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A New Year

I'm endeavoring to get back to writing daily. Maybe this old blog is a good place to start. Not sure. Only time will tell. Consistency has not been my strong suit since 2010 I have been out of the nine to five Western work world since then, but I wonder if I was ever very consistent in the sense of doing the same thing the same way for an extended period of time.

2017 was a rough year because my mother passed away. She died on December 18, 2017 after a seven year decline into dementia. She became less and less herself as the years went by and this was sad and depressing for everyone, most of all my father. But he coped very well.

When her death was probable according to the doctors, he called me in Pakistan to say it was up to me but perhaps I should come home so i did. I was relieved to be able to get there in less than a day. I booked the flight at 4:00 pm and was on the plane later the same night. Since Pakistan is nine hours ahead of NY, I arrived at JFK just a day later.

She died with my brother, my father, her aide, Melanie, our housekeeper Vickie, and myself in the room. She was at home, in the hospital bed she had slept in for most of those seven years. The hospital released here on hospice care, which means she came home to die. She received oxygen and medication but no food for about five days and then she slowly and quietly died. There was a day or two of difficult breathing at the end. The death rattle is a real thing and it is quite horrible to listen to.
When you hear it, you start to think every breath will be the last. and when the last one finally does come, there is a sense of relief.

I am a person who believes in God.  While she was alive and able to comprehend, I tried to get my mother to believe in God and to have faith. She would often get annoyed at me for bringing up the subject of God or religion and would ask me not to talk about it. I still tried, but mostly by silently asking God to open her heart and especially for Him to have mercy on her when she could no longer speak or eat or do anything for herself. God describes the conditions of dementia, Alzheimers and senility in the Holy Quran: 

16:70. God has created you, then He causes you to die. And among you are those who are deferred to the age of senility so they do not know, of what they once knew, anything at all. Surely God is All-Knowing, All-Powerful.

Here final death did have a quality of mercy to it and I take that as a sign fom God that he answered my prayers. While she took her final breath, she raised her hands. For many months before her death, se did not have much control over her hands. They were mostly useless to her, curled in on themselves.

Six Years Later

Six Years Later!

Hard to believe I'm saying that. Have six years gone by since I last wrote on this blog? The whole world has changed since then. In the past six years I've traveled more than I ever would have thought. Back and forth from the U.S. to Pakistan with side trips to the U.A.E. , Istanbul and Konya and a year long stint as an English instructor in Saudi Arabia

My overseas adventures are mentioned in my book, The Eye of the Heart. It's a spiritual memoir of my journey to Islam and what happened in my life after that. I'm publishing it through Niyah Press and it will be out in late 2016, Inshallah (God-Willing). The writing itself has been quite a journey, one I started long ago, with my very first journal, first article, first poem. Alhamdulilah, I'm so glad to see it all come to fruition.

I'm going to use this blog for some sneak previews and for the photos that go with each chapter. First a word on the title. Hazrat Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam and nephew of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said,

     “The vision of the eye is limited; the vision of the heart              transcends all barriers of time and space.”
 

As a child of the sixties and seventies, I was schooled to "think with my head, not my heart." This never made sense to me. When I came closer to God, I realized I didn't have to choose between the two. "The heart is the seat of intellect". Hence my title, The Eye of the Heart. Stay tuned for more to come!

My Afghanis

Baghee, panni, Baghee, roti!
A simple request for bread and water. My Afghan kids are at the gate and if I don’t come out soon they’ll ring the bell, alerting the whole neighborhood to their noisy presence.
Eayk minute! I reached for a nearby scarf to throw over my head, Pak. style but not really. A woman isn’t fully dressed here unless she has her dupatta slung around her body in some fashion when she goes out of the house. As usual, I’m evolving my own style. This morning, my jalabiyya was so comfortable I didn’t change or go to the grocery to get something for their breakfast... Anyways, they eat whatever I give them: apples, biscuits, a little porridge left from my lavish breakfast. I added milk and honey, so I don’t think it was too bad. They ate it. They’ve also sampled peanut butter and jelly lately and liked that, too.
After eating, it’s time to play. Lailmina, Zargilleh, Zarmina and Shazia have brought clay with them, soft, red clay, dug up from the riverbank near a local construction site. Lailmina sets about making a whole kitchen set complete with a pot of chicken curry simmering in a pot. The younger girls each make a pot or two. We have a tea party complete with clay biscuits and fancy tea cups, a miniature pot and milk from the gayn (water buffalo) that Shazia has made. She is a real pip. Must be about four to five years old and wants to prove she’s better and tougher than anyone, boy or girl who tries to mess with her. But today she was at her creative and imaginative best, hosting a tea party for us.
Pakistan is a tough place to live, but you can easily fall in love here. Lailmina is about seven but she is tall, like a nine year old. She’s thin and lanky, but strong, and she has beautiful, brown understanding eyes. Arnagul is a little older, about 12 maybe, with the deepest, most glittering eyes of all. There is a whole group of them, including Heer Bibi, who wants to wash every chance she gets, especially her hair. There is no clean running water in the ramshackle huts they call home. They sleep three, four or more to a bed, a simple charpay meant for one. They dream of having a double bed when they get married. After the bed comes the swaddled baby lying on the bed Arnagul fashions from clay this morning. Not to be outdone, little Shazia makes a whole man and they all chuckle at her creation.
I noticed these Pathan, or Afghan, children, as soon I began living here in Chatta, about two weeks after I arrived in Pakistan. They were on the highway, cutting dry grass, and in the bazaars helping parents who had stalls there. But I didn’t start really seeing these children until I saw Lailmina.
Walking to and from the school where I help with English twice a week, I would observe groups of five to seven children with large burlap and plastic rice bags on their backs, picking up trash. Then one day I saw a group of them clustered around something on the other side of the high curb that separates the street from the muddy creek that the water buffalo wallow in. One of them called out happily and excitedly to her friends, Sayp, sayp! I went over to see what it was they were so delighted about. I looked down into a mess of rotten apples that had fallen from a tree.
I know they love apples, because they’ll eat as many as I have, along with cookies and any other treat I can find them. One day it was ice cream that made them happy. Another it was Pepsi and they were practically delirious with glee, even though each one only got a quarter glass full. These are things they love, just like all kids.
But what they really come here for is food. The fun comes second. They need the pot of rice I cook for them and serve with whatever is left over from our dinner the night before. Or I make daal, (lentils) which are quick, cheap and filling. They need the clean water that comes out of my tap to drink or to wash with. Sometimes they just need to use the bathroom and want to play with the flush toilet, a novelty in their lives.
These are my Afghan girls. There are also three boys. Ali is the oldest, tall and lanky. A younger boy is short and chubby. He likes chasing the girls and climbing the columns that flank the sides of our home. The third boy is quiet and dignified. He usually likes to stay out of trouble.
Ali recently found a broken MP 3 player somewhere in his ramblings and was trying to get it to work. But when he saw my camera batteries had died, he took the batteries out of that MP 3 and put them in my camera. It still didn’t work, so he tried some other batteries he had in his pocket. No luck. He collects all kinds of scrap metal, which fetches more money than plastic bottles and discarded cardboard boxes. So does the broken glass I’ve seen them stuff into their bags.
They eat lunch, and then play their games. They love the space of the courtyard for tag, climbing the columns and high jump games. They are highly imaginative and spontaneous. They’ve never been to school. One can’t even imagine their boundless energy being contained in a classroom. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the opportunity of going to school. For now, the world is their classroom, with all the harsh and complex reality that is Pakistan today.
I’ll never forget the day Saima, Arnagul, and Marina, the older crowd, saved my life on the highway. I had gotten a taxi to go to the Daewoo bus station for my four hour trip to Lahore After I got in the taxi, the driver started asking me how to get there! As is our usual plan, if a driver doesn’t seem to know where to go, I call my husband, Asad, and he talks to the driver. It usually works fine. But this time, after yelling at the driver, Asad talks to me and tells me, Get out of that taxi and get another one. This guy doesn’t know where he is going. Okay………
I gestured for the driver to stop. It was less than a quarter mile from where we started out. I hop out and he has the nerve to ask me asks for money! Asad, still on the phone, tells me to just walk away, as I had already started doing. Suddenly, who should I see materialize by the roadside as if out of thin air? There were my girls, walking back to Chatta from Chak Shazad, a bigger town where they had gone to collect plastic bottles and other recyclable trash. There they were, walking in a graceful line, carrying bundles on dry grass on their heads and trash bags on their hips, the way mothers carry babies sometimes, looking for all the world like the beautiful young women they are soon to be.
We were delighted to see each other. They took one look at the cab driver, and then glanced quizzically at me. In my very poor Urdu, I explained the situation and they started yelling at the driver, all of them together until he drove away! I’d never been so happy to see anyone in my life! They stayed and chatted with me and then waved good bye as I waved to them from the new cab’s rear window. When I got back from Lahore this afternoon, they were already in the courtyard, making me more tea sets.
By the way, those bags they carry are not all that heavy. One kilo of plastic is needed to make 15 rupees, the price of three rotis at the local tandoor (bread bakery). Plastic is very light, so it takes a lot more than one bag to earn their bread.

They are all our children.
For more pictures, please see http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/emailAlbum?uname=sommieh&aid=5537432693344912721&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fsommieh%2FAFC%23
11/9/10
Sommieh Stephanie Flower
Chatta Baktawer, Pakistan

Up on the Roof

Up on the Roof

Last night, not being able to sleep, I went to the roof to do some prayers and zikr under the starlit sky. That was beautiful. There is rarely a time when I do not find the roof a beautiful place to be, except maybe in the heat of the mid-day sun. That’s the time to retrieve the laundry, when everything is dry but the sun is not yet fading the colors. It’s fall here now, though the leaves don’t change color and I’m told winter will be here very soon.

The morning, right after prayers is also prime time on the roof. The sky will still be dark when you get there, but the sun is about to come up. Some of the small bats are chirping but will soon go to sleep.

The first birds start singing at fajr, along with the roosters. I prefer waking up to them, like I did in Michigan than to the loud wailing of the mullahs all over town who intone, Prayer is better than sleep. Are they sure about that? Now they’ll start to fly. There are some large birds, akin to vultures but much more graceful. They’ve got a large wing span that makes it easy for them to flap their wings a few times and then glide, soaring and dipping at will. They head to a field not too distant from my house where they hold their morning conference. Sometimes I can see them flying with long pieces of straw or sticks, perhaps to take back to their nests.

Crows and smaller birds prefer to confer on the telephone wires. They perch there or congregate in the trees. Some of these trees brush the rooftop of our one story abode. It’s marvelous to watch them squawk at each other, like quarreling spouses. The crows here are larger than in the States. Their bodies are a dusty black and their faces a grayish white. These smaller birds land on our lawn as soon as I’ve scattered any leftover bread, proudly carrying the bigger pieces off to the nearby trees. Their shrill squawking implies that they do not share the booty they’ve made off with.

On one occasion I saw two hood-hoods. That’s the Arabic name for a brown and white bird with a fringe of feathers on its head, somewhat like a Mohawk haircut. They are small and need to flap their short wings quite often as they fly, as do the crows and sparrows.

On top of the neighbor’s chicken coop, just below my back wall, I found Diana, our adopted cat. She was curled up in a ball, fast, asleep after her evening adventures. I caught a shot of her sleeping with my camera. When I went for the second shot, she suddenly opened her green, green eyes and stared straight up at me. I got a great shot and then told her to go back to sleep.

The sun is rising in the eastern sky. Slowly but surely, its spherical redness rises in the sky. Today it is quite distinct and self contained, its ruddy reds, pinks and oranges are not bleeding into the sky, which is turning from its dawn grayness to a bluer than blue beauty.