to my brother informing him of where on earth we’ve been for the last week and I crash in bed. There is much rejoicing.

    Today is day, err.. ten? Khalid is still being fed every two hours to help clear his system, and I’m still in my pajamas. In about 15 minutes it’ll be time to wake him up again. I’m wondering what new skill he’ll have learned. Yesterday he learned what his fingers were for (sucking on) and the day before that he got his first case of hiccups outside of the womb. That was hysterical to watch, as each hiccup took him by surprise and left him confused. (Hic! What the? Hic! Who did that?! Hic!)

    I’m still in wonder & amazement mode. I still can’t believe that this tiny, silly boy is the son I carried for nine months. His face changes every day, and he learns new and devious things faster than I can account for. Today he peed in a perfect 3-foot arc, clearing the towel and the changing area and squarely hitting the leg of his crib. Not only was that a well-aimed shot, it was also well timed. I had been sitting with him as he lay naked, soaking up some sunshine, and the minute I decided to get up and grab a cup of tea, he let the waterworks loose. My boy, I tell you he has timing. I commended him on the good shot and diapered his deviant little cheeks before cleaning the puddle up.

    Yes, updates may be short and few for the next few weeks. Khalid and I can’t settle into a normal routine just yet because of the two-hour feedings. As soon as we do though, I want to get back to the things I missed during pregnancy- like my feet. I haven’t seen them in months, and we have a lot of catching up to do.

    Love, Peace, and Handi Grease
    -Abez

  • The Husband Files: Why teacups are like cats – or – why the husband, the car, and everything in it are covered in a spray of chai

    The Husband Files: Why teacups are like cats – or – why the husband, the car, and everything in it are covered in a spray of chai

    Photobucket

    Update: HF has posted his version of what happened here, hehe.

    HF: So, dogs like to stick their heads out of car windows, right? They like to hang their tongues out and go nyah and enjoy the breeze.

    Me: Yes..?

    HF: But cats don’t though, if you took a cat and held it out of the window of a moving car it would go rraoowr and turn and attack you and fly at your chest.

    Me: Yes.

    HF: It would kind of explode and fly at you.

    Me: True…

    Hf: See, that’s why cups of tea are like cats.

    Me: Oh?

    HF: I held this one out of the car window, and it exploded and flew at me.

    Me: You held a cup of tea out of the window?

    HF: To cool it. *big shiny smile*

    Me: While you were driving?

    HF: But then the wind hit it and got all shaky and then foosh!

    Me: At a hundred kilometers per hour?

    HF: And that’s why cups of tea are like cats.

  • The secret lives of housewives?

    So my first real (but non-paying, hehe) project as a newbie graphic designer has been launched! I designed some T-shirts for dawahgear.net. They’ve started out with just a few designs, and there are other designers on board. Here are three of my designs, two are available as t-shirts, the third should be coming soon InshaAllah. I’ll be posting the new designs if/when dawahgear uses them, InshaAllah. 🙂

    The guy who runs this project is making a great effort, and I pray InshaAllah Allah blesses him and purifies the endeavor for him. Ameen.

    Now, GO BUY A T-SHIRT! 😀

  • Call me Speedy. Ice cream, anyone?

    Photobucket

    Under normal circumstances, a pregnant woman with a bucket of ice cream in one hand and a spoon in the other could not possibly outrun her well-intentioned but confectionarily cruel husband.

    Under current circumstances, where well-intentioned husband is burdened by a plaster cast on his well-sprained ankle, the pregnant woman not only has a chance, but she also has 1.9 litres of cookies and cream all to herself. As well as gloating rights.

    mwaahahahaa

    So HF has suffered his first mortal wound. The building was burning you see… it was a charity hospital… for orphans… for umm, orphaned kittens. And it was on fire, yes. So he sprained his ankle while rescuing burning kittens from the burning building. My hero! *swoon*

    (Really though, and this is just between you and me, habibtis- he called me from the gym last week and said, Mabrook! and I said, Wha? and he said he had sprained his ankle. Hai, kitni cute.)

    So HF is on crutches and in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Bring me my sceptre, I can use it to serve ice cream.

  • Nine Months Pregnant

    So people sez, “How are you Abez?”
    And I sez, “Alhamdulillah, nine months pregnant.”

    Nine months pregnant.

    Sounds dramatic, doesn’t it- especially with the nine being emphasized to ummm, emphasize that you could go -pop!- at any given moment. Nine Months Pregnant is an explanation unto itself, and if you’ve been there yourself, you nod sympathetically. You think of how the floor is always farther away when there’s something on it you need, and how your shoelaces are always untied but never within reach, and how automatically you get programmed with politically correct responses to people’s questions.

    People sez, “How is the baby?”
    And I sez, “Good, Alhamdulillah.”

    And if you’ve had one yourself, you automatically know that the baby is running out of room and protests your constrictive political regime by poking his toes into your lungs and wiggling them for emphasis. The baby wants freedom, and makes this very clear by undertaking a dedicated campaign based on civil disobedience

    (No, we will not remove our elbow from your spleen until you comply with our peaceful demands.)

    Of course, civil disobedience can only take things so far, and sometimes your baby will resort to outright violence.

    *KICK!*

    People sez, “You must be excited.”
    I sez, “I am.”

    I am excited, and sometimes when my back is aching and my feet are killing me and my joints are audibly creaking under the strain of an extra human + support system, I imagine holding my baby in my hands for the first time and everything- the impatience, the exhaustion, the emotional erosion caused by not feeling like myself for the last nine months- disappears. It all fades and is replaced with a nervous happiness- an impatient, excited, lightness that inevitably brings tears to my eyes.

    My baby will be here soon, InshaAllah. 🙂

  • The Husband Files: A Romantic Walk on the Beach

    Photobucket

    Me: Do jellyfish wash up on the beaches here?

    HF: I’m not sure.

    ME: You know, when my sister was little she got stung by a jellyfish.

    HF: So that’s how she got her powers?

  • Countdown: Six weeks

    I turned around in a store last week and only narrowly avoided knocking into a display shelf. It’s not that I’m miscalculating space, it’s just that my mental idea of how big my stomach is hasn’t quite caught up to the physical reality of how big my stomach is. Six weeks InshaAllah. Six more weeks until I am no longer shaped like a wrecking ball and potentially as dangerous. :p

  • The Husband Files: Housekeeping?

    Photobucket

    HF: The table was dirty. There was this crunchy dry stuff on it.

    Me: Oh?

    HF: So I put some newspaper over it. 😀

  • Traditional Hiccups, Traditionally

    Traditional hiccups are (traditionally) an involuntary spasm of the diaphragm. The sudden rush of air into the lungs causes the glottis to close, creating the “hic” noise. They are also, traditionally, felt in one’s throat or chest.

    Fetal hiccups, however, are felt in your big round stomach, and unlike traditional hiccups, cannot be cured by offering the sufferer a glass of water. It is also very difficult to frighten the hiccups out of the sufferer, as fetuses pay little attention to world politics and seem unimpressed by the distressing rise of medical fees and university tuition.

    -hic!-

  • The Husband Files: 1:32 am

    Photobucket

    HF: Could I shave my head?

    Me: No.

    HF: Come on, what would happen if I shaved it all off, my beard too, and started over.

    Me: Then you’d look like how you did before, but with a period of baldness in the middle.

    *pause*

    HF: Could I grow a moustache?

    ME: No.

    HF: Come on, just a little big one.

    Me: A what one?

    HF: I’ll just grow it on the left side, ok?

    Me: No! You’re nuts! You can’t grow a mustache!

    HF: Fine.

    *pause*

    HF: Can you grow a mustache?

  • I kid you not

    My pasta sauce smiled at me. Benevolently, even, hehe.

  • You know you go out too often when…

    You and your husband, dressed for Eid-day meet & greet, stand in front of a door. It opens, and the house within is silent. You wonder where the hosts are, why the lights aren’t on. You can’t remember whose house you’ve arrived at. Oops, it’s yours.

    Foistly, AssalamuAlaikum & Eid Mubarak & e-hugs to all the sisters and e-nods to the brothas. Now, on with the nonsense.

    Nonsense Numero Uno: The conversion rate in the UAE is two falafels to a donut hole. Allow me to explain. For one UAE dirham, you can buy either:

    – Two Dunkin Donuts Munchkins (dh) (donut holes)
    or
    -Four falafel balls. (fl)

    Therefore,

    1 dh = 2 fl

    Where only 1dh is equal to HW (happy wife), but HH (happy husband) is equal to 8fl, calculate conversion ratio from HW to HH.

    DH=HW
    HH=8fl
    HW= ?HH

    Nonsense Number Duo:

    Dear Abez,

    Welcome to your third trimester! You may have noticed that clothes you were counting on to wear for Eid are no longer viable options. True, they fit you last week, but this week they wear like sausage casings, and it isn’t nice to visually horrify the guests so. Especially after they bring you baklava. Please consider augmenting your wardrobe, you can only live in your PJ’s for so long.

    Also note, due to rapid expansion and growth, it is recommended that the functions of digestion and respiration be rerouted to legs L and R, left and right respectively, in order to make more room. Things are tight enough in there as it is, and you can’t complain about being kicked in the ribs if you just relocate your lungs.

    We hope that in the future an understanding can be reached to assure the satisfaction of both parties.

    Sincerely,
    Your Baby

    PS: Icecream?

  • A Simple Omission

    Every week I get an update from babycenter.com. The website helps to keep simple track of where you are, where you’re going and what to expect when you get there. It also has interesting facts like, “This week, your baby is the size of an onion!”

    The website says that the weekly updates are reviewed by a team of doctors for medical accuracy and whatnot, but I think they’re suffering from some glaring omissions. Take, for example, the update I got this week:

    How your baby’s growing: This week your baby weighs almost 2 pounds and is about 14.4 inches long with his legs extended. He can now open and close his eyes, and he sleeps and wakes at regular intervals. He may suck his fingers, and although his lungs are still immature, they would be capable of functioning – with assistance – if he were to be born prematurely.

    Your body is gearing up for the final lap, so you may start noticing some new symptoms. Along with an aching back, for example, you may find that your leg muscles cramp up now and then. They’re carrying extra weight, after all, and your pregnancy is putting extra demands on your circulation. Your growing bulge puts pressure on the blood vessels that return blood from your legs to your heart and on the nerves leading from your trunk to your legs.

    Now read the update with the necessary corrections.

    This week your baby weighs almost 20 pounds because that’s how much extra weight you’re carrying, and is about 14.4 inches long with his legs extended. His legs are often extended, and there are times when he may not be curled into fetal position at all, but rather, standing on one leg with his arms extended above his head to maximize the appearance of your stomach as well as poke you in the ribs now and then. He can now open and close his eyes, and he sleeps and wakes at intervals directly opposite to your schedule, which means he’s most feisty and kicksome from midnight to Fajr. He may suck his fingers, which is a silly habit but at least he isn’t picking his nose, and although his lungs are still immature, they would be capable of functioning – with assistance – if he were to be born prematurely.

    Your body is gearing up for the final lap, so you may start noticing some new symptoms. Along with an aching back, for example, you may find that your leg muscles cramp up more often than now and then. You must be careful to work the cramp out before trying to stand up, lest you lose balance and end up hopping on one leg and going ‘ow ow ow!’ Not that we’re saying you’re fat, but your pregnancy is putting extra demands on your circulation. Your growing bulge, the one that no longer fits into any of your pants, puts pressure on the blood vessels that return blood from your legs to your heart and on the nerves leading from your trunk to your legs.

    SubhanAllah. I don’t know if there’s any way to describe how it all really feels, carrying a child. Yeah, pregnant wimminz complain, it can’t be helped sometimes. You used to be one person with a waist and a fitness level of some sort. Now you’re two people with no waist and indigestion.

    (My theory on heartburn and pregnancy is that indigestion is God’s way of keeping pregnant women from gaining too much weight.)

    You used to stay up late, you used to have energy enough to fly up the stairs and zip around, now you take stairs slowly and have difficulty tying your own shoes.

    (My theory on pregnancy and shoelaces is that your legs must get longer when you’re pregnant, which is why your shoelaces seem impossibly far away.)

    You used to pay as little attention to your stomach as you did to your elbows and knees, it was just another part of your body. Now, you rest your hand on your stomach and feel for the movement of the child held under just a few layers of tissue. You hold your stomach and feel amazed, content, blessed. You put your hand over your stomach protectively when you cross the street, and there are times when you wrap your arms around it as best as you can and pray that you do right by the tiny person inside.

    You wonder, you worry, about when your child will be born into the world- into this world, with all its darkness, with all the forces that human malevolence directs against humanity. Your child is weeks away from being born, months away from walking, years away from temptation, but you’re already worried about how the world will treat them. You can give them only so much, you can teach them only so much.

    You pray desperately that God protect your child, not from being in the world, but from falling into the world. You pray that your child is given a character that God loves, an intelligence and a faith that will carry them through this life and save them from the consequence of deliberate sin. You hope and you pray, but you don’t know what kind of person your child will be. You do, however, have faith that God is never unjust, and God loves His creations more than you do, and this insane, overpowering, indescribable love towards a small human you’ve never met is nothing compared to the mercy that God has promised yours and all other children.

    You wonder what kind of person, what kind of Muslim lies resting inside of you.

    You feel the gentle nudge of the child turning from one side to another and you are relieved, reassured for a time at least, that your child is safe.

  • How?

    How does one explain the quiet joy of sitting in the masjid during Jummah and watching the beads on your scarf dance each time the tiny foot of the tiny human inside of you kicks?

    SubhanAllah, SubhanAllah.

  • Jabr & Qadr

    A lot of very interesting questions and issues of theology have come up in the comments of my last post. I begin in the name of Allah and seek refuge in Him, and pray that the answers I give are based on truth. Anything good or correct I may write is from the Grace and Mercy of Allah, anything bad or incorrect is from my own ignorance or the influence of Shaitain, from whom I seek refuge.

    Wayfarer said:

    See, people always say “make dua for me or pray for me” and i do but in the end i don’t think it matters because Allah’s plan is set right? Like one friend said “make dua for me when you are having your baby because women are most sinless at that point.” She is unable to have children and madly wants one. In my head i’m thinking yeah i can make dua but perhaps this is Allah’s test for you. He doesn’t want you to have children. So going with your thinking…chappati’s, ropes around the neck and all that jazz, how is prayer different? Hasn’t Allah already decided these things for us so why supplicate except for forgiveness – and other things He hasn’t decided on yet if that is the case? Same with asking for protection of our loved ones. To what degree can we ask for? If their lives will be taken when it is set as the Qur’an says, what good does it do to ask for their safety?

    This has been a big question of mine since i converted to Islam and I’m glad you spoke of it because no one ever answers my inquiry with a serious thought. I’d like to hear your position on prayer as it relates though…

    It was a big question of mine too, and I think it was only recently resolved for me. A few weeks ago I attended a lil Islamic mini-lecture. The topic was dua, and the woman who spoke did an amazing job, MashaAllah.

    The question of Jabr & Qadr (free will & predetermination) has existed for as long as man has, in his free will, wondered about it. Alhamdulillah, because scholars have been writing about it for such a long time, there is a rich body of work on the subject. Most of us simply don’t know that it exists and don’t know that we can access it though. But yeah, as I was saying, because people with real knowledge have addressed the topic, I don’t have to write my own shpiel. I can simply convey what has already been said:

    The first principle which Islam lays down in regard to Taqdir is that man is neither completely the master of his fate nor is he bound to the blind law of predestination.

    The idea that Allah has a foreknowledge of everything that He created and the events unfold themselves exactly according to it, does not imply that human beings have been completely deprived of the freedom of action. The foreknowledge of God is an acknowledged fact, but it should not be interpreted in the sense of predestination, for if we do so we shall have to conceive of eternity as a storehouse of ready-made events, from which they drop one by one like particles of sand in a glass hour. MSA-USC Intro to translation of Sahih Muslim, Book 33

    The companions of the Prophet, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, asked him why, if their final destinations (hell vs. heavan) were written, should they bother doing good deeds? Why not just rely on what was written in their destiny? The Prophet’s response was, “Act, for everyone is facilitated what he intends to do.” This hadith has been transmitted on the authority of Jabir b. Abdullah with the same wording (and includes these words): “Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) said: Every doer of deed is facilitated in his action.” (Sahih Muslim, Kitab-ul-Qadr)

    Other times the Prophet answered this question with the following verse from the Qur’an:

    Then, who gives to the needy and guards against evil and accepts the excellent (the truth of Islam and the path of righteousness it prescribes), We shall make easy for him the easy end and who is miserly and considers himself above need, We shall make easy for him the difficult end”. (XCii. 5-10).

    Obviously, what we think of as Qadr is not “predestination” in the restrictive, binding sense that we have no freedom of action. Otherwise, what would be the point of giving us rules? Of giving us a test if we had no hand in our own results?

    We do have a will of our own, and Allah refers to it many, many times in the Qur’an.

    …So he who wills may take to his Lord a way of return by obeying his commandments. Quran: 78:39

    So fear Allaah as much as you are able and listen and obey… Quran: 64:16

    Allaah does not charge a soul except with that within its capacity. It will have the consequence of what good it has gained, and it will bear the consequence of what evil it has earned… Quran: 2:286 -IslamWeb

    The will of man does exist, and yet the will of Allah is all-encompassing. How do we explain the co-existence of both wills simultaneously? Man’s limited free will exists because Allah has allowed it, and it is limited in the sense that man’s will is subject to God’s. You may ‘will’ to sprout wings and fly, but good luck buddy. Allah wills for His creations what He wants, and since His supersedes yours, you may never get off the ground.

    Or more realistically, you may ‘will’ to take your car from point A to point B, and you may do everything in your abilities (your abilities also being allowed to you by the will of God) but God willed that someone else should crash into you somewhere in the middle and you never make it to your destination.

    There’s a difference between your will and God’s. You’re only judged on what you do, not what happens to you. It’s the difference between poking yourself in the eye with a fork deliberately or having a fork fly at you in a freak accident. No one will call you self-destructive in the second case, because it’s not like it was your fault or will.

    Belief in Al-Qadr …does not provide an excuse for mankind to sin or abandon what they are obligated to do. This excuse can be refuted by the following seven arguments…

    Allaah says: “Those who associated with Allaah will say: ‘If Allaah had willed, we would not have associated [anything] and neither would our fathers, nor would we have prohibited anything.’ Likewise did those before deny until they tasted Our punishment. Say: ‘Do you have any knowledge that you can produce for us?’ You follow not except assumption, and you are not but falsifying.” [Quran 6:148]

    The disbelievers did not have a valid excuse when they said that what they did was according to Al-Qadr. If this excuse was valid, then why will Allaah punish them for their sins?

    “The future certainly pre-exists in the organic whole of God’s creative life, but it pre-exists as an open possibility, not as a fixed order of events with definite outlines.”

    So now that we know we’re not limited by the fact that Allah already knows what we’re going to do, we have the freedom to ask for things, don’t we?

    “And your Lord says: Pray unto me: and I will hear your prayer” -Qur’an 40:60

    We can petition God, as God has told us to, for our needs and wants, for guidance, for security, for peace. For a new shoelace even. Allah has said that He hears all prayers, and even the ones we don’t consider to be “answered” according to our limited knowledge of what we think is good for us are not “wasted.”

    The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him said: Any Muslim who supplicates to Allah in a Du’a which contains no sin breaking of kinship, Allah will give him one of three things: either his Du’a will be immediately answered or, it will be saved for him in the hereafter, or it will turn away an equivalent amount of evil (from him)” The companions said “so we will ask for more” he replied, “Allah is more [generous].” at-Tirmidhi, Ahmad

    So there’s always a point to making dua, and because not only does it bring you closer to Allah, it also benefits you in ways that you simply may not be able to understand or see.

    …’protection’ and ‘predestination’, both are the doings of the Almighty, as He alone does as He wills. As far as the slave of Allah is concerned, his responsibility is to make du’a, and then proceed in the direction of his choice, as that will be best for him.

    Wayfarer said: btw…hope that didn’t sound like i don’t believe prayer and supplication duas work because i do. I’m just talking about things that are predetermined like pregnancy, death, safety etc. It also doesn’t stop me from praying for the safety and health of all my loved ones and even the other stuff – just in case.

    All things are ‘predetermined,’ not just pregnancy, death, safety, etc if you translate predetermination as being within Qadr- as being within the will and knowledge of Allah. And yet, we make dua because Qadr is not a limitation on man, it is simply another proof of God’s magnificence and the completeness of His knowledge and power.


    (It was reported that a man who was caught stealing was brought to ‘Umar bin Al-Khattaab, may Allaah be pleased with him, who ordered that this man’s hand be cut off. The man said: “Wait, O leader of the believers! I only stole because this was in the Qadr of Allaah.” ‘Umar, may Allaah be pleased with him, replied “And we are amputating your hand because it is in the Qadr of Allaah.” Ha ha.)


    I hope that answers your questions Wayfarer. As for the pregnant women being without sin or having reduced sin, I looked but was unable to find any hadith mentioning that. I could be wrong, and Allah knows best, but as a pregnant woman m’self, I don’t feel too terribly holy. I slept in and missed Fajr more than once this week alone. It was my fault entirely, it had nothing to do with pregnancy. The Bebe I carry is sinless, not me, and I don’t know that the act of carrying a child itself is enough to wipe my slate clean or excuse any sin I indulge in.

    Although it is true that suffering, borne with patience and faith in Allah’s will, serves to erase sin (by virtue of said patience), I’m not that much inconvenienced, even if I am starting to look like I’ve swallowed a basketball, heh. So about being ‘most sinless’ at this point, I’m pretty sure I had less sin when I was a Bebe m’self. Allah knows best.

  • La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah

    “Whatever of Mercy (i.e. of good), Allah may grant to mankind, none can withhold it, and whatever He may withhold, none can grant it thereafter. And He is the All-Mighty, the All-Wise.” (Qur’an, 35:2)


    The Qur’an states that if God wills something for you, no one can withhold it, and if God chooses to withhold something from you, no one and no thing can grant it.

    It makes sense, no? Without God we don’t even have existence, how then can we pretend to have any power or ability unless it comes from him? We acknowledge that because He is the Source, it is foolish to seek from anywhere else. Creations have no power over the Creator.

    There is no power nor strength except with God, so why then, do we put our faith and our hopes in people and things other than Him? Why do we feel that certain objects will possibly entice (or coerce?) God to grant a prayer that we feel hadn’t been answered so far? If nothing and no one in the world can withhold what Allah chooses to grant you, then why are we waving around holy chapattis and tying black strings around our childrens’ necks?

    That black string, btw, is called a tavees, and people take verses of the Qur’an or write Allah’s name on a piece of paper, sew it into a black piece of cloth (because black is holier than other colors?) and tie it around the necks of their children to protect them from harm. The power of this tavees is apparently stronger than that of God, because is this not a better, more surefire measure than simply asking God to protect your children? I mean, maybe God had intended to let your child get a cold, but then you tied a tavees around the kid’s neck and now God has been enticed/coerced into changing His mind? Astaghfirullah.

    Or hey, maybe you’ve had a bad fiscal year and someone tells you that you need to burn some chili peppers in your house while reciting verses from the Qur’an. So you’ve already been making dua and you feel it’s not working? Chili peppers also have the power to change your fate. God may have been testing you with a tough year, as He said he would, but chili peppers can change that because chili peppers are yet another way of making God reconsider His will. You thought they were just hot? Oh no, they’re also Powerful and Mighty.

    We know it’s wrong to lend divine power to people, it’s easier to say that the dirty man in the green satin has no power to either change or thwart God’s will. But why is it not wrong to try ‘curing’ things with burnt peppers and chapattis? Or a black goat sacrificed in the moonlight on a Friday facing East and reciting Surah Fatiha?

    “If Allah touches you with hurt, there is none can remove it but He; and if He intends any good for you, there is none who can repel His favor which He causes it to reach whomsoever of His slaves He will, and He is the Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (Qur’an, 10:117)


    We are all linked to God through our hearts, our thoughts, and our prayers, and there is nothing more direct, more “powerful” than asking Him for help. If you’ve been asking for something you haven’t gotten yet and you feel it’s time to take stronger, holier measures and break out the green peppers, what are you basing your actions on? Do you feel that God owes you something and that perhaps you should take stronger measures so that He grants it? Do we know something that God doesn’t, or are we just hoping to get our way with the Creator?

    “If Allah helps you none can overcome you, and if He forsakes you, who is there, after Him, that can help you. And in Allah (alone) let believers put their trust.” (Qur’an, 3:160)

    We must not let impatience with our trials lead us to the bizarre cultural form of shirk of associating foodstuff with our worship of God. We must also be wary of the shirk of drinks (make a prayer, blow on a glass of water and drink it, your prayer will be answered?), both hot and cold (try with an espresso?) Beware also of associating a certain location in your worship, because there are people who tell you that a prayer at such and such a grave will be answered, guaranteed. What guarantee are they talking about? Whose guarantee is it? The guarantee of the curator of the shrine, whose word supercedes God’s?

    “And whosoever fears Allah and keeps his duty to Him. He will make a way for him to get out (from) every (difficulty), and He will provide him from (sources) he could never imagine.” (Qur’an, 65:2-3)

    There is no power nor might except with God. Beware the outrageous belief that man can, with the power of worldly objects, change God’s mind about what’s been willed for him.

  • What the Muslim world needs is more chapatti

    What the Muslim world needs is more chapatti

    There’s a tv channel called QTV- Qur’an tv- upon which there’s a sort of ‘ask the scholar’ type of program. People call in with their problems and a learned man sitting off-camera advises them. Yesterday’s program was rather interesting.

    Woman caller: I have a problem with my son, he’s not disobedient, but he sleeps all day and he stays up all night. What should I do?

    Moderator: This is a common problem among our youth these days, what do you recommend?

    Learned man: When you wake him up for breakfast, make him a chappati and write ‘Ya Allah’ over it with your finger seven times. Then feed it to him.

    I’m sure there’s a logical reason for this. The logical explanation must be that chapatti has hyper-religious powers that we don’t. Even though Allah states that He is nearer to us than the jugular veins in our own necks, chapatti can bring Him even closer. That’s how to bring your teenager nearer to God, feed him God.

    And if you feel your prayers about your son have been going unanswered, then just address God on a chapatti, because despite the fact that Allah is All-Hearing and All-Knowing and listens to our quietest prayers and hears our secretest thoughts, chapatti is still better at getting His attention than we ever could be.

    Such wonders from a home-made flatbread.

    I wonder what miracles one could work with a jalebi?

    Auzubillah.

  • We now return you to your regularly scheduled apartment

    Well, I’m back home in ze apartment again, sleeping in my own bed and coughing germs onto my very own husband. Ah, the comforts of home. My three-day fever being over, I’ve moved on to tackling my five-day cough. It sounds pretty gross, really, and is not at all the debonair vocalization that one comes to expect from a ladies’ man like myself. *wiggles eyebrows*

    I’m sort of weak and wobbly feeling, and if I was a better sick person I could use this to my advantage. I could delicately wheeze and look yearningly towards the window, meaning I wanted an ice-cream sundae, or I could turn over in bed and sigh, indicating that I wanted a new laptop. The opportunities are endless, but I have failed to avail any of them because my brain is running below standard too, and by the time I come up with really good demands, the opportune little cough or sigh has already passed.

    I’m no good at being sick. I get bored lying in bed and I don’t want “sick person food” (except for my Momma’s chicken soup, which is magically delicious regardless of whether you’re diseased). I want ice cream. I want pizza. I want nachos and chocolate cookies and the stomach sez that if these things taste good, then logically they must be good. And what harm can come of it? Illness is bacterial, or viral, or psychological (hehe) not nutritional, so why can’t “sick person food” be stuff that makes you happy and therefore more energetic and more likely to recover? Does chocolate ice-cream not make one want to get up and dance? If they served more ice-cream in hospitals they would have a lot more dancing patients and therefore a lot less sick people.

    That’s it, isn’t it. Feeding sick people bland food is all a conspiracy by hospitals to keep you sicker for longer, therefore increasing hospital revenue. Trust me, I’ve had hospital food, and it definitely saps your will to carry on. We, the common people, have simply carried the hospital’s ‘wisdom’ into our own lives, not realizing the damage we are causing to ourselves.

    Friends, colleagues, I believe I have made a valid case, and a review of my theory (boring food makes you sad, sadness leads to lethargy and weakness, your weakness gives the germs the upper hand in the battle) proves, without a doubt, that HF should bring home a pint of chocolate ice-cream.

    Stat.

    Thank you.

  • It’s been a long ole while

    What have I been up to lately? Well, at the moment I’m under quarantine. Momma, Owlie and I are ill and keeping each other company with flu germs. HF has gently and tactfully suggested I enjoy the Chateau for as long as I like.. and am infectious, hehe. I suggested he come and visit me, he muttered something about sick people having such unreasonable demands. :p Everyone should keep their distance, actually. Knicq bhai, Mona, BL, back I say! back! The Chateau is a red zone for flu germs and unless you want to lose a week of your life to blown-out tissues and bottles of cough syrup and aspirin, you’ll stay away.

    On top of it all, because I’m, err.. hehe, expecting (InshaAllah, InshaAllah) the meds I can take are quite limited. Acetamenaphen is safe, and so is Robitussin DM, but nothing else that I know of is ok for now. I have to pop in to my Tabiba and ask her what will clear up my nose without hurting my lil Bebe.

    *sappy smile*

    Yeah, we’re expecting a Bebe, a cute little bundle of MashaAllah to be delivered late this March, hopefully via UPS, and InshaAllah healthy and well and naked and pink. 🙂 In the mean time, I’m still sick and I’m going back to bed. I woke up at the unholy hour of 7:30 am when the cough syrup wore off and have been up HTML’ing since. (I fixt my blog, see?) Back to sleep with me.

  • Testing!

    You know, for a while I broke my blog? hehe

  • To a new Muslim and an old friend.

    AssalamuAlaikum Luv!!!

    I would have replied earlier but I’ve been meaning to sit down and really, really reply with all me brains to ye. However, seeing as how I’m never going to have all of something that I never had, heh, I’ll just begin.

    Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, welcome to Islam luv, and welcome to all the same questions and the confusions and sometimes doubts that we all have. *hugs* Faith is never a surety. If it were, they wouldn’t call it faith, they would call it ‘Duh,’ and the test we’re all taking right now would be rigged. :p

    About the severity of hell: You may not know this, but for every single time that hell is mentioned in the Qur’an, heaven is mentioned. They are referred to in equal numbers, and correspondingly, hell is as awful as heaven is amazing.

    The severity of hell is scary, you’re right, and it may seem harsh because we think ‘who really deserves that?’ We forget a few things though.

    “When God decreed Creation He pledged Himself by writing in His book which is laid down with Him: My mercy prevails over my wrath.” -Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) Hadith Qudsi Number 1.

    First, God promises, He has pledged Himself in fact, that His Mercy will be stronger than His wrath. That said, God, who is the best of Judges, and the knower of everything, knows who really, really deserves Wrath with a capital W. I may be mistaken, and Allah knows best, but a few types of people come to mind. (those who order genocide, murderers of entire nations, warlords, tyrants, mass murderers, unrepentant child molesters, etc.) I’d type out the name of a specific German WWII personality, but only God can judge people.

    Now, because God is the best Judge, you have to trust that no one, absolutely no one will get hell who didn’t deserve it. After all, what reason have you to doubt God’s word? Has He ever lied to us? No. God speaks only the truth, and God says hell is severe but nowhere does He say that people will be treated undeservedly harsh. Alhamdulillah. In fact, many many people will be treated undeservedly gently, and they’ll get into heaven because God’s Mercy prevails over his wrath. Take this Hadith Qudsi (I’ll explain what a Hadith Qudsi is in a sec.)

    “A man from among those who were before you was called to account. Nothing in the way of good was found in him except that he used to have dealings with people, and being well-to-do, he would order his servants to let off the man in straightened circumstances [from repaying a debt.] He (the Prophet) said that Allah said: We are worthier than you of that (generosity) Let him off.”

    Imagine that, a guy who has no good deeds at all, nothing good in him found at all, except that he would forgive poor people who owed him debts. So God released him from his debt of sin. There’s also a hadith that mentions a prostitute who, seeing a thirsty dog standing at a well, fills her slipper full of water and gives it to the dog. For that kindness, God forgave her sins and granted her paradise.

    God makes it ridiculously easy for man to earn blessings, “Allah has written down the good deeds and the bad ones. Then He explained it [by saying that] he who has intended a good deed and has not done it, Allah writes it down with Himself as one full good deed, but if he has intended and done it, Allah writes it down with Himself as from ten good deeds to seven hundred times, or many times over. But, if he has intended a bad deed and has not done it, Allah writes it down as one full good deed, but if he has intended it and done it, Allah writes it down as one bad deed.” -Hadith Qudsi 16

    So here’s the breakdown-

    1. You intend to do something good, you get the full blessings of having done it regardless of whether it gets done.{bonus!}
    2. You actually go through with it, and the deed is written for you as ten good deeds, or seven hundred, or however many times over Allah wants to multiply it for you. {bonus!}

    3. If you intend a bad deed but then change you mind, you actually get a full good deed. {bonus!}
    4. if you intend a bad deed and do it, it counts as just one bad deed. Just one. No multiplying. Allah is overwhelmingly generous in his Mercy, but perfectly Just in his punishment. You’ll be rewarded many times over for doing one nice thing, and only penalized once for doing one bad thing. {fair}

    Even having sinned, God makes being forgiven wonderfully easy. Forgiveness, called Taubah in Arabic, has four steps.

    1. stop the sin
    2. feel sorry
    3. resolve not to do it again
    4. make up for it if possible (if you have stolen, give it back, etc.)

    As long as you sincerely apologize for something, you are forgiven, and it doesn’t matter if you, out of error, fall into the same thing again. God’s forgiveness and mercy are without limit for those who seek them.

    “O son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind.

    O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of me, I would forgive you.

    O son of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the earth and were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring you forgiveness nearly as great as it.” [as great as the earth] Hadith Qudsi 34

    Ah yes, a Hadith is a saying of the Prophet, and Qudsi means ‘Sacred,’ and is used to refer to things the Prophet said that God said directly. I highly recommend picking up a copy of 40 Hadith Qudsi. That’s the name of the book, it’s fairly easy to find in any Islamic bookstore, and I know the one in F-8 markaz, right around Szabist university has it. If you can’t find one lemme know and be ten to seven hundred times happy to send you one. 😉

    It’s true, in spite of God’s Mercy, some people will make it to hell. After all, God can only forgive you for the sins you sought forgiveness for. What do you do with a person who dies unrepentant and proud of the hurt they’ve done to other people? If you reward the good then you must punish the bad, such is justice. Even so, consider:

    “There will come out of the Hell-fire he who has said There is no god but Allah, and who has in his heart goodness weighing a barley-corn. then there will come out of the Hell-fire he who has said There is no god but Allah, and who has in his heart goodness weighing a grain of wheat, then there will come out of the Hell-fire he who has said There is no god but Allah, and who has in his heart goodness weighing an atom.” Hadith Qudsi 36

    Note: the word Allah is not a proper name. It is simply God with a capital G in Arabic. What does it take to get out of hell once you’ve fulfilled your term? Faith in God and an atom’s worth of goodness. Alhamdulillah.

    Faith is hard, yeah. It’s hard for all of us luv. Everyone has questions and only God has all the answers. In the mean time, we’re here to help one another and assuage our smaller doubts with the greater certainties: God created us and nurtures us and expects us to be grateful to Him and good to one another.

    The first verse of the Qur’an, Surah Fatiha, is often called ‘The Essence of the Qur’an,’ because it sums everything up so beautifully. All Praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, the Merciful, the Beneficent, Master of the Day of Judgment. Thee alone do we worship and thee alone do we seek help from. Guide us along the path that is straight; the path of those who have earned your Mercy, not that of those who have earned your wrath and gone astray.

    [Praise is due to God. God, please guide us to righteousness.]

    I know it’s taken me way too long to get back to you. Aniraz told me about your email after I got back from a weekend trip and I was so happy for you darling, and I am, I really am praying for you. I want you to find peace and strength and happiness. I’m here for you, please, ask me any question at all, doesn’t matter, because chances are I’ve had the same ones. It’s taken me years to work things out, but if I can save you the time of having to search for the answers yourself then I can save you trouble that I wish I didn’t have to go through, because those spots of trouble weakened my faith for a while before God helped me through with comfort and answers. (yeah, I’m a bad little infidel.)

    Remember luv, God always hears the prayer of one who calls on Him, and when you call on God, He speaks your name, and if you reach out to Him, He comes to you at speed.*

    Love, Love, Love

    -Zeba

    *I am as My servant thinks I am. I am with him when he makes mention of Me. If he makes mention of Me to himself, I make mention of him to Myself; and if he makes mention of Me in an assembly, I make mention of him in an assemble better than it. And if he draws near to Me an arm’s length, I draw near to him a fathom’s length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go to him at speed. -Hadith Qudsi 15

  • Married Life: A Mighty Battle

    Married Life: A Mighty Battle

    I put an apple into HF‘s lunch this morning. It was dutiful and stayed where I placed it all through breakfast, but just as HF was getting up to go to work, it escaped. I saw it sitting on the dining table, looking guilty but smug for having evaded captivity, and I picked it up and said to HF, “Honey, this apple rolled out of your bag.”

    He said, “That’s ok, it looked better on the table.”

    Silly me, and I had blamed the apple.

    HF doesn’t like fruit. Or excercise. Or peanut butter, all of which are Good For You. Yes, I capitalized Good For You, to emphasize the importance. Fruit is healthy. Excercise is healthy. Peanut butter is just plain yummy. HF is mad I say, maaad!

    And yet, he thinks I’m nuts for not eating mangoes. You know, I actually ate a mango once. There was a piece of it in my fruit salad and I accidentally consumed it. Boy, whoever snuck that in there was a mean and evil person. And I don’t like mutton when it’s on the bone, because it smells funny and I can picture exactly what part of the sheep I’m gnawing on, and I don’t like green chilis in the raw, and any animal product other than skeletal muscle does not make it into my diet. No organ meats, thank you. I have enough spare parts of my own.

    But I digress. I think I may have to make a deal, like maybe if I eat a mango or something HF will excercise for the rest of his life, or maybe if I eat one raw green chili pepper HF will bring me ice cream and then excercise for the rest of his life. Or maybe if I eat all the peanut butter he won’t have to. Yes, I especially like that last one…

    It’s 5:46, do you know where your brain is? I don’t.

  • An Ode

    An Ode

    How shall I update? Let me count the ways.

    I shall update about the man in the white paper hat, a butcher. Oh how he sternly, how resolutely he worked, jaw firmly set, eyes focused straight ahead upon the task at hand, until the side of lamb he was weighing dropped wetly onto the floor and went -splat- Shall I speak of how his face changed, and how he quickly dropped down to pick the skinless lamb up and return it to its place on the meat hook? Shall I mention the hurried glance left, then right, to see if he had been seen? And is it possible to describe the nervous, amusing, lopsided smile he greeted me with when he realized I had been watching him, and laughing? Ah, the grocery store.

    Or shall I update about Litho, the gas station attendant, who knew not what flavors his slurpees were. Truth be told, it was midnight, and in the haze of sleep deprivation and late-night hours, the light blue slurpee looks alot like the dark blue slurpee, and the both of them look like close cousins of the teal slurpee. HF and I asked him what they were. He wasn’t sure. He went into the back to ask someone else and returned without an answer. He looked at the machine. Then he took out three cups and poured an inch of each blue into each of them respectively. He offered them to us. The teal one tasted like lemon-scented handsoap. The light blue one was an unknown, and it tasted like lemon-scented conditioner. The dark blue one tasted like lemon scented blue berries that had been left overnight in the radioactive core of a nuclear power plant, so we ordered one glass with two straws. My tongue was blue for a day and a half.

  • Married Life: This is what happens when you marry yourself

    Married Life: This is what happens when you marry yourself

    Photobucket

    I made HF’s glasses into the bed last week. Really. I tucked them neatly beneath the topsheet and the fitted sheet and then I threw the comforter over top of it all. Then I couldn’t find his glasses, because I hadn’t made them into the bed on purpose. No, because that would be foolish.

    I searched extensively for his glasses before I decided to retrace my steps for that morning.

    (Let’s see, I had your glasses in my hand and then I threw them on to the bed. Then I went into the kitchen, then I came back and made the bed.)

    My poor husband (who at that point, realized that the lumpy bits he had been sitting on were, in fact, his nice glasses) shook his head and sighed. He dug his glasses out of their cozy hiding spot and put them onto his nose.

    It serves him right I say. After all, did he not greet my cool new mandarin shirt with the iffy compliment, “Hey, you look like a Chinese assassin!” And has he not feigned seriousness, taking me quietly to one side of the hallway when there are guests in the living room, only to giggle into my ear and call out, “TROGDOR!” He has. And if, in exchange, I manage to make his glasses into the bed or make him rescue me when I get stuck behind the TV or make him sit through Monty Python skits on the computer late at night, I say he deserves it. This is what happens when weird people get happily married. 🙂

  • New Muslim Burnout: Dealing with bitterness

    New Muslim Burnout: Dealing with bitterness

    I have an article in Muslim Link, and it has typos, hehe.

    I first saw Nicole in December of 2000. She was a Christian then, but very interested in Islam and Muslims- in what we stood for and how we chose to do so. She was full of enthusiasm, eager to learn and willing to read any book. She could be found sitting front and center when any discussion about Islam took place, and she seemed to know more about it than most Muslims our age. That was 2000 and she was 20.

    The last I saw Nicole was August of 2004. She had been Muslim for three years and married to a Lebanese man who divorced her in six months. We were at yet another party, and this time, when an Islamic discussion started in the living room, she took her drink and walked out. That was 2004 and she was bitter.

    Ali converted to Islam when he was fifteen but had learned little beyond those first few months. At twenty he still did not know how to pray. “I started learning,” he once told me, “But then I guess I stopped. At least I’m not Jewish anymore.”

    Nicole and Ali are two examples of what often happen to us new Muslims. We start out on a spiritual high, we resolve to do amazing things with our faith, but we lose enthusiasm like Ali did, or worse yet, we become bitter like Nicole. Ali’s solution was relatively easy compared to Nicole’s, he changed his circle of friends and his location so that he could be around people who strengthened his faith, but what do you do if being around other Muslims only depresses you?… Read the rest…

    For the full article, visit www.muslimlink.ca and download Issue 10, Volume Three. I’m on page two.

  • UAE Internet Service Affected

    UAE Internet Service Affected

    Dubai, UAE- Internet traffic in the UAE is being affected after a submarine cable linking Mumbai and Penang was cut by gargantuan rampaging lobsters with wire cutters yesterday, taking out four of Etisalat’s 19 links.
    E-Company marketing manager Farooq Hasan said broadband customers who use the net for gaming and peer-to-peer applications will be most affected, but failed to mention that I would be unable to check my email.
    An official complaint has been lodged. No indication was given as to when the problem would be rectified, and an international lobster-hunt to apprehend those responsible is currently underway. -AFP (Abezi Fraud Press)
  • Married Life: I am pit crew, hear me roar

    Married Life: I am pit crew, hear me roar

    Photobucket

    So the popular question for everyone who emails me these days is: So, how’s married life? I suppose I should eventually answer the question.

    Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, I have been blessed. Unlike most weddings in Pakistani culture, mine was not to a complete stranger. It wasn’t even to an acquaintance, it was to a person who became a good friend. That is probably why, when I try to describe things betweenMr. Abez and I, I say being married is like hanging out with a friend. All the time. Except when he’s at work and I’m home cooking and straightening up.

    Yeah, he brings home the bacon and I turn it into pumpkin pies. Does that make me a housewife? It might, but I think there are too many negative connotations associated with that word. I prefer to use a different term. Allow me to explain. A race car has only one driver, but there’s a whole team of guys with power bolt-removers who go zzzummmzummmm and change the car’s tires real fast when the driver has made a pit stop. Could any one of them have driven the car? Probably. Could the driver change his own tires? Sure he could. But when you’re a part of a team, you do what needs done and you support your mateys.

    I am the man in the red jumpsuit. I am pit crew. I could be the driver, I could bring home the bacon and HF could put some biryani masala on it, but at the moment I’m simply not. And besides, his masala bacon is terrible and if he did the cooking we’d all die of grease poisoning. Keep that man away from olive oil, he thinks it’s God’s Answer to the scourge of low-fat foods.

    Do I mind being pit crew? Not at all. Especially since the pit has broadband internet access as well as the freedom to do as pit crew likes. And then there’s the stylish jumpsuit. And the power tools.

    -ahem- I know that some people consider huswifery to be a downgrade, possibly even the waste of an intelligent female. Considering the path to academic over-achievement that I was once on, this may not seem like the fruition of all those ‘you can be something’ speeches that the guidance counselor gave me, and yet, am I not something? I make pit crew what I want it to be. I don’t wake up and drag my feet to the kitchen (I wake up and HF drags my feet to the kitchen for me, hehe) I wake up and think about breakfast creatively. Then I make eggs with too much salt, but I digress.

    I don’t do household chores all day, I have a set agenda of things that need done in order to run a clean, smooth Formula 1 team, and I get them done as soon as possible so that I have time for the other things that are important to me. Do I still not have the time to blog properly? Yes, but that has nothing to do with housework and everything to do with chilling with my favorite race care driver. 🙂

    The mutual give and take of a successful relationship doesn’t end on the emotional level, it extends into the practical. Would ‘I love you’ be worth anything if I refused to make my husband a cup of tea when he was tired, or if he refused to help me when I was tired? I find nothing degrading in supporting the person who supports me. I’m proud to be part of an efficient, enthusiastic team.

    Got to go, HF will be making a pit stop soon and I need to put a radial tire, err, chicken in the oven. It’s the um, fuel for the engine, hehe.

  • The Husband Files: DIY Mango Milkshake

    Photobucket

    My husband has an interesting recipe for mango milkshake.

    Step 1. Ask your wife to make you a mango milkshake.
    Step 2. Look forlorn when your wife won’t make you one.
    Step 2.5 Discover that your wife doesn’t like mangoes.
    Step 3. Pout.
    Step 4. Dolefully accept ingredients from wife for do-it-yourself mango milkshake;

    • milk
    • icecubes
    • sugar
    • two mangoes

    Step 5. Begin combining ingredients. In a wok.

  • Coming soon:

    Is it a sin to be rich?

    For now: It has happened. I have given myself the first mortal wound of my married life. I do not wish to horrify those of you with delicate constitutions with the gory details. Nor do I wish to upset those readers who lack intestinal fortitude. (please, not on the computer chair…) So all I will say is this- There was a hot skillet and a cocky, no-good hash brown that refused to accept its rightful place in the circle of life, and when it took off I had to show it what’s what. I had to chase the sucker down and retrieve it, and being a Suggard does come with occupational hazards, and at some point during the high-speed chase, I invented a new recipe for Seared Abez. Tsssss. So now there’s the pink burn on my forearm of all places, almost into the crook of my elbow, and if you think that’s bad, you should see what I did to the hash brown. mwa. ha. ha. chomp.

    Oh, and I fought the Shogun and nearly lost the tip of my thumb, but the fruit salad does taste meatier for it. The End.

    And here, for the sake of posterity:

    Mortal Wound: TROGDOR!

    Mortal Wound: Sensei Presents

    Mortal Wound: Killing me softly with pineapple

    Mortal Wound: Oven-roasted Knuckles

    Mortal Wound: GONGGG!

    Mortal Wound: ZAP!

    Mortal Wound: Waxing your thumbs: pros and cons

    Mortal Wound: Carrot upside-down cake

    Mortal Wound: Crackers on the rebound

    Mortal Wound: Death By Exasperation

    Mortal Wound: The Mortal Wound Medley

  • Suggardh with a capital Sugg

    Photobucket

    Being a sensitive technical procedure, pancake production can be adversely affected by multiple factors- the size of the pan, the size of the burner beneath the pan, the type of the spatula, and the qualification of the pancake engineer. It is therefore necessary to generate a few pre-meal proto-types- a few little ones to account for such factors as well as fine-tune the heat of the griddle, the amount of baking powder necessary for desired fluffiness, etc.

    -ahem-

    I used up most of my batter on experimental and geographical-looking pancakes.

    There was only one truly round, truly ideal pancake, and it was the last one. It came off the griddle just as my sleepy-faced husband made it to the table last.

    “Sweetheart, I made pancakes. Yours is the one not shaped like Mississippi.”

    (shhh! I think they’re getting used to how weird I am.)

    Heh. I am so not a proper bahu. (daughter-in-law) I haven’t been living here in Husbandland for more than five days and already I’ve regressed to jeans and a kurta. And two of Monkey’s hairclips. (Zeba Mami, put it the clips!)

    Over the last few days we’ve been slowly evicting HF from the wardrobe and replacing his nicely folded shirts with my duds and ducky PJ’s. Today I finally finished unpacking the two suitcases I brought with me, and as I stood surveying the crammage, it occurred to me that I owned way too much junk for my wardrobe space. Which is why I should start getting rid of some of my husband’s clothes, mwahaha.

    Ok, seriously though. Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. Here’s the deal, yo. I miss ma homeez, I miss my Dad, I miss my Mommasita, I miss my Owlie-face like nobody’s business. But I also love being with my charming HF, and his family is sweet, and lil Monkey brings light and innocence and a squeaky giggle to a situation that is getting easier as the days go by.

    Love to ma Monkey-Pirates,
    Abez