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 suspect the majority is starting to feel under siege and they’re tired of political correctness.

When I think of Christmas what is seared into my memory is the first grade teacher who insisted I write a letter to Santa even though I told her I didn’t believe in him.

She told me to write a letter anyway so I did. I listed all kinds of toys that I wished I had but knew we couldn’t afford–it was only imaginary anyway.

Up until that time the bane of my existence was that very few teachers could ever spell my name right. And their pronunciations would make me wince!

Substitute teachers were the worst. They’d come down the attendance list and I knew when they got to my name because they’d hesitate.

What convinced me that Santa existed? I received a reply to my letter from Santa–AND MY NAME WAS SPELLED RIGHT!

Plus I got a little peppermint candy cane and some chocolates, just like everyone else.

I was convinced my parents were wrong, my sister was wrong. They were wrong, wrong, wrong. There really was a Santa and I’d get everything I wanted on my list!

You know it’s really not that hard to deal with deprivation.

I grew up poor. I came to terms with it.

But raising such false hopes in a poor immigrant kid is just CRUEL. What was that grade one teacher thinking???

I’m sure that teacher didn’t mean to be cruel, but she was–with her ignorance.

For so many years I felt ultra bitter about Christmas.

It didn’t help that we had our own celebrations.

We were so poor that we received one gift a year–on Eid ul Fitr–and because wrapping paper cost money my parents wrapped it in newspaper. They said, “What does it matter? You’re going to rip it anyway.” So I never got a pretty gift and I never had anything to brag about. Not like the other kids who came back to school after the Christmas holidays and recited the list of things they got for Christmas.

I’m not saying this to elicit any kind of sympathy.

I survived all of that.

And yes, there was a time when I felt bitter about my experiences, but with maturity those feelings have passed.

And ironically it was the effort I put into my own children’s Eid celebrations that helped me exorcize a lot of these old demons. I made sure they had a FANTASTIC Eid! And they had plenty to brag about when they went back to school. Same with Halloween. I’d give them each $5 to $10 so they could go to the stores and buy the chocolates that the other kids in the neighbourhood would be going door to door for, so they wouldn’t feel left out in any way.

It worked. They grew up happy and secure in their own celebrations.

I think what really changed my mind about Christmas though is that this same society that was at times quite difficult to grow up in, was now supporting my lifelong dreams and ambitions in terms of children’s books.

It’s easy to be magnanimous when your dreams are coming true.

And I’ve gone from the point where I’d cringe if I was wished a “Merry Christmas” to the point where I’ll just shrug.

Look.

I’m genuinely happy for you and your Christmas cheer.

I get it. You’re having fun and you want to include me in it.

But don’t.

It doesn’t apply to me, and that’s fine.

It’s your thing, not mine.

Wishing someone like me a Merry Christmas is just silly. You know I don’t celebrate it, or you should know it just by the way I dress!

It would be like wishing me, a proud Canadian, a Happy Fourth of July.

It’s a head-scratching ‘huh?’ moment! Doesn’t apply.

Doesn’t mean I don’t want you to have a Merry Christmas, but why do you want to inflict that on me?

Why do you want to possibly remind me of the feelings of exclusion I grew up with?

The feeling like I’m standing on a cold porch looking inside at a Norman Rockwell Christmas scene that I know will never apply to me?

Oh I won’t hold it against you if you tell me Merry Christmas.

I know you don’t mean anything by it.

But if you were to take a moment and reflect, oh what a difference there could be.

If you were to use the more neutral: Happy Holidays or Season’s Greetings–boy would I appreciate that!

And in fact, my current policy is to say “Merry Christmas” to anyone I know who is Christian and celebrates it. And I say Happy Chanukah/Hanukah to any person I know who is Jewish at this time of the year.

I consider it to be an act of consideration.

You know like what Dale Carnegie said about how a person’s name is the sweetest sound to their ears, and learning to pronounce a person’s name correctly is one of the most considerate things you can do for them. And when someone repeatedly mispronounces someone’s name it’s a form of an insult.

Well, greeting someone with the appropriate greeting is kin to that, in my opinion.

If you know that this person is Muslim, or Hindu or Jewish or any other non-Christian denomination, why, oh why would you wish them a Merry Christmas?

If you don’t know, then fine. I doubt they’d take offense.

I’ve learned not to take offense.

It took me a LONG time, but I just shrug it off now.

But if someone takes the trouble to greet me with Season’s Greetings or Happy Holidays, you can bet that my face breaks into a big wide smile! Especially if that person’s one of those Christians who’s a real Christmas afficianado.

And I reply back, both heartily and sincerely, “Merry Christmas!”

And I mean it with all my heart!

And when so many people actually wish me a Happy Eid (at the end of Ramadan or the Hajj) it gives me LOADS of joy!

So in that very spirit I say Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, Happy Chanukah to all that celebrate it, and the joy of the season for everyone else!

And may the new year contain the fulfillment of all your hopes and dreams.

It’s unfortunate that in written communication especially, it’s so easy to misconstrue tone and meaning to people’s words.

I’ve stopped responding to people’s good news via email with a ‘Good for you’, because I figure it can so easily be misconstrued as being sarcastic instead of heartfelt.

Even though ‘good for you’ is the pithiest way to say that you’re happy for someone.

My daughter informed me the other day that my post Stonehenge and Immigrant Culture, came across as racist.

My first reaction was, ‘oh dear’. My second reaction was, ‘c’est la vie’.

My daughter particularly referred to the phrase ‘white crap’.

Thing is most bloggers are smarter than me. They avoid ALL controversy by keeping their posts as mild as pablum.

Is it shocking to think that immigrants can be as racist towards mainstream culture as some mainstream people are towards immigrant culture?

I guess it is, but then that was the whole point of the post.

Racism goes both ways, and there was a time when I actually believed that if I said something negative about white culture it didn’t constitute racism because racism could only be perpetrated by the powerful majority towards the unpowerful minority.

Yeah, right.

I may not always be smart–but I can learn.

I’ve been fortunate because I’ve made friends with some wonderful people and some of my friends have been kind enough to point out the error of my ways.

The fact that my son in law did indeed call Moby Dick ‘white crap’, is just an honest reflection of how he felt. And it becomes really odious when political correctness gets to the degree that we simply can’t be honest.

I still don’t feel like Moby Dick is ‘white crap’ in any way at all. In fact ever since I wrote about that anecdote I had a bit of an epiphany.

Maybe Herman Melville was really referring to how people who’ve been injured or abused in their past keep hankering after those that injured them, being locked in a death battle trying to get vengeance, and maybe it is just as futile as Captain Ahab chasing a whale, and maybe my son in law was spot on in that it is an animal and how can you take it personally if it chews off your leg?

The more I think about it the more certain I become that this is in fact the whole point!

We’re not all getting in ships to chase after maniacal sperm whales but holding grudges against things people have done to us in the past is just as futile.

It’s just too bad though that the language of Moby Dick was too dense for me to get through.

In my twenties I started reading a LOT of classics. I had grown up thinking that classics, being so old, must be boring. But after reading Jane Eyre, I started to view them differently.

I realized that they were classics because they were so old and had passed the test of time. That generations had found value in them, so I started seeking out classic literature.

Read one Thomas Hardy novel Far From the Madding Crowd and thought ‘meh’.

Read all of Mark Twain’s works except for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.

Read all of Jane Austen–loved them all but particularly Mansfield Park.

So anyone who thinks that I consider ‘white’ culture crap, obviously hasn’t been tuning in to all of what I’ve been saying.

When my daughter told me that I sounded racist I just told her that if people get that impression then they haven’t been reading all my work. They haven’t been seeing all the admirable things I’ve said about white/western literature.

The fact is that American and British literature (‘white’ literature) is the most popular or at least the most prestigious literature in the world today.

The Americans and British really know how to tell a story!

That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been immersing myself in ‘white’ literature. I’ve been absorbing their storytelling techniques and applying the structure and format to stories from my culture that I want to tell.

I’m not copying their content! I’m copying their framework.

It’s a very good idea to do this because as a reader is reading about another culture, living it vicariously, they do need to feel ‘grounded’ in some way. Not totally disoriented. By having a solidly ‘western’/'white’ framework to my stories it gives the reader a sort of reassurance of common ground.

And in doing so, I’ve been fortunate that I’ve been developing a following of sorts.

I’m so fortunate to meet some of the people who support my work.

I was in Kingston, Ont. on Tuesday and Wednesday visiting schools because a dear friend of mine who works on social issues in the schools there arranged a sort of tour for me.

She was introduced to my work way back when she read Dahling if You Luv Me Would You Please Please Smile.

She had taken me for lunch at a small restaurant when we started discussing the state of the world and she said something interesting. She had just told me about this girl she’d been dealing with who’d suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of an old man and she said, “The world would be so much better if women ran it.”

Nope. Don’t agree.

I’ve watched too many episodes of Judge Judy where there are these really really stupid bimbos who do all kinds of stuff to exboyfriends, exgirlfriends, parents, you name it and who are just as bad as any man on the show. And too many shows of Till Debt do Us Part and seen too many women who ran their family’s finances into the ground because they couldn’t stop shopping! I felt so sorry for their long suffering husbands!

Women are not automatically better than men.

I guess that means I’m not a feminist.

So be it.

I want justice for everyone, and as bad as men can be, women can be just as bad, or worse.

I told my dear friend, “Every time I start thinking about how horrible men can be, I remember that Kenny Rogers song, “Lucille.”

And then I started singing the chorus to her, right there in that restaurant:

“You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille,

Four hungry children and a crop in the fields.

I’ve had some bad times

Lived through some sad times

But this time your hurting won’t heal.

You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.”

Men don’t have a monopoly on being brutes or even being evil.

That’s why in my book Wanting Mor I really didn’t make it about the father being the only baddie. The stepmother is equally to blame.

White /black, western culture/eastern culture, men/women, none of them are automatically superior to the other.

It really does come down to our actions.

We are defined by our actions.

Not by what culture, race, religion or gender we were born into.

And it behooves us to remember that.

Took a moment away from organizing this British trip (my Mom’s decided to come along as well as my sister!) and watched Oprah’s show on visionaries.

Here it’s on every Sunday night at 8 pm on OWN.

Tonight was James Cameron, the guy who did Terminator, Titanic and Avatar.

In the promos for the show they quoted him as saying every once in a while a door will open a crack, and you have to push it open, that’s your opportunity!

Something about the way he said that really resonated within me, and I’ve been waiting for this show for a long time!

It did not disappoint.

I wanted to know how a kid from a small town in Canada (he never did say which town!) got to be one of the biggest directors in the biz!

Apparently he’s done all kinds of jobs, including truck driving and being a school janitor, scraping gum off the bottoms of school desks. He made an observation that had already struck me. He said that every job he’d ever held, even the menial ones, had been necessary!

They had built him up to who he is today.

Boy can I relate!

I’ve been a dishwasher, a salad preparer, a cleaning lady, a biological-chemical technician doing quality control in a pharmaceutical lab and I’ve been a daycare provider.

All of those jobs have been absolutely necessary to building me into who I am today.

He believes in cultivating curiosity!

He talked about those astronauts who’d landed on the moon. Neil Armstrong never said a thing about it for years afterwards. The other guy even wrote books about it!

He said that there’s something in people that they want to go and be in that special place they’ve dreamed or heard about. And boy can I relate to that too!

When I was in Singapore, seeing the Raffles hotel, thinking that Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maughm had actually stayed there… And just walking around Singapore, I kept thinking that I’m actually in Singapore!

Same when I was in Rome!

And everywhere else I’ve been, to me is amazing!

James Cameron said that people who’ve experienced that have a duty to those left behind to share what it felt like!

Cameron’s first break came when he was a set painter for some b-list director. He had created these elaborate sci-fi sets and noticed the cameramen weren’t exploiting them as well as they could be, so he went to the director suggested a different angle, the director liked it and put him in charge of some sub set camera crew or something like that.

Gradually he worked his way up from there, but that was the door opening just a crack.

I think my door opening a crack was that acceptance speech at the Golden Kite award. I do believe that I arched a few eyebrows. But we’ll see.

All in all, it was well worth seeing that James Cameron interview. He’s a real artist who works on his craft, in ever sense of the word.

Later in the evening I watched District 9 that movie by Peter Jackson. Wow! What a contrast!

I asked my son how the movie had done on Rotten Tomatoes and he said it had received mixed reviews.

It’s clear that Jackson’s intention is to parallel the treatment of these aliens with the treatment of illegal aliens and the discrimination they face, but the problem was it was very hard to follow the first bit.

It felt *too documentary-ish*.

Lots of faux interviews and such, loved when the guy defended calling the aliens the ‘racist term’ ‘prawns’. He just sounded so reasonable.

I think it was a mistake for Jackson to make his aliens so ‘prawnlike’.

You need to know fairly quickly in any story, who you’re supposed to be rooting for.

The problem I think with District 9 is that the beginning was so disorienting, you really had no idea who the good guys were.

And for the first time I actually understood why my American publishers have asked me at times to just set my immigrant stories in America.

They said basically that it’s already a culture once-removed from American sensibilities, setting it in familiar American suburbia just makes sense.

And as a result, I do think that Jackson setting the District 9 in South Africa was a bit too removed from familiarity.

One thing I realized quite early in my career is not to get too experimental in terms of format with my writing.

The thing is the cultural context in my work is already alien and unfamiliar. Playing with form would be way over the top!

Having a basic story structure basically gives the reader something to hold on to so they don’t feel too disoriented.

I know Jackson must have been drawing parallels with apartheid, they come through loud and clear! But still, the unfamiliarity of the South African setting and the South African accents was very disorienting, even to me, who’s been to South Africa!

In fact that’s one thing I did kind of enjoy about the movie, thinking, “Hey I was there!”

Once the story got to a certain point, it really picked up! Then I thought it was quite compelling and really enjoyed the whole thing.

But that said I wondered if most people wouldn’t have given up on it by then.

All in all, I highly recommend it!

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.

My first thought was, “I must have done something right!” And my second thought was, “What if this person is right about me?”

I have seen too many people delude themselves. These are people who construct elaborate narratives about themselves where they’re misunderstood victims instead of the jerks they really are. These people surround themselves with people who prop up this alternative reality and anyone who tries to burst the delusion bubble gets backlisted–but good!

I’ve seen too many otherwise intelligent people do this–to ever feel comfortable that I’m not doing that myself. So my first reaction on getting an insult is to second guess myself and wonder if there’s any truth in it.

Sometimes there is. Whereupon I force myself to swallow some humble pie and make amends.

When there is no truth in the insult then I chalk it up to a problem with the hater that has nothing to do with me.

And the reason why I thought I must be doing something right is that anyone who is making an impact in any way, will attract their share of haters.

There’s a line in L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, where the heroine Valancy Sterling is taking stock of her 29 years of living thinking what a pathetic creature she was, she didn’t even have one enemy!

It seems to be the nature of artists that they remember the slings and barbs long after they’ve forgotten the praise!

Perhaps it’s because within every artist there is an inner critic and the slings and barbs echo the snarly comments of the critic, so are more easy to hang on to.

But I received a very nice email from a lady I met at the SCBWI conference. She reviewed Big Red Lollipop and wanted to share it with me. You can read what she had to say here: http://childrensbooksheal.com/2011/09/07/big-red-lollipop/

It’s so nice to read such heart felt comments about the impact your book has had on others!

I got this email at a time when I felt rather low, so it was welcome indeed!

Then yesterday I got ready and went to Ottawa to attend an event that was organized by a booking agency I’m working for up there called MASC. http://www.masconline.ca/www.masconline.ca/RukhsanaKhanEng.html

They called it a ‘retreat’ but it was really just a day of workshops. They looked interesting. The first was about grant application writing and the second was about creating promotional vidoes.

All MASC artists were encouraged to attend. Being from out of town I wasn’t obligated but the topics looked interesting and I thought I might get something out of it.

Also it was neat how MASC had re-hired me kind of. About ten years ago, when I first started storytelling I was on their roster for a couple of years, but somehow they didn’t ask me back. About seven years went by and one of the ladies in charge saw me at an Arts Smarts event, and they decided to invite me back. As an out of towner they’ll try to concentrate all my bookings in a week in April to make it worth my while.

I drove up yesterday and the weather was simply gorgeous!

The sky was that really deep ultramarine blue you really only get in the fall (ultramarine is a colour of Laurentian pencil crayon that is a deep intense blue!). It’s a blue that is completely free of the haze of humidity!

The trees were beginning to turn! The sumacs that lined Highway 7 (transCanada highway) showed brilliant red edges and there was a grove that I passed that I swear were almost purplish in hue!

I’ve never seen purple fall leaves!

And oh the cottonwoods! When the wind blew you could see the bright white of the under leaves!

And the oddest thing was the monarch butterflies that fluttered across the highway.

I noticed them first on the 401 of all places!

Monarch butterflies dodging eighteen-wheel trucks who must be on their yearly migration to Mexico!

After a while I started looking for them and like the inukshuks I counted on the way to Sudbury and Espanola back in March and April, I started counting Monarch butterflies zigzagging from my left to right (I was driving east) heading south for the winter.

I counted a total of twenty Monarch butterflies–including a poor chap that hadn’t dodged artfully and was stuck to the yellow line in the middle of Highway 37 just outside Tweed.

The milkweed they had probably spent the summer feasting on was also turning golden colours at the side of the road, their pods curled back  having burst open.

I can’t really say the scenery was spectacular. I mean I’ve driven across Canada and southern Ontario farmland is nothing compared to the vast beauty out there, and yet the rural charm of tawny autumn colours does my spirit good.

Going to this retreat meant spending my own money on this trip, but hubby encouraged me and now I’m really glad I did.

The grant writing workshop turned out to be too specific towards artists in the city of Ottawa, so I went to the parallel session on social media instead.

I had initially passed on the social media session because I’d already been to sessions on it, but this one was different! Holly Wagg really made social media understandable!

And having seen John Green’s video blog, I found out how I could do that too. It’s actually not that hard (although I’m saying that without having even attempted the learning curve!).

MASC received some funding to make a one minute promotional video for each of their sixty artists so I learned about that as well.

Being in Ottawa, so close to Quebec (it’s on the other side of the Ottawa river), there were a LOT of Francophone artists at the retreat.

I wore my purplish-lavendar coloured shalwar kameez suit. It’s a little darker purple than a Canadian ten dollar bill. It’s a very simple suit that I thought would agree with my colouring. And I picked up a brightly coloured Italian scarf, that had the same purple as well as ultramarine blue and black in it, as a hijab to go with it.  

It was one of the suits I wore in L.A. that I got so complimented on. Today was no different.

While walking into the venue for the workshops, a lady told me how very  nice I looked!

But it was when I got inside that a Francophone lady started speaking in French, gesticulating at my hijab and my suit, smiling and speaking quickly, saying ‘beau’ and ‘belle voile’. I know enough elementary French to realize she was also complimenting me.

Then she went on saying stuff I didn’t understand and eventually explaining in broken English that she was commenting on how nice I looked and wondering why all Muslim women couldn’t dress as attractively. Why would they wear such ugly clothes to cover themselves up? Browns and blacks and things that didn’t match? Why couldn’t they do what I did so they looked nice?

I was still smiling, kind of, but not as widely.

I couldn’t help wondering what she’d think of my daughters who do wear the ‘ugly black’ stuff.

For an instant I thought of trying to explain it to her. That those women, like my daughters, deliberately wore the drab colours because they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves.

They often had the bright colours on underneath, for private eyes. Or maybe they didn’t match up because they were poor and couldn’t afford it.

I wear the clothes I do because I figured, hey, I’m going to stick out anyway, I might as well wear what I like–and I like bright pretty colours. (and I can afford them)

But I knew that it would destroy the moment. She meant her remark in all kindness, and that was how I should accept it, period.

But it was a little sad.

On another note I did meet a Native who is Ottawa’s official town crier!

I didn’t even know the position of town crier still existed!

Apparently they have international conferences and competitions and such.

In his job (that he’d held for thirty years) he’d announced the Queen and the Pope!

His name is Daniel Richer and check out his website! http://www.danielricher.com/

The organizers called upon his services to get the group of us to stop chatting and start the workshopping.

He had a booming voice that was quite pleasant even in the louder register!

All in all a fascinating day!

Driving back home after the workshops–  I didn’t see one Monarch butterfly! Not even the one stuck to the middle of Hwy 37! And the weather had turned chilly.

Omigosh have I ever matured in the way I deal with people.

A while ago, a contentious issue arose during some discussions I was having with some people where it was myself against everyone else in the room.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to defend my perspective like that.

Reminded me of the time I confronted Suzanne Fisher Staples at the Children’s Literature New England Conference way back in the summer of 1996, before I was even published.

Back then I was trying to explain the Muslim point of view too and I’m quite embarrassed to say that I ended up in tears.

Not this time.

Oh it was hot at times.

I was quite opinionated, but under the circumstances there was nothing wrong with that.

But at no time did I feel overwhelmed, or at a loss. Nor did I feel ganged up on, and as a result, I wasn’t even tempted to cry.

Not at all. I didn’t even have to try not to cry. I basically held my ground, making my point without being obnoxious or saying anything that I’d have to apologize for later.

After the exchange, I felt right and good. Whether the others listened or not I had at least represented ‘my people’ to the best of my ability.

I know that sounds pompous, but hey, that’s how I felt.

The next day the chairperson took me aside to have a chat. I had a choice of recusing myself from this contentious matter. If I had felt prejudiced in any way, I definitely would have.

But honestly my heart felt clean.

And yet there was one matter I did recuse myself for because it involved a person I know personally and really dislike!

In that one I couldn’t be sure I was giving a fair assessment.

In that case, my heart felt clean only when I recused myself.

So I stuck to my guns at this point and felt good about it, but oh…

Sigh.

Sometimes I look back at the past and cringe.

Gosh, I was such a prickly immigrant!

So many immigrants are.

Oh well, I guess I need to cut myself some slack. It’s all been a learning process.

The nicest thing was in this more recent incident, the other committee members said to me how they could completely understand where I was coming from.

That was gratifying, that at least I’d been able to express my point of view.

But dealing with such stuff leaves you emotionally and mentally exhausted! It was a while ago, but it still left its mark.

And now I’m home and don’t have to deal with anything more contentious than ornery characters and plots that won’t twist right.

I’m home till July 13th when I have to go to Regina Saskatchewan for a festival. But just to have time to work on all the projects in my head makes me feel good!

I’m going to try to get back to work on the sequel. Got some ideas, plus I have three other story ideas I’d love to finish by the end of the summer.

So very busy!

I always tend to watch movies after the hype has died down somewhat.

I wasn’t very curious about Avatar. Sure wasn’t going to plunk down good money on it without seeing it. The opportunity came on the fifteen hour trip to Hong Kong that I took at the beginning of May, en route to Singapore.

I remember another guy saying that a good way to check if your writing is literary and good quality if it still sounds good when you plug your nose and read it out loud in a ‘ducky’ voice.

Same idea.

Basically what the small screen and the lousy ear plugs and ducky voice do is that they penetrate the ‘mood’, the peripheral rhythmic setting you’re establishing and in this way you can really tell if you’ve written something worthwhile.

My opinion of Avatar…it’s a rip off of Dances with Wolves. The exact same idea: white man infiltrates the natives and becomes better at being ‘savage’ than they are themselves.

Then, the white guy, armed with superior firepower ‘guns’ or whatever, helps the natives fight back.

I think I know why James Cameron set the story on a distant planet.

He wanted the natives to actually win.

The problem with James Cameron movies is that they’re two dimensional, black and white, even when they’re in vivid colour and ’3D’.

The natives didn’t do anything to deserve being extinguished and he milked the concept of the ‘noble savage’ for all it was worth!

It worked, I guess, for most people.

But I can’t help wondering, are white people really so insecure? What is it with this obsession to ‘out native’ the native?

There are many many examples of this kind of plot curve.

I think it all started with James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.

Isn’t the fact that Western powers dominate the globe and their foreign policies manipulate and strangle the economies of indigenous economies all over the globe, enough?

Do people in Western powers also have to obtain mastery of other people’s cultural exploits as well?

Is this the fantasy?

This little rant of mine might seem out of the blue.

About a week ago I went to an information session for the Hajj group I’m planning to go with this year.

In November the Hajj will culminate on the day of Arafat. About two and a half million people from around the world will gather on the plane of Arafat, outside Mecca, and spend the day in prayer and contemplation, as a kind of dress rehearsal for the Day of Judgment.

And in the process we will sacrifice a sheep in a  commemoration and re-enactment of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael (peace be upon them).  That’s what the Hajj is all about.

It’s following in the footsteps of Abraham, and his wife Hagar and his son Ishmael (peace be upon them).

It’s not a competition.

No one can tell who did a perfect Hajj and who did not.

It’s an individual thing between a person and God, and if done right, it means the pilgrim will emerge from the ordeal with all their sins wiped clean.

It’s a very Muslim thing.

So imagine my consternation when I was emailing a lady at my booking agency, telling her about my availability during November (I had taken the whole month off but have since re-opened a few days at the end of the month), and she informs me, in a ‘la-dee-da’ manner that, “Oh, I know all about it. A girl friend of mine went a few years ago. She’s not Muslim, but she went anyway.”

GRRRrrr!

Now to be honest, she’s not the first one who’s infiltrated the Hajj. Way back in the 1800′s Richard Burton, (not the actor who was married to Liz Taylor but the explorer) the same guy responsible for bringing the erotic (in fact what Arabs considered downright pornographic) collection of stories called the 1001 Arabian Nights and likewise the Kama Sutra to England.

He was a perverted Englishman who seemed to delight in exposing the licentiousness of indigenous cultures!

Well he heard about some Arab tribes that were planning to go on the Hajj and he wondered what it was, so he went too, incognito.

Nowadays there are signs outside Mecca saying Muslims go this way, and non-Muslims don’t go further. Most of the time it’s on the honour system, but there are authorities that do check.

I wonder what Richard Burton thought of the rituals. Was he disappointed there were no natives dancing around a cauldron with the remains of human sacrifice in it? Rather just some men dressed in two pieces of white cloth, and women covered up to their faces and hands, circling around a square building, the Kaaba, crying “Labaik Allahuma Labaik”. “Here we are, our Lord, we have come” (rough translation).

When I was young and the other kids would ask me about some of the things we did in our religion, there was always a curious expression on their faces when they did so. It was hard to describe. It was like they were hesitating to ask because they were afraid of what I might tell them.

The closest I can describe it is a mix of fascination and disgust. You see, they’d seen the National Geographic issues with the topless natives and the feathers and stuff. Maybe they thought all us darkies did stuff like that.

I just kind of glossed over our practices. Frankly I was embarrassed. And yet now that I’m grown I’m wondering what on earth I was embarrassed about?

The essence of Islam is purity of belief in one God, and one God alone. Muhammad (peace be upon him) has absolutely no divinity and is a man just like ourselves, sent as a guide, a messenger and an example we must follow. Basically we’re not allowed to lie, cheat, steal, gossip, eat pork, drink alcohol, fornicate and commit adultery among other things.

What’s so weird about that?

And here I don’t mean to disrespect anyone’s beliefs, but frankly, to me, it’s not as unusual as eating a wafer and pretending that it’s a piece of Jesus (peace be upon him).

But it’s all relative.

Religions are full of things we take on faith.

There are definitely things about Islam that are abhorrent to people of other cultures.

But it’s not like some indigenous person goes and tries to be a better white than whites, is it?

All I know is that it’s 1:56 am and it’s been days since that lady told me about her friend who went for Hajj, and the thought of it still galls me.

I’ve been waiting over ten years to go!

Grrrr!

I’m glad I didn’t know that I could have become a librarian when I was a kid, because if I’d become a librarian, I never would have bothered being a writer, I think.

I’d have been having too much fun just reading all those fantastic books!

It wasn’t the first library convention I’d been to, but things were a bit different this time.

I was waiting for the light to change so I could cross the street, walking from the hotel to the Shaw convention centre a few blocks away and this lady glanced down at my rolling briefcase and said, “Oh, lots of books, huh?”

I wondered how she knew there were books in there. So I said something like one of them was books the other were my clothes and I asked her if she was going to the CLA convention too. She said, “Oh yes!” She had to. She was going for meetings though.

So I told her about my talk and started in on my spiel about my books and she cut me off, “Oh I know who you are! My son saw your presentation (at a school in Toronto) and loved you!”

It was so weird to be recognized in a city so far away!

Apparently she was an ex-president of the CLA or something and was only attending meetings, not the conference itself.

I was nervous about my session. Again the CLA had paid a good amount for me to be there, I was really hoping I’d have more than two or three people in my session. Hey, it’s happened before!

It was odd how I got to this convention. A librarian asked me to submit the proposal for it. It had never occurred to me before!

So I did, and lo and behold, it was accepted! I have to thank her for the opportunity!

The subject of my session was my Denmark IBBY speech, Freedom of Speech vs Cultural Sensitivity, a very controversial topic!

You can read the original speech here: http://www.rukhsanakhan.com/articles/Freedom%20of%20Speech.pdf

But I updated it for the convention. You know what surprised me though while I was updating it?

The situation in the world has actually gotten worse since 2008, when I wrote it.

When I originally wrote the speech, the Swiss were only still contemplating banning the building of minarets, the French had only as yet banned the hijab, there was no such thing as ‘draw Muhammad (peace be upon him) day’, etc. etc.

When it came time for my session, I was so happy to see a few people trickle in. By the time I was actually ready to begin, the hall was full. An audience of about eighty people!

I even met a lady who reads my blog! What a delight!

And many librarians who said they were ‘following my work’! Wow!

I made sure to leave time for questions, and the first couple were a little on the confrontational side. Later I met one guy who seemed to be from a Spanish background who said he disagreed with some of the things I’d said.

He thought that evolution meant survival of the fittest and that would mean that only one culture would end up surviving.

I was surprised at his take on evolution.

That’s not what it means at all. Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean that one species dominates. It means that whatever survives, basically survives because they’re well adapted and the way they’ve evolved has served them well.

When Darwin did his research on the Galapagos islands he found the different finches with the different shaped beaks had evolved over time to fulfill certain evolutionary niches. Each finch was adapted for a particular food source: seeds, insects, etc. There were still many types of finches, just as there are many types of cultures.

Evolution does not mean a streamlining of species (or cultures). There is still diversity, and diversity is a good thing, even in cultures. It represents different ways of looking at things.

Cultures die off, get absorbed into others and evolve over the years all the time. It’s all reflected in how well a culture suits the people who belong to it.

If a culture has aspects that don’t work, those will cease to function and the people of that culture either have to adjust their thinking or it will be adjusted for them, by following generations.

The fact that so many different religions have survived over so many generations means that they contain something that enough people find valuable enough to continue practising.

We need to get to a point where we’re not trying to change each other or convert each other.

Challenging each other with thoughtful, respectful dialogue is good! But launching culturally insensitive attacks and trying to dominate other cultures is not good!

In the end, I doubt that these religions, or more accurately, the people from these religions will ever be able to come to any sort of agreement on all principles. 

They haven’t been able to do so in thousands of years!

And in fact, I don’t think they need to. The religions work for their respective people.

Tolerance is the best we can hope for. A live and let live policy where everyone is free to live their lives, and believe their beliefs as they see fit.

Don’t knock tolerance!

I know it has the connotation that people are just ‘tolerating’ each other, but I think it’s much more deeper than that.

It means that you’re not out to convert or change the other person. You accept them for who they are, even while you might fundamentally disagree with certain aspects of their beliefs.

That’s big!

Tolerance is good. It’s more than enough for me.

The world could use more tolerance!

I just had one of those days when everything stupid you could possibly do, gets done.

It started with Friday, when I went to a school to drop off eleven books some kids had bought. The librarian had it all very organized. All the book order forms with all the names to whom I should sign the books, and then the money collected and counted in a little plastic bag, a total of $155.

I thought I dropped it in the envelope along with the lovely letters from some of the kids who’d seen my presentation.

But later, when I took the envelope inside, it wasn’t there! $155 missing!

I checked the trunk of the car thoroughly, I checked my purse, I checked all the logical places, or so I thought. And then I wondered if I’d somehow left it at the school.

It being the Friday of a long weekend, I had to wait till this morning to call the school, and of course I felt like the biggest fool when the secretary said nope, it wasn’t there.

She sounded so concerned and asked me to let her know if I found it.

Then this afternoon my son was coming home early so I thought I’d take him to get his health card renewed. It was expiring and he needed to get the photo taken.

I had the renewal notice, but did I read it before I got to the government service office? No! It had taken half an hour to get to the office, and the line was very very long! All these immigrants in clothes from around the world trying to get their health cards for free health care. In line, I read what I should have read at home before I left.

Yikes! I had to bring proof of citizenship!

So I went up to the lady, a nice black lady with silver eyeshadow, and told her my dilemma. We had his student bus card, but that didn’t have his address on it. I showed her something else but I thought she’d say it wasn’t enough.

Because he already had a health card I was able to sign a guarrantor using my own driver’s license. But then, wouldn’t you know I put my name in the spot where the health card number was supposed to go.

When I told her I was so sorry she didn’t say anything, just got up to get something to white out my stupid mistake.

All the way home I cringed at what she must think of me.

Immigrants have such a bad rep.

One of my friends who’s from England and is actually an immigrant too told me how people would talk about immigrants in front of her, not realizing that even though she was white, she was one too.

What a word! Im-mi-grant. It even sounds uncouth.

And today I was.

Oh well. Tomorrow’s a new day. Maybe I’ll be a little more refined.

Frankly I couldn’t get worse.