‘You go, Glenn Coco!’

Early this morning, my dear friend June asked a question on Twitter which struck me with all the bluntness of a machete to my workdesk:

RT @j_rubis Why do some older women act like schoolgirls & gang up on a younger woman? It’s creepy.

            If you’re anything like me, tweets addressed to no one in particular become a self-centred exploration of past sins. Have I done something like that before? Was I conscious of what I did; did I give a whit of consideration to what I was doing to another person? Did I do it willingly and thinkingly? You awful person, you did.

            And what struck me most about this particular frustrated note was the sureness I felt, that I had done this before. I can’t remember to whom or when – likely it was during my delusional tyrannical primary school years, where I was vicious and socially inept to a fault – but I just knew I had.

            It was a frightening feeling.

            I judge people. I don’t hide the fact that I do. One of my ‘things’ is hanging out with friends, generating parodies of social commentaries on stereotypes; I judge them knowing I can never fully know them and that I’m painting a superficial caricature of how that person appears; I know that I can in no way reach the person’s essence. However, some truths (and character traits) are self-evident. Most of the time, I keep such thoughts to myself. Every now and then I judge myself, viciously and angrily, until I can no longer look my reflection in the eye.

            I come from a strong history of self-deprecation and admittance of faults, and perhaps it’s only natural that I nitpick others as well. Once upon a time, I’d have no qualms about saying them aloud and to a person’s face. Being educated in a co-ed system meant that the majority of my interactions where with other girls (statuses usually remain quo), and I learned (slowly) over the course of my schooling years that doing so was less truthful than hurtful.

            Something happened which reminded me of our tendency to bully in packs, just two days ago, at my cousin’s wedding. I love my cousins, but I loathe weddings. Everyone is forced to be nice to each other and plaster on fake smiles and heavy makeup; petty hatchets resurface amid the tangled dance of courtesies, and you come back from such events learning more facts about certain people you wish you hadn’t.

            My cousin’s relatives (unrelated to me) had arrived at the wedding party a little later than everyone else – a group of sisters in their mid-20’s and late-teens. They were not particular beauties, but they had symmetrical features, long dark hair, lithe young bodies and all the self-assurance of people who felt themselves pretty enough to move ahead in the world. They were known among the family to have certain airs that came with vanity – the Malay word for it is ‘gedik’, I believe. These young ladies don’t laugh and talk, but giggle and titter instead, and they don’t walk but sway, their hips moving in an exaggerated expression of perceived femininity. They were everything almost every man wants – they displayed a successful vision of the culturally ideal young woman.

            My own cousins and nieces, all in their early teens and only just burgeoning into that probing consciousness of womanhood we all go through, looked on admiringly. They wanted to know who the sisters were, and what they did and where they went to school and how old they were. Oh, look how lovely their hair shone in the midday sun. So tall, and so pretty.

            My writing is self-evident of my impression of these sisters. I know that one of them is smart and driven, if a little giggly. I know that all of them are kind, friendly and respectful. I know that I barely know them at all, except for family functions such as these, where we barely interacted because I have scant patience for topics and interests I don’t share. (I usually ended up in a fierce discussion with the old uncles (about politics or other stuff only they talk about at weddings) until my mother would drag me away.)

            But as I answered my young cousins and nieces’ questions about these sisters as best I could, I felt wary. I wondered if it was my jealousy of their looks and confidence. I wondered if it was dread at knowing that my young girls were picking up these conformist notions of beauty, that they had to dress and primp a certain way to catch a man’s eye. They are young still, and I would rather they be themselves than chase an ideal look or an age they’re not. I suddenly felt conscious of my own dress and makeup; I could feel the uneven eyeliner on the corner of my eyelid weigh down on me. It unnerved me that I, too, shared my cousins’ knowledge that this was what women were told they should look like, that this was how women are meant to behave and talk. The sisters were everything I am not.

            Still, I kept these thoughts to myself. I did not dismiss aloud the sisters’ obvious efforts at beauty, nor their precariously high heels, nor their obvious awareness of being observed and admired. My cousins and nieces are young and impressionable, but they still had time to form their own ideas. I would rather they admire these women than hate on them for things we did not even know for certain. I understood my own jealousy and feelings of inadequacy, but these young girls must learn to form opinions and impressions of people, especially other women, on their own. Our sex does get a lot of flak for being quick to gang up on others, especially if they are perceived to be a threat, no matter how vague. While I do not believe it is a means of bullying exclusive to females, women are perhaps more cruel when they resort to this, because we know what truly gets to a girl, and we attack with the precision and cruelty of assassins. We may not take away life, but we take away a girl’s security, sense of self and confidence, and how is that any better?

            I believe that in some form or manner, I may have done this style of bullying before. I may still be guilty of it now. Sometimes it’s easy to fall into a pack and start picking each other’s flaws; I’ve both experienced and seen it being done in an actual playground, as a child. While I try to be fair about my words (I am as critical of men as I am of women), I know how tempting it is to narc on someone, as part of a group. At an age where young women are still figuring themselves out and trying to find their space in the world, I don’t wish my own pessimism to mar the way my cousins and nieces see other girls, hypocritical though it may be. I want them to find in other women confidants, kindred spirits, role models, and inspiration for when times get tough. I want to share my own mistakes as a teenage girl so they won’t make the very same.

            A couple of hours after the sisters arrived, I overheard the eldest in conversation with my younger brother, as they compared internships at law firms. She flipped her long, dark mane of hair over one shoulder as she discussed spiritedly with my brother the pros and cons of working in a small firm. It reminded me that while I judge people at will, it is always important to remember that I will be pleasantly surprised by the very same people. I smiled to myself, moving past them quickly, not wishing to intrude, and was grateful that I held my tongue. We judge books by their covers, but we treasure them based on their contents.

ill.

Hati ini mahu

dipungut tidak sudi

diherdik tidak lali

bagaimana alam ini fana

begitulah hati ini

sakit….!

Tuhan saja yang tahu

kerana Tuhan saja yang dengar rintihan

yang tidak terungkap

sekadar termenung pada awan yang kian mendung

dan terpaku melihat dunia ini berputar

pada akal yang sudah tidak mampu mencapai

hati ini yang makin berisi

makin sepi

bengkak… terus membengkak

mahukan dunia

dada hilang ruang menaung

hati ini sekadar mahu, dan mahu saja

tidak pernah puas

masakan mampu dipenuhkan kata hati

yang diherdik tidak lali

dipungut tidak sudi

namun jasad harus terus bangkit

tangan terus menengadah

kerana yang menjadi saksi adalah mahsyar

dan Tuhan yang Satunya mendengar rintihan

tatkala mata berat melelehkan

kata yang tidak terungkap.

(Whoever’s up for it, minta tolong translate to English?)

If equal affection cannot be

It’s past midnight, and too close to my final paper for comfort. A little rant – hopefully one less hyper and cringeworthy than the previous one – is only due.

I left Malaysia thinking nothing much would change. I started uni this semester thinking that my life would fall into routine – that it would be as it always were, marked by insignificant moments that engulf entire days with emotion, and epiphanies so wrenching and yet so brief that they go ignored.

And as always, God never fails to prove me wrong.

In the hope that my mother does not read this until years later, this semester has been my craziest and most disorganized. And yet I didn’t feel lost like I did in first year – alone most days and bored for the others. It didn’t feel new like last year, where I discovered so many things I ignored in lieu of comfort and routine the year before. This semester felt like rediscovery. In more ways than one, it felt like coming home. I hear echoes of everything my parents drummed into me my whole life, repeated in the mouths of others and reverberating in my mind, like some forgotten memory.

Old questions resurface for air, and I find my brain working harder and my heart grasping tighter to new words which name my deeper convictions and make sense of patterns, mangled before by rejection of that which was unknown and feared.

These past twelve weeks and some, I have made new friends, reinforced my relationship with old ones, and realized that the surface as a facade lies more than I thought it did. I feel like the bonds now forged are less forced, less trite than the ones made before, and it never did have to follow a pattern.

I am more willing now to look for the beauty in chaos, even if I ask that you keep that statement from my mother.

I’ve found people I can learn from and who are willing to let me grow.

I’ve found people who see me changing and are learning to let go.

I’ve found people I disagree with and yet who love me all the same.

I’ve found people who share my beliefs and my faith in the ability to trigger change.

I have found new thoughts to believe in and new means to understanding, even if they feel like they were always mine.

I’ve found that old friends – old acquaintances, rather – can turn out to surprise you in pleasant ways.

I’ve found trust and faith and patience and respect in the people who I now – too eagerly it may seem and yet never with sufficiently due honour – call my friends.

And then I remember than my finding them is only a parable for my having been given them; blessings from God for whatever they may give me and however they may mould my future.

Here’s to us sustaining the Now and the After, together. InshAllah.

I could quote your many wounds of battle.

I am more emotionally vulnerable today than I have been in months.

I had promised you, my reader, new or loyal or visiting, in so much as broken thoughts, a different take on things: stronger, mature, calm. But today the sky is grey and the wind is cold, and the Cavatina is re-establishing the fact that my heart is, temporarily at least, broken.

This will sound selfish, but I am in no hurry to let it heal. I find peace of mind in sadness. It grounds me and reminds me that my fortunes seem greater on the outside, and that I should feel blessed. Sadness reminds me that only God can ever relieve mine. And I look forward to every other second I am permitted on this earth.

In the bustle of exams and its ensuing stress, my friends have interjected with their lives and their anecdotes and their love. We ‘study’ together – we laugh and joke and confess, and my heart carries all this with me when I plough into the inner workings of gene regulation.

The past three days have been so FULL of people. I love them all. But I work alone today, and I feel relieved.

Oh, it could be the stress of late nights in the library and trudging home with my laptop. I am such a weakling.

It could be that sometimes I feel I don’t deserve my friends.

It could be that sometimes I feel their pain and it kills me that my only comfort for them is in prayer, the best of comforts though it may be.

It could be that I feel trapped in expectations and waking up everyday, feeling like I fail everytime.

This isn’t depression – not the kind I felt in high school; the kind I joked about with Arv as we walked those early morning rounds in the schoolyard. It’s more of a feeling of early loss; I can imagine life without them, as inevitably will come, and I know that that day, I will wonder if I ever did them justice. I will wonder if I ever did right by them, or if my actions hurt them even more.

Ah, this will sound sappy as. But this is for every one of you who has been there for me this past month and as long as I can remember.

My heart expands and takes you in, and I will only be the better for it.

Thoughts from a continent away

In the spur of the moment, not an hour ago, I called Lubna on her mobile.

I still find it insane how much we’ve bonded, despite never having met. This is only our third phone call (I count that first time as TWO, because I had to call you again, Lubs) and it’s so rare to find someone so easy to talk to. And I guess it shows that we both keep blogs, because our coversation had a theme.

Lubna was asking me to go back home. Malaysia, home. Because I had a duty to my people, and because we both knew that there were far too many things to be righted back there.

But it’s funny, how despite my greater loves (family and food) being there, that I should still be so reluctant to return. Almost as if I no longer regard it as home but in name. And sometimes not even then. Whenever we mention the word ‘home’, Aisha gives me a funny look when I seek to clarify what she meant.

‘Of course, Malaysia. What did you think I meant?’

Because I live here. I may have spent 18 years of my life in the suburban comforts of Subang Jaya, and laid claim to my mother’s village in Kelantan, and love the island I was born in like no other place, but I did not GROW there. And I may feel like a stranger many a time, still, in this continent with it’s bemusing culture and odd vocabulary, but I know this city more than I knew my own hometown.

‘Don’t be a kacang lupakan kulit,’ she told me, using that famous proverb. ‘You have so much to DO here.’

I seriously feel torn. My heart shared between two continents, drawn across an ocean, all 6454 kilometres. That place is still mine. I don’t deny that. But I have a life here.

I know my reasons are purely selfish. Just because I felt more of a stranger in my homeland does not validate my intention to remain where I am. It’s also selfish in the way that my dear friends threaten to marry me off to a ‘nice Turkish bloke’ just so they can keep me here. It takes me some convincing them that they need not go to such extents, because they are enough to make me want to stay.

Yet when I read stories like this, I wonder if I should look for any excuse to remain here.

The fact that someone out there is living a life that I can’t imagine, yet which I can possibly fix, just undoes me.

I suppose. I might have to go back somehow.

Fall upon my knees

“And I have chosen you,
so listen to that which is inspired to you.
Verily, I am Allah!
There is none worthy of worship but I,
so worship Me
and offer prayer perfectly for My remembrance.”
[Taha 13-14]

Two evenings ago, I had my bi-annual meltdown.

It was the same old, same old. Feelings of inadequacy and utter stupidity, compounded by an impossible thumping pain around the circumference of my skull. The people and places and things gone wrong spun me into a little whirlwind and when a loved one asked me if I was alright, that was when I cracked. She offered a hug I couldn’t take, because it wouldn’t do to cry in the middle of a street.

I made my way, past the kindness of friends and strangers, into the prayer room. It was thankfully empty, and I clutched my head in my hands and started praying hard. My heart reached for its limits and cried for its Maker, and I began to sob.

Making my way home, hands in my pockets and stiff from the cold, I took my time and breathed in the fading autumn. The winter breeze had come, but the autumn leaves were still stubbornly holding onto their branches, and it gave an odd air to the city streets. Cars were milling up at the traffic lights, making their way home; joggers in ridiculously tiny shorts were striding past me, chasing after the last of the daylight. I walked, chasing nothing in particular, except for maybe peace of mind.

I passed by an Orthodox Church halfway down Royal Parade, and as usual, glanced inside. Sometimes they had mass on Friday evenings; sometimes there would be a funeral service, and I’d catch a glimpse of the congregation, all grey and wrinkles, staring straight into their future.

But that day, as with most days, the church was empty. The lights were dimmed. Sunlight shone through the stained glass windows and into the cavernous space.

And as usual, I wondered what it would be like, to be in a church. All alone.

When I was a child, in a moment of defiance, I was determined to enter the neighbourhood church, just down the street where I lived. We children grew an aura of mystique over the church – childhood folklore had it that staring at a cross long enough could make you Christian by default, and no longer Muslim. Even though its huge, lusciously green grounds were open to everyone, the church and steeple seemed like a forbidden space; as if stepping into one were the equivalent of apostasy. As with so many childhood myths, we kept these stories to ourselves, believing them to be absolute truth.

I was nine, and I asked my father about how a church looked like so many times that he walked into the compound with me and made me look for myself.

I lasted up to the donations box and the notice boards, before I took one look past the wooden doors and down the aisle, and ran for home as fast as I could, so I could confess to my mother.

Thinking this, two afternoons ago, I mulled the memory over a background of Cat Stevens and his melancholic guitar. I may have grown older, but I wasn’t any wiser. Each blatant glance into the church still gave me a little pang of fear – of what, I wasn’t quite certain. My mother made apostasy sound so bad that I feared it most as a child. Maybe there were still remnants of that illogical fear, that stepping into a Christian space made you one by default.

And still, childhood wonderment aside, I could imagine walking into a warm, dimly-lit room; all wooden walls and a stage at the end of the aisle; the pulpits set so low that you have to look upwards to see the preacher – it gives the image of speaking to a higher power.

And with all the internal conflict an hour before, I could easily understand how walking down the aisle and kneeling at its end, face turned heavenwards, could feel like a solution to one’s burdens.

‘It always comes down to one thing, honey

Still I kneel upon the floor.’

-Cat Stevens, How Can I Tell You

But while kneeling on one’s knees, as seems to be the popular Christian stereotype, may seem to some as a humble gesture enough, I know of one that is more natural to me than any other:

Prostration.

Knees touch the ground, aligned with the toes; palms pressing against the ground and leaning against its warmth; forehead on the floor, subjugating everything else in a moment. There is nothing like it. It feels like coming home to One who knows you better; who knows you best. And if you’re blessed enough, tears pour down like rain, the mercy of the heavens.

And in Islam, the world is my prayer space. Sometimes, I prefer praying in the park without a mat – letting the grass and earth and moss touch my forehead is a reminder that I am still alive and able to change. My prayer is not limited to four mere walls, and each move, and each word is a gesture of grace and humility and gratitude eternal.

I have a friend who searched for God and peace during Fajr in a park; praying in solitude and amidst the trees and sleepy possums and stirring birds. She says that she found what she was looking for.

And so I understand the idea of the church – of being awe-inspired and humbled into feeling that God is All-Aware. I can only compare it to a mosque, and I must say, churches seem to scare one into submission, while a mosque is just there to facilitate and inspire.

But give me the fields and sand and earth and snow anytime. The remembrance of God should and does exist beyond four walls.

‘…The earth has been made for me (and for my followers) a place for
praying and a thing to perform Tayammum, therefore anyone of my
followers can pray wherever the time of a prayer is due…’

- Narrated by Jabir bin ‘Abdullah, [Volume 1, Book 7, Number 331]

two of us

My mother often laments after my brother, Amir and I have had one of our nasty yet regular spats, that we were so nice to each other as children. And for some reason, whenever she does, I can see it in my mind – an old snapshot of the two of us (for it has always been just the two of us) in our pajamas in our parents’ room, plastic containers on our heads, pretending we were at the market, just before breakfast.

With that excellent memory of hers, my mother can recall the days when I actually anticipated my brother’s birth (something I find hard to believe now). I was so keen on being a big sister, I had volunteered to do away with my Pampers far before my time – a decision much regretted by my parents, as they apologized to the cleaner lady at a shopping mall, after my first attempt at being diaper-free.

My mother says that I was a doting sister, who took pride in my brother’s full Beatles’ 60’s mop and constantly showered him with kisses and hugs – a scene I would have even greater difficulty believing, were it not for the many pictures of us as toddlers, my arm dangerously positioned in a strangle-hug around my brother’s neck. There were clearly no homicidal tendencies; just pure sisterly affection.

And then, my mother recounts in a slightly wistful tone, I went to school and started yelling at my brother. Everytime she tells us that bit, I almost don’t have the heart to tell her that as far back as kindergarten, I played by social rules. And the sick social rules back then was that younger siblings were uncool. Basically, all younger kids were uncool. And I lived with one, so I was in the high-risk category. Or so my twisted six-year-old mind thought.

I used to bully Amir all the time. We both learned Taekwondo from a young age, and I was especially generous with my punches and slaps. I distinctly remember a regretful encounter that ended with my brother having an imprint of my palm straight on his back – which lasted for some time. We feared our mother to a fault, and that meant that anything bordering profanity – even the word ‘idiot’ – was forbidden. Physical revenge (hidden from Mama, of course) was the only means we had, and we were well trained in it. I took advantage of my age and size all the time.

It horribly backfired by the time I reached twelve, and my brother started growing at a faster rate. All he had to do was pull my arm back in a fierce lock, and I would start apologizing for anything and everything profusely.

It can’t have been nice, being him. I’ve only recently learnt how awful the teachers at school were, always comparing him to me. The first child apparently sets the standard. Right. He was never good enough, it seemed to be implied. But in every way, he was the better child. He had sound common sense (something I sorely lack), natural intelligence (another missing feature of mine), a critical mind (which people seldom listen to, much to their loss), charming genteel manners (which make even little baby girls blush with admiration), a solid religious foundation, and overwhelming patience and faith in the human spirit. He was never judgemental, except maybe to his own flaws – but never in others. He always saw the good in people.

I always forget that behind his rough exterior, he has a huge, warm heart – tender and easily hurt when betrayed.

My big little brother is strong in many ways; fragile in others. And I can’t believe that he’s all grown up. He got accepted into Law Matriculation at the International Islamic University. He’s happy, going off to do something he excels at (talking his way out of messes) and he’s doing something I never had the guts to. It’s unchartered territory. He’s slightly scared but excited, I can tell, even a continent away.

I’ve taken to the habit of looking up old Beatles’ hits lately, and as I listen out for the familiar chords and drum cues, I’m constantly struck by the image of my brother and me, arguing over Paul or John’s lyrics as we struggled for elbow-resting space on the seven-hour car trip to our mother’s hometown.

And when I found this song, I knew I could share it with no one else.

You and I have memories

Longer than the road that stretches

Out ahead.

the rebel’s qalb on trial

These past three months, I have been torn, I will admit as much here.

For a long while, I used to be a follower. I used to follow the crowd; try hard to fit in. Someone once asked me, “I thought you said you didn’t care what people thought of you.”

Right I didn’t.

Early this year, I came back to Melbourne, finding that once again, the kaleidoscope with which I viewed the world had changed. I had visited reality – it wasn’t pretty, but that reality was mine. And I knew that certain things that I had taken for granted – from this point on, they had to be questioned and re-evaluated.

And so I tried to tread my own way – to listen to the ‘real’ me inside, that I seemed to have lost touch with some time ago. The one that didn’t like mindless conformity. The one who questioned before judging, and definitely before accepting. The one who balanced everything with moderation. For Muslims, we walk the middle path between two extremes, the Furqan as our guide.

And I learnt that just because I didn’t think like everyone else, did not mean that tolerance was out of the question.

It’s true, at times I feel almost singled out. I feel like I am the weird one for questioning and searching for answers. I feel like an outsider, for not necessarily adhering to the societal mores (for I feel like I never have, anyway).

So I see my past lives (for I have had several), and know that God has prepared me to be a ghuraba’ either way – to be a stranger, walking foreign lands.

Political theory has always been my thing. And so I delved into it. Bediuzzaman Said Nursi once wrote in one of his many treatises, “…a person sometimes gets carried away by paying attention to the enticing broad sphere of politics and conflict.”

And yes. I was carried away by it, for a long while. I started looking into everything and anything at the same time. Somewhere along the way, I lost focus, despite my eye always on the main aim (my darling housemates made sure I had my head stuck in reality). I became wide-eyed by big names and ideals, which though pressing nonetheless, had sucked me in and whirled my mind.

All of a sudden, talk and action was all that mattered.

And so alhamdulillah, a little bit of dialogue occurred not too long ago, which had me seriously considering the balance between the mind and the heart. A fellow blogger I had come across had negated my opinion, which was that the dealings of the human heart (in its spiritual form) sometimes held higher importance when it came to matters of religion. His claim that even traditional scholars had not classified the mind and the heart unsettled me.

Not confident of my own knowledge, I turned to a learned and trustworthy friend for clarification.

Just the other day, I managed to catch him for a brief discussion on the topic. And having braced myself for his blatant, uncompromising honesty (which, I had thought, might be amazed at my incredible ignorance), I asked him about the theoretical separation between the intellectual mind and the spiritual heart in the context of Islamic spirituality. We discussed the work he had recommended me, which was Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine’s dissection about the Muslim’s understanding of the position of the heart and the mind as mentioned in the Qur’an. And I asked him if my understanding was right; that the heart and the mind, in all its simplistic terms, had equal credence in understanding religion.

“Well, you know, the mind is definitely important… it’s just that the heart, it’s more so.”

And that sentence, more than anything else, struck a chord within. They were simple words, yes, but they related to me more than so many other things I had heard these past three months – the ideologies and the huge plans. All the political theory I had been keen on digesting sounded impressive, and no doubt they made me think, but they did not fill the little furrow that was beginning to dig deeper within me. By instinct, I felt that his words were true.

I was too busy with doing the physical, that I had abandoned my heart for a bit. I may not have lost my way, but my heart was suffering out of malnourishment. For the longest time, I had felt as if my lungs lacked air, and I desperately longed to go away for space to breathe. I think that other times, my intention may have gotten skewed.

After discussing the study of Imam al-Ghazzali’s Ihya’ Ulumuddin with him, it dawned on me just how much I have been neglecting that most important part of my life – the spiritual one – that part of religion that the secular world despises for its ability to transcend minds, and expand the soul.

And I suppose that Banoffee, in all her maternal concern for me, had it right:

“Sometimes, when you don’t feel at ease with yourself, when your heart is uneasy, ask yourself time and again – how is my relationship with Allah? For if that part of your life is good, then everything else should be as well.”

Allahu’alam bithawab.

P.S: – Title duly borrowed from Sheikh Yassine’s book, ‘The Muslim Mind on Trial’, available here.

because there is far too much to say

At the risk of sounding utterly philosophical (the ambiguity of which I scorn):

Some talk of methodology and adhere to it, fearing the unknown.

Some talk of keeping to constants, and scorn the outer core.

Some refrain from saying – they remain quiet but not quiescent.

Some find a way around with their socks firmly on; they do not compromise, nor do they blatantly agree.

Some sputter ideals into the polluted air but fail to retrieve them – to plant so they may grow.

Some prefer to analyze with bemusement and will get there when they can.

Some chase after things halfway, but earnestly concede defeat.

Some prefer to work uncomplainingly, letting the hurt fly in passivity.

Some hunch over with the burden of responsibility, remaining stoic and resistant – become bluntly passionate when provoked.

Some chase philosophies and mantra to repeat and digest and repeat, but into what fruition?

Some keep smiles on tired faces and prefer to follow the choppy seas.

Some are indignant and astute, but fall into the ordinary at the end of the day, their shield swallowed dry.

And I?

I take all this in, and follow the wind. Fate leads the way, and I am the active passenger.

the road to affection

Does admiration = affection?

Dearest habibti Sema, self-elected matchmeddler, likes to think so. Because apparently you can’t admire someone without such simple feelings leading to more exhausting ones (sigh).

Woman, if you’re self-googling, take note: Give it up already.

To think of it, a lot of people I admire, I have come to love. I admire their principles and the way they carry themselves, but I believe that my ability to care for them was only slightly influenced by their virtues.

Because I happen to love a lot of people that I don’t necessarily admire, or agree with.

And then there are some people that you REALLY don’t agree with, but you admire their veracity all the same. It takes a lot of guts (and stubbornness) to be so principled, and if you love a person selectively, then you can admire one in the same way.

There are those who you may never be able to understand, but you end up loving wholeheartedly anyway. Take family, for instance. One of the more apparent truths that you don’t have to like someone to love them (as my cousins may attest to in reference to me, the overall girjiksen)

My recent foray into the realm of Sisterhood has made me realize that love is a subjective thing; one that you may never totally understand, but you come to accept. The human heart is a wondrous thing to observe, and recent weeks have taught me that God owns our hearts, and shall make them feel however so He wishes.

Upon reflection, though, if admiration had nothing to do with affection, Islam would not stress that our Prophet was the one to ‘perfect noble manners’. Looking back, I remember the first time I felt tremendous love for Rasulullah (pbuh) – and it was due to something he did (I can’t remember what, he did so many fantastic things), not just the fact that he was the Messenger.

And so I suppose (in my case), admiration does help lead to affection. But not always so.

(Further and better reading must be recommended: Muhtar Holland’s translation of Imam al-Ghazali’s Ihya, The Duties of Brotherhood in Islam. Haven’t gone past the translator’s note, but it should explain a lot.)