The way you saw me...

Pappa you always saw me as your strong child, because that’s how you wanted to see me. And I wanted to measure up to the image in your eyes, so each time I found my strength… sometimes it was a reach, sometimes I faked it.

But I grew into it. It was easy to be strong when fair winds were blowing. The confidence, the career, moving on from mistakes - I started believing in my strength.

But little did I know that it was all building up to a moment when I would truly be tested. But did you know all along Pappa? 

If you had raised a soft and sweet daughter who had to be shielded, who needed a knight to protect her, then today I wouldn't be here would I? You raised me to stand up and face down a bully, to call out a liar, to tell my heart to stop being such a baby… To woman up!! To always, always prioritize my self-respect. To never compromise on dignity, on agency. The world told you not to instill so much pride in a girl, they would rather see a broken girl. But you raised a girl who could break the ties that were breaking her, and walk away and never look back.

How did you know that was what I would need to do in my life? That I would need to be so much stronger than just an educated girl, who worked, who drove, had opinions, traveled alone. Psshhhtt, you didn’t raise me for just that. You raised me to not tolerate bullshit - that’s what you were teaching me all along.

And because of you Pappa, and because of Mummy who is the living example of the strong woman you wanted to see in me - I was able to stand up for myself at a defining moment of my life, and use my brain and intellect and logic instead of all the weak feelings that wanted to overwhelm me.

Because of you, I have everything. Everything you wanted me to have. Thank you for everyday that you taught me to not settle for less than everything I deserve.

It’s been just over a year that you left this world Pappa, and I miss you but I am out here living like the queen you raised me to be.

May Allah reward you for being the father I needed, and increase you with every passing moment in my life.

The colors of loss

It’s been almost a month since my dad passed away. And I’ve been feeling weird that I have not written about him. Because I always write when I am upset - it's my catharsis. And because my dad was all about words - the shaairi, the words of praise, the books, the songs and dialogs.

But I have just been struggling to understand how I even feel about him being gone. I have read this somewhere “Where does the love go when someone dies?” I don’t know if there’s a void in my heart, or if my heart is overflowing with his thoughts, and his love.. and his memories.

A parent is unique to a person in that we feel that a part of them is in us. Literally. The DNA, the habits, the nature and the nurture. So, do I feel like a part of me has died? Or do I feel like he is still alive within me?

Where do I put all the stuff he’s left me with? The ideas, the confidence, the security - somehow they were all tied up with him. And he was the invisible anchor holding them down. Now I find them floating, displaced, disjointed.

How do I grieve him? When he was alive, our relationship was between the most current version of me, and the most current version of him. And the bond between us was perhaps a pale shadow of what it had once been. Now that he’s dead, every version of me grieves every version of him.

My little girl version, who he always called his princess. He said my brothers were sepoys whose job was to serve me (my dad trying to undo generational patriarchy in his own funny way).

The young teen version who felt that Pappa was my best friend. He understood all my dreams and my rebellion. When I was in the tenth grade, he booked tickets to London and was going to take my sister and me on the Eurail, because he knew how obsessed I was with DDLJ. (Thankfully, my mom intervened and canceled that wonderfully sweet but highly impractical plan. But how I loved him for that!)

The post-high school version of me who wanted to pursue an engineering degree - so he got an AC installed in my bedroom in India, and bought me a small sedan to drive (the fact that I was the first girl in my family in India to drive, or study engineering definitely had everything to do with him being my dad)

I could go on and on, because he did right by every version of me. When the roles were reversed, and I started taking care of him, he was so expressive and appreciative. When I was married and he was no longer my main man, he gracefully handled that too. There was always a version of him standing by me, protecting me, bolstering me, appreciating me.

I am also struggling to pick a perspective on this loss. Should I just focus on all the good he did for me as a father? Or should I dwell on my guilt of not having been as good a daughter to him as he deserved? Did I ever thank him, did I convey how much I loved him? Should I be grateful for the chance of having been with him in his last few days? Or should I be mad at myself for not calling him more, for not collecting all his stories, jokes and favorite shers to pass on to my kids?

It’s as if I am trying to pick a color to paint this goodbye canvas with, or an instrument to play his send-off song. I am trying to encapsulate the experience of having him as a father. I am trying to make sense of what just happened. But I need to just let go and have the orchestra play - all of the notes, even the jarring and out of tune ones. I need to keep painting because the canvas is so large, and the colors so many…

And if there is a parting note, or final brushstroke - it is that of joy. My sister’s post captured my dad’s joie de vivre in much better words than I ever could. Even as I feel a pressure to align with society’s norms of grief, I know that’s just not how my dad raised me. So I want to embrace the feeling that comes most naturally to me after losing him. Joy. 

Joy for having him for as long as I did. And the joy of anticipation of meeting him again.

 

Chapel Hill Shooting

Listening to Suzanne Barakat yesterday at the CAIR banquet unleashed this poem that had been in my head for a while. Dedicated to Deah, Yusor and Razan, who taught me it is possible to love and grieve for people you have never met in your life

Red

was the color of apples
that went into apple pie
and I was as American
as my favorite dessert

Red was the color of my first car
that dad gifted me when I turned 16
and I rode it with a smile to school
just your average American teenager

Red was the color of my flag
That I handed out as I campaigned for Obama
How proud I was to be American on that day
as I was on most every day

Red was the color of joy
That I brought to everyone’s life I touched
My family and friends were diverse
Just a typical American family

Red was the color of my bridal bouquet
that I carried as I walked up
to meet the love of my life
And I thought I was living the American dream

Being Muslim never seemed to me
to go against being American
Why was it so hard for him then?
Why is it so hard for all you bigots?

He saw me that day
Wearing my white scarf
Just a cloth that I loved to wear over my head
A cloth that said "Not American, Not human, Not worth living” to him

So he shot me
Red was the color of my hijab
dyed with my blood
As he shot me dead

Three little words...

Feb 14, 2014. Best Valentine’s day ever!!! I got the first ever in life text from my mommy and it said (among other things) “I love you”.

I felt crazily happy. Part of it was the awesomeness of getting a text from my mom, which is a pretty run of the mill thing for most people in the world today. And the other part was her saying “i love you”, which again most people, especially those in first world cultures, take for granted.

And it made me realize that deprivation, or rarity is a huge blessing in some cases. And that an abundance of good things unfortunately make us numb to the amazingness of them.

I always wished my mom was a softie like other moms. Even as I admired her incredible strength and respected her silences. She made me feel like I had to earn her approval, which made me strive to succeed (or at least appear to succeed) in her eyes. Many a times I have said noble, upright, religious things in her presence even when I didnt mean them from the heart.

We have been blessed with a child, and now as we struggle for a second - we are forced to consider the possiblity that it may never happen. Zahra might be my one-shot at being a mom. And I don't want to mess it up.

I want to strike the right balance. I want to make her feel loved but I don't want to have a child who rolls her eyes as her mom mouths “i love you” 20 times a day. I want it to mean something. I want her to feel like I love her unconditionally, but still strive to win my approval and respect by being a good human being and doing the right thing. I want to inspire her to be strong, yet comfortable enough to be able to cry in my arms.

I want her to be strong and righteous like my mom. And I want her to be loving and gentle like my khala. I want her to be funny and patient like my husband. I don't know if I want her to be like me, I would just settle for her liking me! Because honestly, unless you really screw it up, your child will love you. But if your child likes you, then you know you did it right!!

Wake up women...

Women just make me mad. What is wrong with us??? We have been around for thousands of years and we still haven’t figured it out. Have not evened the odds half as much as we should have.

What’s with all the accepting?? What about using our own head? And not assuming the position of weakness for once. Demanding fairness in the face of culture and traditions.

It always annoys me when friends say how “lucky” I am that my husband is reasonable, helps out and so on. I am not lucky - I have worked hard, and fought hard to instill some fairness into the marriage equation. I have refused to mutely accept pre-conceived notions of what my role as a wife or mother should be. Culture and traditions do not sway me in the least, the only ethic I abide by is the word of God. Not man - and that goes for the entire male species.

I am not saying you don't respect and love your father or husband as you are supposed to. I am not even against housewifely behavior (provided it is what you want). I am just asking why women assume this helpless pose and complain as if we have no say in the way our life, our home and our world is run?

To use one example - domestic abuse. I am not condoning it or being unsympathetic in any way. My heart goes out to any woman who is in a situation of non-resolvable abuse.

BUT when I watch tv shows, or read about domestic violence, this is what goes through my head… If, God forbid, I was married to a b@$!@% who hit me even once, I would just turn around and say “Do that one more time and I might just “accidentally” drop something heavy on your balls while you are sleeping”, “accidentally poison your tea”, “spill steaming hot water over you”, the threat options are endless. Just being strong, if not physically then at least mentally. And emotionally. Although there’s something to be said about learning jiu jitsu and flipping the b@$!@% on his ass!

Weighing In…

So, what sparked this rant off in my head is a combination of many things.  The most recent being a post on Facebook about how the HR of a company in an Arab country (not taking names) sent an email to its female employees telling them that since it was their responsibility to take care of household chores, the company was going to be “kind enough” to adjust their work hours in the month of Ramadan to make it easier for them to bear the burdens of home and work.

There were comments ranging from “this is so sexist. Most of these women have maids who take care of household chores” to “nothing wrong with cooking and cleaning, my husband would happily reverse roles with me”.

My response: No, there is nothing wrong with cooking and cleaning (and I have no patience for people who assume that homemaking isn't a difficult and rewarding job in itself). However, there is nothing wrong with women choosing to contribute in the work force and hiring help to do the household chores. Or women being the primary breadwinners while the husbands choose to be the homemakers and stay at home dads.

And since this email was sent to women in the workforce who are either equal, primary or secondary breadwinners in their households, it is ludicrous to assume that they are still the sole responsible individual in managing the house. Even if the woman is not contributing any money to the household other than paying for the maid and child care (though personally I prefer to be the primary caretaker of my children when they are too young to be in school but that is a separate discussion), it is still her choice whether she wants to stay at home and contribute directly to the running of the household, or contribute to the workforce and have her home taken care of in her absence. Every woman is different – for some it is fulfilling to cook and clean, and for others it is drudgery.

Just like some men are doctors and other artists, some women are home makers and others are rocket scientists.

In fact, going back to the last point I made, it is not even just “her home.” It is “their home” so the husband and wife should talk about what they would like to do with their lives and jointly decide who takes care of what. I don’t even like the assumption that it is the woman’s “job” to take care of the house and so if she’s not doing it, she should be the one paying for the maid and the baby sitter.

As for the popularly held belief that it is ordained in Islam for a woman to be the housekeeper, that is just not true. In fact (just paraphrasing Anse Tamara Gray who spoke at Zaytuna recently) in Hanafi madhab, it is the duty of the man to hire help to relieve the wife of household chores, and if he cannot do so he must compensate the wife because she is also doing a job. No woman is ever jobless. But she should be able to choose instead of being told what her job is, or worse being made to do two jobs.

And this brings me to the whole “super mom/ super woman” tag that drives me nuts. Yes, some women are amazing at managing their time and energy and they work full time, volunteer, cook dinner, coach their kid’s soccer team, all the while sewing curtains for their living room. I assume again that they do so because they want to, and they thrive on being achievers. Just the way some men are driven or gifted and they are CEOs or Imams who travel the world. And then there are other men who max out at their 9-5 job and then come home and nap. Nobody dreams of telling those men – why aren't you Bill Gates? Why aren't you a super achiever, why don’t you do more? It is universally accepted that it takes all kinds of men to make up the world – over achievers and normal achievers.

Yet women are continuously held to the standard of the super moms, the over achievers. As if that is the default expectation from every wife and mother. Why?

There is currently a movement in the western world for women to “lean in”. But unfortunately, for a vast majority of the world, it hasn't even reached that point yet. First, they must “weigh in”. Be a part of the discussion, before they can be a part of the decision. It amazes me how so many women, especially in eastern cultures, are still told what they can and cannot do, should and should not do.

I could go on and on, and of course people will label me a “feminist”. If I am a feminist, then my dad is a bigger one, because he’s the one who taught me to be like this. If being a feminist is another term for being fair minded, breaking barriers and not being shackled by the laws of man, only accepting the laws of God – then I am definitely one. Proud to be one, and my husband says he is proud to be married to one!

17 again...

The thing I miss most about school days is that feeling of belonging. Being part of something bigger than yourself, a sense of purpose, a sense of worth. How I took for granted then those things. The fact that i would never have a moment of loneliness, that I could always pick up the phone and call my best friend and share the smallest problem, the dumbest idea. Heck sometimes it was 10 friends who I had to share absolutely everything with, and the biggest problem then was the phone bill.

And the mad laughter. With my friends, my sisters, my cousins. If you’ve laughed like that, and danced like that to “mukkaala muqaabla” in your life... well then you know how it feels to live fully. Youth is not wasted on the young, it is drunk in full, dove in headfirst, reveled in. And then it comes back to haunt you when you are old. Really old, as in 32 years old.

I love my husband, I am obsessed with my daughter and her perfect chubby delicious little feet. And I am grateful for my life. I truly am alhamdulillah

But sometimes at 2 am, I find myself wanting to be 17 again.