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.

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.

Nov. 18th cont’d

There’s nothing like the feeling of throwing the last stone.

I hefted it in my fingers, said, “Allahu Akbar” God is Great! and let loose with my best overhand curve.

I watched it bounce off the even bigger stones that comprise Jamarat Aqaba. And with that last stone my Hajj is complete.

I hope it is accepted.

I’m writing this even as I sit on a bench off the main corridor waiting for our bus to pull up to take us back to our hotel in Aziziah.

Back to ‘civilization’.

I have such a feeling of lightness in me.

I feel like I could just float away. (Ironic given what would happen next!!!)

And yet overhead clouds are gathering and it looks like rain again, twice in two days, three times in two weeks!

Very very unusual!

Last night lightning flashed and the thunder rumbled.

I really felt for those people we’d seen camped out on the roads of Mina. With many children.

The groups gathered up all the umbrellas and gave them out to them. Umbrellas and sleeping bags. (We could have used those umbrellas later!)

Even us in our comfy tent didn’t completely escape.

The tent leaked along the metal struts and some of the sisters beds got wet…

Nov. 19th

Nothing I have up to now endured prepared me for last night!

I just reread my entry and I can’t believe how happy I sounded.

I am still happy I completed Hajj of course but what happened afterwards was quite a nightmare.

What do you do when your bus doesn’t show up and you don’t want to spend another night in Mina–because if you don’t leave before sunset that’s precisely what you’ll have to do.

So of course there’s a mass exodus of Mina and yet somehow our bus didn’t show up. And it was probably because of the storm.

I heard there was hail. And there was definitely some flooding.

At one point while we were taking shelter in one of the tents (not our own but one of the abandoned ones) our group leader asked if any of our flip flops were outside the tent we were sitting in, because if they were, we’d best fetch them because they were floating away.

The tents in Mina are definitely designed to keep the sun off with little regard for rain, because in our tent, the water didn’t just trickle in like it had the night before, it gushed.

We sat and waited and waited for the promised bus that never came, till finally it was too close to sunset and there was nothing for it, we’d have to walk.

That didn’ t pose such of a problem for me, despite the grumbling over the 10 k we’d walked a day earlier. But when you’re with a group you can’t just think about yourself!

You have to consider the weaker members. There were two ladies I was particularly worried about.

They were both 80 years old.

I grabbed the arm of one of them and checked my pace to match hers.

She was plump and had various medical problems but still it was alarming the way she was gasping after having walked just halfway to the tunnel that marked the boundary between Mina and Aziziah.

I had asked for a wheelchair from the group leader but there was none to be found. “There’s nothing for it, aunty.” I told her. “We’ll just have to walk.”

I kept telling her it’s just a little further, she’d be all right, but honestly I was scared she’d have a heart attack right there. She was obviously not used to walking.

First we were told to just go midway. Then at midway our people weren’t there so we had to go further.

I saw a guy with a wheelchair and I called him over. It cost 40 riyals to get her to the end of the tunnel even though he wanted 50.

There we met up with our group again, but still no bus.

At least on this side of the mountain it had stopped raining and the sun was peeking through clouds in the west.

I could finally wipe the raindrops off my glasses.

Then we saw why there were no buses. The roads were closed. Because of the storm? I don’t know.

No buses would come.

How would we get to the hotel in Aziziah?

Walk.

But no way could this older sister do it.

And then the group started moving and we had no choice but to follow.

Through the muddiest filthiest water that splashed against our lower calves, we walked.

Water that you tried not to wonder what kind of contamination and bacteria it contained.

At one point the aunty at my arm exclaimed, “Oh! My shoes are getting wet!”

And I said, “It’s okay. Nothing we can do about it. Let’s just keep going.”

But it was clear she couldn’t go much further.

One of the young guys saw a bus that belonged to our group, stuck in traffic–basically parked with its engine running, on the other side of the street. They went over and got some of the young men to give up their seats and I was able to see this old aunty board the bus.

It was such a relief to know she was okay. Even if the bus took a long time to get there, she’d be in more comfort than out here in the chaos.

Oh wouldn’t it have been tempting to just grab a taxi and forget about the rest of the group! But it felt wrong.

Now that the old people were stowed on the buses, I could turn my attention to how I was going to get to the hotel.

There were some empty wheelchairs now and we were invited to put our carry 0n luggage on top of the wheelchair so they could wheel it, but I felt reluctant to part with my backpack. It contained two abayas, 2 underwear, 2 pairs of socks and one pair of pants–basically all the clothes that I had left, and I’m not of a size that I can just easily walk into a shop and find clothes to fit me.

I put my backpack on top and for the first time I felt desperate. I had tears in my eyes when I told the employee of the Hajj group, “Don’t you lose that! It’s all I have!”

He just smiled and said, “Don’t worry, I won’t.”

I told him again, “You already have lost both my luggages. I can’t afford you losing that too!”

He said, “It wasn’t me.”

And that was true.

We probably walked about another mile but it was hard to guage, we were weaving through traffic, around parked cars and stinking alleyways till finally we got to what looked like a terminal with lots of public transit buses.

Long story short, one of the employees was able to procure a bus for us–a different bus–just the women, the men would still have to walk the 1.4 miles to the hotel. But a lot of men got to come on board too, once the women were on.

(With the traffic jam I heard that the men who walked ended up getting to the hotel before us anyway.)

While on the bus, I overheard a conversation between two men in the aisle talking adamantly about American economics. I don’t know what came over me but I ended up joining in and actually holding my own in the conversation.

It was funny. I met the wife of one of the men (he turned out to be the CEO of a bank in California) I was talking with the next day and she said how she’d overhead the whole conversation and she said how surprised she’d been to hear the things I’d added to the conversation, like the fact that the South American countries were developing their own consortium and bypassing the IMF all together, all under the leadership of Evo Morales, the Bolivian president. And there was other stuff we talked about. At one point the lady’s husband turned to me and asked what my profession was. He was obviously trying to guage my credentials.

I just blushed and said, “I’m a children’s author.”

His wife said to me while we were sitting in the lobby that it was good for these men to hear a woman talking econimics.

LOL. It sure beat the stereotype of Muslim women being clueless.

Because of the traffic it took quite a while to get to the hotel but by this time I was having so much fun in the conversation, it went by fast for me.

We were at the hotel before I knew it. But the bus driver parked in the middle of the road and traffic honked at the disruption.

They told us to just grab any bag from the luggage bay and take it inside but no way was I leaving till I saw my backpack with what was left of my wardrobe.

Finally I saw it, and with my running shoes still squishing full of filthy water and my damp stinking pant legs flapping against my ankles, I trudged into the hotel.

First thing I did was wash my shoes in detergent.

They’re the only pair I have.

Then I washed my clothes and then I washed my stinky self.

What a relief!

But then I found out later that the other lady I’d been worried about hadn’t been properly tended to.

Another lady had escorted her down that long tunnel but she’d been no match for this brute who bumped into her and pushed the old lady down with his luggage.

Apparently he ploughed into her, she fell (she’s quite unsteady) and then the lady who was escorting her, fell too.

Luckily they didn’t break any bones.

I know it sounds weird but I felt extremely guilty when I heard about this.

I’d made a choice of which old lady to help. If I’d been there I don’t think that guy would have gotten away with such a thing!

But then that’s the way many of these men treat women over here.

Nov. 19th (cont’d)

I’m writing this on the bus to Jeddah, the port city, gateway to Mecca.

I’m already missing Mecca. While we were driving out of Aziziah turning left onto the road that would take us to Jeddah, I saw the clock tower, a landmark, that stands as the tallest building I can tell, in Mecca. It’s right outside the first door of the haram, but we couldn’t see the haram.

It was hidden by buildings but we could see its glow lighting up the sky. And just seeing that sent a pang of homesickness through me.

Like I’ve said before last time I came for umrah in 2008, I knew I’d be back one day for Hajj, if God willed.

This time I have no idea when God will let me come back.

I leave behind a lot of bittersweet memories.

So many of the ladies I met were fabulous. I felt instantly that we were kindred spirits and yet so many of the women were also frustrating.

If Muslim women have the stereotype of being meek and timid it’s because so many of them are. The worst was when it came time for prayer.

Prayer is supposed to be a time of discipline. I’ve heard there is a saying that if the leader of the prayer, the imam’s, concentration is not acceptable, then God looks at the concentration of the people in the first row of the gathering. If their concentration is not acceptable then God looks at the concentration of the people in the second row, and so on and so on and if all the rows in a jamat (gathering of prayer) have no good concentrating worshippers then God looks at how straight and perfect the lines for prayer are, and if they’re good, He accepts the prayer.

So you really want the prayer lines to be straight, with no gaps. Also in terms of efficiency, of getting as many people into a space as possible you want people to be standing shoulder to shoulder, toe to toe. There is also a saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that the prayer lines should have no gaps as that leads to disunity.

I know people like to have their own personal space, but that’s something that needs to be suspended during prayer times.

It’s a blessing when there is such a crowd of people praying that space issues arise.

The imam always reminds the followers to straighten their lines. The men tend to be pretty good at it, oh but the women!

(It’s like herding cats!)

After the first day I couldn’t take it any more so in the middle of the prayer hall, with the men on the other side where they could hear me yell, I called out, “Sisters, move to the right. Fill in the gaps. Leave an aisle on the side so that later sisters can get through to the front.”

That’s all it took. They listened.

And yet again at the next prayer I had to call out the same instructions.

They’ve been told this all their lives for crying out loud! It’s NOT something new!

I hate putting myself forward like that. There are some women who take it the wrong way and start getting hostile and resentful when you lay down the law like that.

Like I’ve said before, maybe they’re wondering, “Who died and left you in charge?”

Whatever the case, I hate having to step forward like that. It’s also hard when doing so, not to feel a little pleased with yourself that you’re taking matters into hand and wouldn’t the Prophet (peace be upon him) approve, etc. And that can lead to feelings of self-righteousness. So you have to be careful to keep ego and pride out of it when you’re doing this. Just stick to the task at hand.

As a result, this time was a little bit better than last time I did this kind of thing. I was young then and quite stupid and naive when it came to social negotiation.

And it was good that this was for a very limited time.

Today, alas, I was menstruating and so wasn’t praying, but it was Jumah (Friday prayer) and I wanted to hear the khutba/sermon.

Practically every prayer before we left for Mina, I’d done the whole, “Sisters, fill in the gaps, move to the right…” spiel.

Now we were back from Hajj and wouldn’t  you know it, they were back to the herding cats thing again.

I didn’t want to say anything. Not praying made me feel that I wasn’t qualified under the circumstances.

Then a lady came up to me and said, “Tell them to fix the lines. They’ll listen to you!”

I had to laugh. But I obeyed her and sure enough, the women straightened up.

Conclusion

There is a very good reason that Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) only said that you have to perform Hajj once in your lifetime, if you have the means. Even once is hard.

I feel as though I had a difficult Hajj, but now I’m not sure. Except for the last day, the day of the flood, it was actually not too bad. What made mine hard was losing the luggage, I suspect.

When I boarded the plane to come home, I thought, nope, never again, but now I’m not so sure.

All the difficulties are quickly fading, and instead the spiritual moments are dominating my memories. 

Moments that were a little too private to mention in this blog.

Yesterday there was a tiny reunion with all the Hajj members of our group, and even though my head was stuffy and I have a cold, and it was bitter cold, I went!

The ladies in my Hajj group feel like family to me. We bonded in a special way and I love them all dearly.

I heard that old sister that I escorted on that last day, isn’t doing too well. Apparently she can’t keep anything down, and is extremely weak. I pray that she’s okay and I can’t help but wonder if she wasn’t infected by something in that flood water!

I also heard a story about another brother who’d done something quite wrong.

After almost every prayer in both harams, there would often be a janaza (funeral prayer). He’d followed the corpse procession out of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) mosque and into Janatul Baqee, the graveyard that contains the remains of many of the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) companions. (There’s one section where they bury modern people. The bodies decay quite quickly and every so often they bulldoze it and bury more there.)  He took lots of pictures of the corpse being lowered into the grave, and all kinds of stuff that you’re not supposed to take pictures of. They were on his phone. When he got back he asked his employees to download those particular photos onto his desktop, but they started screaming at one point. Something very strange was happening, and when he picked up his phone he saw the word ‘erasing’. All those pictures were gone!

It wasn’t the first time his employees had downloaded photos from his phone! But he admitted right then that he shouldn’t have taken those photos.

Another odd thing happened with photos, and it was at Muzdalifa.

My brother took two photos of people sleeping on the ground in Muzdalifa. It was a clear night, there was no reason for what showed up, hundreds of those little light orbs that sometimes show up in photos, as anomalies. Some people insist that the camera is capturing a bit of the presence of spirits. In these two photos they were covered in the orbs, like snow. It was very odd!

The only explanation I can think of is maybe there were a lot of jinns making Hajj too. We do believe that of the jinns there are believers and the non-believers.

I don’t know. I just wonder.

We were fortunate to hear some excellent lectures from various scholars and sheikhs who had come along with us. One of the best lectures was by Sheikh Abdool Hamid from the Islamic Institute of Toronto. He talked about ‘Why Hajj?’ He began by asking us why God might have required this of us. Some said that it connected Muslims as an ummah, a brotherhood, from all over the world. Another reason somebody gave was that it’s basically a dress rehearsal for the day of judgment. Others said that we were coming to ask forgiveness.

Sheikh Abdool Hamid said, “Yes, but you can ask forgiveness from the comfort of your own home? So why come here? Why not take that money you were going to spend and give it in charity?”

And that’s true.

But in the end he quoted the Quran and said that the reason we come is that we might learn something that will be of benefit to us.

Things we couldn’t have learned while in the comfort of our own homes. He talked about getting us out of our comfort zones.

And I began to see the whole experience in a different light.

So what did I learn from my Hajj?

I think the biggest lesson was that I went, hoping to make a ‘perfect’ Hajj, so that on the day of judgment I could face God and say, “See? I did it perfectly, now you gotta let me in to heaven.”

Asthaghfirullah!

I forgot that it’s not by ritual that we get to heaven.  It’s by God’s mercy.

We do the ritual because we are committed to trying to please God by following the practices of his Prophet (peace be upon him) as precisely as possible. And doing so, is an act of worship.

I think I learned humility. At least I hope so.

One thing for sure.

I’d love to go back and do a better Hajj. (See how I didn’t say perfect? *g*)

One of my biggest problems is that when I do something boneheaded, I can’t stop thinking about it until it’s resolved. And how can this ever be resolved until I die and find out for sure whether my Hajj was accepted or not.

As crazy as this sounds, I just wanted to do a ‘perfect’ Hajj. And I’m realizing there’s no such thing. We’re only human and are bound to make mistakes. I have to just remember that God is merciful. I’ve begged and begged for forgiveness, and that’s enough. I just have to move on and hope that He’s forgiven me.

This is a continuation of the journal I kept while on Hajj. I’ve tried to transcribe it exactly as written. Any recent thoughts are in parentheses.

Nov. 18th

Well I spoke to some other sisters about what I said and the concensus is that I was too harsh.

An African American sister even said that it would have ben better to say, “May Allah accept your Hajj.” (I’m beginning to think she was right!)

Another sister said to just ask forgiveness. So I did.

It’s so easy when you’re in the right and people are being unreasonable to go too far and err yourself.

Yesterday we went to perform Tawaf al ifaadah–basically it’s the tawaf of Hajj and since we did a certain type of Hajj called tamattu it meant we had to do sa’ee as well.

Omigosh, I thought Muzdalifa was a test! (The funny thing is that there’d be an even bigger test to come!)

And yet Hajj is hardship.

It’s supposed to involve difficulty and inconvenience.

It’s no wonder the reward for a proper Hajj is nothing but paradise.

We were supposed to be ready to go the haram at 1:30 a.m. I was going to sleep around 11:00 pm but any time I have to be up early, I have a difficult time sleeping. What made it worse was the hot flashes. The desserts they’ve been serving have been delectable and the day before yesterday being Eid I went overboard. What a mistake!

I really suffered. Hardly slept.

And because the roads were  closed coming in to Mina we would have to walk out to catch the bus on the other side of this tunnel that goes through the mountain.

We weren’t the only ones walking. The tunnel was busy with people trying to get to the haram. I’d overheard someone say that there was no guarrantee there’d be a bus waiting for us on the other side and someone had said the best thing to do would be to just grab a taxi and try to make it to the haram on our own.

It was a good 45 minute walk and a wait of about 15 minutes and finally we found the bus. Immediately I fell asleep. Thing is the haram is actually within walking distance. From Mina they have a pedestrian walkway that is about 4.5 km. You can walk it in a couple of hours.

The traffic was completely snarled. All the cars and trucks were trying to turn around. Diesel fumes everywhere! And people camped out like the homeless on ever spare inch of ground and trash everywhere!

Like the remains of a street party gone mad!

We didn’t get close to the haram till close to 5 am. Fajr time.

I had one thing on my mind: to complete this last major rite of Hajj. I was particularly worried because all 5 million pilgrims have to do this and it was bound to be super crowded. You have to really pace yourself.

It’s a LOT of walking and how we’d already done the 45 minute trek I was wondering about my stamina.

Because of this I elected to do the tawaf of the Kaaba, down in the courtyard. It’s generally packed because it is so much shorter than doing it on the 2nd and 3rd floors.

There were a few squishy moments. If I were more claustrophobic–I’m only slightly–it would have been unbearable—and actually a lot of the things I’ve had to endure are things I would have once considered unbearable, but now, after having indeed born them, my definition of unbearable has changed.

I got through the tawaf and sa’ee, my feet very sore but still in tact thinking that at least on the way back we’d be able to go by bus all the way into Mena.

(At one point during tawaf I was so hungry I was feeling faint. I hadn’t eaten anything since the night before and after all that walking my glycogen stores must have been used up. So when I drank some of the Zamzam water I prayed that it would be a food to me so that I could finish the rites. It worked! I felt much better and went on to finish the tawaf al ifadaah. I had to meet the group in front of the big clock tower and as I was making my way through the haram, the Kaaba was on the right of me, visible through the graceful columns and I was overwhelmed with a feeling of intense longing. My love for it was back. There was no feelings of trepidation of challenges to come any more–I thought I had overcome them all, and now I could look at the qibla with great fondness again, and a bit of nostalgia. When I’d come for umrah in 2008 I knew that one day I’d be back for Hajj, but now that I’ve completed Hajj, I have no idea when I’ll ever be back again. I was feeling homesick for the Kaaba even while standing right there.)

When we got onto the bus, I was so tired I knocked out, only to be awakened and told we’d have to walk the rest of the way to our hotel in Aziziah as the traffic was not moving. (Half way there the bus we’d been on passed us! Arggh!!!)

So we walked more than a km to the hotel.

I had thought we’d get breakfast there. It was 11 am and like I said, I hadn’t had anything to eat since about 8 pm the night before.

But all the staff of the hotel were in Mina, serving us there!

We walked over to a KFC across the road and it was a struggle even to do that!

Then it was back on the bus to get to Mina–where apparently the roads were still closed. So we had to walk that 45 minute trek through that tunnel through the mountain, back to our tent compound in Mina again.

All in all I think I walked between 10 and 12 km yesterday up till then. But we hadn’t gone to stone the jamarat as yet.

The jamarat has always been considerd to be the most dangerous part of Hajj.

It was there that they had that fatal stampede years ago where so many hundreds of people died.

The jamarat consist of 3 pillars. They used to be narrow: small medium and large–the large one called jamarat aqaba.

We threw seven pebbles at jaramat aqaba on the morning after Muzdalifa and that signals the first partial release from ihram–where you can now cut your nails, men can wear perfume but they can’t have relations with their spouses.

(That said it was funny. Because as soon as the men came out of ihram, many of them came knocking on our tent door (it was one of those accordian-like folding doors) and they wanted to spend time with their wives. It seemed like they missed them. My brother and many of the other men shaved their heads (it’s the sunnah, the practice of the Prophet (peace be upon him) and better than just trimming your hair, although that’s permissible. Many of us were chuckling at how the men looked all shaved like that. My brother was a cross between Telly Savalas and the guy who played the Mummy! My sister in law and I kept telling him, “Who loves you baby?”)

The jamarat respresent satan/temptation. But some pilgrims take it too literally. They think they are satan and they get very angry at them.

This part of the ritual goes back to Abraham (peace be upon him). Actually the whole of Hajj goes back to him and the struggles of his wife Hagar and son Ishmael (peace be upon him).

The whole Hajj is the commemoration of the tremendous test that Abraham (peace be upon him) was put through when he saw in a dream that he was to sacrifice his son Ishmael (peace be upon him).

Now Abraham (peace  be upon him) was already an old man by the time he was blessed with Ishmael (peace be upon him), and the name Ishmael means ‘God has heard his prayer’. According to the Biblical story Abraham’s first wife Sarah was jealous that Hagar–a slave girl from Egypt that Abraham (peace be upon him) married bore Abraham (peace be upon him) a son when she was barren. And that’s the reason Abraham (peace be upon him) took Hagar and Ishmael (peace be upon him) and left them in a  barren desert valley.

But according to the Quranic story Sarah had nothing to do with it.

Abraham (peace be upon him) had brought Hagar and Ishmael (peace be upon him) to the barren valley and he got onto his mount to leave.

Hagar must have been alarmed. She asked him if he was leaving. Abraham (peace be upon him) gave her no answer. She asked him again if he was leaving her. Again Abraham (peace be upon him) gave no answer. Finally she said, “Is it that God ordered you to do this?”

Abraham (peace be upon him) said, “Yes.”

Hagar said, “Go then. God will never allow His servants to perish.”

But within a few days the water ran out and baby Ishmael was crying with thirst.

Desperate, she ran between two hills: Safa and Marwa, to get to a high point to see if she could find some water.

The valley of Mecca is like a bowl, that concentrates the heat. And Safa is about 1/2 km from Marwa. She ran back and forth between the hills seven times. Then she came back to Ishmael and found that where he’d been kicking his heels, a well had sprung up. A well where there had never been one before.

They were saved.

This is what we commemorate when we do the sa’ee. The hills of Safa and Marwa are now part of the haram, but wisely they still left some of the original rock exposed. (If you go down in the basement to do sa’ee you can see them behind a wall of plexiglass. And on the main floor you can see just the tops of them.)

That well of Zamzam continues to be a miracle to this day.

Sometimes it boggles my mind that a well, barely six feet deep, produces enough water to not only quench the thirst of every pilgrim that comes here, but is enough for them to ship 120,000 tons of it a day, during non Hajj and non Ramadan to Medina (imagine how much they ship during Hajj and Ramadan!!!). Plus every hajji will take up to a gallon of Zamzam water home and give out a little to relatives to share the blessing.

And the well has never run dry!

Well going back to Hagar, if anyone discovers a water source in the desert, they get rights to that source and anyone wanting to use the water must pay a tithe.

Instantly Hagar became set and independent. A caravan came through and found Hagar and Ishmael beside a water source that had never been there before, and paid her handsomely for the privilege of watering their caravan.

Abraham would return periodically to visit Hagar and Ishmael, and by the time Ishmael became a young man they were ordered to raise the foundations of the Kaaba.

I referred to this in an earlier blog post that while Abraham (peace be upon him) was setting the stones in place he wondered who would ever come to this barren desolate valley to perform pilgrimage to God’s house. At that moment God allowed every soul of every pilgrim (including mine) to call out “Labaik allahumma labaik!” “Here we come O Lord, Here we come!”

It was some time after this that Abraham (peace be upon him) saw himself sacrificing Ishmael (peace be upon him) in a dream. He approached Ishmael with this dilemma because he knew this was no ordinary dream.

Ishmael’s (peace be upon him) answer was, “Father, do as you have been commanded. Insha Allah (God willing) you will find me patient.”

The story differs quite a bit from the Biblical version.

In Islam it’s clear that this was a test for both father and son, to see if they were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice.

God knew that the one thing in the world Abraham (peace be upon him) cherished more than anything else was his son Ishmael (peace be upon him).

So the two of them headed out of Mecca and they came to the valley of Mina. Yup, the same Mina I’m writing this from.

And while the two of them were walking satan came to try to dissuade them from their course of action. First he came to Abraham (peace be upon him), asking how he could follow such an order, it was crazy, etc. etc.

Abraham (peace be upon him) picked up seven pebbles and threw them at satan chasing him away.

Then satan came to Ishmael (peace be upon him) and asked him how he could go along with such a crazy plan. Ishmael followed his father’s lead and picked up seven pebbles and pelted satan with them.

Abraham tied Ishmael (peace be upon them) up and covered his face and was just ready to bring down the knife when God Himself called out for him to stop. Abraham (peace be upon him) had fulfilled the vision.

When we pelt the jamarat we are in fact reenacting the rejection of satan’s temptation, (and when we paid for the sacrifice of a sheep (to be fed to the poor) we are reenacting Abraham’s sacrifice of a ram, and in fact taking advantage of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice in that we’ll never be asked to face such a dilemma.)

But some pilgrims get carried away. They start blaming the jamarat who they think is satan, for all the bad things they’ve ever done. And they want revenge. (Before when the jamarat were thinner, some pilgrims used to even climb them and hit them with their shoes.)

They’ve really changed the jamarat now. Escalators only go one way so the crowd has no choice but to go in the right direction.

And they have lots of soldiers making sure the crowd doesn’t get out of control.

It feels so good hurling the stones at that wide oval wall jamarat.

Now all three of them are basically the same size but still they’re called the small, medium and large jamarat.

Sometimes I wonder at there being 3 of them. I wonder if satan didn’t also go to Hagar and hers represents the third jamarat.

But that’s just speculation.

Yesterday after coming back from all that walking, we still had to go pelt the jamarat.

In a few hours we’ll pelt all three of them one more time and that’s it. The last rites of Hajj will be over. What an experience it has been!

to be continued…

Nov. 16th,

The day after Arafat, oh, and it’s the Day of Eid ul Adha.

I decided yesterday that I wouldn’t take from any of the precious moments of Arafat from Zuhr to sunset in writing my blog so I’m writing now, after we just prayed Asr.

The day of Arafat was extremely hot. I have no idea of exact numbers but I wouldn’t be surprised if it hit the mid 40′s Celsius.

I constantly drank water and yes, I had to use the bathroom more than I would have liked.

I’ve basically become resigned to the bathroom situation here. It took some getting used to but it is what it is and let’s leave it at that.

Other sisters though took a different approach.

Thing is we were going to be spending the night in Muzdalifa, a narrow valley where we would basically just sleep, that has even less facilities than what we’ve been used to, but I’ll get to that later on.

At Arafat I heard some ladies advising others to stop drinking anything after about 1 pm to avoid having to use the even worse washrooms in Muzdalifa.

One of the times I went to the bathroom at Arafat, I saw a lady leaning forward with her head resting on the sink basin. Of course I asked her if she was all right.

She said she was feeling dizzy.

Just looking at her I knew it was the heat. So I ran and got her a cold water bottle, urging her to drink it. She wasn’t doing a good job of it though so I went and got a chunk of ice from the cooler and started rubbing it over her hair and down her neck and across the front of her neck. Then she poured some of the cold water down her back and front and within moments she was feeling better.

I told her she had to drink up all the water. Then I gave her some juice, and I told her that she was suffering from heat exhaustion and she said, “Yes, I know. I’m a doctor.”

I couldn’t believe it! So I scolded her, “Shame on you! You should know better!”

Then about a half an hour later I popped my head into another tent, looking for someone and this lady called me back saying that someone was asking for me.

This lady was vomiting.

Honestly I felt like a doctor for a moment! A woefully unqualified doctor. She said she’d drank a bottle of orange juise and immediately threw up. The room was hot but when I felt her forehead it was clammy and I immediately suspected she was heat exhausted and dehydrated too.

When my older sister went to Egypt decades ago, she’d told me that when she’d rode into the Valley of the Kings, she’d started vomiting uncontrollably, and it was actually a reaction to being dehydrated.

So I got this lady cooled down with cooler water and ‘prescribed’ her to drink 7 up to replenish electrolytes and the funny thing was that even when a real doctor showed up, the lady kept asking me what to do.

Strange, very strange.

Then another lady started feeling ill. (I poured ice water down her back and got her cooled down as quickly as possible!–It’s interesting though that she really learned from this and when she saw a lady collapsing from heat, she applied the same remedy to her–helping her!)

About then one of the sisters came up to me and said I should make an announcement about this dilemma. I hesitated. I had said before how well we were getting along in that tent in Mena, but since then things had deteriorated somewhat. I kind of knew it would happen. Whenever you put yourself forward and yet you’re not really in any position of authority, there are some folks who will resent it and wonder who died and left you boss. It had happened to me before and I could see it happening now. I really didn’t want to make any announcements or take charge, but then I just thought who the heck cares if anyone likes me or not, this was important. So I got up and with my big voice I told the ladies in the tent that this was the third lady I’d helped with heat exhaustion. I said, “I know the washrooms aren’t nice and you don’t want to use them, but never mind that and drink! Drink a lot! It’s hot!”

As soon as I said that, many women got up and went to the coolers which were filled with water, juice and pop. We had no more incidents the rest of the day.)

Between all that and the four page list of people I would be praying for, I was very busy!

The morning had dragged but the afternoon flew by and then we were on our way to Muzdalifa (which we were told would be the hardest part of Hajj–it was!)

My brother said a curious thing after we woke up for Fajr in Muzdalifa. He said “I’ve never slept on a street before!”

In Muzdalifa, rich and poor have basically the same accommodation.

Our group leader called it ‘all star’ accommodations in that there only stars above you when you slept.

Muzdalifa is a narrow valley where all 5 million registered and unregistered hajjis spend some or all of the night.

The bus took about 2 hours to cover the few kilometres to Muzdalifa.

Saudi Arabia outisde the haram and the Prophet’s Mosque (peace be upon him) is definitely third world. People hanging off buses and trucks, people riding on the top of buses with no regard to safety.

But many many people walked.

I’d heard that even though you spread a sleeping bag on the road and sleep where you get a spot, you get the best night’s sleep of your life in Muzdalifa. (Maybe it’s because after pouring your heart out to your Lord and Creator at Arafat, you feel all cleansed inside and sleep like a baby.)

All I had was my prayer mat  between me and the pavement (my sleeping bag was in my lost luggage) but surprisingly the road didn’t hurt my bones like hard surfaces usually do.

I must have fallen asleep around 9:30 and woke suddenly at 12:30 am thinking it was about 4 a.m. close to Fajr.

That same elderly lady who’d sat beside me in the bus earlier and had bathroom issues, needed to go the bathroom now, so I helped her weave through the sleeping bodies littering the ground.

Then I decided to brave the toilets myself.

They were the squat type that consist of a hole in the ground.

What a struggle with my knees! When I was younger in Pakistan it was much more manageable.

I made the mistake of drinking some juice and then suddenly I was going again only this time I was shocked to see men had encroached on the women’s washroom!

Men in ihram, two pieces of unsewn white cloth–and nothing else, were standing there waiting for the middle cubicles while women lined up for the remaining few.

My anger boiled up inside. This was too much!

In the haram the men are always encroaching on women’s areas. How could they do such a thing here?

There were plenty of washrooms for them! It was shameful and I went ahead and told them so.

I must have sounded crazy, saying, “This for nisaa! (women) Rajul (men) over there!”

They just stared at me and pretended not to understand. Then one of the men started rolling his eyes and snickering at me.

That got me going!

I said that this was shameful. They should be ashamed of themselves.

Women were waiting to use the washrooms and here they were barging in. It was nice when another lady who spoke Arabic told them the same.

They ignored her too.

(I should have stopped.)

But I wouldn’t stop.

As they stood there I kept reminding them of how wrong what they were doing was.

Some other ladies came up to me and grumbled about them too, but none of them would confront the men for it. I told the ladies that the men could get away with this behaviour because the women didn’t call them on it.

And it occurred to me that they were violating the laws of ihram.

Ihram basically is a state of consecration that men and women enter when performing the Hajj. You’d be surprised the lengths that men and women will go to make sure they don’t violate the ‘no fragrance’ rule or the cutting the hair or nails part of it.

You can’t even harm a hair on your head. You can’t kill anything or bother anything. You can’t lose your temper. You have to be patient.

But you don’t have to put up with others violating the rules of decency.

(Up to this point I hadn’t crossed the line myself, but alas that was to change.)

Funny thing was, the guy that was snickering at me stopped when I pointed it out. And as I kept going on about how shameful this was, about half the men standing there bent their heads and left, looking quite embarrassed. But the rest stood there stubbornly.

And then I said something I’m not sure I should have said. (Now I realize it was definitely something I shouldn’t have said!)

I said, “You’re violating ihram. You’re harassing these women. May Allah not accept your Hajj!”

It was kind of a curse. (Actually it was precisely a curse! And the worst thing about a curse is that if it is unjustified, it can boomerang right back on you! Ever since I realized I crossed the line, it’s been eating me up that my own Hajj might not be accepted. It brings tears to my eyes. I’ve prayed and prayed and asked forgiveness about it, and even now, typing this so many days later, I have tears in my eyes. I tried so very hard to be patient, and to lose it all in one moment of thoughtlessness!)

I was upset. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone that far. (I definitely shouldn’t have gone that far!)

Allahu alim, but I did.

I went ahead and said it, a kind of curse, and at the time I meant it.

Problem is cursing like that could violate my own ihram.

I don’t know. I hope not.

 But it was extremely wrong of them. And I really wanted them to think twice before they did this again.

I wish the other women had spoken up. If we’d all banded together I’m pretty sure the men would have left, but sadly the stereotype is often true. So many Muslim women are way too meek and submissive. (Or maybe they just knew it was useless and not worth getting riled up about.)

I told some of the sisters in my group about what happened. They gasped collectively when I said “I hope Allah does not accept your Hajj.”

They thought I went too far.

And yet, I think if the Prophet (peace be upon him) had been there, he would have been angry at them too.

(This is faulty reasoning. Trying to justify what I did. I have no idea if the Prophet (peace be upon him) would have justified what I said.)

God only knows, maybe his verdict would have been the same as mine. I hope so. He sure stuck up for the women at the time when their plight was so bad they could be inherited as possessions.

I just hope I didn’t violate my ihram.

to be continued…

Nov. 13th 2010

They’ve lost my luggages. Both of them. Somewhere in transit from our Medina hotel to our hotel in Aziziah and yet I feel everything’s going to be okay.

I’m writing this in the prayer hall of our Aziziah hotel, waiting for Asr and thinking alhamdu lillah for the instinct that made me stick an extra abaya (long dress) and shalwar (pants) in my carry on.

So I have: 3 abayas (long dresses), 2 shalwars (pants to go under), 3 underwear, 3 pairs of socks and some laundry detergent.

A similar thing happened when I went to Denmark. They lost my luggage and luckily I’d listened to the advice of seasoned travellers and stuck a change of clothes in my presentation case which was my carry on.

Even now, I have all my vitamins and medications, I can easily survive the rest of Hajj. (Actually it wasn’t that easy! At the time of writing this I assumed that the loss of luggage would be temporary and I’d get it in a few days. I’m writing this on Dec. 2nd and I still haven’t received the luggages yet, although I did hear from my brother that the Hajj group we went with finally located them–in Jeddah!)

I emailed my hubby and told him they were gone and his reply was that if the luggage is all I lose, then that’s fine.

I think now he was referring to my temper and impatience. (As it turns out, I would lose my temper too, in a disastrous moment that may in fact have jeopardized the legitimacy of my Hajj! But that happens in a later post at Muzdalifa.)

It’s true too.

And it got me to thinking that yes, I’ll miss all the gifts I bought for family and such and yet I know if it comes down to that it’s still lost when I get back, my family’s reaction will be simply ‘Alhamdu lillah’. Those things weren’t in their qadr/provision. (Actually their reaction was even better than that! My family was just happy to have me home safe!)

And it also occurs to me that I’ll really miss those suitcases. They’re the fancy kind with the garment bag built right in and we paid good money for them.

But alhamdu lillah even if they’re gone for good, it’s not the end of the world. I can buy new ones. God is so merciful to us, it’s not a huge inconvenience.

If this is the worst test of my patience, I hope I passed.

Besides, they’re still diligently looking for them.

Nov. 14th

I feel like Hagar. At the mercy of God because all my luggages have vanished.

Like I said before, I’m not too badly off. And I’ve washed all 3 abayas, 2 salwars, pyjamas, 3 prs socks and 3 underwear in the hotel sink.

(I hung them on hangers all over our tiny room. I wasn’t the only one who lost their luggage. My brother and sister in law lost theirs too and my sister in law was sharing a room with us and doing laundry in the washroom sink too. In order for it to dry, we shut off the air conditioner and turned on the ceiling fan on high so it sounded like an airplane! It was loud in the room, but it worked. Those clothes fluttered with the wind and got dry quickly!)

It should last me 5 days but I brought my little bit of laundry detergent to wash in Mina if I have to. (The clean clothes only lasted one day for each set because it was so hot, I sweated a lot! So I ended up having to do laundry every other day!)

But all the things I so carefully packed: the sleeping bag for Muzdalifa, the flashlights and such that were part of my hajj kit are gone. I hope it’s not cold in Muzdalifa. If it is I’m in trouble.

I had a very strange dream last night.

One of my worst nightmares is that this writing thing won’t work out and I’ll have to go back to babysitting. I know, I know, it’s silly. With eleven books published I should feel ‘established’ but the fact is I don’t.

Every now and then I get the dream that I’m babysitting. But this dream was different. I was changing the diaper of this cute little white baby and the lady of the house came to me and offered me her house for sale.

It was a large spacious even luxurious house with one of those groomed backyards with a great patio/outdoor living space. I told her I lived in a tiny townhouse but she kept insisting on giving me a tour and telling me that I could indeed afford the house.

The I woke up. (Since then I’ve been having other weird ‘house’ dreams. The other night I dreamt that I broke into Glenn Beck’s house and slept in a bed there–like some kind of Goldilocks! And all the time I could hear him snoring in the other room. The room I was in was decorated in white! And I kept getting up and listening at the door thinking I’d better get out of there before he woke up! Weird!)

I think it was Jung who said that seeing a new room  in a house or a bigger house had to with personal growth (or any other type of house dream).  According to him a house represents your subconcious or mind, I think, and discovering a new room or a new house means opening up a new aspect of your personality or a new way of thinking.

Appropriate perhaps for such a life changing journey as the Hajj.

I feel so light of baggage and kind of ‘poor’ like Hagar must have felt.

Now I’ve boarded the bus for Mina, tears stream down my face and in my heart I’m repeating “Labaik allahuma labaik” Here I am, O Lord, Here I am, at your service.

The Hajj has begun!

Nov. 14th cont’d

We arrived in Mena after only about 20 minutes. I had been told that it was just on the other side of the mountain across from our hotel.

Seeing all the pilgrims on the road. So many of them walking made me feel quite privileged to be riding in an air conditioned bus.

When we got here, to this gated compound, trudging with my backpack through a maze of tents and finally getting to our own tent it felt almost anti-climactic.

It was all so organized. I was in group 1B, bus 7, and they even had my bed/chair ready with a pillow, blanket and a tag with my i.d. pinned on it.

It’s actually about 1/2 a tent that I’m sharing with 21 other sisters. Once we pull our beds out there’ll be very little space for our luggage. all the other ladies started reading Quran but somehow I felt too tired, so I just sat there staring around me for a moment or two, like an idiot.

Then fatigue came over me and I pulled out my bed and I took a nap.

I’ve been crying for ten years to get here to this moment in my life and I guess it was all too much for me.

Nov. 14th cont’d

Well the day is almost over. My first day of Mina and so far I’ve survived, alhamdu lillah.

Our group seems to be composed of some very nice ladies masha Allah. It’s nice that we all get along despite our different points of view regarding some Islamic matters like praying in jamaat (together).

One of the sheikhs had asked me to tell some stories during our stay in Mina.

It felt awkward to put myself forward like that.

I consulted with one of the sisters and she urged to do it so I did. I told  3 stories. The first was the story of Joseph (peace be upon him), which I messed up in the middle–argh!

Then I told the story of Moses (peace be upon him) and Khidr. Then I told the story of Aisha’s necklace. Of all the stories Moses (peace be upon him) and Khidr from Surah Kahf in the Quran was probably the most polished, but I’m surprised how much of Aisha’s story I remembered.

The washroom facilities–always a concern–were pretty good but they have the shower right above the toilet and I don’t know how I’m going to shower without getting my clothes wet. And since my crocs, which I’d been planning to use as bathroom slippers, are in the missing luggages, I’m going to have to borrow some slippers for the purpose.

I may have broken my ihram.

I noticed a stray hair on my face and when I instinctively grabbed it and pulled, it tugged at my facial skin and seemed to be attached. I swear it wasn’t there this morning! Did Satan put it there to mess me up?

Because in the state of ihram we’re not allowed to literally harm a hair on our or anybody else’s head.

Lunch ended up arriving at around 4 pm. We were all pretty hungry, standing in line, then one of the doors to a tent opened and a lady came out and dumped a plateful of rice in the garbage!

I couldn’t help myself!

I exclaimed, “Subhanallah! How could you throw out so much food?! Next time don’t take so much.” She just made a face and went back inside.

The lineup for the food was extremely long! There are thousands of people in this hajj group!

Oh well. Hope I wasn’t too harsh. I’m going to pray Isha in a  few moments.

Already flossed and brushed my teeth and washed my face. Tomorrow’s the big day! Arafat!

I hope I retain my patience.

So far, so good. Alhamdu lillah!

to be cont’d…

Nov. 12th

We left Medina last night.

I said goodbye to the city of the Prophet (peace be uponhim) with tears stinging the corners of my eyes.

I did one final prayer in the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) mosque.

It was Maghrib and the temperature was sultry.

That magical mix of not hot and not cool, and the courtyard was comparatively empty. I got space inside, no problem.

All day I’d seen hajjis boarding buses to Aziziah–a suburb of Mecca, very close to Mena the site of the beginning of Hajj.

It’s the law now, ever since the H1N1 scare that all pilgrims must leave Medina two days before the start of Hajj, on the 8th of Dhul Hijjah.

We were no different, but our scheduled departure was 6 pm. (Hotel rooms in Mecca ae running up to $2000 a night and there is no space. One of the reasons why we stayed in Mecca first.)

Problem was we had to wait for the mutawaf to arrive and give us back our passports.

We didn’t end up leaving till 9 p.m.

The Hijra, migration of the fledgling Muslim community from Mecca to Medina is the crucial event that marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar (the beginning from which we tell time) and was undertaken at great risk to the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) life.

The Meccan Qureish were so determined to kill the Prophet (peace be upon him) they colluded together and sent a youth from each tribe to do the deed–kind of like what happened with Julius Caesar.

With so many striking the blow, blame would be shared and there’d be no blood feud to follow.

The Prophet’s (peace be upon him) escape is considered one of the greatest in history.

Ali (the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) cousin) slept in the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) bed and right under the noses of the enemies surrounding the house, the Prophet (peace be upon him) and his best friend Abu Bakr slipped away.

I’ve heard that the Prophet (peace be upon him) picked up some sand and blew it in the faces of the conspirators so they could not see, but I’m not sure of that.

When the youths rushed in to kill him they found Ali instead. The hue and cry went up and a reward of 100 camels was offered up to the person who could bring news of his whereabouts.

Medina is to the north but to throw off the chase, the Prophet (peace be upon him) and Abu Bakr headed south to Jebel Thaur (the mountain of Thaur) and hid in a cave on its slope.

Asma, the daughter of Abu Bakr used to bring them food and water everyday, and to hide her tracks, a shepherd would drive his flock over them to confound any pursuit.

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) and Abu Bakr got to the cave, Abu Bakr went in first to make sure there were no dangerous animals hiding in there. He found only a small hole which he blocked with his foot and he bade the Prophet enter.

But within the hole was  a scorpion and it began to repeatedly sting Abu Bakr.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) noticed his friend flinching and asked what was wrong. When he saw the stings he put a bit of his salivea on his finger and touched the wound and instantly Abu Bakr felt better.

Despite the precautions, there were two trackers who were still able to follow Asma’s footsteps to the mouth of the cave. Abu Bakr was very afraid. All the trackers had to do was look down and they would be discovered, but the Prophet (peace be upon him) reassured him that though there were only two of them, the third with them was God.

And God had ordered some pigeons to make a nest at the opening of the cave and in some narrations of this story, also a spider spun a web across the opening of the cave. When the trackers saw these they deduced that no one could be inside the cave and left.

Then slowly, taking a circuitous route, the Prophet (peace be upon him) and Abu Bakr made their way to Medina.

I knew Medina was a far way from Mecca. I’ve heard some compare the distance to that of Toronto and Ottawa, about a five hour drive, but I really appreciated the distance last night as we drove it. For much of the distance there were no lights at all, just the residual glare from the bus headlights or those of passing cars. The stars were amazing.

I guess with the desert air being so dry, the stars stood out all the more against the blackness of the sky. I saw the Orion constellation lying on its side, close to the horizon of dark sand hills and it felt so strange. I used to always see Orion early in the morning on cold winter days when I used to deliver newspapers as a child and somehow I felt connected to that kid gazing at the stars so long ago.

A journey that should have taken 5 hours ended up taking fourteen hours by bus.

We stopped only three times, once to pray Isha and once to use the bathrooms and once to pray Fajr.

When we stopped to pray Isha I was pleasantly surprised by the state of the washrooms. You have to expect the worst.

2 1/2 million people from hundreds of countries just don’t all have the same standards of hygiene.

I was happy to find a ‘sit down’ toilet (basically a standard western toilet) as opposed to the ones that are holes in the floor and you have to squat. Yeah there was water all over the floor and trash in the corner, but all in all it could have been worse.

On the bus, I was sitting beside an elderly lady and she informed me that she couldn’t stand the condition of the bathroom and had decided to hold it. I told her the next bathroom could be way worse!

For the next couple of hours she drank very little because she had to go to the bathroom–also not a good decision while traveling, especially in a desert!

You really stress the body by letting it get too dehydrated.

Sure enough, the next bathrooms were way worse.

All squat toilets, none of them too clean. (Although compared to what I’d experience in Muzdalifa later on they were pretty okay!)

As one young sister put it: “Just do what you got to do and get out of there!”

And yet that elderly lady used this washroom and when I spoke to her in the bus afterwards she felt quite proud of the fact. She said she’d never used such a toilet before and she felt much better.

Like I said, a trip that should have taken 5 hours ended up taking 14. So much of it was stop and go, traffic jam, honk, honk, but I was too exhausted to let that prevent me from sleeping.

One thing I realized is that on such a bus it’s best to sit fully upright to sleep. That semi-reclining position just hurts my back.

When we stopped for Fajr I had a problem with my legs. When I sat during the prayer my legs felt like swelled up sausages.

The swelling’s gone down since, alhamdu lillah, now they just feel ‘normal’ swollen.

We’re relaxing in the hotel in Aziziah and it occurs to me that it took as much time to get from Medina to Mecca as it took to fly from Toronto to Abu Dhabi!

The distances we’re going to be dealing with during Hajj are not far. People can and do walk them. I mean from Arafat back to Mena is only about 5 -10 km but it can take the bus anywhere from 2 – 7 hours just to get half way there to Muzdalifa, where we’ll be spending the night.

5 million people calls for the world’s worst traffic jams I guess.

to be continued…

Apparently we literary writers tend to let our characters just stand around and talk too much.

Boring!

That’s what I mean when I said in an earlier post that part of the learning curve when it comes to screen writing has been thinking in three and even four dimensions.

Frankly I’m not sure how I’m even doing it.

I write at least two pages soon as I get up on the sequel for Wanting Mor, then I come down to my downstairs computer and write I don’t know how many revisions of the screenplay.

I want to get the first one just right! (Well actually I’ll want to get them all just write, but the first one is especially important.) It sets the course.

And I’m just about done.

One episode!

Nineteen to go!

It helps to think of them each as chapters in a bigger story.

The nice thing is I love my characters, even the villain! (I’ve only got one so far, but he’s a hoot!)

And there’s such a feeling of liberation in some ways.

So many times with writing books, you’re limited because some jokes, some situations, just need the visual aspect to get the joke.

And now it’s available!  Yeehaw!

And yet, I have the creative control of this project! I’m the sole writer! Yeehaw again!

I can infuse a bit of depth into this series that might not otherwise get in there.

It’s quite difficult, but quite a bit of fun!

I love it, even as I feel like I’m coming up for air.

And now Ramadan is winding down, and I’m feeling all nostalgic, thinking where did the month go?

It always flies by.

I’m up to chapter 40 in the Quran and I have about five days left to finish reading it, basically about seventy-four more chapters, but the thing about the Quran is that the first chapters are the longest.

And every time I read it, I find things I missed.

This time I came across a verse where God talked about how He had made the enemy at the battle of Badr appear smaller than they really were in a vision that the Prophet (peace be upon him) received, and He said He did this because if the Prophet (peace be upon him) had seen their actual size, he would have gotten discouraged.

And I thought, what a mercy!

The battle of Badr was the first battle that the fledgling Muslim community fought after they ran away from persecution in Mecca, to live in what would become Medinat al Nabee  or simply Medina (The city of the Prophet (peace be upon him))

The Muslim army didn’t leave Medina expecting to battle another army. They left expecting to intercept a camel caravan that would compensate them for the wealth they’d had to leave behind in Mecca (which was stolen by their enemies).

But the caravan diverted its route and an Army of one thousand strong came out to meet the puny Muslim force of 313.

It was a decisive victory!

To think that God made the enemy seem smaller than they really were, such a mercy.

Anyone thinking that they’d have to fight odds of 3 – 1, would be discouraged.

And even now, with this whole script writing, maybe it was a blessing that I thought it would be easier than it turned out to be.

Would we necessarily have the courage to do things if we didn’t rush into them with false bravado?

Does courage come when the going gets tough and you don’t quit?

Perhaps.

It’s been tough.

And it’s getting easier.

Thank God!

I’ve just heard the term bandied about all my life and figure that’s what it means.

These last few weeks have been a great trial to me. And yet there’s been such good things happening too!

I got the travel grant for Italy! I was invited to launch the Italian version of Wanting Mor at a conference in Rimini, Italy, and applied to the Canada Council, and yup! Got the grant, so I’m going, God willing!

On Saturday I went down to visit my mom in the hospital. She’d just had her knee replacement surgery.

It is never easy to see your mother in pain, and yet this is useful pain. I can see that she’ll be better off having done this and I can’t help but be glad.

I just wish the timing were better and I could be there with her, helping her recuperate.

While I was down there, I set her garden up for the summer. I do that every year and it seems every year it gets harder and harder. I’m no spring chicken myself any more and my father, ever the wit, said something that made me smile.

He said, “This is the first time I saw a grandmother taking care of a great-grandmother.”

So true. The image is odd, isn’t it?

I got back early yesterday and got ready for four presentations at a Catholic school today.

It always amazes me how open-minded people can be. This is not the first Catholic school I’ve presented at, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

They had multiple copies of my book Muslim Child and the teacher librarian told me how much he loved the book! Then he asked me to give him my opinion on two older books he had about Islam.

Two very odd things happened at the school.

The first was during the primary presentation. The child could not have been more than six or seven. I can’t even be sure if he was a boy or a girl, I just remember the esoteric question he asked me. “Are you real?”

LOL. I mean talk about transcendental! How to answer???

Finally I just said, “I think so.”

The other incident occurred a little while later. It was after my The Roses in My Carpets  presentation. A grade five boy came up to me and asked me, “But I thought Pakis were the bad guys. The ones we are fighting.”

For a moment I just looked at him and couldn’t believe what I had heard. The term ‘Paki’ is about as offensive as the n-word to most Pakistanis, and yet this boy had uttered it in such a matter-of-fact way, with no hint of any intention to offend.

I’m sure he thought it was just the singular term for a person from Pakistan. And I’m equally sure he heard it bandied about by adults and didn’t realize the racial connotations.

How could I get offended?

So we talked a bit about perspective, that to the people there, they felt we were invaders, etc.

I wonder now if I should have told him that he shouldn’t be using such terms.

Nah, he would have been too embarrassed. I just didn’t feel like dealing with the effusive apologies that were bound to ensue.

And I thought of that Oprah episode where they’d said that you should try not to take things personally.

So I let it slide.

One day he’d realize, and then he might remember what he said to me and how I hadn’t taken issue. And that might be even better.

Who knows. I just couldn’t hold it against him.

Tomorrow I have to mail off a grant application, call the taxi to pick me up early on Wednesday morning to go to Edmonton for the Canadian Library Association convention.

I’m delivering my Denmark IBBY speech again (this is the second time I’ve been asked to deliver it–not counting the time it was published in Horn Book magazine!).

At first I was hoping a school in Edmonton would book me for presentations, but now I’m glad my Wednesday is open. I’ll just chill at the hotel and prepare myself for the speech the next day. I also have to do a poster session. Should be an interesting experience.

I’m coming home on Friday night.

And in the midst of all this who has time to keep track of oil spills and humanitarian aid flotillas?

And yet how can I ignore them? It makes me sad.

You know, I really do get it. I’ve read enough books about the way that Jews were persecuted through no fault of their own, just for being Jews, that I really do get it.

I can understand why they need a homeland, and they need security.

I was talking with one of my good friends. Her parents had survived the holocaust. They’d come to Canada at a time when Canadian immigration policy discriminated against Jews, when they turned away a boatload of Eastern European Jews who were trying to escape the holocaust, and that boatload went from port to port having their quest for asylum rejected, only to return to Germany where they were sent to the concentration camps. It breaks your heart!

What would that do to a people’s mindset?

Wouldn’t they be forever looking over their shoulder? Wouldn’t they be forever suspicious that people are out to get them?

And once they achieved a level of security, wouldn’t they be hell bent on retaining it? Even if it meant that they’d be employing some of the tactics that were used against them? Making Palestinians carry their papers, identify themselves, live in ghettoes while they exercised ‘lebensraum’?

And all the while suspecting that the Palestinians want to annihilate them, like so many people in their past have tried to do.

Makes for a perpetual insecurity complex and a self-fulfilling policy.

They’re never satisfied, they’re always afraid, and so they commit more and more egregious acts, because they can get away with it.

They are enabled by Western governments who are still sorry for not helping them escape the fate of the holocaust and so they indulge them, like a favoured child. No matter what they do, they are exempt from punishment because they suffered, for centuries they suffered, from pograms and unspeakable horrors, they suffered.

They are the victim that has turned into the abuser, and there is still suffering.

They can do what they want. They can invade a flotilla of ships bringing humanitarian aid to a people besieged beyond endurance, and they can kill ten of them with no consequences.

It is so senseless and so sad.

My heart goes out to the families of those killed.

And to the people of Gaza, who continue to suffer while I planted impatiens and spread mulch on my mother’s garden.

And my heart goes out to the people of Israel who are on such a misguided path, thinking that such tactics will ever bring them any kind of security!

The Prophet (peace be upon him) said that if you see someone  abusing another person you must help both  the  abuser and the one he is abusing. The companions said they understood that they must help the one who is being abused but how were they supposed to help the abuser? The Prophet (peace be upon him) answered by stopping him from abusing. (I’m paraphrasing.)