Abez sez Assalamualaikum!

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  • The Husbandfiles: I married a tech guy?

    We interrupt this Ramadan introspection with a late-breaking Husbandfile.

    Me: We need to do something about the front gate, there’s no way to see behind it when somone rings the bell. I could be opening the door for anyone. We need to put one of those little peep-hole thingies in.

    HF: No, all we need is some electrical wiring and a switch.

    Me: Oh? (For a security camera? she wonders)

    HF: We could run the wire under the gate and plug one end into a socket and leave one end on the ground outside.

    Me: Ok.

    HF: And when someone rings the bell, you go outside and turn the power on.

    Me: Then what?

    HF: Then when they get electrocuted you identify them by the sound of their screaming.

  • Ramadan or the Lack Thereof, Part I

    Once upon a time, Ramadan was really, really sacred. Owlie and I read Qur’an aloud each night, broke our fast on as little food possible, had reasonably small dinners and felt light and alive and grateful. This Ramadan is hugely disappointing, I feel like a Ramadan Failure.

    I’m not fasting because I need to nurse bebeface. That in itself does not at all make me a failure. Alhamdulillah, Allah knows His creations well, and allows certain exceptions to the fast, nursing mothers included. I will make the entire month of fasts up when I can, but as the days pass one after the other, I feel more and more as if I’m missing something that I can never get back. I feel, well… almost sore about it. I feel left out at Iftar time; me munching on dates then is not what it used to be. The first date at Iftar, the first bit of sweet, soft fruit that you put in your mouth is better than a hundred dates in any other month. That warm little cup of tea used to make up for hours of self-denial in its first sip. Iftar was quiet and contemplative and, for lack of a better word, magical.

    It used to be that Ramadan passed slowly. The first few days were agonizing, of course, but after a week or so, they had a certain, gradual sweetness to them. You counted the days of Ramadan not as being closer to the end of deprivation, but as being nearer to the happiness of Eid. I remember an Eid spent in Islamabad when it was just Owlie and me praying Eid Salah at Faisal Masjid. Now, we come from a very ‘Suck it in, Walk it off, If you lose you leg, don’t come crying to me’ kind of family, but we let all the force fields down after Eid prayer and give each other happy, sincere hugs. I remember that hug, I miss it.

    I used to read Qur’an. I used to open its pages and read and re-read the lines until I registered them, understood them, thought about them. It was slow going, but speed was not the issue, comprehension was.

    I used to pray Fajr. Now, a combination of odd baby-related sleep habits plus laziness and growing spiritual apathy on my part mean I pray a handful of Fajrs a month. It’s embarrassing to say, but what purpose would it be to hide it? Everything I do, and don’t do, will come out before every human ever born on the Day of Judgment. Blogistan, compared to All of Humanity, is peanuts, and compared to God, Humanity is dust.

    -to be continued-

  • I gawts thawts!

    Hey hey! I’m here! And I’m donut powered! Props to Owlie and blueberry cake donuts!

    I’m feeling much better than I have in a long ole while- the move was chaotically busy as well as physically taxing. Bebeface of course realized that we were moving, so he decided to work harder- at being demanding. I have never tried to move while also minding a bebe. It’s Difficult. I capitalized that D on purpose.

    And then the day before yesterday I gave myself minor food poisoning. I call it Chicken Fingers. It’s what happens when you cut and prepare chicken and the germs get on your fingers and somehow your fingers transfer the germs to your stomach, which then goes into a state of violent political upheaval and nationwide strike to protest the incursion of foreign elements.

    I was in bed all day except for when I was in the bathroom. I woke up the next morning feeling miserable and desperate and worse, so I reached into my bedside table drawer, found a blister pack of amoxicillin left over from my wisdom tooth removal and popped one in my mouth. Yes, all of my doctor friends will scold me for dosing myself with antibiotics, and HF pulled my ear and glared at me, and yes, amoxicillin is typically for ENT and uncomplicated skin infections, but it’s also sometimes used to treat stomach ulcers caused by the baceria H. Pylori, so I figured that its presence in my politically unstable stomach couldn’t go completely unnoticed. Then I went back to sleep for another six hours.

    And woke up feeling like a newer, less toxic man. And today I moved some boxes around, finished up a design project, found out I have another one lined up (Alhamdulillah!) and met Owlie for donuts at the City Center. And now I have thawts! As well as the ability to keep food down! SubhanAllah, health is such a blessing!

    Bebeface is six months old now, and I don’t know where the time went. Honestly. One day he’s this little pink blob, the next he’s a big, chubby, heavy, cooing, impossibly cute bundle of giggles and spitbubbles and cramming of slobbery fingers into my mouth. His mouth too, but he’s realized that I have a mouth and it’s a great place to hold on. He calls for attention and then revels in it, he bounces himself u and down in laps, and even bestows slobbery bebe-kisses on me. Only one other person has been honored with a bebe-kiss, and that’s Lil Grey. Khalid’s version of a kiss is to smile and then grab you by the face with both hands, and then press his mouth into your cheek. And it makes him exceedingly happy. It’s not a ‘Hi mom, lemme suck on your cheek,’ it’s definitely a kiss, and it’s definitely reserved for when he’s happy and content.

    And then when he’s not happy there’s the ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma of ‘momma, help!’ or the bbbbbb of the self-defense raspberry. A good indicator of whether Khalid’s nose is being cleaned is whether he’s blowing raspberries- when I poke a q-tip up there he frowns and goes BBBBBBB with such force that if the q-tip were in his mouth it would have been shot across the room.

    And then there’s the singing- Khalid sings. He does opera, mostly. He fills the new halls with aaaaaahs and oooohs and waaa waaa waaaas that he enjoys immensely. He experiments with volume, he smiles, and out of his gummy, wet mouth comes an ear-shattering EEEEEEE that might be B-minor, or more likely, EEEEE-major. hehe. My son could shatter glass.

    Also, he could probably eat whole chickens. Well, he would if he knew what they were. MashaAllah, Khalid is in the 95th percentile for his height and weight, which means that’s he’s bigger than 95 percent of other kids his age. Which, for me, means an aching back, but muscle definition on my arms comparable to when I used to lift weights, and for Khalid, it means comments from guests like, “Whoa, Olympic sized!” and Hbiddy‘s hysterical “Oh my God, that baby is huge!”

    (Also, “What an adorable one year old!”)

    You know, it’s interesting seeing how people who haven’t been around babies react to Bebeface. I’ve heard questions that immediately mark the questioner as complete baby-amateur, like “Wow, he’s 3/4th Pakistani and 1/4th white, so what does he call you?”

    (Well, he’s four months old, so he mostly just calls me waaaanh.)

    “Cute kid, so what language does he speak?”

    (He’s a baby, he speaks all languages and they all sound like crying.)

    And then there are the exciting babysitting tactics from people who have never babysat before. A group of family friends (we shall call them ‘The Four A’s) consisting of three very cool dudes and one very cool chick were left to their own devices with Khalid for all of ten minutes. I returned to find the baby strangely quiet. The dudes were sticking small balls of tape onto Khalid’s hands, feet and clothing. Khalid thought the crinkly sounds were fantastic. I give that new game a nine out of ten, and it loses one point only for not taping Khalid’s arms and legs to each other.

    So yeah, Bebeface rocks, but I currently stink. I am a Ramadan nothing this year. But I’ll blog about that next time. It’s 11:50 right now and Bebeface has just gone to sleep. I’m going to run and do grown-up things like wash my face and maybe reply to my email.

    Peace & Chikken Grease! And Ramadan Kareem!

  • I’m here!

    But now I’m going there. House is abt 60% unpacked. Bizzy. Off to Chateau for some R&R. peace & chikken grease.

  • Really, Truly Wireless

    Wireless, and wirelessless. No wires and no wireless. The wireless internet router is being packed in a few min, and I have awoken at 7:30 in the morning to check my email before that happens. Junkie Me.

    It’s mostly Khalid’s fault. He’s lying on the one remaining carpet behind me and cooing at the same blue dog that, ahem, attacked him yesterday, so I guess he’s forgiven both of us. 😉

    See y’all on the other side!

    Internet over & out!

  • Mortal Wounds: The next generation

    There’s nothing funny about pain, but the look on Bebe’s face (brow wrinkled, lower lip protruding) followed by the offended little ‘meep!’ noise that he made when I accidentally beaned him in the face with Blue- that was funny. That was very, very funny.

    I must be a horrible mother, because once when the cell phone I had been trying to hold between my ear and my shoulder slipped and bounced off of Bebe’s forehead, I couldn’t help but notice how his wide-open eyes and perfectly o-shaped mouth made him look like a surprised little coconut- and I laughed.

    On a separate note: the moving and packing is about 80% complete, and we are now left with one mattress, a fridge, a washer, a stove, a kitchen and two bathrooms. There will be one last installment of work and then we should be shifted into the new house completely, InshaAllah. So if updates are few and far between these days, it’s because I’m currently busy reigning over the Kingdom of Dustbunnies in Cardboardland.

  • quantity over quality, yeah baybee

    I’m in the process of customizing this template, which of course means accidentally making the text in the ‘About Me’ section blue so that no one can read it. Oh yeah, I meant to do that…yessss…

    And I would finish customizing it, but reality calls. It sez, “FOLD THE LAUNDRY!” and “WE WANT TEA!” and “I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT BUTTER!”

    Reality is a strange place. Oh and last night, I did something I never ever thought I could, and according to Momma, HF, and LilGrey, never ever should. I removed my own stitches. I had two stitches inside of my mouth from last week’s removal of a wisdom tooth (Abez: Now with 50% less wisdom!) and thanks to a pair of tweezers and a pair of scissors, I now have none. Admittedly, the idea gave me the heebie-jeebies for about ten minutes before I gave the stitches an experimental tug. That was relatively painless, so I gave them a snip and they practically fell out.

    What was painful though, was the way HF grabbed me by the ear after he caught me. You know how your mom does that when she’s scolding you? Hehe.

    Yeah, that may be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done.

    Also, this may be one of the most random blogs I’ve ever written. Owlie is back! Hooray! And she brought me a DDR pad! And I was up until 2 am last night stomping away! And I am w00t! w00t I say, w00t!

    By Abez, The End.

  • The was a little girl who had a little curl…

    Last night HF popped his head into the kitchen with a box of mithai in his hand. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘Did you say to put the mithai in the fridge?’

    ‘Yeah,’ I said, soaping up another glass.

    ‘Good, because that makes more sense than putting my ties into the fridge.’

    HF was relieved. I was happy for him.

    SubhanAllah, things these days are good. Well, things these days specifically are good, though you never know how those other days will be, and whether you’ll contemplate flinging boxes over the side of the balcony as compared to taping them shut and sending them to the new place. We’re in the process of moving, InshaAllah. The exact move date is uncertain, but the non-essential items of the house are slowly but surely being sorted, arranged, and taped shut. As of yet, none of them have been flung over the balcony.

    Did I mention that it’s 6:20 am?

    Bebeface is getting a head start on religion by waking up for Fajr at the age of 5 months. Alhamdulillah, he’s grown a lot since I last blogged about his age specifically. (3 months) He’s learning how to sit up, he plays with his fingers and has learned how to smile with two from one hand and three from another crammed excitedly in his mouth. Up until one sentence ago, he had been sitting in his stroller and chewing his Yellow Tiger and contemplating his socked feet. As of this sentence, he is in my lap, holding firmly to the edge of the computer table and staring at the monitor. (Psst, Momma there’s a typo in p2, l5.)

    We’ve been up since 5:30, and having prayed, we’ve also had Weetabix, a shower, and a diaper change. Right now we’re sucking our fingers and rubbing our face sleepily into Momma’s t-shirt. Bebeface does wake up several times a night, but usually not for longer than the time it takes to nurse and fall back asleep. He’ll be running out of steam soon, and then we can go back to bed InshaAllah.

    *rubs eyes sleepily onto own shirt*

  • Details, Details

    AssalamuAlaikum alls of ya’ll

    JazakAllahu Kheiran for all the duas and well-wishes and the ‘what the heck happened?’s I’ve gotten. So here’s what happened. Basically, as we were passing through an intersection on a yellow light, a car coming from our right slammed into us from the side, knocking us into the turn lane on oncoming traffic and into the front end of a truck. It looked like this:

    The other car, a BMW, had been waiting for the light to change, but for whatever reason, decided to accelerate before it turned green. It shot out of the red light fast enough to knock us askew, and as the car spun the rear-end of our vehicle hit the bmw again, knocking the bumper off. Then we crashed into the front of the truck. The car is quite simply totalled. It took three consecutive impacts, the first from the bmw on the side, another from the bmw at the back, and the third from driving head-on into a truck.

    SubhanAllah for good people, the man who had been in the car to the left of the bmw had also been waiting for the light to change, and he testified to the police that he had been waiting at the same signal and saw the bmw accelerate when the light was still red. He’s also the man who brought Bebe’s car seat and stroller to me, first to the shop, and then again to the hospital. We were all driven away by police/ambulance reapectively, so he packed our stuff into his car and followed us there after talking to the police.

    And imagine my surprise when Knicq appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. I was waiting for my turn in x-ray when he showed up, even before HF did, bringing his usual supply of cheer and comfort. JazakAllah Knicq. You are a good bhai.

    And my lovely HF called when he was enroute, and when I answered the phone he said, “You know, Abez, if you want me to spend more time with you there are better ways of letting me know.” And then he bought me chocolate and took me for an adventurous spin in the wheel chair, and we went zipping through the halls of the hospital with Khalid riding asleep in my lap.

    It’s been two or three days I think, but I have yet to let myself even think of what might have happened. I am very well aware that any one of us could have died should Allah have decided so, but I refuse to imagine anything having happened to Khalid. Even writing this right now is difficult- my throat gets tight and my eyes fill and I get this horrified, panicky feeling. I can’t imagine my life without Bebeface. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose him. I don’t want ever to be lost to him, either. Chalk it up to Momma hormones, but to think of my baby crying and me not being able to be there for him- to think of my child growing up without his mother-

    Alhamdulillah.

    May Allah bless and reward and shower with mercy and kindness everyone who brought nercy and comfort and kindness to us. Allah, please give us life so long as life is good for us and death when death is good for us, and reunite us with those we love in the hereafter. Ameen

  • The Bebefiles: A Beautiful Thing

    The Bebefiles: A Beautiful Thing

    A beautiful thing happened two days ago. After the bounce and the jolt and the crash- after the smell of the hot asphalt and the exhaust cleared, I took Khalid from his car seat and got out of the car. To get out of the car – that was a beautiful thing.

    We walked through stopped traffic to a shop on the other side of the road, where I took Khalid’s clothes off and looked for injuries, and I could see, from where I sat, the back bumper of the car lying in the road and the front end of the car crumpled and pushed into the nose of an 18 wheel truck, but I could see both of my husband’s parents had gotten out and were standing near it. To still be standing – that was a beautiful thing.

    And the men from the street brought in Khalid’s car seat, and brought his stroller, and brought water and tried to comfort and soothe Khalid. Khalid’s little face was flushed pink from the heat and the fear and the pain, but the men held him and kissed him and told him he was ok, and that too was a beautiful thing.

    And my right knee was bloody, and my right calf was cut, and my right ankle was swollen, and my left leg was rapidly turning purple, and my right eye was swollen, and I had hit my head, but the x-rays said that nothing was broken, and that was a beautiful thing.

    And Khalid was scared and in pain, and he spent 45 minutes screaming and crying until he passed out from the effort. Even in his sleep, he shuddered and whimpered, but after two hours he woke up smiling and that, Alhamdulillah, SubhanAllah, AllahuAkbar, was the most beautiful thing of all.

    Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah.

    Always wear your seat belt.

    Always keep your baby in a car seat.

    Life is a beautiful thing.

  • The Bebefiles: AMBUSH!

    I should have known what was coming when I saw how close the box of q-tips was to the edge. I should have moved them when I placed Khalid on the bed to change his diaper. I should have known that a kid who has mastered spitting up not on my shirt, but in my shirt, would be able to take advantage of the q-tips’ precarious position.

    Bebe’s Plan for Revenge for Putting Bebe to sleep last night at the wee hour of 11.

    Step 1: Pre-place box of 200 q-tips on the edge of bed.

    Step 2: Soil diaper.

    Step 3: Allow self to be placed on bed and freed of diaper, thus exposing lethal weaponry.

    Step 4: Kick Q-tips off of bed, scattering them precisely within range of lethal weaponry.

    Step 5: Allow mother to stoop to pick up q-tips, foolishly leaving lethal weaponry exposed.

    Step 6: Ready.

    Step 7: Aim.

    Step 8: FIRE!

    Step 9: Beam joyously as you soak momma’s back in a fresh, steady stream of revenge.

  • Testing, II

    Second Test post, here we go…

  • testing

    ding?

    sorting out some technical ish-yous.

  • The BebeFiles: Time Flies

    Somewhere when I wasn’t looking, Bebeface turned 3 1/2 months. I hadn’t noticed really. There were other things to look at- like spit bubbles. My son has become quite proficient at them, pursing his lips together to produce a nice, long cascade of wet, frothy silliness. Then he beams. He doesn’t smile anymore, he beams, his whole bebe face lighting up in the biggest, gummiest expression of joy.

    A few weeks ago he noticed his own hands for the first time and then spent a few days staring at them intently. Soon afterwards, he began playing with his toys for the first time, MashaAllah. Lying underneath an assortment of hanging toys, Khalid now has mighty battles with the jingly yellow tiger. Khalid crams the tiger in his mouth, and the tiger retaliates by craming its stuffed legs into Khalid’s eyebrows. Khalid growls. The tiger jingles. The battle continues.

    It’s hard to believe that this is the same baby I brought home with me in March. That baby was a tiny, non-interactive bundle of newbornness. This baby is a wiggly, cooing, squealing, arm-waving, judo-chopping, bicycle-kicking handful of chub and happiness. The Bebeface I brought home only cried, but this one holds conversations with you.

    “coo! bbbbb! aaaa?” he asks, raising his eyebrows at the end of the sentence. He expects you to answer. So you coo and laugh and squeal back. And he beams.

    Bebeface noticed his reflection the other day, and spent a vain long time engaging it in conversation. “bbbBbbb?” (translation: “Who is that handsome devil?”)

    I wasn’t looking when it happened, but my son developed a personality. MashaAllah.

  • Inna Lilla

    You know those plain, brown plastic Bata sandals? The ones outside of the men’s section in any Pakistani masjid? The ones that everyone has a pair of to do wudu in, the ones that everone’s father has owned at least once and everyone’s mother has ‘borrowed’ around the kitchen a few times? I saw one yesterday.

    It was lying on its side in the fast lane on Emirates Road, ten feet from a white sheet with a growing red stain on it. Inna Lillahi Wa Inna Ileihi Rajioon. Verily wa are God’s and to Him we return.

  • Greetings from Captain Snot-tastic

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

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

    *fits tinfoil more snugly over head*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Ew…

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

  • The Bebe Files: Eight Weeks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Everything you ever though impossible can be done, Alhamdulillah.

    Hug your mom. Now.

    Now now now. And then hug her again.

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

    And never, ever sass your mother.

  • We are the champions, my friend…

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

    (We will, we will BURP YOU!)

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

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

    Heh.

  • The Husband Files: Insert rimshot here.

    Photobucket

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

    HF: No, we live in the UAE.

  • The Baby Files: One Month, Alhamdulillah

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

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

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

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

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

    And my left shoulder.

    And a third shoulder would be helpful.

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

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

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

    Peace & Chikken Grease
    -Abez

  • Ook, ook?

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I digress.

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

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

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

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

  • Two Minute Blog: My son the lethal weapon.

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

  • Hair today, gone tomorrow?

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

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

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

  • Khalid is Born

    Khalid is Born

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Love, Peace, and Handi Grease
    -Abez

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

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

    Photobucket

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

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

    Me: Yes..?

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

    Me: Yes.

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

    Me: True…

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

    Me: Oh?

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

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

    HF: To cool it. *big shiny smile*

    Me: While you were driving?

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

    Me: At a hundred kilometers per hour?

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

  • The secret lives of housewives?

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

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

    Now, GO BUY A T-SHIRT! 😀

  • Call me Speedy. Ice cream, anyone?

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

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

    mwaahahahaa

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

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

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

  • Nine Months Pregnant

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

    Nine months pregnant.

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

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

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

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

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

    *KICK!*

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

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

    My baby will be here soon, InshaAllah. 🙂

  • The Husband Files: A Romantic Walk on the Beach

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    Me: Do jellyfish wash up on the beaches here?

    HF: I’m not sure.

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

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

  • Countdown: Six weeks

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

  • The Husband Files: Housekeeping?

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

    Me: Oh?

    HF: So I put some newspaper over it. 😀

  • Traditional Hiccups, Traditionally

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

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

    -hic!-

  • The Husband Files: 1:32 am

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    HF: Could I shave my head?

    Me: No.

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

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

    *pause*

    HF: Could I grow a moustache?

    ME: No.

    HF: Come on, just a little big one.

    Me: A what one?

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

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

    HF: Fine.

    *pause*

    HF: Can you grow a mustache?

  • I kid you not

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

  • You know you go out too often when…

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

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

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

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

    Therefore,

    1 dh = 2 fl

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

    DH=HW
    HH=8fl
    HW= ?HH

    Nonsense Number Duo:

    Dear Abez,

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

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

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

    Sincerely,
    Your Baby

    PS: Icecream?

  • A Simple Omission

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

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

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

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

    Now read the update with the necessary corrections.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • How?

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

    SubhanAllah, SubhanAllah.

  • Jabr & Qadr

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

    Wayfarer said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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