Update: All 30 notebooks have been given away. Recipients will be emailed re:postage/delivery details.

I have an irrational philia for notebooks. Large stacks loom on my desk; blank and anticipant. Sometimes, I feel I don’t have the reserves to fill them, but still, I keep buying them; out of some strain of optimism and faith that my brain will deliver.

When I’m not buying notebooks for my legacies, I’m making or altering them. It’s a very soothing exercise. There is nothing more zen to me than rounding the corners of every single page.

I have 30 notebooks to give away, all of them hand-made/hand-altered. I’ve up-cycled materials where I could (old postcards, scrap paper), and each of them retains some charming imperfection that sets it apart from the sterile bulk pre-fab.

If you’d like one of the notebooks, comment on this post or drop me an email (saaleha[at]gmail[dot]com) with the number of the notebook you’d like and what you’d use it for.

If you’re not the journaling type, use the notebooks for listing stuff like:

• bucket lists
• things that need to be done before your hair grows another centimetre
• new people you’ve met
• good/bad deeds
• recipes
• shopping
• books you’ve read
• big, crazy ideas
• your favourite things
• post-sehri dreams
• in-queue doodles
• travel notes
• life-hacks
• new words
• things you’re grateful for
• people you love
• song lyrics
• pictures you’d like to take
• lessons you’ve learnt
• things you’d write in other notebooks

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I always thought I’d be writing books, not designing them.

My first reaction on seeing the announcement was, “Nee vok.”

I have no idea why I was channeling an Afrikaans man at something-past-eleven this morning.

I was so chuffed at making the short-list, that I sketched out no scenarios beyond having my design right up there alongside the freakishly talented (they might be mutants) Fatima Cassim, Yusuf Dajee and Shubnum Khan.

I’m still a bit shell-shocked at the judges’ decision, though I am grateful for this crack at building my design profile.

An ileum-deep thank you goes out to those who included my design in their nominations and to my great friends; whose faith in me is unwavering even when I’m not much of a believer.

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For a long time, things have been kind of cluttering up around here; fiction fried up with food, poetry jamming along with n00b executions and bits of carby-blogging in between.

While the idea of having all my stuff in one place seemed sensible at the time, it now feels like chyme; chewed up and sludgey.

So, I’m going back to the old formula:

Food here,

Fiction here,

Poetry here,

while blogging of the old Electric Spaghetti variety will continue right here.

Following on in this spirit of simplification, I’ve decided to take down the Books&Bikya page. It really hasn’t gained as much momentum as I’d have liked (partly due to me not finding enough time to grow the community).

Perhaps the project will see some future resurrection but until then, I do thank you for your support.

I’m certain you will all stay committed to upcycling and de-cluttering.

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For Ramadaan and beyond.

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I could have been a Sakinah, a Qur-atul-Ayn or a Naseeha.

Had I popped into this world Y-chromosomed and cocksure, I may have been named Dhul Qarnain.

My folks settled on Saaleha; pronounced Saw-li-ha with the h sound emanating from the throat, exactly like when you have to hock up that annoying bit of phlegm.

The name Saaleha means Good even Pious. My parents hoped.

The original spelling of my surname has an H after the A, but for reasons unknown, it was filled in like that on my birth certificate and I’ve seen written examples of my dad spelling his the very same way. I have no idea what my surname means. I want to believe that Bhamjee/Bamjee means something more than “One who opened up a shoe shop in the Oriental Plaza”.

My forefathers were not even Bhamjees to begin with. They were Patels, but apparently, there were just too many of those coming in on the ship to South Africa. So someone had the foresight to adopt the Bhamjee name, thus consigning to me a lifetime of having to explain that we’re not related to the Bhamjee’s Shoes people or that uncle who was involved in the dodgy soccer ticketing business.

The magical webbiness of the internet brought me not only love, but the unique (and blessed) opportunity of meeting another Saaleha Bhamjee (her surname spelt with the H).

My own dear doppelganger and friend, the other Saaleha (of course to her, I am the other Saaleha) thought me terribly potty-mouthed when she first visited my blog. I’m a lot more mellow these days; ask Noorjehaan who was expecting a trigger-happy chain smoker on our first meet. I must have been really angsty.

Saaleha is also a writer, and we’ve even collaborated on a script for a radio drama series. You can see how our names and similar vocations would generate a bit of confusion.

To ameliorate this, I hyphenated my surname after I married. But even though I was presenting myself as Saaleha Bamjee-Mayet, it was still quite muddling for some. The guys down at Adgator got our blog codes mixed up and it’s happened where I’ve received emails not meant for me (disappointingly, nothing risqué).

During our time in Egypt, I decided to pop my dad’s name in the middle of mine. It was one part memorialisation and two parts pragmatism. I dropped the Mayet from that as it just seemed like too much to chew down (though I’m still very much Bamjee-Mayet at heart). Should I ever publish, I will do so under the name Saaleha Idrees.

According to the Department of Home Affairs, I am still, officially, Saaleha Bamjee.

You can call me whatever you want.

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A magical marriage by modge; paper from a Nando’s take out bag and a moleskine cahier. Eat my words.

More prescribed eating:

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Always examine the reasons behind your dislike of someone.

It is either that they remind you of your own shortcomings or that they exhibit characteristics you secretly wish to cultivate.

This is not to say that you have to like everybody. Some people are just unlikeable.

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The khamsa

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The Verse of Light

Lucille’s, Maadi, Cairo. Home of the world’s best burger

Lakeside Cafe, al Azhar Park, Cairo

Masjid Sultan Hassan, Cairo

Masjid ibn Tulun, Cairo

Coptic Cairo

Click here for more photographs from our time in Egypt.

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Photographed cropped heavily due to radio hands*.

*like the faces that are better suited to audio broadcasts.

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Don’t fail me by falling for pretty and popular.

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Some of the things I will miss:

• Walking everywhere at anytime without having one of my hands pat a can of pepper spray
• Halaal everything
• www.otlob.com
• Egyptian halwayat (a key contributor towards the development and nurturing of my third chin)
• Late night shopping
• Interesting shopping
• The kindest, massive-hearted, deep-souled people: Dina, Mae, Dana and their families, Bibi and her buddies
• The cool old and the cool new; the different textures of Cairo
• Getting around on the Metro
• Fresh juice (my favourites are sugarcane and watermelon) at LE1 a pop from the shop around the corner
• The flat breads
• Cheap nutella
• Decent taxi drivers
• City living
• The photo ops
• The stories I could pluck out of the air

Some things I’ll be glad to give a miss:

• The tap water
• Leaky plumbing
• The dust
• The smog
• The litter (these people need a massive zap-it-in-the-zibi campaign)
• The crazy driving
• Playing chicken everytime we need to cross a road
• Dodgy taxi drivers

Will add to this as stuff occurs to me. It’s been a wowsome four months. Our Arabic tongues aren’t quite as fluid as we’d like but this made for a great start.

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…there is no honour killing, only honourable living.
No woman is forced in to or out of a burka.
The mind is valued over the mob.
We celebrate the fi6nah in our mothers over the fitnah.
We walk our own paths towards the Divine, without pissing on the roadsides of others.
We do not take knives to the genitals of our daughters.
We allow everyone their right to love.

TBC.

(note: ‘fitnah’ with an empty mouth ‘taa’ could translate as ‘sedition’, whereas ‘fitnah (fi6nah)’ with a rounded and full mouthed ‘taw’ could translate as ‘perspicacity’.)

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My parents would have been married 28 years today.

I wonder if I would have truly known my mother’s strength had my dad not been taken away.

Widowed at 27, she shouldered her world so squarely, so boldly. She is my daleela, my minaret.

I turn 27 this year, nowhere near the woman she was then and the woman she is now.

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We’ve been here for just over three months and we still haven’t figure out what this framed tapestry on the lounge wall is all about.

I suppose we could ask the landlord but our broken Arabic is guarantee that someone’s decor sensibilities will be offended.

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Well?

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In a glass lightly

Um Ali, the mother of halwayaat

Coffee with chew

Outside Qal3a Qaitbey

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Dovecote

Sometimes, Cairo, with all of its rich fullness and grainy texture, displaces the mind’s quiet.
As both vanquisher and subduer, al-Qahira fills the spaces between thoughts with its Life and Living.
You would imagine that in order to reclaim some of yourself, it would take a great many hours to escape the city’s penetrating charm.
Not so, as you spare just a pair and head out for the desert, along Korymat road, passing through the Helwan tollgate.
It takes an au fait guide to make the necessary u-turns and entries through the unofficial breaks in the concrete barriers of the dual carriageway.
With your back to the churning of industry, you follow on the tracks of camels, donkeys, 4x4s and motorbikes towards Wadi Rischrasch.
The landscape introduces itself by its wide grey plains. The valley soon narrows, drawing in the rocks and cliffs. The colours become earthier. Water has had its way here but you’d never tell by the shattered clay of the earth. But when the water comes, it comes, and the little starts of vegetation are that testament.
Between the hills that look like huts and pareidolic faces cut into the sides of the eroded mountains, stillness replaces what Cairo displaces.
This is where you can speak to yourself and listen.
Further on the way lies what used to be King Farouk’s hunting lodge. Located to perfectly capture and circulate the cooling winds of the wadi, this is where the last King of Egypt would come to find his own quiet (and hunt the gazelle collected, conveniently, for him).
The dovecotes make for quirky sentries and the buildings now function as a rendezvous for bedouins with business (apparently some hush-hush about hashish) and tourists who want a different story to tell.
While the insides of the stables and kitchen declare that Mohammad was here in 2004, the rocks outside bear more ancient graffiti. There are rudimentary depictions of cattle and gazelle you may speculate as being left behind by some keen, and bored, herdsmen hailing from pharaonic times.
If it weren’t for the fresh animal spoors, the wadi may soon trick you into believing you are the only breathing thing left in the world.
And the bedouins too leave their own tracks. Their motorbikes score doughnut rings in the dust and there is an alien packet of chipsys wedged under a rock next to shoes that must have trampled a hundred thousand miles. But this is detritus you can deal with.
The golden walls of the wadi lull and soften.
Here the skies are clear.
Your lungs are loose.
Your thoughts are your own.

More pics (and less windier words) on Naeem’s blog

Crossposted on  Al Rahala.com

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My hands cradle the rising beneath my navel.

Moon-breaths dictate this ebb and flow of my repose.

It has been just three months and the miracle biology in my belly has rendered my profile alien but soothing.

My fingers probe the extra flesh and for some seconds I am rewarded by a stirring; ah, there is work being done.

Yeah, that chicken was pretty damn good.

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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a handsome prince in a big castle by the sea.
When this prince was a little boy, he was cursed by an evil wizard who was jealous of the little child and all the wealth he would inherit.
Because of this curse, the handsome prince lost his voice and could only speak for a minute every day at midnight.
One day, a brave and beautiful princess rode by the castle on her magnificent white stallion.
She had just come back from battling a fearsome dragon who threatened the villagers in a nearby hamlet.
The princess was thirsty and just a little peckish, as dragon-slaying did have the reputation of building up quite an appetite.
She stopped her stallion at the little stream that ran pass the castle.
She and her steed were enjoying the refreshing waters when the stallion suddenly whinnied and looked towards one of the castle’s turrets.
It was then that the princess heard the most beautiful singing.
The voice was strong and rich, and reached the very heights of the heavens.
It was like something straight out of American Idol.
The princess said, “I don’t often say this, but this is easily the best performance I’ve ever heard. This guy definitely has the x-factor.”
She got on to her trusty stallion and dashed off for the castle gates.
The walls were fairly easy to climb and within two winks the princess had scurried up to the tallest turret.
She found herself in a dim and dusty room with only the glow from a fireplace as illumination.
“You’ve got some really bad feng shui going on in here. I’ll give you the number for my guy, he’s really good,” the princess said.
The figure in the corner stared at her in amazement and coughed.
The prince had never seen anything as beautiful as her.
But how would he tell her? His minute was up.
The princess gave the prince a quick once-over. “Not a bad looking chap,” she thought. “With a shave, a new haircut and some styling, he’ll be fit for royalty.”
She nodded at him and said, “You’re a quiet fella aren’t you? I like that. I will marry you.”
The prince reached for his notebook and pen and quickly scribbled, “Er…ok. But what about this curse?”
“Curse, shmurse,” she said. “This is a blessing. A husband who doesn’t nag? What more could I want?”
And with that she slung him over her shoulder and jumped out of the window to land squarely on her waiting steed.
She lived happily ever after.

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… Lucille’s in Maadi does indeed make the best burger on this planet.

When the menu says the chili cheese burger comes smothered in chili and cheese , they’re talking real mo’ fo’ motherin’.

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