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Celebrating Discipline
Islam is a faith like no other in that we celebrate acts of worship. Our main two celebrations, Eid, both happen around two (of five) of the pillars of faith: fasting and pilgrimage.
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يستحقون الهداية
لم أكن أعتقد أن الانتقال للعيش في الغرب سيكون صعب، بالأخص أنني لست غريبة على الغرب فلقد عشت أيام طفولتي هنا حتى بداية المرحلة الثانوية وسافرت لدول غربية مرارًا وتكرارًا وعملت مع جهات غربية لسنوات ودرست الماجستير في دولة غربية الخ ولذلك أعتقدت أن الانتقال سيكون شئ سهل وسلس وربما بديهي في التعود. ولكن الواقع كان مختلف تماماً فالاستقرار في الغرب من أصعب التحديات وأثقلها حملاً دون تجاربي مع الحياة. وربما من ما زاد من الأمر صعوبة وبرز الفرق بين الحياة في الغرب والشرق هو تأثير الجائحة والتي جعلتنا نختبئ بين جدران منزلنا لأشهر ونعيش في مساحة ضيقة ولكن في ذات الوقت مساحة مريحة تحمينا من أي شي دخيل او غريب علينا ولذلك أصبح لدي تعود على “منطقة الراحة” أكثر من أي وقت صعبة
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You don’t owe anyone anything.
I was talking to a friend this morning and remembered one of the deepest lessons I’ve learnt in the past couple of years: I don’t own anyone anything.
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Consciousness
We are in a world that sells to us the idea that we can escape our everyday reality. That there is a way to let loose and ignore it all, as a way to feel – momentarily – better. We see it in pop culture, media, books and anywhere our eyes set upon and through everything we hear: Netflix and chill, binge eating, intoxication, retail therapy and the other multitude of things that take us far from our reality for a bit or make us feel numb. We are constantly being marketed a non-satisfactory means of filling in the discomfort we feel within us.
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God Never Promised You Days Without Pain
The title to this post in a line from one of my favourite songs Warrior//Worrier by Outlandish. I was driving on the highway after dropping my daughter at school a few weeks back and as I was driving I was scanning my head for trying to think of something to listen to that would give my spirit a spark. This song came to my mind and I turned it on; from the first line it was like it was the missing piece that tied so many life experiences together into a nice package that made it all make sense. That’s the beauty of art – something I have come to really appreciate in these « panorama » days of our lives.
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Barren Walls
I’m sitting in my kitchen somehow too exhausted to finish unpacking but yet with an inspiration to put into words what I’m feeling. I feel a restlessness to write. The light in the kitchen is dimmed and the rest of the house is dark. I can hear the freezing rain pouring down outside while the furnace occasionally starts up downstairs to keep the house warm.
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The Year 2020
We have all, without exception, experienced a challenging and difficult year. I too have had quite the experience that I can say has broken me in a way I never could have foreseen.
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How to Write a Post-Grad Essay
Writing an essay can be a really difficult task and one that is challenging to even just start. Here I hope to share some tips that I learnt that really helped me with my essays in grad school.
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Post-Graduate Tips: What I wish I knew when I first started my Masters
Choosing to pursue a postgraduate education is a big step and can be very overwhelming. I would say it took me about two months into my postgrad for my heart to stop racing and to be able to let it sink in. Along the way, over the past year I have learnt many things and devised different habits and skills to keep up with the never-ending reading and writing that the student-life entails. In this blog post, I hope to share with you the things I wish I knew when I first started my postgrad.
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Home?
Home has always been a difficult concept. I grew up in the West, during my childhood I remember getting annoyed when my parents called Libya home. I remember them speaking of “when we are going to go home” and get really annoyed, Canada was home. We were Canadian. I remember when we finally “went home” and I was upset, our relatives would say to me “you were eventually going to come home, how long were you intending to stay abroad?”
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Aching Pain
The days have folded into nights and I have lost count. The past 21 days have been a blur.
I do not live in Gaza, or anywhere in Palestine, and I am not Palestinian. But my heart, nevertheless, aches uncontrollably. I am bound by a responsibility as a human, as a Muslim, as an Arab to feel for my brothers and sisters. This means that I am obligated to know their history, their stories, their suffering and that I too feel their pain.
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Khadija Ali ••• خديجة علي 