Where is Humanity?

The events which took place in a village near Sialkot moved me to tears of frustration and anger. Nowadays the newspapers are full of violence all over the world. Murder, mayhem, hunger, rape and hate.

Today while praying I just felt soo hopeless and helpless and I asked Allah where are you? why are you not helping the helpless and I screamed at him to tell me where he was and than I heard a voice in my heart which said to me. It was not his duty to help and protect us, it was our own duty to protect the defenseless. It was our duty to do help the helpless and the feeble and the weak.

Yes, we all question what can we do in such reckless times, when Humanity seems to have died. I guess the answer is that yes we cannot change the world but we can change our selves give a little bit of our time and energy to do good. Every small thing helps. Mothers can raise their kids to be better more thoughtful individuals. WE can volunteer our time with organizations if not money. Just pull along and do a little bit, because every little bit helps

Where is our Humanity?

A ricochet Bullet at the corner

Pierced through is ribs,

went through the mothers heart.

Blood splewed everywhere

They came in droves

to break their bones,

Broken limbs,

fractured skulls

Brains frying on the side walk

She was left looking at their pictures flashing on the screen,

What was she to do to protect her babies...

Killing, Murder, blood...

Is this the solution ?

Where is our humanity?

In such reckless times

Death seems like a bliss.

Through the eyes of my child

I see a face, it has a mask on it and they are all looking at me. I am wrapped in something warm and fuzzy. It feels almost like the belly lodge and I am placed in the arms of some one. They are soft and kind and feel very much like what I was used to. I hear her voice, the voice I have been hearing for the last so many months and I can smell the same familiar smell. I feel safe, this is my safe haven.

There are so many people staring down at me, oh why do they have to make such weird faces and why do they talk in this funny language. I can understand adult talk perfectly well. I try and tell them to talk properly using their big words but oh what is this I feel an intense pressure and pain in my belly so I start to cry and soon there is a wet sensation and it all feels better. A disapproving face hovers on top of my crib now, it is the nurse she is telling mommy that I have wet my diaper and we need to change me, oh not again. I feel horribly cold, so I cry some more.

Now I am hungry give me food, oh you mean mean people give me food I yell and scream and flail the things attached to me, what are these long things and where is my belly lodge bed, I do not feel the walls around me any more. They laugh that I sleep like a super man well I want my bed back you guys. I hate this crib, I am all alone in it no warmth no safety;oho everything is new and different from what I am used to. Pick me up pick me up waaaah waaaaaah. Finally a light turns on, I see her face hovering over my crib she is smiling. I smile back, she hugs me tight...... I feel safe now. Mommy please keep me safe protect me from the mean mean monsters.

Yes my baby that is a mothers job; protection........

protection of my gift from god.

Halal =sustainability

My younger sister is a tree hugger, atleast that is what i call her. She did her studies in economics with a special interest in sustainable development. She recently got a job and in the interview they had asked her why she was interested in working in sustainable development and my sister who in outward appearance does not come across as a religious person told the interviewer because that is what her religion taught her to do. I had asked my sister why she had said that and she said, well apa Islam is all about sustainability, we are encouraged to live a life of service to others where we are good to the environment and treat all creatures humanely. I thought wow, she is so right i never did look at it quite this way before; yet when I think about it, it is true. We are told not to beat work animals and to treat them kindly, feed them well and give them plenty of rest and not over work them. When it comes to crops and trees we are told not to burn, cut or destroy crops even in times of warfare. When it comes to eating animals there are strict guidelines on how to kill them and not only how to kill them but also how to raise them.

These last few days my friends and I have been having discussions regarding method of Halal and all my research led me to a lot of information regarding how the throat of the animal must be cut, how the blood be drained how things are to be cleaned prior to the killing and after the killing. What verses of the Quran are to be recited etc. However, the things that really piqued my interest was that there is also strict guidelines on how to raise the animal. It must be raised on good vegetarian diet, not be fed ground animal bits. It must be allowed to roam free and it must be treated with kindness and calmed down before being killed. It also got me to thinking that although Islam allows us to eat meat it does not tell us to just eat meat or to eat meat mostly. Cause when we study the life of the prophet and examine his diet we find it to be quite simple and again following organic and sustainable practices. His sustenance was mostly dates, water and sorgham (jowar) flour. He did eat meat occasionally but even than liked to share it with other people, it is a good practice to send some meat curry to your neighbor when it is cooked at home. So here is my beef with whole halal/haram debate. First of all halal is a way of life which extends beyond how we cut and kill our meat. It is also about how we treat them prior to killing them. Halal is also not just about what we eat but also about how we live our lives, it is about conservation about all else. Islam discourages needless consumerism by encouraging us to spend our time and energy wisely in service to other creatures and in spending time gaining knowledge and our expertise in other areas of life. It is about living passionately and in harmony with out environment while inflicting minimum damage to it.

My sister was right Halal is synonymous with sustainability and conservation. It is about leaving our planet a little better than how we found it, and if we cannot leave it better; lets try and not leave it in a worse off state.

You should have married a computer

My husband started telling me he wanted to buy a computer the second day of our married life. Oh wait, it was the first day. I was not surprised, since he is a programmer and well I would look at him in quiet amusement barely containing my adoration of this 6 ft "galoot"(I mean this with sincerest affections hubby dear). Thinking its only time before he ll be giving me his 100 percent attention hanging on my every word. Oh, how naive I was.

Well, he bought a lap top and after barely a week with that machine he wanted to buy yet another computer and the quest for the perfect 'puter began. I told him hey, when you buy me a house you can buy your self a computer. The day the deal for the house finalized the first of the many number of puter boxes showed at our door step. My husband came home barely containing his excitement. Like a child on Eid day waiting for eidi he could barely wait to get the box open and examine the motherboard. The mother to the bane in my life. Than more boxes arrived, a tickle soon became a stream ending with a deluge in the form of an HDMI monitor screen.

The next few days were spent among a maze of boxes while the machine was being put together. First it had just been the laptop which was the center of his life. He d come home,barely enter the door and start on the laptop. There I was regaling him with the triumphs of my day which he would half listen to as he read news from all across the world. The final straw came in the form of Stephen Colbert and John Stewart; with food was a daily dose of the daily show. I have asked him on many occasions why he married me. I think if we were in more technologically advanced times and hot hot robots in black leather suits were actually around, girls like me would never have a chance at snagging a husband. He would have married a computer. The other day a friend of mine and I were lamenting this very fact, of how our husbands spend their whole day in front of this terrible tube, come home and plank themselves right in front of them. We dubbed them the other woman in their lives to which her husband said no, she is not the other woman, you are!

Well I am woman enough to admit that he is right, the terrible tube did come into my husbands life waaay before me. He was swimming in its codes long before I arrived on the horizon and writing the code to Writetext.Writeline("Hello World") before we had the chance to be introduced. Another friend gave an iphone as a birthday gift to her husband and right after she took it away because as she put it, it was like shooting one self in the foot.

Hence, I will never give my husband an iphone or a wii console or for that matter a play station for his birthday, a few months a ago a dear friend of mine had to buy a gift for her husband she had enough money saved up to buy him rock band but in the end she decided on not getting him any such thing. As she put it than I wont talk to him for weeks unlike right now where I get to talk with him once every few days.

As my husband is such a computer geek and as I am surrounded by computer geeks in this part of the world I decided the only way I was to have meaningful conversations with my better half was to become at least some what like that hot hot robot. Becoming hot is out of the questions as I am sure my rotund and pleasantly plump figure will never be able to fit into a leather suit. Becoming more computer savvy is still a possibility, so what started off as a conversation starter between me and my geeky half soon became my all consuming hobby. Conversations about computers and programming started me off on the quest to actually learn and figure out the fantastic world of computers and well honestly saying now after my meager experience. I get why my darling is glued to the terrible tube, it really is quite addictive and a whole lot of fun. So to the Richard Geere/Josh Groban/Patrick Demsey/Eric Bana/Shiney Ahuja/Luke Wilson of my life(i.e hubby dearest) all I gotta say is code on dude!!!!

winds of change

I was watching a Tunisian film called satin rouge (highly recommend it) when I was hit by a wave of nostalgia. It reminded me of my time in Montreal, while studying there I had exposure to so many different cultures and people. One of my dearest friend is from Morrocco and watching this movie hearing the Arabic felt like coming home though I do not understand one word of it.

It is interesting to note how life changes. There was a time in my life when I was a die hard romantic, in Pakistan one would never find me without my choorian. My favorite dress was chooridar and Angrakhas, dressing up was so much fun. My sisters and I would spend hours have beauty sessions where we ll put oil in each others hair. Now its been ages since I wore choorian or dressed up, I guess in Pakistan there is always some occasion to dress up, there aren't a lot of such occasions here . When I moved to Canada, life became a frenzy of activity between holding down jobs and school and social life there was hardly any time. There was so much to soak up, the culture and meeting new people. I spent so many late nights at the library or at the local cafes with friends "studying", talking, laughing.

In university we had such an idealistic view of life, my friends and I spent so many hours discussing politics and religions and cultures. We wanted to change the world and sitting around the table we tried to analyze why there were political tensions in different regions of the world. I had the chance to meet people from pretty much every continent. My summer spent working at a short term stay hostel for tourists was a cultural extravaganza. I was working with a Jew whose parents had immigranted from south America, a girl from Burkina Faso, another girl from China, there were a couple of canadians thrown in the mix and a Native. Man, the conversations we had were phenomenal and the people we met were pretty amazing too. There were South Americans, Algerians, Saudis, Americans, Irish, Swedish, people from Eastern Europe. I learnt of Religions I had never heard of and stories from all corners of the world abound when we d sit down for meals. Living there taught me how similar humans are and yet we like to create differences just so we can make these groups and distinctions.

When I moved to Seattle after I got married I had no idea I d miss Montreal so much, the city I was dying to get out of, I had hated the snow there and yet today I wished I could go back and spend the winter there. I love that city because it was there I truly understood who I am and my potential as a human being. It is only when I faced adversity and got to test my limits I got to know that yes, I could survive in trying circumstances. I was able to let go of my preconceived notions about many many things when I allowed my self to experience and step outside my comfort zone. I do miss those days when I shared meals with folks from across the globe, shared apartments and houses with so many different kinds of people. The last house I rented was from a Jewish couple, the neighbours used to call us a UN peace poster they found the idea of moslems and jews living together harmoniously quite amusing, infact when we had met the landlady to discuss renting the place she had explicitly told my sister and me to ask our parents permission if we could move in with them.

Now my life although not as exciting, has taken on a quiet rhythm, my days are spent being a mommy and a wife. The high of my day is seeing my daughter smile and welcoming my husband back home and watching him enjoy the meal I prepared for him. My life has become a constant flow of poopy diapers, laundry, vaccum, tidying up and cooking. I am now the CEO, CFO, Marketing consultant, Nurse, Chef and party planner all rolled into one of the M enterprises. Is this the life I had planned sitting drinking coffee? I don't know----- what I do know is that I am enjoying it thoroughly just as I had enjoyed being an explorer, living on a meager budget, when salvation army was the high point of fashion and home decore was a mish mash of craiglist and dumpster diving.

As the saying goes the only constant in life is change I wonder what the future holds.

To sleep or not to Sleep

Ah sleep sweet sleep; there was once a time in my life when I d put my head to my soft pillow and surrender my self to slumber. Deep in the arms of sweet dreams I would be until the golden rays of the sun woke me up. No more, gone are those glorious days since I joined Mommy boot camp 1 on 1. The instructor Major Alina aka Major cranky pants, who is looking to be General cranky pants real soon is drilling us new cadets harder then usual. Now adays or rather now a nights the routine is some what like this. The General gets fed a bottle of milk and is put to sleep Private Cadet Mommy burps the BIG G and gently rocks her to sleep off to la la land and than hardly containing her joy she rushes back to the Mess hall jumping with joy and screaming I am free, free at last when she hears the BIG G menacing call again. This time private Cadet Daddy goes and get to change poopy diapers and put the general back to sleep. Daddy comes to the mess hall jumping with joy and before we can sit down for a quiet evening daddy recalls he has important office work to do in his favorite room. So there goes private cadet mommys big plans for the evening.......

When I had married private cadet Daddy I had not known of his nocturnal life style, ok ok I lie. I knew about it but like all starry eyed romantics I had thought oh i ll change my man once he is mine. I have yet to make a dent in the nightly routine of sleeping at 4 in the morning and waking up at 2 in the afternoon. Much to the chagrin of my mother who had religiously put us to bed at 9 in the evening and woke us up at 8 in the morning, when she calls me at 1 o clock in the afternoon and finds me a sleep she is not at all a proud parent.

Back to our night time adventures so once the general finally fall asleep and private cadet daddy goes of to the thinking machine I console my self that it could be much worse like my brothers nightly routine for instance which goes something like this. Mom starts telling him to get ready for bed at 6 in the evening by 9 she manages to make him go to his room and start changing into his pajamas, where we turns on his radio host voice and gives us a minute by minute account of what he is doing right now, (these next few lines are in gulabi urdu or urdulish)

"main apna pajama paine raha hoon, aur ab mein nay left wali tang andar dal li hai. Ab mein apni microsoft wali shirt paine raha hoon. Yeh mujhay apa nay di thee, meri birthday kab a rahi hai? Ami mujhay meri birthday par kiya milay ga?" Ami says, " Beta ap abhi jo kaam kar rahay hain woh dehan say karain, birthday ki baat baad mein ho gi" "Acha jee, par meri birthday walay din aap mujay kiya dain gi, Ali haider wali cassette dain gi...... and on and on this continues till 12 at night when every one has given up and gone to bed so having no choice my brother also falls asleep.

The Big G of our boot camp however employs a different method however, she likes to wake up in the wee hours of the morning when all the cadets have finally popped off to sleep and are busy enjoying the dreams of la la land. Full of amazing biryani recipes and delicious curries being served at her now very famous restaurant, which has a 2 month waiting list and has regulars the likes of kings and presidents, while she herself is off on book tours and presiding over iron chef. At preciesly this moment the General likes to let out a blood cuddling scream to let all the neighbourhood know that she is ready for a diaper change and another bottle of milk at the right temperature not too hot and not too cold. Once this has been administered we can rest assured that we ll be allowed sleep for a couple of hours before the next drill begins.

However, between you and I; I am deeply incredibly and completely in love with the general so I cannot bring my self to leave mommy boot camp because just watching her sleep and smiling while she does so makes all the sleepless nights in seattle better. Cuddling up to that little heater is better than a sandal wood fire, Love you my little angel sleep tight.

What did Abraham know that we do not?

We all spend Eid Ul Azha eating meat and remembering the story of Abraham and how when Allah jee called onto him to sacrifice his most prized possession he did not hesitate one minute to sacrifice his son. I was thinking about that story a lot; specially recently when my own child was in the hospital fighting for her life. I thought about how can a parent be so ready to sacrifice his child for Allah and than I thought maybe Abraham knew something which I did not know, so that got me to thinking what was it that he knew that I do not know?

First of all Abraham loved Allah jee a lot and in return Allah jee loved him a lot. As humans we never hurt the ones we love so how can the creator of the worlds be willing to hurt some one he held dear to himself. Allah jee gave Abraham his son, if he had wanted he could have very well not given him a son at all to begin with so why did he ask him to sacrifice his son once he had been born. I think because he wanted to test Abraham;to see if Abraham knew how much Allah jee loved him because only than would he have been willing to sacrifice his son. Abraham knew that Allah jee would never hurt him, he would never do anything to harm his son because he knew that act would hurt Abraham, so in essence I think he knew all along that nothing was going to happen to his child because Allah loved him.