One thing I can’t seem to comprehend is why people suddenly jump on the bandwagon to help one country and not another.

On the one  hand you have Gaza which is slowly being strangled to death because they had the chutzpah to elect people we didn’t approve of, nobody makes a peep out of that, then you have Haiti which definitely suffered an enormous earthquake catastrophe, where the whole world rallied around them, and then Chile suffered an even bigger one and the news fizzles out after a few days.

I don’t get it.

What makes people decide to care? Was it that Haiti was so poor in the first place? Was it the number of people who died? Do we care in proportion to the number of those killed?

Compared to Haiti, Chile is relatively modern and progressive. But devastation is devastation, isn’t it? Why isn’t there more of an outcry to help?

I wish there was a more measured approach to natural calamities. I wish we could push aside political differences and see suffering for what it is.

When the Jews suffered the pograms under the Czar of Russia, the whole world looked the other way. When the soldiers of the Czar would cull men from the Jewish ghettoes, forcibly march them, as is shown in Carol Matas’ book Sworn Enemies  and force them to convert to Christianity, did anybody in the West care?

True, they might not have known about it. But somehow, I suspect, that even if they had known, many would have thought, ‘well, they’re turning them into Christians. Isn’t that a good thing?’

It’s the same mentality that led to the Canadian government forcibly removing native children from the reservations during the 1950’s and moving them to the residential schools where the children would be punished if they spoke in any other language but English.

I do believe that the Canadian authorities had the best of intentions. They did not see themselves as oppressors.

They were apalled that these natives hadn’t assimilated, hadn’t left their ‘backward’ ways to mingle with the whites. Why hadn’t they adopted the Canadian dream? Why hadn’t they moved off their reservations, stopped speaking that ‘gibberish’ language and taken full advantage of all the opportunities they were being offered?

Basically, why weren’t they more like them???

This generation was lost. They should focus on the next generation. They’d take them away, and teach them to be white, and wouldn’t they thank them for it?

The native community is still suffering the repercussions of that horrible policy.

I think the mistake that the Holocaust Remembrance society makes is that they fail to understand how a society like the Germans could have come to a point where they could rationalize the extermination of the Jews. They just think they were crazy, like we think that psychopaths and sociopaths are crazy. And yet how can a whole society be crazy?

You just can’t paint a whole society as evil and warped. No matter how bad what they’ve done is, they must have had some sort of logic, some sort of reasoning behind it, and isn’t it dangerous if we don’t look at that, and learn from that?

Personally I think that any society can talk itself into committing the most heinous of crimes, if the right sort of logic is used.

Logic is usually considered such a benign beneficial tamper-proof sort of way of thinking. Many people seem to think that it’s not like religion, it’s not ‘corruptible’. I think they are mistaken.

I think Hitler was able, by twisting the whole idea of ’survival of the fittest’, evolution and the superiority of the Aryan race, to logically show the Germans who followed him that it was a good thing to remove the Jews. His diabolical genius lied in the way he did it. He didn’t start with the Jews.

He started with the physically handicapped and the  mentally ill.

It was not hard for him to argue that the gene pool was better off without them.

Then he used the underlying anti-Semitism that existed in the society and fed it by showing that Jews were inherently and genetically inferior. He did this when they discovered that Jewish people, as a group, were genetically prone to Tay Sachs disease–just as blacks are often genetically prone to hemophilia. (By the way, there’s a reason for blacks being prone to hemophilia. When not full blown, hemophilia helped protect them from malaria.)

Once German scientists discovered this connection between Jews and this disease, it was easy to make the leap to suggest that in their quest to create a ‘pure society’ that they would do well to exterminate the Jews. Wasn’t the race inferior since they were prone to this? Heaven forbid there should be intermingling, intermarrying and their gene pool should be thus polluted.

It’s funny how people always accuse religions of causing the most death and destruction.

Two of the biggest wars: World War I and II were not religiously motivated in the least. You could argue they were motivated by ‘evolution’.  But nobody ever talks about that!

And now, America is on a crusade (didn’t George W. let the term slip when talking about the war on terror?) to bring democracy to all the poor wretches who are suffering under dictatorship.

Lessons not learned are doomed to be repeated.

It was arrogance on the part of the Bush administration to allow Hamas a spot on the ballot in the elections in Gaza.

Nobody would vote for Hamas! How could they? They were terrorists! So what if Fatah (Arafat’s group was corrupt.) So what if Hamas provided badly needed social services. The west did not approve of them.

And yet when Gaza voted, they chose Hamas. I think they considered them the lesser of two evils. And for that they have been brutally punished. Collectively.

And the Egyptians are in on it, closing the border at Rafah.

Why should we care?

You make the choice and you choose the consequences, right?

Right.

And yet, the children suffer.

Out of the spotlight of international scrutiny, the children suffer for something they never played a part in.

And we cry and sing “We are the World” for Haiti, but nobody sheds a tear for Gaza.

Generally I don’t consider myself a superstitious person.

I actually consider it a form of ’shirk’. Shirk is considered the biggest sin in Islam. It’s the ascribing of any sort of partner to God.

By imagining that something like a black cat crossing your path, or the number thirteen is something to beware of, imagining that any of these things can harm you or bring ‘bad luck’ is investing a power in them that I do not believe they have.

And yet, I’ve always had a niggling feeling, and I recognize this as a sort of superstition, that I should always have a book in the works.

It started when I got my first book accepted in 1996. Within months of that, I got my second book accepted. Then in a few more months I suddenly had five books under contract.

Some people might not understand that it takes a good amount of time for a book to go from idea to contract and then to finished product. This is especially true in the case of picture books.

With picture books, an author has to wait for the illustrator to finish the artwork and that can take anywhere from six months to two years, depending on the illustrator.

So even though there was a drought after the acceptance of those first five books, I got the contract for Ruler of the Courtyard just before the last book came out and so I have always had a book in production.

I felt positively superstitious about it. There’s a sense of security in knowing that you have a book coming out. It’s something to pin your hopes on if the current book isn’t getting the reception you hoped it would.

I guess every author feels a little self-conscious about their work. They wonder is this the last book I’ll ever write? Will the ‘muse’ ever strike again? What if the well runs dry?

Last year I felt a good amount of trepidation with the upcoming publication of my picture book Big Red Lollipop. I didn’t have anything scheduled after that.

And then I was contacted by a television producer who works with the BBC and a Dubai organization in producing short animated segments in England. They bought a story from me, and voila, I was back in ‘production’.

True, it wasn’t a book, it was an animated segment of my story but it still counts, right?

And then days before Big Red Lollipop  was set to come out, it happened. I signed a contract with Scholastic to contribute to an anthology.

I can honestly say I have a book coming out. Mind you, it’s one story in the book, but still it’s something.

And in the meantime, I’ll finish the novel, God willing.

It’s funny how that’s working.

The little drought I had, in terms of selling stuff, came about when I was establishing myself as a storyteller. I wonder if it happened because of a sort of switching of gears. And I wonder if the same thing isn’t happening right now.

When I first began storytelling I thought it was a natural extension of story writing. I mean it makes sense. They both deal with story don’t they?

But the fact is, it isn’t. Story telling is a completely different skill.

Lately I’ve been so focused on novel writing, I wonder if my picture book writing hasn’t suffered somewhat.

It’s funny how it goes.

I wrote Silly Chicken  in ten minutes during a time when I was wrestling with what I thought would be my second novel. For about seven years I’d been working on the blasted thing, trying to make it work. And it all started from a suggestion from my agent at the time. She asked me to write a novel about immigration and racism.

I’d worked so hard to get her as an agent, I didn’t dare not listen. I thought, oh it won’t take long. So I wrote a novel that I eventually re-wrote for going on ten years, till it was spoiled beyond recognition. During this process, on one of my many visits to my mom, she told me a hilarious story from her childhood about a really dumb chicken that her mother’d had. 

I came home chuckling, thinking that it would make a very good picture book, and the next day I got the idea. I thought what if the girl who’s telling the story about this really silly chicken is jealous of the chicken! Oooh, sibling rivalry with a chicken! I loved it.

I sat down and wrote out the story in ten minutes. It was one of those ‘gifts’, when a story practically falls into your lap.

And I got it just in the nick of time, because Ruler of the Courtyard  came out and now I had Silly Chicken  in production.

Maybe it would have been better if the Scholastic contract had waited a while to come to fruition. It would have been nice to break this silly superstition.

For goodness sakes I know I sound pathetic.

But for now I have the security of knowing that both these projects are in production, and time to get going on finishing the next book.

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again  at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

This is the first half of the third stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’. And I’ve always thought that if gambling or drinking were at all allowed in Islam, I’d be addicted to both.

I’ve always been an all or nothing kind of gal.

When I do something, I do it wholeheartedly, no holding back, no moderation.

I can’t remember if I was fourteen or fifteen when I joined the air cadets. It’s a junior kind of paramilitary organization in Canada. There are air, army and navy cadets, where we did drills and went on weekend exercises where we played ‘war games’ and learned how to shoot rifles.

Oddly enough, I liked drill. Snapping to attention, saluting, right dress, at ease. We had a marching song that I can still remember. It went:

One!

Can’t hear you.

Two!

Little Louder

Three!

That’s better.

Four!

Now you got it!

One,

Two,

Three,

Four,

One, two, three, four, One, two, three, four.

Try it next time you’re walking along. You’ll find that it keeps your pace at a perfect rhythm.

I thought I’d found my calling in the air cadets, but fate intervened.

I got to the grand ole rank of corporal before I did a strange thing. I got married.

I had dreamed of getting my pilot’s license. You can get it for free through the air cadets. You go through glider’s first and then on to a pilot’s license. The problem was everytime we were set to go gliding, the weather didn’t co-operate.

I love the idea of gliding. Flying without an engine.

I’ve heard it’s completely silent.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I’d stayed in the cadets and gone on into the army like my older sister.

Sometimes I still wish I could get my pilot’s license but after 9/11, frankly I don’t dare.

I’m sure my path would have been very different if I’d stayed longer in the cadets. Every weekend we’d go up to the Canadian Warplane heritage and help in the airplane hangar. Usually we just cleaned up and watched the mechanics rebuild all the old warplanes. I saw them reconstruct a Lancaster bomber and a corsair. I was so gung ho, when they asked us to polish up an RCAF jet with an aluminum fusilage I didn’t even bother using gloves. The polish was so strong it ended up taking a layer of skin off my hands and turning my fingernails yellow.

 Sometimes I wonder how I survived the cadets intact. There were drugs all around me.

I remember going on a weekend exercise to Niagara on the Lake. It was for war games as well as shooting range practice. The boys and girls had their own tents but that didn’t stop them from raiding each other’s tents at night. Let’s just say there was a lot of fraternizing going on.

But I remember one night in particular, it was a full moon but it was covered by a lacy veil of clouds. It was so beautiful and so cold. I stuck around the campfire while others were off in the corners smoking dope. I’m sure I could have joined them, but I was just mesmerized by the beauty of the moon.

I had one good friend. I felt rather sorry for her because her younger sister always treated her so bad. It turned out that she was always high on drugs.

Come to think of it, she did have a very slow expression to her, but I just thought that was the way she was. I’d never seen her any other way.

You might think that my parents were lax in allowing me to be in that kind of environment. I don’t think they knew. But even then, my father had done something very wise. He had always reinforced within all of his children that ultimately we weren’t accountable to him. We were accountable to God.

I didn’t do drugs, not because my parents would find out. I knew that I could probably have fooled them. I didn’t do drugs because I knew that God was watching. If you instill God-consciousness in your children, no matter what temptation they’re faced with, they will not succumb.

This was the approach I took with my own kids.

As it is, the one addiction, the biggest weakness I have, the one thing I do find almost irresistable is spider solitaire.

How pathetic is that?

I have wittled away what amounts to years on the stupid game. And then someone I know said something that alarmed me.

She’s a children’s author who wrote one good book a while back. It was good enough that I bought several copies, but for years she hadn’t written a thing. I invited her along with some other authors over for lunch on a summer’s day and when I confessed to my addiction she said, “Oh Rukhsana, I’m so glad to hear that you play spider solitaire too! I’ve always felt guilty about all the time I spend on it.”

She hadn’t had a book published in years. I still don’t think she has. At least nothing that got any attention.

I could see where I was headed. Immediately I deleted it from my computer. My techie daughter says that it’s not actually deleted, it’s still there, but fortunately I’m not tech-savvy enough to figure out how to access it, and that’s just fine with me.

But the problem is, every time I upgrade and get a new version of Windows, it’s there! And I get hooked, for a while, all over again.

I don’t play the single suit level. I play the hardest level, with all four suits. Most of the games are impossible to win. I can’t say why this particular game has my number, it just does. I’d play till my eyeballs burned holes in their sockets from staring at the computer screen. I’d play till my left shoulder got frozen from sitting still so long.

Maybe when I did win, I felt like I was actually accomplishing something.

It always comes down to the point where I have to delete it, if I want to get any work done. And I do.

As a result, I’m not very judgmental when it comes to drug and alcohol addicts. I know there but for the grace of God (literally) go I.

Today I had the radio interview with Shelagh Rogers and it went better than it ever has.

Usually I’m so nervous, and I was, even when I sat down in front of the microphone, at the seat pushed up to a round table. There were posters on the walls and a miniature model of the Rogers centre, home of my beloved Blue Jays, sitting on a little platform in the middle of the table. I decided it was a portent of sorts and I would try to hit a home run.

There were other little knicknacks on the platform as well. A fluffy thing, lots of fur, with some eyes. It was either pink or green, I can’t remember, and a little toy elephant that was marching to the right. Little trophies or good luck paraphernalia, I didn’t know and didn’t ask.

I sat at the round table all alone and could see the producers in a darker room on the other side of the window. But their images were marred by the glare of my own and I realized that the room I was in must be lighter.

I thought I should have the headphones on, but they hadn’t told me to wear them yet, so I just sat there looking at them.

The producer came in then and asked me to put them on and asked if I wanted anything. Remembering how dry my mouth can get, I asked for a cup of water, and took tiny little sips so I wouldn’t have to pee.

Sitting and waiting for set up just makes you more nervous: hearing them do all the technical stuff; knowing that they’re only asking you what you had for breakfast because they need to check sound levels; resisting the urge to go closer to the microphone in case they can’t hear you because the sound check was done at a certain distance from it and you can’t be varying it; and you can’t be talking louder or softer; just normal because that’s what they’re counting on. 

I’d brought a copy of the book and on a whim, opened it at a random page, and somehow, even with all that stuff around me, I got lost in the story for a few moments, and that just reaffirmed my faith in it. Then I put the book down and tried not to fiddle with it because the producer said any rustling of paper would definitely be heard.

I asked him if that meant tummy rumbles would be audible as well. He said, yes, but to just leave a pause after each of them so he could edit them out. He might have been joking.

Shelagh was delightful. She seemed genuinely happy to speak to me, like she wasn’t just being polite, but it’s always hard to tell. People in these situations are always so polite.

It’s a bit surreal to be interviewed in such a way. It reminds me of that scene in Notting Hill when Hugh Grant is offering Julia Roberts something to nibble or drink from his fridge. Surreal but nice.

It’s many a writer’s dream and ambition to be fussed over in such a way. To have people *get* what you wrote.

I mean you work so hard. For months you wrestle with words on a page thinking will they ever evoke what you see in your mind? And it gets to a point when you’ve read the sentences over and over and over again, and you’re sure they’re banal, they’re tripe, people will see right through them. But then you remind yourself that you’re coming at them from a position of familiarity, and doesn’t familiarity always breed contempt?

These readers are coming at them afresh, and remember what you felt when you had freshly written them. Remember how the words had moved you as you’d recorded them, rely on that, have faith in that, for that is more real than this niggling self-doubt.

And here was Shelagh Rogers really saying how much she had loved the story I had concocted. A story I thought was good but nevertheless it’s a story I couldn’t be sure anyone else in the world would like at all.

And the questions she asked! And the flow of the answers. I can’t help but think that I did pretty well. If it wasn’t a home run, it was at least a solid triple.

And even though the producer said at the end, “You talked a LOT!” He laughed then and added, “In a good way.” And I felt a lot better thinking wouldn’t you want a guest to talk a lot on radio?

It wasn’t just a few minutes interview either. Geez, it must have been at least half an hour!

It will air on Shelagh Rogers’ show The Next Chapter either April 4th or 5th, I can’t remember. The details flew out of my head.

And then later in the day, after the excitement had calmed down, a friend called to say how he’d taught the same book in his university course to budding educators and how 450 of his students had read it and loved it!

It was a good day.

One of those days that Rudyard Kipling talked about in that poem of his I so love to quote, If. Today I met with Triumph, and for now at least, he was no imposter.

I’m going to be interviewed on Shelagh Rogers radio show The Next Chapter tomorrow. It’s on CBC, which stands for Canadian Broadcasting Company and is national.

It’s not the first time I’ve been on her show.

But the first time was a different show. Years ago, when she was host of Sounds like Canada she was doing a piece on the largest school in Canada, Thorncliffe Park P.S. and she had me on.

Thorncliffe Park is full of immigrant kids. I’d actually say that South Asian kids are the majority there. And the ambience of the place is phenomenal. The teachers are so friendly, the librarian is amazing, I’ve always had a fantastic time when I’ve gone to visit.

I got to meet her and her staff there in the revamped library and I read my book The Roses in My Carpets on air.

It’s funny how things lead one into another.

A lady, driving her car, heard me telling the story on air, she told me later she had to pull over because she was crying so hard.

She just happened to belong on the board of a local branch of Toastmasters, you know that public speaking group. Well she managed to convince them to give me their annual International Communication and Leadership award.

It seems fitting that tomorrow I’ll be talking about a book that grew out of The Roses in My Carpets.

It’s Wanting Mor  that I’ve been invited to talk about.

Shelagh read it and apparently loved it and will be asking me all kinds of stuff about it.

Yes, I’m nervous.

But I heard one storyteller say that being nervous is actually a good sign.

It means you respect your audience.

But you know what? I’m not *too* nervous.

Easier said than done, I know.

When I first went on T.V. and radio, my nerves would often get the better of me. I’d stumble over words, I’d feel the hot lights, so many times I had the terrible sensation of having a very dry mouth and yet needing to pee at the same time.

I was deathly afraid of making a complete fool of myself or being ambushed.

When I was growing up, there’d be times in the classroom, when someone would say something, often a pretty innocuous comment, and the smart alec, the joker in the class, would turn it around to be an insult at me.

The teacher would be helpless to stop the guffaws as everyone stared at me, laughed at me, and pointed their fingers at me. I would burst into tears and run from the room.

It would happen about once or twice a year. Of course the teacher would give them a stern talking to and detentions, but I guess the jokers thought it was worth it, because they’d do it again.

Ever since I decided to get published and promote my work, including public presentations, my worst nightmare was a scenario when people were ganging up on me. When they were laughing at me and there was nothing I could do.

A few years ago, my worst case scenario came true. It was on a local channel on a kind of talk show. The host was a bit of a loose cannon. I’d been on the show a few times and this time the issues being discussed were about Afghanistan. I assumed they were calling me because of my book The Roses in my Carpets.

The producer even told me, ”Don’t worry, it won’t be confrontational.”

I was the only Muslim on the panel. And it ended up to be a show on the transgressions of the Taliban.

I was called upon to defend every atrocity that had ever been committed against women, in the name of Islam.

And the worst thing was two of the ladies on the panel were also South Asian but they had some kind of bigotry against Islam and Muslims and even as I was answering their charges, trying to explain Muslim perspectives, they were snickering and giggling, laughing while I was talking.

And during the commercial breaks I kept turning to the host saying, “I feel like I’m under attack!” He just smiled and said, “Nonsense. You’re doing fine.”

Even the driver, who drove me home after the ordeal, said he’d been watching it all and had called it bad form and felt sorry for me.

It was my worst nightmare.

But what it taught me was that I survived. And I had held my own. I had not buckled under the pressure.

My heart had been palpitating, my breath had been coming in shallow gasps, but I had survived.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the old adage that no one can make you feel inferior without your permission.

And I felt certain that this whole scenario had been conducted in a very unprofessional manner. They had acted shabbily. I had not. Under the onslaught I had simply held to my principles irregardless of the fact that this was not the venue that would lead to any kind of understanding or intelligent discussion.

The next day I called up the producer and I told her, “I thought you said it wouldn’t be confrontational!”

She had nothing to say, and suddenly I felt a little sorry for her. I thought she was embarrassed. It probably was a spontaneous thing her loose cannon of a boss decided to do on the spur of the moment.

Then I told that producer, “You know, if you’d told me I’d be called upon to talk about every atrocity that’s ever been committed in the name of Islam, I still would have come. But at least I would have prepared myself.”

Then I hung up the phone and every time they’ve called me to come back on that show, I’ve refused.

But in hindsight, it was a blessing.

It’s powerful to think that I experienced my worst case scenario, and I survived.

I believe the outcome of tomorrow’s interview is already written. I believe that the first thing God created was the pen and he ordered it to write everything that would ever happen.

Not a leaf falls, not a bird sings, except that it is recorded in a book.

So why should I worry?

If tomorrow brings good for me, then that is God’s will. If it brings harm to me, then there’s no way of avoiding that either.

But really, Shelagh Rogers is no loose cannon!!!

She’s as nice as they come.

On Tuesday March 9th, I’m going to be interviewed on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) Radio by Shelagh Rogers. Yesterday a gentleman called me up for a kind of pre-interview and he asked me this question: “Why YA?”

He was referring to Wanting Mor, my novel that is based on a true story and set in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

He’s the second person who has asked me that question about that book.

At first I misunderstood the question, thinking young adult as opposed to younger middle grade students. Middle grade students (grades four to six) are the ‘best’ target audience in that they read more voraciously than any other group. My books always seem to be either too young for them, or a little bit too old.

I started saying that I thought ten year olds would have no problem reading Wanting Mor because it doesn’t contain any explicitly sexual references in it but I thought older students would really get the nuances of what I was trying to say.

Then he clarified. He had read it, and loved it, and asked me why it was designated for young adult and not simply for adults.

It’s a very good question.

And I’m not sure of the answer.

The fact is I’m a children’s author. I write ‘children’s’ books.

I’ve had lots of people ask me when I was going to ‘grow up’ and write adult books, but a writer writes what they have to write. I never think of audience when I sit down to write a book. I only ever think of the story that needs to be told.

A book that appeals to both children/youth and adults is called a crossover book and there are only two examples I can think of: the Harry Potter and Twilight series of books.

Frankly, when I was writing Wanting Mor I wasn’t even thinking about if it would ever get published.

I wrote it with abandon. I wanted to find out what would happen to this poor girl.

When it was done, I automatically assumed it was a teen novel. That’s what I write.

I’ve read many articles that warn people who are setting out to write children’s books that if they think children’s books are any *easier* than adult books, they should think again.

I kind of disagree with this statement. They can be easier only because they are shorter. And they’re easier if you’re suited to writing them.

Children’s books involve the same scale of emotions as any other type of books, only the story is filtered through the sensibilities of a child. As an adult writer, you have to limit your character’s understanding and perspective to what a child would think or say under the circumstances. The emotional strain is underneath the dialogue and the action, and often all the more intense for being portrayed in an understated,  muted manner.

It actually requires a very mature character to accomplish this.

Because in doing so,  you have to understand what the adult perspective is, as well as what the child has been exposed to.

As a result many children’s authors are more than happy to remain within children’s publishing because it provides more than enough challenges and stimulation for their craft.

I guess I’m taking a roundabout way of saying I never thought I could write an adult book. I don’t read a lot of adult books. I used to, but I’ve kind of stopped.

I guess you could consider all the classics adult books. I got into some Catherine Cookson, Victoria Holt, Jean Plaidy, Georgette Heyer, Daphne Du Maurier. With the exception of Daphney Du Maurier’s work, I found that after a while all those other authors’ main characters were exactly the same.

They’d essentially stuck the same person in different circumstances.

I read some fantasy including Stephen R. Donaldson’s Thomas Covenant series and quite enjoyed them but when he resurrected Lord Foul after he’d so thoroughly killed him in the third of the what was supposed to be a trilogy, I felt cheated.

So many adult books cheat. Agatha Christie did with so many of her mysteries. She’d leave out a crucial clue so the reader couldn’t possibly have figured out whodunnit!

And so many adult books seem to ramble, the authors go off on tangents to satisfy, I don’t know, their own intellectual egos, I guess.

And don’t get me started on the The Life of Pi.

There have been other adult books I read that left me feeling totally disgusted. Even tainted. One of them was called Through a Glass Darkly,  I can’t remember what nitwit wrote it, but it was horrible. Or more diplomatically, I should say it was ‘not my cup of tea’.

Shortly after that I gave up on adult books and stuck to the children’s section.

I still don’t know what to make of the idea that people want me to consider Wanting Mor  an adult book.

It doesn’t contain any smut, or language. Of course I know not all adult books do, but it’s kind of the first thing you think of when you think that something is ‘adult’.

It’s interesting though. I’ve been flirting with writing a sequel.

I had the most peculiar feeling of homesickness when I finished Wanting Mor. I didn’t want to leave Jameela, and I actually feel that the story is not quite finished.

The sequel will definitely be adult because it would deal with her getting married. So maybe, if Wanting Mor is considered adult too, it won’t be such a ‘bad’ thing. *g*

twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your live to,

broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

This stanza of the poem If by Rudyard Kipling, always reminds me of the Prophet (peace be upon him)

Sometimes I wonder what he would say if he saw what people do in his name today.

Or Jesus (peace be upon him). What would he say?

Over the years I’ve discussed a lot of issues on the internet. Mostly on this political writing forum I often frequent.

It’s funny how it works. I have a lot of friends on that forum.

We’ve ‘known’ each other for many years.

I’ve spent countless hours arguing and explaining my perspective as a Muslim to them.

Some people are respectful, others less so.

They all start out with lots of assumptions.

Having grown up here, I can safely say that I understand their perspectives a lot better than they understand mine. I’ve been bombarded with them all my life.

I had to actively choose my faith.

There are some people who belong to the religion they do by default.

They were born into it, so they accept it as a culture.

Others, like me, while not ‘converts’ have come to a point where they actually accept the religion.

It’s a kind of conversion of sorts.

For me it happened when I was very young. Eighth grade. Under the trees that surrounded the soccer field of my middle school.

It was another recess spent alone, in contemplation during a particularly rough week of my life. 

Canada is a less religious than America. When I was growing up, science reigned supreme, and I found it very compelling.

On the one hand I loved the way it explained so many fascinating natural phenomenon, on the other hand, I found it apalling that it seemed determined to prove the absence of God.

I’ve never found the two to be incompatible.

But that day, on the field, beneath that maple tree, I felt like I had to make a choice.

It’s taken a long time for me to reconcile the two, and feel at peace with my scientific training and religious training.

It’s taken me a long time to learn to use the one to complement the other, and vice versa.

And as a result of this arguing, discussing and yes, even defending my beliefs, I learned to distinguish between the actions of Muslims and what the Prophet (peace be upon him) himself dictated.

Unfortunately many Muslims are not very good examples of the Islamic teachings. And growing up in Pakistani culture, there were so many aspects to what I thought Islam taught that I found apalling and even barbaric.

The first instinct is to blame the messenger. It’s what so many people on that politics forum would do. They’d point at crazy things some Muslims were doing and blame them on all of us, and on Islam and the Prophet (peace be upon him).

Despite the proof I provided that these were things that the Prophet (peace be upon him) clearly condemned.

Instead of blaming the messenger, I studied the messenger, found out what he really taught by going back to the original sayings, and in doing so, I tried to purge all the cultural corruption from my practice of Islam.

Today, on CNN, Wolf Blitzer was making a big deal about some Muslim scholar who issued a fatwa categorically denouncing suicide bombing and terrorism.

My response: “Duh!”

Armed struggle against an occupying force is certainly legitimate. Blowing yourself up to kill anyone, even your enemies, is not.

Anyone who wants to blame that on the Prophet (peace be upon him) when he categorically forbade suicide and the killing of innocents, is operating on the basis of their own prejudice, and not on anything he taught.

But you cannot control your words once they’ve left you. People will quote you and misquote you, twisting your words to set a trap for fools.

And those fools will be responsible for what they do, and so will the knaves who trapped them. Each according to various degrees of culpability.

Sometimes it just seems so overwhelming.

I don’t know if I could stand it were it not for the belief, the certainty that there is God, who is impartial, who can see into our hearts and judge us from our true intentions.

Otherwise, with all the wickedness in the world, and with all the times that evil seems to prevail, there would be no hope.

Only despair.

And yet, I have hope. Lots of hope.

I subscribe to an email newsletter from a group called CAIR which stands for Council on American Islamic Relations. They’re a Muslim advocacy group and they field all kinds of issues that arise with regards to problems Muslims face in America.

Most of them have to do with women who are fired for wearing the hijab, the Islamic headscarf, either at work or in a court room. They do a lot of good work but sometimes you read something that just makes you go huh???

Like this mentioned in the most recent CAIR newsletter from a police report in Nevada: 

According to the Henderson Police Department incident report, the officers responded to a report that 7 MIDDLE EASTERN MALES ACTING 425, BY A GRY MINI VAN, UNK CA PLTS, SEV OF SUBJS ARE KISSING THE GROUND. (The men are of various ethnic backgrounds, including Middle Eastern and South Asian. The police code 425 generally refers to a suspicious situation. Muslims place their foreheads to the ground briefly while praying.) 

I’ve been to Nevada, and Montana and South Dakota and Wyoming. I can’t believe that people reported this!

In fact when in Montana, I was at the Little Big Horn Battleground National Monument (checking out where Custer had his Last Stand) and the time came to pray. There was a grassy spot just by the parking lot with the graves of soldiers behind us, where my son and I just spread a cloth and started praying.

We weren’t kissing the ground. We were prostrating ourselves in front of God, showing our complete submission to Him by touching the highest spot on our heads (our foreheads) to the ground to show our acknowledgement of Him as our Creator, Sustainer, Cherisher, and Lord of the Worlds.

Nobody said ‘boo’ to us. I saw them watching as they passed by, but nobody said or did a thing and no police were called.

I wonder if they called the police in this situation because it was seven men. No women were around.

I’ve traveled down to the States many times and never been too bothered, but then I’m a middle-aged woman. Long ago I stopped bothering my hubby to go down there. When this trip to South Dakota came up, he refused to go. He just doesn’t feel like dealing with American border authorities.

I’ve been reading about Crazy Horse, the Oglala warrior who defeated Custer for so long, that I felt compelled to spend my own money and go there.

I hired a native guide, a really nice guy named Marcel Bullbear (and paid him as much as I could) to take me around all the battle sites where Crazy Horse had fought.

There’s a book I want to write about it one day! I’ve been working on one for ten years but it doesn’t seem ready yet.

And I took my fifteen year old son along as a kind of chaperone.

It’s forbidden in Islam for men and women who are not married or closely related to each other to be alone together without a third being present. I was going to be driving all over four states with Marcel for about four days. It was good to take my son along with me.

And it was also good because the only experience my son had ever had with Americans was listening to the talking heads on CNN.

As a result, he thought all Americans were loud and obnoxious, and paranoid of Muslims, only thinking the very worst of us. Even when I assured him they weren’t like that, that when you actually meet Americans they are some of the nicest people in the world, he couldn’t comprehend it, until we went to South Dakota.

In fact we were in the parking lot of  Fort Phil Kearney, near the site of the Fetterman massacre, what the natives called ‘The Battle of One Hundred in the Hand’ when an old white guy came up to us. He looked like the type who’d be very racist, but he wasn’t. He started making conversation and asked us where we’d come from.

He was friendly and genuinely interested in what my son had to say, and I watched my son, ever the sullen teenager, speak to him, at first haltingly, and then more openly, and when the man wished us the best and left, I said, “See?”

He agreed that Americans were really nice.

He even went as far as saying they were nicer than Canadians.

I’m not sure I’d go that far. I’ve met some really nice Canadians too!

Check out the pics of our trip: http://www.rukhsanakhan.com/photogallery/SouthDakota/index.html

I admit I approached my education in a very strange way. I decided to go to college (community college) before going to university.

I went two years to Seneca college and studied, of all things, biology and chemistry. Eventually graduating as a biological chemical technician, not even a technologist, for goodness sakes.

I wonder if it wasn’t because I needed to get the science and maths out of my system.

Growing up, my father was partial to high marks in sciences and maths. If I got an A in English or Art, it was always, “”That’s nice, behti.”

But if I got an A in Science or Math it was “Shabash!!!!”

And I liked math and science. I thought they were intelligent no-nonsense subjects, not open to interpretation. An answer was either right or wrong. Artist endeavours like writing depended too much on subjectivity. Even if I liked something, I had absolutely no confidence in the fact that anyone else would.

Being an immigrant I never saw much value in extra-curricular activities. Oh I played a few sports, weird ones you’ve probably never heard of like deck tennis. It’s like volleyball only played with a ring. But I never got very good at it, our team never won any championships.

We poured the bulk of our energy into maths and sciences. I had a very intimidating teacher in grade nine named Mr. Begin. He was a tiny fellow and he never smiled and yet everyday he wore the strangest belt buckle, a happy face. It made his grim expression look all the more incongruous. 

I learned how to solve mathematical theorems in his class. We had to prove the pythagorean theorem, and things like if a line intersects two parallel lines then the angles produced are equivalent, stuff like that.

It was a fascinating use of logic. I think it grounded me in logic, in fact.

 I enjoyed math, I loved biology, physics was a struggle, and chemistry was fascinating. Back then there were thirteen grades and you could graduate grade thirteen without completing grade twelve by taking six grade thirteen credits. I ended up finishing five years of high school (grade nine-thirteen) in four years instead, by taking the prerequisites and then doing the six grade thirteen subjects, three maths: algebra, relations and functions and calculus; and three sciences: chemistry, biology and physics.

I really thought I’d be a scientist mainly because, being a non-white, I didn’t think I could be an author.

If I’d actually made a good living as a scientist I probably wouldn’t be an author today.

But what surprised me was the attitude of my high school and college professors.

So many of them repeatedly asked me why, with my marks, I hadn’t just gone straight to university. Instead I was doing it part time after I’d finished and gotten a job in a chemical lab.

It’s like they looked down on college students.

I can’t completely remember my reasoning at the time. I think I thought of university as too expensive. I’d do it gradually, one credit at a time, while college gave me a practical job. But I do think that if I had gone straight to university something would have been lost in the process.

I might indeed have become a teacher and it might have ruined me for writing.

I think university can indoctrinate students. I’ve heard too many stories about professors of English and the Arts rewarding students who only wrote papers that agreed with their pet philosophies.

That’s only logical with subjects like sciences and maths, but you would think that other interpretations, what we call ‘thinking outside the box’ would be encouraged in the artistic fields.

I looked at art analysis and history a bit like those mathematical theorems. If you *proved* your case, substantiated your opinion enough with references and logic, why wouldn’t a professor accept it, even if he disagreed personally with your conclusions?

Maybe that’s what a thesis is for. I really don’t know much about education. 

I just think reading Austen and Bronte in some English lit course would have killed them for me.

I read Austen and Bronte on my own terms. I analysed them, perhaps, every bit as deeply as I would have under the tutelage of an English professor, but I drew my own independent conclusions.

The reason why I read them was because I’d heard of them enough to think that they were books I should read.

They are referred to in normal intellectual discourse on writing and literature, so I thought it behooved me to read the works so that when they were being discussed I might have something intelligent to add to the conversation, or at least know what they were all talking about.

I never expected I’d enjoy Austen and Bronte as much as I did.

And in the process I started reading all the ‘classics’ until I realized that not all of them were created equal.

I have no use for Thomas Hardy. Daniel Defoe’s okay. I actually enjoyed Robinson Crusoe, especially the religious conversations he had with Friday, until I found out that Defoe had never left England.

I love Shakespeare’s  tragedies, his comedies less so. I actually don’t find it that hard to understand. I grew up hearing a lot of pseudo-old English through the translation of the Quran that my father would read to us. It was by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, who fancied himself an Englishman I guess and wanted the Quran to read ‘like scripture’ so he echoed the thees and thous of the King James Version of the Bible.

It made Shakespeare quite palatable.

I only ended up working as a biological chemical technician for a year and a quarter. Enough to basically pay for my education. It was about then that I got pregnant with my first child.

For most people they do things in order: education, university degree, career, money, find a spouse, get married, have children.

My path has been quite the opposite.

Grade eleven, get married, education, college diploma, make a little money, have children, university part time: geology, biology, chemistry, calculus, change your major, then drop university, study on my own, writing workshops, years of writing workshops, rejection, get published.

I had my first child when I was twenty-two and my last child when I was thirty-two.

And now that I’m going to be turning forty-eight I have four grown children, soon to be three grandchildren Insha Allah (God willing), eleven books published, the career I’ve always wanted and I get to travel the world.

When my own kids shunned university, who was I to cajole them into staying?

Right now they’re focused on religious learning and they’re focused on motherhood. I think all three of my daughters are working on memorizing the entire Quran in Arabic, a feat I’ve never accomplished.

Today I was presenting at the middle school all my children attended. The teachers asked about my daughters and when I told them they’d only completed a diploma in community college, they got that apprehensive look in their eyes. They didn’t ask me why, with their marks, they didn’t finish university, but I could see that perhaps they wanted to.

And maybe they were surprised that I was so accepting of  their choices.

The way I see it, my daughters can always pursue more education and career later on. The door to education is always open, the door to motherhood is more limited.

But even if they never amount to anything more than they’ve achieved so far, that’s just fine with me. They are fine upstanding women and I’m happy to say that I’m proud of them.

What more can you ask?

I was flicking channels and saw a bit of Interview With a Vampire starring Brad Pitt. Despite my squeamishness regarding the topic, I find it’s actually well written. The dialogue is compelling, at least as much of it as I watched a long time ago.

I couldn’t get very far.

Tried watching bits of Bram Stoker’s dracula too, and couldn’t finish. It just felt ‘icky’ watching it.

I wonder if that’s what the creators of it are going for, that ‘icky’ feeling.

I’ve learned my lesson about dabbling in stuff like that.

I have a friend who feels compelled to write about dark paranormal stuff. Yet meeting her she’s probably one of the sunniest people around.

She writes about it, but she doesn’t write about it like Anne Rice or Stephanie Meyer or J.K. Rowling. She said it’s because she believes in it.

Hers are more cautionary type tales and recently she’s turned her hand to mystery thriller type stories.

I think people who do believe in the unseen don’t ‘go there’ in their writing. They stick to safe subjects.

What surprises me is that Stephanie Meyer seems to, at least on the surface, come from a fairly religious background.

When I read on her website, her description of how she got the idea for her Twilight series, it turned my blood cold.

Apparently she was waking from a very vivid dream and she saw two figures in a clearing in a forest, who had a kind of glow around them, and she was particularly drawn to the boy, she knew he was a vampire and he was tempted by the girl’s blood.

Anyone who thinks this idea is new is  mistaken.

In medieval times they were called incubi or succubi (sp?) depending on their gender and who they went after. (I really haven’t done much research on this stuff, so don’t take my word for it.) All I know is that the concept of the ‘demon lover’ goes back to the dark ages and was often one of the charges launched against suspected witches.

Personally, I think it’s irresponsible to write a novel that glamorizes and romaticizes the idea of a woman falling in love with a man who wants to eat her. And I’m not the only one. Many feminists have come out against the novel as well.

Not like that will make a lick of difference to her fans.

The other day I was at a school and the kids wanted to know what I thought of it all. I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. I said, “Twilight is basically a girl’s fantasy and a boy’s nightmare.”

The girls looked puzzled and the boys cheered, high-fiving each other.

Jealousy doesn’t even weigh into the equation. I’m happy to say that I don’t feel jealous about books I couldn’t or wouldn’t ever write.

But I do wonder how Stephanie Meyer reconciles her faith with her writing.

I recognize Twilight as just another phenomenon like Harry Potter, that seems to tap into what a lot of people happen to be looking for at a particular time.

To compare them, I think Harry Potter is a bit more wholesome than Twilight but I haven’t finished reading either of them so I shouldn’t comment too much. (It’s not fair.) I read the first five chapters of Harry Potter because someone told me you get hooked by then. I didn’t. To me it was too reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones The Lives of Christopher Chant. 

The only fantasy I really do like is The Lord of the Rings and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the most important characters in it are the least magical. After LOTR I read way too much bad fantasy, talking stones and glowing slime kind of stuff, and I gave up on the genre ages ago.

As for Anne Rice, I find it interesting that since writing the Vampire books that she’s so famous for, she’s actually given up on the genre and turned religious. She’s a devout Catholic now, and one of her latest books that I watched her being interviewed about was on some Catholic religious history that didn’t get near the attention that her vampire stuff got.

I think it’s fascinating that she went from atheist to staunch believer. She said that the climax of Interview With the Vampire (which I didn’t get to because I didn’t watch that far) was where the two vampires are talking and somehow they ask if they’re still children of God and the answer becomes yes. (I’m remembering an interview I watched a while back, so forgive any inaccuracies.)

She seemed to regret the vampire books, but she still must make royalties and money from them, maybe, I don’t know.

And yet, for the launch of one of the vampire books she’d arrived dressed in black or something and riding in a coffin.

Just goes to show that as long as there’s life a person can always find God.

I think that’s comforting.