The old: ‘if I knew then what I know now…’ kind of thing.

And yet when a kid once asked me what would I change about my upbringing, I looked at him blankly, thought to myself  ‘What an excellent question!’ and answered, truthfully, “Nothing.”

In particular the grade seven and eight years were the toughest and to be perfectly frank there were reasons why I was so targetted and bullied.

I often spoke my mind!

If I had a thought or an opinion, I didn’t have the sense to check and see if it was the popular opinion, I’d just say it right out loud so everyone could hear.

One of the reasons I did this was because in all those Newbery books I read, the heroes and heroines were strong enough to stand up for themselves. I guess I used them as role models.

Big mistake at least socially speaking!

I was dumb enough that when I saw an injustice I opened my mouth and confronted it.

Why on earth would that make me popular with the grade seven and eight crowd?

Maybe I thought naively, that speaking out against such injustice would endear the victims I was defending to me.

Nuh uh. They looked at me puzzled, and then sided with the bullies and thought I was just plain weird.

The only kids who can get away with that kind of behaviour are the trend-setters, the ‘cool’ kids, and even I knew I wasn’t one of those! But foolishly, or not so foolishly, I believed my opinion was just as valuable.

If I had kept quiet, checked the waters before stating an opinion, kept my head down, then I probably would have saved myself a lot of grief.

But do I have any regrets?

Um, actually, no.

I have been humiliated often. I have had a whole class laugh out loud at me.

I have had kids literally chase me and hurl insults at me.

I have been constantly ridiculed for my beliefs and religion.

And what did I learn from all that?

No matter how bad the humiliation gets it doesn’t have to faze me.

So many times I have told myself (and believed it) that I am not defined by the colour of my skin, the wealth I have and what other people think of me.

What defines me are my actions and my character.

And if I had to do it all over again I would stand up for myself differently, more intelligently, but yup, I would still confront the bullies and speak against injustice.

As I’ve grown, I’ve learned so much about dealing with other people.

For a while social scientists were really espousing ways to avoid confrontation.

Confrontation–even the word sounds combative!

In your face! Up in arms.

And yet I’ve been in LOTS of situation where a bit of confrontation would have done a heap of good!

And it occurs to me that the bullying that I put up with as a kid really hasn’t totally vanished. In adult venues people still try to dominate others, but mostly they just use other tactics.

When I first arrived on the internet scene, I was about 33. I got onto a writers forum to get some contact with other writers.

Writing is such a solitary profession!

On this board there was one person in particular who was an absolute bully. Oh how she hounded people, and it was all the worse because it was so anonymous and behind the safety of a keyboard.

It would have been so much smarter NOT to confront her. It would have been SO much smarter NOT to stumble into her crosshairs.

There were days when my heart would palpitate as I got up to read her most recent attacks on me.

The way she could twist your words!

She was very very clever–in a diabolical way.

Reminds me completely of Sarah Palin.

The kind of person without book smarts but with a whole lot of street smarts–and very loose ethics.

Sarah Palin is just the same as that other bully–but with more power.

And then when I was on another internet forum, I came across another bully.

But somehow I found this woman hilarious. She was so uptight and insecure I almost felt sorry for her.

At one point she actually emailed me offlist and hinted that EVERYONE thought I was CRAZY, but were too POLITE to say so.

When I read her poison email message I laughed out loud. Even typing this now, I’m having a good chuckle.

How pathetic!

I told her I hadn’t been aware that EVERYONE had made her their spokesperson and I thought most people gave up on these kinds of popularity games when they were in high school.

My thirteen year old indignant self came out and for a short bit of time I actually tried to help the victims of this lady again. Then I realized something.

This was a turf war.

It’s what I like to call the old ‘king of the dung heap syndrome’ in action, only this time it was with non Muslims.

For those of you who might not be familiar with the term, ‘king of the dung heap syndrome’ is a set of behaviours I’ve noticed among Muslim immigrant professionals.

When mostly doctors and lawyers and other ‘educated’ people can’t seem to make a mark in mainstream society, they impose themselves on their Muslim communities. They go into the mosques and try to infiltrate the administration, becoming president of this Islamic society or that Islamic organization. They don’t want to do any work for the community. They don’t give a hang about their congregations, they just want the titles! To beat their chests like silverback gorillas proclaiming that this is my turf, I am king here, so BACK off!

And if they don’t get the recognition they believe they deserve, they’ll splinter off into their own little dung heap–I mean organization– and plant a flag there and beat their chests there.

But do you know what this really means?

It means they think that this lesser venue is really the best they can do. That they can only ‘dominate’ or get noticed on this smaller scale.

They can’t really ‘make it’ in the mainstream.

It would be sad if it weren’t so pathetic!

Basically this lady/bully had carved out this internet forum as her dung heap and she was going to plant her flag darn it, even if it meant pushing out the people who’d first founded that particular internet forum!

And the sad thing was that most of the forumites wouldn’t take her on.

It felt like the ‘victims’ looked at me non-plussed.

Finally I asked myself, “Does it really matter?”

And I thought do I really want to spend my creative energy on this nonsense?

So I left.

I let her have her dung heap all to herself. She could beat her chest and patrol her domain to her heart’s content.

(Months after I had left the forum, this guy emailed me out of the blue. Apparently this bully was in a knock-down drag out fight with someone anonymous on the forum and this guy thought it was me!

LOL. I had no idea! I told him I was in Ottawa conducting writing workshops with kids during this whole escapade and blessedly had no knowledge of the escapade.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find a touch of satisfaction knowing that she was thus embroiled. But really I was kind of glad because it proved that it wasn’t just me!)

And instead of getting so distracted I concentrated on my writing–the one thing I can really control.

I plan to make it in the mainstream! Forget the niche internet forum stuff! Who the heck cares?

When it comes to confrontations you definitely have to pick your battles.

And it sure does get better with age!

No longer do my days consist of internet confrontations.

I’m actually pretty good at sidestepping them these days (if I say so myself).

I have a great deal of peace in my life–and it’s WONDERFUL!!! (Hmm, I wonder if those bursts of joy aren’t a manifestation of all this.)

I will still stand against injustice. I will still speak my mind freely on any opinion, but tangling with petty Sarah Palin types–nuh uh.

It’s best to detour around them. Their domains are limited.

Entering them will only bog you down.

Fundamentally they cannot define me.

Only I can do that.

Dontcha know the best revenge is living well!

And I don’t need any sort of dung heap to do so!

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.

And yet I can’t help it.

This is actually a very good follow up to my post on Perseverance.

Maybe there’s something to be said about January funk, because I was definitely feeling funky last week when I wrote it. (And talking to some friends they were feeling funky too.) You can hear it in the tone of that post, one foot in front of the other, plod, plod, plod.

I can’t remember who said that successful people are people who do the hard things that unsuccessful people don’t. (I’m really paraphrasing!)

After the initial glow of idea, that’s what writing is. Plod, plod, plod.

But last Friday I did something quirky.

I went to Jumaa.

I know, I know, I’m terrible. So many times I’m home on Friday and I don’t bother going to Friday prayer, I just pray at home, comforting myself with the idea that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said that it was better for women to pray at home.

But the funny thing is I often pray the extra prayers more easily when I go to the masjid. And in Ramadan, for taraweeh, there’s no better feeling! (Try praying taraweeh at home where you don’t get to hear the beautiful melodious recitation of the hafizes they import from Muslim countries for the task!  Praying taraweeh on your own? Ugh!)

Anyway, I took my son (he was still off school) and I surprised him by parking the car and going inside with him.

I’m sure it was because I needed to hear the sermon. God meant me to hear it. It was given by an old friend of my husband’s. He talked about humility. About walking on the earth lightly. And he gave the example of two very interesting and selfless Muslims, one man, one woman, who’d worked quietly for their respective communities and made real changes but weren’t particularly famous.

And yes, of course I found it humbling. Especially the woman’s story. It made me cry.

Which is weird because I seem to be getting very weepy in my old age! I cry buckets at the drop of a hat.

In fact I confess it’s been quite a while that I can’t sing Canada’s national anthem without having embarassing tears drip out of my eyes! (I mean who cries at national anthems???!!!)

But ever since I realized that the last part of the Canadian national anthem is more like a prayer than a beating of the chest with patriotic pride kind of thing, it really does move me to tears. I can stand for it, no problem. But don’t ask me to sing it!

(By the way it goes:

O Canada!

Our home and native land. True patriot love, in all our sons command. With glowing hearts we see thee rise the true north strong and free. We stand on guard, O Canada! We stand on guard for thee! God keep our land, glorious and free. O Canada we stand on guard for thee. O Canada we stand on guard for thee.)

Pretty simple and understated, and dare I say it? Down right humble!

Anyway, listening to this sermon just reminded me that I’ve been taking myself WAY too seriously lately.

It brought me down to earth, alhamdu lillah, and got me back to focusing on what’s really important–the STORY!!!

Which comes back to why I’m so excited!

You know that sequel for Wanting Mor that I’ve been spouting off about?

Well yesterday, I finally got to hook up with my Kabuli sister in law, who was kind enough to vet the manuscript and tell me all the myriad places where I’d messed up the cultural customs!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, just because Pakistan is so close to Afghanistan and we share so many facets of culture, doesn’t mean that even I can take for granted that I’ll get the culture right! And if I can get it so wrong, pity the white people trying to write about Muslim culture!!!!

Anyway, I went over to her house for tea and she explained exactly what worked and more importantly what didn’t work about the book.

And even better, we brainstormed ways in which to solve the things that didn’t work!

Fundamentally she loved the story!

She said how she’s not a reader but something about my work makes her compelled to finish reading. She said she could hardly put it down. (Probably one of the best compliments a writer can receive!)

(She also read Wanting Mor and loved that too! She had told me how she’d gotten the book and had to go to work early the next day and was reading it, her eyes closing because she was so tired, but she couldn’t put it down.)

But anyway, with the sequel, culturally, I’d really messed up.

So armed with all the ways I can write my way out of the conundrums, I can actually go back to the manuscript and fix it.

Why should that make me so excited?

Well because the story can work!

It’ll take work. Real hard slogging, but I can make it work insha Allah.

And I believe in this story so much, I personally love this story so much, and I think it needs to be written so much, that I think I’ve found a way to solve all the problems and make it work!

It’s not glamorous in any way whatsoever, it’s going to be a lot of good hard work, but I can just picture the end result!

Insha Allah it will be magnificent!

Not because I want it to reflect on me. No, not at all!

But because it’ll be a really good story, insha Allah.

And that’s what it’s all about.

Story.

The conclusion of that sermon was stated in a few words from that dying Muslim woman’s life. She said that life came down to serving God, everything else was tangential. (I’m paraphrasing again. Can’t remember the exact words but it was along those lines.)

And one of the reasons I got into writing in the first place was to serve God. To tell stories that would humanize Muslims–and add to the pool of literature that hopefully would help enlighten people.

Personally, I believe that the only reason to continue writing–when it would be so much easier to just read all the delightful stories already out there–is because you have something to say, some idea that desperately needs to be added to the social consciousness.

Leave ego out of it!

Oh it’s so exciting!

Can’t wait to finish this Hajj novel so I can get back to the other project.

And in the mean time I have all the other work on my desk to complete.

Busy, busy, busy.

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.

Whenever you’re in the process of negotiation, there is ALWAYS give and take.

When I was younger, omigosh, I had no idea how to negotiate. I’m sure there were times when I came across as way too desperate. And I wonder if that’s not the case with most people.

Negotiation is a form of its less respected cousin haggling. You think of haggling when you’re on a street market in Pakistan or Mexico, you don’t think haggling has any place in ‘modern respected’ society.

Nonsense!

Especially in the arts field, haggling is alive and well!

And it occurs to me that the end result of any negotiation is that ‘it should hurt a little’, on BOTH sides!

If one side is sitting pretty and completely contented–then you can bet that someone’s getting played.

It is NOT a good idea for ANYONE to get played, not even when the deal is to your advantage!

Know why?

Because people talk!

If someone has negotiated themselves a cream puff deal and then don’t live up to the hype, the people who paid the terms will do so grudgingly!

And they will grumble.

And in the long term it will bite  you in the behind.

Because when organizations are planning events and your name comes up, because of that whole six degrees of separation thing–someone’s bound to know that establishment that feels had, and they will say, ‘she’s not worth the price’.

Honestly there’ve been times when I’ve preferred receiving a lower price for a presentation because it means I can trot out something tried and true and not have to develop something specific for that occasion and risk not living up to the hype.

That’s when you’ve gotten to the point where you, yourself, value your own time and energy.

On the other hand, if you play it too easy, you’ll also get bitten in the behind. Because not charging enough shows that you don’t respect your work and no matter how good you are, you will be dismissed.

There’s a really good line in that Adam Sandler movie Spanglish when Flor is asked what she wants to get paid. First she quotes an exhorbitant amount, then she quotes something reasonable–even though it’s way more than she would have been willing to work for.

You don’t want to close the door to opportunities, but at the same time, you don’t want to feel used after you’ve done a gig.

In terms of international presentations the rules are very different!

If you’re going to the U.S. if you don’t charge a minimum of $1000 per day, they’ll think you’re worthless. Not sure if that’s changed recently, what with the recession and all,  but I know it’s been true for a while. Many authors charge way more! My bench mark is $300 for an hour presentation. That’s a fee where ‘it hurts a little’ but I still feel good. (By the way, for a keynote charge way more!)

You can’t get away with that in other countries.

And there you have to weigh how much you want to do the gig, what it will mean in terms of international exposure, do you have books to promote in that language, what kind of experience will it give you and…how good will it look on your resume–before you decide to commit or not.

Even then, when they offer you terms…always ask for something more.

It should ‘hurt’ them a little too. They should want you enough to be willing to give out a little extra–and that doesn’t necessarily mean money, but just better terms.

In the end, you want to be in a position where you’re GLAD you did the gig, it made you GROW as an artist and you don’t feel bitter or used in any way.

And even if you decided to be charitable and you gave your time for free, you know for sure that they valued your services.

That’s why I say even to Muslim schools–pay what you can.

In Picadilly!

Dear me, I must remember to crook my pinkie finger as I sip it!

I’m practicing even as I type this! Does make reaching the the ‘p’s and ‘q’s and apostrophes rather difficult! LOL

Can you tell I’m getting excited about the England trip???

As if I didn’t have enough on my plate with trekking up to Bradford and Coventry (Bradford’s halfway in the middle of England, a three hour train ride north of London!) I was finally approached by a Muslim school interested in having me.

When I told her how much I usually charge, she politely declined and said maybe next time even though I’d told them to ‘pay what you can’.

I know how poor Muslim schools are! For goodness sakes I don’t expect them to meet my normal fees! 

I want them to know that for once the bias of being Muslim works in their favour. I’m ‘giving back’. And yet still it has been frustrating because so many Muslim communities don’t take advantage of my offer.

Some might think that it would be wiser to just tell them I’ll do it for free.

No! No! No!

Don’t ever do that.

They’ll think you’re worthless.  Or desperate.

And they’ll treat you like garbage.

Been there, done that.

Felt sorry for the kids but vowed I’d never do it again.

I always tell them what I normally charge, then I tell them to pay what they can.

It puts the onus on them.

But apparently doing this has ‘scared them off’.

One teacher told me she felt bad inviting me when they couldn’t pay me properly and ‘maybe next time’.

I really had scared them off.

And you know what it reminded me of?

All those scenarios where the really nice guys are too intimidated by the beautiful bombshell on the other side of the room to even approach her.

Guess who’s the ‘beautiful bombshell’ in this scenario???

LOL.

Omigosh! It makes me laugh!

I have never *intimidated* anyone in my life! Not even when I wanted to! Um… especially when I wanted to!

Even my kids would mostly just laugh when I got really mad at them.

I was telling one of my daughters this afternoon about it and she said how it was understandable. She said how would they know that I really mean it when I say ‘pay what you can’?

And then she reminded me of the fact that I actually think quite differently from other people.

Well, the long and the short of it is that I will be visiting an Islamic school in London after all! I’ll be doing two presentations with them on Monday morning insha Allah.

I’m looking forward to it. Then the head teacher is taking me to Kew Gardens. Heard they’re worth seeing.

And then Monday afternoon is the afternoon tea in Picadilly! With an illustrator who does some amazing Islamic-style illustration. Check out her website: http://ayeshagamiet.com/ 

It was her idea to invite me to a traditional English tea in Picadilly!

Oh, even saying the word Picadilly tickles me inside!

I’ll be staying in three different hotels in five nights, and then I come back to London and stay with a colleague. Yikes!

And I’m going to be way out of my comfort zone navigating the London underground tube and national train system. (The map for the tube looks like a ball of tangled multi-coloured string!!!)

See? Each subway line is a different colour!

 When a lady told me to use the tube/subway I was thinking of our own humble underground here in Toronto. It is VERY straightforward! Not so the London tube system!

But they do have one thing on us. Convenience. You can get almost ANYWHERE by tube there!

Oh, and I have to get something called an Oyster card. It’s like a loaded tim card where you put money on it and just flash your card and it automatically deducts your fare. Should have ordered one weeks ago but didn’t.

Oh well.

Not sure how much blogging I’ll be able to do while there, although I am taking my laptop.

So on that note, I’ll be bleedin’ signin’ off.

Top of the day ta’ ya’ Guvnor!

Ketch ya’ on the comeback!

(Pardon my atrocious attempt at a cockney accent! It’s the excitement! Really!)

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.

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.

Guess it goes back to what your definition of a ‘hit’ is.

I’d argue that a hit is a song or performance that is so POPULAR that you can make reference to it in casual conversation and people will know what you’re talking about.

For something to be a ‘hit’ doesn’t mean you have to like it.

If I reference Gaga’s (don’t like calling her ‘Lady’ because I feel she’s anything but!) Born This Way it is definitely a ‘hit’ and most of the general public will know what stupid tune I’m referring to.

I don’t like the song, and I don’t like her, but even I have to admit it’s a ‘hit’. Whether it’s platinum, titanium or whatever.

The funny thing is whenever a song by Gaga comes on, I want to ‘gag’, and I shut off the radio till I think it’s over.

She reminds me of Madonna, and she seems to be a very brittle prickly person who tries WAY TOO hard to prove that she’s okay with herself.

Methinks she does protest too much, but then, before anyone can accuse me of spouting off about things I don’t know, I’ll readily admit that I know very little about Gaga–and I want to keep it that way.

Gaga and Madonna and Katy Perry represent the lowest common denominator (funny! when I was first typing the word denominator it came out ‘demoni…’)

They’re like stand up comics who fall back on the sleazy sexual innuendo to get a laugh.

Jon Stewart and his gang do this a lot.

I guess when you have to write a show per day, getting the cheap sexual laugh is easier than thinking of something truly witty.

Madonna, Gaga and Katy Perry and a long line of other female artists sing about “girl empowerment” while ironically overly sexualizing themselves.  And in subtle and not so subtle ways, they’re leading to the downfall of society, encouraging promiscuity in women (in the name of their girl power) with no thought of any consequences! By the way, I tend to shut the radio off whenever Katy Perry comes on too. I find listening to her songs makes me feel like my intelligence is leaking out of my brain.

And I think exploiting their sexuality is like the cheap joke standby in Jon Stewart’s shows. (I actually stopped watching Jon Stewart because of his profanity towards God. I just couldn’t be part of that even though he said so many things that I agree with.)

In order to be popular these artists appeal to the lowest common denominator, intended to hit the biggest majority of people in an emotional way.

Anyone who is a bit more thoughtful will reject such drivel but then how much of the population are we talking about? It seems less and less.

As for David Cook, I’m glad that he’s keeping on keeping on!

Okay, I just tried looking him up on youtube, and started listening to Light On. And all I can say is ‘meh’.

I stand by what I said about his best performances (so far as I know) being on American Idol in the run up to his winning. His tribute to Cornell’s version of Billie Jean really is amazing! And who benefitted from that??? Certainly not him. Whoever uploaded the video, I think, and of course the producers of the show.

And you have to remember that if a performance really touches people, they will tell others, “You’ve got to see this!” and simply by word of mouth, things go viral, and there’s something to be said for that kind of reaction.

That’s a ’hit’. And being popular, and even, yikes, being played on the radio is nothing to sniff at!

That would be the equivalent to a bestselling list for an author I think.

Popular art doesn’t have to be brainless.

Look at Cold Play’s Vive La Vida. That has depth to it! And even Grenade by Bruno Mars. It’s quite interesting. He stays in the character of this obsessed lover and that’s probably why it’s got over a hundred million views on youtube.

It deserves to be popular.

Guess personally, as an artist, I want both.

I want to appeal to the intellect and write something moving, but I also want it to be popular.

But of course none of that is in my control.

Love what Joni Mitchell did.

Ever since I was a kid I’d always loved Big Yellow Taxi. Didn’t know the song was actually called that. I thought it was called “Put up a Parking Lot” because of a line in the chorus.

I heard a few years ago that Joni Mitchell put out an album of her greatest hits, while concurrently putting out an album called ‘Misses’, with her greatest ‘misses’.

And that’s really what it all comes down to.

Hits and misses.

But as long as you like what you’ve done, as long as it expresses your thoughts and emotions and contributes to the artist dialogue, then you must stand by it–including of course David Cook.