Before, I would often go into autopilot when I’d be praying. It’s hard not to. We memorize the whole prayer, it’s formal and prescribed as such, there’s only a few spots for spontaneity.

I used to wonder why.

But over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s a mercy and a blessing.

God tells us what to say, shows us how to pray, and if you understand the words you’re saying, they’re beautiful and moving.

Oh I make duas/supplications at other times, but the salat/Muslim ritual prayer is pretty much set.

But ever since I got back from Hajj, it’s changed.

So many times I’ll start praying and it’s like my chest opens up and swells with such joy that it gives my spirit a bit of a hiccup.

It’s not something I’ve told many people, and the only reason I mention it now is because one of my friends, who gave me the feedback for the Hajj novel, felt sad and thought I was sad.

And I thought, “Oh no! I hope that’s not the way my posts are coming across!”

I have tried to be totally honest about the creative process I am going through. I’m doing so because I think people who would tend to gravitate to my blog would find that information useful because they’re probably creative types as well.

They might not be writers, and my comments might not apply exactly to their situation, but hey, creative process is creative process and it translate to other endeavours as well!

So much of the creative process is just plain hard slogging work.

And I don’t believe in hiding that.

But that doesn’t mean it brings me down.

Quite the opposite.

These are high class problems to have!

And be under no illusions…writing is HARD work!

The people who succeed are those who do the things that other people don’t want to do.

Many of my stories have taken me ages to write!

And it’s because there’s a stubborn streak in me. When I believe in a story I’ll keep coming back to it.

And I’ve said it before…it’s all about angles! It’s all about voice.

It’s like that moment in My Cousin Vinny when the Joe Pesci character is holding up that playing card and telling his cousin that the prosecutor will try to convince the jury that it’s solid, like a brick, that it has straight sides and all that, so that the jury won’t notice that it’s paper thin and flimsy.

Writers should remember that analogy! It works for stories we write too only the other way around.

Our stories are paper thin and flimsy, but write them right and the reader will feel they’re solid brick!

When we write we don’t have to recreate the whole world of our characters! We simply suggest realities and the reader’s imagination will fill in the rest. Do it well and your story will be so convincing that people will think you really do know what you’re talking about!

Even though you know you’re muddling about figuring things out as you go along.

Every single author I know of, has moments of doubt. Moments when they feel like a complete fraud.

I feel that way especially when I’m wrestling with a new story.

Then it doesn’t matter what I was able to accomplish with past stories, it feels like I’ll never get it right.

What helps though is the school presentations!

They are really really good for my confidence! And it’s because as I’m telling them my stories, doing presentations I’ve done thousands of times before, in the process I re-fall in love with my own stories.

I think, ‘Wow, these really are good. And look how much the kids are enjoying them!’

Hope that doesn’t sound egotistical or anything, I’m just being frank. Those are the reactions I get from the kids I visit.

I just got home from a literacy night and I got to tell two of my favourite folktales.

I’d gone to this school on Wednesday and they invited me back tonight (Thursday night) for a literacy evening where the parents were invited. I told the kids I saw on Wednesday that I’d be telling completely different stories tonight, and I fulfilled my promise.

A lot of them showed up! It was so nice to see so many parents out on a stormy Thursday evening, when it would have been so tempting to just stay home and watch T.V.!

The enthusiasm of those kids helps keep me going!

Basically what I’m taking a long-winded approach to say is this: You need to find your joy wherever you can find it.

You need to let it fill your heart till it feels like you’re swelling to burst open! (In a good way!)

I may relate the difficulties I’m facing in gory detail. (I even had a dream the other night–that same recurring nightmare I often get where the writing thing didn’t work out and I’m back doing daycare to make ends meet!)  But that doesn’t mean I’m not having a great time!

Growing up in that small town in Ontario, growing up being told I was brown because I was dirty and my classmates were white because they were clean, often being ambushed with ridicule because of the colour of my skin and the strangeness of my faith–it is absolutely astonishing to me that I can actually make a living as an author and a storyteller!

And to think I couldn’t even speak English when I first came here! And now I write in nothing else!

I have SO much to be thankful for and I often tell children there’s only one thing in my life that I would change and that’s my weight!

I really need to lose weight.

Other than that, life is good!

And I won’t let myself take that for granted.

I’ve read this phrase in the Quran a number of times and it’s funny but I always thought it only referred to the oppressed and downtrodden.

But I attended a lecture a while back and a scholar made a good point. He said that no, this phrase applies to both a privileged status and a downtrodden one. Basically it also applies to people who are doing well–that God will not cause them to decline until they change what is in themselves–ie abandon the good qualities that made them successful in the first place.

The older I get the more truth I see in this phrase.

When I was younger, how the sympathy poured out of me when I saw people living in horrible conditions– until I got to know them and saw how sometimes they contributed to their own situation.

I used to babysit for a lady who claimed that her husband abused her. She had left him and was staying in a shelter but still going to work.

She nodded absently while I urged her to cut off all contact with her husband, for the sake of her children. 

But she wanted to reconcile.

She laid out her terms.

He agreed to none of them.

She went back to him anyways.

And I thought to myself that she’s either stupid, or I am in believing it was as bad as she said.

Oprah never talks openly about the people she’s helped that have disappointed her.

But I remember one show where she decided to give about three very poor families a leg up for a few months.

One lady, I think she was from Appalachia, I just remember that she was white, very skinny and had horrible teeth. She was in a desperate situation because her husband had become injured and couldn’t work and she was going to school to increase her job skills. At the end of the time period of help–she was remarkably better off!

But there was another lady who was a single mom, and used the money to buy stuff she hadn’t been able to afford. At one point her daughter said, “Can we get that?” or something, and she answered, “Of course dear, we’re not poor any more.” We never saw what happened to her at the end of the period of help!

The first lady was keen on changing her condition by changing what was in herself, the second lady accepted the handout and took it for granted, not realizing that it was a limited time offer, and if she didn’t change, then she’d be no better off.

And that’s just an economic example.

I know a lot of people reminisce about how much better things were when they were growing up. And I know I’m going to sound like a real geezer saying that, yes, in many ways things were better when I was growing up.

Even if you only look at the commercials we had back then!

They were full of ‘scientific’ sounding comparisons that ‘proved’ that Detergent A was better than Detergent B. Think about what that says about the people the commercial is targetting their sales pitch at.

News was a somber affair. It was meant to contain gravitas, not looney side piece human interest stories!

Even when I look at the creative writing journal I kept when I was in grade eight and thirteen years old, my vocabulary was quite impressive! Kids just don’t write like that any more!

Oh of course we had our vulgarities! But they weren’t ‘mainstream’. Mainstream society kept a level of sophistication and a civilised demeanor.

And governments paid their bills, living within their means!

That’s all gone. 

There is no question that God bestowed His favour on western countries at the time. He granted them prosperity and took it away from Muslim countries!

He gave western countries rulers who tried to be just and rule their people well, and He allowed dictators to take control of Muslim lands.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said that the ruler of a people is a reflection of the people. 

And boy was he right!

For a corrupt ruler to gain control over a people, he has to have the support of a number of people.  And corruption is rampant in Muslim countries and African countries.

But I wonder if that isn’t changing with the Arab spring.

Say what you want about Hezbollah and goodness knows I’m no fan, but when the Lebanon war was finished their people were out there writing cheques to compensate people for the destruction of their property and help them rebuild!

Folks in America, after Katrina, noticed it and wondered why FEMA couldn’t be more efficient. How many billions of dollars were spent on New Orleans???

Where did it all go???

If the government had done the same, given each household a lump sum to use towards rebuilding, they would have saved a ton of money and New Orleans would have been rebuilt much faster–I believe!

I remember how instead they put the poor and homeless up in fancy hotels for a time period and I screamed at my T.V. set, “You idiots! Why don’t you give that money you’d spend on the Crowne Plaza, to the people living there???” And cynical me, I thought the guy in charge of the funds must know the guy in charge of the hotels. They’re just divvying up a piece of the pie!

And even the news media commented on the corruption of the authorities as to how the money was spent.

In the past, Canada was always known for being a fair and balanced society. Championing human rights all over the globe. It was one of the things I was most proud of, being Canadian.

But with our new leader, Steven Harper, boy have we taken many steps backward! Recently our government was only one of five in the world that refused to condemn the Israeli government’s settlement expansion. The other four countries were the U.S. (no surprise) and a few little countries in the South Pacific.

It does not bode well for America or Canada.

As the Arabs are continuing their spring uprising, it seems to me that the west is sinking the other way.

Perhaps God is finally changing the condition of the Arab people because they are changing something within themselves.

It might be too soon to say.

I have very little hope for Pakistan–my land of birth!

They’re ruled by a crook–Zardari, husband of the late Benazir Bhutto–another crook, both of whom have syphoned untold amounts of wealth from Pakistan into off-shore bank accounts.

Zardari doesn’t give a hang about the people suffering under his rule, and as sorry as I feel for them, nothing will change until the people change what is in themselves.

But yesterday I had my second glimmer of hope. (the first was that wonderful community in Oklahoma!)

I was invited to another Muslim gig.

This was a Muslim school in Mississauga where they asked me to come in and do a presentation for the kindergarten to grade two’s.

And there was some mention about a session for the women.

Sure, sure, I said. I’ll do that one for free, thinking I’d be talking to a handful of housewives interested in promoting literacy in their kids.

Um…no.

There were about a hundred and fifty women, many of them Pakistani, and others who were taking in the session on line!!!

And they were all wearing hijab (or niqab) and intent on LEARNING!!!! Islam, and other knowledge too!

I have never been to an Islamic school where they were as intent on teaching the MOTHERS as they were on teaching the kids!

Wow!

These were no ignorant immigrant women! These were highly refined, super motivated seekers of knowledge!

Masha Allah!

They put their money where their mouths were and supported this institution!

And the institution itself was not run down, but aesthetically beautiful and more importantly it was WELL-ORGANIZED!

The programs were punctual!

Oh, it was NOT your typical Islamic school, not by a long shot!

It makes my heart sing to see people so dedicated to learning, to changing the next generation for the better!

And when I got up to talk, indeed giving them tips on how to instill a love of learning in their kids and a joy of reading, these women soaked up every word!

And some of them even emailed me afterwards telling me how inspiring they’d found my little talk. (One lady had viewed it online from Columbo, Sri Lanka! I couldn’t help wondering what time in the middle of the night she’d stayed up to do so!)

May this be the beginning of God changing the condition of Muslims–because it seems to me that many Muslims are definitely changing what’s within themselves!

Tonight on Oprah’s visionaries Will.i.am was talking.

If you’re not sure who he is, you’re not alone. I’d heard his name, but didn’t realize he’s one of the co-founders of the group Black-eyed Peas.

The first half of the show was just him spouting off about how tickled he was to be recording a song after-hours in the Louvre, and I get that.

Geez, I’ve been talking about that very thing the last few posts, about going places you’ve always heard of drinking in the moment of actually being there. For him it was the fact that the Louvre staff considered him important enough to actually break the rules on his behalf. I wonder if he realized that really it meant that he was big enough to give them free publicity.

Even a place like the Louvre isn’t averse to free marketing, I imagine.

In the whole show the one thing he said that most resonated with me was about his discipline in going into after-hour clubs AFTER the concerts and trying out new ‘beats’ on the dancers and seeing which ones they responded to.

Basically Will.i.am is the kind of musical artist that is all glitz and very little substance. He doesn’t have a message to his tunes, he just wants to provide some escape for people.

Nothing wrong with that.

One of the hadeeths of the Prophet (peace be upon him) talked about gladdening the hearts of the sorrowful as one of the best actions.

But what I found interesting was that after he’d played a concert to an audience of 35000 he found it absolutely necessary to go into some little backwater joint and play these beats. It was basically some kind of marketing research. And he talked about how most artists would never bother doing that, but he referred to it as keeping his pulse on the likes of the people.

He also talked about how every place he travels, he meets people who affect him deeply.

After coming back from Oklahoma, I can definitely agree with that!!!

I feel like it’s a way to give back to my community. The communities in Oklahoma City and Tulsa were ever so appreciative! Masha Allah.

And I got to meet some fantastic people who were kind enough to share some of their stories with me.

I ended up staying with an old acquaintance, a Pakistani lady who happened to grow up in the vicinity of my hometown about ten years after me.

She remembered me very well indeed!

Now she’s an optometrist and through her I was introduced to some amazing people!

So many ladies who’d converted or ‘reverted’ to Islam–it was really surprising to see so many converts within the Muslim community in Oklahoma city and Tulsa.

They make up a significant portion of the community.

There was one lady who’d been a former marine or soldier, not sure which and was now working in the Islamic school in an administrative capacity. I told her about my book Wanting Mor, how it’s about a girl who’s father abandons her.

She told me about being so poor when she was growing up because her father had left them. She lived in a house with waist high grass that often contained rattlesnakes and she had no shoes. Her mother would feed the children white bread with marshmallow spread on it, and because there wasn’t enough, she’d give it to them and watch them eat, but the girl and her brother would take off strips of bread and hide them in their pillowcases and when the mother got too weak, they’d feed them to her with sips of water.

Putting them on her tongue even though they were dry and a bit moldy.

And once again my stereotypes of white people being automatically privileged by birth was shattered.

Then I met the lady who was driving me a ways and we had a lovely conversation in the car. I asked her about her revert story and she was happy to tell me that she’d learned about Islam through her room mate, who’d been a pastor’s daughter and yet had a stack of Islamic books hidden at the back of her closet.

In Tulsa, I met other reverts, two charming ladies who told me their stories. I always ask how their families reacted to their reversion and one of them said, “Oh my mother didn’t speak to me for four years.” Then around that time she was diagnosed with cancer and her step father had asked her to nurse her because no one else in the family was available or would do it. He asked how much she wanted to be paid. He even offered to give her the house, but she said she didn’t want anything. She said of course she’d do it and then her and her husband would drive a hundred miles there and back and every day to care for her, and one time while they were praying in her room, she noticed her mother prostrating along with them on her hospital bed.

And when she was done praying she asked her mother if she’d been praying with them, and her mother said yes. She asked her mother why. And her mother replied, “Because for once I wanted my prayer to be answered.”

Her mother accepted Islam before she died.

And her story reminded me of the hadeeth of the Prophet (peace be upon him) where he said that some people would live their whole life according to Islam but would come within an arm’s length of the grave and what was written for them would occur, they would negate their faith and die in unbelief, and others would live their whole life in unbelief, come within an arm’s length of the grave and what was written for them would overtake them and they would die believers.

And the way they talked also reminded me of the time I was at an ISNA convention (Islamic Society of North America) in Washington D.C., with about 40,000 Muslims from all over America attending, and I’d walked through the food court and overheard two little old white ladies wearing hijab and abayas (long dresses) discussing the finer points of ijtihad in fine southern accents. (An Islamic term I wasn’t aware of.)

That’s Islam, American style!

How I’ll ever put any of that in a book, I do not know, but it’s like what Will.i.am said. It puts your pulse on the community.

On Saturday night at about 2 am I felt the 4.6 magnitude earthquake near Tulsa. They’ve had some after shocks since then, but really I must say my misconceptions shook more than anything else.

Writing doesn’t occur in a vacuum. You have to continue grow, fill the well from which you draw your inspiration.

And in the process of all that, I felt incredibly ignorant and humbled.

Honestly, I’ll go most of the day completely unaware that I wear hijab, have brown skin, and otherwise look any different from anyone else and then suddenly something will bring me up short.

I’ll see myself reflected in a shop window or someone will say something  like acknowledging how ‘tolerant’ they are to have me as a friend, or to overlook my differences, and I frown and think, “Oh yeah. I AM different.”

Today, I got back to the gym. I’ve been very naughty. Eating way too much and excercising way too little, and I thought I should reverse the trend before things get out of control.

One of the ladies at the gym wanted to do some outreach with the Muslim communty down the road (there’s a mosque on the way home) and she asked me if I’d go in there with her.

“Why? Honestly you’ll be fine.” I told her.

“Yeah, but I’d still like someone with me. I’m afraid I might offend someone.”

“That mosque does outreach all the time. They’re not going to treat you bad in any way.”

“But I’ve heard people tell me… oh the way the men treat the women…”

I wondered what the heck she thought would happen!

Yes, some Muslim men can be misogynistic, but really!

But then I thought, “What if I was going into a synagogue? Yeah, it would be nice to have someone from the community along.” Although honestly, I’d just go in by myself if I had to.

She wanted to have a breast cancer awareness program for the women at the mosque, and with my older sister having died of breast cancer, I said okay, I’d escort her in there.

I thought it shouldn’t take too long.

While we were climbing up the stairs to the second level where the office was, she said, “Oh I feel so self-conscious. Should I be wearing a head cover or something?”

Why? I wondered. She’s not Muslim. But I thought saying that might be too abrupt, so I just told her not to worry about it.

We ended up speaking to a bearded gent who was perfectly amiable.

No drooling, no ogling, nothing to be concerned about at all–which is precisely what I expected–but what she did not.

On the way back to the car, I wanted to just get going. I still had to get some groceries and I was hungry, but we spent some time talking in the parking lot.

She saying how she’d driven past the mosque so many times–afraid of ever going in.

And part of me was thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I guess that’s understandable.”

And she kept talking about movies she’d seen about this woman who’d been stoned to death, and yada yada yada. And I thought, “I should be caring about what she thinks but honestly, I just wanted to get home and get some work done.”

Gosh, in the past, I would have talked her ear off, telling her we really weren’t as bad as the stereotypes portrayed us. The guy in the office was nice enough to give her some literature. A book about human rights in Islam (which she’d expressed an interest in) and a book called Towards Understanding Islam, which is an old standby, and another book that I had read and found quite amazing, which lists all the scientificly accurate statements made in the Quran.

In the parking lot she was in a very talkative mood. She kept saying how she felt so moved, like she’d had an epiphany. She told me she’d always been curious about the Islamic faith, and it was like her eyes were opened.

Inside my head a voice was yelling, “C’mon Rukhsana, don’t be so apathetic. You’ve got a good thing. Share it! Care!” And I told it, “Okay, okay.”

And I bothered to tell her some of the observations I’d made, that the movies that do well in mainstream society only reinforce stereotypes about Muslims. Anything that portrays us in a good light doesn’t get much air time.

She said something like, “Oh but you should be telling more stories about yourselves.”

And I said, “I am.”

“But I haven’t heard of any new stories that you’ve done.”

So I told her about Wanting Mor. Then she asked to read it.

And I hesitated, because if she read the book I gave her, it might look used and I wouldn’t be able to sell it. Then I thought, “Oh what the heck. Maybe it will help her.”

So I lent her a copy.

I might even give it to her.

I guess I’ve been dealing with people’s ‘epiphanies’ for too long.

And while they’re opening their eyes to the beauty of Islam, realizing that we just might not be as barbaric as they thought we were, I’ve taken it for granted that they don’t and won’t understand. And honestly, who the heck cares? As long as I can pray the way I want, and dress the way I want, and eat the way I want and just live the way I want; as long as they’re not carrying torches and hunting us down with pitchforks; and as long as they’re minding their business and letting us mind ours, it’s all hunky dory!

I’m really not normally this callous.

She’s a nice enough lady. She’s always treated me well.

But I’d done a presentation that morning and had popped into the gym on my way home. I wasn’t in any kind of ‘information’ mode.

I was in a ‘get-home-and-have-a-peanut-butter-sandwich-before-I-keel-over’ mode.

Oh well.

It was a moment I needed to be patient, so I grit my teeth and did my best.

One brilliant writer said two things that are very true.

He said Islam is the most hated religion on earth.

It is also the fastest growing.

Think about it.

Or not.

It’s really up to you.

To say good bye to Ramadan, but to have your heart swell with the joy of Eid!

A long time ago my older sister, her husband (at the time) and my husband and me, had an Eid greeting card business.

And it was my job to come up with the jingles inside.

One of my favourites was:

After every hardship there is ease

And after Ramadan there is Eid.

Our business went defunct a long time ago, but it’s funny because a few years ago, I received an Eid card–completely different! And it had my little jingle inside.

At first I was annoyed that I’d been ripped off.

(Muslims are notorious for violating copyright!)

Then I thought, “Hey, I don’t plan to become a jingle writer anyway, and I’ll still be rewarded for anyone who finds enjoyment in that sentiment.”

But then I wrote that so long ago.

In the past few years Ramadan has changed so much for me.

It’s not really a ‘hardship’ any more.

Oh it can be hard, no doubt about it, but something so much greater opens up when you close your mouth from food and drink for the sake of God!

My heart is just so full, swelling like it’s ready to burst with all the joy and goodness!

I was corresponding with a good friend of mine and she is a lady of faith, though a different faith, and she understood exactly what I meant.

Today I immersed myself in preparations for Eid.

I made two lasagnes, cooked six pounds of beef in a curry sauce to make biryani in the morning, made a chocolate cake with coffee icing, and 36 cheesecake cupcakes with dollops of cherry pie filling on top, and finally made about forty pineapple tarts, individually folding them, forking them and painting them with egg wash before baking!

And now, at midnight, I have to iron my new Eid suit and go to sleep to wake up by 7:30 in the morning!

I’m beat…

But happy!

Eid Mubarak to one and all…

And that means Eid Blessings.

It’s a time to reboot, turn the switch off, and start again.

All the bad habits, the excesses that we might have gotten into the habit of eating, drinking or doing, are shut off, from dawn till sunset for a lunar month of 29 or 30 days.

And isn’t it interesting that recent research says that it takes 21 days to get rid of a bad habit?

I have to admit that when Ramadan draws near, I always feel both a sense of anticipation and a sense of dread.

Sometimes the dread is greater than the anticipation and sometimes it’s the other way around.

It’s really not easy to give up eating and drinking for that long, and these days with the summer hours, we’re talking about seventeen hours! Every year Ramadan moves up the calendar by ten days because the lunar calendar is about ten days shorter than the Gregorian (solar) calendar. So next year Ramadan will start around July 20th! In about four more years it’ll be in June, close to the summer solstice where we’re talking 18 hour fasts in the height of summer heat.

I’ve done it before. When I was about twenty. Oh the thirst! It was hard! 

It takes about 36 years for Ramadan to go through the calendar year.

And with the long days coming, I guess it’s natural to feel dread.

And yet no matter how long the fasts are, you ALWAYS get used to them!

Back when it was in the height of June, the month whizzed by, just as it has this month!

I can’t believe it’s the 23rd night already!

Where did it go?

And in a week or so it will be Eid and we will say good bye to Ramadan, and I’m not even close to being ready to! How I will miss it so!

Tonight I went to taraweeh prayers, even though I had lemon squares to bake for Eid. (Been baking up a storm! Made some of my famous chocolate cake with coffee icing and gave some to the neighbours!)

I was debating whether to go or not to taraweeh or pray at home, I have two books to read by Wednesday plus I’m behind on my Quran reading (Every year I try to read the whole thing in English by the end of Ramadan). But hubby said something like it’s not going to wait for you.

Meaning that the taraweeh wouldn’t be there later.

And so I got dressed in some nicer clothes and went.

Last year we had two Libyan imams come who’d memorized the Quran, to lead the taraweeh prayer. (These are extra prayers we pray in Ramadan). Their voices were enchanting! They couldn’t come this year because of all the turmoil there. But still, tonight’s imam was very nice too.

And there’s just something so beautiful and melodic about listening to the Quran in Arabic, in this, the month that it was first revealed. And with all the courses I took in Arabic grammar, I can pick out words here and there and get the general gist of what’s being said.

I just feel so close to God, the Creator, the Most Merciful, the Sustainer.

Like I could reach up and wave or something.

And that blanket of serenity that I already mentioned envelops my heart, and my heart swells like it’s so full of love and peace and all kinds of good stuff…oh I know this sounds corny, but I can’t find better words to express it!

Last year’s Ramadan was the best!

I think I was getting into Hajj mode or something.

This year I’ve been a bit more distracted, what with the L.A. trip and all. The feeling of being rebooted has taken longer to manifest itself.

But these last ten nights are proving definitely climactic.

I’m riding the crescendo of …I don’t know…righteousness? Goodness? Love and good will toward all mankind? Something like that.

And even when I’m dealing with business matters, there’s a part of me that’s detached and thinking that there are far more important things at hand.

It’s a realignment of priorities.

It’s developing a greater consciousness that God is watching.

And it’s a rebooting.

And come Eid, the switch gets flicked back and I’ll go back to my normal routine.

Sigh.

And yet with each Ramadan, Masha Allah, I feel like the effect lasts longer and longer into the next year.

This seems to happen every Ramadan and the problem with that is that it really makes it hard to take anything else, world squabbles over a debt crisis, and attending an impending SCBWI convention, very seriously.

In the grand scheme of things, they really don’t matter now do they?

Even while I keep praying for all the victims of the horrible things happening: the gunning down of civilians in Syria and Libya; the famine in Somalia and the oppression of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, it cannot completely destroy that feeling of serenity.

Because with the blanket of serenity has come the assurance that those who die will go on to a better place, God is most merciful. And we have the opportunity to help those who are suffering by sharing some of the bounty that God has bestowed upon us.

At no time during the year do I believe this more than in Ramadan.

So many times I think, if there were no assurances of a life hereafter, where all injustices will be addressed and all oppression will be punished–I would not be able to take all the suffering in the world.

And along with that, I believe that everything happens for a reason, though we may not be able to see it.

It’s all part of God’s larger plan, and we have to be patient.

Back when we were renovating the kitchen and the bathroom, and I was lifting up old linoleum tiles so that the contractor could lay the ceramic, I was using a heat gun.

I was pretty careful, but in the process the edge of my little finger touched the hot nozzle, and before I could think to pull it away, I suffered a burn.

Of course my first thought was how foolish and clumsy I’d been. (Of course it’s nowhere near the scale of what’s going on all over the world I’m not even trying to compare them, but it was pretty darn painful. And till it scabbed over and began to heal it was pretty painful.)

My second thought was that perhaps this little bit of suffering would help expiate some of my sins–sins I might not even have realized I’d committed.

Because part of Islamic beliefs is that for a believer, every difficulty, even something as small as a heat gun burn or a paper cut, will expiate their sins.

So those believers suffering major catastrophes will have most if not all of their bad deeds wiped out.

For some people who do good in this world but do not believe in God or the hereafter, they will be rewarded with good in this world, and for those whose bulk of reward will be in the hereafter, then things like cuts and burns they get in this life will help expiate their sins so that they will be free in the hereafter.

There were two superpowers at the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him): the Persians and the Romans. And when the early Muslims defeated the first of them, the Persians, and they saw the treasure palaces of the Chosroe II, they wept because they had never seen such wealth and they were afraid that they were obtaining their reward in this life.

When I got that nasty burn, and it started to blister and sting, I sent up a little dua (prayer) right then, to let it be an expiation for any sins that I’ve committed knowingly or unknowingly.

I want to send a donation to the drought victims in Somalia and Kenya even as I pray they get rain.

And I send a prayer out to all those who read these words, may God make this a month of blessing and peace for all of us.

And now, I really should get back to preparing for that SCBWI conference! Because even though my heart’s not into it, my brain’s telling me it’s a pretty big deal.

There’s something kind of tempting to living beneath your means.

On the one hand you could try to convince yourself that you’re above all that superficial nonsense and it’s inside that counts, not the state of your kitchen cabinets.

That notion is reinforced by a story my dad used to tell me when I was growing up.

About a very pious man who used to wear fine fine clothes of silk, but he had a little patch of burlap sewn into a spot on the left half of his chest.

People would ask him why he ruined his clothes like that with that patch of burlap, and the man replied, “The fine clothes are to fulfill society’s expectations. I am a wealthy man and they expect me to dress a certain way. The patch of burlap is over my heart, and that’s for God.”

Ha!

What a silly thing to do!

Every year as Ramadan approaches I start reading through the Quran, in English as well as my halting Arabic, to kind of refresh its message in my mind.

I always get something new from each reading.

Was it last year or the year before that I seemed to focus on all the ayats where God encourages people to spend out of what He has provided for them?

It surprised me all these references to spending.

Of course they come along with admonishments about not being spendthrift, that is not throwing your money away on foolishness.

And from the words of the Prophet (peace  be upon him) he said that a person who has been blessed with wealth should reflect that in their standard of dress and living. Doing so shows gratitude to God for those very blessings.

And we’re really really discouraged from hoarding and piling up wealth.

In fact there’s a chapter towards the end of the Quran that refers to that very phenomenon of hoarding.

We’ve been in this townhouse for twenty-four years, and we bought the house when it was ten years old.

This is probably the first kitchen renovation it’s ever got.

And in spending I thought of a story I wrote for my anthology Many Windows. It’s called The Locket and contains references to the celebration of Buddha’s birthday.

The whole anthology is really about community, and that story in particular is about the way we, as individuals, rely on each other economically. The way our livelihoods are so intertwined.

There is so much benefit in the fair trade of goods and services.

While the contractor came in to do the tiling, didn’t we strike up a conversation and share cultural ideas, talking about how my beloved Blue Jays had won the game against the Tampa Bay rays?

The chinese people at the place we’re getting our cabinets, don’t they deal with us on good terms? And the lady who’s been dealing with us turned to me and said, “Oh your husband is so picky.” And I nodded and said, “Yup, sometimes I wonder how I passed inspection.”

She chuckled and said something about her boyfriend having really good taste too, and wasn’t it good that he did. In that moment we shared something in common.

Don’t such positive cultural interactions provide fodder to erase years of prejudice and insularity where people stick to only their own cultures?

There’s nothing like business to put prejudice in its place.

We benefit and they benefit, and hopefully, when it’s all done, I’ll have a sparkling kitchen that will better reflect the blessings that God has bestowed upon us.

But in the mean time, I have to wash the dishes in the laundry tub and deal with the topsy turviness of it all.

Yippee!

I feel like it’s closed the chapter on the whole experience.

One thing I really learned from this…make sure you get a receipt coming in from Canada customs saying that  you’ve got baggage coming in later, or else you could lose your personal exemption.

Each Canadian is allowed about $700 per person in buying gifts and stuff overseas when you’ve been gone a month, and by rights I shouldn’t have had to pay anything, but trying to convince the customs officer of that took some work.

She asked why I hadn’t declared anything coming in later, and I told her quite frankly that when I’d returned to Canada on Nov. 25th, with only my backpack containing my two abayas, one shalwar, two underwears and two pairs of socks, that I had no idea if I’d ever see my lost luggage again, so I didn’t declare it was coming later. 

Apparently that was a mistake.

We got into a discussion about Hajj. Our group leader and another lady who’d lost a piece, was there with me, and the custom’s officer was so interested she said, “Next time take me with you!”

Even now it makes me laugh.

I told her, “Sorry, it’s a Muslim thing.”

And she said how she was open to all kinds of faiths.

It was really cute!

But a little embarrassing when I blurted out that silly incident in Muzdalifa, and right there, in front of that customs agent, the tears started pouring out of my eyes.

I’m still not over the fact that I might have ruined my Hajj in that moment of thoughtlessness. The group leader assured me that it hadn’t nullified it and urged me to ask forgivness. I told him that I already had.

And then the group leader said how there were some people he’d taken for Hajj who’d sworn at him during the process. After witnessing that meeting at that hotel in Medina I’m actually not surprised.

After about an hour’s conversation, and seeing some back and forth emails on our group leader’s blackberry, the custom’s officer was finally convinced that we really were telling the truth and she released our luggage without charging us any duty!

I brought the bags home, searched them thoroughly for any bedbugs that might be hiding in the crevices of the seams, like I’d seen on Dr. Oz, and then unpacked. Despite the fact that there were no bedbugs in our hotel room in Medina and despite the fact that everything had been sent to the laundry in Medina and was clean, I washed everything in my suitcase, inspecting each article of clothing thoroughly for any apple-seed-size stowaways!

One thing surprised me.

On impulse I had bought these two little stuffed camels at Uhud. This kid was selling them and when you touched them the camel’s red beaded eyes lit up and an annoying little song played. At the time of course I didn’t think it was annoying but after a while, like most musical toys, it quickly became annoying.

When I had packed the large suitcase the camels often went off, and you could hear the annoying little song from inside. And yet when I brought the large suitcase into the house, not a peep!

I thought maybe the batteries had died or something, but when I finally opened the suitcase I saw six little batteries strewn in the midst and I didn’t know where they came from till I opened up the camels’ interiors.

Someone had opened my suitcase and taken the batteries out!

I got over the feeling of being violated when I put the batteries back in and the annoying song played! No wonder they’d gone in and disabled them!

This afternoon I had to call up a scholar about an issue of Islamic jurisprudence in the sequel for Wanting Mor that I’m writing, and while I was on the phone with him I told him what I did at Muzdalifa and asked him how I could make up for it.

He too urged me to ask forgiveness and he also said I should feed some poor people. I asked him if I should do a sacrifice of a sheep in Somalia (where the meat would be fed to the poor) and he said, no, that wasn’t necessary, but to give $10 each to a bunch of poor people and that would cover it.

I’ve been fasting the last five days. It’s helped me get back into a good routine writing wise but it’s played havoc with my dieting.

Then while speaking to one of my daughters, she told me that it had been the tenth of Muharram on Thursday and asked if I’d fasted.

I’ve been fasting since about Wednesday, trying to make up as many of my missed Ramadan fasts as I can while the days are so short.

Apparently the story goes that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) noticed the Jews of Medina fasting on the tenth of Muharram and he asked them why. They told him that it was the day that Moses (peace be upon him) had gotten victory over Pharoah (I think). She can correct me if I’m wrong.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) told the Jews that we had more right to Moses (peace be upon him) than they did, and ordered the Muslims to fast on this day too. But in order to differentiate ourselves we must fast either the day before or the day after as well. Well I was fasting both the day before and the day after, but I wish I had realized the significance of those days. They completely slipped my mind.

Apparently if you fast those days then all your previous year’s sins are forgiven. (Including my gaff at Muzdalifa, I hope!!!!)

And yet, actions are rewarded according to intentions and at the time my intention was not to fast for the 10th of Muharram, but just to make up for those missed in Ramadan. But I think I covered myself.

I prayed to God to make my intention retroactive, and give me the reward for fasting it anyway!

I’ll also give that charity, just to make sure I’m covered.

This Friday I plan to invite the kids and their families over for a pizza party.

Yup, a ‘Christmas eve’ pizza party where they’ll open the presents I brought them from Hajj.

Me gathered with millions of others, sending my thoughts and prayers up to our Lord and Creator.

Yesterday I took one of my daughters and her children down to visit my parents. It was my first post Hajj visit, and my mom went all out, making my favourite chicken korma and pilau in my honour!

Oh it was heavenly! She really outdid herself, even though she gets tired so easily with her knee replacement.

And on the way down my daughter gave me her feedback on my Hajj posts. We have a unique relationship, my daughters and I. We are some of our most critical critics, and yet we seek each others’ opinions out because we know we’ll be honest and not spiteful.

They’re always asking me what I think of their artwork and especially when I was starting out, I’ve always asked them what they thought of my writing.

And according to two of my daughters and one of their husbands (the one who’s been reading the blog consistently) the impression that came across from my Hajj posts was a mostly negative experience.

It would be terrible if all people came away with from my detailed description was how hard it was and how silly I was on that night in Muzdalifa.

I felt I needed to really correct that impression, problem is, it involves getting into the nitty gritty of spirituality that I mostly avoid when writing about religion.

I mean how do you talk about how you felt when you’re pouring out your heart to your Creator without making it sound preachy and mushy and sentimental?

And it’s so intensely personal. And talking about it makes you sound so …oh I don’t know, righteous?

During one of his speeches Obama said that he didn’t believe in wearing his spirituality in public or something like that. I could understand that.

It’s like the feeling you get when you’d watch Tammy Faye’s mascara running down her cheeks during the height of her evangelical experience.

I couldn’t help thinking that how can she be experiencing that with all those cameras on her???

It looks fake.

That’s one of the reasons why, when talking about my Hajj experience I avoided getting too personal into the spiritual connection.

I still won’t go into it too much. Some things really are too personal, it would be like relating an intimate conversation.

But I will say this much. There is a difference between the conversations I have both internally and through prayer with God in the comfort of my home, and the conversations I had with God on those sacred sites.

Being in the state of ihram heightens your awareness of every single thing that you do. Maybe I talked so much about the little annoyances in my posts because while I was in ihram, I didn’t express them in any other way.

It also made me appreciate that the reason I felt the privations so keenly was because I am so accustomed to North American standards. I am spoiled in that regard. The standards there were more typical of global conditions.

It was also interesting that while I was on Hajj, I often dreamed of buying new homes or babysitting, and other silly things, but as soon as I left, even while spending those five days in Dubai with my nephew, I couldn’t stop dreaming of Hajj. Of Mecca, of Mina, of circling the Kaaba.

The first night I got home was uncanny.

I was exhausted of course, and sleeping in my bed was luxurious, but when I got up to go to the bathroom in the night, I had absolutely no idea of where I was.

I was sure I was still on Hajj.

Every night for ten days, I dreamed of Hajj.

And the weirdest thing was that the time I was there, in Mecca, in Mina, in Muzdalifa, I thought very little of my life back here. I didn’t think of my writing. In fact THAT felt like THE REALITY, and this life I lead here, in Canada, felt like the illusion.

I only really felt like I returned on Wednesday. That was the first day I had to go do school presentations. Three of them, in fact, at a school in Markham.

I got up, went to Tim Horton’s and bought a coffee, and the familiarity of the routine grounded me.

I thought I was the only one that couldn’t stop dreaming of Hajj, but when I went to see my Hajj sisters at that mosque across town, it seems all of them had the same experience.

It really is a journey of a lifetime, and all the minor inconveniences have faded into proper perspective.

It was a FABULOUS experience and I hope and I pray that I can go again one day.

Oh, and when I told my mom about that incident in Muzdalifa, she suggested I pay for a sheep to be sacrificed in a poor country where the meat will be distributed to the poor. I’ve chosen Somalia.

When you do a sin, cover it up with a good deed. It’ll help wipe it out.