Watercress

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;”

said Shakespeare.

If this tide rose for me it may have been one year when I met my husband to be, and achieved a lifelong dream of going to art school. Before then, the tide was low and it seemed things would never change, but they did. Perhaps our lives tend to go in cycles like that. If so, then there may be other tides to look forward to and all the exciting possibilites of that. Or maybe it’s only in looking back that it’s possible to see how far the water has risen because at the time, the lifting is imperceptable.

For the longest time I have wanted to learn how to make a kufi but found it impossible to find a beginners pattern on the web or anywhere. So I went back to basics and bought an introduction to crochet which was actually very good, and learned the basics again. This gave me the confidence to try this project. We had one of these kufis at home, so I tried to replicate it as closely as possible. It was a lot of fun and it felt so good to get it finished and see it being worn. Now I want to try different yarns and designs and include some dhikr while doing the work, which will God willing make it extra special as a gift perhaps.

Snow might not be the first image to be associated with a religion like Islam which began in a desert, but there are some interesting connections.

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) was a young boy, two angels came and opened his chest. They removed his heart and after removing a clot from it, washed it in a gold basin which was filled with snow. They then returned his heart to him.

Years later, Aisha reported the Prophet (peace be upon him) saying the following prayer:

“O Allah! Wash away my sins with the water of snow and hail, and cleanse my heart from all the sins as a white garment is cleansed from the filth. “

Snow symbolises purity, and it has a quality of luminosity as well, so it’s not so surprising to associate it with Islam, and some writers have said that the ‘climate’ of Islam is like that of a snow covered landscape - serene, calm, and peaceful and also permeated with light.

For some reason I sometimes find myself thinking about those people I met on only one occasion and wondering about them and remembering our encounter. Our destinies brought us together momentarily in this life, but that meeting has as yet unknown meaning in the akhirah where we must meet again.

It is said that we love or dislike certain people in our lives because we knew them before this life, when all of humanity was gathered together and we in unison acknowledged our Lord. So are the people we encounter only once and briefly any the less significant? I don’t think they can be and I think every meeting with another person is steeped in meaning. If our destiny can’t be separated from who we are, and is in effect part of us, then when two destinies touch, we become part of each other.

One day Nasruddin was repairing some tiles on the roof of his house.
While Nasruddin was working on the roof, a stranger knocked on the door.

- “What do you want?” Nasruddin shouted out.

- “Come down,” replied stranger, “So I can tell it.”

Nasruddin slowly and unwillingly climbed down the ladder.

- “Well!” replied Nasruddin, “What was the important thing”?

- “Could you give little money to this poor old man? ” begged the stranger.

Tired Nasruddin started to climb up the ladder and said,

- “Follow me up to the roof.”

When both Nasruddin and beggar were up on the roof, Nasruddin said,

- “The answer is no! ”

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image souce: http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?photo_id=677542

It’s the last day of Eid, so it was a nice treat to find beautiful Iranian pomegranates in the local supermarket. They were fresher than any I had seen before. My husband says the best pomegranates are the ‘Kandhari’ variety, i.e. those which grow around Kandahar in Afghanistan. I wonder what is the condition of those famous orchards and their farmers now, after all the years of war? Iran, being geographically close to Afghanistan shares in the good fruit growing conditions. The flavour of our pomegranate was intense, an almost fizzy mix of sweet and sour.

photo source: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/details.php?gid=62&sgid=&pid=546

Eid Mubarak, and as the ladies at the prayer said to me this morning - insha Allah, next year in Mecca, or next year in Arafat!

Mubarak to sister Anniyyah on her conversion to Islam!

May she be blessed in her life, and a source of blessing to others.

God is Great, the Guide of hearts!

Congratulations Australia for ousting Howard in the election. After the despicable antics of some of his party’s members in lying to forment race hate and bigotry to frighten people off the opposition, they deserve no less than to be booted out of power. Thank you everyone who voted for decency.

There used to be a time when people could have experiences outside the realm of reason and logic and accept it as a normal part of life. My father talked about those days. It was before electricity had come to the countryside. He thought it had to do with the complete darkness of the night time. Nowadays, we don’t get to experience total darkness outdoors. Light leaches from the towns and roads and reflects off the clouds. My father told stories of the strange things that happened in the pitch darkness, about lights in the sky that people followed, and there were stories of beings that share this world with us, but are not human. (from a Muslim POV, we would recognise these beings as the Jinn)

This all came back to me as I was listening to a talk about Ali Farke Toure, the great musician of Mali. He had some strange and powerful spiritual experiences in his younger days which he felt gave him his strength as a musician.

What Ali Farke Toure and those old folk my father remembered had in common is that they were all immersed in the natural world and they were free human beings. They weren’t penned into little concrete boxes. They had the earth to walk on, not joint jarring pavement. They could see pure night, without the toxic orange fake-light of the ‘civilized’ world to disturb them. They were unhindered from acknowledging the mystical in their lives. It’s more difficult for us. We have to first break through the thick crust of modernism just to be ourselves, just to be natural. It can be done, although it seems the everyday experience of the mystical has been lost to the majority of us.