Console me

I have to compete against some Locust Queen.

A play on an afrikaans word and one of the main game characters.

I'm thinking an early release in time for the IIFAs

Bollywood ain't big enough for me yaar.
Aasia put me on to this gem of a site.

nauseatalgic (i like this word, i think i'll keep it)

I swear, I will not post any more of these nausea-talgics and time capsule things again.

---

from: capsule@forbes.net
to: saaleha@gmail.com
date: 17 November 2008 16:00
subject: greetings from 2005

Greetings from your past. In the fall of 2005, you agreed to receive this message, which has been preserved for a year in the Forbes.com E-Mail Time Capsule. For more details, visit http://www.forbes.com/capsule

Here is the text of your message:

hey there dollie,

Hope this finds you well, smiling and happy.

are you married to your soul mate yet?

what's been happening since we last left?
right now, i'm sitting in Paula's home office, messing around on the internet when i really should be making headway with the investigative journalism conference logistics.

the currents in my life>
-*-the one that got away
-**-unclassifiable
-***-a distant friendly distraction
-****-the blind date (who i'll be chatting to this Friday)

i wonder which of these have stuck around.

I hope you've made some progress with your writing and all the big dreams that you've had at the tender age of 22 have translated into a little reality.

mwah and hugs

your past Self-

Saaleha

(how long is your hair now? and have you lost all the weight? more importantly-do you have your driving license and a car?)

--------------------

Hey there littler Saaleha,

Good Lord, weren't you the über bubblygum back then, with alphabet-case issues, and your head full of boys.

Thank the Almighty you don't 'dollie' and 'mwah' that often anymore. 

Well, lil ditzy Sal, none of those okes are of any weight to you now. 

But, you'll be pleased to hear that you have indeed married your soulmate, a boy from the 'ville, would you bloody believe it. Of the ghaam too, despite all your protestations that you'd never get with one of the People of The Cook Book.

You've also been with the company through three other Investigative Journalism conferences, and while you don't handle logistics anymore, you still mess around on the net when you should be making headway with other things. You're also thinking that a bit of R&D is as good as some R&R and may find yourself in a different kind of workspace next year.

You lost the weight. Then you gained the weight. Then you lost some more. Then you got that happy stomach and funtastic forearms and now you're planning on going back to gym. Tomorrow.

The hair is short. You've never had it so short. They even shaved off some from your neck. But that's also because you Bhamjee's lean towards the hirsute, rocking the bad moon rising and all.

Yes, you drive and you have a Chevy Aveo that your husband won't acknowledge because it isn't german-made. He also thinks it's a big blue shelf in the garage. You drove off to work one morning, with his spectacles, garage-card and cd flying off the roof and making violent kissie-kissie with the tar. He got most of his stuff back and had to cancel the card. You're kinda sure he still loves you.

Ah the writing. Let's not talk too much about the writing. You were more confident back then. But you have been accepted for a MA programme in 2010. We'll talk then.

And the big dreams, well, you're living one of them, and you're pretty much on track on the trek. You just need to be a bit more zenlike about things. 

Calm. 

Focused. 

Like Water.

You're  still clumsy. I know you didn't ask but you should know anyway.

Don't think I've seen this one on HijabStyle

Hola, hola, hola, kicking it for Mzansi Apa!

(Get yours at Al-Hidaayah (sp?), Mint Road, Fordsburg, JHB)

doodle is a funny word and doodling just sounds like it should be dirty

As far as business ventures go, I wish the blood of Charou ran thicker in my veins.

My first chug of entrepreneurial spirit was some time in Std4 (Grade 6 to you young 'uns) with a little start-up called "Cupid Aint Stupid". 

I dealt primarily in matters-of-the-heart and would write custom love-letters and poems for a very reasonable R2 each. I was also the purveyor of fine hand-made twinsaver tissue flowers .

I made enough to buy a few chip rolls at break-time, but the business wasn't sustainable.

The type of people who didn't write their own love-letters were also the types who promised to pay up tomorrow. And the market for tissue flowers was soon overtraded after I gave tissue-flower making lessons for R3.

I never sold much else after that, apart from a few sticker sheets in Std5 and my old Archie comics much later on (a transaction I now regret).

But now I've hit on this idea of customising notebooks.

I'm a huge notebook phan-girl. I'm moleskine-verskrik, and the one I'm currently desecrating is a gorgeous leather-bound volume from Florence with the giglio embossed on the cover.

But I don't quite know where to start. Sites like cafepress.com offer exactly the type of arrangement I think would work for me, but after exchange rates, the final product is too expensive for the average blog reader to consider [Would you pay something like $12 for a notebook just because it had something clever on the cover?].

Are there any South African based print-on-demand set-ups?

Here are a few of the notebook cover ideas, taken from some of my more obscure blog-moments over the years:

Is this the kind of thing you'd willingly hand your credit card details over for?

The backbone of colonial America and where-house sales

Chuck Palahniuk is of that rare strain of writer. 

He violates us with the most extreme characters, but they're so utterly believable, that we'd just lie down and gratefully push a few hundred in their pockets afterward.

5g33k and I watched Choke last night. 

A sex addict support group, a potential half-clone of Jesus Christ, an ingenious restaurant choking scam, a fucked-up childhood, a mad mother who meant well and a doctor willing to get herself impregnated in the hospital chapel in order to carry out a radical stem cell procedure. And there's more.

All of it plausible.

I haven't read the book this was based on, and therefore can't make any judgements on the medium migration, but I could see Palahniuk in almost all the pixels.

I may be writing out of my ass here, but what I got out of it was a portrait of damaged people, searching and failing. 

I like that about Palahniuk; that as much as the people he creates are so tremendous and weird, there are little filaments running through them that seal the connection with the reader/watcher.

You may not be a chronic masturbator, but when you see Denny draw the stripper as a perfect female form, you're taken right back to those moments where you felt total acceptance of a beloved.

The journey you take with the protagonist Victor Mancini, is one you may still be on, even though you might never find yourself naked in an unlocked airplane bathroom.

--

Exclusive Books sent out a mass email informing Fanatics cardholders of their warehouse sale. They spelt 'members' as 'memebers' in their email subject line. I think that most of us bloggers are meme-bers.

Back to the ware/wherehouse sale. The dulcet tones of the GPS dominatrix lead me to Strijdom park where I expected to find a huge structure bursting its zinc with covetable titles.

I was disappointed to find a selection that took me all of 20 minutes to browse through.

I came home with two facepainting kits and fairy stories for the brats, three photobooks with accompanying soundtracks (the American Cars and Cuban beats for my uncle, the Sax! and Moods of La Habana for myself), Terry Pratchett's Thud!, Alduous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves, a Marie Claire Breakfast recipe book and The Bollywood Cookbook for my mum (ta for the heads up Kaye).

More to add to the pile of the unread. Whereas I used to eat up entire days reading, now I tend to digest books in spurts, little bites before bed or huge gastronomies on rare Sunday mornings. I'm currently gnawing on Lita Epstein's If you can't say anything nice, say it in Yiddish. To the recent vermin carrying the blogosphere plague, "Zolst es shtupin in toches arayn."

--

NaNoWriMo 2008.  It's the first hour of Day 2 and my word count is bleak. Forget bleak, try non-existent. It's November's fault. Months that start on the weekend have no real ooomph about them. I'll start writing on Monday.

Did I convince you?

At 16

In the months leading up to my wedding, I observed a sort of ritualistic catharsis by reading through old diaries.

The entries, as one would expect, were a riot of cringe, funny, angst and pain.

It felt a bit odd going through each one, almost as if I was an intruder bearing witness to the life playing out on the pages.

Because I was so different then, but still so Saaleha.

I ended each quasi-voyeuristic reading by tearing up the pages. 

I was letting go to make space for new things.

However, like any wannabe godplaying wordsmith, I took notes. 

I never wanted to forget what 16 was like. 

Even though I'd grown beyond the insecurities and other mental blocks, it was an age ripe with what was to come.

Here are some of those notes, with a little careful editing to preserve some semblance of pride.

(I'm not sure why I tend to refer to myself in the collective, perhaps I'm spreading the loaded responsibility of what I write across all my personalities.)

--

At 16 we're emo. 

Dramatic. 

Over the top. 

Histrionic, theatrical. 

We overuse metaphor - bunjee jumping, precipice, mach 3, ground zero, sans parachute, plummeting.
We overuse words - pain, rejection, unrequited, dramatic, therapy, voices in my head.

We begin with new years resolutions for the year 2000-

• lose weight
  
• read namaaz
  
• read quraan
  
• study hard
  
• be disciplined
  
• make an effort not to miss school or madressah
  
• be more assertive - as headgirl and in everyday life.
  
• be neat
  
• learn how to drive
  
• talk less and listen more
  
• 'be there' for my friends
  
• refrain from gossiping and passing bitchy comments
  
• look upon everything and everyone as beautiful in their own way
  
• smile more
  
• be more understanding
  
• learn how to cook
  
• drink 8 glasses - more if possible- of water daily
  
• start an exercise routine and stick to it
  
• build up my self confidence
  
• finehone my writing skills - start a thought journal
  
• remember that folks are just folks and people are rarely intentionally nasty or stuck up
  
• don't be judgemental
  
• compliment at least one person daily
  
• don't be a doormat
  
• get up earlier
  
• be more helpful and considerate
  
• don't litter- don't be part of the problem, become the solution
  
• set an example
  
• lighten up
  
• save the world!
  

---
Death shocks the young - we wrote of a friend's passing, the regret and the lessons learnt - to not hurt each other because life is indeed short and the Almighty knows best.

We had self-esteem issues - never thought we were good enough or deserved the best. 

We seemed to prefer fantasy, living in that dream world. 

We learnt not to underestimate ppl or pass judgements.

"I like to write in pencil, easier to erase"

We thrived on unrequited love, the chase, the longing
We used to listen to 5fm while we wrote in our diaries, pencilling in the name of a computer college advertised, because we weren't quite sure where we fitted.
We had a crush on a boy.

We tended to vacillate -I love him, I cant believe I ever liked him, and on and on.
We were superficial.
We were terrified about the future. and being friendless and nameless.
We realised we were on the continuous search for The One, the elusive ideal.
We used to write for an imaginary audience that we obviously tried very hard to impress.
We realised we wanted to write. Really write. We wanted to inspire awe, be glorious and spellbinding.
We thought we hadn't suffered enough to write brilliantly.
Our fear was that we would waste our talent.
We feared being ignored.
We thought we were manic-depressive.

We met someone at a party. We thought he was amazing. We were swept up in the moment. We forgot what he looked like and made up a picture in our head when we spoke to him over the phone. We learnt soon that evening-time was a witch who liked practical jokes.
We panicked when he put his hand on our thigh during the longest trip home.
We cringed and we wanted to die.
We were horrified when we learnt he didnt like poetry.

We were more attracted to boys who didnt show any interest in us.
We often wrote about suspected psychological disorders.

We liked writing because it immortalised the ephemeral.
We liked using words like ephemeral.

We thought often of the One.
We didnt want a mirror of ourselves - someone who reflected our faults, shortcomings or virtues. We didnt want perfection.

We made the 'first move', and it was thrilling and scary.

We loved the power, the fact that we could make things happen.

We found out he liked another girl. She was pretty, funky and thin. For us this meant she was perfect, and better than us.
We liked his goofy laugh and smile, the dumb things he said, we admired his confidence.

We were afraid of commitment, afraid of solidifying things into concrete definition.
We didnt know if we were in love, only that we felt deeply.

We couldnt get over the fact that someone crushed back, that we were desirable.

Our last matric paper was Afrikaans. We were afraid of the changes that we'd see. 

We felt like we were losing something. We were afraid we'd never find friends like the ones we had.
"leave the sunshines of your past to face the fires of your futures" - something we wrote once.

Our weight was a 'heavy issue' - we intended all puns.
We realised we always fell for the goofiest, quirkiest characters.
For us, leaving school was like jumping off a very high cliff.

We learned that good can come from bad and that we learn from every life experience.

We were intrigued by the strange boy who'd come to the shop and stare at us.
We felt fat, unattractive, stupid and unfriendly.
We were whiney, yet we tried to inspire ourselves towards Better.
We realised we liked goofy quirky guys because they didnt intimidate us.
We were afraid of failing at varsity, of making the wrong friends or none at all, of losing ourselves.

We seemed to feel empty alot, We doubted whether we'd ever find the real thing.

We got our matric results - 4 As, 2Bs.
We got interviewed by Radio Islam because of this success.

Our insecurities concerned us. We wanted to be thin and pretty. We wanted fame and acknowledgement but were afraid of becoming conceited.
We didnt want to be a carbon copy, we didnt want mediocrity to swallow us.

---

Ennui Eyes

258.

That's how many blog posts I've pushed out since I got serious on this platform at the end of August 2005.

The sound the Most Prolific Blogger award makes is "whoosh-thik", as it clips me on the shoulder and soars past towards others worthier on my google reader.

Genesis

It was our Honours year. 2004.

Razina (now a perspicacious Fourth-Estater with the Financial Mail) and I (Jane-of-all-trades who does a bit of wordswork) skipped out of our Journalism Theory class, our heads full of Anton Harber-isms and this Blogging thing. 

Off to the post-grad computer labs to get in on the action and become the cyber-bastions of Truth, the wwwatchdogs of the State, the free voices giving voice to the voiceless, wadda wadda, all that stuff you write for the entrance applications.

The first blog I ever really got into was written by Reza in Canada. "Musing Over The Ontological Status of a Boiled Egg". With a title like that, sure, it's gonna grab me by my metaphorical cajones. It's defunct now, but you can still go through his archives. Brilliant stuff.

While setting up my blogger account, I stared at the hulking grey servers making fresh pasta of the data cables, and I thought, "Hmm...you know what, that looks a lot like electric spaghetti..."

I'm now a blogger!! k3wl!!

My first few posts were hardly the stuff of killer citizen journalism we were creaming ourselves over in class. A kitschy poem that rhymed (yeah, I used to do those) and a list of words I found interesting (I recall flocculent, being one of them). You could tell I was farting fairy dust at the time.

And blogging bored me. Mostly because no one read me (what did I know of link-baiting and comment-whoring then. I thought that if I built it, Google would make them come). So I left it to die a slow, stinky death.

The becoming.

Then this guy decided to turn his weekly Randeree-roundup email into a series of  blogposts. Suddenly, my blog was up on his link list, it was being read. I should've been elated right? Instead, I was horrified that friends and strangers would be reading the twaddle. I deleted everything, and put up a little spring-clean notice. It was time to decide what the blog should become. 

A space for me to write to keep the rust away.

And you know the rest

Personal observations. Me, without too much me. Rare bits of social commentary. Travel stories. Ad-jamming. Obscurities. Little things I do in Photoshop and InDesign. Fun with 419-ers. Monologues. Trying to be a bit clever and fancy with the words. Amusements. A real salmagundi, the phenotype of what it's like in my head sometimes.

Ennui eyes?

It could be due to my current frustrations career-wise, that I find this blogging thing iffy and blehsome of late. I'm easily annoyed at people who poo-poo ponitificate all over the place (and I've used that term in conversation with at least two friends so far). I'm irritated by the judgements I see cast, the idiocy that gets the approved sticker from quality control and an undiscerning audience. I can't stand the sheer amount of inane convoluted verbiage (and I use that word ironically) that's out there. 

I don't want to feed into this.

I wasn't always like this. This critical, this angsty.

So I guess, I'm saying I'm just tired and a little jaded.

And maybe I need to eat more soya beans.

Really giving (Blog Action Day 2008)

I give the man at the robot some of my loose change. He has albinism, and I feel sorry for him, imagining what it must be like to have grown up so, to have people glance at you curiously and quickly look away.

I give another man at the robot some of my loose change. He has an awful burn scar that's eaten up half of his head. I feel sorry for him, because I can see that he's 'not all there' and that it is probably hard for him to get work.

I give a child at the robot some of my loose change. He's holding his blind mother's hand and I feel sorry for him, knowing that he'll graduate from a school on the pavement, and know nothing beyond the cars that pass him, and the people who give him money.

I give a woman at the robot some of my loose change. Her child is tied papoose-style on her back, and I feel sorry for them. While her child is lulled to sleep by the lullaby of hooting taxis and worn brake pads, my baby niece has a tastefully decorated nursery and a colourful hanging mobile to stimulate her impressionable mind.

These are transactions right? I give them money, and they sell me a bit of windowlene for my soul, something I can use to polish off the guilt, rewards in the next world.

But while this sounds like a classic win-win, it's not a real solution, this swapping of something tangible for fickle abstracts.

I give, You take - not sustainable. Yet it has its place, when the space between us goes much much further than just my hand reaching out of my car window to drop some bread money in yours.

But the belly cries louder than the brain.

When your milestone for the day is to find enough food so that your children don't die from a slow starvation, education and development (and sustainability) become big useless words that can't be eaten.

And so poverty extends beyond the corporeal, it entrenches itself in the mind. And like weeds given a small chance, they flourish, forming the incubator ready for the birth of the demonchild - Crime (and that's subject for another Blog Action Day).

I come back to 'sustainability', that somewhat diluted word that's been draped and displayed by consultants and development specialists at many a conference and symposiusm.

Bring on the food grants and food gardens, feed families so that they can start moving up on Maslow's pyramid. But don't let it end at the stomach. 

Shift focus to the schools, training colleges and centres for entrepreneurs. 

But this need not be a government mandate solely. 

We can all somehow contribute and feed momentum into this.

I know of one way we can give so that, like the catchy jingle, it keeps on giving.

"Ibn ‘Umar reported: ‘Umar acquired land in Khaibar. He came to Allah’s Apostle (saw) and sought his advice in regard to it. He said: “Allah’s Messenger,  I have acquired land in Khaibar. I have never acquired more valuable for me than this, so what do you command I do with it?  Thereupon the Prophet (saw) said:  If you like, you may keep the corpus  intact and give its produce as Sadaqah. So ‘Umar gave it as Sadaqah declaring that the property must not be sold or inherited or given away as a gift. And ‘Umar devoted it to the poor, to the nearest of kin, to the emancipation of slaves, to wayfarers/guests,  and in the way of Allah.-Sahih Muslim"

According to the National Awqaf Foundation of South Africa, this hadith led to the establishment of the Waqf system. A Waqf can be anything from property to money to a food garden. The core endowment remains, while the earnings/produce/resources get distributed/utilised.

I believe this concept has universal and secular appeal. Goverments and NGOs work together to form central trusts where the endowments can be managed. Everyone gets involved in the solution.

What do you think? 

Pie in the sky or a slice for everyone?

The Ultimate Choose-Your-Own-Adventure storyboard

What's your story?


The inkblots were sourced via a google image search.

Do I have to pay extra for that?

Just a bit of lavatorial-silly-ha-ha. Phonecam-snapped while stuck in traffic.

Slogan reads; "WE WOULD LOVE TO HANDLE YOUR PACKAGE"

Eat Mubarak (updated)

And so to end, as we began, Eid Mubarak from myself and the folks at someecards.com.

Sucks that we can't agree on a date, but hey, we can't even agree on which of the 72 will make it to the finish line.

May your day be a beautiful celebration of Faith, family and food.

To note; fennel, ginger and turmeric are good remedies for indigestion.





One for the Jo'burgers:


And a special rendering for the spokesperson of the Anti-Mehndhi Collective:


The last time I was this excited about new shoes for Eid, must've been when I was around six years old. Please humour this mindless indulgence:

Recalled

My husband's handiwork. He's a big South Park fan. 

The term 'recall' makes me think of defective seatbelts or leadpainted alphabet blocks. 

We are living in interesting times.

The reluctant tagger- Proudly SA- the last i promise (maybe)

"A Proudly South African meme inspired by EXMI

Rules:

Link back to the Meme creator - Caz

Link back to the person who tagged you - this girlie here.

Give at least 5 reasons why you love SA

Let me know once you've done it."

Our country is a troubled teenager. Its soul wrestles and sweats with the burly demons of crime, poverty and corruption. It thrashes with poor service delivery, reckless political mouthpieces, unemployment, class struggle and HIV/Aids.

But it still believes; this teenager harbours hope.

And I still believe, though on some days, it gets a bit hard to. But that is the nature of Faith.

And with that, I give you 5 reasons why I love South Africa:

1. Our freedom of expression/religion. I can be Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Taoist, Bhuddist, Wiccan, whatever. I can wear the symbols of my faith freely and there is no obstacle to my practice.
   
2. We all go on about what a beautiful country this is, because, what do you know,  it really is a beautiful country. Click here for pictures the husband took over at Chapmans Peak, Cape Town. That's just one place.
   
3. Our internet access is not censored or restricted. (But we'd really like more bandwidth please)
   
4. We managed a fairly peaceful transition into democracy back in 1994, when the world thought we'd burn each other up. And that gives me real hope for our future.
   
5. We are a nation of creatives and achievers: in the arts, technosphere and on the sports field. 
   

Your turn.

You know what I am before you know who I am.

My original concept for this was to have the words form the image of the woman wearing the scarf, a textual graphic, similar to the Islamic calligraphy where verses of the Quran are written stylistically to curve into and form shapes from nature. 

But, I am artistically-inept, any rendering would have been as elegant as a crayon left to melt in the sun.  The next best thing was to turn to photoshop and manipulate an image sourced from a google search.

The rationale: Ramadaan tends to froth up the visual Islam; the conventional markers of the Faith such as the hijab and the beard. It is a time for questions from those you work with, study with or buy fruit from. Challenge the existing perceptions, unsettle the mindsets, uncover their minds, educate.

"Be water, my friend" and current addictions

Ramadaan and fasting has me as placid and calm as an undisturbed forest pool,  and I am more inclined to do what is asked of me. 

Like Bruce Lee, my way is of water.

So while I don't usually respond to tags as a full blog post, I will do this for Fatima because not only am I roza-compliant, but she is almost-family and gave me a really awesome serving bowl as a wedding present.

My five current addictions are as follows:

1. Fennel. The seeds, the sprigs, ground up or whole. I will add it to any dish I can get away with.
   
2. Google reader. How could I have not latched on to this sooner!? Shame on me.
   
3. Twitter. I'm following some of South Africa's brightest people and some brilliant buitelanders.
   
4. Woolworths Taste Magazine
   
5. Making coffee popsicles. See here for directions. Add a bit of elachi (cardamom) for that lekker extra.
   

--note-- Killa's gone and tagged me as well. Even though I didn't get a discount on the jellies I bought from their shop, he's family too (the tentacles of the charo-connections* extend into the blogosphere)

I will not tag anyone specifically. If you care to play along, leave your list in the comments section.

*aka "haga kareh" in the guji vernac, "my granny's your grandpa's cousin", "my aunty's married to your brother-in-law's sister" and on and on until you discover you've gone and married someone whose forebearers worked in the same village rice keti as your great-great-grand-dada's.

Day 4, 5 and 6

I was born on the fifth of Ramadaan. 

A friday much like yesterday, except for the faint chill of winter that threads through June air.

I always forget my islamic calendar birthday, and had to be reminded by my mother.

Once I hit fast#3, the days become one huge amalgamated mass of light and dark, with only the numbered chapters of the Quran and the tear-away days on our Ramadaan calendar providing any sense of where I really am.

However, this is not exclusive to Ramadaan. Just a few weeks ago, I misplaced a whole day. I have no idea what I did with Tuesday, August 26. Any information you might have regarding the missing hours can be forwarded via email to me.

The quiet still shrouds me, amplifying all those ugly, scraggly bits of character I need to do away with. If only a metaphysical Verimark existed, and I could pick up a nifty flaw and fluff-remover along with some Bio-slim (as this month of abstention does nothing for a body that's stubborn and clingy). 

The community website ramadaan.co.za features a really good series by Mariam Mahomed titled Ramadan Bootcamp. A post on forgiveness pulled a string in me, and I began to think on all those whom I had stomped on and the ones who muddied me.

I believe it's a feature of only-child syndrome to want to be loved by everyone all the time (other solo brats feel free to disagree). 

For a large part of my lived life thus far, the thought of someone not falling in step with that line refused to compute. And with that, I lived selfishly, doing what I had to do to get what I want, with little cognisance of the sharp words I'd utter or the disappointments I'd cause. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise..." were frequent and familiar. I'd give you a smiley face and some story of how I'm just so caught up in myself to be aware of what I've really done. All would be forgiven, because, well, I'm me, and everybody likes me.

But it happens, that one day, someone actually is not able to stomach you, and it sickens you to your bowels, because really that's never happened before (or maybe you were just so caught up in that little monarchy in your head, that you never noticed). That experience was enough to allow for a long-overdue growth-spurt of maturity. And you begin to think on who's really forgiven you. 

It would not make any sense to go back to every single person you've wronged for all your time on earth. What would you say that wouldn't rattle with empty? "Look, I've just had an epiphany. I've been really ugly to you. I know I asked for you to forgive me, but will you really forgive me, because I'm being sincere this time around."

You can't expect people to hand out their heartfelt maafs on your demand. They have a right to withold it for as long as their soul will allow. All you can offer is your honesty and prove by your subsequent actions that you truly are regretful. 

As for those for whom you penned great epics of wrath and rage for, it's all kind of laughable really. You would not be who you are today were it not for some reptile who forced you to walk on another path. While you need not cut out your heart for canapés, know that hate makes you brittle.

I visited my family in Azaadville today; with all their quirks and crazies, they keep me grounded. Reading salaah next to my grandmother, I found it hard to suppress a smile when she made her takbeer aloud and proceeded to recite her prayers just above that of an audible whisper. She's been praying like that for so long, I don't think He minds anymore. This is the woman who raised me, more mother than grandmother, I'm blessed to have three I can call Mummy (the recent addition of sg33k's). My grandmother laments my weight gain and pushes sweets on me, all in the same breath. The ways of the old sometimes grate on the young, but in that exercise of patience, lies great reward. 

My uncle had a tumour removed from his bladder two days ago. He's caught in that horrid limbo of waiting on his results. Some of you reading this may have met him, and for others who've not; know that he is a father, a husband, a son, a brother, an uncle. At a time where our prostrations are just that little bit more extended, and we're inwardly clamouring for the Almighty's approval, remember him, and all those who are not in their best of states, in your prayers.

Jelly and Ifthaar are inextricably linked for me. Whobbling wonderfulness, I lose at least twenty years whenever I'm shlurping some.

Day 2 and 3

There is a stillness in Ramadaan; a special type of quiet that wraps around us. A stillness that renders us malleable; a warm and pliable soul, ready to receive all of Good.

Those things that rub against our grain; loaded words that bring on brain-hives and the desire to strew expletives over the offender -- for no well-reasoned argument will dumb the donkey’s bray that offends -- we find those things have no place in this soft soul.

It is from the stillness that patience is to be born, with a certain measure of tolerance and the will to let things go. Water off of a sheet of glass.

But I must acknowledge how fortunate we are to have within our midst, those who abide in domiciles built from a certain amorphous solid, and who are only too keen to hurl projectiles at those who pass by. Well-meaning missiles, of course; targeting our ill-placed sentiments into something that loosely resembles one person’s notion of what constitutes a Mu’min.

Why, you need not scar your forehead asking of The One to guide you onto the path of Truth and Light, when you’re being herded onto a trail predetermined by one who simply knows better.

And everyone knows better. Except you, of course.

My patience is not complete. It has yet to be tempered into something better than glass.

(Coffee at Sehri, keeps you Merry. Salma will agree, that rhymes somewhat)

Day One

It was hard for me to bask in a spiritual infusion today, when my brain must’ve been trying to escape through my eye sockets, for all the pain I blinked back.

Hello Caffeine Dependency, you are such a bastard.

A website I was working on had its database eaten by some e-tokoloshe.

That translated into two full days of work having to be compressed into a couple of quicksand hours in order for us not to look like inept fools should some client surf over. This excluded the two hours of downtime we experienced due to the power being cut-off because someone was having a Marie Antoinette moment down at the municipality.

It takes a strong person to not want to smash up the internet and unleash an inner Gustav on anyone within arms reach.

I am not a strong person.

I tried to smile, and I failed.

The frustration and the physical fatigue gave my aura the brown-colour wash of a party-pooper. I could see relief iron out the wrinkles on my boss’ face when I asked to leave early.

I admit the juggling is a feat and I’m trying very hard to keep work, pray and kitchen in smooth circles up in the air.

But this is only Day One. I have an entire month (and beyond) to work out my arms.

And there is something truly magic and complete about breaking your fast with someone who builds your world.

The not-quite-Ramadaan-greetings post (updated)

The best e-card site ever (ever!) has come up with a range of messages just for Ramadaan.
As these have been conceptualised in line with their usual facetious-tongue-on-dockers-clad-butt-cheek offerings, do not send on to people who take themselves too seriously.

They've also introduced a create-your-own e-card function which, as evident below, I thoroughly abused last night.

(As kids, we'd call people who didn't keep their fasts 'kotchcows'. I don't know the etymology behind this one)