Category Archives: Loss and laments and letting go

cloudy days. Last Saturday, while on the road ear…

Hit the Road, Loss and laments and letting go

cloudy days.

Last Saturday, while on the road early in the morning, I listened to the Burdah for the first time in almost a year. The recitation is beautiful, the solos are simply amazing, but I realized it’s always going to remind me of this day.

I either slept through or skipped most of the cognitive psychology class I took last spring, and so don’t remember much of whatever I did learn, but I still find it interesting – for lack of a better word – to note how, much later, our minds continue to make such heartbreaking associations.

Because the world doesn’t know that spirit anymore

Casa420 and Familia, Loss and laments and letting go

Less than two weeks ago, we drove up to Sacramento to visit our relatives when we heard the news of our bhabi‘s sister’s death.

Towards the afternoon, I took the opportunity to escape the endless crying and sad, drawn faces by ushering my niece, three-year-old Zaynam, and her one-year-old sister – my cousin and bhabi‘s daughters – out the back door. We sat cross-legged on the lawn as Zaynam drew small gifts out of the goody bag we had brought her, while her sister sat silently in her usual huge-eyed, doll-like stillness. The common consensus in our family regarding Zaynam is that “she’s cute and she knows it,” but we can’t seem to resist granting her endless attention regardless. So I spent a lot of time exclaiming over the contents of the goody bag: a dinosaur, matchbox car, plastic palm tree, sparkly noisemaker, a bubble bottle, and various other odd and ends. I’m a big kid, too, you know.

Zaynam must have noticed my special affinity for the bubble bottle, because she thrust it at me with an order to twist the cap off for her. While I removed the cap and then fumbled with the aluminum covering, she cocked her head to the side and exclaimed, “Oh!”

I looked over questioningly. “Someone must have gotten hurt,” she explained. I squinted and turned my head, thinking she had perhaps heard a police car or ambulance siren nearby. It took me an extra second to realize that she was actually commenting on the loud weeping that had resumed from inside the house as soon as new guests walked in to pay their condolences to the family.

“My ummy cries a lot. Someone must have died,” she continued matter-of-factly, her eyes on the bubble bottle in my hands, and while I sat there in shock at the casual ease at which she made her comments, she added, “Give it to me!” and snatched the bottle out of my hands. We spent the rest of the afternoon blowing bubbles at each other, pushing the matchbox car along the concrete patio, and trying to learn how to play croquet. I stayed outdoors as much as I could that day.

But then just when we thought we could breathe freely, wipe the tears, remove the sadness from the back of our minds and guiltily try to move on with our lives, it hit again. Death is sly like that, you know. Only a week later, we were back in Sacramento, shocked beyond words, descending on the same household of relatives. It took massive effort for me to look my bhabi – Zaynam’s mother – in the face, to see the blank despair in her eyes. What could I say – “I’m sorry…again”? Instead, we asked each other helplessly, “How does she handle it?”

“Dado!” Zaynam shouted to my mother. My mother turned her head with a small smile, and Zaynam, clever child that she is, waited until everyone was silent and she had gotten the attention of the entire room to announce: “My nano died.”

Sometimes one can’t help but be amazed at the extent of childish innocence and understanding. And sometimes the human spirit is so resilient and able to withstand any number of blows, that one can’t but help being awed beyond words.

[I’ve had the pieces of this post composed in my head for days. It took my breath away then, last night, to come across a short story passage that epitomized something of what I was trying to say:

Her skeletal body was exhausted by its slow descent through limitless suffering, and her eyes stared up from the pit. But her spirit came up through her eyes in full force. Her spirit was soft and it was powerful, and it could hold her suffering, and it would stay with her until she fell into darkness.

– A Bestial Noise, Mary Gaitskill]

May we be blessed with all the strength, courage, and patience we could ever need, insha’Allah. Ameen.

Time here all but means nothing/just shadows that move across the wall

Hit the Road, Loss and laments and letting go

I knew it was a red car.

Three boys and a girl were killed, and another girl critically injured, in that freeway accident last Monday. Local articles have referred to it as “grisly,” “high-impact,” “ugly,” and “tragic.”

It has been difficult to escape the aftermath of the accident over the course of the past week. You can see the red smudges and black skid marks all along the freeway wall, if you know where to look and what to look for. They’re difficult to miss, especially for me, since I drove by just a couple hours after the accident, when the cars were still there, during the beginning of a week that turned out to be overwhelmingly stressful and disheartening anyway. Not to mention the fact that I now can’t sleep at night without my overactive imagination conjuring up visions of me being involved in car accidents galore.

It has now become a habit for me to turn my head to look every time I drive by on my way home. The day after the crash, bouquets of flowers began appearing all along the chain-link fence and retaining wall that separate the city street from the freeway. Over the past several days, I’ve noticed dozens of people stopping by, huddling in groups, standing silently before the makeshift memorial. One evening there was a group of adults and small children. The next day, a crowd of teenagers. The day after, a blonde woman holding a toddler at her hip.

It wasn’t until Friday morning that I checked online editions of local newspapers and read about the details of the crash. On an impulse, I grabbed a pair of scissors I found while rummaging through my backpack on my way out the door and quickly gathered together a rough bouquet of roses from the garden.

I called my brother while driving through town.
“Guess what, my hair’s red now!” he crowed.
“Slick!” I answered absently. “Hey, is Main Street the one that turns into Contra Costa Boulevard?”

A minivan was pulling away from the sidewalk just as I parked my car right under the “No Parking At Any Time” sign, along the street running parallel to southbound Interstate-680, just on the other side of the retaining wall. (There was no other place to park.) I felt relieved to not have to deal with groups of people who had known the victims, to have to offer condolences to strangers when I couldn’t even begin to fathom their grief. Freeway traffic whizzed by in front of me, on the other side of the fence, while four lanes of city traffic slowed down behind my back to catch a glimpse of the memorial. Standing on the sidewalk, I carefully threaded my roses into the chain-link fence, then stepped back to view the entire memorial. Amid all the posters, candles, balloons, endless flowers, signs, and photographs, two scrawled statements stood out to me:

Remember when we were little, you taught me how to throw a football.

and

I know you’re break-dancing up there in the sky.

The four people who died last week ranged in age from 15 to 20. I thought of their short lives, and of my three speeding tickets and the over one-hundred-thousand miles I’ve put on two cars.

Sometime life is so ironic, you don’t even know whether to laugh or cry.

Still the cold is closing in on us

Glorious mundanity, Hit the Road, Loss and laments and letting go, Suckool

After four years, the sixty-mile drive to school has become second-nature. I scoff at people who complain about supposedly long drives, dismissively citing my own daily commute to school as “nothing.” It has come to the point where I don’t even have to concentrate on driving; I get from Point A to Point B – and back again – in a perfectly safe fashion, but without having to actively think about it.

Lately, though, the drive, along with everything else school-related, has been getting to me. Much of it has to do with the fact that the first summer session is coming to an end soon, finals are any day now, and second session starts next week. I admit there have been many good things about this session: sleeping in, eating real meals, hanging out with beautiful friends (and family) who inspire me. But, ultimately, it comes back to academics: I’m tired of not pushing myself as hard as I should have, of trying to prove myself – to myself – and not meeting the goals and standards I set for myself, of being at that academic “eff it all” stage that Somayya and I have joked about since freshman year, but which isn’t really funny if you think about it. My GPA, for example, doesn’t find it amusing at all. I feel like I’m wasting my time and my parents’ money, and if there were ever a good enough reason for me to take a break, that’s it right there.

I’m registered for second summer session classes, but just thinking of that makes me feel suffocated, as if it’s difficult to breathe. I don’t want to have to deal with another six weeks of feeling overwhelmed and burdened. Even with four years of year-round school, I’ve never before had such an adverse reaction to taking a class. I’m too young to be feeling burned-out, dammit.

Driving home tonight, lost in my own thoughts, I decided to join the real world long enough to realize that I wasn’t even as close to home as I thought I was. You’ve still got forty miles to go, buddy boy! jeered the little voice in my head.

And I thought: Dammit, I don’t want to do this anymore. Not for a while, at least. God, get me home already. Ten miles later, my exit at the interchange was closed due to construction, and I had to go through the drama of taking detours. I don’t like drama, in case you didn’t know. Finally, just a few miles from home, slowing down due to flashing signs and lights that warned of an accident, I glanced to my right and gasped in horror. In the far right lane, right up against the freeway divider wall, were the remnants of two cars that had collided. And I mean remnants in the most devastating way possible. All I could make out were crumpled bits of red metal, chunks of steel that I could have picked up with my hands and dropped in a trashcan. I have never before seen cars reduced to such minute rubble. If anyone in those cars survived that crash, it’s a miracle of God. I drove the rest of the way home in tears, muttering incoherent prayers under my breath.

It was not a good drive.

I’m getting tired of driving, and I never thought I’d say that.

I want a full tank of gas to last longer than two-and-a-half days. I want to go running early in the mornings and take naps on the sofa during the day and perform my prayers punctually and spend quality time with my mother. I want to remember why I used to consider myself just as much an artist as I do a writer. I want to browse through Main Street and reply to people’s emails and learn slick tricks in Photoshop and feel cool Bay Area breezes instead of waves of blazing Sacramento Valley heat. I want to do all the things I mentioned in that one list, without remembering that there actually is a list.

When my friends come to me with their problems (which seems to happen often, Lord only knows why), I generally listen patiently and give careful advice. But sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly intolerant, I snap, “If you refuse to do anything about it, you have no right to whine about it.”

Looks like it’s about time I took my own advice.

surely we belong to God and surely we will return …

Blogistan and the Wide World of Webs, Loss and laments and letting go

surely we belong to God and surely we will return to Him

Everyone, please take a few moments to pray for Arshad‘s father, who passed away Saturday.

I wish we could do more, Arshad. But all we truly have to offer are prayers. So – May God grant you a reunion with your father in Jannat-al-Firdaus, the highest level of heaven. May He reward him for all his good deeds, and forgive any sins. May the good he did always live on, multiplying infinitely. May He bless your family, and guide you all through this time of sorrow. Ameen.

“And those foremost (in faith) will be foremost (in the hereafter)” [56:10]

Loss and laments and letting go, Salaam Namaste

I, who supposedly never cry, watched my face crumble in the mirror as I stood before it early yesterday morning, arms raised in the act of wrapping a scarf around my head, my mother standing next to me as she relayed the message.

I left the house less than ten minutes later, and cried all the way up to school. Not sobs; I don’t sob. Even during the rare times that I do break down enough to cry, I never lose control enough to sob. Instead, there was an endless stream of tears that I had to constantly wipe away. I stabbed at the buttons on my CD-player, expecting to hear Matchbox Twenty, and was grateful when Surah Ya-Seen spilled out of the speakers instead. I flipped back and forth between surahs Ya-Seen, ar-Rahman, and al-Waqi’a, reciting along in a voice thick with tears.

I was dry-eyed and calm by the time I got to the university parking lot exactly an hour later. My tears are always short-lived, perhaps because we’re usually so geographically far away from the sources of grief, but mainly because, after losing so, so many loved ones over the past few years, there is eventually, sooner rather than later, a sense of numbness during times of sorrow.

[D found me at the library computers later that morning, doing some research for an assignment. Never one to waste words, she peered into my face and demanded, “Why are your eyes red?”
I could have said, “I washed my hair this morning, and got shampoo in my eyes,” and it would have been true.
I could have said, “Cold weather always makes my eyes water,” and that would have been true as well.
But instead I chose to go with the third truth, the real story, and felt the tears crawl back. She hugged me, then leaned back to look at my face. “Remember when your grandmother died two years ago, and we walked out in the middle of bio lecture because you were so sad?”
I offered up a watery smile. “I really traumatized you that day, didn’t I?”
“Yeah! It was good to know you actually have feelings though,” she said with characteristic bluntness. “But you really scared me. The whole day, I went around thinking, ‘Oh my God, Yaz is crying. The world must be ending, if Yaz is crying.'”]

The day passed in a blur. I grieved for her calm, even smile and the deep creases at the corners of her eyes. For the mysterious way she drawled her words as she spoke in Hindku. (Where did she pick up a drawl? I always wondered.) For the way she always pronounced my name as “jussmeen.” I laugh, remembering that now; she was the only one who could get away with it. I grieved for her youngest daughter – my little sister’s age – who lost her father recently, too. I grieved for all the times she listened to me haltingly, stumblingly learning to recite the Qur’an from her other daughter, and for when she said, “We used to be able to hear your daddy’s recitations from across the galli every morning after fajr. What a beautiful voice he had.” I grieved for her serene presence, her dark henna-dyed hair, the bread she used to bring us from the tandoor on the roof of her house. For her long, cool verandas that we escaped to during the summer months. For the late afternoon that her youngest daughter and my sister and I played cricket in her courtyard in the pouring rain, and she overrode my mother’s entreaties to come home with the gentle, “Let them play.” For the joy she took in her grandchildren. For the eighteen months when I lived just across the narrow galli and took her family’s very presence for granted – nearly ten years ago now.

I knew things had already changed by the time I visited three-and-a-half years ago, for a mere two weeks.
“Boboji,” I said to her, “I miss Baba” – our beloved Baba of the mischievous grin, our Baba of the potato kabobs, eggplant pakoras, and Chinese fried rice, who spent entire days refining his creative culinary endeavors while she smiled the indulgent smile of a wife who knows best to stay out of the kitchen.
She gripped my hands tightly. “I know,” she said wistfully. “The house seems lonely without him, doesn’t it?”

[“Grief is personal,” I once snapped at a concerned friend, soon after my grandmother’s death.
“I don’t know, that doesn’t sound healthy to me,” he said dubiously. “It’s always good to let people see you shaken or rattled every once in a while. Lets people know you’re still human and not an alien. Wait – you are human, aren’t you?”]

What inexplicably hurt me the most was that I couldn’t remember how I had said good-bye to her when I was returning to the U.S. Did I hug her tightly enough? Did I thank her for being a source of calmness and sanity for my mother during all those years she had to spend away from us? Did I thank her for her daughter, who patiently taught us to recite the Qur’an and read and write Urdu with staggering fluency? Did I thank her for her sons, who, following in the footsteps of their father, uncomplainingly filled prescriptions and delivered medicine for my grandmother? Did I thank her for her husband, who was a surrogate father to us during those eighteen months? Did I know then that every detail of her face would be imprinted on the back of my eyes even years later?

But I think I’m done grieving now. Already, yes. I’ll have to let her go eventually, and it may as well be this soon. After all, all I truly have to offer are prayers. So – May God grant her a reunion with Baba in Jannat-al-Firdaus, the highest level of heaven. May He reward them for the love they showered on us, the decades during which they somehow shifted from neighbors and friends into people close as family. May their marriage of patience, strength, faith, and affection be an example for all of us. May their generosity always live on, multiplying infinitely. May He bless all their families, and guide them through their sorrow. Ameen.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon.
Surely we belong to God and surely we will return to Him.

rain, rain, go away

All-Star Crackstar Squad, Loss and laments and letting go

I helped pick out a bouquet of flowers today.

As a single, random act in and of itself, buying flowers really isn’t all that hard. “Ooh, look, these are so pretty,” we said, and grabbed an armful of three different types. As the lady took apart the bunches of flowers and skillfully re-did them as one large bouquet, I idly wondered just how scandalized my gardening-obsessed father would be if he knew I couldn’t, for the life of me, name those flowers without their identifying tags. We remembered we needed a card, too, so we wandered over to the back of the store and stared in bewilderment at the choices available, flipping them open and reading them aloud, then impatiently shoving them back in the stacks. “What about this one?”…“Here’s one I like.”…“What do you think of this?”…“Nah…” Finally, we just grabbed the simplest and plainest card in the aisle, and ran.

We agonized over the message itself, muttering to one other, “I don’t know what to write!”, the pen changing hands as we stood in the parking lot, the car’s trunk a smooth writing surface for the card we stared at blankly.

We drove fast on freeways still drying from the morning’s rain, the roads / mountains / bridges / water passing by our windows in a blur, four close friends in a three-car-caravan, leaving behind us abandoned classes and cancelled appointments. Alone within my car, a sheet of lined paper with hastily scrawled directions lying across my lap, I glanced repeatedly at the bouquet resting on the seat next to me and wondered whether we had bought the right flowers, whether we had written the right words, whether mere flowers and words were enough. What should have been a 75-minute drive under normal conditions was compounded by some more rain, a little bit of hail, and the fact that we got lost once, too.

But none of that was the hard part.

The hard part was meeting her gaze levelly as she entered the room – was hugging her tight and whispering, “I’m so sorry about your mother” – was seeing her look so calm and collected when I can’t even begin to fathom the magnitude of the pain I know she feels inside. Later, I drove home with the beginnings of a headache, and alleviated it a bit by listening to the Burda, the moonroof tilted upward to let in cold air even though it was drizzling outside. Watching the miles of cars ahead of me crawl through rush-hour traffic, I thought of my mother and father and brother and sister, and how she has none of those now.

For the love of God, go let your mother know how important she is to you.

Ramadan mubarak to you all

Loss and laments and letting go, Rockstar and Crescent, Salaam Namaste

For all my joking that my mental age is in the single digits (and, hey, it is, okay), all I really want is to be fourteen again.

I was still two weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday the year I traveled to Pakistan, in the midst of Ramadan, for what would ultimately become an eighteen-month stay. That first Ramadan in the village passed in nothing more than a jet-lagged stupor. We kids stubbornly slept through iftar, and then remained wide-awake following suhoor, bundled up in heavy quilts against the numbing late-February cold, tossing paper airplanes back and forth across the vast, dimly-lit room as a means of passing time. The daylight hours were spent staring shyly, uncertainly at an endless sea of curious faces, fellow villagers who came out to see this family from America.

I was fourteen by the time Ramadan rolled around the next year. The village had become home by then, and that’s the Ramadan I remember most clearly, the one I compare all others to, the one I seek to regain in terms of simplicity and spirituality. The months leading up to that Ramadan were interesting, to say the least. Mainly, I remember the hours spent in learning to read and write Urdu, and learning to recite the Qur’an in Arabic. I remember picking up Urdu with staggering fluency, surpassing my teacher’s and father’s and even my own expectations. And once I ran out of Naseem Hijazi novels and short story anthologies and magazines and poetry in Urdu, I turned to Urdu hadith collections and translations of the Qur’an. I still recall reading my first set of hadith in Urdu, and the feeling of epiphany that came with it, the sense that I had finally grasped the essential nature of what it really meant to be Muslim, and what was expected of me now that I possessed that sacred knowledge.

During that second Ramadan, I completed the recitation of the Qur’an three times, in Arabic, supplemented with full translation, so that I could understand exactly what it was that I was reciting. But most of all, though, I remember the prayers. I had never been in a masjid, much less prayed in jama’at. That, unfortunately, just wasn’t done in the village. Instead, I used to pray taraweeh, the night prayers, in our long, narrow behtuk, lights dim and door closed, my tasbeeh carefully placed on the chair next to me, a small handful of date pits on the floor next to my prayer rug, to help me keep track of the raka’at. Some nights I’d pray out in the courtyard, on the marble slab created for that purpose. Either way, more often than not, the electricity would go out, and my mother would have forgotten to bring me a lantern, and so I’d be left to pray in utter darkness, which only served to enhance my prayer and make the experience more beautiful.

Six months later, I was back in the U.S. After a year or two, things began to change. I let them. Life got in the way. I somehow let that happen, too.

I sat in halaqa yesterday morning and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Everything I’ve been learning over the past several years, through conferences and lectures and halaqas, is stuff I already know. Or, actually, stuff I used to know, before I let myself lose that edge of clarity I once took for granted.

And that is the most frustrating thing of all, to know that if I stretch just a bit further, I could perhaps grasp that clarity once more, and to yet also know, at the same time, that I’m just not trying as hard enough as I have the potential to.

Last night, I went to pray the first taraweeh of the month in jama’at at the masjid, as I usually do now. I walked out of there nearly two hours later, with the soles of my feet aching from standing so long and my knees tingling from rug-burn, yet elated at having captured some of that closeness to God. Not every congregational prayer can do that for me. Mostly, I’ve found praying in jama’at to be distracting. What I usually need is solitude, to enhance my level of concentration.

This morning, I prayed fajr in solitude, hearing aids and lamps and overhead lights all switched off, door closed firmly against the rest of the house. I prayed surrounded by absolute silence and inky darkness, and at some point I could feel that sense of peace…not exactly flooding back – that would be too simple, now, wouldn’t it? – but more as if tentatively pressing back against the walls of the room, simply there if only I reached out, concentrated just enough.

Earlier today, driving up to school, I listened to Shaykh Ali Abdur-Rahman Al-Hudhaify’s recitation of Surahs Ya-Seen and Ar-Rahman. Reciting along easily, I was surprised, as always, by how I’ve unconsciously managed to memorize most of those Qur’anic chapters merely through sporadically listening to them on my more stressful days. And I wonder, if I’ve managed to do that much unconsciously, think of how much I could do if I just put my mind to it.

My goal for this Ramadan, then, is to regain at least some of that clarity and focus and discipline from the year I was fourteen, so that my prayers become less routine movements and rote memorization, and more personal conversations with God, just as they once used to be.

Whatever your own goals for Ramadan, I hope you find within you the strength and dedication and drive to fulfill your goals, and to maintain and implement those changes following Ramadan, too. May your fasting become a manifestation of patience. May He accept your repentance and make it sound and permanent, and grant you guidance and success in following the straight path. May He purify your intentions, accept your fasting and tears, forgive your sins, and bless you with mercy and peace during this month and throughout the year. Ameen.

Surah Yaseen days

Glorious mundanity, Loss and laments and letting go, Rockstar and Crescent

I know you probably have a “Surah Ya-Seen day” once in a while, too. You may call it something else, but I bet it’s still comparable to mine. Perhaps yours is known as “The Day from Hell” instead. I’ve always called mine “Surah Ya-Seen days” simply because it makes me feel less pissed off that way.

Surah Ya-Seen days usually occur the day after an all-nighter. The level of stress and annoyance varies, depending on whether I have a paper due that day, or a midterm or final exam to take.

Yesterday was a great example of a Surah Ya-Seen day: I was up the night before, skimming through three cultural anthro books in preparation for a seven-page paper due yesterday (which, incidentally, I hadn’t started at the time), and racking my brain for the perfect thesis sentence. I had great quotes, a reference sheet in progress, a slick intro, and a very nice conclusion to boot, but did I have a thesis? Of course not. Come seven a.m., I tried to eat breakfast, and discovered that chewing took far too much effort. Sat there in exhaustion and stared at the sister and our ummy for a bit, before deciding I had better get a move on. Running late, needed gas, and thus gave myself an annoyed lecture for not stopping to fill up my tank the night before, when I had had plenty of time. (I talk to myself a lot, in case you didn’t know. No, I don’t move my lips.) And still no thesis.

Once in the car, I listened to two tracks of my favorite mix CD, then impatiently stabbed at the “on” button for the radio. Listening to Michelle Branch scream out, “Are You Happy Now?” irritated me yet further, because I had already pretty much figured out I wasn’t happy at the moment, thank you very much. And I generally like cloudy days in September. But not on Surah Ya-Seen days, which is why I narrowed my eyes up at the sky in my best impression of a “Don’t you dare” look. I was actually talking to the sky, but God ultimately took pity on me and decided rain wasn’t a good idea that day after all. And I realized that my latest favorite juice (strawberry-raspberry) tastes like medicine if you drink it right after brushing your teeth. Wonderful. And everyone and their momma was driving much too slowly for my taste.

So yeah, music never works for me on Surah Ya-Seen days. Instead, I scrabbled around and came up with my favorite Surah Ya-Seen tape (recited by Shaykh Ali Abdur-Rahman Al-Hudhaify—masha’Allah, the most beautiful recitation I’ve heard so far), and turned it up real loud. I turned it down real quick though, as soon as I remembered I still needed to brainstorm a thesis sentence. But it was good background sound while I struggled to concentrate and mentally string together the perfect set of words.

The computer labs on campus were already full, but I finally found myself a computer. My finger raced to type up the sentences I dimly remembered from my drive. I was abrupt and visibly impatient with the guy from my anthro class who asked to borrow my mini-stapler. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was printing out his anthro paper while I was still barely had a thesis. Plus, he almost stole my reference sheet, which printed out at the same time as his paper. “Hey, that’s mine,” I said, while he backed up a step and stared at me warily. Somehow, I’m always mean to people on Surah Ya-Seen days. I should wear a bright “Stay Clear” warning sign, no?

I rushed to my first class, only to find that we were watching a video (something about the relationship between advertising and personhood) instead of having a lecture. Shoulda just stayed in the computer lab, dammit, I muttered (mentally), and settled down to writing transition sentences for each paragraph of my paper while the video played. (Did you know that “we value humans less if we’re surrounded by objective representations of them”? Yes, well, now you know.)

Rushed to another computer lab after class. Stood in line for almost fifteen minutes, wondering impatiently why everyone and their momma always seems to have papers due right about the same time I do. Finally, I was at the head of the line, and the girl behind me asked, “Do you want that computer over there?”, gesturing vaguely. I thought she was pointing at a Mac, so I declined. Only after she passed by me did I realize I had just turned down a PC. Thus followed yet another mental lecture, which was enough to keep me busy while I waited ten more minutes for a free computer. After typing up four pages, I had to switch labs, so I wandered all the way across campus. Logged into the computer, busted out with my disk, and realized I hadn’t saved my paper and related files onto the disk. I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing for a second. I stared at the screen in horror, then put my head down in my hands, scrubbed at my face, and mumbled, “What the hell is wrong with you?” (Only, I didn’t use “hell,” but a much more profane—and less profound—word. So much for that no-cussing rule I started last Ramadan. I was doing so well, too. Sort of.) So I had to run all the way across campus, figure out which computer I had been using, walk up to the girl there, and say, “Excuse me, I’m sorry, but…” She gave me a weird look (probably thinking, “What’s up with this freak?”), but let me take over her computer for a sec. And, yes, thank goodness, all my files were still there on the hard drive. Good one, genius. Ran back across campus. Skipped my second class and worked on the damn paper some more.

I was majorly hungry throughout the day, but I had to ignore that. I missed lunch with friends at the best sandwich place in the whole entire world (no, I’m serious. It’s that good).

What’s even sadder, I missed a chance to see Dennis again. (I hear he’s been asking about me.)

Emailed my paper out to the TA at exactly 4:50 p.m.

Then I stopped by a convenience store to pick up some juice before hitting the freeway to head home. On my way to the register, I found out that Pringles now come in colors like “Ragin’ Red” and “Electric Blue.” Not the canisters; the chips themselves. I stared. I blinked a few times. I stood in the aisle, and laughed and laughed. The owner/manager dude worriedly asked me if I was alright. “Yes, thank you,” I said, and grinned all the way up to the register.

I smirked all the way home. And even though I found out, halfway through my drive, that the screws on my favorite (and only) pair of sunglasses—yes, the little, rectangular, yellow-orange gradient ones—are loose, rendering them unfit to wear until I fix the problem, and even though that meant I had to drive the remaining thirty miles with the sun in my face, it was okay. Because I was listening to Surah Ya-Seen again, and laughing about those Pringles that somehow managed to make up for the whole jacked-up day.

Es ist die Wahrheit: Pringles rocken das Haus. And alhamdulillah for all the things that make us laugh, no matter how silly—especially on Surah Ya-Seen days.

Another ditch in the road, you keep moving /Another stop sign, you keep moving on…

Casa420 and Familia, Hit the Road, Loss and laments and letting go

I lean back into my seat in the university library’s 24-hour room, wince at the unrelenting hardness of my wooden chair, and ruefully wonder what possessed me to study here. I think longingly of the small, private, third-floor room where I usually study: broad tables with polished black surfaces, muted voices, chairs with cushioned seats. But the main library itself is closed for the night, and this is my last resort in studying for midterms I’ve given no thought to ’til now. The 24-hour room is long and narrow, harshly lit and crowded, filled with a cacophony of voices. Seats are scarce, stress levels are at their peak, and my innate need for personal space is regarded as inconsequential.

The lovey-dovey couple across from me can’t keep their damn hands off each other. I raise an eyebrow. They glance over, then look away, momentarily abashed. Less than two minutes later, they’re at it again. The girl next to me shifts in her seat, stretches, and tries to surreptitiously move my pile of books over with her elbow. I raise an eyebrow and shove them back into place as obviously as I can. She shrugs without looking at me. I sneer at her turned back and try to concentrate on the notes in front of me, but all the people at the next table reek of cigarette smoke, and this, now, I just can’t handle. I stand up, gather my stuff together, throw one last, collective glare at all offending parties, and wander out to my car.

Nothing beats driving home at nearly one a.m. on dark, empty freeways. Setting my cruise control, gulping down copious amounts of strawberry-raspberry juice, pressing the button to slide open the moon roof. Listening to the wind whistle through the inside of my car, marveling at the stars visible through my windshield. Comforted by Arabic nasheeds, words I don’t understand but which I’ve been playing over and over for the last week — because.

Because, these days, I feel guilty for switching on the radio. Because there are just some things that Matchbox Twenty and Third Eye Blind can’t help with, and my mother’s pain is one of those. Because I can speak of silly things and laugh at the mundane, yet tears have never come easily to me and neither has the ability to comfort those who cry, and so there eventually come moments when I find myself at a loss for words. Because just yesterday morning, rushing out the front door, not knowing where she was within the house, I called back easily, “Fi aman’Allah, Ummy; I love you!” but something made me turn back, and there she was, sitting there all along, weeping silently. “Oh, no,” I said, very quietly, in that initial moment of shock, then put down my books and bag and sank down beside her, holding her tightly, awkwardly smoothing back her hair, trying to murmur soothing things that probably made no sense, but what the hell anyway. And these days, when I come home and ask, “So how did your day go, Ummy?” she doesn’t smile and relate for me all the routine household news, but instead answers softly, resignedly, “It went.” And I lack the words to ease her pain and bewilderment, because I can’t even come close to understanding the magnitude of what she must feel.

And so, because of all these things, I drive home on dark roads, late at night, listening to Arabic nasheeds to calm my own heart instead. There’s just the star-studded sky, the hills I love — and me, contemplating the people I take for granted and the things I never expect.