May 9, 2010
Ummi
Tweet 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. read more
Feb 10, 2010
15 – fi misr
Tweet At a masjid fi misri just before maghrib I find jidatee* with her nose in His Signs, while a metronome of bone on bone keeps time with each fatha, each kasra. Those knees creak as much as the scuffed plastic of her chair. She’s not really my grandmother. I hear only one word out of her hundred. “Ana la atakalam arabiyya”, that’s... read more
Jun 29, 2006
Lessons from the Lift Club … (part one…in progress)
Tweet an attempt at memoir/nostalgic indulgence. crit most definitely welcome. ——– We were second-hand lions; Hash, Batman and me.That’s what Batman would say, after a long day capped with a handrolled cigarette – cherry tobacco swaddled in a liqourice flavoured Rizzla. We’d lean against the car, watch the sun slip into... read more
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