Alhamdulillah, Alhamdulillah, HF has agreed to wrangle the kids on his own and let me zoom off to Ilm Fest! I’m going to Malaaaaaaysiaaaaaa!
And also? I’m too busy to write properly. Away!
Blog
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Dear Tired of Trying
“This made me weep today. I’ve already read this post 4-5 months ago and yesterday while thinking about what I’m going through.. I got Exactly these feelings .. the forming of outer cover .. the smashing .. the shattering .. And I thought of You. This article. And then as I checked your site today I picked up some random article displayed and started reading.. And it turned out to be the Same One I was thinking of yesterday! It brought me back to Realisation. BUT, Zeba, Do you still have that ‘fear/depression’ after the shattering? I do.. still. The shattering did make me gain more trust .. But .. the fear of those trials or the depression still remains in a corner. I am still dangling between Hope and Fear (from the trials, Astaghfirullah).” -Tired of Trying
Dear Tired of Trying,
Do I ever still have fear or depression after having the hardened out covering on my heart smashed? Are tears wet? Does loneliness hurt? Does the pope wear a funny hat?
There, I made you smile. A little bit. I hope. And now, a side-story!
I had a muscle biopsy once- I can’t remember if I blogged about it- but it was done with only local anaesthetic on my skin because the muscle they removed needed to be chemical-free for a correct lab analysis. This was not a needle biopsy- this was a crouton biopsy- where they cut out a 1 cm by 1 cm cube of my right arm and then cauterised the two-inch hole shut. I still have a dent in my right arm from where the muscle was taken.
That is not my arm. But that is what they did to my arm. I don’t know if I should even try to describe what it felt like. In theory, I know that scalpels are sharp and surgeons are precise. In reality, it felt like having my arm sawed open with a dull, rusty hacksaw and then carved into with a melon baller. Have you ever thrown up from pain? Me neither, but I wanted to. My brain was screaming in complete panic- every muscle in my body tensed to flee- and nothing I have ever done- no surgery, no accident, no mortal wound and no child birthed- was ever as painful as having that muscle biopsy. But I did it. And I did it willingly. And I was grateful my surgeon did it to me. If doing it again meant getting healthier, I would do it again. Would I be looking forward to it? Hell no. But I would do it again. That is pain with purpose.
Pain is coming. Are you afraid?
If you are, then remember this: The hammer of Qadr is going to beat you against the anvil of the Master Smith. If you’ve been burned, it’s because He’s scorching the impurities out of you. If you’ve been cooled off only to be thrust into fire again, it’s because you needed that second heating.
If you feel like your life is nothing but an incessant pounding- where you get smashed in the face by Qadr of Allah over, and over, and over again, remember- that is how steel is crafted. Your heart was cold, hard, sin-encrusted rock. Allah burns the rock away, heats it until it is soft, and then pounds it into what He wills. Some of us are swords. Others of us are armor. What better honor than letting your pain turn you into a shield for others? AllahuAkbar.
(If you thought you were done- that everything had been burned out of you and you weren’t in any danger of being mistaken for coal, remember, hearts rust. Blades dull. And that’s why life’s a grindstone, and that’s why Allah is pressing your face against it.)
Fear of Allah is part of faith, but fear of Allah’s will is opposite to Trust in Allah. Fear is a button that Shaitaan pushes so that when Allah turns the heat up, you turn away. Or when He lays your heart upon the anvil, you don’t yield- you break. Without trusting Allah and trusting in the purpose of that pain, you flee in terror and go back to being a rock with a heart inside.
Except, now it’s broken.
The pain Allah intends for you has a purpose, and when you understand what the purpose is, not only do you not fear it, you would also volunteer again to have the purpose accomplished. That is why- despite the indescribable pain of childbirth, women still have- and love- their children. This is also why I’d offer up my other arm for a muscle biopsy if there was a chance it would make me better. That is why, when the blows start raining down on your head- you can place it gently down in submission and soften your heart, making it malleable in Allah’s hands. Or you can turn to face Allah, rather than flee Him, and find yourself beautifully refashioned by the work He’s done. If you knew what beauty He was crafting you towards, you would miss being on the anvil when you’d been given a break And if you hadn’t been on the anvil for a while, you’d get worried that you weren’t worthy of anymore detailing from Him, and then- then you would really be afraid.
Trust in Allah. If you find yourself being fearful, remember that He promised no burden greater than you could bear, and fear is a weapon Shaitan uses to prevent you from being turned into one against him.
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Must… not… break… salah!
I’m trying to concentrate on prayer, and the following conversation transpires before me:
Musfira: Iman, canna have a cotton candy?
Iman: Musfira, these are cotton balls, not cotton candy.
Musfira: Notta candy?
Iman: No, it’s not candy. Do you know what this is made of?
Musfira: Cotton?
Iman: No, try again.
Musfira: Umm, cotton?
Iman: (rolls her eyes in big sister exasperation) Musfira, cotton balls are made out of sheep, ok?
And here we see a herd of sheep, grazing peacefully in their natural environment. Thankfully, I finish my prayer just before this insight into the wonders of nature. Iman sees me smiling and loses some of her scientific confidence.
Iman: …what?
Me: Cotton balls are made out of cotton dear, not sheep. Sheep make wool, cotton makes cotton.
Iman: Right, hehe.. sorry Musfira.
Dare I say Iman looked… sheepish?
insert rimshot here.
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I’m thinking of an animo…
Our lil family has a favorite game, and the way it’s won is by preserving momma’s sanity with three children and no volume control. We stick to animals to keep it simple, and a turn always starts with the phrase “I’m thinking of an animal,” followed by three clues.
We play the guessing game during long drives and boring waits, and I am working to slowly introduce concepts like animal families (Is it a primate? A reptile?) and habitats- does it live on land? Underwater? Underground?
Khalid, almost inevitably- is thinking of a dinosaur of some sort. This is useful- because that’s how we introduced the concept of extinction. Now, some kids know five or six dinosaurs. Khalid, on the other hand, knows almost all of them. Really. MashaAllah- all of them. He has memorized almost three encyclopaedias of dinosaurs, so when he’s thinking of an animal with four legs, a tail, and a long neck- he’s not thinking of a giraffe. He’s thinking of a dipolodocus. Or a mamenchisaurus. Or an argentinosaurus. Or a camarosaurus, which is also known as a morosaurus. I believe there are HUNDREDS of -sauruses that serve no current purpose other than to confuse and bewilder anyone trying to guess Khalid’s animal. Such is the universe.
He takes pity on us, and tells us the first letter of the dinosaur’s name when we’ve gotten stumped. Then, he tells us the second. Then the third. Sometimes he will spell out the whole name and I will be no more clued in to what dinosaur he’s talking about- just because he can spell it doesn’t mean I can say it, or know what the heck it looks like. Case in point: Do you know what this dinosaur is called?
It’s a parasaurolophus. I spent almost twenty minutes once, wracking my brain and trying to figure this dinosaur out before asking Khalid to finally spell it for me, and even then- I still didn’t know what he was talking about.Iman’s MO for the guessing game is adorable. She doesn’t pick animals that are difficult, or get upset when her animal is discovered. For the most part she isn’t even picking animals, she’s actually picking people.
Iman is acutely aware of who hasn’t had a turn in a while, and when she successfully guesses an animal and gets her turn, she will tailor her choice of animal to the person that she feels needs one. She will direct her clues right to the person she has in mind. For HF, she will usually be thinking of a shark. For Khalid, she will be thinking of a dinosaur. For me, she will be thinking of a lion or giraffe, and for Musfira- she is always, ALWAYS thinking of a cat. Why? Because Musfira is always thinking of a cat too.
Musfira’s ability to participate in the guessing game has been increasing step by adorable step. In the beginning, she was struggling with the concept, and would just repeat the last clue that she heard. If Iman said, “I’m thinking of an animal with two legs,” then Musfira would ask, “Is it two legs?”
When she realized that we were looking for answers instead of echoes, she started guessing as well.
Iman: “Musfira, I’m thinking of an animal with four legs, with brown spots, that says moo.”
Moo? Musfira: “Izzit the sun?”
Momma: “No dear, the sun is not an animal. We’re only thinking about animals.”
Musfira: “Oh, ok! Izzit Lighting McKeen!”
Musfira had an epiphany one day, and she correctly guessed the lion that Iman was directing towards me. That was her first chance for a real turn, and she started out pretty good:
“I’m thinking of a animo-”
(“Okay.”)
“It has four legs…”
(“Very good.”)
“Anna tail…”
(“Alright.”)
“And, it’s a cat!”
Musfira grins expectantly, anticipating all the exciting questions we should now be asking her. Iman raises an eyebrow and says, “Musfira, are you thinking of a cat?”
“Guj-job Iman!” Musfira cheers, “Your turn!”
We’ve played this game hundreds of times since, and Musfira’s ability to sort and label is getting better, and so her turns are getting more interesting. However, they have yet to move beyond cat.
Once Musfira said to me, “Momma, I’m thinking of a animo. It has four legs, two ears, and iss bigger than a cat.”
“How interesting!” I said, excited that Musfira could finally be breaking free from her cat-only streak. “Is it a dog?”
“Nope!”
“Is it a cow?”
“Nope!”
“Does it eat grass?”
“Nope.”
I tried a few angles and eventually I gave up.
“Alright Musfira, you were thinking of an animal with four legs and two ears that was bigger than a cat. What was it?”
Musfira beamed. “A bigger cat.”
We have since thought of smaller cats, as well as a pink cat, specifically Musfira’s long-time crib companion, Meow-Meow.The only time we’ve ever thought of anything other than cat was on the way home from the Dubai Mall after we had surprised the children with a trip to see the dinosaur fossil being exhibited there. It was a diplodocus. Khalid knew this within seconds of seeing it, even before he was within range of the exhibit information. He looked at the fossil- suspended from the ceiling in all its fossilized awesomeness- and he smiled and said, “It’s a North-American dipolodocus.”
We oohed and aahed, marvelled at the hugeness of its legs and the tinyness of it’s really tiny head. Later, there was ice-cream, and on the way home Musfira suddenly announced, “I’m thinking of an animo!”
Iman interrupted, “It’s a cat.”
Musfira snarked back. “I didn’t finish my clues.” She has learned this phrase verbatim from Khalid and Iman and their tendency to start guessing before the clues are even given.
“I’m thinking of an animo, ” Musfira continued, “It has four legs, a long… long… long…. neck. And, a tiny, small head.”
“Is it a diplodocus?” Khalid piped up excitedly from the back of the van.
“Nope!”
I felt I should translate. “Musfira, Khalid is asking if it’s a dinosaur.”
“Nope!”
Iman tried again, “Musfira are you sure it’s not Meow-Meow?”
“Nope!”
“Is your animal pink?” Iman pushed.
“Yes!” Musfira said.
A few seconds of silence passed. “Musfira,” I said slowly, “Are you thinking of… a pink dinosaur?”
“Hooray Momma! You did it!”
Four legs, lives in desert. Gives milk. Rraawr. The game has only gotten better and more interesting since Musfira has started participating actively. HF was playing with her at bath-time the other day, and as he pulled her pajamas off he said, “Musfira, I’m thinking of an animal with four legs, a long neck, and it lives in the desert.”
“Oh! Izzit a chicken?”
“Musfira,” HF said, “This animal gives milk!”
(Musfira- who has a bovine milk allergy- has been raised on camel milk.)
“Izzit a milk?”
“Milk is not an animal dear.”
“Izzit a tannasaurus!”
And so, the awesomeness continues. Alhamdulillah.
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Short Update
I think I may not have updated for over a month. High score! So here’s the world’s shortest summary of last month:
I’m not sure how this is supposed to help her hearing, but there you go. Iman: Grommets in, tonsils & adenoids out. Two weeks off school, ice-cream and lollipops FTW! We spent a day and a half in the hospital. The first day was fun, because morphine. She actually said- and I quote- THIS IS THE BEST DAY EVER! Once the morphine wore off, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and she very sadly and heart-breaking sobbed, “Momma, I wish I never had a peration.” Not an operation, a peration. Say it out loud.
Alhamdulillah, she’s been off the pain meds for a week and is hearing better already. Alhamdulillah.
Khalid: Finally, finally getting his front teeth, Alhamdulillah! Khalid’s front teeth had to be removed almost four years ago, and his gummy grin has been a source of embarrassment and self consciousness for him since. Now, there are four white bumps slowly growing on the front of his gums, and we excitedly check on them every evening after brushing. Khalid’s been making dua his teeth. Alhamdulillah, it’s been answered. 🙂 Also, MashaAllah, my little man is now eight. And taller. And handsomer than ever. MashaAllah.
Musfira: Cute, small, crazy. Alhamdulillah.
The End.
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The Economics of Sex
Forget the naked lollipop schtick and the oversimplification of covered = protected and protected = virtuous.
Hijab is about setting the market value for yourself in an economy driven by sex and how much it’s currently going for.
)
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Really Oughtta be a National Holiday…
Alhamdulillah, our office has finally been moved into the premises of the larger organisation that we are joining. It’s a real office. With real people. And when you’re me, every day is Take Your Toddler to Work Day!
I think Musfira likes it so far. We get up, have breakfast, get out of our pj’s, and pack our respective bags. Mine has a laptop, a company stamp, a check book, and various reports. Musfira’s has three diapers, powder, a box of cereal, and small LED flashlight from Daiso. It is pink.
We wake up in the morning and leave the untidy house- the cereal bowls crusting over in the sink, the pile of folded laundry that’s been on the coffee table for three days, and we drive. We listen to Qur’an or Nasheeds. We point out birds. Sometimes, Musfira likes to point out trees.
Momma, twee! oh, twee! twee! twee, twee, twee, twee…. ah twee!
We get to the new office and Musfira is immediately welcomed by any number of bouncy, energetic, ABA therapists with exactly the right sort of personality to be a toddler’s best friend. She sees who’ll be working with her today while I’m working with admin. She gets happy.
SHELL! (Hanshell)
EYES! (Aiza)
JOY! (Joy)
She plays with puzzles, and climbs up and down the stairs, and when no one’s looking, she hides in a corner and poops in her diaper because she’s too afraid to use the toilet at the office. So then I close my reports and wash her little bottom in the bathroom without a changing table, and she runs back outside to climb the stairs again and all is right with her little world. Sometimes, we have impromptu teleconferences. I’ll be talking to one person on the phone. And Musfira will either talk to me, or start talking to them too. She comes with me on lunch meetings, and the day before yesterday, she demanded- and got- the Clinical Supervisor’s apple juice.
Today we’re going to be taking our lunch from home, because I cannot and will not eat out every day- it’s too expensive, too unhealthy, and too hectic trying to pack a two a half year old out to lunch and back again within any given timeframe. She likes to chase birds, linger over her chicken strips, and ask loud questions about other lunch-hour patrons.
Musfira: “momma, wha happinid to a lady’s nose?”
“It’s pierced dear. Some cultures wear earrings in their noses. Isn’t it lovely?”
Musfira is unconvinced. She continues to stare fixedly at the nice Indian lady in the power suit.
It’s 8:30 right now, and my company toddler has overslept, which is why I’m blogging instead of driving to work. But it’s time to wake her up now, change her into her best corporate diaper, and hand her to her adoring fans while I attempt to get some work done. Alhamdulillah. Off to work we go.
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MAMA, I HEP YOOOO!
These days, there are four magic words from Musfira’s mouth that cause me to go into instant state of anxiousness.
“Mama, I hep yoo!”
Musfira had a dirty diaper. We went into the bathroom to change her. As I turned to move the garbage can closer to the toilet, I heard those magic words- mama, I hep yoo! followed by the crinkly zip of a diaper being unfastened.
Her diaper had been full of poop. Had. Now her pants were instead.
We were making eggs for breakfast, and a bowl of lemon-yellow omlette sat waiting to be poured into the pan.
mama, I hep yoo!
And that’s how Musfira had her first egg-wash for smooth and shiny hair.
Musfira wanted a cup of milk, and I asked her to bring me the bottle from the fridge. Instead, she got both the milk and the cup as far as the hallway, where she – impressively- filled the cup, as well as emptied the bottle on the floor.
mama, I hep yoo!
She says it with such enthusiasm, such genuine love and a desire to please and help me that I feel guilty for dreading those words. There are many times where she follows my instructions perfectly, but those other times- where she doesn’t listen for instructions, or makes up her own instructions- those are the times that set my teeth on edge, and that’s when I end up dramatically sighing and cleaning raw eggs or poop off of things. And people.
But she’s tiny. Really. She has these teeny-tiny feet, and these skinny little legs, and when she comes pattering up the hallway at full-speed, both arms in the air and a face full of gleeful enthusiasm, then I HEP YOOOO! is perhaps, the cutest, sweetest, most earnest little expression of love that this momma has ever seen.
InshaAllah, we’ll both get better at this. 🙂 And we’ll hep each other.
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JazakAllahuKheiran 🙂
I invited myself over to a friend’s house yesterday. Normally I invite people over to my house instead, but since we’ve been without a housekeeper for the past three weeks, I don’t think any of my friends would appreciate an afternoon in the sty with tea and- well, that’s it. Tea. Because I don’t have cookies and there’s nothing made for lunch.
So MayG let me invite myself over. And she very patiently waited for me to arrive two hours late after I was delayed by urgent work. She sent me very detailed directions to her house.
(I buckled Musfira into her seat and started driving towards her part of town. Five minutes into the drive, I noticed some alerts on my phone.)
I needed to go north on this road, take this exit, and then look for that building with the thing on it. I had a google map point as well, which is fantastically useful.
(I’m in a Whatsapp group called- of course- Brain Surgery News. It’s a small family group where my sister- who is in Singapore for neurosurgery right now- shares updates about what’s going on. There were 29 notifications.)
So I started driving and skimmed through the messages when I stopped at a traffic light.
(My sister is allergic to the materials they could have used to fix the aneurysm in her brain.)
And then I realized I had starting driving towards the wrong city.
(The aneurysm is too wide for the second option, coiling)
So I turned around and headed the other way, but I got stuck in Deira traffic because I hadn’t accounted for the time of day. But when does Deira NOT have traffic, really.
(The third option is to open up her brain and manually put a titanium clip on the swollen vessel. Which is behind her left eye. Which she may lose sight in.)
I worked my way through Deira and got myself going in the right direction. When I was finally five minutes away from her house, I drove right past the exit.
(But losing sight in one eye is a small price to pay to keep your brain from exploding. So Alhamdulillah.)
I made a U-turn using the next exit, except it wasn’t a U-turn. It pointed me back in the direction of home again.
(The surgery has been delayed until the doctors are sure they’ve picked the right course of action. Owl is being tested to see whether her form of EDS- a connective tissue disorder that we both have- is the kind that makes your veins fragile. That’ll take another week to come in.)
I made another U-turn, and got myself pointed in the right direction to make a second pass at the correct exit.
(They also need to see if she’s allergic to titanium, because again- you can’t install things in someone’s brain that their body is going to have a problem with.)
I nearly missed it again. I swung my car into the exit ramp at the last possible moment, grateful that traffic was light and there were very little cars on the road.
(They would have to break her skull.)
I finally found the building. Musfira and I located the entrance, pushed the button for the ‘alligator,’ went upstairs and then rang the bell for MayG’s flat.
Breakfast was lovely. It was served the moment I arrived- at nearly noon- as all breakfasts should be. We had eggs and toast and chicken and nutella and juice and tea and cake. Musfira and her four year old played beautifully together, we chatted about random interesting things, and just as I finished my last piece of toast (this was the one propping all that nutella up) MayG suddenly said, “Hey, you want to paint with me?
(…)
Yeah!
MayG printed out some Arabic calligraphy using a machine that cut the art into adhesive vinyl. Then she painstakingly removed the excess vinyl around all… err.. most of the little fathas, dammas, kasras, and other little wiggly bits that go around Arabic script. Then she transferred them to watercolor paper and handed me a brush.
(She had asked me if there was anything I wanted to paint in particular.)
To say that I enjoyed the painting wouldn’t even begin to do justice to how I felt. I felt renewed by the painting. I felt freed by the painting- even if it was for a little while- from the non-stop worry, fear, pain, and anxiety that had pounding on my brain the entire drive down. I dipped the brush in water, I touched it gently to a deep, uncomplicated blue. I dabbed the thick, textured paper and watched the paper soak up varying shades depending on wet the brush was, how long the brush had already been on the paper, and how quickly I moved the brush from one place to another.
It was soothing- not only in the action of painting itself- but in reading and re-reading the words I was painting around.
(On no soul does Allah place a burden greater than it can bear. Stroke, stroke, dip. On no soul. Stroke, stroke. No burden greater. Dip, dip- stroke. On no soul does Allah place a burden greater than it can bear.)
I painted for Owlie-bird, who is floating in fluorescent white medical limbo somewhere in Singapore. The course of treatment is unclear, the risks are scary, and the waiting is hard and scary, but InshaAllah, she’ll be fine. Allah said so.
(If she dies as a Muslim, Alhamdulillah.)
I wish I could get it to her now because I want to frame it and prop it up next to her hospital bed, not because my untrained, unstructured, and uncomplicated blue watercolor is beautiful, but because Allah’s promise is beautiful.
(If she survives and lives as a Muslim, Alhamdulillah.)
I’m pretty sure I thanked MayG three or four times before leaving. I was hoping to convey just the right sort of thanks- one where you’re insanely grateful but not hoping to show your insanity. I don’t know if I succeeded. But I thanked her.
And now, I’m going to thank her again.
MayG, thank you. Really, very very much. For tea and cookies and company and calligraphy and paint and green masala chicken and qeema and gajar halwa and poking out all those little sticky vinyl bits with a pin. And for listening and hearing and giving me emotional sanctuary in your beautiful home for the better part of the afternoon.
Thank you for making me a larger, prettier version of the same calligraphy that I painted for my sister.
Your decorations are awesome, and you are one of the most creative people that I know, MashaAllah. I left your house feeling calmer, clearer, and less likely to miss my exits because I was crying- which is what I had been doing on the way to your house. I was also crying while you were printing things out with your magical cutting machine, and I would also like to thank you for either not noticing or not letting on that you had noticed.
“Whosoever relieves from a believer some grief pertaining to this world, Allah will relieve from him some grief pertaining to the Hereafter.” Hadith Source Here
May Allah bless you and forgive your sins, and return the kindness you showed me thousands of times over with His mercy towards you and your family.
May Allah relieve the distress of Muslims all over the world, wherever they are, whatever their source of distress.
Ya Allah, please bring my sister home safely.
Ameen.
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Musfira’s Recipe for Homestyle Chocolate Cupcake
Ingredients:
- 200 grams of Hersheys unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 cup (that’s it, one plastic cup)
- 1 flat, dry work surface. Preferably a coffee table.
- 20 minutes of suspicious silence.
Fill one plastic cup with as much cocoa as makes it inside.
Once your cup has been filled, dump it onto your work surface and pat the cocoa into a smooth, even coat.
Between smoothing pats, wipe cocoa generously onto your shirt, pants, face and hair. Repeat process until Cupcake is evenly coated in chocolate.
For best results, put the cocoa powder back in the kitchen and then walk past your mother as if nothing has happened.
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Caution: Rant Ahead
The mechanism of autism is unknown, and that’s ok. Research takes time, especially when you’re talking about complex neurological disorders. We- the people who have to manage autism behaviorally before it can either be prevented or effectively treated- find meaning in our role in making the lives of children better before we can make their brains better, and that’s ok.
But there is something that is not ok, and I am angry. This morning I did yet another intake meeting for an autistic child whose parents had been put through the wringer. They went to an established clinic in a fancy building for a better understanding of why their child wasn’t speaking, and they left with a big, steaming heap of BS, including but not limited to:
• Heavy metal testing
• A full food-allergy screening
• Recommendations for genetic testing
• Recommendations for CT scans & MRIs
• A shopping list of supplements, including FRIGGIN LITHIUM
• A prescription anti-fungal
• A prescription anti-psychotic
• A recommendation for Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
• Stool and urine testing
• Recommendations for a Gluten Free, Casein Free dietThe psychiatrist’s recommendations for therapy were pretty much anything that she could get away with legally and possible charge for. Oh, and somewhere on the side- they should check a website for an ABA program.
And now- some information about the child whose parents were just wrung dry- He’s 3.5 now. He’s been on anti-psychotic drugs for the past six months. He’s verbal, social, can sequence numbers from one to one hundred, can read, write, and spell words from memory. You know, simple words like e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t and p-o-m-e-g-r-a-n-a-t-e?
He has no behaviors of self injury, does not tantrum, no obsessions, and very little stimming- which is easily redirected. If this child were to be assessed by someone who knew what they were talking about and didn’t pass out antipsychotics like candy- he would probably be diagnosed with PDD-NOS, maybe mild autism. But this nice lady- she diagnosed him with moderate autism, ADHD, food allergies, heavy metal toxicity, a fungal infection, and vitamin deficiencies. Wow.
Now, I’ve seen a lot of shoddy autism services in the three years I’ve been working and the five years since my son was diagnosed with autism. I’ve seen centers that copy-pasted names onto other children’s assessments and charged parents thousands of dirhams for 16 pages of ctrl-v.
(Child has severe speech deficit, as he cannot/does not use his, her, and other gender-appropriate language. Yusuf- age 10 months.)
Because I work for a center, I see more than just my own son’s assessment- unlike other parents, who will probably only ever see their own child’s. I have seen assessments from many, many centers- and I know which ones actually provide accurate information about a child’s development and which ones are giving you a binder of fluff. But junk assessments are practically nothing compared to what the lady above has done. Because she has done it over, and over, and over again.
She’s been doing it for at least as long as Khalid has had autism- because we visited her clinic when we were first searching for answers, and HF and I smelled a rat then and never came back. But then, HF and I are both educated, highly-literate people who can- and do- unleash the full power of Google on our important decisions. Many parents don’t know that they’re allowed an opinion, multiple treatments, and the tools to research the hell out of a something before touching it with a ten foot pole.
Every child she sees gets practically the same report. They certainly all get the same recommendations. I’ve never seen her administer a CARS, GARS, ABLLS, VB MAPP, or the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Index. She assigns children an average score without showing their scores for the subdomains- which is like writing the answer to an algebra question without showing your work. No matter how old you are, how many words you know, or how mild your autism is- you’re all hyperactive, moderately autistic, and possibly bipolar little snots, so have some happy pills. Ok, bye!
I met a child who had been under her “treatment” for four years before his parents finally figured it out- that she had wasted four years of his life- drugging a six year old until he was a ten year old- and “treating” him with an unstructured, undocumented “program” of flashcards, scribbling in a binder, and sending him home to come back next week, thanks.
Am I ranting. Yes, I suppose I am.
Have you ever wondered how much money Candy Crush makes? At the moment, it’s $956,114.
That’s nine hundred fifty six thousand, one hundred and fourteen dollars.
A day.
Not a year, not a month- a day.
So $956,114 –a day- is going back into one company. I have to ask- why can’t they make Candy Crush for Syria? Or Candy Crush for Autism? Or Candy Crush for Cancer Research?
I know that Syria, autism, and cancer aren’t Candy Crush’s fault, but can you imagine if the people who made shiny, interesting, and successful things actually did so to the benefit of humanity? And considering the state of humanity at the present- autism services included- can you imagine how much it hurts the world when people act for their own financial gain? I mean really- if your company made $956,114-a day- would you not feel even just a teeny bit morally obliged to do something other than make yourself richer- like I dunno… cure cancer? End world hunger maybe?
My least favorite psychiatrist and Candy Crush have something in common- and I don’t know what to call it yet, but it’s a combination of profiteering and gross negligence. It’s what happens when people think about themselves first. It’s what happens when you’re living for this world alone- and your perspective on “success” doesn’t look past your own mortal lifespan.
Rassa. Frassa.
-end rant-
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Being two and a half is awesome
Musfira comes skipping excitedly into my room:
Musfira: Momma! Iss somefing!
Momma: Yes dear?
Musfira: Somefing inna body went pffft!
(Musfirs grabs her bottom with both hands and grins)
Momma: Yes dear, that’s called gas. You had gas.
Musfira: had gas?
Momma: Yes, you had gas.
Musifra: Gas inna my body?
Momma: Yes dear.
Musfira: Hehe!
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Update: check
Frazzled. That’s a great word. I like it. I will now use it.
I don’t have a housekeeper again.
My sister is leaving for Singapore for neurosurgery and three weeks in hospital in two days.
Work is work. Enough said.
My mother is moving apartments. That means I am helping my mother move apartments.
I have all these thoughts in my head and not enough time or mental wherewithal to extract or organize them.
So this will have to do.
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Tales of Toddler Genius
The Inventor
Musfira asks Momma for a cookie.
Momma gives Musfira a cookie.
Musfira receives the cookie and folds it carefully into a tissue.
Then, she takes her tiny first and begins pounding it into crumbs.
Momma is taken aback.
“Musfira! What are you doing to your cookie?”
Musfira is reassuring.
“Iss okay momma. I making a puzzle. Hee you go!”
Momma accepts puzzle.
Glowing with pride, Momma eats it.
Masha’Allah 🙂
The Stylist
Alhamdulillah, we acquired a lovely new sister in law this weekend as HF’s younger brother got married. Family wedding preparations were a team effort, and Alhamdulillah, everyone did their part to ensure things went smoothly- even Musfira, who took the initiative to do her own hair and makeup with a pair of scissors and a blue marker. And she did it an entire day before the party, making her not only helpful, but also forward thinking.A proper stylist was commissioned to neaten up the asymmetrical bangs Musfira cut for herself, and I followed that with a cleansing baby-oil and rubbing alcohol facial.
The Behavioural Analyst
Musfira likes to play limit-testing games- as toddlers often do- and they follow a pretty simple format. Momma says to do something. Musfira refuses to do it, and she smiles and waits to see what will happen.
One of these more recent games is a jolly round of “I’m not leaving the car.” This game takes two people to play and is usually initiated at the end of a long drive, after a long day, when Momma would much rather be bathing children and putting them to bed. Musfira’s car seat is unbuckled. Momma says let’s go inside. Musfira makes a run for the back of the van- a cramped space that Momma is not a fan of climbing in to chase a wiggly and wilful toddler.
So in a recent round of the game, I unbuckled Musfira and she made a successful break for the back of the minivan. Rather than engage in a Tom & Jerry style chase, I stood outside and said, “Musfira, it’s time to go home. You need to come out of the van now.”
In response to which, she did her best imitation of a stern face and said, “No momma. I stay inna van. One… Two… Three… I hit you!”
Now, I would like to make three things clear:
- Iman does get a count to three, but when three comes, it isn’t with a smack, it’s with a physical prompt. If, by the count of three she’s not walking to the bath I will take her by the arm and walk her there myself.
- I may not be the best mother in the world, but I don’t threaten my children with “I hit you!” anymore than “I will cut you.”
- Musfira is a squeaky two-foot nothing and has all the authoritative presence as a rubber duck.
I was so impressed that she had made, and then used her own assumptions about what would happen when 3 came that my toughest battle was suppressing a laugh.
Besides, in accordance with the cardinal parenting rule of No-No-Prompt, the thing to do when Musfira had disregarded my instructions twice already was to climb in and just take her inside the house, not argue with a grumpy two and a half year old.
The Photographer
At the end of the valima of same said family wedding, Musfira kept trying to steal the limelight from the bride & groom’s photos by dancing on stage with no shoes and only half of her party ensemble on. When I went and physically removed her from the stage, she wailed and pleaded, “Momma wait! I wanna photo!”
I put her down and handed her my phone with the camera open. “Alright then. Go take photos.”
I don’t think she quite caught the grammatical trickery that got her from the front of the camera to behind it, but it worked. She took my phone and stood behind the other amateur photographer. She returned with around 30 fuzzy, poorly composed pictures of the stage- with and without bride and groom- and proudly showed me her work. Alhamdulillah.
The Dreamer
We were driving home on E311 after a long day in Ajman, and the children were riding in tired silence. Suddenly, Musfira sat straight up in her seat and squeaked “Momma! Look! Issa crown! Issa crown!”
“A crown? I don’t see any crown…” I scanned the traffic and tried to figure out what Musfira was getting all excited about.
“A crown! A magic crown! Iss fwying away!”
“Musfira, do you mean the light on top of that car?”
“Notta car!” she angrily insisted, “A crown! Iss going!”
I sped the car up and chased down Musfira’s magic flying crown. I matched its speed and pointed, “Musfira, is that your magic flying crown?”
“Oooh! Iss bootiful! A crown!”
“That’s called a taxi dear.”
“A kaksi! Iss so pretty!”
SubhanAllah 🙂
Dubai kaksi. With a magic flying crown. -
Cue Motivational Music… now.
So HF made me write a list of affirmations. Cheesy, I know- but surprisingly effective. Everyone needs an anchor sometimes, and right now, mine is affirmation number one: I am an overachiever.
I won’t bore you with the rest of the affirmations, but that’s the one I’m leaning on right now because gosh darnit I am having a bit of a challenging week. Our staff have been on stand-by for a move to our exciting new office, and due to bureaucracy and an unsigned MOU, the move has been postponed until AllahuAalim.
My kids are home from school on winter break, and while they’re in the process of rediscovering things like creativity, imagination, and the ability to entertain themselves without maternal intervention every five minutes- I’m not getting much work done.
On top of that, someone, somewhere must have sneezed in my general direction, because now I am incubating an exciting new infection. I’m hoping it decides to stay in my throat instead of bunkering down into my lungs where- historically speaking- it declares the Free Lungs of Bronchitistan to be independent from the oppressive forces of The Body, and a civil war ensues.
(I cough. My lungs try escape. I try to keep them in. It’s very ladylike.)
So yes. I am an overachiever. And you know what I’m going to do with that? I’m going to take my work setback, and the inevitable disappointment to the staff, and the pair of lungs that are trying to fight their way to freedom and I am GOING TO HAVE A GOOD DAY. Or else.
Or else?
Or else I’ll have another cappuccino and another cup of chicken and mushroom soup. And that’s a threat. I’m sitting in a coffee shop right now, trying to derive warmth and can-do attitude from one small, sad cappuccino with steam and sugar. I’m hoping to combine its forces with the cup of soup I just had from Chili’s, because the problem with being sick and a mom is that you’re supposed to make your own soup. And if you don’t feel well enough to make yourself soup, then you don’t get soup.
(Unless you sneak out for soup when no one’s looking, in which case you might end up in the mall, feeling kind of sick and alone but at least well caffeinated with a belly full of warm soup.)
I am not a dementor. I am not a negative, pessimistic person with a mopey sulk on my face that drains positivity and energy from other people. And that’s one of my affirmations too. So even if I am feeling down or negative, I refuse to pull other people down with it. Yes, I may feed my negativity soup, but I will not turn around and feed my negativity to other people. So where was I?
You know how when you’re sitting in a coffee shop alone, and people walk right up to you (because your table is blocking the cream and sugar) and you’re half afraid it’s someone you know, but half hoping that someone will sit down and cheer you up? Yeah- that’s pathetic.
I’m that pathetic right now, but not for long. Within the last year alone, three people have independently referred to me as Mary Poppins, and I’ve been hearing this throughout my adult life. You know what it means to be Mary Poppins? It means you have freakishly unsinkable cheerfulness- not all of the time- but at least for enough time so that people think unsinkable cheerfulness is your default. I am a friggin Mary Poppins. So I’m going to take my pre-bronchitis sulk back home to where there’s wifi- because this coffee shop’s wifi won’t connect- and I’m going to open a can of directorial whoopa$$ on my inbox.
And then, I’m going to bake a chicken.
And then, I’m making soup.
Because I’m an overachiever. Alhamdulillah.
By Abez, The End.
(PS- HF, I love you.)
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Iman’s first blog
GOT THE BIGGEST ICE CREAM
LOVE IMANNote from Momma: Iman typed this blog by herself, and I had no intention of making any changes, but when autocorrect underlined her spelling of “bigist,” she had to ask why the computer was putting red lines under her words. So we had an impromptu spelling lesson for superlatives (big, bigger, biggest) and one other correction was made for the spelling of “crem.”
The inspiration for this blog is that today is the big day- after ten days of nightly antihistamines (‘skusting!) Iman will be going back to the ENT to figure out of the pressure in her ears has normalized. If it hasn’t, she’ll have the world’s biggest three-scoop sundae and perhaps an ear surgery- though not in the same day. If the pressure has normalized, then she’ll just have the world’s biggest three-scoop ice cream. One way or another, it’s going to be a good day, InshaAllah.
Apart from that, the Photoshop work is entirely Iman’s, as is the image choice. And this is Iman’s first blog. By Momma, the end. 🙂
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Got caught
I woke up this morning, and I noticed that Musfira was already awake and singing in her crib. I wanted to use the bathroom before picking her up and activating Mommy Mode for the day, so I stood up quickly when she was looking the other way, starting tiptoeing and then-
“Momma! git back in yo bed. iss not morning time. I haff work to do!”
I turned around and saw Musfira giving me the no-nonsense stare of a toddler that means business, though I’m not pretending to know what business she wanted me to stay in bed for so she could finish. But then, she cracked a smile, and I was off the hook.
Phew!
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Sometimes, I love autism 🙂
Last week or so- HF decided that we were going to stay up super late (or some of us, nap super late) and then go out and watch the Geminid meteor shower with the Dubai Astronomy Club. I thought it was a lovely idea. The grand reveal to the children went something like this:
HF: Guys, Baba has something really special planned for you- tonight, we’re going to go to bed on time, and at ten thirty we’re going to wake up, drive out to the desert, and we’re going to see some meteors!
Iman: Yay!
Khalid: -silence-his eyes suddenly widen in fear-
Me: Oh no Khalid! Not like that! Not like the dinosaurs!
Khalid: -slow, uncertain blink- So, it will miss the earth?
Me: Yes, the meteors will miss the earth.
He must not have been completely convinced, because later when we woke and loaded our drowsy but excited children into the car, Khalid just needed to reconfirm.
Khalid: It’ll miss the earth momma?”
Me: Yes dear, it’ll miss the earth.
SubhanAllah. 🙂
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The Mother of All Mommaisms
So I went into the bathroom yesterday. I picked up a kids toothbrush and I squirted some pink, raspberry flavored, fluoride-free toothpaste on it. Then, I opened my own mouth, popped it in, and got halfway through brushing and humming the toothbrush song before I realized I was on autopilot.
I laughed so hard my face hurt.
It’s been an awesome and funny week. Awesome, and amazing, and exciting because the AutismUAE GoFundMe campaign has made the 10K we needed for license renewal, and people still keep tipping coins into the hat. Funny because my children have been more amusing than usual.
Khalid declared that Musfira could play with his trains only after she learned how to speak English.
I taught the children how to play I-Spy in the car.
Khalid: I spy, with my little eye, something that is that orange car.
-blink blink-
Iman: I spy, with my little eye, something that is yellow!
Musfira: SUN!
(it’s 8 pm)
Iman in patronizing big sister voice: No Musifra, it’s not the sun. Can you see the sun? It’s not in the sky right now.
Khalid: Its light is reflecting off the moon. The sun is in the sky.
Iman: Wha?
Khalid: It’s day time in the Western pole.
Khalid is recently into directions, and so last week when we heard a neighbor’s dog barking, Iman said, “Oh, I hear a dog!” And Khalid said, “Yes, it’s north-west.”
And Musfira, upon opening her eyes after nap-time and seeing Aunt Owlie for the first time after her two weeks in the US said,
Aunty, your cat food is spicy.
It’s also been a bit of a rough week, with all three kids sick with something or the other- Musfira’s nose threw up. Khalid’s had a three-day stomach ache. I took Iman and her ears to see an ENT and he very politely informed us that both of her ears were full of fluid and that they both had negative pressure. I don’t know enough about ears to know what negative pressure is, but by golly, I will google it.
So Iman has to take “‘skusting medicine” for the next ten days to see if the fluid can be cleared up. If not, then we X-ray to see what kind of mechanical problem there could be. I’ve told Iman not to worry, because it’s a win-win. If Iman takes all of her medicine for all ten days, she is going to get the BIGGEST ICE CREAM SUNDAE IN THE WORLD.
Three whole scoops to be precise.
Then, if she has taken all of her medicine but the fluid hasn’t cleared, then she and I will have a special sleepover in the hospital and she will get to pick out a much-coveted, often longed-for, overpriced mylar balloon from the hospital gift shop. Either way, we both get ice-cream, and one of us gets a balloon. Alhamdulillah.
So now it’s time for bed, my day started at six am and involved a two hour meeting, two good friends, and both HF’s and my parents unexpectedly showing up for dinner at the same time, without prior planning. Alhamdulillah, its finally time for bed. Alhamdulillah. 🙂
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Woulda Coulda Shoulda
I shoulda seen it coming. I felt Musfira make a tiny little gagging sound as I held her over my shoulder. After all, I have three children. I know how ominous one tiny *herp?* from a child’s mouth can be. Sometimes that’s the only warning you get before herp turns into full-out hurl.
I could’ve acted faster.
Instead, I waited half a second and, just as I was turning Musfira around to check if she was ok, she threw up- and the motion of being turned created a beautiful, semi-circular arc of vomit that spread outwards from her mouth to the far reaches of the bathroom.
I nodded to myself in acknowledgement of my folly, sour milk dripping from my clothes. She threw up again, and then tearfully turned to me and asked, “momma, my nose throw up?”
Yes dear, it did.
Everything was hosed down. This morning, it was hosed down again. And as I took stock of the dried (and curdled) milk on my shoes, I remembered something funny. A friend of mine once posted a list, “You know you’re a mother when…” and one of those entries went something along the lines of:
You know you’re a mother when catching vomit in your hands is a cause for celebration, not disgust.
Musfira was recently sick, and HF and I were sitting with her in bed trying to soothe her. Suddenly, she herped, and because HF and I were both on guard for these things, he quickly picked her up and turned her face away from the bed, and I leaned forward and held my hands out. Then, she threw up in them.
This is my vomit catching face. It was beautiful- the timing, the execution, the flawless teamwork in orchestrating such an advanced parenting maneuver. No vomit on the bed, the floor, or HF. We would have high-fived if my hands weren’t otherwise occupied.
There’s a little something catching in Dubai right now- when the seasons change and the blistering summer winds turn to the toasty winter winds, germs get all excited about being able to use the sidewalks for once, and they come out to play. So Khalid and Iman both have low-grade fevers, and Iman is complaining of an ear that “goes boom boom” when she swallows or drinks. Musfira’s stomach is upset and her nose threw up. And HF isn’t feeling too well either.
Hey, for a change, I feel fine! True, I did follow my breakfast with a 9am nap that last until 11:30, and maybe that’s why I’m feeling all peppy and energetic- even about being vomited on!
Really though, I’m just so excited by what’s happening with the GoFundMe campaign- one amazing person- just one- added 2,000 dollars. Another one person added 450. I feel almost giddy with excitement and relief. AllahuAkbar. Alhamdulillah.
May Allah bless everyone last person and every last cent donated, anonymously and not- and give me the chance to thank each of them personally in Jannah. Ameen.
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Gofundme, please?
Well, we now officially have a GoFundMe page. JazakAllahuKheiran to Mariam for setting it up. 🙂
I feel nervous and excited. But nervous. But hey, what have I got to lose?
Apart from the not for profit autism intervention service that I’ve invested the last three years of my life on but Hey!
Let the spamming of everyone you know with this link, BEGIN!
http://www.gofundme.com/AutismUAE
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A lovely update 🙂
AssalamuAlaikum all of you really awesome peoples. 🙂
Through the grace and mercy of Allah, which facilitates the kindness and generosity of people like you, things are looking better for AutismUAE. Not only have the comments in my last post reached almost a third of what we need (JazakAllahuKheiran, really) but Muslim Matters has also offered to run a post for AutismUAE too. I don’t know exactly when that will be, but I’ve had a chat with the licensing department and they’ve given us a date for the 20th of December to bring the funds in.So now, I have a little room to breathe, and a lotta reasons to smile. 🙂
Truly, after hardship comes ease. Alhamdulillah 🙂
Everyone who left a comment offering to help should have received an email from myself by now, as well as HF, who’s my pro-bono Director of Finance. He’s the man with the plan (as well as the bank account information!) so if you haven’t heard from him yet, or haven’t received an email from me, please check your spam and try again.
<<<VIRTUAL INTERNET HUGS!>>>>
-Abez
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2.0 is not a fan of ambiguity
To make a long story short, the not-for profit autism intervention service that I founded three years ago is in danger of going under. Partly due to a long string of non-paying parents, and partly due to a chronically ill, depressed, and mentally spazztastic director. That would be me. I’m the chronically ill, currently a lil bit depressed, and often spazztastic director.
*waves*
And I’m going to hold the internet hostage until I can find twenty thousand dirhams to renew my business license next month.
And by hostage, I mean I’m on break from twitter, FB, and heavy blogging until I can keep my ship from going under.
No need to comment, unless you’re one of those rich UAE sheikhs who gives people cars as hostess gifts. Or a person who wants to send me money for some strange reason.
So I’m really sorry, but I’m mentally in so many places that I haven’t the brain cells to be here as well as there.
And I’m sad and scared and praying that Allah saves AutismUAE as well as my sanity. And I’d be grateful if you could too.
JazakAllahuKheiran.
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Hooray!
Everyone has a purpose in this life. Sometimes I think mine may be to give medical staff something funny to talk about over break, MashaAllah.
My doctors are trying to figure out if my POTS, progressive weakness & neuropathy are caused by an underlying auto-immune disorder, which isn’t entirely unheard of. One of the way they’re doing this is through a lip biopsy.
So I went in for a lip biopsy on errr… two days ago, and the procedure was very simple. The surgeon gave me some lidocaine, then he took a pair of scissors and cut a tiny piece from the inside of my mouth. Then I wondered why they called it a lip biopsy if they didn’t take anything from my lip.
Then, he gave me three stitches and said, “All done! We’ll get back to you with the results in about a week!”
So I stood up, said thank you, and walked out.
I made it as far as the reception before I passed out. It was awesome. One second I was like Excuse me, can I pay my bill? and the next minute I was all like Floor, Y U No hold still?
I was standing in line when my ears started ringing and I noticed darkness closing in around the edge of my vision. I managed to hold on to the counter and mumble “I’m going to pass out…”
I don’t know what the receptionist said in reply, because after that was all cold, dark, and miserable. Passing out is only fun in movies. In real life, it’s feels like falling straight down into a cold, dark, nauseating chasm. When I opened my eyes I was in a bed surrounded by confused looking nurses, since they worked in the outpatient clinic, not the ER. My surgeon’s nurse was there too, and when I opened my eyes she said accusingly, “You said you were ok!”
I apologized to her. And to the other nurses. And to my surgeon, as well as the ER doctor when they were able to wheel me down there. I’m not sure why I felt so guilty, but my fuzzy brain felt as though I had sorely inconvenienced them by passing out in the middle of the hallway- like any polite person would have gone and discretely passed out behind a potted plant so as to not disturb anyone.
I called HF, and he hopped into a taxi and brought the entire entourage to pick me up. The kids oohed and aahed at the BP and heart rate machine. Khalid and Iman tested their own blood oxygen levels repeatedly.
HF made small talk with the doctor, who was a distinguished looking African man with curly white hair and sense of humor.
“Your wife says this happens to her sometimes. It’s from the POTS. She’ll be ok.”
“I know,” HF said, shaking his head at me. “She does this just to get my attention.”
“All wives are like this,” the doctor smiled, winking at me.
We went home, had HF’s parents over for dinner, and I guess the kids were put to bed but I wouldn’t know, because I fell asleep before 8pm. And that’s my medical misadventure for this week. The End.
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This is NOT complaining
This is an elaborate status update that you didn’t ask for. But it’s not complaining.
I’ve been cat-sitting for my sister’s cats for a week or so now, and they follow me from room to room mewling expectantly. Whenever I sit down to work they loll all over the keyboard, chew the wires, yowl at me, and play with my mouse. This would be cute if I didn’t have children who already follow me from room to room mewling expectantly.And they loll all over my keyboard.
And they play with my mouse.
I’m behind in work and there’s a mom who’s mad at me. She has every right to be- she asked for an urgent invoice copy (granted, it was an urgent request) and I said I would try to get back to her asap. But Khalid recovering from Sunday’s dental surgery has been a two-day teetering on the verge of meltdown and dental sabotage. If he is not kept distracted, he either rages about the new hardware installed in his mouth, or goes somewhere private to try and pull it out. Were he to succeed, it would be the third time he has removed supposedly “unremovable” dental work- crowns, spacers, bridges… you name it and he’s ripped it out. With the exception of fillings, anything that we pay a dentist to put into Khalid’s mouth is in perpetual danger of being removed.
Oh right- I didn’t update: Khalid broke a tooth on Saturday night. On Sunday morning he had dental surgery under general anaesthesia to remove an abscessed molar, fix the broken canine with a root canal, fill four cavities, and then install a lingual arch to maintain the spacing and position of Khalid’s teeth. Since so many teeth have been removed at one point or another, they’re starting to shift around, and unless we keep them in place, his permanent teeth will be affected.Coming out of anaesthesia is hard enough for adults- I’ve done it many times and it’s always horrible- but for Khalid, it makes him fighting mad. Literally. He actually hit me, and it’s been years since he did. He was raging, kicking, screaming, fighting mad for around an hour, and no one from the clinic staff could so much as look at him without setting him off again. He and I laid in the recovery room together, me holding his hands to the iPhone I wanted him to focus on, and him crying and periodically fighting to reach into his mouth and start pulling on whatever he could find.
We spent the rest of the day just watching him and trying to keep Iman and Musfira from getting too close to Khalid. He was angry and irritable for two days- and today is Wednesday and he went off to school happily Alhamdulillah. He remembers his teeth when he’s eating, but it’s gotten easier to redirect him or distract him. The trick is to NOT talk about teeth. At all. ever.
We used to joke that Khalid’s teeth were worth a used Corolla. MashaAllah, they are now worth a used Lexus. 😉 Our insurance does not cover dental work, and on top of that, Khalid gets his dental work done in an operating theatre under general anaesthesia. So that means we never just pay for fillings or a cleaning or a crown- we pay for the anaesthesiologist, his nurse, the operating theater, and THEN we pay for the dental work.
(And then, Khalid tears it out.)
In parallel, HF is out of the country. He’ll be back by Sunday, and when he returns, I will greet him with our traditional family salutation upon return from travels: Welcome home. I’m burning your passport.I’ve been sick. It’s nothing too terrible- a small bug going around from the change of weather here in the UAE. Musfira had it and threw up. I got it and was nauseated but still functional. I’ve been operating solo for the past week and running on fumes, a whole lot of forgetfulness, and the stubborn determination to keep things afloat just until HF gets home and not a moment longer than that. Then, once I’ve burned his passport, I’m going to collapse into a blubbering heap of housewife and demand cuddles and catering until it all feels better.
Do I sound tired? I am. I’m not complaining though- because even in this there is a reward for patience as well as the opportunity for growth. I have this crazy stress response sometimes- when I’m overwhelmed with work, the kids are whining, and my phone is buzzing with unreturned calls- I get domestic. The last time I got put on steroids to recover from bronchitis it gave me a serious case of the Irrational Angries. I couldn’t talk to my children without snapping at them. Their tiny, sweet hands felt like grabby little claws, and their innocent requests sounded like the shrieking of baby banshees. So what did I do?
I sewed a princess hat.
Really. Iman and Musfira and I went into my office, dusted off my sewing machine, and started sewing. We made a pointy princess hat with a veil and a strap, and it was a pink satin masterpiece. And no one got yelled at and no one died. Alhamdulillah.
Yesterday, when the kid/cat/work combination had me wanting to run away and hide in my bathroom until HF got home, I went and got the hedge clippers, a bucket of water, and some sponges. We went outside where the weather was lovely- and in the cool winter breeze with warm late-afternoon sun, I enjoyed the simple, uncomplicated snip snip snip of the clippers as I trimmed back yards of thorny pink blossoms from our front entrance. The girls giggled and threw soapy water at each other and sometimes even at the car. Khalid chased the cats around inside the house, and I recited Qur’an and gardened until I felt better. And really, I did. Alhamdulillah.So here I am with a mountain of work pending, groceries need to be bought, and some very hugely important excel files need to be created- and here I am writing. Because it makes me feel better.
Also, I’ve decided that if Sleeping Beauty’s castle had been surrounded by bougainvillaea instead of plain ole enchanted thorns, Prince Charming would have given up before making it past the drawbridge. Bougainvillaea is vicious, and the only reason why it has such pretty flowers is to lull you into a state of flowery pink security before tearing your skin off.And now the cats have woken up and discovered this blog, even as I am typing it. See?
Sometime between now and Saturday I need to de-fur the house before HF returns- he’s allergic to cats- and hand them over into the care of another person.
But here’s why this is not complaining. I sent the mom the invoice and I apologized. I didn’t say “I’m so sorry, I’m sick and my son had emergency dental surgery and my sisters cats are bothering me because she’s in the US looking for a neurosurgeon because HER BRAIN IS GOING TO EXPLODE and my husband is out of town and I am chronically ill and we don’t have groceries right now” because you know what? It sounds so… prima donna. I’m sure she has her own problems, and she has her own stresses- her own work and her own son with autism, so what difference does it make if I’m sick or my sister’s sick or my husband’s out of town? It isn’t about oneupmanship. It’s about taking responsibility. So the invoice is late, and I’m sorry.
By Abez, the end.
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The only kind of counterstrike I play
One of the ways that Shaitaan tries to bring me down is to get me to use the internet for wandering into distraction versus addressing any cause of my stress, or Shaitaan-Forbid- actually making dua or something.
So I use his own trick against him and use the internet to bring me closer to Allah. See, I let him think I’m getting online to waste time, and I even get so far as opening youtube, but right when he’s looking the other way, PEW PEW PEW! I fire a round of this at him!
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Life after death before death
“O you who have believed, respond to Allah and to the Messenger when he calls you to that which gives you life.
And know that Allah intervenes between a man and his heart and that to Him you will be gathered.”
The Qur’an, Surah Al Anfal, line 24
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Dua or a Dollar for the Philippines
I have a special relationship with the Philippines- even though I doubt the islands know. When my son was diagnosed with autism and my husband and I were struggling to meet his monthly therapy needs and begging Allah for help, He gave us a special needs teacher and ABA therapist from there whose passion, energy, and relentless dedication firmly paved the way for the amazing future he’s living now.
When I took a leap of faith and founded an early intervention service for children on the autism spectrum- she was a founding member, and together we hired a team of amazing special needs educators- all of whom were from the Philippines.
We’ve travelled there together many times during the past few years, and there she’s been my tour guide as well as an ambassador for the country and the people she loves. She’s taken me to the beautiful, historically significant Fort Santiago, as well as the homely, close streets of the poor Muslim neighbourhood of Quiapo, where she stood guard as I prayed in one of Manila’s few large masjids.
She took me through merchant-filled underpasses in Baclaran, an underwater shark tunnel in Ocean City, and the slums in Manila where one man’s trash is literally, another’s treasure- entire families live in dark, jumbled lean-tos made of discarded billboard, banners, cardboard, and desperation.
She carefully- and protectively- showed me the edge of one cabaret and red-light district, where the “Lovely Ms. Lemon” was slated for performance- her thin, disturbingly young looking body barely dressed and cheaply displayed on a poster outside of the bar.
She’s steered this amazed, insulated, first-world Muslim past the casinos and La Lechon buffets to safety and pleasant surprises at a Mom & Pop halal kitchen in a house in Quiapo. She’s told me when I should lock the car doors and when I can roll down the window and gawk in amazement. She’s showed me a side of the Philippines- however limited- that no five-star tourist would be able to see, and what I’ve learned amazes me.
I’ve learned that the pleasant Filipina receptionist with the policy-mandated smile may actually hold a Master’s degree in Business Administration, but will have taken the job to escape the poor economy, poverty, and endless cycle of debt some families live in back home. She may be living in a shared bedspace, paying half of her salary to rent a single bunk in a room of ten or more, with access to a shared kitchen and a single bathroom where each resident keeps a neatly labeled basket with their own soap, tissues, and toothpaste.
I’ve learned the people leave their children with aunts and grandmothers for years at a time so they can try to cover school fees and housing costs with their meager incomes, working low-level service jobs here in Dubai.
I learned that the Filipino driver who is on call 24 hours a day and hasn’t been home in five years is counting down the days until his daughter gradates from medical school back home. That the housekeeper with a nursing degree is grateful to have a job that wasn’t a scam for a brothel- and that the ladies who share rooms in Karama live in fear of rape, because the petite, polite, and well-polished Filipinas are common targets for intimidation and sexual exploitation.
I learned that to address a Filipina with respect I use Atay, which is the tagalog equivalent of Baji (big sister) and that Atay’s counterpart is Kooya. Our friends are maray and paray. And they make this amazing thing called adobo and it’s beautiful on buttered garlic rice.
Here in the UAE, people from the Philippines fill a majority of jobs in the service industry. All but two of the employees in my local beauty salon are from the Philippines, and yesterday when I entered for a well-needed foot-scrub, the mood seemed markedly less cheerful than usual. Instead of being greeted with the usual “Hello Madame,” I was quietly shown to a comfortable chair where Jane- who has been working there for the past five years, was quietly filling a basin with soap and fragrant bath salts.
She wordlessly took my feet and began washing them, and as she worked her hands over my bubble, lavender-scented feet, I couldn’t help but stare. Her face was… pained.
After a few moments I carefully ventured, “There’s a terrible typhoon in the Philippines right now.”
“Yes ma’am, a superstorm.” She replied flatly, now taking one of my feet in her lap and preparing to pumice it.
“I was getting ready to travel there again, I do hope everything there is alright.”
She scrubbed for a few more moments and then surprised me.
“My parents are very old- 74 and 75. They stay with my niece, who’s 9. They’re ok, but the water- it was up to here.” She lifted up the hand with the pumice stone to her eyes. “My family is from a western province. The typhoon is in the south.”
“I’m glad they’re ok.”
Another employee- who went home to deliver a baby just a few months ago, walked through quietly on her way to another part of the salon. Jane gestured to her subtly.
“Atay is not ok. Her family is from Samar. She can’t reach them.”
Atay headed back through the pedicure room, her face flat. I wondered where her baby was. I bet she was wondering too.
I’ve never had a pedicure that made me cry before. I think Jane could probably say the same. She scrubbed away, her eyes welling with tears that she wiped away with the back of her hand before they could spill over.
“It’s hard,” she said quietly. “You save and save small small amounts. And then your house is gone- it’s destroyed.”
Typhoon Haiyan was three times stronger than Hurricane Katrina, and in some areas of the Philippines, people were still living in tents- refugees from last month’s major earthquake. 10,000 people are estimated to have died in one region alone- and as aid agencies are struggling to respond, debris clogs the streets and bodies float in the waterways.Allah sent Islam as a mercy to mankind, and Muslims are instructed to have mercy- not only for other Muslims, but for all of mankind.
There are an armload of places and worthy causes that need help right now, and trying to put the Philippines in some sort of tragedy competition is not the point. Shaitaan would like you to believe that you can only help one people (Muslim vs. Non), or one place (Syria vs. Palestine) at a time. The truth is though, there’s no limit to how many people, how many times, or in how many places you can help. However much you help, Allah will reward you. However much Allah rewards you, your sins will be erased and your rank will be raised in the Aakhira.
Whether you help with a dollar or a dua, please help.
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Dear Not a Loser…
“Asalaamualaikum please don’t think dat i am belittling your problems but i want to kill myself but i cant as it is prohibited i feel i am accumulating sins day by day isn’t it better for me to die i am not satisfied with my life i don’t want to do engineering but for my parents sake i have to and i am not able to observe completely rules of hijab in the college i wanno cry and shriek dat i cant carry on anymore with this life which i am almost sure will lead me to hell. -Loser”
AssalamuAlaikum Sister, please note that I refuse to call you a Loser. 🙂 Now bear with me as I go off on a bit of a tangent.
Shaitaan is possibly millions of years old and pretty damn sneaky. His goal, at the end of the day, is to get as many of us into hell with him as possible, and one of the ways that he does this is using the myth of what I call “Muslim Perfection.”
The idea is pretty simple. Shaitaan says:
Do it all perfectly or just stop, because you’re embarrassing yourself.
A person as horrible as you are has no chance of getting into Jannah.
In fact, just kill yourself now. At least it will be over sooner.
Al-imām Sufyaan ath-Thawri (161 H) struggled for twenty years to enjoy night salah- but he kept it up until he did. For twenty years. His message is straightforward and actually very insidious. People all over the world actually give up trying to be better Muslims because they fall short of their own expectations for how effortless, euphoric, and impeccable their Islam should be. Shaitaan wants you to believe that there are naturally religious people, and then there’s everybody else. And the reason why you are having a hard time is because you aren’t one of the beautiful people.
Some people he tricks, others- like Imam Sufyaan ath-Thawri- saw through this cheap trick and insisted on praying at night for twenty years even though he wasn’t “feeling it.”
Imagine if, one day- he had just thrown his hands up and said “You know what? I’m not cut out for this, I’ve been praying for twenty years and I’ve yet to find this whole peace and contentment with my salah. What’s the point. I’m never going to get it right…”
Shaitaan is trying to convince you that because your Islam is less than perfect, you’re a failure who should give up already. In reality, everyone is a sinner and everyone struggles. The best people aren’t those who sin, but those whose sins cause them to try even harder and draw even closer to Allah next time. For some people, major sins can be major set-backs. For others, they are life-changing events that mark the end of heedlessness and the beginning of seeking Allah’s pleasure.
Every Muslim is a combination of successes and failures when it comes to their religious practice. So as a sinner, you’re in great company! Everyone, everywhere, accumulates sin on a daily basis, and if everyone like you just killed themselves, we’d all be dead. 🙂 Join the club sister. We’re over 6 billion strong!
O My servants, you sin by night and by day, and I forgive all sins, so seek forgiveness of Me and I shall forgive you.
-Excerpt from Hadith Qudsi, full hadith here.
Shaitaan wants you to think that the passing grade for this test is 100% and failure is everything else. But if you believe him, then you’re buying into an insult to Allah. How? Allah is The Most Merciful, Most Forgiving- Most Loving, Most Gracious, Most Kind- He alone has attained perfection and as The All-Knowing, He knows how and what we’re made of- so by what crazy logic would He mercilessly penalize us for not reaching a standard that He would best know that we could never attain?
Shaitaan might add at this point: well, ok, Allah is the Best. But you can’t think that your sorry butt will get into Jannah with *that* old sack of a soul. Have you seen the state of your nafs? Brother, it is bad.
If you think you’re too bad for Allah to forgive, then you’re grossly underestimating Allah’s capacity for forgiveness. You’re implying that your capacity to sin is even greater than Allah’s capacity to forgive. Please, don’t insult God. They don’t call Him Al-Rahman for nothing.
On the authority of Anas (may Allah be pleased with him), who said:I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) say: Allah the Almighty said:O son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done, and I shall not mind. O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of the sky and were you then to ask forgiveness of Me, I would forgive you. O son of Adam, were you to come to Me with sins nearly as great as the earth and were you then to face Me, ascribing no partner to Me, I would bring you forgiveness nearly as great at it.Related by at-Tirmidhi (also by Ahmad ibn Hanbal). Its chain of authorities is sound.
Whenever I read that Hadith, it puts a certain picture in my head, and in my primitive photoshop imagination, it looks like this:
Repentance for a mountain of sins is equal to a mountain of blessings. So, the greater the sin you’ve committed, the greater the reward for seeking forgiveness. Knowing that this is how Allah works helps us appreciate how truly generous Allah is in His forgiveness- instead of seeking forgiveness on a level -10 sin and only being returned to a clean slate with 0, we seek forgiveness on a level -10 and in response are given a +10 in its place. AllahuAkbar.So yes, Shaitaan wants you to forget that Allah is the Greatest- even in His capacity to forgive those who sincerely ask it. He wants you to think that you only have two choices; perfection or failure, and since perfection ain’t gonna happen, what option does Shaitaan leave you? Killing yourself and getting it over with already. But, there’s a third option that Shaitaan doesn’t want you to forget about it:
Between perfection and failure lies your only real choice: Fight.
Fight shaitaan’s insistence upon your failure, fight your own soul’s inclination to sin, fight your own weaknesses and no matter how hard you’ve been hit or how long you’ve been laying on the ground- get up and keep fighting. Fight shaitaan as hard as he’s fighting you, as long as he’s fighting you, and don’t stop fighting him until the Angel of Death draws your soul gently away from your body and into the safety of your grave, spacious and fragrant with the winds of Jannah, where you can finally relax a little, reassured and kept company by your good deeds until Allah raises you on Qiyama.
Just because your heart is aching right now, and you’re locked in the seemingly endless cycle of sin, regret, and self-reproach doesn’t mean you’re a lost cause. It’s actually good news, and here’s why. The human heart (or soul, or nafs) has three settings according to the Qur’an.
The Default Setting: Nafs al-Amarra bis Su’
The lowest level is the Nafs al-Amarra bis Su’ or the soul that is inclined to evil, and a majority of humankind lives in this guiltless, no-regrets, live for the moment mode. This seems to be the default setting for the modern nafs as well as most pop music.
And I do not free myself from blame. Indeed the human self is inclined to evil, except when my Lord bestows His Mercy (upon whom He wills). Indeed my Lord is Forgiving, Merciful.” (Surah Yusuf: 53)Knowing that it’s possible to have varying levels of soundness to your heart/nafs- Muslims don’t rely on the soundness of their heart to provide a compass to morality. It is not your heart’s job to point you towards what’s right, it only points you towards what it wants. So in a sense, you don’t follow your heart as much as your heart follows you.
Have you seen the one who takes as god his own desire? Then would you be responsible for him? Surah Al Furqan: 43
The Medium Setting: Nafs al-Lawwama
“I do call to witness the Resurrection Day. And I do call to witness the self-reproaching Soul.” Surah Al-Qiyamah: 1-2
This is a soul that battles with its desires, that commits sin and then reproaches itself and tries harder next time. It has awareness of its shortcomings, but despite its imperfections, it hasn’t given up. Your guilt and self-reproach about the shortcomings in your Islamic practice are evidence of having made progress on your spiritual journey. The bad news is though, is that Shaitaan is trying to knock you down a notch so that instead of trying harder, you just stop trying altogether- whether because you’ve killed yourself, or because you’ve decided that you’re a hypocrite and you’ve written off as Muslim.
Alhamdulillah though, Allah has good news for the Reproaching Soul.
“And hasten to forgiveness from your Lord and a garden as wide as the heavens and earth, prepared for the righteous- Who spend [in the cause of Allah ] during ease and hardship and who restrain anger and who pardon the people – and Allah loves the doers of good; And those who, when they commit an immorality or wrong themselves [by transgression], remember Allah and seek forgiveness for their sins – and who can forgive sins except Allah ? – and [who] do not persist in what they have done while they know.” Qur’an 3:133-135
The very fact that you are aware of your shortcomings, even pained by them- is reassuring proof that you have a Nafs al-Lawwama. If you didn’t care, didn’t want to care, and didn’t even want to hear about why you should try to give a care- well, that would be worse. Sure, you’d probably be happier and more “at peace with your self,” as many modern proponents of self-worship would say, but you’d actually be wallowing in heedlessness.
The Highest setting: Nafs al-Mutma’inna
“O you satisfied soul. Return to your Lord pleased with yourself and pleasing to Him. Enter among My servants. And enter My paradise.” (Surah Al-Fajr: 27-30)
You might not be here yet, but that’s ok. You can still strive to accomplish this. The Contented Soul, or the Satisfied Soul, is the highest setting for your heart. It is a place of happiness, peace, acceptance, and sweetness of faith. It takes hard work to get there, and Allah has good tidings for the Contented Soul but get this- not even the Contented Soul is a perfect soul. It’s just a very happy one, and very close to Allah.
So, in a nutshell:
- No one is perfect except Allah
- You’re not the only one accumulating sin every day that you’re alive
- The difference between a good Muslim and a bad Muslim is not that one sins and one doesn’t- it’s that one seeks forgiveness & tries harder, and one doesn’t.
- Shaitaan’s the one trying to trick you into thinking you’re a failure
- Believing him is the only way to lose
- Fighting him is the only way to win
There’s one more thing that we need to remind you of:
On no soul does Allah place a burden greater than it can bear.
That means that this situation- where you’re stuck in a major you don’t like, being prevented from doing hijab, and being teased by Shaitaan that nothing you do will ever be good enough to get you into Jannah- you can overcome this. You can succeed. You can find a way- either out or through- that is pleasing to Allah and perhaps even terribly frustrating to Shaitaan.There is nothing coming that you can’t handle, not because you’re great, but because Allah is the Greatest. He knows what you’re capable of, and He promised your challenges would never exceed your strengths. Allah sets us up for growth, not failure. And Allah never, ever breaks His promises.
Shaitaan, on the other hand, has been lying to you. He’s saying that anyone who’s struggling with deen shouldn’t even bother to try, whereas Allah gives double the normal reward to those who have difficulty reading Qu’ran. The Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him said “The magnitude of the reward goes along with the magnitude of the affliction.” (Tirmidhi)
The more you’re afflicted now- whether it be with stress, illness, financial difficulties, emotional turmoil- the more you will be rewarded, and the fact that you’re struggling right now isn’t a sign that you should just give up and kill yourself, it’s an invitation from Allah to come closer to Him.
May Allah make it easy for you to recognise and spiritually drop-kick the suggestions of Shaitaan, even when they come disguised in the form of avoiding hell. May Allah make His religion easy for you, and increase you in faith, and surround you with people who lift you up and help you draw nearer to Allah is this world and the next. Ameen.
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Sibling Rivalry
Once upon a time, my sister Owl used to blog, so if I needed to share an update about her, I could just link her post. However, it’s been a while since she has, and I think her blog may no longer be public access, so I just have to update here.
Owlie-bird has a brain aneurysm.
I know, I had the same reaction. I was like “How rude! Being the sickie is my job!” We’ve always been competitive, and now she’s just upped the game on me.
She’s copying me, I just know it. She’s been mimicking most of the same weird symptoms and ailments I’ve had over the years- I have scoliosis, she has scoliosis. I have fibromyalgia, she has fibromyalgia- and it’s quite likely that she’ll also receive a diagnosis for the same set of syndromes that I’ve got as well- POTS and Ehlers Danlos.
The brain aneurysm may be linked to vascular-type Ehlers Danlos sydrome, and although I’m tempted to try to take my title of Reigning Sickie back, I have no intention of developing an aneurysm for it. Sudden death isn’t my style. I’m more of the slow & steady tortoise type, and here she is being all impetuous hare.
She’s weighing surgical intervention options, and duas are greatly appreciated.
Who knows, maybe we’re racing for Jannah. May the best sickie win.
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My back hurts. Buy it a cupcake?
Aaaaaand now that I’m out I can’t go back in again, and overwhelmingly I am getting asked one question from the people who know me in real life:
How come I didn’t know you were sick?!
Well, it’s not really a talking point for most of my day.
Welcome to my office, I have chronic disease!
Nice day isn’t it? Yes, especially for tachycardia!
Would you like some coffee? It won’t make you sick. Unlike me, who’s totally sick. And maybe even DYING! Cream and sugar?
Unless you’re my cardiologist, neurologist, endocrinologist, orthopedic surgeon or physiotherapist, there’s a good chance that I have no reason to keep you actively and intricately informed of how I’m feeling.The exception to this is my husband, who hears way more about how I’m feeling than he probably ever wanted to. (My toes hurt! They want a cookie!)
You may also be the victim of limited observational data- you only see me when I’m fit to be seen. You don’t see me sleeping off pain for hours at home. You see me when I’m feeling good, because if I wasn’t feeling good then you wouldn’t be seeing me.
I don’t define myself by my illness. I have more in my life going for me than being sick. I have work, kids, and a charming, obnoxious, supportive husband. I have places to go, things to do, and topics of conversation other than chronic illness- like Khalid, who yesterday said to me, “Momma, are babies toothless mammals?”
“Yes, I suppose they are,” I tentatively replied.
“But I was born with teeth,” Khalid said.
“No dear, you weren’t. You didn’t have any teeth when you were born either.”
He seemed disappointed. Poor toothless mammal.
To talk exclusively, or even primarily about how sick I feel for the day would not only make me a total downer to hang out with, it would also be self-centeredly depressing. I deal with pain all day, the last thing I want to do is talk about it all the time too. I rather enjoy having normal friendships, normal conversations, and normal people around me who talk about normal things.
My sickness is a bit like the news- if it’s relevant or urgent you might want to know. But if you leave it running in the background then people just tend to tune it out. That doesn’t mean I’m not willing to talk about it, provided there’s something you’d like to know and it adds value to your day somehow.
So yes, you may have known me for the past three or four years and I may never have mentioned that I’m sick, but I humbly hope there is more to me than just my status as a chronically ill person, and you’ll still be my friend if I talk about things other than chronic pain and my favorite new heart medication.
Which is procoralan.
By Abez, the end.
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Alhamdulillah! I’ve been upgraded!
There aren’t enough characters in the title limit to fully express how many Alhamdulillahs I would like to put in the title, so I have to settle for one.
So, Alhamdulillah, my neurologist in Chicago (who I visit this last week) has helped me clarify what exactly’s going on with my body. To make a long story short, I do have muscle atrophy, but Alhamdulillah- it’s not from unspecified myopathy- it’s from my brain!
Yes, this is actually a better prognosis than before. See, before I was told that my muscles were atrophying because there was an unknown problem with my muscles.
Now, it turns out that my muscles are atrophying because my brain is not communicating with them properly, and the reason for this is because I have:
- Autonomic Dysfunction, specifically Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome
- Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome
I’ve leave you to the googles to figure it out. Neither are curable, both can be severely debilitating but guess what- at least they’re both known disorders! And, either one of which can be life-threatening due to complications, but neither are inevitably terminal in and of themselves! Alhamdulillah.
Did I say Alhamdulillah already? Alhamdulillah.
To be frank, this doesn’t change much in terms of me maybe or maybe not dying. Just in case you were hoping I’d be checking out soon and leaving my impressive bottle cap collection up for dibs. Or, if you were hoping I’d be magically cured. Having been to the neurology specialist in the US and been extensively poked, prodded, tested, and even strapped to a table that tilted like a carnival ride, I have the same medical issues that I left with, but with one important distinction. I’ve been upgraded from unknown and possibly terminal, to just chronic and possibly life threatening.
Alhamdulillah. 🙂
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By the steeds, choo choo!
Autism has its pros and cons- and boy does it ever have its cons- but SubhanAllah, it really has its pros. Khalid doesn’t just like dinosaurs, he likes reading about them, and he doesn’t just read stories, he reads encyclopedias. And he’s not just reading encyclopedias, he is memorizing them- word for word, page by page, and he’s on his fourth dinosaur encyclopedia now.
Roar. If you ask him about the Camarasaurus, he won’t just tell you it had four legs and went roar. It was a four legged herbivore with a bony crest on its head, and it was between 15 and 23 meters long. It had hollow vertebrae and was one of the larger sauropods.
And it went roar.
And here’s a picture.
And it was also known as the morosaurus.
So when Khalid starts getting interested in something, he doesn’t just dip his feet into the water, he dives in-head first, and forgets that there are any other things in the world that could ever be as interesting. When he was into maps, he would wake up in the morning and read the Dubai Street Atlas. He would carry it to and from school, and often kept mini-maps in his backpack. To this day, he can still give me road directions off the top of his head, and will often point out when I’m taking a wrong exit. MashaAllah, he doesn’t need a GPS. He is a GPS.
He is also a walking dinosaur encyclopedia, and now, InshaAllah, I hope he’ll become a walking Qur’an. Khalid immersed himself in the waters of Qur’an on the iPhone shortly after trains, and slightly before dinosaurs. He memorized a good half of Juz ‘Amma on his own and without us really knowing. We didn’t realize how many surahs he knew until we heard him driving trains up and down the hallway and reciting to himself, “Wal ‘adiyati dhub-haa! Fal moori’yaati qad-haa, Fal mughiraati sub-haa!”
Even now he surprises us- the other day I was in the kitchen cooking and randomly reciting Qur’an, and when I paused to make a distinction between the black pepper and the coriander powder in my hands- he called out the next verse for me while passing up the hall. It was in Surah An-Nabaa, which he already knew, MashaAllah, MashaAllah, MashaAllah.
And now, Alhamdulillah- with me sitting halfway across the world in Chicago and HF managing all three kids with the help of his parents, Khalid and Iman have started Qur’an class, and I am tremendously excited about what will be coming next. Of course, Alhamdulillah, I’m excited for Iman too- she’s a bright little star and she can carry a tune and stay on pitch like nobody’s business. But it’s Khalid- my little memorization machine, that I’m especially excited about. I could actually, really, InshaAllah, possibly even maybe become the mother of a haafiz.
It was narrated from Ali ibn Abu Talib (May Allah Be Pleased With Him) that the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him) said : “If anyone recites the Qur’an, learns it by heart, declares what is lawful in it to be lawful and what is unlawful in it to be unlawful, Allah will bring him into Paradise and make him the intercessor for ten of his family all of whom have deserved Hell.” [Al-Tirmidhi 653]
I know we’re still a long way off from memorizing the entire Qur’an, but I’m excited. For Khalid, this could be an amazing use of his autism pros (laser-like focus, amazing memorization) and for me, this could be the next cool goal in my legacy project. Did I forget to capitalize that? My Legacy. There. If Khalid memorizes the Qur’an and keeps the halal halal and the haram haram, he can give his lil ole momma a leg up into Jannah, InshaAllah.
So duas would be nice, but don’t limit them to Khalid only. Include Iman in them too, because the only thing better than one righteous hafiz is two. 😉
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Home Thoughts from Heathrow
Oh, to be in EnglandNow that April’s there,And whoever wakes in EnglandSees, some morning, unaware,That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheafRound the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,While the chaffinch sings on the orchard boughIn England—now!-Robert BrowningIt was a strange angle for my head to be tilted at, cocked severely to the right and resting uneasily against the cabin window. I woke up because I smelled eggs. The passenger to my left was still asleep. She was a designer for a major retailer. She said you could put Hello Kitty on a pink garbage bag and it would sell. She’s right.
She fell asleep immediately after the flight took off. It was 2am Dubai time, and by my hasty calculations, I had to stay awake for only two and a half more hours before it would be time for Fajr, and then I could sleep. Boy was I wrong. And now I’m surrounded by old ladies.
They’re in varying degrees of old and in need of wheelchair assistance, and we’re all waiting in the special assistance lounge of Heathrow Airport. The western women, invariably, have short white hair, glasses, and cardigans. The Asian ladies have their little old heads covered. The African ladies are seated together in a sparkly, vibrantly-colored group. And then there’s me- a 33 year old “white” woman in a black abaya and a flowery purple scarf. They’re eyeing me curiously.
My calculations were totally off. I did wudu and took a seat, waiting for my two and a half hours to pass before I could pray and get some sleep. I turned on my tiny TV and watched Monsters University. The movie finished and I looked out the window. It was still dark, and in the cloudless sky somewhere over the Arabian peninsula, the big-dipper sparkled. Bright, close, and undimmed by light pollution, it was a beautifully clear reminder of nights outside of my grandmother’s remote house in southern Indiana.
She’s eighty-eight now, and 115 pounds. She is afraid of climbing stairs because the last time she lost her balance she fractured her hip. I haven’t seen her for six years, and it’s frustrating to me that I should be coming so close- all the way to Chicago- only to still be so far. She’s living in the warm, safe care of my aunt in Arizona, hundreds of miles and dollars out of my budget.
My health insurance doesn’t cover the US, so this visit to Chicago to see a neurology specialist will be thousands of dollars out of pocket. Allah is the Best of Providers.
He is also the Best of Planners. Right when my hands starting shaking, and my head started feeling heavier than usual, and HF and I started wondering where the money to fly out and see a doctor would come from- it came. Allah caused an old, nearly forgotten debt to be repaid, and that’s where this trip is from: Allah.
There are a few old men here too, but most of them are just accompanying their wives. There’s even a wheelchair assistant- an employee of Heathrow Airport- that looks like he should be the one being pushed. I wonder how old he is, and if he’s the one who pushes me to the terminal, will he wonder why someone half his age isn’t just walking there?
I catch people looking at me curiously, and the 2.0 in me smiles back, encouraging them to approach. No one has so far, and my guess is that they think I’m an Arab. So the white women keep a distance, the Pakistani women don’t include me in the polite small-talk, and the one real Arab here asked me a question in Arabic earlier that I couldn’t respond to. Sorry, I’m a fake.
Well, I’m not actually. I’m a genuinely tired, shaky, and mobility-challenged person, but I tend to be in denial sometimes, and it doesn’t help that I still look pretty good.
I assume I look pretty good, but my eyes are tired, my scarf feels sideways, and I only managed to sleep for an hour before I was woken by the smell of food and the clatter of the air-crew preparing breakfast in the airplane’s galley. I opened my eyes and turned my severely cocked head to see that the black, star-strewn sky was bordered with a bright-red glow that hinted at a sharp golden line at the very edge of the horizon. It was finally Fajr, six hours into the flight and four hours later than I had planned for.I did wudu four times for that one prayer. After the first movie finished I stretched, waited, stared out of the window, my sleep-deprived brain searching for a reason why it was still dark. It came up with the original Xcom UFO, where your job was the save the world from an alien invasion. The same world turned before you in VGA-glorious rotation on its axis, turning from night to day and night again. I knew I was flying from the right side of the world to the left, but I couldn’t remember whether I would be flying with the light or flying against it.
I turned on another cartoon. Epic. It wasn’t Epic. It was a mis-labeled attempt to pass 104 more minutes waiting and wondering why it was still dark. I got up for a stretch. I used the bathroom. I did wudu again.
The sink was tiny. The taps were tiny. But the water pressure was tremendous- and the tiny stream of water was blasted into a spray that wet everything in the bathroom except my hands. I did wudu as best as I could, washing my hands, mouth, face, arms, abaya, purse and shoes. Then I did my best to paper-towel things dry before going back to my seat to wait again for Fajr.
I wish my kids were here. When the plane began to descend over London, there was no one for me to share the wonder with. We were preparing to land over a solid terrain composed entirely of clouds, except for where clusters of tall building had broken through, their lights glittering and flashing above a grey ocean. It was the famous London fog, and when the plane began slowing to hit the runway, it was doing so in zero visibility. The sky above the fog was crystal-clear, but within the fog it was non-existent. We had no sky. From where I sat, the plane barely even had wings.
I want to remember these things so I can tell Khalid, Iman and Musfira about them. There were stars- distant white diamonds in a perfectly black sky- no clouds, no lights, no other planes. Then there were the cities, their densely packed lights looking like embers on the dark background of Iraq. I checked the map, that was Iraq.
I was so grateful to be awake. I was afraid that I would miss Fajr, and while I have missed hundreds of Fajr prayers before, most of them were before my hands started to shake. Once laziness made my eyelids heavy, but urgency has made them light and quick to open for prayers now. I was so relieved to have been woken up that I was actually happy to get up and do wudu again- fourth time the charm.
I happily prayed and then turned to watch the horizon glow, just waiting to watch the sun rise.
Except it didn’t rise, becase we were flying away from the dawn and if we had been going any faster it would never have caught up. We would have flown endlessly around the world being chased by day, hiding in perpetual dark, sharing aisles and armrests but refusing each other identities or eye contact until the fuel ran out and the plane crashed and we all died and went back to Allah where we came from.
Iman and I have made a pact- that if she cannot find me, she will come looking for me in Jannah. But if I cannot find her, I will come looking for her in Jannah. It’s a deal. Khalid and I have a deal as well, but it involves him making sure that the hamster has food and water, and he gets dinosaur and train pajamas from the US. Also, Iman wants a Chinese parasol.
I’m now going to be moved from the wheelchair lounge to the boarding gate, and the staff member who came looking for his “disabled” passenger looked at me and said, “Oh, Miss Abez? We have a young lady here. Practically a girl… your limousine is here.”
So it’s time for me to go now. But here I am, sitting halfway across the world, looking forward to returning home before arriving at my destination.
And Allah is the Best of Planners.
And after April, when May follows,And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedgeLeans to the field and scatters on the cloverBlossoms and dewdrops—at the bent spray’s edge—That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,Lest you should think he never could recaptureThe first fine careless rapture!And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,All will be gay when noontide wakes anewThe buttercups, the little children’s dower—Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower! -
Heartachingly Sweet
Iman: Momma, your hands are shaking!
Me: Yes, they do that sometimes dear.
Iman: I’ll stop it for you!
:holds my hand:
That’s my girl.
