InshaAllah, I will be heading into the hospital this Thursday morning for another surgery on my right knee, the one I keep banging up in car accidents, plural. SubhanAllah 🙂
Female visitors with shawarma welcome.
Some people, when they imagine Jannah, hope for the exquisite foods, breath-taking architecture, perfected mates, and The Countenance and Pleasure of Allah. In addition to all of these things, I’m really looking forward to perfect knees. InshaAllah.
Please remember us in your duas. 🙂
One worrying aspect of taking Khalid out is how he will interact with other children. He’s quite shy as far as kids go- even more so than normal ones- so he’s overly good at keeping his hands to himself.
Even with Iman, who hits, pinches, taunts, kicks, and noogies her way through life (I’ve been told that she’s the normal one) Khalid seldom hits back, and his strategy is one of defense and escape. Iman can be sitting on his chest and trying to pull off his eyelids, but all he will do is cover his eyes. So you can see how I would be worried for Khalid when it comes to other kids, who can be vicious little beasties when unsupervised. Good news, my fears have been allayed.
Last week, we took the kids to the Dubai Outlet Mall, which in addition to cheap brand name shopping, also has cheap indoor play areas. Hooray! For 30 dhs, we were able to get both kids into an area with two bouncy castles, a bouncy slide, and a bunch of other great kid-proof play equipment. The slides, benches, and even floor were covered with foam. It was a weekday evening, so the mall was nice and empty, and there was only one other kid in the play area with Khalid and Iman. I snuck away while they were bouncing and wandered off to do some discount browsing. Joy stayed to watch the kids, and when I came back, this is what she told me.
A little boy named Andre was playing rough. He was pushing and hitting, and at one point he deliberately knocked Khalid over in the bouncy castle. Joy watched, waiting to see how Khalid would respond. Khalid picked himself up, walked around Andre, matter-of-factly KICKED HIM IN THE BUTT and then walked away.
!!!
It gets better.
Andre backed off for a while, but finding nothing better to do, and no one else to bother since there were only three kids in the play area (the third being Iman, and you do NOT want to mess with her) came back and sat down next to Khalid. Then he punched Khalid on the thigh.
Khalid stood up, and without anger or malice, took Andre’s leg. Then he pulled. And Andre came crashing down from the (foam) bench and on to the (foam) floor. And Khalid walked away and found somewhere else to sit. And thereafter, Andre kept his malice to himself.
This may sound weird, but I am so proud of Khalid. He responded without doing more than he had to. He expressed his dissatisfaction with a swift kick to the butt, and then he walked away. When Andre came back and hit him again, Khalid responded with just enough force, but no amount of abuse, and then walked away again. My gentle giant of a four-year old can stand up for himself. Alhamdulillah. 😀
I’ve been in two car accidents in my life, and in both cases, the memory of the impact stayed in my mind for months. Neither though, have anything on this one-
Note to self- never, ever, ever, ever text and drive.
SubhanAllah. There are so many things that could go wrong- every car on the road is a potential accident, and yet, Allah protects us from everything except what’s written for us. Sometimes healthy people die in their sleep with no medical explanation, and sometimes a person who should never have survived does. Because, actually, he was never supposed to die. And that other person, the healthy one? He wasn’t supposed to live.
Your time is written. Texting or no texting. But there’s a whole lot of harm you can incur before killing yourself. And plus, as a mom, my heart ached for the little girl in the back seat who said she wanted her mom and dad to wake up. Even if she was an actress, because as a parent, any baby crying is like your baby.
So please drive safely.
So, if five minutes pass without you hearing your kids laugh, giggle, squeak, yell, cry, fight, or jump off furniture, there’s a strong possibility that you may become suddenly (and rightfully) suspicious and tiptoe off in search of them.
You may find them sitting on your bed, holding those supposedly baby-proof cups- you know, the ones that will only leak if held upside down and vigorously shaken? They’ll be holding those cups upside down and vigorously shaking them, engrossed in what is obviously very important and very serious work, because the two will be working in tandem and in silence to effectively soak your As-A-Grown-up-I-Deserve-A-Pretty-Bedspread bedspread, which is just a few months old and dry clean only.
Or, if you doze off thinking your son is asleep as well, you might wake to find him, the bed, the floor, the desk and the same milk-stained bedspread all ghostly white and pleasantly floral smelling- all covered with a layer of baby powder so deep it will require a proper archeological dig to restore the room to its original color. There will be two jumbo-sized containers of baby powder suspiciously kicked under the bed. Both will be empty.
Or you could wake up with four colors of post-its stuck to your face and pillow. Because your son woke up and early and quietly entertained himself while waiting for you to come around.
Kids: If you can’t hear them, find them!
Before I get to Khalid’s first sentence- his first spontaneously, original, and contextually appropriate sentence- this blog has a long preamble. Here it goes.
Once upon a time, HF and I met a friend of a friend at an Eid party. MashaAllah, he was an American Muslim convert married to a South-American convert. Together they had three children, two of whom seemed perfectly lovely and energetic and funny, and one of whom was… strange. His name was Aziz. He was extremely thin, held his arms in front of his body with his fingers in strange positions, his speech was difficult to understand and he seemed disconnected from things that were happening around him. At that time I was pregnant with Khalid, and little did I know that the weird little boy with the flicking fingers and disconnected look would have so much in common to the unborn little boy I was carrying. Aziz had autism.
We didn’t see that family again until over two years later, when Khalid was diagnosed with autism, and HF remembered that once upon a time, we met another Muslim family at an Eid party whose child had autism. Contact was reestablished, and we went over for a visit, nearly three years after we had first met them. I was nervous, and still depressed and in the initial stages of trying to understand Khalid’s diagnosis. Khalid had not yet begun ABA and we were in the agonizing wait between assessment and the beginning of therapy. Imagine my surprise when we got there and were welcomed by a totally different little boy.
“Come here,” he said, excitedly, though with his head tilted awkwardly to one side, “I want to show you my big city.” He led us to a poster on the dining table dotted with landmarks along a hand-drawn river. “This is the Eiffel Tower. And this,” he said, pointing to a suspiciously geometric-looking piece of play-dough, “this is the Sydney Opera House.” He took us on a tour from one wonder to the next- the Golden Gate Bridge, the Burj ul Arab- plastic models and play-dough sculptures as his parents stood and beamed with pride.
I asked the mother what had happened in the two years since we had seen them. She told me that she had moved back to her home in South America for a year with the kids to get ABA training and the most therapy possible for their dollar value. She sat with Aziz for six hours a day, training him, teaching him, coaxing him out of his bubble, and the end result was this intelligent, social, and earnest little boy who built his own cities.
I asked her when Aziz started speaking- a question that I worried over for Khalid constantly. At that point in time, he had no words (apart from one, single instance where he parroted the word ‘socks’) and had gone almost completely silent, apart from screaming or crying. She laughed and told me the story of their vacation in Malaysia. They had gone there as a family, and of course, they were facing challenges with managing Aziz. He could not stand being wet. If even a single drop of water landed on his clothes, he would have to be changed. Now, imagine pouring with sweat in Malaysia, and trying to control a boy who is freaking out every half an hour because he’s “Wet! Wet!” and needs to be changed no matter where, no matter when. The mother honestly told me (and I loved her for her honesty) that one day she couldn’t take it anymore. She just flipped out, and when Aziz started panicking at a restaurant when he was sweaty, she took a glass of water and threw it on him.
“There, now you’re wet!”
He went silent. And he stayed in his wet shirt until they got home, but he didn’t complain about being wet again.
Of course, the mother felt terribly guilty, and awful for having lost her cool. It was a tense vacation, and towards the end of it, they were taking a jungle tour where they were led across a bridge that passed through some treetops. They were bordered on both sides by monkeys desensitized by the number of visitors who passed over the bridge every day. The tour guy expressly told them to NOT bring any food on to the bridge, because the monkeys wouldn’t wait for you to offer it, they would just take it. And of course, kids being kids, one of their other sons ignored the advice, and midway across the bridge, pulled out a piece of bread from his bag. Within seconds, a monkey appeared out of nowhere, snatched the bread from the boy’s hand and disappeared into the great green yonder. And in the stunned silence that followed, Aziz shrugged and said his first sentence.
“Monkey took the bread.”
I have remembered that story since it was first told to me two years ago. I’ve told it to other people as well as myself when fretting over when and if Khalid would speak. It brought me joy and hope and always a little chuckle to remember the mother holding her palms up and shrugging, “Monkey took the bread.” I loved her story of Aziz’s first sentence, and I’d been waiting to have one for Khalid. Now, I finally do.
On Friday, the seventh of May, HF and I had been sitting on the bed and talking, and simultaneously two things happened. The first was that Iman made a grab for the piping-hot cup of chai that I had just set down on my desk. The second was that Khalid, who had been quietly climbing the bed from the far side, fell down and landed face-first onto the mattress. I jumped up and took the chai out of Iman’s hands just as she was about to slosh it onto herself, and HF turned and picked up Khalid who had begun to shriek. I opened the wardrobe and shoved the cup of chai inside for safekeeping and turned to Khalid, who was bleeding heavily. He had somehow bitten through the corner of his mouth. Iman began to cry as well, terrified by the blood and the screaming. She was whisked away by Cindy, and Khalid, bleeding and screaming, was quickly given a voltaren suppository as HF and I took turns trying to hold a kitchen towel over his mouth.
When we got a handle on the bleeding, we loaded Khalid into the car and off to the ER, where he was seen by a doctor at 12:20 pm, and four hours later, put under general anasthesia to have a surgeon repair his mouth. Apparently, he had fallen with his mouth open, and cut his lip and the area around it with a canine tooth from both sides, inside and out. HF stayed with Khalid, and told me that Khalid fought blindly when coming out of anasthesia, and cried non-stop for around half an hour before settling down and watching cartoons on the hospital tv in his undies. Eventually Khalid had some juice without throwing up and was ready to come home.
We got home by 9:30 pm, thanked Joy for her help, threw HF into the shower and began prepping Khalid for bed. Khalid, realizing there was something funny on his face, began to pull. And within ten minutes of getting home, he had removed the glue that the surgeon had put over his stitches, disturbed the wound, and found himself in his car seat again and back on his way to the hospital. Joy and I took the second shift and left HF at home. We took our second tour of the ER, saw a different doctor (as their shift had changed too) and were told (to our relief) that even though he had messed things around a bit, the stitches were safely inside of his lip, and the edges of the wounds still lined up reasonably straight, so he was alright without the glue as long as he didn’t pick anything else apart.
We made it back to the car by 11:30. It had been a long, long day, and Joy and I were sitting in relieved, if not tired silence at a red traffic signal. Khalid, from the back seat of the car, picked up a paper cup and balanced it on top of his head. Seeing the motion in the rear-view mirror, I turned in my seat to make sure he wasn’t picking at his mouth again. He looked at me and smiled, and shyly and carefully said his first sentence.
“I … am… a hat!”
Alhamdulillah.
And all was right with the world, and when we got home Khalid fell promptly asleep, and in the morning, Cindy confusedly handed me cup of tea she had found in my wardrobe and we had a good laugh.
The end.
The woman who posted this list at McSweeney’s deserves a hug. And so does Baji for mailing it to me, because it made my day. We had a public meltdown about two or three weeks ago in the Mirdif City Center, and I didn’t blog about it because I try not to be pointlessly negative. I feel I could be more positive writing about it now that I’ve had some time to think about it.
So were at the mall. And it was a weekend, the opening weekend in fact. And the check-out line was forty minutes long. I’m not joking, it was 40 minutes long. People were abandoning their purchases by the wayside and giving up before reaching the cashier, but we finally made it because Cindy held our place in line while I walked the kids around the store in the shopping cart. But 40 minutes is a long time to aimlessly wander, and Iman wanted everything she saw, and Khalid wanted nothing but to be out, so there was crying and whining and grabbing and lots of attempted escaping from a moving shopping cart.
Eventually we made it to the checkout, and I pushed the cart to Cindy, who started handing our shopping to the cashier while holding Iman into her seat. I took Khalid out, because he was climbing out of the cart anyway, and was just trying to keep him standing near me until we could pay. On top of that, the forty minutes of people standing behind Cindy had a collectively mutinous look to them, and it was clear from the more-than-usual amount of glaring that I was thought to be cutting in line.
Khalid was tired and angry, and instead of holding my hand, laid down on the floor and screamed and kicked- and some shoppers got kicked too- and some carts were rearranged on the crowded floor by his flying feet of fury, and in the mean time, Iman was standing up in the shopping cart and yelling to be taken out. And the two ladies standing closest to me – and they were really, really close- began their pitying analysis of me and my parenting skills with lots of tsk-tsking and Taubaaa! (God Forbid!!) and gesturing to Khalid and making disgusted faces and looking to me to make eye contact so they could take what they were saying and put it into second person instead of third.
Eventually, Joy came to the rescue. She had been at the other end of the mall trying to find chips and tic-tacs, two of our favorite go-to’s when there are errands to be run and children to be pacified. She finally returned with said chips and carried Khalid out of the store so I could scribble something unintelligible on the receipt, collect my bags and try to exit the store with as much dignity as I could muster when all I really wanted to do was cry. I would have been in good company, Iman would totally have joined me. Heads turned as we walked past the rest of the line and the chattering followed. I left feeling broken and worthless and utterly low.
We had parked on the opposite end of the mall, and it was a rather long walk back to the car. Cindy pushed the cart, Iman rode inside, at peace with a box of tic-tacs. It was relatively uneventful and morose until Khalid- seeking the freedom of the long, marbled shopping arcade- escaped and ran away from Joy at full speed, and in running past me, tripped on the corner of my abaya, slipped, and crashed head-first into the shopping cart full of groceries and Iman. And there was a mighty wail, and lots of crying, and people rushing out of stores to see what had happened. And I sighed, and scooped Khalid up and eventually the crying stopped and eventually, after forgetting where we had parked and wandering around the parking lot for fifteen minutes, eventually we made it home.
When HF got home I had a good long cry about it. I couldn’t help it. I had been trying all day to forget about it, but the utter disgust in those women’s faces cut me to the quick. I may joke about being ‘Mother of the Year’ when my kids have fries and peanut butter for dinner, or go to bed in the same clothes they’ve been wearing all day because they’ve fallen asleep in the car, but to be seriously seen in that light by someone else made me feel like something you scrape off the bottom of your shoe.
I know, they had no idea Khalid was autistic. Even if I told them that he was, they would have no idea what it meant in terms of behavioral issues. Sometimes parents get together and complain about how long it takes their children to sleep. “Twenty minutes!” they moan, “Twenty whole minutes!” I nod sympathetically and tell them they are doing a good job, and that eventually, InshaAllah, their hard work will pay off with loving, responsible adults who appreciate your struggles once they have their own. I can’t say ‘Twenty minutes? Oh God, that would be AWESOME.’ Putting Khalid to bed takes an hour on good nights and two hours on bad ones. Also, he kicks me in the face in his sleep.’
If I said these things I would be complaining. I don’t mean I, me, myself, would see myself as whining. I mean I would be seen as badmouthing my special-needs child, which is the moral equivalent of kicking a puppy. Sometimes, when I tell people for the first time that my son has autism, I’m told- ‘Oh no, he’s fine! Look at him!’ And if I warn them to move their mobile phones out of his reach, or put the decorations on a higher shelf because he may try to eat them- they look at me like I’m casting aspersions on him, the bitter, angry dishrag of a mom that I am.
But I digress. Even if I had told the two ladies in the checkout line that Khalid had autism, they would still think I was a bad mother. They didn’t know that Khalid had zero understanding of the situation and had already displayed epic patience (40 minutes!!) and had no way of verbally communicating that he was tired and wanted to go home other than screaming and trying to walk himself away from the clamour of the mall- and unless they knew what happened if I raised my voice to him or took a hand to him- they would expect him to behave better or me to spank him into submission. If you yell at or hit Khalid, he is overcome with terror. I’m not talking about the kind of fear that every child usually has of their parents, I’m talking about an animal fear- devoid of logic, unaffected by hugs or bribes or apologies- where he will run into walls or hurt himself in his desperation to escape. Or, he completely shuts down. He covers his ears with his hands and screams and is so overwhelmed that the original point of the disagreement is totally lost.
One of autism’s most difficult challenges is lack of public understanding. No one would glare at a mother who had a crying child in a wheel chair, or physically rough child with Down’s syndrome. It would be obvious- cut the mom some slack, the child has some issues. With autism, most children *look* perfectly normal, but that facade covers up severe behavior problems further complicated by inability to communicate- not only from child to mother (I’m hungry = Screaming, I’m tired = Screaming, My toe hurts = Screaming) but also from mother to child. When your child can’t understand you, they can’t easily be comforted when they’re afraid, or reassured that food is coming if they’re hungry, or be pacified with promised rewards for good behavior. The bubble of autism doesn’t just keep your child in, it keeps you out.
Now remember, I’m not being negative. I’m not complaining. I’m just being honest. And I can’t think of what an ideal situation would have been at that mall. I won’t say that ideally Khalid shouldn’t have been having a meltdown, because that is unrealistic and unfair to Khalid. He didn’t choose to have autism, and he can’t just choose to be normal. I suppose I should have gone into ‘Autism Ambassador’ mode instead of just trying to contain the situation and get out of the store asap. The ladies would have had a learning experience and I would have felt less like mother scum of the earth.
So here we are today, being positive. 🙂 Alhamdulillah. I should be willing to cut other people as much slack as I wish they would cut me. They won’t know what Khalid’s autism means unless I tell them. Sometimes I think I should just print t-shirts that say: Ask me about my son’s neurological disorder! I wonder if I could order them in bulk.
The Messenger of Allah (sallallahu `alayhi wa sallam) said,
“Whoever wakes up with good health, safety and he has with him food for the day, then it is as if the world has been gathered for him. O Ibn Ju’shum, what suffices you of it is that which prevents your hunger and that which conceals you; whether that’s a garment which you can wear or an animal which you can ride upon, then indeed, how fine that would be! (It is) half a bread and some running water, and you shall be called to account for whatever lies above the Izar (lower garment).”
Majma’ al-Zawa’id 10/292, Mawarid al-Dham’an 2503
Iman: (pulling a hairclip out of her hair) Fa-yi-yi!
Me: Yes, butterfly!
Iman: (offering to put the hairclip into my mouth) Oooh! Fa-yi-yi!
Me: No dear, I don’t want to eat the butterfly.
(Iman reconsiders and tries another idea.)
Me: Thank you sweetie, but I don’t want it in my nose either.
I fell off the wagon and landed in a donut.
It’s been three weeks since the beginning of Mission X-20, my attempt to publicly shame myself by blogging about my weight loss or the lack thereof. I did ok for the first week and even managed to lose a pound, Alhamdulillah! But then, the house-hunting picked up, and I was driving down to Dubai from Abu Dhabi every other day, having breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the road, drinking less-than-gourmet coffee with cream and sugar from those machines in the petrol stations, bolstering my resolve with emergency chocolate pick-me-ups, and then Alhamdulillah we found a house, and then the packing began with limited home cooking and lots of junk eaten amidst cardboard boxes ensured.
We’ve spent the last four days moving ourselves from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, one truckload at a time- breakfast, lunch, and dinner on the road with munchies in between- boxes of greasy biryani from the public cooks, roasted chickens from the cafeteria up the road, Burger King, McDonalds and Blah.
Today was the first time in three or four days that I’ve cooked food at home. Alhamdulillah, I made daal. Lentils. Red lentils. Then I accidentally left the stove on and went to the mall, and when I came back, it was remarkably charcoal-like on the bottom but extra thick and -kapow- on top. So I made really good dinner, I just made most of it inedible.
I digress. Also, I get sad. I gained my one pound back, and it’s been three weeks. I was supposed to have lost three pounds. Not lost one and found it again. But hey, I re-learned some old lessons! I am becoming better at spotting the common obstacles and outright enemies of eating according to the Sunnah- and they are:
Portion Sizes: You buy one burger from a fast food joint, and it’s so big you could use it to stave off starvation for the winter during hibernation. And you didn’t even order the double. A single portion size at a restaurant is enough for two people if you have Sunnah Eating Buddy, which is fitting really, because Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him said- “The food of one person will be sufficient for two, and the food of two people will be sufficient for four, and the food of four will be sufficient for eight”. (Muslim)
Sometimes I miss the good ole days when Owlie and I used to split one meal and one dessert and be more than content. We were in control, we were superfly, we lost over fifty pounds together. That was amazing, Alhamdulillah. HF used to make fun of me when we were first married because all I needed for dinner was half of a shawarma. Not two. Or even one. Just half. But then kids came, and life changes, and good habits were lost and ground once gained was so badly lost that Cindy, the housekeeper, came across an old photo album of mine and exclaimed “Oh! You really were thin!” as if this whole time I had been bemoaning my previously more streamlined state I had been making it up, because someone *this* plump being *that* thin seemed unbelievable.
Good Friends, Bad Choices- “Come on, have some fries with me!” It’s simple, you love your friends and your friends love fries. But what is more important, pleasing your friends for the ten minutes (or less) that the fries are there, or making a permanent change in your life towards good health and amazing self-discipline? Mona, I blame you for those cupcakes. Those yummy, yummy cupcakes…Ok, it was my mistake for accepting them, and my repeated stupidity for eating one and then another and then another over the course of a few days so that eight cupcakes became zero. And willpower needs momentum too. Every day you do something right, you become stronger, more committed- you pick up the forward motion from each day that comes before, and you can think things like “Eight cupcakes? No way, I’ve lost five pounds and I don’t feel like gaining them back!” In my case though, I was thinking “Eight cupcakes? With adorable nonpariel decorations of flowers and ladybugs and grass? Can I get an order of fries with that?”
Stress: Stress eating is my achilles heel. In fact, it’s both of my heels. When I am angry, frustrated, upset, or depressed, I overeat to feel better. And then I feel worse. In fact, overeating makes me feel angry, frustrated, upset and depressed. I used to channel my anger into ice cream so frequently that I had a personal Baskin Robbins guy. When I finally realized- consciously- what I was doing, I had to stop. But it was hard, because I had to make the decision that I did not deserve to be sabotaged, especially by myself. And if other people made me mad, then they should be the ones to get fat as a consequence. Ha!
I still stress-eat though, and it’s a very hard habit for me to break. Ice cream is not involved as often- it’s usually just an extra portion after I know I really don’t need any more food. It’s just enough to jab myself in the slightly achy gut and think things like “Take that.” I must have a streak of masochism, because when I’m angry or upset, I settle on hurting myself rather than addressing the issue at the risk of hurting someone else. But please don’t call me passive-aggressive, there’s a Baskin Robbins up the street from my new house too and I might have a double sundae just to show you what’s what.
Poor Planning: If you pack yourself a lunch, or wake up ten minutes early so you can make yourself breakfast instead of inhaling junk to tide you over until lunch, then you’ll have saved yourself the extra calories that lack of foresight tends to bring on. Keep an apple in your purse. Or a granola bar in the glove compartment. It’s not a meal, but it can be enough nourishment to keep you from making a bad choice out of desperation. Like that box if greasy biryani at ten o-clock last night.
Lack of Willingness Due to Loss of Hope: I gained my one pound back, what’s the point of trying? I was honestly thinking that yesterday over that aforementioned box of biryani. That and ‘this is so spicy I bet there’s smoke coming out of my ears’. I had fattening food, and too much of it, and I went to sleep, woke up, and had a donut for breakfast, not because I couldn’t have had a bowl of cereal, but because I had thrown in the towel after a series of failures on my own part. I was *trying* to eat responsibly, but I was also moving and packing and had no time to cook, and the smallest things I could buy outside were still too big, and well-wishers brought us junk food and friends met us in malls, and one slip up after led to stop trying because I was just going to slip up again anyway.
[Note: Friends don’t buy friends donuts. Next time I’m moving, come over with a fruit salad or suffer my flabby, donut-powered wrath!]
Yesterday I wasn’t even trying. As of now, I am trying again. Public humiliation can be a good thing sometimes. And that’s why I swallowed my pride and admitted that I had 20+ pounds to lose.
I could stand to lose forty, actually, but I figure 20 would be pretty amazing start. Provided I climb out of this donut and get back on the wagon. So I am trying again, InshaAllah. Which will be a challenge, because tomorrow we go back to the old house for the last time to pack the last boxes and load up the last truck, and there is no stove, no food, and no refrigerator for me to keep pre-packed lunches in during this 100+ heat. Please make dua for me, cuz I really, really need it!
Alhamdulillah, we’ve found a house, and within the next three or four days, will have moved to Dubai. 🙂
I’m excited, I feel like a country mouse moving to the big city 😛 Also, I burned my right wrist, which makes typing quite a challenge. So this is my update. And I will be offline, since my computer will be packed and the internet and phone lines disconnected and all that fun stuff, but I will blog again from the new house once we have internets. 🙂
Ma’Assalam!
Prophet Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon Him, once said:
“Faith wears out in the heart of anyone of you just as clothes wear out, so ask Allah to renew the faith in your heart.” [Tabarani]
I think in my case, my faith is a bit more like a pendulum. It’s always there, Alhamdulillah, but I swing between striving for concentration in my prayers and struggling to not make grocery lists in sajda. It’s a constant effort to keep my faith on the upswing as well as minimize the back swing. I find that when I start letting things slip out of laziness- like praying late, praying 1 witr instead of three at night, ignoring Fajr sunnah- then the pendulum starts moving backwards faster, and laziness is replaced with sluggishness, and Astaghfirullah, even a bit of apathy.
I’m being honest, and may Allah forgive me, I’m doing so for the sake of reminding myself. I know that Allah has said in the Qur’an that sin puts a stain, or a spot of rust upon your heart, but again, in my case, it feels a bit like thin outer coating. The farther back I let myself swing before intervening, the thicker and thicker the coating becomes, until the prayers on my own lips barely reach my own ears, let alone penetrate my heart. The gentle reminders bounce off like they’re hitting a forcefield, I become short-tempered with the kids, lose patience with HF, and start slipping into self-destructive habits. I stay up late reading junk on the internet, sleep through Fajr without even having brushed my teeth, wake up late and stagger around groggily while Cindy and Joy- the housekeeper and Khalid’s full-time ABA therapist- are kind enough to feed the kids breakfast because Momma is too stupid-faced to even pour the cereal.
Then, because I’ve started my day late and tired, I’m cranky and unproductive for the rest of the day. I’m even less attentive in my salah than usual, and mustering the energy to battle for Ihsan is contingent upon me having the desire to try. Alhamdulillah, I’ve never been so low that I’ve abandoned prayer, but I have gone for months at a time without waking up for more than one fajr in the whole week. May Allah forgive me and protect me from ever slipping that far back again, because shaitaan takes advantage of the inevitable self-loathing that follows and volunteers such brilliant suggestions as “You’re a lost cause anyway, why bother trying.”
Yeah, I can get pretty low. And then, amazingly, something drastic always happens. December of last year I was so low I even stopped setting the alarm for Fajr, and what happened? I had a miscarriage. Then I crashed the car. Then I gave myself, Khalid, HF, and HF’s family food poisoning, and we were all in and out of the hospital for a very, very miserable two days.
I had reached a point in my life where the spray-on apathy covering my heart had gotten so thick it had solidified, crystallized, and began blocking the light out and the darkness in. So Allah took my heart and smashed it against the floor. And then again. And then again. I lost a baby, I lost my mobility- both the car and the cartilage under my right knee cap, I was violently sick with my own salmonella poisoning while also waking up with Khalid to be vomitted on five and six times a night by a crying, terrified, exhausted little boy who had no idea what was going on, and what did I get out of the whole experience? Something absolutely beautiful.
The covering shattered.
Allah used just enough force, and not an ounce more than I could bear, to break apart the encasement on my heart and leave a battered, tenderized, bleeding, but liberated heart laying there for me to pick up and start over with. So I did. And the shards were sharp and I have hurt more this year than I have in my entire life, but I have learned more about maintaining my faith and keeping my heart soft so that Allah doesn’t have to do it for me.
Is it superstitious of me to believe that if Allah will scourge me if I let my faith slip? Yes, it would be, except that isn’t what I believe. I believe that Allah is kind, and He gives us chances to rebuild ourselves by knocking us down. Every hardship is both a challenge and an opportunity, and when I think of all the times that Qadr has backhanded me, it’s been when I needed a good, swift kick in the apathy. I believe it’s tough love. And I’m grateful for it.
And now that I’m done typing the world’s longest introduction, here is my actual post:
I can feel it starting to form- the smoky, glassy, film on the outside of my heart that makes my words harsh and my worship empty. At one point in my life, I would have kept this to myself, but I recognize now that acknowledging it and fighting it is the only way to keep it from solidifying again. So I actively seek out ways of softening my heart, and I think, for the first time ever, I understand why there is an entire field of Islamic thought and literature devoted to this- Al-Riqaq- usually translated as heart-melting. I have been slowly building my own collection of heart softeners, which I turn on, open up, or bring out when I realize I need them. I want to share two of my favorites, but believe it or not, Youtube hasn’t been working for the last three days, which is why this update has been delayed.
I’m hoping this link works for those of you outside of the UAE, and this one too.
Of course, the best heart softener is the Qur’an, but sometimes you need something short, powerful, and visual to get a good whack at that coating. And do please share any of your own in the comments. Allah knows I need them. JazakAllahuKheiran
Out of the chub that covers me
Though soft I sit from pole to pole
I thank forever the Lord that Be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the sweet clutch of circumstance
I have not pinched nor snacked around
Under the bludgeoning of chocolate chance,
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of fat and fears
Looms but the horror of the shade
And yet the menace of these years
Finds, and shall find me, unweighed.
It matters not how great the plate
How charged with condiments the roll
I am the Master of my fate
I am the captain of my…stomach.
I first mangled William Henley’s Invictus six years ago, and I was then, as now, trying to lose weight. I wasn’t dieting, but I was exercising and trying to eat according to the Sunnah, which, on a side note, is possibly the only weight loss plan endorsed by God Himself. SubhanAllah. 🙂 Fast forward six years, and I’m not trying to lose weight so much as I am trying to try to lose weight.
To say that I’m trying to lose weight implies that I am actively doing something about my weight. I’m only trying to try, which means I forget I’m supposed to be trying, have a second helping of Thai green curry and then later remember that I wasn’t supposed to be filling my stomach. And then I feel sad, so I have a cookie. I’m not joking. I’m struggling here, and like many other young mothers, the only proof I have of a previous life and waist-size are some pre-marriage abayas lovingly kept and impossible to wear except as righteous-looking wetsuits. With matching sheilas.
And I’m typing this as a much, much needed reminder to myself, because I will be turning 30 in five months, and while there’s no magic to the number, there is the fact that my health as a human being isn’t going to automatically improve or maintain itself. I’m not old, but I’m not getting any younger, and the older I get, the harder it will be to get into shape. Besides, the excuse that you’re only carrying a little post-baby weight only works when you actually have a baby. Iman is no longer a baby, she’s an all-singing, all-dancing, hair-pulling, toe-biting, cookie-stealing two-year old. With whipped cream and a cherry on top.
So it’s time for me to dust off the old resolve, and bolster it with some imperative and structure it with some best practices. Here I go.
I resolve to lose weight, InshaAllah. I have done it before, and with Allah’s Grace I will do it again. I once lost 50 pounds with the same- God’s help, eating according to the Sunnah, and exercise. The exercise wasn’t very intense, and it was secondary to controlling my stomach. So how does one eat according to the Sunnah?
“No human ever filled a vessel worse than the stomach. Sufficient for any son of Adam are some morsels to keep his back straight. But if it must be, then one third for his food, one third for his drink and one third for his breath.” –The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, recorded by Ahmad, At-Tirmidhi, An-Nasaa’I, Ibn Majah – Hadith sahih.
It took me almost two years to master eating according to the Sunnah, and it was one of the hardest battles I had ever fought against myself. Once I finally did it though, I can testify- it feels amazing. Eating according to the Sunnah does not mean that you go hungry, it means that you eat when you’re hungry and stop when you are satiated, not full. Being satiated means that the need to eat has passed, though the desire may still exist. The need is a function of how empty your stomach is, but the want being a function of how good the food tastes.
The funny thing about eating this way is that in a few hours, you’ll get hungry. Surprise! If you’re eating to satiation, and not fullness, this is natural. So eat again just until you’re satiated, and life goes on. And gradually, your stomach shrinks, you start to feel light and energized, and you can enjoy a meal without having a belly-ache afterwards. The weight begins to fall off by itself- no dieting, no counting calories, no carbs this or protein that. You are consuming enough calories to fuel your body’s basic needs without putting excessive amounts into storage (fat). And you have mastered one of the most overpowering urges that humans can experience- the desire to overeat.
Of course, you do need to exercise common sense- don’t fill a third of your stomach with bon-bons. Don’t drink a third’s worth of grape soda. Eat normal food, drink water, and remember that you are in control of your body. You’re in charge, not the stomach!
When you start losing weight, and passing by mirrors and thinking things like- hey, that doesn’t look half bad! Then you’ll probably want to accelerate the melting process. That’s where moderate exercise comes in. Do something, anything aerobic for fifteen minutes a day. Take a walk around the block. Run up and down your stairs, get on a bike- just do something, anything, to get your blood pumping and your muscles moving.
Weight loss is, simply speaking, a matter of math.
One pound of human fat contains approximately 3,500 calories. In order to lose one pound a week, you need to decrease your calorie intake by 500 calories a day. And yeah, you could starve yourself briefly, creating miserably sudden weight loss, but there’s a good chance you would cut into muscle mass, mess with your metabolism, and then fall face-first into a gallon of ice cream once you had reached your goal, thus, undoing all your hard work.
Dieting NEVER works, because dieting is a reduction of calorie input that is generally a) drastic, and b) unsustainable, and therefore temporary. Temporary changes in eating habits only yield temporary results, because the underlying problem (consumption of excess calories) has not been addressed. Once you go back to your old habits, you inevitably go back to your old weight.
Eating according to the Sunnah is different, because a) you are never hungry, only satiated and b) it is a permanent shift. It is a change in how you perceive food, eating, and the purpose of your stomach. It’s a fuel tank, not a bean bag.
So here I go. And to keep myself honest, I’m going to blog updates. If X is my starting weight (and no, don’t ask me what X is) then the goal is X-20. I’ll weigh myself tomorrow morning, and I have five months to lose 20 pounds. I was going to say 30, but with my grinding, groaning right knee and a move to Dubai coming up soon, I need to keep my goals reasonable. Make dua for me, ladies. (Brothers are exempt for praying for my weight loss, thank you) I’m going to need it!
Overalls by OshKosh
Hat by Shan, who let her borrow it
Shoes by Kaycee, who wasn’t wearing them anyway
Bag by Momma, who bought it to keep snacks and diapers in
Fridge by Whirpool
For the first time in his life, just this evening, Khalid asked to be taken to the toilet. Alhamdulillah. 🙂
Today’s request of ‘a-wahn toy-lut’ is a huge step in getting Khalid completely out of diapers, InshaAllah. At the moment, he wears one to bed, or when we step out of the house as damage control in case of an accident. Generally he’s really good about holding it and waiting until he’s taken to the bathroom (which we do regularly when we’re out) but he’s never before asked to go on his own. Previously, if he had to go, but no one had offered to take him, we would just have an accident. And because people tend to take offense to their sofas being peed on, we would leave him in the diaper but treat him like he was potty trained.
But hey, my little man asked for the toy-lut! They grow up so fast, MashaAllah. 🙂
Ibn al-Qayyim said:
“…Manners have limits. When these limits are crossed, this is transgression. When they are fallen short of, this is deficiency and disgrace.
Anger has a limit: and it is to be bold while being above having negative and deficient traits, and this is the perfect form of anger. If this limit is exceeded, you become a transgressor. If you fall short of it, you will be a coward and will not be able to raise yourself above negative traits.
Covetousness has a limit: it is to take all you need from this world and what it has to offer you. When you fall short of this limit, it becomes disgrace and wastefulness. When you exceed this limit, you end up wanting what you shouldn’t want.
Envy has a limit: and it is to compete in becoming perfect and to excel such that your rival is unable to excel over you. When this limit is exceeded, you transgress and oppress in which you wish that the good things are taken away from the one you envy and are keen to harm him. When you fall short of this limit, you become low, weak in aspiration, and you belittle yourself. The Prophet (Õáì Çááå Úáíå æ Óáã) said: “There should be no envy except in regards to two things: a man who was granted wealth by Allah and he was able to spend it for the sake of the truth, and a man who was granted wisdom by Allah and he takes it and teaches it to the people.”So, this is an envy of competition, where the envious one pushes himself to be like the one he envies without wishing that he is deprived of the good things that are with him.
Sexual desire has a limit: and it is to relax the heart and mind from the exhaustion of worship, to maintain moral excellence, and to use the fulfillment of these desires to help you in this. When you exceed this limit, you fall into being overly lustful, and you come to resemble animals. When you fall short of this limit and don’t use this time to obtain excellence and virtue, this becomes weakness, inability, and disgrace.
Relaxation has a limit: and it is to collect yourself and your strength to prepare for worship and perfection of the self, and to save this so that you don’t become weak or tired. When you exceed this limit, this becomes laziness and waste, and you end up missing out on so many things that could benefit you. When you fall short of this limit, you end up hurting and weakening your energy, and it might even be cut off from you like a farmer who is unable to land to plow or crops to pick.
Generosity has a limit between two extremes: and whenever this limit is exceeded, this becomes wastefulness and extravagance. When you fall short of this limit, you become cheap and miserly.
Bravery has a limit: and when you cross this limit, you become reckless. When you fall short of this limit, you become a coward. This limit is that you put yourself forth when the time is right to do so and that you hold yourself back when the time is right to do so, just like Mu’awiyah said to ‘Amr bin al-‘As: “I don’t know whether you’re brave or cowardly! You go forth to the point that I say you’re the bravest person, and then you stay back to the point that I say you’re the most cowardly person!” So, he replied:
I am brave if I am guaranteed the chance * If I don’t have the chance, I am a coward…
Protective jealousy has a limit: and if you exceed this limit, you fall into accusation and suspicion of the innocent. If you fall short of this limit, you fall into heedlessness and lack of manhood.
Humility has a limit: and if it is crossed, this becomes humiliation and disgrace. If you fall short of it, you deviate to arrogance and false pride.
Honor has a limit: and if you exceed it, you fall into arrogance and blameworthy traits. If you fall short of it, you deviate to humiliation and disgrace.
The basic principle in all this is to choose the path of moderation between excess and negligence. This is what all of the benefits of this world and the next are built upon. In fact, you can benefit your body in no other way, because when some of your activities are done with lack of moderation and either exceed or fall short of it, your body’s health and energy begins to decline accordingly. Likewise, natural activities such as sleeping, staying awake, eating, drinking, having intercourse, playing sports, spending time alone, spending time with others, etc. – if these are all done moderately between the two blameworthy extremes, this is justice. If you deviate to either extreme, this is a sign of deficiency and will lead to even more deficiency.
This knowledge of proper limits is from the best types of knowledge, especially the limits of what is commanded and prohibited. The most knowledgeable people are those who know the most about these limits, such that they don’t put in them what doesn’t belong and don’t remove from them what does belong. Allah Said: {“The bedouins are the worst in disbelief and hypocrisy, and more likely to be ignorant of the limits that Allah has revealed to His Messenger…”} [at-Tawbah; 97]
So, the people who are most just are those who recognize by way of knowledge and action the legislated limits in their manners and deeds, and Allah is the source of success…”
So March has come and gone, which is annually insignificant, except that both of my children were born in March. I haven’t celebrated birthdays for years, but when it comes to my kids, the dates are significant to me in ways that have nothing to do with candles and everything to do with crying.
When I first learned that I was expecting, I have to admit- I had no idea what to expect. The magnitude of the situation was completely below sea-level until Khalid was born and the nurses put a tiny, dark-haired bundle on my chest and told me I had a son. He was bluish, and wrinkly, and the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. And then he was always there- it was my duty to keep him happy, warm, clean, alive, loved, fed, rocked, tickled and adorably dressed. He was a gigapet without an off button who refused to take either a bottle or a pacifier and no one else could watch him for me.
And he grew, and eventually he crawled, and thank God, he even learned how to walk at 13 months, but at night he cried. And he learned how to babble, but he never talked, and he sometimes played, but spent a great deal of time just staring at things. And when he was fourteen months old I learned that I was expecting again, and I cried. It is humbling, and personally very shaming to think of now, but they were not happy tears. They were the tears of mother who felt like an utter failure, an utterly overwhelmed failure with a little boy who lived like a shadow in my own shadow.
By the time Khalid was two, he had gone nearly silent. Hours would pass without him making a single squeak, laugh, babble, or request- verbal or nonverbal. He would spend his day staring out of the window or following me from room to room. It was March, and then Iman was born. We spent weeks in a nocturnal daze, handling the growing confusion of Khalid’s development problems and the confusing emergence of Iman’s colic. Like clockwork, Iman would start crying at one am and stop by six am. For five hours she screamed inconsolably, squirmed, kicked, and arched her back, her body tense and trembling, and paused only for breath no matter how much I rocked, walked, soothed, sang, or bounced her. By six am the screaming would stop, she would feed desperately, and then fall asleep. By that point Khalid would be asleep on the floor by my feet. He would have cried himself to sleep too, because he would have woken up when Iman started crying and sobbed himself to sleep at the foot of the rocking chair where he begged to be picked up (and demanded that the little screaming pink thing be put down) until he gave up and fell asleep on the floor.
(No, I didn’t blog about any of this, I try to maintain a ‘No Pointless Negativity’ policy about blogging, and my G-ma taught me that if I can’t say anything nice, then I shouldn’t say anything at all. I cannot think of ANY SINGLE THING even remotely nice about colic or the creeping fear that your child’s brain is abnormal, which is why you won’t find them in previous blog entries.)
We eventually changed our sleeping habits completely. We woke up at 6 pm and started our day, and Khalid’s bed time was at 7 am, when Iman was done with her screaming and I could bathe him and put him to bed somewhere other than the floor. We saw HF for a few hours, after he came home from work and just before he too went to bed, and he woke up countless times in the middle of the night to give me a break- to walk the beaten path in the living room around the coffee table, to the front door, and past the sofa and back again while rocking Iman in his arms. It was a tough time for everyone. And I did a lot of crying.
Then, we got help. We hired a full-time Nanny, who put Iman to sleep while I put Khalid to sleep, and when Iman woke up in the middle of the night, I would go out and take the night shift while Khalid continued to sleep with HF in our bed. Some semblance of normalcy returned. After six weeks, the crying started to taper off. We started to have two, sometimes even three good nights a week. Eventually the screaming stopped, and Iman only woke up for feedings in the middle of the night with a minimal amount of crying.
By the time Iman was six months old, and Khalid two and six months old, we started to put our finger on exactly what the issue with Khalid could be. We were on our second nanny, because the first one became quickly frazzled by our nocturnal screaming schedule and quit after four weeks. We did our homework, had an initial assessment done, and then a full psychological assessment done, and by October of 2008, we knew for sure that Khalid had autism. His mental age was 13 months.
Khalid began ABA therapy in January of 2009, and he would spend the entire three hours crying. After a few weeks, the screaming would be punctuated with bouts of peace, during which I would quickly rush to the window and peek inside to see Khalid putting coins into a piggy bank, or scribbling, or watching one of his therapists blow bubbles. Eventually, he only cried when it was time to go into his sessions, and it would peter out in about ten minutes, and he would emerge from his sessions happy and covered in finger paint.
And life got better. And Khalid learned one word, and then another. And then he asked for a hug, and while the floodgates have not quite opened, they are cracked enough to let a few dozen meaningful words and a hundred or so prompted words through.
And now, Khalid is four and Iman is two. Khalid is learning how to read, even though he has yet to use a full sentence, and Iman decided yesterday that she is a Nice Cat. She gets down on all fours, crawls over to my feet and calls out Nice! Momma! Nice Cat! And I kneel down and pet her and say Oh, what a Nice Cat! And I scratch her behind the ears, and she giggles, and I pet her head, and she crawls away to do something important, like hit Khalid on the head with a building block. But she’ll be back again in a few minutes, calling out Nice Cat! Cereal?
(And if I ignore her, she bites my foot. So I feed Nice Cat a few pieces of cereal, and Nice Cat says thank you and bye bye and meow.)
Khalid and Iman have moved past enmity to tolerance, and from tolerance to coexistence, and from coexistence to inseparability. SubhanAllah, if I have to run an errand that requires one child and not the other, the two will cry out to each other as if they’re being separated for life. Iman! Iman! Khalid will yell and kick the back of the passenger seat from of him. No No! Ka-leed! Momma! No! Ka-leed! Iman will cry back to him from the gate as we drive through it, and the drama will continue for a few more minutes until Khalid wipes his nose and gets back to pointing out numbers on road signs.
When we get home again Iman will greet him by bursting into the room screaming and giggling and yelling out KA-LEEEEEEEEEED! and the two will reunite and celebrate by doing important things like bouncing on my bed and hitting each other over the head with building blocks. Iman is the non-stop talker, Khalid is the silent partner. They tease each other constantly, fight viciously, and hug and play lovingly when and if they’re not busy competing for toys and attention. It might be hard to imagine how Khalid can do all of these things without talking, but when he wants to tease Iman, he will look at her and smile, and maybe pinch her toe. And Iman will consider that an act of war and take swing at him, and he’ll dodge and run and a mad chase will ensue.
Sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that I have it so easy. Thinking back to the downright turmoil that HF and I have been through with the kids, their progress seems unreal. The crying, the colic, the panic that Khalid’s autism put us through- sometimes it seems a million miles away, and those two little babies that the nurses gave me at the hospital, those can’t really be the funny little boy with enormous eyes or my Nice Cat with pigtails. I don’t have babies anymore, I have children, and by the Grace of Allah, this year, they are two and four.
And I don’t need to give them presents for it as if I don’t overstock the toy department all year round, or bake a cake as if cake isn’t happening on a regular basis, but I do have to say Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah. All praise is for Allah, who held me together when I was broken, who kept me on my feet when I was losing my head, and who took some of HF and some of me, and mixed it into the most quirky, energetic, devious, amazing, and inventive little humans I have ever known. And I thank Allah for the colic, and even for the autism, because the fact the He gave it to us means we have the strength to handle it. Without hardship or pain or stress, we would not be forced to become better versions of our previous selves, and we would never be pushed to push through. Allah has made me a better parent and a better person through my children, and I pray that the progress continues for all of us, throughout our lives.
Ameen.
Being half Pakistani, half white, raised in America and living in the UAE, I’ve long ago learned that when people ask me where I’m from, they don’t want to hear ‘Chicago.’ They want to know why I look like an Arab, sound like an American and hang out with a brown guy who bears striking resemblance to my Turkish-looking children. So I have no problem presenting my pedigree at the drop of the hat, because I know that there is no short and accurate answer. I’m Muslim, I was raised in America, but have also lived in Pakistan for eight years, my mother is American, my father is Pakistani. My father is Muslim, my mother is Mormon. No, they are not divorced.
“Ah, yes yes,” people nod, as things start to make sense. Then the next question comes:
“And your husband, he is local?” When people here say local, they mean local Emirati, and they ask because any foreign Muslim woman wearing a black abaya must to be married to her local counterpart in the white kandoora, right? (salt and pepper, yin and yang?)
“Actually,” I say, “My husband is Pakistani.”
“Bakistani?”
“Yes…” I try to explain, because the brown guy in the Blogger t-shirt with the standard Midwestern accent who says things like Hey, howyadoin? does not fit inside of the box traditionally reserved for Bakistani. “Well, his parents are from Pakistan, but he was born in Kuwait. And raised in Oman. And went to school in the UAE, and college in the US. And, he’s never lived in Pakistan, but I’m sure he’s visited a few times.”
People nod uncertainly. “So I mean, he’s Pakistani, but he’s not really very Pakistani? I mean, I’m more Urdu-literate than he is! But he looks brown, so his Urdu comes off better than mine, and his accent is better too.” And then people start to get that polite look of panic in their eyes that is usually accompanied by a sudden urge to rush home and see if they left the iron plugged in.
I think it’s easier for me to explain myself than it is for HF, because I at least was born in, and brought up in, the country of my nationality. He was born in country A, raised in countries B and C, educated in country D, and has a passport from (but has never lived in) country E. And in this country, your salary and your renumeration package is directly connected to your nationality.
[Yes, it’s racist, idiotic, and unfair. No, I can’t do anything about it. The Mighty Whities (US, UK, Australian, and South African Nationals) get top dollars, top benefits, and more prominent positions. The rest of us are on a much, much lower pay scale, with much fewer benefits. Why? Because if you, Brown Guy #237, don’t like it, there are 67,409 other Brown Guys standing in line behind you who are willing to work for what it a humungous salary back home, though a paltry one according to the expenses of Dubai. If White Guy #1 doesn’t like his job, however will we replace him? Do you have any idea how hard it is to coax a white guy out here? Quick, meet his demands! His accent makes our company sound posh!]
The office, who is legally obliged to give employees tickets “home” once a year, wants to give HF tickets to a home he’s never lived in, because his passport is Pakistani. So, to get tickets back to the “home” he actually has family in, he says he’s American. But then he has to deal with people on both sides of the fence who say things like: “American? You’re not an American, you’re a Pakistani national!” And if he says he’s Pakistani, people say things like, “Oh, where from?” and he says “I don’t know, I’ve never lived there….” So where did you live before this? “Umm, Virginia?”
In some ways this is very typical of Dubai. Yesterday we went to the barbeque of another “Pakistani” family, born in Saudi, raised in Connecticut and moved to Dubai last year. We had steak and barbecued chicken, we played Scrabble and we’ve invited them over some time after next week. We’ll make sushi.
Chai, a dear friend of mine, once told me a story about her young brother, Ismo. Ismo, then seven or eight, brought a friend over from school to play. Chai overheard the following conversation.
“Hey, what are you? Are you Muslim?”
“Muslim? I don’t know.”
“Well, do you eat rice?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re Muslim.”
I often remember that story when people ask me what “I am.” This is a different question from ‘where are you from’ or ‘what is your nationality.’ This is not a question of ethnicity or nationality, this is a question of identity. They want to know what my culture is. Do I make Nihari? Yes. Does that make me a Pakistani? I don’t know, do Pakistanis traditionally bake gingerbread men for Ramadan?
Does HF eat Pakistani food? Yes, does that make him Pakistani? Not any more than eating sushi makes him Japanese, and we roll our sushi at home. I don’t think that the food you eat determines ‘what you are,’ nor does the way you behave neatly define what your culture is. Do I respect my elders? Yes. Is that an exclusively Asian thing? Nope. Was I an obnoxious teenager? Oh yes. Is that an exclusively ‘American’ thing? Unfortunately, no.
I long ago realized I was too brown for the whites and too white for the browns. My first language is English but I have a funny foreign name. My Urdu is awful but my father is Pakistani. My passport is American but my wardrobe alone scares the bjeezus out of most Americans. (My accent may be as American as apple pie, but my abaya most certainly isn’t.) So what am I? What is the determining factor for one’s identity, if it is not nationality or ethnicity? Vague ideas of what is ‘culture’ differ on a regional or ethnic level, and are the passing whims of popularity and general accepted social norms. You can argue that certain things make you American, but a hundred years ago, those same behaviours would be shocking, outrageous, and very un-American. (June is Gay Pride month in the US) They’re not standards, they’re just a sign of the times.
Even if I were to choose to be American, and to abide by the generally accepted principals of what being ‘American’ means, there are no principals of American-ness. Having a passport alone doesn’t make me an ‘American,’ it only makes me an American national. I could choose to be Pakistani, but again, there’s no documented process. My father is Pakistani, and he identifies with the culture and was born within the borders of the country, but guess what- he’s an American national too. Being born in a certain country doesn’t mean they’ll teach you the secret handshake either- HF was born in Kuwait, and he is most definitely not a Kuwaiti, even when he does wear a kandoora. Ethnicity alone doesn’t convey identity either, because I’m not an Irishwoman any more than my mother is. Without an agreed-upon standard determining the requirements of identity, the only thing left to fall back on is choice.
I did not choose to be born in America, any more than I chose to have a Pakistani father and an American mother. My ethnicity was set before I was even born, and my nationality can be changed if I decide to say… apply for Canadian immigration. My identity is the only thing I exert any control over. I choose to be Muslim, I identify with Muslims of all colors and countries, because we have an agreed standard of Muslim-ness. If you believe in Allah, and His Messenger, and the Qur’an, and you try to follow it- you’re Muslim. These elements of belief are all matters of choice as well, and someone can easily choose to NOT be Muslim if they wanted to, and that choice alone would be sufficient for them to no longer be considered part of the Ummah anymore.
The food I cook is not determined by what my ancestors cooked, but by what is halal. The clothes I wear are not any specific national dress, they are pieces of cloth arranged in such a way that they fulfill the Islamic requirements for modesty; abaya, shalwar qameez, or skirt or whatever. I don’t dance at Mehndhi parties just because ‘I’m Pakistani’ or go to prom just because ‘I’m American.’ I do, however, pray salah, fast, give zakah and wear a hijab because ‘I’m Muslim.’ My traditions and rituals are not specific to any tribe or cultural legacy, they are a follow-through on the Qur’an and the consensus of the scholars on the Sunnah, and I would be an arrogant idiot to say everything I did was 100% Islamic, but I can honestly say that the only defining culture I have is what has been given to me of Islam.
So what am I? Culturally, and consciously, I’m a Muslim. Alhamdulillah. My nationality is American, and my ethnicity is Irish-Pakistani. I’m married to a lovely man whose ethnicity and nationality are Pakistani, but whose upbringing is as crisscrossed as international flight patterns. He’s a Muslim too. My children are also Muslim, and InshaAllah, may they live in the state of Islam and not die except in a state of submission. They are American nationals born in the UAE who are ethnically 25% Irish, though they have never been to Ireland, and 75% Pakistani, though they have never been to Pakistan. Allah is the Lord of the East and the West, and the whole earth is a place of worship. Who knows where my children will live when they grow up, or how many strangers they’ll scare away when asked what they are?
Oh, and I think you left your iron on.
First, there is the Story of Bottled Water, which is not only adorably illustrated, but well scripted, and well-needed information about the bottled water industry. Abez gives it three thumbs up, and is going to buy Reusable Bottles for All, made out of BPA-free plastic, of course.
Hip, hip? Hooray!
And then there’s the second bit of awesomeness- in addition to the Neturei Karta, and the JVP, Dr.Norman Finkelstein has joined the list of people who make my day by proving that seeing the truth about the Israeli occupation of Palestine is a matter of humanity, and that crimes committed in the name of the Holocaust are not justified, but further darkened by the flimsy excuse of injustices past.
A young Jewish woman plays the Holocaust card at one of Dr. Finkelstein’s lectures at the University of Waterloo- watch this video for his response; the intellectual equivalent of a can of wh00p#$$, pardon my French.
Nablus Now
In Auschwitz it dripped
In Nablus now it drips
From flesh it freshly flowed
As in Nablus now it rips
In Auschwitz she cried
In Nablus now she cries
Hated hands held her and hers
As in Nablus where she lies
In Auschwitz they moaned
In Nablus now they moan
Hear the hunger haunting them
As Nablus orphans groan
In Auschwitz he fell
In Nablus now he falls
Bullets bounce from boy to brain
In Nablus off the walls
In Auschwitz they died
In Nablus now we die
And you call this land Holy Land?
In Nablus, we call it Auschwitz
One little Iman jumping on the bed
She fell off and bumped her head!
Momma called the doctor and the doctor said:
Take her to the ER, she might need stitches.
As life imitates art (or vice-versa?) Iman smashed her head against the corner of a dressing table while jumping on Momma’s bed and initiated herself into the world of the Mortal Wound. And what a dramatic initiation it was- twenty minutes of crying and bleeding profusely and refusing to hold still, blood on her clothes and on her face as she tried to make the pain go away by vigorously rubbing at it. (Note: this doesn’t work)
We did eventually get the bleeding to stop, and then packed her into the car and off to the emergency room in Abu Dhabi. We were seen right away, Alhamdulillah, and were asked only once- “So ma’am, what is the prob- oh. Richard, dressing for the baby please!” Iman was in a fairly good mood, the pain having subsided, and we even went through a few rounds of ‘Five little monkeys jumping on the bed,’ to the amusement of the ER staff. Iman bobbed up and down and tapped on her own head for emphasis, and appropriately shook her head and held out a very stern finger at the final line. But then the fun was over because it was time to actually do something about the hole in her forehead.
In case you’ve ever wondered what the Iman:Normal Human ratio of intensity is, I think it’s three to one. That’s how many people it takes to hold her down so that one nurse can push the edges of the wound together while another paints it with glue, fans it dry, paints it again, fans some more, and then lays down steri-strips, and then clear plastic bandage to background shrieking of “No! Wait! All Done! No No No! Mommaa!”
When it was all done and Iman’s hands were finally freed, she made an angry grab at the bandages on her forehead. Ouch! she cried out in genuine surprise. She frowned, sniffled, thought for a moment, and then tried again. Ouch! *pout*. Cindy and I were trying desperately to not laugh out loud, and we waited to see whether she would do it again. She did. Ouch! *pout* We gave her a glass of water and some tic-tacs, and with both hands full, she stopped taking swipes at herself.
She fell asleep in the car on the way home, woke up in the morning happy, and seems to have forgotten about last night’s trauma. Today Cindy and I moved the furniture around in the bedroom, and the new arrangement is awkward, but at least there is nothing forehead puncturing in the vicinity of the bed. Alhamdulillah, we were blessed that Iman did not get the corner of the dresser in her eye, and I’m not going to risk it.
No more monkeys jumping on the bed!
For the most part, I consider myself a fairly well put together person. Alhamdulillah, I’m not easily given to panic or woe-is-me-ism. Lately though, I find myself being ambushed by sudden, overwhelming feelings of hopelessness and futility. Am I depressed? Not nearly as much as I was last month or so. I think I’m just emotionally vulnerable. And here I am blogging about it, because sometimes the only way to conquer the monster under your bed is to put your head under there with a flashlight and see that it’s only an old pair of bunny slippers.
I haven’t been able to drag the monster out of the dark yet (and to date, I’ve never owned a pair of bunny slippers) but the first step towards a solution is admitting that there is a problem. So I am. And here it is. I, Abez, deliberate Muslim and earnest (if not part-time) seeker of The Straight Path, suddenly find myself face-down in a pot hole when I thought I had been doing a jaunty two-step on the road to spiritual completion and peace. We all hit speed-bumps, but sometimes I feel like someone has laid out a trip wire. And thumb tacks.
Yes, I know, the straight path is bumpy and uphill. It’s supposed to be that way. The easy path is the wrong one. It’s the one with the smooth, fluid, downhill descent into the pleasure of distraction. I could read books all day, I could numb reality with non-stop nonsense, I could fall face-first into the gooey decadence of self-indulgence and then I wouldn’t have to think about anything that stressed me out, because I wouldn’t have to *think*. And if I didn’t think, I wouldn’t worry.
It would seem that I worry a lot. I worry about Khalid, his future, his teeth, that funny rash on his back, whether his pants are too tight, his shoes too small, his hair too long… And Iman- SubhanAllah- I spend hours worrying about her, but not as a mutually exclusive activity. I worry about her while doing other things- like when brushing her hair- how can I teach her to do hijab with passion and eagerness and the certainty that you can only have when the decision comes from both the mind and the heart? Will she be intelligent? Will she be a compassionate person? If she’s not, how can I teach her? Will she pray? Will she resent me for trying to make her?
And then I worry about random people. I only have to step into the waiting room of my doctor’s office to have my mind suddenly awash with hopelessness- all these people waiting around me are worried too, they all need help, they all have something wrong, some things major, some things minor, all of them painful, many of them debilitating. Will they find purpose through their trials? Or will they think they were ok until they hit a speed bump, stepped on a thumb tack and then fell face first into a pot hole, where they then rolled over and found me laying next to them?
On a side-note, the view from the pot hole can be amazing. If you just turn over, you can see the stars. But maybe this isn’t the side-note, maybe this is the whole point. Maybe I lose track of the destination while plodding along, staring at nothing but my feet. Maybe I need to get knocked to the ground so I can turn to the sky. I don’t know if this is entirely true, but I do know that I am never closer to Allah than I am when in pain, in fear, and in need. And in the closeness is a sweetness that you can’t find anywhere else, and that closeness is the direct result of desperation.
I know I am suppose to stand up, thank Allah for the lesson, and keep on climbing, but sometimes I feel like my legs are giving out on me, or that there’s no way I’ll ever make it to the top. I lose hope, though Alhamdulillah, I have yet to lose purpose.
Correction: I refuse to lose purpose. I will not lose purpose. Even if I’m laying in the dirt without the will to get up again, I will still know why I’m there and what direction I’m going to go in once I can find my feet. I need to remember, and God, please help me remember, that if fate gives me a black eye it’s because Allah ordered it. And there is good in it, provided I am willing to see it and that I am humble enough to admit that I deserved it, and Lord knows I have enough sins to warrant some expiation. God give me the strength to admit that Allah knows best, and that losing hope in anything good ever lasting for too long is losing hope in Allah’s Mercy, His divine will, and His greater purpose in all things.
I can’t blame anyone but myself, even though sometimes my fits of hopelessness feel almost out of my control. One minute I’m ok, next minute I’m thinking about how hard all the day-laborers and construction workers have it, how they don’t see their families for years at a time and earn less money a year than most people earn in a month. And I’m thinking that it’s just not fair.
Aha! I lose hope because it’s not fair. To them. Or to me.
Oh boy. I didn’t know my spiritual angst was still a teenager. I bet if my discord had tiny feet, it would be stomping them right now. I’m pretty sure I haven’t whined ‘It’s not fair!’ since I was a baby-faced teenager arguing over how my brother got to stay out late on the weekends but I always had to be home before dinner. At some point I grew up and learned things like:
And I also learned things like:
So now I need to add some new lessons. And it may be a statement of the obvious, but I think it helps round off the previous lessons nicely. Here it is:
By Abez, The End.
Had HF’s family over for dinner. Made chicken kabobs. And gave every last person food poisoning, in varying degrees, with seven requiring the hospital. Myself included.
One of the great things about not updating your blog regularly is that no one really visits it anymore. So you can write whatever you want to. Like this:
Lab Technician: Ah, a BHCG test, expecting a baby?
Me: No, having a miscarriage.
LT: Oh, uh- I’m sorry.
Me: It’s ok.
-Pained silence-
Once upon a time I was in the US for Owlie’s wedding, and two days after arriving, I found out I was pregnant. And then, after four days of baby shopping, and quietly thinking of names, and imagining sweet little faces with HF’s big brown eyes, I found out I was having a miscarriage. And then I was on the next flight home, a week after I had arrived and a week before my original return.
And here I am today. Blogging.
Because it would seem that my blog fulfills many roles, one of which is catharsis. And I’m an extremely logical person, but my own brain is baffled by how deeply you can mourn something that was never yours and was never meant for you to begin with. I can’t say that I’ve lost a baby, because the baby was never mine. If Allah had willed that child for me, the entire world could not have withheld it from me. But He did not, and so the entire world can not grant it to me.
And the miscarriage was not my fault, and could not have been caused by anything I did or by any medicine I could have taken. The doctor very kindly said so. Which was nice, because up until that point I had been mentally crucifying myself for taking my daily migraine medication. Never mind that I had no idea I was pregnant until three days before I miscarried. I’m a mom, I blame myself for things. The flip side of taking responsibility for your children is that you blame yourself when something happens to any of them, even an embryo that was never meant to be born.
And you cry, and you cry, and you cry. And when no one is looking, and Abu Dhabi is flying past you at 155 kph with the highway roaring and the nasheed blasting, you cry when you remember what you’ve been trying so desperately to drown out.
A few people know, and they ask about me because they care, not because they’re trying to stick their fingers into the gaping, bleeding, hole in my heart. I have to pull myself together and be polite, and patient, and coherent, and talk about things in terms of BHCG levels and non-viability and natural termination. I have managed to not cry in front of anyone but HF and the speed radars on the Abu Dhabi/Dubai highway, not because I’m being Stoic, but because I don’t want anyone’s pity, especially my own. I’m healthy, I’m ok, I am free from permanent physical effects of what was an early and natural miscarriage that required no medical intervention, chemical or surgical. I have two beautiful, amazing children and no reason to believe that I cannot have more, InshaAllah. I have the most loving, supportive, water-proof husband in the entire world, who not only knows what to do with a wife who is crying so hard she’s incoherent, but also to make her stop, and eventually, even smile.
Allah hasn’t wronged me. He never has. And faith says that He never will. Healing is just a matter of time and patience. And being content with God’s will does not mean that I cannot allow myself to grieve. SubhanAllah, may Allah bless those who preserved the life and sunnah of the Prophet, so that fourteen hundred years after the death of Prophet Muhammad, we know what he said upon the death of Ibrahim, his 18 month old son. “”O Ibrahim, against the judgment of God, we cannot avail you a thing.”
Logic and emotion are both part of human nature, and insane, frantic, overwhelming love for your children is part of a parent’s nature. I am allowed to be sad, but I am also required to fight through the blinding storm of grief and find the knowledge that Allah doesn’t test anyone more than they can bear, and all that’s required of me to pass this test is to keep faith and be patient.
Verily we are God’s, and to Him we return.
InshaAllah, Owlie-pie is getting married in T-minus six days and counting, and the blast-off will be happening in our ancestral stomping grounds- Chicago. It’s been over two years since I was there last- Khalid was sebabeen months old, and just developing the necessary bravery to crawl up the stairs and then scoot down them on his bottom. I was thinner, had a better hair style (hehe) and it was August of 2007. Fast forward to now, with Khalid skipping across the livingroom carpet (even as I type) singing ‘Ay bee shee dee ee eff jee!’ and Iman asleep for the afternoon. She was helping me pack earlier- her contribution to my suitcase being a panda, a book, a toy train, and herself.
She’s an amazing little girl she is, and it’s cutting my heart out with a dull plastic spoon to not be able to take she and Khalid with me to the US. HF can’t get time off from work, Joy (Khalid’s full-time therapist & care giver) and Cindy (Housekeeper & Girl Friday) can’t apply for visit visas to the US until they have worked with us for over a year, and neither have been on for longer than six months.
I can’t take Khalid on my own, and although I could take Iman, it wouldn’t be fair to split them up. When Khalid has lunch, he insists that Iman have lunch too. When Iman has a bottle of juice, Khalid has one too. When Khalid wakes up, he goes to Iman’s bed and wakes her up. When Iman cries, Khalid helps her up, and if anyone so much as scolds Iman, Khalid runs to her rescue and glares furiously at us or throws a full-out tantrum in protest of our unfair treatment of Princess Godzilla.
Iman, in return, charges off in Khalid’s defense, fists and teeth clenched, to rescue him from whichever therapist of wicked OT who could be making Khalid cry. Sometimes they walk hand-in-hand through the park, or hug each other and giggle. They are a bit like the mismatched twins- Khalid is huge, shy, speaks relatively little, and is comparatively a gentle giant compared to his little firecracker of a sister, whose waking hours are generally back to back with shrieking, jumping, giggling, babbling, singing, dancing, pinching, smacking, and pulling hair. Also, sharing and blowing kisses. She’s a toddlersaurus rex, but she’s a loving little toddlersaurus rex. 🙂
I’m trying to steel myself and not die of bebe deprivation in the US. I will miss HF too, in ways that will ache and hurt and eat me with loneliness, but I am not worried about missing what cute, adorable, amazing thing he will do for the first time that I will have missed and will never have the chance to see again. Plus, HF will email me (or suffer the consequences) while the kids have no way of telling me what they’ve been up to and what they were thinking and how Khalid discovered he could make phone calls on a gummy bear.
(Holding gummy bear to ear: “Awo? Aitikatikatikatiak. Ok. Bye bye.”)
I need to not think like that though, and I should instead focus on how awesome it will be to see old friends, new places, and pretend to be a husband-free, kid-free Abez running wild and fancy-free in the city where I grew up.
(I can’t wait to see the Shedd Aquarium again, and the Museum of Science and Industry, and to go sledding with a group of friends and a thermos of hot chocolate.)
I’ll be flying out in the morning, please remember us in your duas. 🙂
pimeeble –noun
the edible, juicy, collective fruit of a tropical, bromeliaceous plant, Ananas comosus, that develops from a spike or head of flowers and is surmounted by a crown of leaves.
pima bubba –noun
a paste made from ground roasted peanuts, used as a spread or in cookery.
escameeble –noun
Also called moving staircase, moving stairway. a continuously moving stairway on an endless loop for carrying passengers up or down.
chawee
(used interjectionally as a conventional apology or expression of regret): Chawee, you’re misinformed. Did I bump you? Chawee.
kan-tee -verb
to detach with or as if with a sharp-edged instrument; separate from the main body; lop off: to kan-tee a slice from a loaf of bread.
much-mum-mum –noun
1.a sweetened paste or confection made from the mucilaginous root of the marsh mallow.
2.a similar confection, usually soft and spongy, made from gum arabic or gelatin, sugar, corn syrup, and flavoring.
ocatiga -noun
a polygon having eight angles and eight sides.
yego– adjective
a color like that of egg yolk, ripe lemons, etc.; the primary color between green and orange in the visible spectrum, an effect of light with a wavelength between 570 and 590 nm.
sebabeen -noun
a cardinal number, 10 plus 7.
kwi -noun
also called Chinese gooseberry. the egg-sized, edible berry of the Chinese gooseberry, having fuzzy brownish skin and slightly tart green flesh.
Khalid: Huh be bees! (Help me please!)
Me: Yes Jaan?
Khalid: (pinching my leg) Huh be bees!
I turn around a look at Khalid, who is standing expectantly by the refrigerator door. I stand up and open the door for him.
Me: What do you want?
Khalid picks up an orange and pokes his finger into it. Juice squirts out and begins dripping down his arm.
Me: Clean up!
I take away the orange. He finds a kiwi and begins peeling off the sticker.
Me: Khalid, what do you want?
Khalid opens the crisper drawer and pulls out an apple.
Khalid: Ah! Abo! (A, apple!)
Me: Good boy. 🙂
Iman: (pointing to the number 5 on the laptop screen) One!
Me: No sweetie, five.
Iman: Five?
Me: Good girl! Five!
Iman thinks for a moment, and holds up five fingers and begins jumping.
Me: Yes Iman, Five little monkeys jumping on the bed, one fell off and bumped his head!
Only, only in Dubai, do we have firemen who ride around in a rescue Corvette. The trunk is full of firefighting equipment, and this unit’s job is just to drive up and down Sheikh Zayed Road to rescue people trapped in burning cars.
HF and I happened to stop at this cafeteria on the Abu Dhabi/Dubai highway, and had our socks shocked off when this pulled up next to us. HF being the fearless one, walked up to the window, introduced himself, and asked the fireman (who was ordering a fresh juice) whether he would give his wife (me!) a tour of the car.
We got pictures and an explaination of everything in the trunk, as well as the goofy satisfaction of telling the nice firefighters (who were wearing their shiny, fire-proof pants with Air, Fire & Rescue Dubai t-shirts) that they were the coolest firefighters we had ever seen.
Iman, holding a small triangular puzzle piece, holds it up and asks: “Kak-kak?” (cookie?)
Khalid, look up at her: “Twingle.” (Triangle)
He takes the piece and puts it back into the puzzle. A few seconds pass, they are both scribbling on magnetic doodle-boards.
Iman, picking up the same piece again: “Kak-kak?” (cookie?)
She tries to put it in her mouth.
Khalid insists: “Twingle!” (Triangle)
He takes the piece from her and puts it away. They both resume coloring, and all is right with the world. 🙂
So HF and I are hoping to move to Dubai soon, InshaAllah. Not only because our current house features four adults, two children, and only one bathroom, but because driving 120 miles before lunch time to get to Khalid’s therapy center and back is taking its toll on me. And I don’t mean Salik. Aching knee, aching back, steadily increasing inclination to road-rage- last week I actually passed someone in the fast lane by screaming past them on the hard shoulder. And I’m not an aggressive person, but I am quickly turning into a very frustrated driver as well as a very frazzled Momma.
And then there’s the race to try to cram every possible errand into the limited amount of hours in town, because if you’ve driven sixty miles into the city you better make the most of it, and if you go grocery shopping you have to time it just right so that the chicken spends the least amount of time chickenly possible in the sauna of the car’s trunk, thus minimizing the risk of giving everyone salmonella for dinner. But you also need to go look for a laminator, which is on the other side of town, so if you want to buy chicken, you should just buy it first so that you don’t have to double back, but again, that means letting it stew in the trunk with the rest of the groceries, and the weather’s cooling down, but it’s still 100+ in the shade and poached eggs are nice but not a whole dozen of them. And if you have a physiotherapy appointment, then no errands are possible because physio starts at exactly the same time as Khalid’s therapy, and you’re always ten minutes late for it, and then you finish with just forty minutes before it’s time to pick Khalid up again, and that’s barely enough time to go to the grocery store let alone park and buy chicken, so there’s no point in trying so you might as well just drive back to the center and wait for him to get out. And you can’t really go shopping afterwards, because he is so tired that he’s a three and a half year old wreck- crying because he doesn’t want to go into the mall, screaming because he doesn’t want to be in the cart, throwing groceries out of cart and kicking you as you try to push your way to the frozen foods aisle, wondering whether this whole eating thing isn’t really overrated, and if chickens can fly, why can’t they just be given directions to Abu Dhabi?
And in the spirit of ongoing medical misadventures, my Ramadan was punctuated with two trips to the ER for what turned out to be severe gastritis from a H. Pylori infection, and I missed five fasts being unable to eat and needing to take a slew of medication to help eradicate the invaders. And then there was Khalid’s dental surgery- he’s had four of his front teeth removed, about ten fillings, and two silver crowns installed, all under general anesthesia, for which he spent three and a half hours in surgery and eight hours in the hospital with. Alhamdulillah, it went well- he did fight the anesthetist, but his tantrum was gassed out in about ten seconds. When he woke up, he vomited blood, fought me blindly without knowing what was going on, pulled on his canula until we took it out, and then passed out again. He woke up a few minutes later and did the same, and then slept for a few hours, then drank some apple juice slowly and groggily, and then fell asleep again. We headed home at about 8 pm. And of course, he vomited in the car a few times, but Alhamdulillah it was just the apple juice- no more blood. We’re waiting for his new teeth to be ready- and we’re going to make another visit to the dentist for them to be cemented to his molars, and his four-tooth bridge will, InshaAllah, remain until his permanent teeth come in.
*taps fingers on keyboard*
Ok, I’m trying to write a nice, comprehensive update but I really have something else on my mind. I had a lovely time hanging out with two friends this evening, that is, until one of them asked me about Khalid’s autism. It had been fun up until that point, and once she brought the topic up, I wanted to leave. I’m not comfortable talking about it. Talking about autism in general isn’t that hard, it’s Khalid’s autism that presents a problem. I don’t want to have to explain why I don’t think it had anything to do with vaccines, how he had been slow and strange and distant from the very beginning, and how there are doctors and scam artists out there whose full-time job it is to take advantage of my desperation and sell me Miracle Cure Number #43, and how hard I have to work to not seek out and inflict bodily harm on people who put autistic toddlers on anti-psychotics. She asked me, as many other people have asked me, when I first realized Khalid was autistic. I don’t think there was any shocking epiphany- only the dawning of a very unpleasant truth- of milestones delayed, even entirely missed, and worrying behaviors and repeated visits to pediatricians, of finally getting him assessed by a pediatric therapy team, and then a clinical psychologist, etc
But like I said, there was no instantaneous epiphany, only the heart-breaking realization that my foray into motherhood had been a nearly complete failure- that at the age of two and half, my son didn’t talk, play, feed himself, respond to his name, seek affection, or handle disappointment or tiredness well. Also, he banged his head against the floor and kicked walls and started screaming if anyone laughed in his vicinity.
And I can talk about Khalid’s autism here, because I’m sharing non-spoken thoughts with a word processing software. I’m not talking to anyone about this, I’m just thinking on paper. But I have a hard time talking about this, and it’s always hard to hold myself together- to be informative and cheerful instead of depressed and terrified for my son’s future. And then there are the well-meaning but infuriating questions like- have you tried making dua? I realize that people are simply offering what they feel as helpful solutions, but I am gobsmacked, utterly gobsmacked, that they would think that I haven’t prayed, cried, pleaded, begged, and petitioned God with insane love and desperation for my son to be healed/cured/enabled to lead a normal life after I die, and dear Lord, please let me live long enough to see my children become independent. I have gone through some crazy things in my life, but nothing has tried my faith like this and forced me to have faith, really, to have faith that Allah does nothing without reason, gives no one a burden greater than they can bear, will reward me for my patience, and will take care of Khalid the same way He takes care of all of His creations.
It’s easy to slip up- not in the “Why Me?” sense, but “Why Khalid?”and “Why Autism?” And I must remind myself that Khalid is my test, and autism is Khalid’s test. And it’s just a test. And after it’s all over, and the believers and the righteous are finally in Jannah, it will be asked of them whether they had ever suffered in this life. And they will swear that they never had, because the suffering we feel in this life is so minute, and so brief, compared to the reward and the contentment and peace and the perfection and resolution of Jannah. I desperately hope I’m included in that group, and I desperately hope that Khalid is as well.
HF says that I blame myself too much, that I blame myself for everything that goes wrong. He may be right, but I think all mothers consider themselves responsible for their children’s welfare. Yes, I feel like Khalid’s autism is my failure. No, it’s not logical. No, telling me it’s not my fault doesn’t make me feel magically better. Yes, I know I can’t cause autism. No, I don’t care if you think I’m special-needs parent superhero. It’s BS. I’m barely coping, I’m stressed out, I’m exhausted, and I’m scared of what the world will inflict upon my son when I can no longer protect him from it.
What’s the moral of this story? Well, I guess if you are one of the many lovely, amazing, indispensable friends that I have who read this blog and may have asked me recently about Khalid’s autism, please don’t be offended. I have a hard time socializing with people, because going places with Khalid must be tightly managed, closely watched, and minutely scheduled to prevent meltdowns, but when I finally do get a chance to get out of the house without Khalid or Iman with me, please let me talk about nonsense. And please don’t ask me about Khalid’s autism.
Sleepy, tired, hungry, achy, overextended and happy. 🙂 Alhamdulillah. 🙂
I love Ramadan, because I know that even though the first few days can be very rough, the rest of the month will feel light, unburdened, and somehow… free.
SubhanAllah.
