And here... we... go!

I haven't been writing. You could argue, that, for a time, I hadn't been feeling - had put myself full force into today (wake up from a sleepless, baby-dominated night, drink coffee, get groceries, cook), tomorrow, the day after.
Be at the front door at 7:15.
Drop the kids of at 7:23.
Back at the house at 7:28.
Catch the 7:32 bus (maybe), or miss the 7:32 bus (probably).
Sleep on the bus (check twitter, read articles, close eyes).
And all the while there was a voice in the back of my head that said, 'where have you gone? There was a girl in there who used to feel everything so intensely, who sobbed when she cried and shrieked with delight when she laughed, and that girl has dulled and dimmed and quieted', and I would turn the knob down on the voice and say, 'That's just age, that's just maturity, that's just wisdom'.
And when the voice reminded me about the last time I'd read Quran, or stood for Sunnah, or let myself feel in my prayer, I would turn her down too. 'God Knows I'm doing my best. God Knows I don't have time for Sunnah, I barely get enough sleep as it is. God Knows.' (Ignoring that God also Knew how many hours a week I spent on Facebook, on TV shows, on the finally-winning again Habs.)
But no more.
I'm ready to feel again. Ready to feel at a loss and for that to be okay, to feel good, or bad, or scared, or proud, and for that to be okay. To let myself be that small, tired, person because I don't need to know the answers. I don't need to know the plan because it's not my plan anyway. It's God's Plan. and it's going to be great. and that's a huge weight off.

Awesomest Eid Ever

We are on day 3 of Eid Al-Adha, but really wrapping it up because tomorrow's a monday and we'll be back at work. Normally, we end up celebraiting Eid for a day because it's too hard to take more time off, or we're travelling to and from Ottawa or TO, but this Eid, this Eid was different. My parents were coming to Montreal, M's parents and brother were also coming, and my younger sister's in-laws were also in town. Basically, we celebrated in true family style, as-in a bunch of people around an extended table, elbows pressed together, laughter and conversation and ladels being passed from person to person to person. The food was delicious and the company even more so.
It was such a success that M and I (and my younger sister and her hubby) are all insisting that there must be one communal Montreal-style Eid each year.
Repeat, for sure!

A little dose of inspiration and beauty

The words in this are perfect, so I won't add my own:

Are you Muslim?

I was coming up in the elevator today on my way home, and there was a pizza delivery man there too. He looked at me a bit hesitantly and then asked me, "are you Muslim?"
I smiled and nodded. He said, "Assalaamu alaikum" (the Muslim greeting meaning "peace be upon you"), and I replied "wa alaikum assalaam" ("and peace be with you").
That was it. Simple exchange. Nothing fancy, but it made me wonder.
I wear a hijab, and I'm of Arab descent, so I assume, especially because of my hijab, that I'm a very obvious Muslim. And yet this isn't the first time I've been asked if I'm Muslim by a male Muslim before he says salaam.
With women it's very different. If we spot a fellow hijabi, we smile and say salaam right away. We don't ask. We don't need to. Why do they?
I'm not bothered, just curious. It seems unnecessary, no?

Revealing Ramadan, Take 2

The same day I posted my previous Revealing Ramadan blog post, I got an email from the good people at Speaking of Faith. I did a brief interview with them today, and read my Ramadan piece. Same for Jen. Not sure if they'll be posting the audio, but the piece is now on the website, here. Enjoy!

Revealing Ramadan

My dear friend Jen let me know about this fabulous website for NPR's Speaking of Faith program. They're doing a "Ramadan special" where they've asked Muslims to write in with their personal reflections on Islam and/or Ramadan. Some were chosen to air on the radio. Others were chosen to show on the site where you can read them. Jen's is here.
Mine was sent in, but doesn't seem to have made the cut. Since I liked it though, I decided I'd share it with you here.
Don't forget to check out the rest of the stories and reflections on the site. I really enjoyed seeing so many different perspectives.


When I think of Ramadan, I think of many things, but the first is almost always my mother, up before the rest of us an hour and a half before dawn to prepare the food we would sleepily consume in the last half hour before the fast began.
My mother, a doctor with a strong interest in nutrition, was always sure to get as much protein into our systems as possible: there were scrambled and boiled eggs, fava beans slow-cooked the traditional Egyptian way, tuna salad. But there was always something for our teenage taste buds: My mother would wake us up with home-cooked french fries, still sizzling on the plate. Into our bedroom she would sweep, singing “wake up, wake up, your food has come to you” in a jolly voice, and as I rolled over on the top bunk to face her, I would find a handful of hot, salty fries stuffed into my mouth before my eyes were even open. It certainly was an effective tactic.
When we were younger, we would “fast” from breakfast until lunch and then from lunch until dinner, feeling for the first time what it was to have sustained hunger, to not cure it immediately with a stop at the fridge or the cupboard. The pangs in our stomachs would knot first, then twist, and there was something so satisfying about not succumbing, about defeating that part of ourselves that cried out to be served, to be given now now NOW!
Experience is learning, is knowledge, and the value of that knot in the pit of my stomach can never be underestimated. I knew, ever so briefly, what it was to want; knew the slight pain, the slight light-headedness that came with it; but more than anything, knew the gratitude of sunset, of taking that first sip of water, that first sweet bite of a date, sweet and soft and buttery, melting on my tongue. And as I got older, I knew too the gratitude of having that water, that date, having what so few have, and especially what so many everywhere can't reach: a fridge full of food; a house with a roof; a blanket to cover my bed; a loving mother who would wake up in the middle of the night to make sure her daughters were well-fed before the fast began.
My father broke his fast with a glass of hot milk, heated to the point of scalding in the microwave, nearly foaming at the top, and three or five dates to go along. It was my father who taught us the supplication to make when breaking our fast:
“Oh God, for you I have fasted, and from your blessings I have broken my fast, and on you I depend, and in you I believe”. And then each one of us would turn inward and think of what she wanted and pray a private prayer, just between her and God, before that first bite, that first sip. It could be anything: I would pray for a good grade on an upcoming test, for a class trip somewhere fun, to get out of babysitting that Friday at the mosque, for forgiveness for my sins – a rude word, a look of ridicule, the missing of one of the five daily prayers.
After the dates and milk we would pray our sunset prayer before having a proper meal, and there we would stand, my mother, my three sisters and I behind our father, reciting the Quran, choosing, somehow, the verses that would nudge our hearts that particular day, his words poetry, a calling to God.

It's Time

I could try to write something more beautiful, more profound about Ramadan, but sometimes it's better to recognize when someone has already found the perfect words, and just borrow them:

This month is a feast... not of noise, but of silence; not of banquets but restraint; not of forgetfullness but remembrance. This month is a feast for the faith. - Tariq Ramadan

100 Random Things About Noha

Inspired by COTW's list, which was apparently inspired by someone else's list, here is my own list of 100 random things about me.

1. I love parentheses. They were created for people like me who can't finish a though without launching into a second (and third) tangential thought.
2. Nested parentheses are even better
3. Sometimes I wish I had was a starving artist and the whole world read my writing and thought it was beautiful, instead of a gainfully employed civil servant working in IT
4. Most of the time, my practical side wins out and I am happy to have more than 1/2 a month's rent in my bank account, or be subsisting on beets. It's a romantic notion, but I'm actually not that romantic a person
5. I now love certain foods I was completely indifferent towards in my childhood (exhibit a: the date)
6. Though I fancy myself a creative person, I have very few original ideas. Most of what I say was read/heard/seen elsewhere first
7. I don't think this contradicts being creative
8. Songs are really just poems set to a tune. The ones with beautiful words can make me cry
9. I used to be afraid of daddy long legs.
10. I am still afraid of centipedes
11. I have a tendency to be very silly
12. I hate serious confrontation. It literally makes me sick to my stomach
13. My favourite people in the world are my family (hubby, parents, sisters, and all their kids, hubbies, families, etc.). We're close in ways most people I know find unreal.
14. When I was little, I could get so engrossed in books that two of my sister's could stand over me, insulting my favourite hockey player at the top of their lungs, and I wouldn't even hear them
15. Said player would be Doug Gilmour
16. There are teachers who I will never ever forget for how much they contributed to my childhood and by extension, my personality: Mr. Falls (6th grade), Mr. Knox (9th grade science), Mr. Fitzpatrick (9th to 11th grade lit), Mrs. Alexander (high school chemistry). I truly respect and admire these people, and if I knew where they were, I would walk up to them with a box of chocolate and say thank you.
17. I read Quran really well, but have a bit of difficulty reading regular Arabic, because the writers usually don't include the accents.
18. Strangers in Egypt can usually tell within 15 minutes that I'm not a native
19. My parents are my heroes
20. I constantly read other people's blogs and think - Man! How did she think of that great idea/phrase/concept?
21. I tend towards being very vibrant or very quiet. I have a small "in between" window.
22. I'm working on that
23. I'm addicted to coffee
24. Lately, I'm also liking tea
25. and ice cream
26. I am sometimes inexplicably sad for no reason.
27. When this happens, a conversation with one of my favourite people is usually in order to fix it
28. I took gymnastics as a child and still know how to do some of the stuff - cartwheels anyone?
29. I also did track and field, and usually made the team more on effort than on talent
30. I made the tennis team in 9th grade because not enough people tried out. My doubles partner and I lost every match. Badly
31. I LOVE water sports
32. My favourite place in the world is Calabogie lodge. Been going there with my favourite people in the world since I was 8 or 9. You can probably trace our family story by following our summer vacations through the years...
33. I used to write for at least an hour every day. Not always good, but forced quantity used to produce at least a bit of quality
34. I love The New Yorker
35. I love The Far Side
36. If there's a new alternative health craze out there, you can bet I've at least read about it, if not tried it in some capacity
37. I have a whole slew of food sensitivities, which I regularly ignore.
38. My favourite thing about Montreal is the bike paths that are all over the city. I'm the girl in the hijab you see biking all over the place in the spring/summer/fall downtown.
39. My favourite hockey team is the Montreal Canadiens, even though I was actually a Leaf's fan the last time they won a cup.
40. I get caught up in political stuff. I can't separate it from life or turn it off since I see how much it affects some people's lives. Maher Arar used to pray at the same place as my family in Ottawa before he was sent to Syria for a year of torture. I go to Egypt to visit extended family and I see the corruption everywhere (in non-collected garbage and crumbling buildings and taxi drivers complaining about how to make ends meet). It's impossible to close my eyes to this. Politics is life for the part of the world that isn't as lucky as the other part (aka, us).
41. I get very upset at injustice, whether to me, or those I know and love, or strangers.
42. I have a good memory for useless trivia
43. I have three handwritten unfinished novels in notebooks under my bed. My younger sister, aka my audience, has yet to forgive me for leaving her hanging.
44. I cry a lot. Not because I'm easily sad, but because I'm easily moved.
45. If you have a cough, drink Gollum Juice.
46. Also, Oregano oil is the most disgusting tasting thing on earth, but insanely healthy and good for germ-killing.
47. I am the run-on sentence's biggest supporter.
48. My ability to sleep has nothing to do with the noise/light situation around me. The position of my neck and something to use as a pillow though? Absolutely necessary. On my weekly bus rides, I have devised ingenious pillow variations.
49. I know random small talk in Russian, Swedish, and German.
50. I am trilingual (English, Arabic, French)
51. I LOVE names and their origins.
52. Also, trying to figure out what language someone is speaking when I don't recognize it (is that Polish? Russian? Croatian?)
53. I am currently buying books way faster than I can read them.
54. I have a very low tolerance for heels, or anything that hurt the soles of my feet.
55. I have chronic back and neck pain from a dislocated rib/neck incident in 9th grade. It sounds sinister, but it came about in the most mundane of ways. Also, slightly embarrassing.
56. I've gotten stitches on multiple occasions, but never broken a bone or needed a cast (yet!)
57. If I'm reading a book by an author, my writing (if I'm writing at the time) inevitably takes that author's tone/style.
58. I started writing to be like my older sister, who is also my best friend.
59. Whenever I hear a song/poem I like, I immediately email it to said sister. Given she has two little ones under 4 (my Little Angela and Little Angela) her inbox is probably overflowing with these emails.
60. My favourite blog is by this lovely Canadian woman living in India with her husband and children. Moving. Funny. Exceptionally written.
61. I can't draw to save my life
62. I can, however, cook. I make up my own recipes.
63. I never thought I'd be a good cook and am mildly proud (and surprised) of this accomplishment.
64. I get a lot of joy from reading Scott Feschuk's hilarious columns in MacLean's Magazine.
65. I feel like we're living in a very momentous time in history. I think that over the next few years, the world will change a lot.
66. I hope they're good changes
67. I want to be part of it.
68. I love looking at beautiful pictures.
69. CBC Radio 1 is absolutely awesome.
70. Bel Canto is the most amazing book.
71. I second guess myself a lot
72. I buy recipe books, look through them once, and then rarely go back.
73. My husband continuously befuddles me with his ability to do 4 page mathematical proofs. I happily left these behind in 1st year university.
74. I have been an A+ student my whole life.
75. I never took biology because I was too easily disgusted. The bit of dissection we had to do in general science never ended well for me.
76. and yet I can prepare meat without problems.
77. I am a wannabe health freak.
78. I am also a wannabe environmentalist.
79. My favourite verse in the Quran is the second last verse of the Chapter called The Cave: Say, "If the ocean were ink (wherewith to write out) the words of my Lord, sooner would the ocean be exhausted than would the words of my Lord, even if we added another ocean like it, for its aid."
80. I am a big believer in always remembering that you don't know everything (or even most things)
81. I love chocolate, but also salad.
82. I love Canada fiercely, but I make a distinction between love and pride for my country and criticism of it.
83. I get homesick easily when I travel.
84. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is perfectly up my alley when it comes to humour.
85. Corny jokes are also brilliant.
86. Jon Stewart is a genius. Also Tina Fey as Sarah Palin and any political sketches on SNL
87. This one is stolen with modifications from COTW's list: I would happily take a job at the Ministry of Silly Walks.
88. I love calla lilies and irises.
89. I want to go to New Zealand some day for a very nature oriented vacation (hiking, rafting, etc)
90. I have seen the Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean sea, but not the Atlantic.
91. My favourite season is summer, but I think winter is extremely pretty.
92. I didn't have a cell phone until a year ago, and now I can't live without it.
93. I can go on a small amount of sleep, but I become either silly-hyper from too much coffee, or somewhat cranky.
94. My toes are the first part of me to get cold. Once this happens, I become extremely cranky.
95. My sisters and I are all daddy's girls. He used to whisk us off to Timmy's for warm, sweet treats every chance he got when we were still in university.
96. I love to sit in small cafes with a hot cup of coffee, either reading a good book, people watching, or trying to write.
97. My favourite place to do so is Planet Coffee in Ottawa. I'm still looking for my *favourite* place in Montreal.
98. I am still very close a couple of my closest friends from high school, though we almost never see each other.
99. Everyday I get to know M better, I am amazed by new similarities I discover between us. Deeper ones that didn't surface before.
100. I miss carrying my Little Angels and Little Angelas around, hugging and kisses them to bits, giving them horsey rides and other invented silly games. I can't wait to see them again in a few months when they all converge at my parents' house.

So what if he was...

Colin Powell has officially endorsed Barack Obama in an appearance on Meet the Press today, giving a thoughtful, detailed explanation for why he'll vote Obama on November 4th. I was impressed with the whole endorsement, but nothing touched me quite so much as the part where he spoke about people attacking Obama for being "Muslim":

"Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, 'He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.' This is not the way we should be doing it in America"

To which I say 'Thank you Mr. Powell, and about time someone in the political sphere stood up and called out these comments for more than Obama-smears, but for what they really are: an attack on Muslims.
See a clip of his whole endorsement below...

Iftar

This is the word for "breakfast" in Arabic, both breakfast when you're having it any day in the morning, and breakfast when you're breaking the fast after a day of no food, no drink, no bad behaviour, no blowing up...
Back in university, we would be sitting in the computer lab pre-iftar. At first, this was "the Cube", a grey little cube shaped building filled with computer stations, for Computer Science students, and then we would be in the cornily named "library of the future", in the basement of the SITE building, once it existed. We would be scrambling to finish up some assignment or another, perhaps writing the last few difficult lines of code, or hitting compile and praying there would no compile errors, knowing we still had the horrible run-time errors to face. Maybe we'd have already found them; maybe we'd be debugging slowly, exhaustedly, ready to pull our hair out from the effort at looking the same line that seemed fine but was clearly throwing our whole program into disarray. Or, possibly, we'd have given up on all of the above, and had our programs open in some random window on the computer but were only pretending to work. Possibly, instead we were chatting, or checking hockey scores, or surfing away those last few minutes until we had a mandated break to break our fast and clear our heads of the "if-thens" and "elses" of the code that had started to infest our heads...
The SITE building was on one end of campus and Iftar was in the University Centre (shortened to the Uni-Centre, because what's the fun in saying the whole name of anything?), and we had two options to get there:

1. Follow the long, wining path of tunnels through about 5 buildings, zigzagging across campus from the inside to avoid the cold.
2. Take your jacket, go upstairs and brave the elements in what was a shorter trek than in 1, but also a colder trek.

I used to alternate between the two, depending on how much time I had, how cold it was, how long of a break I was affording myself for this communal fast-breaking and prayer.
In the Uni-Centre, dates were passed around or set on a table. Milk or water in Styrofoam or plastic cups was also there, and the desks had been pushed aside in the small room to make space for prayer. Half the time, you didn't know half the people you were breaking fast with, after all, this was a campus of thousands of students, in thousands of programs, and you overlapped here because you were Muslim, and you had class or lab keeping you here to this hour, and so weren't already home. Regardless, you said salaam (peace, our greeting in Islam), you said taqabbal Allah (May God accept your good deeds), and there was a sense of being in it together, of having spent the last 12 or 13 hours in a state of un-having, of emptiness of material so you could fill yourself with something else, some form of perspective, or discipline, or appreciation for the rest of the world, who fasted, not voluntarily so many days of the year. After prayer there were tables set up for big foil containers filled with rice and salad and chicken. If we were lucky, there was samosa, every one's absolute favourite. The food came from people in the community, and it was free: in Islam, we believe there is a great reward for helping the fasting break their fast.
We would sit on the floor or lean against the pushed-back tables and desks, those with classes and labs to get back to eating quickly, those with a little more time winding down. We'd learn each other's names, forget, and ask again a week later when we happened to overlap at another iftar. We'd clean up and go.
This was one of the things I missed most about university, this ad-hoc coming together of a community in a place where the world doesn't revolve around your traditions, where the days are not cut short during your month of fasting and the schedules made more lax. Last night, I felt it again at the McGill MSA iftar. There is something about students and student culture. Something more fluid, more flexible than at the office, where things are set and established, and it's really very... nice. I sat with girls I'd never met and some whom I'd met once or twice, or three WHOLE times, and laughed and talked and got to know them better. We turned the cafeteria into an iftar hall, pulling tables together and pushing them back when it was over. There were those same, massive foil pans filled with rice and salad and a pot full of delicious, Indian style meat. There were taqabbal Allah's and come again's exchanged. I think I will.

For One Month

This is Ramadan. Between dawn and sunset, we don't eat. We don't drink. We don't ingest in basically any form (because I've had questions about chewing gum, popping mints, cigarettes, etc. But no ingesting happens. Nothing.) Before dawn, most Muslims will get up to eat something in order to go the rest of the day without. After a couple of days, the hunger pangs tend to subside and you get used to feeling a little emptier. One of the hardest parts for me is going without the coffee. I've taken to just drinking it before dawn...
The other, less talked about aspect of Ramadan is controlling your temper and behaviour. The food we don't eat is really more of an outward manifestation of the self-control we're supposed to exhibit through out every aspect of our lives. It's almost what I'd call a spiritual-detox period. We use this time to get back on track in our habits, our behaviours, our spiritual / ritual devotions, etc. Things we've let creep in that we don't like, we try to stop. Things we've let slip by the way-side that we want to do, we pick back up. It's like New Year's Resolutions in some ways, except for one month, as the whole community prays together, fasts together, and spends more time together, the hope is that the resolutions won't be broken a few days later, but become ingrained into our daily lives, at least for a while.
Happy Ramadan to all!

H & M will answer my prayers

So, I've been complaining about finding hijabi appropriate clothing where I still like the style, right? Well, I think I've made a breakthrough: Over the weekend at camp, I had the following conversation not once, but two times:

• Me: I love your (insert item of clothing here: shirt/jacket/skirt/etc). Where did you get it? Please oh please don't say another country.
• Fellow camp attendee: H & M.
• Me: woohoooooooooooooooooooo!

In the past, this answer would irritate me to no end, because H & M has no stores in Ottawa. Now that I live in Montreal, this answer delights me. There will be an H & M opening in August 6 blocks from my house. Can I wait that long, or do I trek across the city next week to check out what I can find?

No Blogging This Weekend

I'm about to head out to the MAC Youth summer camp, spend some time with my brothers and sisters and nature and fill my soul up. This means very very little sleep, lots of laughing and crying and praying and playing sports, and NO Internet. This is good. Everyone needs to be weened off every once in a while. I'll be back after the weekend (although possibly I'll be extra-ordinarily groggy and not make any sense for a day or two... we'll see.)
In the meantime, I leave you with a stolen post from my new writing hero, Journey Mama, one of the most beautiful things I've read in a very very long time. I don't think I can steal her words and put them here, so please, just follow this link and read this. You won't regret it, I promise.

Things that make me cry

A few posts back I said I was crying a lot, and that's okay... and then I thought, these people are going to think I'm miserable, and now I'm back to explain:

I'm someone who wears my heart on my sleeve. I know, I know, so cliche, but it really is true and I can't think of another way to say it. While I do cry when I'm sad, I cry when I'm overcome with almost any other kind of emotion too: joy, pride, love, for example. I also cry - or at least feel the lump rise in my throat - when I'm moved, and I'm very often moved. Some examples:

1. M and I were watching Mulan the other day. Caution, spoilers approaching! At the end, when the emperor thanks her for saving all of them and she finds the whole country appreciating her, I got a lump in my throat. Yeah, for a Disney movie... sooooo....
2. Sports championships: I cry EVERY year when I see the captain of the winning team pick up the Stanley Cup, hold it over his head and skate around the rink with it. I cry more when he passes it to his anxious teammates. I cry when they take pictures with their family and friends. I cry (or get choked up) in tennis when the players shake hands at the end of a match. Same during Euro or the World Cup or the Olympics when the trophies and medals are handed out, but especially when the anthem of the winner(s) is played. It doesn't even have to be my country or my anthem. Just that moment, and all the hard work these athletes put in, and hearing their song, I feel a surge of pride for them and it chokes me up.
3. Beautiful words: If I read a great line of poetry, or something in a book, or a song, and it touches me, it can bring tears to my eyes. Some recent examples. From Journey Mama's blog, the following line: "You search with eyes open wide and sometimes full of tears".
   And another amazing line, this one from Bel Canto, the book I'm reading thanks to Jen's suggestions: "People love each other for all sorts of reasons... Most of the time, we're loved for what we can do rather than for who we are. It's not such a bad thing, being loved for what you can do."
4. Quran: Quran is the most beautiful poetry, especially if you can read it in Arabic, and not just an interpretation. There are lines that give me chills for their beauty, and on some days, when I read and the words are as though they were written just for me, speaking to something I have just experienced or felt, I get teary. Sometimes, too, I read a verse and it happens to be a verse my dad often reads in prayer, and I'm transported back to one of our old living rooms, standing with my mother and sisters and listening and worshipping in a row, my dad reciting softly but strongly, and I feel a surge of love mixed with sadness, and this also makes me cry.
5. Art, or the thought of it: I got home on Thursday, and M showed me the easel he had set up for the painting he is hoping to do, and the thought of him getting to paint when he'd been wanting to for so long and hadn't had a chance made me cry of happiness. I suppose it's less the art and more the seeing him do the thing he loves that moved me. Visual art is to M what writing is to me. Although art itself can make me cry. A painting, or a photograph, can stir me and move me to that point.
6. Reunions and departures: On our trip to Egypt in February, I would cry when I saw family as we were arriving, upon hugging my and M's aunts and uncles and cousins, and again when we were leaving. I think the reunion and the departure is the epitomizing point of being with those you love, and I rarely manage to keep a dry eye if I know it'll be a long time before I see them again. Along these lines, I cry every time my sister comes and goes from and to California. I expect to cry A LOT when my other sister leaves for Dubai.
7. Movies: I am the crazy sap who can turn on the TV at the end of a cheesy movie for the wedding scene, or the funeral scene, and not know the characters or the plot, and then hear the moving music crescendo and start to bawl my eyes out. This one I can't explain very well, and though I'm the worst at it, almost all of my sisters are also guilty as charged. Example: the first movie my poor uncle's wife watched with us when she moved to Ottawa many many years ago was Little Women. At the end, she looked around, and there we were, four sisters sobbing away, struggling up off the couch to hug each other to death and say how much we loved each other. My uncle's wife grew up with two brothers. Needless to say, this was a first-time experience for her. Don't worry though, she's gotten over it.

Lightning

The husband of one of the women I met at the hijab potluck last month died this week. He was struck by lightning while sheltering himself from the rain under a tree in a storm. They are not old. My heart aches for her and I'm praying for them right now.
The suddenness of it is quite shocking. We like to think of death as something that happens to those who are sick, or old, or living in a war torn country. But death is anywhere and everywhere. It's real, and it doesn't announce itself. Every day, every hour, every minute we should be thanking God for the fact our hearts are still beating.

Anywhere and Everywhere

Saw this vid on Saj's blog and the ending brought tears to my eyes. Quite beautiful:

Eid-ing

Here's a funny little anecdote about my Eid prayer yesterday morning: As we walked into the already full Civic Centre hall for the prayer yesterday, I was holding the hand of my little angela as I like to call my niece. However, as she was having a hard time carrying her new doll (a gift from Grandma!) and negotiating her way through the crowd, she had handed me the doll while we were a few steps outside the hall. The result was that everyone who saw me at "adult height" level and couldn't see my little angela saw full-grown Noha walking in, all dressed up for Eid prayer, hugging a little doll. I got several looks, and several comments. Explanations were required. Hopefully, all is now cleared up ;)

But seriously, there's nothing more wonderful than the excitement of a little child to make Eid a really special occasion. My niece thought Eid was a person, and - not yet understanding the abstract concept of an event "coming" - she kept waiting for him to show up at the front door. By the end of yesterday though, I think she'd figured out that Eid is gathering of many people (all of whom lean down and look at her, give her hugs and kisses, and then turn to her mother and exclaim how she's grown!), the eating of chocolate and other tasty treats, the opening of presents, and just generally the having of fun.
I had a really great time, and have come down with a vicious cold to prove it (hey, you can't gather more than 5 thousand people in a place for a party in Ottawa in mid-October for 7-plus hours and expect to get away without catching something!)
I also had my first non-home-made Spelt chocolate cake (purchased by the wonderful M) from "The Wild Oat" on Bank and Fourth Avenue. If you're wheat-allergic, or celiac (they do egg-free, sugar-free and dairy-free stuff too), go! You'll find a lot of yummy stuff. My taste buds have been very happy since I discovered this store a few months ago. (I promise I don't work at the Wild Oat, and they're not paying me for this endorsement.)

Tomorrow, it's back to work, and back to 8 a.m. - as opposed to 5 a.m. - coffee. But even though I'm having coffee at a normal hour again, I hope that I can carry some of the Ramadan momentum into my regular routine. Like being more patient, more considerate, all that good stuff I don't always think about enough. My mom always says Ramadan's like a spiritual gas station, and you've got to fill up.

Coffee Dilemna

If you recall, ages ago (aka roughly last year) I planned to quit coffee, and successfully did so... for 2-3 weeks, before work/life got hectic again and I just needed one which eventually spiraled into just needing another, and another, and, well, you get the picture. Earlier this summer, I copped to my addiction and faced the fact that for the time being, I'm not going to stress myself over quitting and feel bad for something for no good reason (it's like, either fix it or forget about it. Guilt without action is pointless, even destructive as far as I'm concerned, at least for a measly coffee addiction that's hurting no one but me, and even that only a little bit.)

All of this, of course, is a prelude to a "but..." - 'what's the 'but', Noha?' you ask? Well, the but is that Ramadan is soon, as in tomorrow, and during Ramadan we don't eat or drink between dawn and sunset, and that, of course, includes not drinking coffee. For a few years, the first few days of Ramadan have always been difficult for me for this reason - not because I can't eat, or because I don't drink water, but because I don't get my caffeine fix, and so it would only be logical that as Ramadan approaches, I phase coffee out gradually, so the lack of caffination doesn't hit me like a ton of bricks tomorrow.

Now, ask me if I phased out the coffee gradually over the last few days. Go ahead, ask: Did you phase the coffee out, like a reasonable, future-looking person would, as the inevitable approached?

NO! No, I didn't phase it out. I drank my usual mug every morning. In fact, I even went from a medium to a large the last couple of days, not because I'd gotten especially less sleep than usual, but just on a whim, just because I figured I was gonna miss the coffee.

So there. There's my confession. If I seem groggy or just kind of out of it if you run into me over the next few days, you'll know why...

A Stolen Post of Beautiful Words

I found this on Sajda's site, and I think I've heard it before (either spoken or in song), but it was very nice to see it again:


The Final Analysis (a version of Keith M. Kent’s The Paradoxical Commandments)

People are often unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered;
Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true friends;
Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight;
Build anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow;
Do good anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you try to help;
Help people anyway.

If you give the world the best you have, you may get kicked in the teeth;
Give the world your best anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it was between you and God;
It was not between you and them anyway.