P.S.

Dear Reader,

This a very good video that sums up what I wanted to say in this post, and the reason behind my Ramadan Reveries blog series, in just over 2 minutes. Well worth watching. Take care and Enjoy:



Nida

Ramadan Reveries: Part 1 - Dawah

Dear Reader,

A belated Ramadan Mubarak if you are participating in this holy month of fasting. May Allah azza wa-Jal accept all our fasts and prayers and bless us with success in this life and in the Hereafter. Ameen. As it is Ramadan, the month in which the Qur'an was first revealed to Prophet Muhammed (saw) [2:185] about 1443 years ago, I thought I'd write a series of blog-posts about my thoughts and contemplations on Qur'anic verses, as Allah (swt) asks as to think deeply about what He has revealed to us: "Indeed, in that are signs for those people who reflect." [30:21] 

So on to today's topic: something to note when giving dawah. I've noticed that, often when talking to non-Muslims, especially Christians, they always seem to be surprised to hear that Islam is not a "new/isolated" religion but rather the further development/amendment of the ideals present by Judaism and Christianity. The "next evolutionary step" as some might put it. These three major religions actually stem from the same original source.  

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Before I can get into the true depths of this discussion, there are a few definitions that need to be clarified:

1. Allah is the Arabic word for the One God, while illah (as in La illah ha) means God. If you, dear reader, were to read an Arabic translation of the Bible, you'll see that the word illah is used in the place of God. So when we talk about Allah, we are not referring to some "Islam-centric deity" but rather to the same God as the one that Christians and Jews believe in. (Aside: the language that the Bible was originally written in was Aramaic, the ancestral language to Arabic, in which the word for God is rather similar to illah - though I'll have to get back to you on what exactly that word is.) 
2. The word Islam means complete submission to God, i.e. submitting our will, our soul, our lives, our wealth, our everything to God. Therefore, Islam isn't just the name of a religion, but is a way of life.
3. a Muslim is someone who submits to Allah. Therefore, in the Qur'an, the Prophets Abraham, Jacob and Joseph etc... are called Muslims, because they submitted their lives to God, and not because they were 'others' or belonged to this particular sect rather than another.    

Now that that is all cleared up, we can go back to our surprised Christian friend who asks "How can Islam be a development of Christianity, when we look so different and believe such different things?" There are, in fact, several ways to answer this question. But the best way I think, is the one I found last night. In Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 136 where God, Allah (swt), has told us exactly what to say when asked something like that question:

Say: "We believe in God and what has been revealed to us and what has been revealed to Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and the Twelve Tribes of Israel; and what was given to Moses [the Torah] and Jesus [the Bible] and what was given to the Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we are in submission to Him."   

Click on the picture to read what it says.

So you see, we as Muslims - people who submit to God, believe in all the Prophets including Moses and Jesus (AS), with the singular addition of Mohammed (SAW), the final Prophet. And we also believe that all these Prophets bought with them only 1 Message: there is no God but the One God, or in Arabic, La illah ha ilallah.    

And as for looking different, I would in return pose a question: "Say you were walking down a street, and there was a nun and a women in full hijab/burka walking side-by-side in front of you. Would you be able to tell them apart from the back?" Most probably not, because the dress code of devout Christians and devout Muslims is rather similar. (Aside: I would have probably added devout Jews to this statement as well, but I am personally unsure of how devout Jewish women dress, and so I don't wish to make any assumptions.)
The only real difference here is, and I'm making a rather educated guess, that the number of Muslim women who chose to wear hijab or burka or niqab, far outnumber the number of Christian women  in the entire world who are nuns.    

  

Nida

six Styles of Writing, and Me

Dear reader,

1) When is comes to writing - a thing that I do a lot of - the easiest form for me is, believe it or not, poetry and verse. Subhanallah, sometimes I find that even my thoughts are following some sort of rhyme scheme or meter, trochiac pentameter (with a lot of causurae) seem to be my subconcious' favoured style. (Aside: if you didn't understand anything from the last sentence, click on the links or over here.) When I confessed this to my mother the other day, she gave me such an odd look, as if I was a person she didn't recognise. Kind of heart breaking, given that she is the person I love second most in the world. But, in order to show you, dear reader, how natural poetry is to me, I present to you a poem that I wrote about Writing Poetry: 

Sometimes the most beautiful things

Are those with no inherent cause

Are spontaneously inspired

A single thought that brings

Words upon words without a pause.

So that is when these poems

Emerge and grow out of my brain

They take on life and flutter around

And align like gems upon a chain

But in my mind they cannot remain,

So I cease and caress the words

Nurture those seeds into a stem

Then my pen begins to caper

As I coax the words onto paper

That was bland and lifeless without them... 

2) The next style of writing, that I suppose I'm modestly good at, is description, in particular scenic description.I believe that description forms the majority of a piece of fictional writing. Without it, the piece would be only half-imagined and only half-conveyed. I know a lot of people who struggle with writing description. I often struggle with it myself. For some people, it's difficult to take exactly what they see in their minds and put words to it. For that, I recommend reading a dictionary and thesaurus, keep one close when writing or try thefreedictionary.com. For me, where the problem mainly lies is that my descriptions become far too long and wordy. Trust me, this is a BIG problem, because then the reader either loses interest or gets lost in the convoluted sentences. Which is the last thing any writer wants. And also, it diminshes the power and meaning of what we're trying to say. Here is a piece from Life in Conversations that, ironically, I struggled to get just right.    

She sat there,in her comfy corner seat, gazing out through the right-angled French windows; the precarious ones that over-looked the front of the house. Today she was looking out onto a silent Saturday-morning street. The summer sun causing everything to radiate with a warm glow. As she watched, a strident gust of wind swept through the yawning trees, pulling petals away from blossoms and across the sapphire sky, so that they resembled snow falling upwards. It was a perfectly inspirational moment.

Yet Nabiha’s normally spry pen hung over the page, stalled mid-sentence.

So she just sat there, her face serene, her skin soaking up the sun, her hair swathed over her neck like a blanket of silky scarlet-brown flames. Her shinny new note book lay open in her lap, with only the first page and a half filled with stunted-but-serpentine scribbles. The shaky tapping of her foot was the only indication of the frustration pent up inside her. Her brain sprinted and scrambled through hundreds of possible solutions but none of them fitted comfortably, seamlessly into the dilemma she had created. She was stuck. 

3) Then comes dialogue. I love to read dialogue. I love writing dialogue even more. Probably because it allows  the writer to reveal a person/character's personality without saying banal things like 'she liked to read the news' or 'he was witty'. Also, dialogue is one of those places where, as a writer, I can explore and develop characters and their relationships. Most of the time, when I'm in the flow of a conversation, I find that it can lead me and my characters to places I had not realised/planned, Alhumdulillah. I'm actually, at the moment, experimenting with dialogue within poetry, since I've finally begun working of my epic ballad(which I talk about here). It's called The Legend of Sirene and is the fourth "book" in fantasy quartet Chronicles by Anamika. Here's a sample from the first chapter: 

“I am one of the Sultan’s elite guards.

What you’re doing could be seen as treason.

Meddling in my mission will leave you scarred.

So it’s time for you to find your reason.”

That’s when Conla felt a prick on his chest,

And saw the knife she had pulled on him.

He had to admit, he was quite impressed,

And his language she had spoken to him!

He faced her fully, her arm he held tight

So that she could not try to escape him,

Though, he had not the will or strength to fight.

Asking how she knew his tongue, on a whim.

“How and what I know, is my own business,

Now please, will you kindly let go of me.”

“I cannot, for that I ask forgiveness.

But I must take you to MannCarh, you see.”

At his words, her round eyes were all ignite,

She suddenly stopped struggling to be freed.

Overcome by an idea so very bright,

Those pretty eyes, shone with something like greed.  
...

Please, please, dear reader, let me know what you think. I really need feedback on this to see if my experiment is working well or not.            

4) I suppose the next style of writing for me, has to be informal, non-fictional writing, like this blog or e-mails/comments to friends. I really enjoy this sort of thing because here I can just be simple-old  me, just someone who is speaking thier thoughts, if not out loud, then in at least in virtual ink. I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy writing it. And even if you don't, it okay because your opinion on this probably won't stop me from writing, though I might try harder to improve.
  

5) Truth  be told, I'm pretty bad at writing action pieces where there is alot of movement and snap decision making. I think that this maybe because actions are not a verbal/wordy thing, and are much better seen than read. Take comic books, for example. They are well known for their superheroes and action-packed story lines mainly because they are so visual. In a comic book, you don't expect to find a long debate on the purpose of life and love, using metaphorical examples that hold little true meaning. But you can get action in novel form and, more often than not, it's vital to the story line. As I'm just beginning to realise, myself. Before, most of my novel ideas avoided action, preferring dialogue and conversation as a means to an end. But the fantasy quartet that I just spoke about, requires a lot of action. There's wars, spies, demons, pirates, chase scenes, flying dragons and hand-to-hand combat involved! So, yeh, I'm attempting to write action, but taking slowly, one step at a time. As an example, I give you the opening paragraph of the first novel in the quartet, called The Legend of Sharon: 

That regal buck had no idea what was coming to him, as he sipped away at the stream, his branching antlers skimming the water. Out here in the foothills of the CahnineCarh, a tall mountain range in the southern lands of MannCarh, the green woodland rang with its own music, oblivious to all that went on in the world at large. And as Sharon nocked an arrow in her long bow, she too was oblivious to everything but the buck. She held her breath, took aim, and let it go as the arrow flew from her fingers, and straight into the throat of the animal. A quick and painless death was her preferred style... 

6) Yet the style of writing that I am the worst at, is the one I have to do most of all: non-fictional, scientific/medical writing. It is the antithesis of poetry. And I absolutely hate it. My words don't flow out easily like they do with all the other styles. It just does not come naturally to me, for some reason. I have plenty of friends who can write fantastic scientific treaties and earn the best marks, whereas I'm always struggling to scrape out the right words from my mind. And I've been told by my professors an unaccountable number of times, that my writing is just too "flowery" or "unscientific" or "round-about".   

And really long essays are the even worse, because I quickly lose focus and my mind ends up wondering towards my next poem-in-the-making or an idea for a blog post (in fact, this is exactly what I'm doing at the moment). I think this might be because, scientific writing is just so bland and clinical; you have write very to-the-point sentences, bound in rigid structure, with no space for creativity. I'm not saying that scietific writing itself is bad. It is very important in this modern world of constant innervation. And I greatly admire those who can write scientifically and do it well. Probably because it is something that I can't manage to do. It's something that just does not sit well with my vibarent and flowing personality.

I truly have know idea how I've managed to get through medical university and to have done well! To have almost completed an MSc!! Sometimes I can't help thinking that maybe there are two different Nidas existing in this one body. One that is calm, studious, religious and shy; who wants nothing more than to curl up with a good book. She's the 'Nida' that most people meet on a daily basis. The other seems to be quite crazy and cheeky and loud and creative; who wears bright colours on dull days and wants to run around in green fields and empty beaches. But most of all, loves to paint, sketch and write about the made-up things she sees in her mind.

How they two seem to co-exist so harmoniously, is a mystery to me.

Nida 

P.S. - Please don't forget to tell me what you think about my experiment. You can do this by clicking on the comments bottom below. Thank you. 

Sonnets

Dear Reader,

A few weeks ago, in an attempt at procrastination, I decided to reorganise all my bookshelves. If you have been following this blog for some time, you'll understand what an immense task this was. For your interest, dear curious reader I will, once again, map out the arrangements of my books with photographs, but not today. 

Today, I want to write about something I found under a pile of books from my bygone days, when I used to study English Literature. It was my old copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets:

I don't know why this book in particular piqued my interest. I had devoured the entire thing when I was 14 and just beginning to dive into marvellous but murky waters of metaphors and imagery. Those poems had fuelled my imagination greatly and inspired me to write, even though, I have to admit, I did not understand most of the meanings behind what he had written. My love for the poems was based almost entirely on their literary value. 

There was something about finding those poems now, that felt providential. As if, Allah (swt) knowing my current dismayed attitude towards poetry and creativity, wanted to encourage me to carry on writing. By once again providing me with something that had once so inspired me, Allah (swt) in all His guiding wisdom, wanted to remind me of my love for poetry. And so in the time I usually leave for fictional reading (i.e. just before I go to bed), I have been re-analysing each sonnet individually now, with a much more aged and, hopefully, wizened mind. Here is an example:

I thinking that, at least the first 10 or so sonnets, are written from the perspective of a once-beautiful man. And now he is also looking through the eyes of age and wisdom, warning his young and extremely handsome son/protégée about the follies of vanity, of how physical beauty is superficial and will fade with time. And underlying that, there seems to be a plea, for the beautiful youth to pass on this beauty that once belonged to his mother; pass it on to his own children if, like the poet, he wants this beauty to persist after his eventual but inevitable death.        

I know, I know! There's a big whole in my interpretation. The actor who went by the name William Shakespeare didn't have any sons. But then again, I never really believed that he was the true author of these magnificent poems and plays anyway. There are just too many obvious pieces that don't add up. Alas, but this is a debate for another time. I've added here Sonnet 2 for your perusal, dear reader. Let me know what you think of it and my interpretation.     

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, 
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery, so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed, of small worth held:
Then being asked where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep-sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserved thy beauty use?
If thou could answer, "This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,"
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
           This were to be new made when thou art old,
           And see thy blood warm when thou feels it cold. 

I've also added here some quotes from some of the other sonnets that I thought were just too amazing to keep to myself:

Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, ~ Sonnet 5


Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. ~ Sonnet 1

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime:
...Despite of wrinkles, this thy golden time. ~ Sonnet 3


That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake,
And die as fast as they see others grow; ~ Sonnet 12



Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?

Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy. ~ Sonnet 8


However, since we are speaking of sonnets and age and maturity, I thought I'd present you, dear reader, first one of my very first sonnets (that I wrote when I was about 15) and then, of course, my latest one.  

Flight

To lift my wings, and to fly,

To see all these cities bare,

To watch people boldly lie,

To feel the rush of the air.

To see things born, see them die,

To glimpse beauty and despair,

To reach the top, touch the sky,

To race along with a mare.

To witness those, in pain, cry.

To sight tender love and care,

To view people steel and buy,

To sense scenic freedom so near.

To lift my wings and to gloriously fly,

No day could be more fair.

***

Thoughts on a Plane (7th February, 2012)

The soft white landscape in the sky,

I look on to as I hover by,

And remark on the hills the clouds form,

Or the black mountains created by a storm,

Or wispy ones that are a steamy stream

Lit asunder by sun-light’s full gleam.

They travel the world, these fluffy Bedouins.  

With all their hidden precipitous denizens.

So as I journey above, this city of pearl cotton

I watch as the light around me, slowly softens.

Until nought but an orange-red ribbon is left,

Gracing this perpetual horizon, right to left.

Now awe and breathless is how I feel,

            As before my Creator I prostrate and kneel.  

I just realised that, despite the fact that these two sonnets were written 7 years apart, and that I have written many other sonnets concerning all sorts of topics in between, these two in particular seem to share a theme: gazing out over the world, from above.

And with that thought, I shall say goodbye.   

Nida    

my Grudge against Time

Dear Reader,

(Note: I was suppose to post this one on the 11th of November but my internet has been down for about five days now so I've only just been able to complete this post.)  

Back in 2006 - which is quite some time ago now - my friend, Codename: The Artist, recommended a book to me that at the time sounded incredibly interesting. So I noted down the title and author, and then thoroughly forgot about it. The book would go on to become a International best-seller and would be turned into a financially successfully film in 2009. This book of course was The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. 

Yet I still didn't read it. Even though I had a copy of the book all this time. The book just sat there in the corner of my room, gathering dust, watching as I read every other book in the unread pile, re-reading books I'd read a dozen times already. I don't have any explanation as to why I didn't read it. As you can probably image, this is quite a mystery to me since I very rarely leave a book I own unread. 

But yesterday, 8th November, I finally watched the film version of the The Time Traveler's Wife with my brothers and I have to admit, if it wasn't for the nudity, I would have really liked the movie and even recommended it to people. And I do believe that I'm actually, finally, going to read the book now (after I finish reading Maps of Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam). This is the first time I'm going to read the book because-of/after-watching the film version, rather than the other way round (which is normally the case). 

So anyway, the film got me thinking of "Time" itself and how we perceive it. For example, in the last three paragraphs (discounting the use in the title of the book) I used the word "time" six times. Hahaha, that last "times" was unintentional but proves my point exactly. The English language has so many uses of the word "time" with such varying meanings and context. It all get quite confusing some times. 

But going back to what I've been wanting to say...

Seconds, hours, years, centuries are just our way of measuring something quite insubstantial, like pain. And to think that so much of our lives are centred around this intangible concept: we plan out the hours of our day, our weeks, our years. So many of our decisions are based on how much time we have; from the most mundane to the most significant. As a consequence, we humans living in the 21st century, spend so much of our "time" watching time, and watching it fly past us. 

Courtesy of djibnet.com 

Being both a city dweller and a Muslim (with our five daily prayers and all), I keenly feel Time as a constant presence racing beside me, ahead of me. There is so much I want to do, have to do, but there are just not enough hours in the day and definitely not enough days in a year. And because I have such precious little time, I tend to priorities almost everything in my life, making mental and physical lists (as can be seem by the state of my bedroom notice board below). 

Unfortunately, the things that find themselves on the bottom of my lists usually end up left undone. These things tend to include: my poetry, my novel writing, long phone calls/notes/e-mails to friends I haven't seen/spoken/written to in ages. So I'd personally like to apologise to all those people in the last category, especially my pen-pal-friend on Shelfari Codename: So-Much-to-Read-So-Little-Time, who hasn't heard from me since August. I'm Sorry. 

Now that that's off my chest I feel a lot better.

So I believe that Time - like Truth - is subjective. Changing it's flow depends entirely on ones perception of it. That quite nicely explains why time seems to move faster when you're busy and much slower when you're not. But, when put that way, in the end it means that my lack of time (and therefore my "grudge" against it) is completely, 100%, my own fault. Can't say I blame myself though. Hardly five minutes go by without me doing something. I hate the feeling of doing nothing, it feels like wasting time. (I'm actually quite a fidgety and impatient person in the solid-non-internet world.)

So that about sums up what I want to say. I hope this post has left with you, my dear reader, with something to thing about. If not, then at the very least, I hope I haven't bored/confused you. I promise the next post will be coming to your monitors soon. Until then...

Nida

In Pursuit of Language

Dear Reader,

I'm going to try to keep this one short, as difficult as that is for me!

So, last week something Dr. Finlayson (my pathology professor - who reminds me so much of the lovable Sybil Trelawney, played wonderfully by Emma Thomson) quite rightly said that "studying medicine is like learning a new language." We learn about 2000 new words just in our first two years, which is about the same number of words you would learn if taking a foreign language course. (Aside: shouldn't we getting two degrees then?)

And to begin with, that's exactly what it had felt like; sitting in Monkton lecture theatre (too early in the morning, I might add) with the lecturer speaking in some-other-unknown-language, interspersed here and there with a few English words like "and, the, a". Especially in Dr. Aland's (our anatomy professor) lectures. Anatomy! now there is a subject that requires it's own 'extensively detailed dictionary and correct pronunciation kit'. Instead of saying "to the side and up a bit" you have say something like "Laterally Superior to ... at the Cranial end of the Dorsal root ganglia..." etc.... If you can understand that upon first hearing it then you deserve an award. For a detailed description of our Anatomy session's and the (duh duh duuuuhhhh) Dissection Room, I refer you to a blog by my poetical friend.          

A Confession: (haven't had one of those is some time) I've always found the history of language fascinating. Being multilingual as I am, I'm always surprised to find connections between different words. For example, pineapple is the same in French and Urdu! Often the etymology of words, like ananas (pineapple), can be quite interesting. (It's one of the things I really like about a little wiki here! To think someone actually goes to all the trouble of finding where words originate from. So next time you  look  up something on that site, make sure you read the etymology of the word.)
 

Anyway, I've noticed that language tends to travel with people. I believe Alexander the Great was one of the biggest culprit for this phenomenon. Honestly, he went all over the place with a war hammer in one hand, (I'm not quite sure what was in his other hand - probably the reins of his horse), spreading destruction, disease and language in his wake. Built himself quite an empire, he did. It's a shame he never got to see the aftermath of his work. (Make sure you click on the map and see the bigger, more coherent, version.)

 
The next big one after dear Alexi, has to be The Crusades. They lasted lasted over a thousand years, killed millions upon millions of people, and some people (quite wrongly in my opinion) believe they are still going on today. The crusades were not only a collision of swords on the battle field but also a collision of cultures. It's not a very new concept for most of us now in our modern-media-driven-lives, but it was definitely new for those poor farmers-turned-crusaders back in the 1st millennium. Looking back, I can't help notice the stark contrast between these two opposing sides (that happen to have the same origin, I might add). While Europe was going through it's 'Dark Ages', the Middle Eastern Nation happened to be experiencing, what we now term, the 'Islamic Golden Age'. Talk about a juxtaposition (look up it's etymology!).

I think I've gone on for long enough now, I'm pretty sure you don't want a history lesson right now. And anyway, I must go and have lunch. I'll leave you to contemplate your own use of language.

(Note: I need to blog about the nerd-fighters and John Green at some point, preferably after the dreaded exams)   

Nida

P.S. - What do you think of the change in the appearance? Let me know, leave a comment.