The ticklish exuberance on realizing I possess the exact amount of money required to buy a book I feel I must own to read and share, everytime: number one on my wishlist but an attainment that is not to be found on the likes of any search conducted by Froogle, or otherwise.
Prejudice
So there were two wallets to choose from. Identical wallets, except that one seemed more new than the other. Just a notch. The one that felt and looked less new had all the more character. It responded to my touch and its brilliant dark purple stood out against my hand.
Needless to say, I bought the wallet that promised character ahead and not the one that spoke of the assembly line it came from.
The Ones Who Do Not Count
BAGHDAD, Oct 22: Over 4,300 Iraqis, nearly 70 per cent of them civilians, were killed by insurgents in the first nine months of this year, an Interior Ministry official said on Saturday.However, NGOs put the figure at 25,000 or even more.
Figures on Iraqi casualties since the March 2003 US-led invasion have been unreliable and difficult to compile, partly because US-led forces say they do not count civilian deaths.—Reuters
Bacha Brigade
You know you've been around children for a long time when...
- you pick up every coin, pin or small object in the fear that someone might swallow it.
- you cannot hand over a pack of juice without shaking it, inserting the straw, twisting the top of the straw and taking the first sip to ensure no spilling
- you play peekaboo with anyone over a column, pillar or corner (this does not apply to me since I do this with or without children anyway)
- you break off into baby language at any sight that pleases the eye
- any amount of convincing to anyone is accompanied by a song-and-dance routine
- your bag contains at least 2 bibs, a pack of Wet Ones, a packet of Oreos, 3 Spongebob (boo-boo) bandaids, a book and crayons everywhere.
Why no paper for coloring / drawing? The entire world is a canvas. - the only kind of bananas you find to put in the fruit chaat for iftaar are the Gerber's Banana Creamed Pie
The only miserable element to this blessed feeling? - you find yourself singing along to Barney's songs
The Return
I can't help but keep thinking of Abdal Bhai. How he traveled across from Canada to Karachi when he heard of Khalu's deteriorating health.
How he reached home five minutes after Khalu passed away.
Just five minutes. How long it must be for both Khalu and Abdal Bhai. Or how short.
The eyes are a window to the soul. But once the eyes close forever, nothing remains. Just a physical monument of the body that contained the soul so loved and so cherished that life without it seems un-imaginable.
I was telling Ryz as well, about how I used to see Allah's Will at the cancer hospice in giving so many patients life enough to see their relatives who had set out to meet them one last time.
To us, it seems as if Abdal Bhai reached too late. In reality, he came just when he was supposed to.
The last couple of months I have seen my parents grow old so much that they have become delightfully childish. Even today, when I saw Sehyr give Ami a "new hairdo" with her make-believe hair-dryer and seeing Ami look masha Allah so beautiful and full of life, I squeezed my eyes shut for just a bit longer than I usually do, in a feeble attempt to capture the moment and hug it close to me for the life that Allah has planned for me. So many moments like these, that "will be lost in time, like tears in the rain." An offhand sentence in my 11th grade yearbook autograph by a friend that stuck to me like a post-it I can't lose.
Everytime I injure myself and I call out to Allah, my first concern is that I cannot tell Ami about it because I know I won't be able to see her upset, and so I try to dress my wound myself without her knowing it.
Which makes me think if I were to die before my parents, I would not like either one of them to be around me, since they would not be able to bear the sight.
I pray that I am always there with them, and Allah Shows me the way such that I can be there for them when they need me the most and when they need me the least, for being with them until the very end seems to me right now, the only way I will fully be able to comprehend His Will.
Reading over, I pray for the best and the ability to recognise His prescribed path, Ameen.
Subhan Allah, Alhamdo lillah, La ilaha illa-llah, Allahu Akbar.
"Be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits (of your toil), but give glad tidings to those who patiently persevere,
Who say, when afflicted with calamity: "To Allah We belong, and to Him is our return":-
They are those on whom (Descend) blessings from Allah, and Mercy, and they are the ones that receive guidance. "
The Noble Quran
Surah Al-Baqara (The Cow)
Where the Heart Is
I want to come home.
I don't want to come back to anything, or anyone.
I just want to be home.
It means so much that I can't restrict it to any one person or activity.
I think at some point, being at home becomes synonymous to being at peace.
Home.
Insha Allah.
Body and Soul
"A long time ago, man would listen in amazement to the sound of regular beats in his chest, never suspecting what they were. He was unable to identify himself with so alien and unfamiliar an object as the body. The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought, and marvelled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.
Today, of course, the body is no longer unfamiliar: we know that the beating in our chest is the heart and that the nose is the nozzle of a hose sticking out of the body to take oxygen to the lungs. The face is nothing but an instrument panel registering all body mechanisms: digestion, sight, hearing, respiration, thought.
Ever since man has learned to give each part of the body a name, the body has given him less trouble. He has also learned that the soul is nothing more than the grey matter of the brain in action. The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in a scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.
But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away."
from "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" a novel by Milan Kundera
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