There is something else beyond nostalgia that accompanies me whenever Facebook recommends a memory. You know, where they show you what you wrote on this exact day maybe a year ago or even more? I am in that phase of life where things happen so quickly sometimes you forget just how much you have grown, … Continue reading prose// the cost of growth
Blog Posts
prose// on swelling and other things
I am in this funny phase of life where time moves quickly and so do I with it. The amount of growth that takes place in even a week astounds me sometimes. I don't know if I were to meet the woman I was even six months ago if she would be able to recognize … Continue reading prose// on swelling and other things
prose// the night of ancestral longing
On this night, 1400 years ago, the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was taken from Makkah to Jerusalem in one night. Space shrank in an unprecedented way. Distance dissolved, the barriers between life and death grew blurry and soft. Prophets who had long been dead rise to pray, Adam and Abraham and Jesus and … Continue reading prose// the night of ancestral longing
prose// on mediocrity and ordinariness and letting myself down
Often, when I force myself, while biting my teeth and clenching my joints, to peer inside me, I all I can see is a deep, dark tunnel stacked neck high in old failures, missed opportunities, a recorded snapshots of moments when I just couldn't jump high enough, or didn't, or forgot to try at all … Continue reading prose// on mediocrity and ordinariness and letting myself down
prose// the length of love
I think about the ways I want to gather up the sounds of my family, pile on as much as my hands and hard drives can carry when we expend ourselves to the very maximum. What lengths for lineage I would leap in a heartbeat! Memorize the laughter, the inflections, the accents, the words they speak in a dialect that is crisp and yet silky in my ear. There are few things as beautiful to my ears as Sudanese Arabic, shuffling its way across the tongues of women who smell like heaven. Everything flows effortlessly from my father's people and the place they proudly represent: the drape of the toub, the bright and blooming karkade that tinkers in glasses, the cold water of the Nile, the long tresses of a laughing girl who flounce her way past me in the masjid foyer.
prose// facing Failure
I am grappling with just so many things this semester. I think the biggest one, right now, the biggest mountain I am staring at and trying to figure out how to cross is Failure. There. I have named it and now I am one step closer to conquering it, which seems paradoxical, and perhaps, it … Continue reading prose// facing Failure
prose// transit, travel, & The Next Big Thing
Here I am, riding on the train back to school from my parents’ home. I realize I spend an awful lot of time in transit. One city to the other, one building to the other, one class to the other. From the room to the laundry room back up the stairs again. I walk. Often. … Continue reading prose// transit, travel, & The Next Big Thing
prose// arabic-less
I was flipping through my class notebook from last year and found this written a midst my philosophy notes: "My arabic is the beginning of my shame. It is emptiness." I do not speak Arabic. My father does and my grandmother does and so do my aunts and uncles and cousins whom I have not … Continue reading prose// arabic-less
prose// jiddu
We all have our own motivations for seeking Heaven: life without pain, wealth, bounty, good food, the Prophet’s home, your home, eternal bliss. I think about and remember those things too when I pray, when I fast, when I pin my hijab into place in the morning. But I also crave Heaven for another reason. … Continue reading prose// jiddu
prose// i want to be beautiful
I have been reflecting on what it means to be beautiful a lot recently. For most of my life, I have wanted to be beautiful. I have often stood in front of the mirror and started at my body and wished away every part of it and prayed over it and begged God to give … Continue reading prose// i want to be beautiful
