The beauty of western governments is that they’ve known this for a long time.

Countries like America and Canada reacted to this idea because they had to live under monarchies and they saw first hand the corruption of such systems.

 As a result, what they tried to do in their establishment is spread the power between different entities so that no one person would have all the say.

This is why in Canada there is the house of parliament, the Senate and the supreme court of Canada. Similarly in the States they have three houses of parliament and their president is only aspect. (Forgive me if I got any of this stuff wrong, it’s been a while since I studied the details of government.)

By distributing the power like that, each entity can correct the other. (At least that’s how it’s SUPPOSED to work. The current trend is to go back to concentrating the power into the hands of the 1%)

I think individuals need to have these kinds of safeguards in place as well.

No parent should create such an atmosphere of total control that their children and others can’t question their decisions or even authority.

At the same time parents have to be the parents. Families are not a democracy where the majority can change rules. Parents need to have the courage to set rules (within reason) and expect the children to comply with them.

For the past six days, I’ve been dealing the conviction of this Afghan family, the Shafias in the horrendous murder of the first wife and three of the daughters. I think that an atmosphere of total and unquestioning control is precisely what the father created in his household.

How else could he have convinced his son and his second wife to go along with his scheme to murder the four women?

The father was a millionaire.

He was used to a certain amount of prestige in his home country.

He comes here and he’s just another immigrant. And as in the case of many immigrant families, his children became more comfortable in their new home and language than he was. He probably depended on them in certain ways and it undermined his feelings of, I don’t know, power and mastery.

When I was growing up I always saw my father in his Canadian setting.

I remember a certain incident in particular that was really jarring. It was during grade eight graduation and I was introducing him to one of my teachers a really odd woman that none of the students liked. I’ll call her Ms. Jones.

Ms. Jones had extremely short hair. She was tall and gangly except for her chest and she spoke with extreme awkwardness. On the night of the graduation she wore a very inappropriate v-neck halter dress and had stuck a blonde pouf of hair on top of her head. It looked as ridiculous as a man’s toupee.

But I was excited about my graduation and I was eager to introduce my parents to my teachers, and so I introduced my father to Ms. Jones and an odd thing happened.

She was taller than him, and perhaps that added to the effect of her bending down and shaking his hand.

She was condescending towards my father.

My father did not look more grand than silly Ms. Jones!

And yet he should have!

He was ten times better than her, and yet the way he was behaving was…yes…subservient.

It really bothered me!

And in some ways it made me think a little less of him.

Until seventeen years later when I went to Pakistan!

It was precisely twenty years ago, in the December and January of 1991-92.

There was a moment in Lahore, when we were at some sort of outdoor venue, my father had bought some sugar cane juice from a vendor and we were all sitting back sipping the sweetness, and it occurred to me what was different.

Our roles were reversed. Here I was the ‘immigrant’. I was the one almost cowering, thinking of what to say in my hesitant Urdu while the words came flowing easily out of his mouth.

He was in his element.

And I was fully dependent on his knowledge of the surroundings to stay safe.

Didn’t he stand a little taller? Didn’t he walk with a lighter more buoyant step?

And only then did I realize what kind of sacrifices he had made to bring us to this land of opportunity, Canada.

Growing up, my father was very strict! But he tempered it with love, and he did his very best to take care of us.

But the difference was that my father’s faith put limitations on him. Because he took his faith seriously, it curbed his behaviour, not condoned any injustice.

He knew his responsibilities as a parent and he fulfilled them completely. When some of his children did things he did not approve of, he had the presence of mind to accept that, as their choice.

Which brings me back to Mr. Shafia.

I bet you anything that he saw control of the family slipping away from him and the way he’d set things up there was no one there to reason with him. To talk him out of his murderous course of action.

Kind of like when Bush wanted to invade Iraq and there was no one to warn him because he’d hand-picked his cronies so they didn’t include anyone who disagreed with him.

All the years when my children were growing up I constantly told them that it was not my job to make them Muslim.

It was only my job to show them what I believed, and ultimately it was their choice whether or not to follow or not.

It’s kind of the way my dad handled us. He would say that the only reason he’d read Quran to us after working sixteen hours that day was because it was his obligation to teach us the faith so that on the day of judgment we couldn’t grab him by the neck and say, “Why didn’t you teach me?” Many times he’d say that when we grew up and went on our own he would never ask us again whether we prayed or not, fasted or not. It would be completely up to us.

With my children, my husband and I went a step further. We wanted God’s authority to be the head of the family (not ours). It was a pretty safe thing to do because it’s very clear that in Islam after obedience to God comes respect to parents.

We challenged our children to show us if we were violating any of God’s principles, and if we were, they were free to correct us.

I have learned to cherish this relationship with my children!

So many times when I slip up, when I say or do something dumb, I have my children there waiting in the wings to gently correct me.

The vast majority of people don’t intend to go bad. They do so in tiny increments.

Like Boxer in Animal Farm when he didn’t challenge the pigs when they started to change the rules.

Checks and balances.

A couple of posts ago I talked about taking on bullies, and I talked about a strategy wherein I was going to deal with a relative who’d been disrespectful to my father by disrespecting hers.

One of my daughters was kind enough to call me up and challenge that. She provided a saying of the Prophet (peace be upon him) that showed this was not necessarily the right approach, and I’m really grateful.

That might sound like an odd thing to say but think of the alternative!

My biggest fear has always been deluding myself.

I have seen umpteen people in my life, people whom I thought were way smarter than me, delude themselves into doing very wrong things.

Not as heinous as the Shafias, but still pretty bad.

And I always prayed that would never happen to me.

There’s a reason I’m talking about all this.

Believe it or not it has to do with writing.

Not only is no man an island, but I’d say people are more like the white ball in a game of billiards (pool).

The white ball bounces off all the others. Some balls it sends to the pockets, others ricochet off the edges of the pool table and effect changes in the configuration afterwards.

In any story, the characters are like that too!

In your story you want your character to start out straight. To be likeable, to be good. Something hits it, some inciting incident, and it will deviate off course. Hopefully by the end of the story, it will return to the ‘straight and narrow’.

The white ball protagonist’s character will change with every move it makes, every ball it hits and every ball’s tajectory that it changes.  Just like our character changes with every person we interact with, and who influences our own trajectories.

If life were perfect we’d all shoot straight from the pool cue and our paths would never ever deviate. They’d follow the ‘straight and narrow’.

But life is not perfect (nor is it meant to be).

We will hit yellow balls, and bounce off of eight balls, and red balls and blue balls.

We can only pray that each subsequent ball that hits us, brings us back in line, in a fairly straight line, because they don’t call it the straight and narrow for nothing!

Arrived on Sunday, it was dreary and foggy, and I wrote about how the cold seeped into my bones!

Traveler beware. The temperature might claim it’s 7 degree Celsius but it’s not like 7 degrees in Toronto!

Went to a posh store called John Lewis and bought a proper jacket with a hidden hood, very light, very expensive. It was 175 pounds (multiply that by an exchange rate of 1.6 dollars per pound and you’ll get the idea.  Haven’t done the math because I really don’t want to know!)

Monday I visited the Islamic school and they were, as expected, absolutely lovely!

And then Monday evening I went to meet Ayesha Gamiet for that traditional English tea at a place called the Richoux, in Picadilly.

Oh what an experience!

Raisin scones dripping with butter and jam that melt in your mouth! Dark rich fruitcake chock full of raisins, currants and marachino cherries! And the most delectable cakes, all washed down with chamomile tea!

And the conversation! Ayesha is this sweet young thing, reminded me so much of my daughters, who’s amazingly accomplished for her tender years. She’s finished her master’s in Visual Islamic and traditional Arts from the Prince’s school of traditional arts (by the way the ‘prince’ is none other than Prince Charles. He’s the patron of this school, in fact Ayesha’s going to be meeting with him today I think–there’s some kind of fancy event for the Turkish president who’s visiting on a state visit).

She has traveled to Turkey to apprentice for the ancient art under a master.

Turns out they hand down the secrets from generation to generation kind of like a pedigree.

She works at the Prince’s school teaching some of the stuff she’s learned.  I had asked her to bring her portfolio and I got to ‘ooh’ and ah’ ov er her delightful pictures. Her style reminds me of Demi, intricate and beautiful.

So much talent! That’s what I’m finding within the Muslim community over here!

The economic upheaval seems to have hit the U.K. particularly hard because the schools seem to be strapped! The Islamic schools even more so!

Yesterday I took a ride on the hop on hop off sightseeing bus service.  Got my first glimpse of London Bridge and the Tower of London. It was wonderful but turned out not to be such  a good idea to do that the day of the award. A lot of walking which left me tired, and then by the time I went to the award ceremony at the Globe I was quite exhausted.

And then it turned into the kind of cocktail party event (minus the cocktails) where you stand around socializing, nibbling tasties and drinking  fizzy lemonade and sparkling mineral water.

One of the guy’s doing a presentation at the beginning remarked about how remarkably clear-headed he was because of the lack of alcohol, and he said something like he could get used to that! LOL

Loverly but ooh my aching feet!

I didn’t win the Muslim Writer’s Award. An amazing talent named Na’ima bint Robert won.  First time she saw me she grabbed hold of me and hugged me hard!

I’d only ever corresponded with her by email, and even online she’s a delight! But in person she’s ever so much more! By the way, she wears niqab, just like my daughters.

She’s so remarkably talented Masha Allah! Has been singularly responsible for creating this fabulous magazine for women called Sisters! In terms of quality it’s right up there with Vogue for style and glamour and it’s completely Islamic!

Now here she’s gone and expanded her expertise into the children’s fiction genre. She was kind enough to give me a copy of her book and I can’t wait to start reading it!

Didn’t get back to the hotel till 10 pm, and luckily I had already mostly packed.

Got up early this morning and I’m on the train.

It’s surprising how quickly we left London behind. The sun has burned off the early morning mist and out my first class window I see fields of pasture and woods all brown leaves that haven’t fallen.

The folks in Bradford were kind enough to spring for first class, so I’m basking in luxury!

They even served breakfast.

I had ‘bloomer’ bread and when I asked the nice gentleman server what that was, he made a hand gesture saying it was ‘big’, like bread that had ‘bloomed’. Of course I had to try it.

It’s a bit on the roundish side, and it tastes like normal bread.

I also had something called bubble and squeak, it’s a kind of mashed potato mixed with bits of carrot and cabbage. It came in a little dome that was crisp on top and tender in the middle. Yum!

It hasn’t been all sunshine and roses though.

Yesterday on the sightseeing bus I met up with a rude man from Kuwait.

His wife was wearing niqab. I saw them take a seat at the front of the bus and I thought I’d join them and chat them up a bit.

The lady seemed friendly enough. She replied to my salams and smiled (I could tell by her eyes). But the man was very curt when I asked them where they wer from. “Kuwait.” He answered in a blunt way that didn’t allow for follow up discussion.

A relative of mine had worked in Kuwait. He had nothing kind to say about Kuwaitis, and now I understand why.

He parked himself on the outer side of the seats, shielding his wife from me it seemed. I tried not to get annoyed. I thought maybe they’re just scared being in a foreign country.

But honestly, I thought, no wonder westerners look at Muslims, and especially Muslim men, as a surly bunch!

No manners!

Contrast that with the warm and friendly manners of the British couples I met on that same sightseeing bus! Two middle-aged couples, one from the middle of England, one from Whales, were absolutely charming!

Well, better sign off now. I’m looking forward to Bradford and Coventry!

What an adventure!

(By the way, apparently Kings Cross Station, where I alighted on this train, is the train station that J.K. Rowling based Hogwarts train station on.)

I had checked the weather forecast and was reassured by it being around 10 Celsius during the day and not getting any lower than 4 at night.

That did not prepare me for the bone-chilling dampness!

Gotta buy a raincoat!

Gotta lack of sleep headache but otherwise I’m in pretty good spirits. Gotta go get some lunch.

And the waving wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain.

I’ve been humming the tune ever since I found out I’ve been invited to Tulsa and Oklahoma city to do some presentations.

Seems like the next few weeks will be very busy in terms of traveling!

I’m leaving early early on Thursday morning and I’m thinking, “Yikes!” got so much to do!

A Muslim community in Oklahoma has invited me and it should be quite an interesting trip.

I’ve finally finalized my trip arrangements for the Muslim Writer’s Award in England.

I’ll be leaving on Nov. 19th and coming back on Nov. 29th, insha Allah.

What has been enormously surprising are the offers of hospitality I’ve received!

I’m a member of a children’s literature listserve that functions mostly out of the UK and has some very prestigious academic and literary minds on it!

Two ladies on the listserve, hearing that I was coming, have offered me accommodation! It’s so touching!

What has been quite surprising is how difficult it’s been to get school bookings. One British author put it bluntly, “Schools have zero funds!”

So things are apparently very tough over there.

On another note, after watching tonight’s Oprah Life class, it was about a woman who suffered a terrible loss. She was a mother of four, had gone out early one morning for a jog, and while she was gone her ex-husband had come to the house and killed all four of their children, and then himself.

Of course I cried while listening to her tell her story.

Oprah talked about why she does shows like this. She said that it was because we can often learn things from people who’ve gone through such terrible trials. She tried never to be voyeuristic in her approach. If the emotions were too intense and personal she’d ask the cameramen to stop shooting.

Then Oprah said something I really disagree with.

She said that what happened to the woman was ‘the worst thing that could possibly happen’.

If only death were the worst thing that could happen!

It just goes to show how actually sheltered Oprah and most westerners fundamentally are.

It’s funny how you can learn things from your characters. James Cameron talked about how he often told stories to learn about things.

One of the nicest compliments I ever got about my writing was that it seemed that I wrote to discover things! Linda Sue Park told me that many years ago, and I still cherish those kind words today.

That’s precisely why I write stories. If there’s nothing for me to learn in the writing of it, I mean why bother?

Any story requires a great deal of investment of time and energy. I want a payoff as much as the reader does. And I want the journey to be worthwhile.

Nowhere has that been more true than with my book Wanting Mor.

One of the biggest things I learned from Jameela in Wanting Mor happens to be not to take things for granted.

We in the west take practically everything for granted.

We think the natural order of the world is one of entitlement.

We’re entitled to a ‘childhood’. It’s enshrined in the human rights code for goodness sakes!

We get appalled at places with child labour! Children have the right to be nourished and taken care of and educated and cherished.

Why?

Because children in the west have these rights?

Because we are empathetic and we naively want what is good for our own children to apply to children all over the world?

And yet we support regimes in direct and not so direct ways that enable child exploitation all over the world.

When I was reading some of the reviews on Goodreads.com for Wanting Mor I was really struck by all the comments about how the stepmother works Jameela like a slave. And because of this, many people likened the book to a cinderella story.

And yet in the story Jameela never actually minds working that hard. Why should she? In fact there are times when she seeks out hard work, and she does this to endear herself to people, especially the other girls in the orphanage with the idea that if you can’t be beautiful you should at least be good, people will appreciate that.

And Jameela tries to be good by being helpful and working hard.

But a lot of people don’t seem to understand what Jameela’s underlying supposition really is.

It’s not so much that she’s ‘selfless’.

It’s that she wants to carve a place into the social hierarchy. Ever since her mother died, her place is in no way guarranteed! She works so hard in order to make herself indispensible, wanted.

That doesn’t sound that noble does it?

And yet she is noble.

She is unbelievably ‘good’.

And while I was writing Wanting Mor  I was astounded at her attitude, because she really doesn’t take a single thing in her life for granted except for one thing. She takes for granted that her father will not abandon her and in that she’s disappointed.

Afghanistan is full of war and bloodshed and carnage.

In fact much of the world is filled with chaos and disorder.

Without peace, middle class morality cannot thrive. Without stability, family life cannot thrive.

People come home to find their families slaughtered far too often!

Not necessarily after they’ve gone for an early morning jog through their middle class neighborhood, and not often as a result of an ex-husband’s psychotic actions, but the end result is the same!

And finding your family dead like that isn’t even the worst thing that can happen!

It can always be worse!

I would suggest that knowing they were tortured or violated before they were killed would be worse than just knowing they’d been killed.

At the risk of being macabre, there an infinite variety of things that can be worse than any scenario that happens to us.

Basically it can ALWAYS be worse!

Women all over the world have to pick themselves up for the sake of their surviving kids and keep on keeping on.

But then they don’t live with the expectation that it’s not supposed to be like that. But that doesn’ t mean their grief is any less.

I felt myself getting really annoyed at the woman who’d lost her children and was now talking about how she kept herself from committing suicide.

If her children were alive to see her in that state, they’d shake her! Why should she destroy her life just because they’d lost theirs?

That’s what they would tell her. I’m sure of it!

Sometimes I find the ‘aha’ moments that Oprah comes up with are actually pretty shallow. But then I guess I’m coming at it from a completely different perspective.

I think a lot of authors, when they’re just starting out, dream of making it big, being discovered through a sort of grass roots movement kind of thing.

I know I did.

There are people who make it fairly big that way, but the odds are heavily stacked against you.

What I’ve learned in the thirteen years that I’ve been published now, is that the American marketing machine pushes for its own interests and the books that it pushes for are the ones that tend to appeal to the lowest common denominator. And you can’t really compete with that.

This might seem self-evident, but it bears stating.

I had thought if you write a good enough story, it shouldn’t matter if the publisher is big or small, American or Canadian, people will *find* you.

Um, not so much.

Of my first three books, two of them were, I consider, outstanding: The Roses in My Carpets and Dahling if You Luv Me Would You Please Please Smile.

They were both initially acquired by a small Canadian publisher that has since gone belly up.

The Roses in My Carpets though, was co-published by Holiday House, and I suspect that’s why it got reviewed in many American journals.

Thing is, the way to publicize children’s books is pretty standard in the biz. There are the major review journals (in no particular order and off the top of my head (forgive me if I miss any obvious contenders)): Kirkus, School Library Journal, VOYA, Publishers Weekly, Horn Book.

That means there is a limited amount of space in the review journals and tons and tons of books to review!

It’s not surprising that my books, being published by a small Canadian publisher, had a hard time elbowing their way in to the journals.

In Canada the review space is getting even smaller. Newspapers like the Globe & Mail, who once heavily reviewed books, no longer do so because of fewer readers.

Frankly getting a book reviewed in Canada does not ensure good sales. And it’s all for reasons of demographics. Canada is 1/10th the size of America in terms of population spread out over a land mass that is second or first (I forget) in the world. Even homegrown hits like Tim Horton’s donut franchise and Cold FX (a fabulous cold remedy that nips a cold in the bud–I highly recommend it!) get short shrift in the States.

Add to that the fact that Canadians have a notorious inferiority complex and don’t take artists seriously until they’ve made a splash south of the 49th parallel, then you’ll understand the kind of difficulties that are involved in terms of drumming up any kind of grass roots support for your books–Robert Munsch excepted.

I realized pretty early that in order to get noticed I had to get the American publishers to push FOR me instead of AGAINST me.

Uh huh. Easier said than done!

In order to even get an American publisher to look at my work I needed an agent. (The contracts with American publishers can be cuthroat so you really do want an advocate who knows the loopholes, in your corner.)

So I shopped around and eventually landed Charlotte Sheedy, a high power New York agent who represents Lemony Snicket, Christopher Paul Curtis and other illuminaries.

You’d think I would have been set.

Again, not so much.

Then you have to write to please the agent and a peculiar thing happened right after I submitted the novel she’d asked me to write about immigration and racism. (That’s what she told me. “You should write a novel about immigration and racism)

I mailed it on Sept. 10th, ten years ago. The next day was Sept. 11th.

Thing is, when you’re writing the light breezy popular fiction, um, you can’t be scared for your life. You can’t go back, emotionally, to a time when you were frightened to go to the corner store in case you were going to be attacked.

Naively, I had thought the racism that I grew up with was actually gone.

But racism doesn’t die.

It goes underground in good times, and pops back up in bad.

Looking back, I realize that it changed my whole trajectory.

I spent many years revising that novel to death. I still haven’t abandoned it. In fact the trip I took to South Dakota a few years ago was research for what it will eventually become insha Allah.

I kind of look at this period of time as a second apprenticeship.

Where I both succeeded and I failed at writing for pop culture. (The success: Big Red Lollipop and Wanting Mor, the failure: Many Windows.  (Many Windows is too *nuanced* for pop culture. It’s less straight forward and I think it takes more thought to understand.))

And what I realized is that this whole high level of pop culture, where people constantly check their listings on Amazon and the New York Times bestseller lists, comes with an incredible amount of pressure!

When publishers give you a huge amount of money and your book doesn’t take off with a huge amount of sales, you’re basically done.

They will look at your new project in light of how your old project sold. That’s what it comes down to.

Gone are the days that a publisher would nurture and groom an author.

If you want an analogy, think of the American Idol winners. They work their butts off to make it, and then with the exception of Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson, most of the other idol winners fizzle.

I suspect they’re all burnt out, having given their best work–for free–during the course of the competition.

Basically it comes down to with great money, comes great expectations.

Most authors think they’re ready for it. They yearn for it.

But if such fame comes about unexpectedly, many find it quite traumatic.

Basically at that level, you have a whole industry behind you, pushing for you, and they’ll only push for so long before they stop.

And what anybody in that position has to realize is that the publishers are not standing still while they’re pushing you. They’re trying to find the next ‘big’ thing–your replacement–when you inevitably grow cold.

It’s not personal. They’re just hedging their bets.

It’s a business.

But when you’re lower on the totem pole, but still in a large publisher (like I was with Viking), they’ll put a book out of print, but because they spent less on you, they might, just might, keep you around a bit longer. And then, when your book makes it big, like Big Red Lollipop winning several large awards, then you’ll start seeing the marketing dollars.

Kenneth Oppel once told me that his publishers only started publicizing his books when he no longer needed them to. (they had won so many readers’ choice awards and were taking off on their own)

Some authors decide they’re going to put their own money where their mouth is.

I heard of one author funding her own author tour to the midwest and west coast. She convinced her husband to sink I don’t know how many thousands of dollars into a scheme where they drove to the major centres all across America, introduced themselves to the bookstores and tried to peddle their books.

When she told me about that it reminded me of the scene in Coal Miner’s Daughter where Loretta Lynn’s husband drove around to the radio stations and gave them demo records.

And it reminds me of those pageant moms who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on pursuing their child’s fame.

That only works in the movies.

Save your money! Be practical! Be pragmatic! I’m not the first person to say don’t quit your day job!

Many years ago I met a person in a writers chat room who claimed to be a household name but wouldn’t divulge his identity. He told me that if I was lucky, in twenty years I might have a modest following in Canada.

It devastated me when he told me that! I don’t WANT a modest following in Canada! I want some real success!

By the way he’s also the guy who told me that I might actually have potential because I’d been kicked out of a writers’ workshop, one of those college courses. (He had no use for writers who were products of writing courses!)

So many years later, I can actually understand what he was saying.

I still think he’s wrong, that I’ll make a much bigger splash than that insha Allah, and yet I live my life, and prepare my life, for the lesser option.

And having been quite poor I am quite stingy when it comes to spending money on promoting my career. And yet I do spend money where I feel it’s wise to do so.

My day job is being a storyteller. And luckily I’ve arranged it so that my storytelling promotes the books.

What I spend money on in terms of promotion is mailouts to all the schools in the greater Toronto area.

This is a corridor that contains between 1/6th of Canada’s population and it’s very multicultural!

Because of my mailouts and the efforts of my booking agency, I visit about eighty schools a year.

And the income this generates helps support research into the new books I want to write.

But as a day job, the advantage is that the presentations also promote the books! So there’s a double whammy effect.

Remember that movie Selena, the one that made Jennifer Lopez’s career when she played that doomed Hispanic singer?

I always remember something the father character said in there.

His tactic was not to try to get his daughter Selena into the mainstream music industry. He went back to his roots and promoted his daughter’s career within the huge Hispanic community across the Southern States and northern Mexico.

He basically built an audience before he put her into mainstream.

It was shortly after Selena recorded that song “I Could Fall In Love With You…”, when she was finally wooed by the American music execs because they saw that she had appeal, that she was murdered and the whole thing came to naught.

Same thing kind of happened to Bruce Lee. After being so bitterly disappointed in his dealings with Hollywood (where he was Cato/Kato (not sure how it’s spelled) the sidekick and second fiddle to the boring guy who played Green Lantern) Bruce went back to his roots and became a big star in Hong Kong martial arts movies. That proved he had appeal.

Of course that tactic won’t work for me because Muslim audiences and Pakistani audiences tend to have even bigger inferiority complexes that Canadian audiences!

You really have to make it in New York for them to take you seriously!

So I have no choice but to make it in New York.

And yet something in me says, despite the overwhelming odds, it’s possible.

It’s because I look at the big writers out there and I can’t help thinking to myself, what do they have that I don’t?

I have an imagination just like them, and I have a curious bent that leads me to research and learn about the world. If they can do it, so can I.

But I’m definitely not willing to pauper myself in the process!

And the ironic thing is that in the process of all this, I’ve really learned that it’s the story that matters.

Not the fame. Not the glory, but the story!

That’s what’s really important.

And even if I never get any bigger than I am right now…that’s okay. Because I don’t have the pressure!

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.

Up till that point, Jon was uncharacteristically subdued and not his usual irreverent self. But at this show of raw emotion, he perked up and said something about how cute it was that they were that joyful.

I think this was in comparison to the other folks who had won for various categories, who glided onto the stage in stiff tuxedos or very uncomfortable-and-downright-weird-looking evening gowns and had ‘gracious’ smiles pasted on their faces.

I’m reminded of that moment because of a conversation I had with some of my family members tonight about being a ‘gracious’ winner.

Apparently with my post about the SCBWI Golden Kite luncheon, my family members, who love me and care about me, told me in no uncertain terms that I came across as a Ms. Braggy pants in that post. And here I thought I was coming across like those African American group members who’d won the Oscar.

We had a very interesting and rather embarrassing conversation.

I find it excruciatingly embarrassing to think that I came across as an obnoxious braggart Ms. Braggy Pants.

That wasn’t my intention at all.

It’s just that I think that no one was as surprised as myself that Big Red Lollipop has done so well and that so many people reacted so positively to my acceptance speech. 

(It was one of the easiest speeches for me to do because it’s basically an extension of the last part of my Picture the Story presentation. I’ve probably done that presentation fifteen hundred times over the last thirteen years.)

And when you’re so surprised that you’ve attained such an accomplishment it’s hard to contain your exuberance.

And whether it’s wise or not, I thought I’d blog about it, because I’ve found that this too is part of the journey I’ve been on.

At first I thought I’d just tone down my offending blog post and leave it like that. And I’ve done so. I’ve taken out the sentences that came across as over the top, I think.

And I thought, the important thing is to just learn from this, as I’ve learned from so many other excruciatingly embarrassing lessons in my past, and move on.

And yet I feel compelled to somewhat explain and even defend myself…a little.

When I began blogging I wanted to make my blog something interesting. Too many author blogs are just thinly disguised platforms for people to announce their next media interview or promotional video.

I’ve described my blog as my thoughts on my journey of life, and I was determined to include both the good and the bad because no way is life a success only journey!

I’ve included plenty of the bad!

Just a few days ago I blogged about an embarrassing incident involving some oversize t-shirts that I’m really not proud of!

And I figured that hey, eventually people will realize that I really try my best to tell it like it is.

I don’t hide much, and unfortunately I don’t censor much either.

If I’m over the moon thrilled about something, I’ll say so. (And unfortunately look like a Ms. Braggypants in the process.)

And yet under the circumstances I’m only being honest.

But maybe I should explain a bit where I’m coming from. Maybe that’ll help put things in context.

You see in some ways it’s even surprising that I’m alive.

When I was six months old, I caught pneumonia and almost died. If an uncle had not stolen the money to take me to the hospital, I would not have received the shot of penicillin that saved my life.

My mom told me about the night that she sat watching and listening to me breathe. With every breath I drew, she waited, expecting and dreading the moment the noise would stop.

I have four teeth in my mouth (my number six molars) that are irreversibly pitted and discoloured because they were developing at the time of that high fever.

My father was working in England sending money back to support my mom and my older sister and myself. He never knew, at the time, how sick I had been. And when he found out, he decided the solution lay in not accosting those who should have sent me to the doctor with the money he was sending back, but rather in getting our family out of Pakistan altogether, and starting fresh in a new country where the lives of girls were just as important as those of boys.

My father always said that I was the reason we left Pakistan.

I grew up hearing this story.

And how in England when he answered the advertisements and tried to buy us a home, the people would not sell to him because we were brown.

So he brought us to Canada.

And we struggled.

When my father first arrived in Canada he was a skilled worker, a tool and dye maker, and he got a good job making about $7 an hour. (That doesn’t sound like much now, but back then it was good money.)

Within a year of buying the bungalow in Dundas, and my little brother and sister being born, my father lost his job.

We could have gone on welfare but my father refused. He said, “Why would I take charity when I have two strong hands I can work?”

So he got another job. But this time it was for $2.35/hour. Even back then that was not enough money for a family of six people.

He would work up to sixteen hours a day just to make sure we had food on the table. He was glad to take over time, because it meant time and a half. And at his work place his coworkers didn’t call him Anwar, they called him black bastard, and he put up with it because he had a wife and four kids to feed.

During this time my mother almost died when her bowels became herniated shortly after my little brother was born.

And I remember staying with my aunt and uncle while my father tried to keep things together.

We were in an old house on Hess St. in Hamilton, and I went to a very old school there. I loved going to school and I loved learning, but the other kids in my class were less than kind.

They used to tell me and my sisters that they were white because they were clean and we were brown because we were dirty.

So basically I grew up feeling dirty.

And poor.

At the end of the month after my parents paid the bills, they had $5 a week to feed a family of six people. Most of the time, growing up, we used to eat dill weed and potatoes because it was cheap and filling.

The one thing, besides my faith, that kept me going, especially through the difficult middle school years, were books!

I lived in stories!

They were my solace.

They were my comfort.

And I started looking for books with those shiny golden Newbery stickers on them because I figured hey, somebody must have found them worthy.

I remember the year I read Jacob Have I Loved  by Katherine Paterson! I read Caddie Woodlawn and loved the stoic way that the brother accepted his punishment! (Pakistani parenting is often filled with corporal punishment!)

And the same with Ping the story of a duck in China.

I read all these Newbery books that helped mould my sense of character.

And when my grade eight teacher, Mr. Bakody, wrote me a note saying that I should be an author, at first I thought he was crazy. Authors were white people. They were from England and America.

But something in me started to dream.

When I failed at my first try I decided to be ’sensible’ and become a scientist because then it didn’t matter what you looked like it only mattered that you could do the job.

If I’d actually made a good living as a biological-chemical technician I probably wouldn’t be an author today!

I graduated from Seneca College at the top of my class, but I was the last one to get a job.

I’d ace the phone interview but once I showed up in person, they’d often take one look at me and say, “Sorry, the job’s been filled.”

I finally got a job but it only paid $.20 more than minimum wage and it took an hour and a half by bus and subway to get to work because it was on the other side of the city.

I stuck with it for a year and a half, and by this time I was expecting my first child so I decided to stay home and raise her.

I was about 27 years old, when I tried again, much more seriously, to get published.

I’ve had family members tell me that I’d never make it as a writer…look at the way you dress!

Many times I felt they were right!

But I kept going.

It took eight years for my first book to be published.

And now, after twenty-two years, I have eleven books published.

I have been to South Africa, Singapore, Mexico, Denmark and all over Canada as a Canadian children’s author!

I have even given a speech where Katherine Paterson was in the audience!

You betcha I’m tickled to pieces at what I have accomplished!

And because it surprises the heck out of me, it’s extremely hard to contain my enthusiasm!

And it’s extremely hard to paste on a gracious smile and glide up on stage and NOT be enthusiastic, but rather be calm and composed with an of-course-I-belong-here expression on my face.

And then to have people react so positively, and to have to play that down, understate it, because otherwise I look like an obnoxious braggart–is definitely not part of my first instinct.

My first instinct is to tell the truth. To jump up and down like those African American singers. Or yell from the rooftops in a Sally-Field-sort-of way, “They liked me! They really liked me!”

But of course you’re not supposed to do that.

For the record, I hate it when someone exaggerates!!!

I ALWAYS try to understate things!

I’ve had family members swear that mega-million dollar deals were coming to fruition in one instant, then next time you meet them, look at you puzzled when you ask what happened. 

And I always vowed that I would err on the side of understatement, and not ever exaggerate.

Frankly I think exaggeration is odious.

For the record, all the experiences I have related in my blog, both good and bad, are an honest reflection of what has happened to me. Nothwithstanding the fact that every person’s account is biased and subjective, for the most part, I have tried never to exaggerate anything, but rather tell it like it is.

Well, I guess I’ve gone on way too long about this.

I will try to trim the boastfulness and self congratulatory phrases.

But if I slip, in the future, which is something I’m prone to do, I hope whoever is reading this will understand.

I’m starting to hate the travel that’s involved.

I’m starting to dread packing and going to the airport…especially during summertime when I’m supposed to have some time to myself.

But I’ve learned not to grumble because everytime I think this will be a lot of work, I end up having a great time and this was no different.

Festivals are particularly enjoyable because they involve other authors and it’s so nice to get together with people who are as crazy about writing as you–and who are often as odd as you as well.

These posts will involve some shameless name-dropping. I can’t help it. I was so genuinely impressed with the calibre of the authors that were at the festival.

It was the fifteenth year of the festival and they had the organization of it pretty well down to a tee. 

It was held in the historic city of Moose Jaw, and I’ll talk about that later.

The most annoying thing about the arrangements was that I had to fly four hours to Calgary Alberta, and then take a plane back an hour and a bit to Regina, Saskatchewan. Coming back, there was a direct flight from Regina to Toronto, but for some reason I wasn’t on it, and to change my ticket at that late stage apparently would have cost an exorbitant amount.

But that’s a minor complaint.

A volunteer picked myself and two other authors: Charlotte Gray, a delightful lady who writes non-fiction and immigrated from England, and Robert Sawyer a very accomplished S.F. writer who has won a Nebula award and has a show based on one of his books on ABC called Flash Forward.

Charlotte had written a new book on the Klondike gold rush called Golddiggers, and it looked like a fascinating piece of work. We talked about the Yukon, about Robert Service and Jack London. I told her how I had passed Lake Laberge where Service’s famous poem The Cremation of Sam McGee is set. She informed me that there really was a Sam McGee but he wasn’t from Tennessee. I think she said he was from Peterborough, but it didn’t rhyme so well, so Service said he was from Tennessee. I told her how much I loved Call of the Wild and had dreamed–for a while–to go to the Yukon and become a bush pilot.

Throughout the festival, whenever she was on a panel, she was a strong voice of reason, and during one of the panels, when a fellow author named Kenneth J. Harvey who was slouched back in his chair with his legs stretched out, announced casually that he was quitting the book-writing business altogether she challenged him, quite successfully, I thought, about some of the things he was saying. And yet, I agreed with much of what Mr. Harvey was saying as well. The book publishing industry is going through tremendous upheaval and I could completely understand why he may have felt jaded by his publishers and the whole industry enough to turn to screenwriting.

For goodness sakes, I’ve been dabbling in screenwriting myself.

It was a very lively session aptly called Running the Writer’s Gauntlet.  And the auditorium was packed, apparently the sessions that involve any trade secrets are generally packed.

Personally I think writers need to adapt to the new reality of book publishing, and I said as much when I went to dinner with: Robert Sawyer, his companion a sweet lady named Sherry who was a fantasy writer, Robert Charles Wilson and his wife and D.J. Mcintosh (who has written another book that sounds intriguing called The Witch of Babylon).

During the evening’s conversation I blurted out that frankly publishing is a ‘survival of the fittest’ type of industry and any authors who’ve been chucked by the wayside by their publishers need to adapt and find a way to make their business model work. The old ways wouldn’t cut it any more.

I feel that way despite the fact that I’ve had people in the industry chuck me by the wayside.

Robert Sawyer gave me a look like I was the most callous person in the world and told me about dear friends of his who’d been devastated by the new reality.

It was a humbling moment and yet, I do feel that callous or not, what I said is correct. You have to be constantly adapting yourself to the shifting literary landscape. And unfortunately publishers are looking for the megabestseller, they’re not content with developing authors any more and increasingly authors are required to do their own marketing.

Maybe it’s not such a shock to me because it’s been that way within the children’s publishing industry for some time now. Very few are the children’s authors who can make a living from actual book sales. And yet it wasn’t always like that. And I count myself fortunate that more and more, my book sales have become a larger proportion of my yearly income to the point where they’re a significant chunk! But still, the presentations I’ve developed bring in the lion’s share and will for some time, I suspect.

Being a primarily ’adult’ literary conference, I was surprised when the organizers first contacted me and asked me to ‘read’ from my books.

Apparently they do this at adult events. The authors just get up on stage and read to the audience. Imagine that!

It certainly would have been easier if I had done that, but as a children’s author and especially as a storyteller, I just couldn’t do it and I told them so.

So they had on hand some LCD projectors and I did my best to squeeze my hour long presentation on Wanting Mor into twenty minutes!

At times I spoke as fast as an auctioneer!

And yet what I’ve found is that although such condensed presentations are very hard on me, the audience (especially when they’re teens) have absolutely no trouble at all following along. In fact, they often attend better when I talk so fast! I was a bit concerned with speaking that quickly with this group because many of the audience members were elderly–but nope, they had no problems following along either! One of them said it was because I enunciated so well.

What surprised me though, was that at this festival, my audiences were packed for all my sessions!

I think it had something to do with the “Readception” event on Thursday night that helped launch the festival.

I was one of the authors chosen to ‘read’ for five minutes.

Of course I didn’t read. Instead I spoke briefly about the theme of Wanting Mor.

I made a dua to myself as I got up on to the stage to do my bit. I said “outhu billahi minshaitan nirajeem” which is a common prayer that asks for God’s protection (and help).

I could see that every eye in the whole hall was on me, and it felt amazing! Not one person was whispering to their neighbours.

And when I was done I felt I’d done a good job, alhamdu lillah.

As I was walking out of the hall, this lady with red hair was one of many who came up to me and said how much she’d enjoyed my talk. But she went a step further. She said that I’d ‘had’ her as soon as I opened my mouth!

I was reminded of that scene in Jerry McGuire when Renee Zellweger says, “You had me at hello”. That’s precisely what she meant (when she clarified herself later).

The next morning a gentleman accosted me at the book tables on the lower level. He said that I’d gone over my time limit during the Readception! I’d gone on for 9 minutes instead of 5! He’d timed me!

I felt SO embarrassed! I try to be an absolute stickler for time because I know how much I hate it when I’m in the audience and a speaker goes past their allotted timeslot.

Then he nudged me and said, “Yeah, but I enjoyed your talk and I finished reading your book and I LOVED it. Couldn’t put it down!” (I’m paraphrasing)

Wow!

I had a session at 9 am and the lady with the red hair, whom I’d had at ‘hello’ was there in the audience. Afterwards she walked with me down the path of Crescent Park (the Art Museum theatre and library were in the park) and told me how she couldn’t wait to see me the next day at this session!

And she went on to say how much she’d loved my presentation!

It’s late and I should get to bed, I’m SO jet-lagged, but I had to share this first installment of what the festival was like. Tomorrow I’ll try to write more.

In it there was a court case, probably in Tennessee but I’m not sure, where the people were arguing about whether Islam was even a religion.

And it got me to wondering, who the heck do I think I am?

How do I expect to ever make a living–as an author– in a world like this?

Oh it was a long shot from the very beginning. I should have known. And yet at times like this, when I’m full of self doubts, I keep reminding myself about the ayat of the Quran that says if God has prescribed a thing for you, then even if the whole world were to get together to prevent it, they could not do so.  So if this is prescribed for me, then it will happen. If not, I’ll keep on trucking along with what I’m doing now.

I guess it doesn’t help that the sequel has been with my publisher for more than a month now and there’s been no word. I’m coming up to the point where they’d probably let me know if they’re rejecting it.

And I was getting antsy.

Will they get what I was doing? Or will they think I’m crazy for even trying it. And the problem is I got two Muslims to read it but I didn’t get a nonMuslim viewpoint on it!

I can’t imagine any nonMuslim hating it, but the sequel is so very DIFFERENT in tone from Wanting Mor.  And it’s not political and it’s not quite provocative, it’s just a good love story.

I went to a party at my publishers’ house a few years ago during the holiday season. I was one of two authors invited to meet the sales team who’d arrived to familiarize themselves with the new season’s books.

The most uncomfortable part of the whole party was trying to avoid the golden labrador retriever who was padding around the house, mingling with the guests.

Somehow dogs are naturally drawn to me.

It’s a curse.

They practically thrust their muzzles into my hands trying to get me to pet them.

And Islamically that’s a problem.

The saliva of dogs is considered very impure. Getting it on my clothes would render them impure, and then I wouldn’t be able to pray. So I try to avoid them.

At one point I was sitting on a couch and the dog was passing by, and I just gently pushed her away to keep her mouth from coming close to me.

Later, as I was leaving, the host had noticed me doing that. I told her that I wasn’t trying to hurt the dog, I just needed to keep clear of her. She said it wasn’t a problem, then she asked me if I’d seen that for most of the party the dog had curled up at my feet with her head on her paws just watching me talk to someone.

I hadn’t noticed that and I guess it showed in my expression. She said it was a pose of trust.

 Hmm. So that’s why she let the dog roam freely through her guests. I guess her dog sniffed out who was trustworthy.

I know, I know, I’m rambling. But there is a reason I mentioned that party. At the party a number of the sales people and office people at Groundwood came up to me to tell me how much they’d enjoyed Wanting Mor. And even at the time I had started writing the sequel. I mentioned it to one of the young workers and her face lit up. She said she’d love to read it. And then I mentioned how I thought Jameela was still broken at the end of the story and she needed to fall in love with a really nice man to restore her faith in mankind after her father had abandoned her.

The lady I was talking to looked utterly shocked.

And I realized that yes, put like that, it did sound shocking. It was against the message of ‘empowerment’ that I’d preached of so effectively in Wanting Mor. But really it isn’t.

And to understand why, you just have to read the sequel. *g*

But first they have to publish it. And I have no idea if they ever will.

But going back to those people in Tennessee. It would be easy to label them bigots. But I don’t think they’re consciously out to deny the rights of Muslims.

And for goodness sakes, one of the guys was even black! And I thought he of all people should understand what we’re going through!

But really they’re just scared. They don’t know anything about Islam except what they’ve read in the news, and of course that dwells on horror stories and nutjobs. I’ve  heard some people say it’s the job of newsmen to scare you senseless–it’s good for ratings.

And Soledad O’Brien asked one lady who was footing the bill for all the lawsuits whether she knew any Muslims. She said that some relative had worked in Saudi Arabia and she’d travelled extensively. Then O’Brien asked if she knew any of the Muslims in the community.

She said no, and then she went on to say how they’d made no effort to make her get to know them.

And I thought, “Wow!”

It reminds me of a time when I was on this politics forum message board (that I still frequent) where this lady came out and said that even though she lived in a university town with a lot of Muslim students in it, she found that she was prejudiced against them, then she asked me to explain to her why she shouldn’t be.

I declined the honour.

I told her that it wasn’t my job or my responsibility to ease her out of her prejudices. And if she wanted to be prejudiced that was her problem. I didn’t give a damn.

She did not take kindly to my stance. I bet she still holds a grudge. And maybe I did more harm to her feelings about Muslims.

But I have a hunch that her mind was made up and there was little I could have done to change it.

Just like all those other people out there who are bound to dismiss my books because a Muslim wrote them.

sigh…

I must be crazy.

It’s always nice to see new scenery, and I haven’t seen  Northern Ontario for quite some time.

Just past Barrie you start seeing glimpses of the Canadian shield.

The Canadian shield consists of some of the oldest rocks on the earth, estimated at about 4.5 billion years old. The earth itself is about five bilion years old

If you’ve ever seen group of Seven paintings, they often feature aspects of the Canadian shield. Pink granite and metamorphic rocks with twisted veins of quartz and other minerals.

As you get farther north, past Parry Sound the shield is more pronounced and you can see where they blasted through it to make the highway.

The rocks get deeper and deeper with grooves in them showing where they placed the dynamite, and on top of many of the crests people have placed inukshuks. I stopped counting them when I got to about 59.

Inukshuks are ‘rock people’, little statues loosely constructed out fo rocks that Inuit used to use as markers in the Arctic Tundra.

They’ve kind of been adopted as symbols of Canada ever since the Olympics in Whistler.

But even the indomitable rock of the Canadian shield is not impervious to everything. On top of it you can see the lichen that is inexorably eating it away.

Oh it’s a sight to see!

And the lakes and rivers are still mostly frozen but you can tell by the edges where the ice is wafer thin that they’ll be thawing soon.

And with the thaw will come the spring turnover.

I  kept thinking about that, being the spring equinox today.

Spring is a time for turnovers isn’t it?

I was explaining this to my son the other. To me it’s one of the beautiful things in nature, the absolutely marvellous interactions that proves to me that all this could not be created solely by the accidents of evolution.

For those who might not be aware of the spring tur nover of lakes, it comes about because of the unique properties of water.

Water is absolutely essential to life on earth or anywhere in the universe.

The first thing space probes search for when traveling is the presence of water, because water means life.

And water is unique in that it’s one of the only subtances that increases in volume when it freezes. Almost everything else decreases in volume.

In fact water has a maximum density at 4 degrees Celsius. Warmer than that and colder than that, it expands.

Water in lakes turns over twice a year. Once in the spring and once in the fall.

In the fall, as the surface water gets colder first, it will reach maximum density at 4 degrees and sink to the bottom of the lake. And having been at the surface, it is full of oxygen and nutrients, thereby feeding the bottom of the lake. Then the bottom water rises and eventually freezes (after fluctuating in a sort of convection current.)

And because ice is less dense, it floats on top and insulates the fish and other denizens of the deep lake water during the harsh winter.

Then in spring as the surface water starts to melt and its temperature begins to rise to 4 degrees, the whole lake flips again. And again the surface water will be oxygenated and filled with nutrients from sunshine, to replenish the supplies below.

Amazing!

Beautifully designed!

Subhanallah!

Tomorrow I begin my hectic schedule.

I’ll take it one day at a time, but I’ll make sure, even in the rush to get to the places I need to be, to take a good look at the beauty of the scenery.

Please excuse any typos in this post. I’m working on my mini-laptop and I can’t always see the end of the screen because of the size of the window.