Prolific Immigrant

Hi all – okay…

(1) For those of you new to me, please understand that the mobile is perhaps the bane of my existence. I rarely have it on and check my voicemail perhaps once every two weeks. Last year, and for reasons beyond my control, I had to make myself accessible as best as possible.

Now that I no longer have to do that, it also means that my response time has slowed.

Please don’t feel ignored…it’s not you, it is most definitely me…

(2) I’ve not been blogging much because I’ve had a super crazy schedule and I am planning a super busy summer. Trips to NYC, Vermont, Toronto, Montreal, Washington, (perhaps) Thailand, and the Azores, all forthcoming.

Now that curling is over, I am back to boxing once a week. In five weeks’ time, boxing will be upped to twice a week. (Please note: this is not faerie boxing, nor is it kick nor muay. It. Is. Boxing. And it beats the shit out of your body.)

I try to have dinner with only one friend a week, but that’s turning a little impossible, so now it’s two a week.

I will also be taking care of a very specific region in mama’s garden. (More on this in the future months as it is a very big deal for me.)

I am maybe going to try rowing, depending on whether the schedule fits my own. Neither for competition nor dragon boating, but simply rowing. I hear it’s excellent for your arms and shoulders…and those are two key muscle groups for girls.

So all this to say that I am currently a little busy. Not to mention that I still have books to read.

If I am out of touch, please know that I’m not ignoring you; it’s only that I’m living a perhaps-to-you-but-not-to-me hectic schedule. There are only 27 hours in my day and I enjoy making the most of them. “Idle” = “lazy” and though that’s an excellent way to pass maybe two days a month, it is no way to live a life. (At least not mine.)

(3) Please visit following album sets to see what’s been happening.

As promised previously, photos of Sophia and I have been uploaded (simply click on the picture):

Aalya / Sophia’s baby shower photos linked here:

Muslims, They’re Just Like You! They Shovel Snow! (Click the picture to see what has buried Ottawa this past winter, and also to check out my stellar shoveling outfit that consists of pyjamas, mama’s panda bear coat, her boots and her headband.)

More to come (including the images from my trip to the Middle East this past December).
xox to each…

Please say hello to my niece Sophia:

Whose papa called me a few hours after the above photo was taken on March 8th, 2008, to leave me the following message:

“hi maha it’s dietrich and i just wanted to let you know that our baby sophia was born early this morning at about twenty to one a.m. and she’s a beautiful baby girl and she’s very happy and she has dark curly hair and long eyelashes and her mother’s nose – lucky her. And she’s just wonderful and she was 7 pounds and 13 oz and her and Aalya are doing just fine they are sleeping here in front of me right now and they’re both just so beautiful (voice cracks) and we wanted to let you know and we can’t wait to see you as soon as we get home. Bye bye.”

I started crying.

After a C-Section / See-Section / Sea-Section (because, really, all of them could arguably apply), mama was satiated and calmed and bonding with baby Sophia:

As was papa:

These next two photos break my heart because while I was carrying her, this is how she looked

and she was collapsible as is apparent in this photo

Funny this, that she is spring-loaded. When you tap Sophia’s little round belly her arms flip out and up, much like The dude crucified in the image of Jesus. I couldn’t stop myself poking and watching the spring load.

I am in love with Sophia and I think it’ll be so much fun to grow one of my own, inshallah. (Pics of her and I forethcoming.)

Unlike mama, I’ve never been one for foliage. I’ve tried having plants in the past, but like my goldfish, I’ve killed them all.

Last year, I took an interest in a situation that had an interest in plants and gardens, which led me to a thorough enjoyment of Green and all of the chemistry involved within.

It also made me ask some questions about Islam and nature / environment and I was quite satiated to find that there are over 700 verses in the Quran that discuss the environment, our link to it, and our duty to protect it.

Furthermore, there are many hadiths that discuss Muhammad’s (pbuh) many references to nature, my favourite being: “Whoever plants a tree and looks after it with care, until it matures and becomes productive, will be rewarded in the Hereafter” because I need all the help I can get in my effort to make it to Heaven and so if there’s anything I can do to give me a better grade, I’m all over it. (I’m so excited to share with you my recent discovery that I’m almost hyperventilating; Please click here.)

Since arriving in my new place of work, I’ve been looking at my office space and noticing that it’s missing Green.

I made My New Friends over three weeks ago and I’m still scared because I don’t want to kill Them. Luckily, it appears that it’s only Penelope who seems to be going to sleep – quite likely never to wake up again. In my defence, I believe I was over-reaching when I decided to purchase a phalaenopsis amabilis. (Two words that I can’t pronounce but provide me the aura of a Hogwarts student and who doesn’t want that?)

I have looked up and studied care instructions because not only do I not want to kill My New Friends, but I don’t want to hurt Them, either.

A couple of tricks I’ve learned from television, such as: chatting with My New Friends in the mornings. I come in relatively early and so there’s no one around to hear me as I tell My New Friends about my evenings.

I purchased a spritzer / schwooscher that mists out water, because that’s what They enjoy. Isn’t that great? The woman who introduced me to Them for an arm and a leg said “mist their leaves. The leaves like that”. After paying very close attention to the sounds made by the leaves, I can now confirm that They are a composite of really small beings that laugh and giggle when it mists all over them exactly the opposite of me, because mist makes my hair fizzy. In case you’re wondering, I mist Them each morning as we have our chat.

Please wave to:

Penelope, my Orchid (Phalaenopsis amabilis)

Hussy, my Calla Lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica)

Kuan-Yin, my Chinese Evergreen (Aglaonema pseudobracteatum)

If you stand next to the sunshine, they’ll wave back at you (except perhaps Kuan-Yin who prefers his quiet and usually in the dark ‘alone’ time).

This is something new; I’ve received quite a few emails quite recently asking what Muslims believe about Hell. Specifically, people are interested in knowing if – like Christians – Muslims believe that everyone but them goes to Hell. (Perhaps this question is due to the latest and greatest list of sins that will send you to Hell, as just published by The Church.)

The answer to the Question is: No, Muslims do not believe that everyone but them goes to Hell.
Muslims also don’t believe that by virtue of you being a Muslim, you are guaranteed a place in Heaven immediately.

Where you end up is based on your behaviour in this world. It’s a simple equation: If you believe in the unity of God in all things (‘there is no god but God’, which is not, by any stretch, exclusive to Muslims) + if your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds, you’re going to Heaven. We don’t believe in purgatory (it’s either Heaven or Hell) and so if your bad deeds outweigh your good, then you pay your dues in Hell and then when you’ve served your time, you go to Heaven.

When one thinks about it, it’s actually pretty difficult to land your ass in Hell, according to Islam. (No doubt, when one reads the Quran and compares it to either the Torah or the Bible, the God presented within the Quran is a much kinder, gentler, friendlier, forgiving and merciful One than the one presented in the other Books. (Don’t just take my word for it; read the Books and compare for yourself in an effort to form your own opinions.)

For a Muslim, the answer as to ‘why’ this is the case is simple: It’s because the other books once did have this same representation of God – until the actual texts themselves were edited to meet political, social, cultural, and gender-specific agendas driven by men.

More importantly, as a Muslim, you believe that the Quran is the literal word of God and it’s this text that we trust in more than others (literal word of God, yes, though it’s our duty to recognise that much of the text is written in metaphor – something stated within the Quran itself)).

Of note is that Muslims believe that everyone eventually ends up in Heaven except for the non-Believers. (If you tell someone you don’t love them, would you expect them to take you to their bed? If you don’t love God, why would you expect Him to take you to his most precious place? Ultimately, in Islam, when one turns from God, one turns from Love – ‘L’ as Plato would express. But if you’re an atheist, this doesn’t matter because you don’t believe in Heaven or Hell and so I don’t even know why you’re still reading. And I a have here just created a terrible analogy between Heaven and someone’s bed, God forgive me.)

And even then, most all Muslims accept the fact that God’s mercy is complete and unbound and so the statement of “…except for non-Believers” has to end with “W’Allahu a’llam”.

Aside no1: For those of you currently reading the Quran in English – remember that you’re reading an interpretation and not a translation. To truly understand the Quran, it must be read in Arabic.

Sorry – it’s just the way it goes, since translation is tainted by time and subject. The interpreted translation written today will differ from that which will be written in ten years from now whereas the Quran is as it was 1400 years ago, is as it will be 1400 years from today. This is why those who convert are usually interested in learning Arabic eventually (because, honestly, why would you ever rely on secondary sources when the primary source is available, if only you did the work?).

Before you say it, let me write a pre-emptive note to your thought: Les Miserables reads better in French, and Habermas actually makes more sense in German (or so I’m told), so chill out with the rhetoric about ‘why Arabic? Arabs are trying to maintain a monopoly on and thus create a hierarchy in Islam’ because Arabs only make up 21% of the world’s Muslim population and (1) you don’t need to learn Arabic in order to become a Muslim, and (2) no one expects you to learn Arabic after you become a Muslim, unless you’re engaged enough and interested enough to do learn of your own desire to do so. Not to mention the fact that the two other Books were not sent to us in Arabic, but rather Hebrew and Aramaic. So seriously: chill.

Aside no2: ‘Islam’ is the name of the tradition. ‘Muslim’ is the title of the individual practicing the tradition: The Muslim Ummah (all Muslims the world over as one nation (never to be confused with the movement of supremacy known as The Nation of Islam) barring citizenship, and thus erasing the concept of nation State) is spoken of in the masculine, because Arabic – as with French – talks of a group in the masculine if 99 of them are women and only one of them is a man. ‘Muslimah’ is the female of the word ‘Muslim’, hence why I am a Muslimah.

Thanks for your questions! They’re really interesting and thought provoking.

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Sin = One single tooth
Sini = My tooth
Sinak = Your tooth (if you are a boy and you are present)
Sinoh = His tooth (if he is absent)
Sinik = Your tooth (if you are a girl and you are present)
Sinha = Her tooth (if she is absent)

Snaan = All teeth
Snaani = My teeth
Snaanak = Your teeth (if you are a boy and you are present)
Snaanoh = His teeth (if he is absent)
Snaanik = Your teeth (if you are a girl and you are present)
Snaanha = Her teeth (if she is absent)

etc. ad infinitum to the tip of the Arabic grammatical iceberg (& you thought French was complicated?).

.1. My body is still hibernating. It sees a potato and angels start singing.

.2. A “Bacetto” chocolate is not a Baci chocolate. They are both made by Perugina and they are both packaged in exactly the same way. They are also both hazelnut focussed.

Only: The Bacetto does not have a poorly translated and usually hilarious “fortune” within, leaving the chocolate eater to wonder if they accidentally chewed up and swallowed the paper fortune.

Don’t be fooled and don’t settle for anything short of a Baci.

.3. Someone gifted me “an aromatic spa refreshing facial mist [that is] ideal for toning the skin and awakening the senses!” (exclamation mark theirs not mine). It comes in a small spray bottle which one is meant to point at thine face and spray.

I did this and found it neither ‘refreshing’ nor ‘misty’, but rather aggressive and hostile.

I tried it several times, hoping I would soften and get used to the on-slough of spray. Only, the more I sprayed, the greater my recoil and shock at the force of the “mist”, and the greater reason my skin will have to wrinkle as I scrunch it up in anticipation of the “pure essential oils of ORANGE & GRAPEFRUIT & natural GREEN TEA” (yelling theirs not mine).

I was holding it up to my face this morning and I couldn’t actually bring myself to mist; same paralysis I would encounter if I tried to bite myself (near impossible to draw blood unless you have psychological issues that would permit you to set aside your body’s natural biological reaction to fight and ward off the potential hurt bla bla).

It may have to do with the fact that I sprayed a direct line into my left eye and nearly drowned myself in it because I forgot to close my eyes and my mouth and plug my nose.

.4. If you know an under-ten, please take them to see Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears A Who. It’s one of the books I always gift under-tens and it’s a message most adults could use to learn.

.5. I used to think Dr. Phil was good, until I watched a complete show around a month back and it hit me like a ton of bricks that: He’s all about “owning your sh*t” and that this is a novelty in this day and age is the reason people like him so much.

So…essentially, the reason he’s so popular is because we’ve turned into a society that does nothing more than enable crap behaviour, and when a normal thought pattern comes on to centre stage (such as: Own. Your. Sh*t.), we think it’s some kind of miracle.

So. I’m officially removing my support for Dr. Phil because I think it’s lame that we’ve propelled to stardom a dude who is selling what should be so obvious to anyone who thinks they are a functioning part of and contributor to a healthy society.

OWN IT, ALREADY. YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS BY NOW. IT SHOULD NOT BE YOUR END POINT, BUT YOUR FRIKING BASE-LINE. (And if you, for one second, believe that anything worth having can be found in a 42 minute show and without hard work and life-long commitment, then you’re a bigger loser than…the biggest loser in the world.)

(It’s like The Secret. It was NEVER a “secret”. I’m rolling my eyes so hard that they look as though they belong in the head of the person sitting next to me and they’ve accidentally landed in my sockets and are trying to find their way out. Roll. Roll. Roll. Never. A. “Secret”!)

.6. In case you have yet to notice: I am intolerant today.

I still do; perhaps more so now than ever before.

(Please befriend a leprechaun and shed the weight of your bitterness on your way out…)

Special Note no1: Upon completing the following, I will be settling down to read – and only read – “Cricket In A Fist”. I can’t read it with any other books as Naomi deserves my complete attention.

Note no2: If I’ve mentioned these books previously, it’s only because I tend to read books two or three times in an effort to sink into them and take as most as I can.

Behaving Like Adults
Anna Maxtead

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories
Vincent Lam

Dispatches
Michael Herr

My Mistress’s Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekhov to Munro
Jeffrey Eugenides

Remember Me?
Sophie Kinsella

Soul On Ice
Eldridge Cleaver

The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion
Joseph Ratzinger & Jurgen Habermas

The Path of Muhammad: A book on Islamic morals & ethics
Imam Birgivi (16th Century Islamic Mystiic)

The Trial
Franz Kafka

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
Haruki Murakami

The Year of Living Biblically
A J Jacobs

“It became clear to him that every [species], although apparently a multiplicity – if one considered all its separate organs, senses and movements – was really a unity if seen in terms of that spirit which emanated from [the heart] and spread from there to all other organs.

He concluded that the spirit indwelling [all] species is a unity but divided among many hearts.

Considered in this way, [all] species [is] a single entity and its many members were as the many organs in one individual: thus, not a multiplicity but a unity.”
- Ibn Tufail, “The Journey of the Soul” (a short 62 page story that may be one of the most important I’ve yet to read. A strong recommendation for you to order, read and reflect upon.)

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Philosopher Ibn Tufail is better known in the West as Abubacer, teacher of Averros, teacher of Avicenna. For those of you interested in philosophy, you already know that these are among the Greats. This short story is worth your time as it is considered a part of the foundation on which stood many of the later philosophers.

His name is Daemon (Scott) Fairless, and he recently married Lyana, a beautiful and brilliant gynaecologist (as Scott says: “It’s nice to have a shared interest”) who I can’t wait to squeeze next they’re in Ottawa.

Scott was the first boy I ever loved, though I never told him that. I believe I loved Scott, but wasn’t in love with him. Being the first boy I dated, it was complicated and unclear at the time.

We met while he was working as bartender at Oliver’s on Carleton University’s campus. He was 6’2″ and quite possibly in the most prime shape of his life, considering how he describes his physique today (“fat” – I’ve seen recent pictures and he’s anything but (not to mention that it is relatively difficult to be “fat” at his height)), with green eyes and sandy brown hair. He made me laugh to the point of peeing myself, was a reader and a boxer and so proved the most beautiful combination for me.

We were both children then and I loved him the only way a 22 year old Maha knew how: Stupidly and confusedly. We argued about religion – he was then an atheist, though now believes in God – and poetry.

He read to me, we had dinner with his step-mum and father who called me “gregarious”, he read to me some more, he had dinner with my mother who called him “handsome” (he is, to this day, the only man whose met mama), we argued more, he read to me some more, we had dinner with his mother and he attempted to play the guitar only to find a condom wrapper inside of the guitar throwing us into a hysterical frenzy of laughter, he cooked, we read, I cooked, we argued even more, his love of Johnny Cash rivaled my love of Madonna, we made fun of each other, I was confused by him, we danced to really bad and fast pop music, we watched ER, he wrote his number on a piece of paper I had kept for years. He was beautiful and brilliant to me and he introduced me to Vietnamese rolls for which I am eternally grateful.

Essentially, it was exactly what two 22 year olds look like in a relationship.

Among the memories I hold of Scott, there are these two following particularly vivid spots in time: First, Cathy and Dino had come to meet me at Oliver’s for a drink and to meet Scott, who was working that evening. I was walking past him when he pulled me over and whispered “you are so beautiful” to which I couldn’t respond because I didn’t know how.

I was 22 years old and I’d never heard it from anyone but my mother because, essentially, I am a muppet. (In fact. Up until that point there had only been one other boy who’d ever referenced my looks, and that was George Logaras of Brookfield High School in Ottawa nearly 7 years earlier: He’d called me ‘ugly’ and ‘fat’ (I was a size 12), and referenced my ‘four eyes’ (glasses, yes) and my unibrow WHICH I HAVE NEVER IN MY LIFE HAD! I have never plucked between my eyebrows. The unibrow misobservation dumbfounds me to this day. He was a real dream boat, that one, aged 18 to my 15.)

Second, he was the first boy to hold my hand and when he did, I nearly threw up because it was so intense. (Remember: I am a muppet.)

Right. So, anyway, 22 year old Scott was also a self-absorbed idiot who didn’t know how to communicate with my 22 year old self, loved Walt Whitman (snoooooooze), made fun of me for believing in angels (now only if I believe in the “Cherubs”, which I don’t), spent way too much time reading and believing Nietzsche (and then making me read Walt Whitman and Nietzsche), writing poetry and sulking in the way only a 22 year old boy can sulk. The world revolved around Scott, and if it didn’t, he forced his mind to perform acrobatics so that the world became about him. In hindsight, he was a 22 year old clown…but he was my clown and I loved him for it.

Needless to say, 22 year old Scott and I ended and then he started dating a woman much too soon after me. His actions didn’t set off a nuclear bomb because he neither deceived nor misled nor betrayed me; but his actions were indeed idiotic, hurtful and mean.

(I must say here be mean. Note that their relationship started by him cooking her dinner; she came over with a Tom Waits CD, flowers and her flute. SHE PLAYED HIM THE phallic FLUTE. Likely, she went to band camp. (I still remember unveiling the news re ‘the flute’ to The Girls who proceeded to gawk at me as though I’d suddenly sprouted a second head and tipped forward due to the sheer weight of the new head combined with my existing head.) When he told me about their date (we were trying to be friends) I told him I was no longer interested in being his friend and that it was too soon and too hurtful. I hung up, went into my closet to find a lantern which he’d gifted me and then promptly propelled it down the garbage chute with enough force to knock down the entire building.

For approximately two months after he and I stopped speaking, I used to imagine taking a bat to his legs and burning her flute.

From what he tells me, he stayed with her for a couple of years, and it was the “worst relationship of his life.”

Yes. I’m not above admitting that it made me feel good to hear this.

I’m being mean because I’ve suddenly lost interest in my 33 year old self and found my inner 22 year old instead.)

Right. So six years ago, I received an email from Scott after he “Googled and found [me]“. He contacted me to apologize for all of his shit behaviour years back, as he should have. It wasn’t something I had waited around for, as 22 year old Maha wasn’t the same as 27 year old Maha nor was she the same as 33 year old Maha who is currently thinking that speaking about herself in the 3rd person is really strange and so Maha will stop.

I accepted because his apology was honest and clear and true, appreciating the fact that it had played on his mind for five years (look: if a boy becomes a man at 27, then that’s pretty damn impressive).

Since then, we’ve remained in contact at a relatively good level – though it’s not regular contact, it is worthy contact when it happens (quality here, in fact).

For the women who live here, I wish to share something with you, sent to me by Scott about men nearly a month and a half back. My mind was experiencing a logjam, and he forced me through it. (There is something to be said for those who knew our hearts intimately, no matter that with Scott it was 11 years ago. As with very very few others, he will always have an edge.)

Take the following with you and keep it somewhere safe so that you may access it when you need it (this is something I’ve always believed and expressed without hesitation, but it’s nice to have it confirmed and backed by a man):

“Fact is, guys suck most of the time. I don’t mean to sound flippant but it’s true. They are hard to trust. Their dicks are serious liabilities. It’s that simple. Even the guys who don’t want pussy want pussy. They’ll go to great lengths to rationalize their actions but it really is that simple. The only guy you can kind of trust is a guy who is honest about that. I really think you can’t ever fully trust what a guy says. At least until he’s got one hell of a proven track record.

Also, guys tend to be kind of autistic and so they don’t really understand how their actions affect others, at least not in the same way women do. (Again, I’m not being flippant. There’s a male-autism-lack of empathy thing that’s pretty well studied).

In my mind, there’s a divide: males who know this is true of themselves can be called men. Males who aren’t yet aware of this are called boys, regardless of age. A gentleman takes care not to harm others whether by taking precautions not to act on his biological imperative or not lying to himself or others about his inability to keep it in check.”

Pretty brilliant.

Love that he’s willing to step beyond the Male Code of Keeping Their Shit Secret and stand next to a girl who was once in his life to clarify a few points.

Love that it comes from the same man who “once made [his wife] lunch and included a can of beer so that when she opened it in front of her colleagues, they’d think she was an alcoholic“.

Love that it proves that even at 22, I knew how to pick a good man…even if it took him six years to become that man.

Every girl should have one (and Scott is mine): The Stand-Up Guy to whom The Girls and you throw back as you discuss the m(e)n in your lives.

Really. I love it.

You must please read Vanity Fair’s The Gaza Bombshell.

It is a lengthy article and so I recommend you print it up and then read it when you are in the proper state of mind.