Attempting Flight

A compilation of all the things I am passionate about: Islam, Education, Beauty/Feminism, BOOKS (Harry Potter tops them all), Food, Running/Dancing/Soccer, Politics (Icky, I know).

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#Ramadan challenges.

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Dua for the Twenty-Fourth Day of Ramadhan اَللّـهُمَّ اِنّي اَسْأَلُكَ فيهِ ما يُرْضيكَ وَاَعُوذُبِكَ مِمّا يُؤْذيكَ وَاَسْأَلُكَ التَّوْفيقَ فيهِ لاَِنْ اُطيعَكَ وَلا اَعْصيْكَ يا جَوادَ السّائِلينَ O Allah, on this day, I ask You for what pleases You, and I seek refuge in You from what displeases You, I ask You to grant me the opportunity to obey You and not disobey You, O One who is generous with those who ask.

Duas from previous days

[magicfolk]

He liked it best when he was with Ron and Hermione and they we’re talking about other things, or else letting him sit in silence while they played chess. He felt as though all three of them had reached an understanding they didn’t need to put into words.

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theoceanlights

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Is it obvious that I haven't picked up watercolours in more than a year?

[niqabisinparis]

The Quran says that your children and wealth are also fitnah for you but you don’t see people reacting to them the same way they do to “women are fitnah.” Do you even know the definition of fitnah. Are we all reading the same book.

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The Hurt is Enough

I’m being dragged down.

By a chain around my right ankle digging deep into my surgery scar; it is connected to a sack filled with dead bodies ready to claw into my skin if they could only reach it. Your fault, they taunt, you didn’t save us.

I try my best not to look down. To avoid the cut-up puppy eyes of the murdered children below or to circumvent the accusing stares of the lifeless elderly, I’m not sure. The bloody-curling screams of those not yet passed sketch arrows in my skin, drawing blood that drips off my body like bullets on the shores of Normandy. Except in this D-day, there shall only be one casualty.

“There is an Ummah we have to help. Responsibilities we have to be up to.” 

No matter how hard I try to plug my ears and look away, nails embed themselves into my gut, tearing at the flesh there. I can no longer breathe. A globe-shaped elephant sits on my chest burning at a slow rate of at 17 miles per minute. Sulfuric acid makes its way down my check, knocking on every cell on its way down, are you still alive? it asks as the tear-tracks cut down to the bone. Now do you feel how we feel, hurt like we hurt?

The Ummah is one body. But my body is already torn to pieces. Fever is already at a stead 429 degrees and counting as the bodies pile up, one atop the other.

Euripides once said there is just one life for each of us: our own. But my life has already passed with that of the lives of those who still remain wrapped in cloth spun from gold and blood, hanging from the chain around my ankle.

There is no happy moral here. No rising above the odds. Not in this story, not now. Later, I might find the strength to wrap up the open wounds and treat the burns, but in this very moment, in this second, there is only hurt that burns deeper than skin, flesh and bone. It burns down to the soul and suffocates even it. In this very second it is enough (but not enough) to simply feel and be felt. In the next, I will have to lean down and hoist the sack of dead and barely-alive bodies back on my shoulder and force myself onward.

But for this very second, the hurt is enough.

[stormbun]

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible, if you’ve got enough nerve.

[harrypotterhousequotes]

[magicfolk]

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Pity magic doesn't love me.

[wrightedgar]

son I think you are ready for the talk *opens harry potter and the philosopher stone book* 

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faseunit

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Perfectly true. If our kids are the same age, we can give them the talk together theoceanlights

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Model : Engy Abdel Moneim

Quote : Fatema L. El Sayed 

[harrypotterhousequotes]

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Shaab Moksoor

Since I epically fail at this blog thing, I think that I'll just maybe either post stuff that I've already written or maybe my daily writing prompts. For now, here's a short piece that I wrote a while ago.

Shaab Maksoor

  The man grabbed the boy’s collar and hoisted him up off the ground where the boy was squatting. Both faces were red: one from anger the other from fright. I got up, to do what I’m not sure. Others swarmed in, cocooning the soon-to-be fight. Calming words quickly flowed out of obliging mouths hoping to smooth ruffled feathers.

  The man owns no property. He sells tea and coffee from his self-proclaimed territory, blocked off by an overflowing dumpster and an overcrowded street corner.  His dingy two-table setup is the aggregation of all his pride. He shines the tired teapot, stacks the depressed little cups and sweeps the abused street curb. The tray that he serves his customers from is better taken care of than his calloused body or worn clothes. The boy owns no playthings. He makes use of sticks and stones which he drafts into his toy box, ordering them around with the authority borrowed from his father’s voice when he beats the boy. His house isn’t a safe place to stay. He sneaks out when his mother isn’t looking, makes his way over to the busy street corner where he squats and organizes his treasures on the street curb. The rows of rocks and broken branches start to grow until he has emptied his pockets and covered up most of the nonexistent sidewalk.  The man takes offense, yelling with all the broken dignity that corruption has left him with. He screams and screams, not understanding that brutality has clogged the boy’s ears and made him deaf to the cries coming from the direction of the dumpster. With his self-esteem so low that the graves of his humanity could be found far above it, the man refuses to let injury pass. He grabs the boy’s collar and hoists him up off the ground where the boy was squatting. The boy gives out a shout that only those without ears can plead with. People gather, unable to restrain decades of hostility triggered by wounded pride. A song plays in the background from a shabby kiosk nearby.

 Ya Yal Midan,

Kunt feen men zaman? 

Hadeth el soor

Nawart el nor

Lamet howalek shaab maksoor

 Where are you now, Tahrir? You broke down a wall and brought in the light but where you once tied us broken people together, you now only push us further apart. Walls do a good job of hiding the nasty truths we had once tacked upon our country’s infrastructure.  Now our government has become the rubber, its people the glue and the accusations that we had once thrown upon the state have bounced off it and stuck on us.

The fight diffuses; the boy scurries off, abandoning his soldiers arranged on the curb. The man goes back to making tea for passing taxi drivers. No one is satisfied. The man’s mouth grumbles about insolent boys. The boy’s eyes looks upon the future version of himself. The man sees the boy staring at him and barks at him to scatter. The boy flees, terrified. I sit back down. 

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Just maybe.

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What if it was me?

To all the people who have been telling me lately to ‘calm down’ with the politics or ‘stay safe at home’. Firstly, I apologize for being a source of worry for you. Secondly, what type of person would I be if I believed in something and didn’t bother to fight for it? That’s right, the worst kind of person: a hypocrite. What confuses me the most is that the ones telling me to stop with my ‘antics’ are the very same people who taught me to fight for what’s right. Let’s agree on some basics: beating children is wrong, beating women is wrong, imprisoning innocent people is wrong, imprisoning children (9-year-olds) in adult prisions is inhumane, letting drug-dealers and thugs go free in order to make room for peaceful protestors in prisons is horrendously wrong. These make up just the tip of the iceberg of things I can personally attest to that the current government does. Are you asking me to stay silent in the face of all this? Still yes? Well then, what if it was me who was beaten, or imprisoned or raped or killed by the security forces? Would you say “poor Fatema, they brainwashed her so thoroughly”? (Really? Me? Brainwashed? As in actually being not just partially, but completely effected by society?  Ha! You’d have an easier time teaching an ostrich complex calculus than get me to bend to the whims of those around me.)  Or would you blame my parents for not “reeling me in”? (HA! If only you saw the arguments we have every time I go down to a march. Certainly, my parents wouldn’t be the ones to blame.)

Or would you put the blame where the blame should be, on the repressive state apparatus that has far surpassed its limit in violence? Now, with my “death” in mind, try telling me, as someone who has had family and friends beaten, detained and killed to stay silent. To just ‘sit at home and stay safe’. Safe eh? My blood is not more valuable than Sonbol’s, Abulrahman’s, Belal’s and countless others. If they risked it all for freedom and democracy, they why the hell shouldn’t I? I’m not saying that I’m trying to sprint my way to martyrdom, as I don’t believe in this, but surely, I have never been one to cower in the corner and let others take the beating. I have prayed istikhara. Several times. And I find that Allah –swt- only gives me more and more opportunities to fight for what is right. It’s an uphill battle to be sure, but it’s one that I will see to the end. #يسقط_يسقط_حكم_العسكر