Slow burning & the ironing of ribs…

This body we carry around is such a vehicle. It has its own set of really sophisticated detectors; it produces tears when our heart is touched by something sorrow-brining or joy-filling, two emotions on opposite ends of the spectrum. It gives us burning sensations when we feel great joy, or great annoyance, or great anticipation. What is really impressive is that it uses the same set of symptoms to indicate a host of contradicting emotions. Our knees can become jelly-like when we win a prize, go on stage to sing, receive really bad news, or get an unexpected bouquet of roses.

The burning sensation that eats away at our nerves, making us cough nervously and ready to shoot ourselves, can be brought about by many stimuli… it can be triggered by intense locked up emotions that you fight all day long so you won’t express them impulsively, colossally, crazily. I know people with great ability to bear the heat of anticipation, love, emotions, joy, sorrow; they aren’t the “burnt onion” kinda folk.

On the other hand when one’s onion is the type that can turn into charcoal the instant love starts forming in the horizon… expect a lot of suffering. Suffering is not limited to bad things in life, suffering is a word that signifies an over-activity of emotions taking place around the body, the ribs included (Um Kalthoum was right when she sang: Yakwee Adlo3ee – ironing my ribs). When suffering hits the heart that’s when we enter the red zone, but if it’s still in the ribs, bones and flesh, then it’s orange, or yellow, depending on the intensity.

We suffer when we fall in love because we aren’t trained to take high temperature. If we were built from something other than flesh (like Light, for instance), I think our ability to sit calmly inside the fire of love, like Prophet Ibrahim, would have been double fold (“Ya naru kooni bardan wa Salaman 3ala Ibrahim”). I admire people who burn and brace themselves and carry on with life without any sign of fatigue. The “khroo2” (weak) type, like this writer, melt under such pressure and start walking into walls (fooot fil 7eetan).

When fire starts burning the flesh of the impulsive type of woman with onion-ready-to-turn-into-charcoal temperament, then expect a lot of suffering. You try to relieve yourself from some of the internal steam by filtering through some messages here and there, not as an attempt to win over your beloved as much as an attempt to stop yourself from exploding.

I don’t know if the slow ironing of ribs can be captured on x-ray… Ya Mogheeeth.

Men who have 3-meter thick walls around them…

There is a certain breed of man who is locked within a thick, 3-meter wide wall; bullet proof, water proof, everything proof, that you cannot reach that man easily. Why am I complaining? – I am a good example of the same kind of wall-locked woman.

But it is quite interesting and challenging to see the “protection” mechanism at work. The worst kind of man (romantically speaking) is the man who maneuvers from behind barricades. He comes out to meet you when you’re totally un-interested, and runs back in at the faintest sign of interest. Very tiring in deed, very tiring.

He communicates with you using everything, but straight-forward language, as medium. He knows (and that’s the part I hate) that you are picking up on all the sign language he is using; he plays with your heart’s strings from a distance, making sure it beats a little bit for him, but without putting himself in a compromising position where he has to reveal himself, and open his heart and get involved and fall in love, and … eventually get hurt (or hurt you). I know, it’s the getting-hurt part that keeps them hiding inside their shell. 3adi.

The merits of straightforwardness

A few days ago I met a Sufi man, not for the first time, he happens to be in my community of Sufi chanters, regularly attending Zikr (Sufi gatherings and Hardas). He shocked me with his straightforwardness, although what he said was something I knew already. Hearing it out loud was something completely different.

The veils inside

It’s very interesting to see how there is a wall between what we think about inside our heads and hearts (we are veiled & divided), and the expression we create into the universe. Some thoughts dwell inside our hearts and minds for decades but saying them out loud can make them lose their meaning, or maybe shock us a bit, or take them from the safe realm of being inside our “Secret” (sirr) and out into the desecrating world we live in.

Some people treat love this way, they cherish you so much that they don’t let you know – unless after they lose you – and of course when you realize how great their love for you has been while they have been making you walk over broken glass and coal, you start appreciating your training in the field of communication. Communicators are people with such a great blessing, not all people have that talent, my heart goes out for the ones who don’t (myself included)!

Benchmarking love

What the Sufi man did was create a new benchmark for my expectations from men; a very high, unreachable one. He vocalized the impossible; I am positive no other man would be comfortable enough with his soul to say what he told me – it’s totally out of this world. He is a Sufi Sheikh with whom I have frequent conversations, we have great rapport, and understand each other without even talking. Sometimes he reads words right off my mind before they reach my tongue.

What he told me made me realize that there are at least 3-meters of wall & clay and steel around the man I am faintly, barely, occasionally, distantly, and  patiently “flirting” with… if this description applies (talk about great fun!). It’s the thickest wall I have every bumped into in my whole life… so thick one really wonders… is there something going on or what is this exactly.

Raising the white flag on you, my Damascene gazelle.

Fate & the asking of Hearts: Ibn Arabi reveals…

Many recent conversations I had with people I’ve known for a month or two, spoke to one time or more, or met for the first time, were about general info: how come you decided to do this or that? or change this? or be here…?

Many questions are answered this way: “It’s Fate. It just happened and I don’t know how. I was planning on going one direction and God steered me into another and here I am.”

When you give an answer like that people think you’re avoiding the “real” answer and stare at you blankly as they wait for the real answer to come. What you just said simply doesn’t register; it’s like when people don’t really listen when they ask you: how are you today? And you say, “good, it’s been busy, but all is well.” If you ask them next day about the answer they got, odds are they’ll stare at you blankly because they weren’t supposed to remember in the first place!

Back to the Fate remark. So you say it was Fate, you get the blank stare and the usual, “yes, buss, ya3ni, how come you did so and so?” Meaning, “we live in a world of cause-and-effect and each one of us has a life that is more or less steered by someone else who has got a plan lain out for him/her – like parents, family, siblings, fears, society, restrictions, social codes, relatives – so how come you are making decisions on your own, and what made you make those decisions, and based on what?”

Their “buss ya3ni” also implies, “don’t talk to me about Fate, that’s philosophy, come down to earth and talk to me in simple cause-and-effect terms and don’t stuff the conversation with the unknown, or the beyond… let’s touch upon the external shell of things and let’s not delve into things unfashionable like talking about our lives from complicated spiritual viewpoints & contexts.”

You pick up on the underlying message, you revert back to your subconscious for more answers and you find out that the answer is: “It’s Fate. I didn’t really plan it, although I wanted it, I didn’t work for it although I sent that application or made that call, I didn’t pursue it, in fact I was pursuing something else when Fate steered me into taking those actions, those decisions… how did Fate do so? By planting in my heart the true desire for them.” Well, gladly those words never came out of my mouth; I think this would be a great departure from coolness if I ever did – lol.

Follow your Heart

Someone recently said to me, “follow your heart.” I wanted to say, “I am following my heart,” but it sounded too lame so I didn’t utter those words. Fate & Heart are very close brothers. Heart is where destiny leaves its messages, if we listen carefully and follow the Heart’s true calling, we fulfill destiny’s call, if we don’t, we suffer. One learns this the hard way. Every single time one ignores the Heart, one ends up hurting oneself. Every time one follows one’s Heart, one is relieved from the fires of not living within integrity, true spiritual integrity.

Living within integrity seems to be more than just living within the ethical codes one believes in. There is the spiritual integrity that comes from one living in perfect harmony with one’s Heart and inner calling. That’s the integrity that brings about the thing people look for in magazines, jobs, trips, romances, love stories and friendships: Peace.

Peace becomes a frequent visitor when one is living within spiritual, Heart-grown integrity. Nights become sleep-ful when one is waking every day to a life lived within what Heart wants and truly desires. And this is not some theory about mastering one’s life, their are experience-rs who have tried it, tasted it and known it.

Ask your Heart – “Istaftee Qalbak”

In Sufism, Ibn Arabi (Qaddasa Allahu Sirroh Al Kareem) says that what God throws in the Heart is what one must revert back to, listen to and follow. He writes in one of his two books, “The Meccan Revelations” and “Rasa2el (Letters of) Ibn Arabi,” that the Heart is the place where God plants His Will. Therefore Ibn Arabi advises souls, “Istaftee Qalbak,” (ask your Heart).

Do you have any idea how hard it is to ask your Heart? Your Heart; not ask yourself, or ego, or thoughts. Ask your Heart. You Heart does not include mom’s opinion, nor what Opra says, nor what media in general agrees on, nor what most marketing books say is true, nor what your peers believe is what is best for you, nor is it your own perception about your own destiny and occupation, nor is it about your great desire for that man/woman that comes from somewhere other than the Heart, nor is it about what history has proven to be the promise of those who look and live like you, me, us.

Asking one’s Heart is about putting aside all paradigms, taking off all cloaks, all hatred, all desires, all thoughts, all anticipations, all plans, all pressures, all pasts, presents and futures. Asking Heart is about not knowing, not controlling, not demanding, not steering… it’s about total surrender to that message in the Heart, which might be totally out of this world (if one happens to have a narrow view on life).

Asking Heart (Istiftaa2 al Qlab) is about being free from everything, everyone, every “reality” (for realities are not Truths), it’s about reaching a level of consciousness where there is La Ilaha Illa Allah (there’s no god but Allah). Expectations, desires, ego chatter, plans, opinions (etc) are gods. In one’s Heart, when all of those “aghyaar” (Sufi term meaning “others”) are left outside the sacred room of the Heart, the Truth reveals itself, and Fate unfolds, one’s true calling is vividly heard and you start following your path.

Hats off to those who follow the Heart, who are brave enough to do so, who don’t fear anyone, who boldly step into the unknown with great faith in their Heart’s calling and greater faith in the source of that calling, Allah, the Most Beautiful, the Most Generous, the Most Merciful who’s set up on His Throne (Al Ra7man 3ala al 3arsh iStawa…).

Sisters in the smoke & the Syrian cigarette

The smoking sequel goes on. Moral of the day: Don’t fear falling back into old habits, for they may take you down new paths and journeys (I’m not encouraging smoking, just making it kosher for the day).

The day (22.12.2008) when I collapsed into my need for a cigarette, I had to take mom somewhere boring (some book signing event), so I had the car to myself for half an hour. After having to smoke my first cigarette – due to unbelievable joy that visited me from the great unknown that morning, I took the car for a ride around Damascus’ busy streets.

I went to Mazzeh, and hurriedly parked the car anywhere, anyway arbitrarily in the street, where a few passers by eyed me, having stormed out of the not-too-well-parked car to buy a pack of fags – no pun intended – and a lighter from Hamada. Then of course, from the supermarket next to it.

Mom hates the smell of cigarettes (let alone the not-so-good news of the habit kicking back into my life), so I opened all the windows and drove away to savor my 2nd cigarette that day.

Since the last time I worked a lighter was almost 2 years ago, I broke the one I had just bought while nervously trying to produce fire (FIRE!!), so I slowed down, with music blasting, windows open, with a red nose (because of cold and addiction) and was totally zoomed in on trying to create a spark from the broken lighter in my hand. I kept on creating blue spark after another in hopes of creating any glimpse of fire, to no avail.

I was dying for a cigarette when an angle passed by in the shape and form of a middle aged woman. She passed by and saw me crazily struggling with my lighter, a cigarette in my mouth, parked the wrong way on a busy street, with flash on, absolutely unaware of my surroundings. She kept on walking and looking at me, we caught eyes, but I didn’t really “see” her – then she took a few steps back and said, “you need a lighter, I understand, we are sisters in the smoke, we understand and feel with each other, ya 7araam (oh, poor you), there you go,” and she lit her lighter for me, extended her hand through the window across, I stretched myself over to the passenger’s seat next to me and received her timely rescue very gratefully. She made sure my cigarette was doing alright, then backed off and bid me good bye.

I was taken by this woman’s great understanding and compassion for me. This is Syria. People pick up on your need, feel it and act on it. This never happened to me elsewhere. But in Syria, people feel with you, they have great empathy for each other. I am glad I smoked that cigarette, it allowed me a nice interaction with a nice lady. Thank you, mysterious lady!

El mohem, I puffed away, losing most of my senses in the act, driving speedily, with hair flying all over the place, windows open, cold air whipping against my cheeks, other male drivers maneuvering to cut me off (because that’s exactly what I was doing to them – we call that “batwaneh” in Jordanian dialect – from “between,” and which is called over here “mta7asheh” or “zig-zagging”).

And then it hit me… what am I doing? This is so un-Sufi; this reflects adolescence on wheels! I immediately went into another trance of thoughts, of hours of reflection on my self accusation, what is Sufi and what is not, and whether I was being judgmental or not… and that’s another story altogether. The important thing is my first pack of cigarettes ever in Damascus is sitting next to this keyboard, waiting for me to pay it a visit…

The side effects of joy: Holy smoke!

It hit me like a train crash; Joy. I opened my email yesterday morning to find great news that I have been waiting for, for a few months, a lot of hours, many self-inflicted comas. When you wait for something to happen, secretly praying to Allah that it happens, getting ready for it not to happen, going through all the stages of patience, faith, surrender, acceptance, bracing yourself for whatever God has in store for you – and then it happens… you crash under the pressure. You simply crash, especially that out of all the tens of tens of attempts your ego tried to make it happen, the only move you make with no strings attached, no hope, no expectations, not even the slightest light shining through from the tunnel of life – works out, and works out greatly!

Joy is a sensation that starts somewhere in the mind or soul, I don’t know where. Your cells open up and start breathing after a long period of waiting, they want to celebrate, they want to lose control, they might even want to sin and become as carnal as they could muster. They have been dormant for so long under the spell of patience, it hurts when there comes sudden joy. It hurts when a 3 meter-wide gate opens instead of a small window, it’s mind blowing to see sudden rain after long periods of drought. Ya Allah, ya Allah, why do we suffer in loss and gain, sorrow and joy, why don’t we just flow?

It starts with feeling totally blown away, then you thank Allah a hundred times or more, you get swept away with feelings of every sort… those are powerful emotions that overtake your system… and then you crave for a cigarette, for in deed, old habits die hard.

You smoke that lonely cigy, you get dizzy with euphoria, you are silent, as ever silent, for you have learnt to go about life silently. You don’t know how to celebrate joy, you have forgotten what it’s like to jump up and down, because you have lived through thick and thin and know that joy is the sister of sorrow, and both should stay locked inside the heart. You know exhibitionism is against your spiritual beliefs… so instead of telling the whole world: I got it… you smoke a cigy. And when you do, they kick back in, your addictions to life find the perfect opening in the door, that little crack in the shell, and they hurry back in before you compose yourself and treat that moment of joy like any other moment of daily, mundane living.

After almost two years of quitting the fag, you can be defeated by a sweeping moment of joy, and become a smoker again.

It’s funny how the second day (today), you wake up shaking with your desire for another cigarette. You smoke but still you are shaky, the whole world means nothing when the body craves for a puff. You come back from your little smoking trip only to find you have two thoughts in your head; am I smoking because of joy? Or am I just crashing under the pressure of too many good things happening at the same time in such miraculous timing and power?

God bless you Syria. This only happens here! Oh, and this happens when Syria decides to become smoke free in public places in 2009… hmmm.

Being free…

Freedom is yet to be benchmarked. No one can claim “being” free, yet one can claim “feeling” free. The only way to feel free is to compare it to another state. One feels “freer” but not just free. It’s like wanting so badly to go to the bathroom, and once the business is taken care of, one feels free. But it’s not freedom, it’s the feeling of being freer than what was more suppressive.

The freer one gets, the more mediocre past freedoms will sound. Then you realize freedom is from within and you start bringing back everything past you threw away in the name of freedom, because you walked the path and you know that freedom is illusive.

That’s why ritual is beautiful. Ritual is home of the disillusioned. You try to find freedom by breaking down social codes, by venturing into the unknown, by throwing away discipline, only to find yourself back into the realms of discipline and ritual, praying five times a day, sitting daily on your own to do Zikr (recitation of Allah’s names & prayers).

There is great freedom in stillness, in being able to let go of the whole world while you are locked inside a room. There is great freedom in being married to discipline. There is great freedom in submission to The One, Allah, the Most Beloved, Most Glorified, may Your Name be my Compainion, dead or alive.

The day the camel ran over to kill me…

Two years ago, or maybe last year, I can’t remember… I went camping with my friends in this place called Little Petra, 10 kilometers away from the well known Nabataean city of Petra, south of Jordan. (I sound like a press release, don’t I?).

El mohem, my friends stayed in the major tent at the camping site to play cards, one of the most boring things one can do on a trip (or generally). So… I decided to pick up my guitar and lyrics and sit on my own in an acoustically rich spot a bit out of their sight, but only a few meters away. I picked a cushion-filled area romantically nestling in a hollow cracking open the desert mountain hugging the site. The acoustics were great so I sat there for an hour or so singing, experimenting with sound and enjoying the experience.

At one point when I was still in the Zone, unaware of my surroundings, very much taken by the experience, focused on the new song I was making, I looked up… and it looked like a huge camel standing in the distance had just locked eyes with me. The minute our eyes locked, he started running towards me producing clouds of dust around him…

Darn, he was fast, there was no time for me to do anything other than stand up and lean on my guitar. In a second I could tell I was trapped, and no escape plan would work; I was inside a hollow, to run forward was to get even closer to him and die earlier. So I decided to accept my fate and die where I was standing. It hit me that I was going to die that day. “That’s it,” I said to myself. I savored those last moments of awareness, of being who I am, of being “alive” – and uttered “Ash-hadu Anna La Ilaha Illa Al Allah wa Anna Mohammadan Rasool Allah” in my heart. A certain quiet came over me and I was ready to leave my body to my next life.

Life felt so trivial at that moment, nothing mattered anymore, there was emptiness and a camel running over to kill me.

The camel was one meter away, one meter away, when two Bedouins jumped in from nowhere, controlled and steered him away. They struggled with him a bit, but managed to walk him back to the tree he was tied to.

I stood there for a few minutes. I had the awareness of a dying person a second ago, now I had to bring back all the attachments and mental processes related to living. I was still on earth… what a feeling!

I carried my things and went to see my friends, who were all stunned because they saw the camel run and thought I must have been dead by now. It all happened so fast and they had no time to move (or they were traitors hung on a game of cards and didn’t mind losing one of their troupies for a lousy victory). We laughed about it, and they all were happy to see me come back from the tunnel.

What I learnt that day was… death was an easy thing to do. Just trust in Allah and let go. I also captured the true taste of freedom; when you let go of everything and see one Truth, Allah – when there’s only Allah, there’s great freedom. Freedom is to shed all skins, all things, all of life and stand timeless in a moment where there is nothing, no past, no tomorrow. A moment of goodbye is freedom.

Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? “God is One.”
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don’t call all these lights “the Light of God”;
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
…Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.

- Rumi

Allaaaaaah!

It’s popular belief among Sufis that Damascus is the Spiritual Sufi capital of the world. Ibn Arabi is buried in Damascus along with a huge number of “Awliya,” whose knowledge, love and history are threads that weave into the fabric of Damascus. Those threads do not leave the fabric; eternally yours, Dimashq.

This city has so many secrets that are revealed to those who have white hearts; unattached to material life, clean from greed, ego and lust. This city is Love manifest. This city is mercy, kindness and generosity. No where else in the world has the Soul this place has, nor is there a place close to being as beautiful inside-out like Damascus. I am a traveler whose been to so many countries for music & media. The two most beautiful cities I’ve been to (not only visually, but also experientially) are Damascus and Istanbul. You can feel – with every cell in your body – how these two cities are cities of Light. You walk down the street and you feel happy; not the fleeting kind of happiness one feels eating chocolate, or receiving a love letter. It’s happiness that touches the very deep core of one’s heart, of one’s being.

Uttering God’s name “Allaaaaaaah” in Damascus is an experience on its own. Allah ya Damascus, Allaaah!

Wood-plank sleeping!

Days like this should be spent in solitude! I’m glad I fell upon this quote. It puts things into perspective. Eid is approaching, a lot of work needs to be done before we sleep for a week… energy reservoirs are running thin.

Can’t write something more focused than this. I just finished working on two documents that depleted every last cent of energy I had. I’m even using expressions I never used before. I love the stream-of-consciousness kind of writing. You just write what pops up in your head without steering it towards a specific shore. Speaking of shores. My shore is ignoring me these days (lol). No prob, there is plenty of time. One can afford spending a couple of extra few days on the wooden plank floating over the waves. Good thing is, I can see the shore, so wood-plank sleeping isn’t a bad idea after all.

Sometimes being human is boring. Pain is boring, drama is boring. You feel like you want to shed your skin and just leave for eternity. Love is boring, social life is boring. On the other hand, wood-plank sleeping, while you wait for nothing, is enjoyable. You wait for nothing to happen. That’s a good day. When you wait for something to happen, you are chained. You wait, floating on the waves, you look around and see no one, you see no one, feel nothing, and expect nothing.

Ah, ain’t that the beautiful taste of freedom!

Kibbeh hallucinations & the world before 9/11!

Image by 50% Syrian, created this morning on Photoshop, mimicking the art of Hundred Waters of Veinna - with an Arabian, Kibbeh-dotted theme

This Kibbeh-saga image is inspired by the art of one of Vienna’s greatest architects, called Hundred Waters (HundertWasser). I got to know about his art the second time I paid Vienna a visit, one day after 9/11 turned the world into a gloomy place. The first time I visited Vienna, I was 9 years old, so I don’t think I “saw” much of the things adults pay attention to, including HundertWasser’s art.

The second visit was a bit weird. The world was still “alright” back then. I was part of a delegation that toured Austria. We took off on September 12, 2001. No one thought much of 9/11 back then; the media blizzard that turned the incident into the world’s biggest tragedy was still dormant.

We were a delegation of happy Arabs touring a “safe” world, we had no “war on terrorism” cloud hanging over our heads, no self-suspicions about our own motives, no fear of being misunderstood (at least not more than the naive image of the camels and tents they thought we left back home). We were warmly welcomed by Viennese tourism officials. Over dinner at one of Vienna’s top restaurants (can’t remember its name, but it overviews a chapel that got burnt in world war I or II), we didn’t speak about terrorists, or the West v.s East, we didn’t dwell on the divide, nor did we eye each other suspiciously. No one asked us if we could travel everywhere without facing visa troubles, no one cared about gloomy issues like that. We spoke about food, culture, and art – excessively. Well, four of us spoke about these issues, in a desperate attempt to camouflage what was going on elsewhere on the table.

We were a delegation of 14 women. Four of us, including this writer, were “normal” people with normal psychological problems, the rest were deranged females on their first-time trip ever outside the country. They looked hormone-driven with all the sexual innuendos, the harassment they gave men on the street, the things they told men. Even for us, the liberal bloc, some of the things we heard them say were shocking, especially that they were single & married, Christian & Muslim, veiled & unveiled women who decided they had a common goal: Let’s harass the men and vent all our sexual and social frustrations. The women looked like a mishmash of cultures, coming from every possible background you could think of. There was the hair-dyed, make-up painted women, walking side by side with veiled, body-odored females, and the mini-skirt kinda folk, in perfect harmony with Christian, short-haired ladies (stereotypes, stereotypes).

Honestly, some of them were ready to devour that half Egyptian, half Austrian tourism official who took us all out for dinner. They revived the Arabian tradition of the Harem around the guy (in a female-dominating kinda way, which made the guy cringe. He once called out for me – since I looked at him in a way that suggested: “They’re gonna eat you alive, poor you” – and said: “Ya sa7afa (media people), what are you doing over there?” – meaning – “girl with the compassionate look on her face, come rescue me Dakheel 3alaiki ana!”). Yes, the four of us, girls who didn’t want to rape the guy, sat on the sidelines of the most aggressive competition to win that man over for husband-ship. I could swear some of them were eye-ing him as a second husband!

Although that trip was culturally shocking, seeing my own country women turn into beasts around one another, I still remember it as the last of the “nice and fluffy” trips into the West. Light-headed traveling & light-weight conversation never took place from that trip onwards; once the 9/11 saga spiraled into very very dark directions. The cloud of a terror-fearing world has successfully formed by the 2nd week of our Austria visit.

9/11″mentality” kicks in !!

On our way back (it was somewhere around September 27, 2001), I was reading through the Quran (as usual) at the Vienna airport, when 3 security people entered the passenger’s waiting area.

A man sat behind me and kept on peering over my shoulder to see what I was reading. It hit me that he must think I’m a terrorist since one of the deliverers of 9/11 “conveniently” left a copy of the Quran with maps and airplane manuals in the car that was found around the scene. I was a journalist, and we were trained to spot conspiracy theory and adopt it at light speed. I can claim I was one of the 1st people who saw where the world was going a few days from 9/11 (lol). I hate the West for injecting copies of the Quran in their media spins!

Anyhow, shortly after, an alarmed-looking woman approached and stood a few yards away, trying to think of a good excuse to talk to me. A third man with walky talky stood at the room’s other end. I saw what they were doing – but since I believed I had every right in the world to read the Quran wherever I was without being suspected of being anything other than a person reading Quran, I stayed put and continued reading while the tension built up in the hall.

A few passengers were asked to change their seats, while I was still reading. Then the man sitting in the seat row behind me stood up, the security woman approached, and the other guy closed in while others ran across from another hall. I thought that was the most ridiculous thing that ever happened to me! I couldn’t believe how extremely brainwashed people were and how stereotypes played a great role in forming people’s attitudes towards one another.

So, I kept reading on, and the woman (since I looked Middle Eastern) spoke to me (of course security people chose to overlook the fact I was wearing a nose ring, a knee-torn pair of jeans, and had my hair all over the place. Stereotypes that usually surround the bohemian kind failed me that day). The woman was very nice. She told me that she’d like to escort me to help me with my bag, since my bag looked a bit heavy for me. My bag was a fixation of hers. She tried to sound as VIP-ish as possible so I won’t feel I was suspect. I kept holding the Quran, and she offered to carry my bag for me.

On that trip I had one bag only, the type and size you could carry on the plane (and the whole idea was that I won’t have to stand at the belt when I arrived home, so I can bolt out of the airport as quickly as possible. I think I was traveling a lot back then and was getting sick of wasted time at airports).

El mohem, the woman insisted to carry my bag, faaa in order not to drill in her conviction of my terrorist inclinations, I allowed her to do so and acted as if I didn’t notice the army of agents walking on both our sides and behind us, I also acted oblivious to the fact that all the passages to other halls on the way were blocked by security people and that we were (excluding the security guys and gals flanking us) the only people heading towards the gate. At the gate, an officer – who looked like someone who had great authority – received me with a cold smile. He said something to the girl, and she looked at me and smiled warmly and said “Maam, let’s take your bag to put it in the baggage area in the plane, it’s heavy and we want you to be comfortable.” At that point, I threw away my composed posture, my I’m-innocent-and-have-no-idea-what’s-going-on looks, and decided those people aren’t making me wait at the baggage belt in my home country! The purpose behind traveling light will not be squandered just because the media machine decided to destroy the image of Quran carriers!!!

You can say I went crazy. Yes, I went crazy. I told them I had rights and I wasn’t stupid, and that they suspected I was a terrorist because I was reading the Quran, and that I noticed how they closed in on me, that I was journalist and I was going to efda7 them (scandalize them) in my own country and in the media, and that no way in hell that bag was going to Baggage (back then threats of this kind were plausible. I guess now if one says something like that, 3adi, they’ll bomb the offices in an accidental raid).

Faaa… I was so crazy with anger that they were actually afraid. The woman told me that they were sorry if I suspected anything, that they “closed in on me” because she thought the bag was a bit heavy for a lady like me – with torn up old jeans on (of course, the bag was feather-heavy and easy to carry) – and that it was airport policy to see to MY comfort. I told her, I didn’t want to feel comfortable and that my bag goes with me on the plane or I won’t be flying that day. She said a few words to the senior-looking man, who was inspecting my passport, and then told me yes, yes, the bag goes with me on the plane.

They inspected the bag, scanned it, opened it, played with it – and obviously ran a security check on me – then suddenly the mood changed. Of course el jama3a found out that my Quran-reading did not carry all the new significance the media had attached to it. They were smiling again, treating me with great ease, their eyes looked at me like I was just another passenger, and to make me feel “trusted” they let me “touch” my bag. Someone else carried it for me, but they let me touch the bag without making me feel like I was going to pull a string and detonate a bomb.

Of course, all of this happened while the security guys were opening chocolate wrappers that belonged to little children whose father wore Afghani-looking clothes!

This whole story was ignited by this morning’s Kibbeh cravings. Why is Kibbeh part of this story? Because my cravings reminded me of life’s little pleasures, and I tried to remember times in my life when I woke up this light-headed. I found out that ever since 9/11, mornings became heavier, life a lot gloomier. That Vienna trip was the last of my Kibbeh-spirited sprees. After which, the opening of light in the world was put out by myths of every kind, media sagas of every shape and fear-infested world dramas.

By the river Barada, I knelt down and cried

To the river Barada, on the occasion of two rain showers only, ever since winter announced itself:

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river

moving in you, a joy.

When actions come from another section, the feeling

disappears. Don’t let

others lead you. They may be blind or, worse, vultures.

Reach for the rope

of God. And what is that? Putting aside self-will.

Because of willfulness

people sit in jail, the trapped bird’s wings are tied,

fish sizzle in the skillet.

The anger of police is willfulness. You’ve seen a magistrate

inflict visible punishment. Now

see the invisible. If you could leave your selfishness, you

would see how you’ve

been torturing your soul. We are born and live inside black water in a well.

How could we know what an open field of sunlight is? Don’t

insist on going where

you think you want to go. Ask the way to the spring. Your

living pieces will form

a harmony. There is a moving palace that floats in the air

with balconies and clear

water flowing through, infinity everywhere, yet contained

under a single tent.

- Jelaluddin Rumi

Moving Water

Water has so many metaphors. It can quench the thirst of the physical, emotional and spiritual traveler. In Holy Quraan, water is mentioned in so many contexts, signifying different layers of meaning: Higher heavenly knowledge, cleansing by Muhammadan Light, worldly prosperity, spiritual prosperity.

So many Water references exist in the Holy Quraan, which are actively used in the Sufi tradition. These include different references to “springs” that stem in the heavens. Earthly water (H2O) is a physical manifestation of spiritual water. Although H2O is a double edged sword that can quench one’s thirst as well as drown nations that are struck by God’s wrath, spiritual water has no duality about it. It cleanses, teaches and fills one with Light.

The symbolic act of cleansing one self ahead of prayer by taking up the act of “Wadoo” goes far beyond the mere cleansing of the body of carnal dirt. Wadoo is the act of accessing spiritual water that cleans eyes, ears, feet, hands and head from things that are beyond earthly sweat. When one dips hand in water, calling upon God’s name with one’s truthful heart, one is cleaning ears from spying on people’s secrets, from things like listening to gossip and backstabbing, or from tempting speech that takes one down the paths of darkness. One is becoming clean from worldliness. When one cleans mouth with water, remaining parsley bits go away, most importantly the mouth is being washed from its sins, its lies, gossip and wrong doing.

The river Barada, is not just a river. It’s the receiver of holy water flowing through infinity – to cleanse us inside out.