... Of Six Days...

“Lo! your Lord is Allah Who created the heavens and the earth in six Days, then mounted He the Throne.”
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AL-ARAF: 54

It takes my Lord, Allah, to create the cosmos in six days. And adorn it with lights and the firmament and all that is beyond insinuations of language. Six days is just an expression, perhaps… not a scrupulous measure of one hundred and forty-four hours.

For God.

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For me, Six Days is a scrupulous measure of one hundred and forty-four hours…ticking away into a pathologically compulsive tick-tick-tick of the skinny needle of seconds’-hand. Only that in Six Days, I must deconstruct my own cosmos.
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The act of building spaces around oneself, demarcating them superfluously … standing on them and screaming defensively: “Mine!”; guarding them in less-colorful terms than pieces of land are guarded… but guarding, still. The act of collecting words and ideas and self-glorified sacrifices in that personal chamber and shooting untrusting glances at every passer-by.

But at times like these, it is best to return to the basics. Yes, after all these stunts and ceremonial indulgences into the worlds of powerful intellect and philosophies… this is the lesson I have learnt: To give in to the simple, sometimes. Pomp and extravaganza may not echo my real self … loud noises, bold colors and crowded, steaming halls are not my cup of tea. But at the core of all these noises and people and their pomp – there is simplicity.

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A certain Basic-ness.

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And so, what is required is to accept this as a novice amongst the novices. Social psychologists celebrate role-playing as if it’s an accomplishment of human civilization. And there is no need for me to become icy-critical about these masks we must wear for our progressive, social Darwinism. These are all basic acts, not base. And not dull. Simplicity is, really, a luxury… a luxury known to many, celebrated by very few, very rarely. The only problem with it is its addictive quality, and hence … the withdrawals.

Six days to teach myself all this.
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Six days to sit down and meticulously undo many eccentricities, those that cannot survive in another nook.

Six days to mould the malleable eccentricities.

Six days to learn to take each bout of life with a sense of wonder and the subtle joy of going through the unknown. You don’t need knowledge or insurance or even reassurances for ventures like these… you just need an enormous capacity of energy… you need acceptability and in the silliest ways, even suggestibility. And redundant as it may sound, you need faith in the One who created “everything” in Six Days.


Human biology is sometimes enough to learn the checks and balances Allah has kept, to ‘maintain’ our existence. If something goes wrong in the body, pain is the signal … to help you identify the locus of injury. And when that pain reaches a threshold, your brain squirts endorphins (natural painkillers) to tame that pain. And so, with that simplistic perspective, nothing can go wrong… there are too many back-up band-aids.
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“Un kahee say durtay ho,
Jo abhi nahi aee, uss gharri say durtay ho?
Uss ghari ki aamad ki agahee say durtay ho!” .
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Hah. What a sermon. Here’s to this six-day-self-indulgent evangelism …
Cheers.

... Depersonalization ...

They call it the ‘writing behavior’, the psychologists do, when the schizophrenic writes in delirium. Some theorists believe it is just the label that makes one a deviant, nothing is really "wrong" with pseudo-patients. Since my recorded history, I have manifested this writing behavior under stress – who is to diagnose the frequencies of sanity, then. But no tick-tack-toe, cross-checking correlation, everyone in the world knows more statistics than I do.

I remember the real spooky Little Days, staring in the mirror for a hundred seconds and feeling this loss of existence. When the hands, the head and all limbs were no longer a part of the self. It used to happen, and I would run to Api that I was scared. She never understood, I never tried hard enough either. Now Umair tells me he used to experience that flight of the inner being too, when little. It does not happen any more. Wordsworth says in verse that the Child in us celebrates his intimacy with Divinity, which diminishes as we grow older. But Siddhartha learned to carry it across age, perhaps, transcending from the waters to the trees to other organic entities.

It cannot happen any longer. It hasn’t happened in a long time, and it will not happen again – and so, it is not possible any longer to depersonalize, to move through the four dimensions of existence and convey, let alone reach? Or is it?




It is not.

We are limited beings. We do not whistle like the dark birds, where one shrill note narrates the tales of migration. Only rarely, very rarely, can we attempt to live through people, see life through them – or pretend, at least. It is what ambitious mothers call “singing through their sons”. I have attempted that too, with my brother… by sending him to places where I could not go… to speak to a lone, deranged man lying across a railway track, singing to himself. It works for a while, just a spark of a moment of self-gratification. But no, not a melodramatic Shakespearean character, ‘seeing joys through other eyes’, not that. Just to ‘sing through’, that ‘Symphony’…

Those are roles God hands down to us. We are born with labeled relationships.

Narratives cannot be easy things, eyes closed or open. Even as the ‘writing behavior’ was manifest in earlier days, I always believed speech to be better than scribbles. And too, God verifies this, that the greatest sign of His mercy is that “He taught eloquent speech to man”. Yet, to communicate with us, He chose the writing.

… Badsha Khan’s Prophecy…

I am no political analyst or critic, because quite frankly, like Gandhi, I can’t think of politics and religion in exclusive frames. After all my hysteria regarding these across-the-border wars, Bugtis caught my attention. From the Balochis, incongruently to the Paktuns. From there, the Pakhtun conflict.

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From there, Badshah Khan.

That’s what I came to write here. This isn’t about Iraq or the Earthquake. It’s about someone we don’t know about. We know about his children and their children, but usually as ‘traitors’. I cannot decide right away, things like these require lots of research and spare neurons. I am low on both, at the moment. My best friend is a pathan – in our history of eight years together, she has done everything in her power (and she is powerful, in all domains!) to make me hate the Pathans, and has managed to do just the opposite.

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While my all-Punjabi-blood friend came to blows with this all-Pukhtoon-blood friend, I had an insignificant role to play (being a cross breed of Punjabi and Delhi blood - raised to the power of Middle East). One narrated anti-Punjabi jokes, the other found her literature of anti-Pathan jokes. I don’t support borders within ethnicities but I am brave enough (finally!) to address and accept differences. Noosing the green-and-white-star-crescent flag around people’s neck is not going fix problems or end grievances.

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I have admired the passion in Pakhtuns. My Pakhtun friend doesn’t and gives ugly names to their versions of passion. When she didn’t do too well in exams, she’d casually blame that on her pakhtun genes: “Pathans don’t have brains” (although she’s on her way to becoming an academic giant of peace, irony!). When she lost her temper, it was again, “the Pathan blood, not my fault”. Anyway, before this begins to sound like a love-poem for her… here is her ancestor… the man who led the greatest nonviolent movement ever, whose name is kept from our Pakistan Studies books, for reasons only controlled and contorted by historians.

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"Badsha Khan was a Pashtun leader in the twenties who promoted Pashtun nationalism. He doesn't feature in many history books. He founded a political movement, the Khudai Khidmatgars, to fight for independence from the British. The movement's popular name—the Red Shirts—came from the members' uniforms, which were dyed with red brick dust. Like Mahatma Gandhi, Badsha Khan believed that nonviolence was the most effective weapon against colonial rule, and although he was a devout Muslim, he mistrusted the political influence of the maulanas, or Islamic scholars. The reforms he promoted—education, sanitation, road building—were secular."
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So, this is for my Paktun friend.

Beyond the senseless fieriness of your genes and blood, there is some prophecy to be unearthed. And if it’s about reforms for education and the like, I can offer my hybrid solution too. I can’t engrave these words on a stone, for you to remember… forever. Cyber pulse is the next best thing to engravings, and so…

:)

... Lobotomy...

I am told I am on the verge of becoming the Prophet of Doom, with all my murky talks.

Alrighty, then, a little embittered humor doesn't bite.

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A cousin sent this: (surely, a man's perception) of a desi female brain.

And since Majaz and I are self-proclaimed defenders of the so-not weaker sex, here is our reply. If only we could paste the conversation we had ... on this...

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… Fluid Beings…

Their weighing machine gave erroneous results, that’s why I qualified as a blood donor today. One metallic bit into the skin, one repressed scream, one giggle from a student, and the fluid of life started flowing out of me, into something plastic.

Donating blood.
Detonating millions of thoughts… as fluid as blood itself.

I remember writing longish tales in 4th grade: “The autobiography of a dollar bill”, “Autobiography of a pen” and silly, sequential autobiographies of other inanimate objects. It would be interesting to write the autobiography of a drop of blood, minus the “unhealthy” aspects.

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Half a liter of my blood.

Recipient of my hormones, my emotions, moments, illnesses, food I burnt, gulped, relished… into the veins of another being? Into their fluid, their emotions, their moments, their food?
Sounds sick and intrusive, invasive almost.

But it’s the fluid of life; it will return consciousness to someone, somewhere. No need for noble consolations about it, I am thinking along other lines.

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We are, organically, fluid. The rest is dust, if not dirt.

A good seventy percent (give or take a few) of earth and human body is fluid, yet we boast the inflexible form of matter. One fluid purifies you, another fluid contaminates.

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It is He Who has created man from water: then has He established relationships of lineage and marriage: for thy Lord has power (over all things).

Quran: 025.054

Fluid, all the way.
Human creation, procreation.

I am wondering how to wrap this writing up. But I don’t really need to do that. Respecting the subject of this writing, fluids don’t have boundaries. They flow into alwaysness, eternally…

... From the Lahore Crucible ...

It’s my grandmother’s favorite proverb:

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“Saray sheher mai bhugdur muchi, burhia ko apnay nikkah ki puri”.

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I don’t mean to ridicule myself but you can’t deny the aptness of this proverb. It saddens me, both ways, when I see Lahore on fire and protestors laughing away and tearing down buildings and when I see the flip side of the picture, where I see some people around me saying, “What’s the big deal, it was just a cartoon and we’re on the roads! Why weren’t we on the roads after 9/11?”

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Who are these people, who don’t understand their own contradictions?

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I am a cynic, I know, but I am sad right now, so everything is permissible! There are people Bullay Shah addressed incessantly: those who will spend their lifetimes trying to figure out what the length of the beard should be, when to pick on your wife for her ‘version’ of the ‘Hijab’, grotesque details of life beneath the surface of this earth, where to keep the hand, the finger in prayer (who cares about the heart, anyway?). I don’t deny the relevance of these issues, but I unapologetically abhor emphasis on it.

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If there is chaos and fire a few kilometers from my office right now, with irrational people, who may never have missed a single Friday sermon in the past twenty years, it’s because the Friday sermons they listened to had nothing to do with what every Muslim has to know and understand today! We appoint a professional Qari Saab to teach our kids how to read the Arabic text of Quran, we forget to teach them that a Muslim is one from whose hand and tongue other Muslims are safe. We start checking girls with glares and threats when it’s time for them to start covering themselves up as if they should be ashamed of how God has created them, instead of telling them they are beautiful, they should respect what they are and they must protect that, themselves.

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Women share everything with men today: buses, schools, universities, restaurants, even small cubicle offices – but they can’t share a mosque with them, not even a segregated one? Only a handful of mosques in Lahore have space for women… what is the message I should be getting from that?

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What do you have to offer? A smart son? And do you have money? Great! Make him an engineer, a doctor, make sure he earns a lot of money. Alrighty, you’re doing good!

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And what have we got here? A pretty daughter? Umm… okay, make her literate, save money, marry her off… it’s all taken care of.

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What’s the issue now? Who’s going to talk about Islam in the modern context? Who has the time to intellectually and passionately study Islam and be a progressive think-tank from amongst the Muslims?

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Let me think… well, you see, it so happens that the only protectors of this religion on the forefront are these mullah-dudes or the guns-bearing bipolar freaks. I say we leave it to them… and when the West asks us about them, just say they are ‘extremists’, we are different from them, and save ourselves the trouble of explaining.

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That’s what we are doing!

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And from the looks of it, that’s what we’ll continue doing until …

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(Until I feel rational enough to think of practical solutions, soon, inshAllah)…

... Murky Airs...

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At home, air of festivity.

But you can only be a part of it for a while… before things beyond these four walls start penetrating from their old niches.

Begging children are still being shoved around by irritated BMW owners on these very roads, British soldiers are still kicking Iraqi “insurgents” on Iraqi soils (for defending their own lands?), and heads are still being chopped off in front of rolling cameras, with the kalima printed in the background. I remember what Mama had conditioned us to do with the kalima – every time you are scared, just say the kalima.

It worked.

That’s what the kalima was for. To get rid of shapeless creatures from your dark room, late-night stomach cramps, chronic worries of failing an exam…

To remove fear.

Not to justify chopping off human heads.


What the hell is evil?

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Nothing is more painful than listening to people, in their self-imposed wisdom, giving you explanations for why there is so much misery in the world. I would accept fatalism, even resignation more joyfully than the flowery crap sprouting out of so many mouths around… words that make you sick to your stomach, until you just know you are on the verge of screaming, “Please talk to the mirror!”

I would show far more respect to someone who says, “I don’t know why there is so much misery…”


Or, better yet, “I am still trying to find out why there is so much misery…”


Even angels don’t know why men resort to blood and gore for kicks. They knew we would plunder but not why.

Only God knows that…

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And I wish the rest of us, including yours sincerely, would stop trying to play God.

We don’t know why there is so much misery.
We never will.

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I think I need to sleep.

...فَلِلّهِ الْحُجَّةُ الْبَالِغَةُ ...

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... And with Allah is the best argument ...

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... Match-stick house of Peace, blown ...

We met in Norway, last year, around this time, for the International Student Festival in Trondheim (ISFiT, 2005).

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Marcin... from Poland... and Madiha... from her land.

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Marcin intimidated me at first and when I told him about that impression on our last meeting, he was so disturbed, I had to console him to the last minute that I am usually intimidated by people on first encounter ... he didn't have to worry about his standing in the female population around the world : )

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Here's an email he wrote to me, today...

Hi :) How are you?


I have a queston, so please answer if you have a bit of free time :).


There's a lot of talking all around about caricatures of Muhammad
printed by Danish newspaper and reprinted in mamy other titles
recently, incliding one major Polish title. What do you think about
the whole case - as a muslim, and as an ordinary person. Yes, I know,
you can't tell the difference between being a muslim and being an
ordinary person ;) - what I mean is to put your religious beliefs
aside a bit and, let's say, think about all of this in context of
freedom of speech and civil rights.


Here in Poland we almost have "clash of civilizations" headlines and
some fierce discussions about it, so I'd like to know your point of
view, because you can't tell what ordinary people think about it - the
press is only writing about protests, riots, etc. I have my opinion
about all of this, but maybe I'm wrong. That's why I'm asking.



Thanks :) And take cere
Marcin



And here's my long, boring, heated response:

Salam Marcin,

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It’s been almost a year since ISFIT 2005, which means your birthday must be around the corner. So, let’s just start with an advanced Happy Birthday, in case you choose never to communicate with me after reading my reply … Hah. Kidding… ;)

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Alright, what I am going to tell you right now is my opinion of the situation, and it’s possible that some Muslims might disagree with me… but here goes honesty.

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I remember something Giselle wrote for me on our last day, that I was an ‘anti-stereotype’ Muslim for her. I am not the only one Marcin, most of the Muslim population does NOT represent what the media has carved out for you as a ‘stereotype’.

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Since 9/11, Muslims all around the world, especially those living as a minority, have been on the defensive side. We’ve been answerable for a lot of extremism and have been abused, from our own extremists and the ‘others’. Whether it’s the transit at Germany or Dubai – at both places my passport was checked with an air of hmm-now-lets-dig-something-out-of-this. But this is not something I can sue anyone for, these are inflammable times and one has to attain silence.

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Don’t speak until spoken to. That was the rule of the game.

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I was just reading an article printed in the Newsweek, just this December, about Female Suicide-bombers. If you’re a responsible journalist, you’d talk about incidences of all suicide-bombings where women have been involved, and you’d definitely include the Tamil women (who are not Muslims) who have given their lives for their cause, in this fashion. On the other hand, if you want to talk about Al-Qaeda’s female suicide-bombers, then it only makes sense that you STICK to women recruited by Al-Qaeda.

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That article, however, was a swinging babble with absolutely no grip over time-span or location. It focused on female suicide-bombers from Lebanon, Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine – all in one go, and that, Marcin, is really sad. The only point being driven there was that it’s something Muslim women do, so that every time an average European passes by a woman wearing a Hijab, he would suspect her to be a potential suicide-bomber.

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I don’t even blame that average European, this is social conditioning through media and we are all susceptible to it. If we had not met in that environment at Norway, had not gotten the chance to hear each other out, share dinner, you and I would have fostered similar feelings, Marcin. The basic point that that article deliberately (at least that’s what it seemed like) failed to bring out was that the REASONS for all of these women are different.

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I’ll get back to those reasons later but let me talk about the cartoons.

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I understand the importance of freedom of speech in Western culture, it’s something that your predecessors have fought to achieve, at least that’s what my understanding says. Your heroes have been individuals who sacrificed for “freedom of speech” and to tell you honestly, I admire those men and women and it only makes sense that you continue to defend “freedom of speech”.

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But the context in which “freedom of speech” is being used here, in my opinion, is almost comical. The purpose of “freedom of speech” should be the development and critical progress of human civilization, it should not mean regressing back to cave ages. It should not stimulate anarchy! As a British journalist said, “We do not go about punching people in the face to test their commitment to non-violence. To be a European should not involve initiation by religious insult.” (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-2025511,00.html)

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For the longest time now, what you’d call “enlightened Muslims” and even many broad-minded Westerners, have been struggling to convey to the world, despite dim-witted tactics of policy makers around the world, despite irresponsible journalism, that Islam is NOT a religion of violence.

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It’s a religion of discipline and commitment, yes.
It’s a religion that does not encourage passivity, yes.
It’s a religion that does not condone persistently bearing injustice without a cry, yes.

But its fundamentals are not bombs and fire.

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So, here we are, putting up a defensive fight, trying to make the loose ends meet. We are nervous, out of breath, sensitive and we’re struggling … and what do we get?

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A cartoon on our Prophet.

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You have to understand that the Prophet, for a Muslim, is not like a leader of some political or national movement, the concept is very large and I don’t think I can express all that in language. To make caricatures of Muslim leaders or fanatics who profess Islam is different, we put up with it all the time and don’t blame the West for that.

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• There is a difference between an academic discussion on the subject of religious discord– and a cartoon.
• There is a difference when some kid cracks illogical, insulting remarks about someone’s faith over the internet – and when a national newspaper prints caricatures and defends that publication and other newspapers around Europe reprint those drawings.
  

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This was below the belt.

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I didn’t believe in “clash of civilization”. I thought it’s just sensationalism from academic Americans. But the way I see it now, this is a deliberate clash, and it’s hurtful. This event may go down in Western history as a test of civil liberties but it is doing terrible damage to our motivation as goodwill ambassadors.

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I know this is not what you wanted to hear – you wanted me to speak outside my role as a “Muslim” and this is the point of discord that the West fails to understand about Muslims. To ask a practicing Muslim to set aside her religious beliefs and “speak” is like me asking you to set aside your limbs and shovel snow. And this, Marcin, is not something I would ever be apologetic about because my religious beliefs don’t limit me or make me hostile – being tolerant and understanding is an integral part of my beliefs.

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And now, I’ll tell you what is not part of my faith: to look at a caricature of my Prophet and laugh with you over it. Or worse yet, to say, ‘Hmm, you’re allowed to throw around such filth, it’s a free country, free continent, free world!’

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I will ask you a question now, perhaps I don’t understand “freedom of speech” correctly. If I start tailing you around Poland, swearing at your father or mother or someone you hold dearly, would that be permissible under the “freedom of speech” slogan?

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If no, well, there you go…

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If yes, then, I am curious why “freedom” is considered an absolute term?

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Are these the times to ignite a population that’s already quite reactive and victimized? If I were to support the publication of those cartoons under the banner of Western “freedom of speech”, then I would have to accept the burning up of embassies as an Arab version of “freedom of speech”.

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But the truth is, I denounce both.

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If the freedom of one individual threatens the freedom of another, can you justify it as a civil act of equality?


…


*exhausted*

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I am sorry I went on and on about this, Marcin. Just that … I am quite disappointed, perhaps even disillusioned. It’s like building a match-stick house for peace, that’s blown away … that too, because of someone’s black humor.

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I need a little ISFiT therapy :D

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What say you?

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... Synapse's Monologue of Discontent ...

Salam.

My name is Synapse.

I am the gap between two neurons, a tiny space that witnesses the jumping of an impulse from one world to another.

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Was I ever born? Or, created simply because two worlds could never merge into one another? Was I powerless to be born? Or, is my birth an example of the power of the distances that must be created for the betterment of mankind? Hah, whatever that is.

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Man-anything-but-kind.
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I agree my name is not quite mellifluous, nothing you’d like to name your child after, or base your poetry on… just a name for myopic big brains to pronounce meticulously over microphones. They speak of me as if I live with them… but they have never seen me with unaided eyes, ever. They ‘discover’ me behind narrow tubes and technical glasses and jump to conclusions about me. Such is the working of human beings, one distant glance and you are ready to write a book on it.
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Hell, I can't be complaining.

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I was not born... I mean, I was not created to be a cynic or a rebel. I was created to watch and remind myself I do matter... even when both neuronic worlds think I am nothing but an impotent gap between them.

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There are some out there, in that field of "mankind" who are like me... and they might be able to identify with me. We are those who weren't created to be leaders, we were created out of a need, a sort of need that necessitates our use and telling us we don’t have much of an identity to boast about.

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Haven’t the users been extra-gregarious already that they NAMED us something? Just like any Roman citizen? A synapse wouldn’t have such a right in Roman history, if you think about it.

All rise for the present civilization!

All bow to the present civil liberties!

All praise the new world order that exhorts and patronizes nomenclature!

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A civilization that names everything, categorizes everything: “this drop of water contains more Magnesium, Potassium, and Carbonate than that drop of water… hence, we label this Natural Spring Water, and the latter Demineralized water." Don’t you dare sip a subjective amount of either before knowing the names, sire…

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I am sorry, I am digressing.

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I didn’t come here to write a satirical piece on a world blighted with nomenclature.

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I came, instead, to tell you… I am just a gap.

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Gap.

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Brilliant, make that a brand name now…

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I can't seem to find an apt conclusion for this letter to you, "man-kind" (can you think of another name for yourself? Homo-homo sapiens! Oh yes!). But then, gaps don't have to finish what they are saying, that's hardly a prophecy that were created to fulfill. And then again, who's listening?

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I should go now, the presynaptic terminal is ready to send something across.

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I do wish, secretly... to be a neurotransmitter, sometimes... life of action and attention.

Wa'salam....

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... Bulleh Shah speaketh...

... Memory Stains...

Once upon a time, there was a poetess.


I am glad she is dead now because she was too ... abstruse. People couldn't understand what she was saying and she was becoming too eccentric. I had to kill her and I don't really miss her, she was an added weight ... with all the other people I host in my consciousness.


However, this is one poem... she wrote this in 2002 ... and although it suffers from the same element of being too superfluous … I think it’s forgivable… almost.

Memory Stains

Strings of ik-tara speak, the flute
Hums a rueful tune of enchanting history.
Musk of the wet Arabian sands,
Stain the silk of memory trace.

The medieval hourglass,
Flows down in deathless narration,
Of legends beneath the parched soils:
The tales told and forgotten…

Seeker of the Truth, soliciting in worship.
Calling out to the wine bearer,
To fill his chalice to the brim.
Overcome with rapture,
Loosing his sense, in the Sense.

Ay! Mansur El-Hallaj of Baghdad,
The seeker of light within Light
Paving that way through waylessness,
Other mortals cannot fathom.

The veils unveiled,
Light pervaded darkness.
The “I” annihilated, the self naughted,
Where Love became the enemy of the self,
And God’s Existence accentuated in the self’s nonexistence.

But, words betrayed invocation:
“I am the Truth!”
Cried the words of the mystic.
And thence, the gallows at his feet.

The devout folks, dismembered him
Limb from limb,
To silence, to entomb, to blend
His flesh within Iraqi sands…


“Kill me, my faithful friends!
For in my slaughter is my life -
And my life in my death.”
Cried the lover, intoxicated.


Hush the ik-tara, shun the chronicle!
Kneeling heads of Mohammed’s progeny,
Have rolled within the bowels of this earth-
It is but the nature of these wasteland sands.

But, who can label dust from dust,
The tyrant from the martyr-
The innocent from the oppressor-
And, the lover from the denier?

Tune down your laments, weeping flute,
The speaking tongue belies the feeling heart.
For him who tries to render passion into words,
Sees with Hallaj’s spirit to the gallows.

No alchemy, no elixir of life,
Memory stains, history tarnished.
Hallaj lives in the silent spirit,
Dies in words.

... What was God thinking...?

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There is so much blood laid to waste…

… So many screams, explicit and implicit…

Every corner you turn, every time you switch the television on, someone is being murdered, or murdering, or on the verge...

Was man created for violence?

Is aggression SO innate that we see nothing else?

… What was God thinking when He created us?



This:

“It is He Who hath created for you all things that are on earth; Moreover His design comprehended the heavens, for He gave order and perfection to the seven firmaments; and of all things He hath perfect knowledge.

Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: "I will create a vicegerent on earth." They said: "Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?- whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?" He said: "I know what ye know not."

And He taught Adam the names of all things; then He placed them before the angels, and said: "Tell me the names of these if ye are right."

They said: "Glory to Thee, of knowledge, We have none, save what Thou Hast taught us: In truth it is Thou Who art perfect in knowledge and wisdom."

He said: "O Adam! Tell them their names." When he had told them, Allah said: "Did I not tell you that I know the secrets of heaven and earth, and I know what ye reveal and what ye conceal?"


II: XXIX – XXXIII
Quran

... God wanted to teach... and for us to learn...

.

.

To learn and to teach those who don't know...

.

.

And for them to learn ... and teach those who don't know...

Quite simple.

... Kafoor...

This had to be the first time I heard the word, but the speaker spoke of it as if it were table salt. I was told it looks like table salt or glassy, ground limestone. But the speaker is eighty-seven years old and her chemistry is rather basic.

The context is not very interesting but relevant for this scrap of writing.

“Munjhli apa said when you bury me, bury me with one hundred kilograms of kafoor,” Daddi was telling Mama. “Now think about it, she died so suddenly, it took hours to get hold of that amount of kafoor. What’s the point of such a will?”

I don’t know who Munjhli Apa was but may her soul rest now. She died a few generations, raised to the power of a few more generations before I was born. Her will consisted of nothing but of a burial with one hundred kilograms of Kafoor – a white, powdery substance sold near graveyards, added to the grave during burial. Daddi claims it is supposed to keep the body “fresh” for sometime.

I am not sure how this indigenous method of body preservation differs from the knowledge of ancient, advanced Egyptian chemistry. But the concept is worth a wonder - - - the concept of wanting to make the body live, even when you are medically dead.


Death is either poetic, apparently too distant to be real, or just heavy.

And then, the science of chemistry, for the art of body preservation.


Why would one want to keep their body alive, when dead?
Well, why wouldn’t one… after all the things this body demands, it should sound only just to ask it to reciprocate.


Immortality is a yearning we cannot deny.


Even at the weakest moments, when we wish we had never existed, we still want that suffering to become permanent somewhere, in a depersonalized fashion. Earlier men scratched caves with pictures of mammoths… “we were here”… we smile when we discover two letters scrapped by ambitious lovers on tree trunks… “X and Y were here” And those few letters and images tell stories of synapses and civilizations – ‘please know this, we were here’. Journals, art-work, music… they are not just sublimated derivatives of libidinal energy … they are an attempt to be remembered.

One string pulled resonates forever, sound energy converted into other forms of energy… it doesn’t die.



Kafoor is not just a white powder.
It’s a metaphor for that promise to live on, in any desperate form… God, they come in such beautiful forms, sometimes.


Like signed books, with long-drawn-out signatures…
Marked pages, ear-marked pages…


Is there anyone who wants to disappear, unnoticed… without a mark, without a grain of kafoor? Even the likes of Kafka, who wanted their works burnt after death? Did he really want to do that…? Leave without a trace…? Silent, unspoken martyrdom sounds so virtuous, it almost hurts – but does someone really aspire for that? According to sociobiologists, many species are pre-programmed like that: they will sacrifice themselves to warn their race against danger. But even that suicide is a form of preservation… the preservation of your specie.


…Kafoor…


Children… why is it discomforting to think of them as parasites – something they are, basically? By-products of a biological motive? No… that’s not all...what they are. They will carry you inside them, in their genes, in the color of their eyes, the voice, and perhaps even (God forbid, in my case, at least) your ambition …

You will live … somehow… through them.



What is Heaven…? It is not just a lure of vibrant goblets, silk and wide-eyed maidens; it’s a Promise of infinity. Sufistic annihilation of the self… to merge the self with the Self… not annihilation, then, is it? It’s all about becoming the part of the Origin, a forever-al Origin… a forever-al, non-created, non-ending Being…

… Kafoor…


Rhodes Scholarship…
Ganga Ram Hospital…
Taj Mehal…
Pyramids…


Don’t worry, Munjhli Apa, you’re not the only one.
Others have been less discrete...

...

..

.

... Historical Matchmaker...

... If Time had no value... no dimension...

I would put the puzzle of the two most good-looking people in history together.

Good-looking and brilliant writers...

Their looks grow on you, like their letters...



~Frank Kafka~



And




~Virginia Woolf~

"I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness... I can't fight it any longer, I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work..."

(Suicide note: The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. VI, p. 481).

... Is Love an Emotion? ...

On Sara's request:

(No debate, please)...

While reading one of Dr. Iqbal’s letters about one of his teachers, the neo-Hegelian, McTaggart, I hit upon something interesting, which only fell into context with the present topic after some deep thinking. After all the spirituality, there were two or three places where Iqbal did not sound like the Iqbal we had been taught about in our Pakistan Studies classes. He wrote, “McTaggart’s philosophy was not in his intellect but in his emotions.”

In a consuming state of mind, I could never imagine any philosopher rooting his reasoned doctrines in emotions, rather than intellect. To further this, he wrote in a succeeding passage that “the solution of all problems is found only in love… Love is no passivity. It is active and creative… it is the only force which circumvents death: for when death carries away one generation, love creates another.”

It is interesting how Hajwairi defines love. He points out several etymologies of “Muhabbat”, but an intriguing one follows thus, “derived from hibbat: seeds falling into the earth of the desert”.

Now recall Iqbal’s line, “it is the only force which circumvents death: for when death carries away one generation, love creates another.” Yes, just like those seeds that turn the barren desert into greener lands…? (Think hard, you will put two and two together!)

As a student of psychology, I often see love as nothing but the squirting of a few chemicals at emotional instances. As a being vulnerable to this age’s media, I see love as something between your family and yourself, or the Hollywood-pomp. The rest is just charity. We don’t love the little boy we feed, that’s just charity. But then, of course, as a student of some human beings of Sense, and with blind informality, students of Hajwairi, Rumi, Bullay Shah and Ghazali, I know Love is only something you feel for God.

I may be wrong, but Love is not an emotion. The deeper I think into this, the more convinced I become that emotions are meant to fluctuate, they are literally defined in psychology as the “rising or falling of feeling”. If it falls, even temporarily, it cannot be Love. Another etymology Hajwari referred to is Muhabbat derived from hubb: “a jar full of stagnant waters”. If it is stagnant, it cannot be an emotion.

Ghazali very eloquently describes the role and nature of Qalb, the home ground of Love. The Qalb “catches the knowledge of God and the spiritual world”. Knowledge of God, right, but what is the role of Love here? Again, yet another one of Hajwairi’s interpretations, Muhabbat comes from the word habab: “bubbles of water and the effervescence thereof in a heavy rainfall.”

Meaning, the human body subsists through the spirit and the heart subsists through Love. Love is the current of the heart; heart is the receptive substance for the knowledge of God, and hence, Love is the energy for the knowledge of God? Or is it the energy of God?

What we call love, in our contemporary dictum, is the love of our own Nafs or Id (courtesy: personal experience). Because when God talks about Love, He says, "None will have the sweetness (delight) of Faith till he loves a person and loves him only for God's sake.” No Romeo dies for Juliet, no Juliet dies for Romeo; that is what the misinterpretation of arts and theatre taught us about love. Romeo dies for Romeo’s Nafs, Juliet dies for Juliet’s Nafs.

Maternal love, I believe, is still an epitome of God’s energy, since it is the yardstick God uses to show us how much He Loves us. And yet, every child born in this age can cite the story of Romeo and Juliet, none can cite the story of… well, just look at that! I can’t even think of an example of a mother who killed herself for her child, although we all know there must be a million such cases.

Between men and women, there can only be understanding, the rest is just the soliciting of the Nafs. There was understanding between the Prophet (Peace be upon his soul) and his first wife. Our Islamiat teachers get scandalized when we ask them, ‘Was it love at first sight?’; our Maulvi Sahibs frown when we ask them, ‘They were in love, right?’. That is probably because they are as confused about this phenomenon as we are, susceptible to same media that conditions you and myself.

God said that if you Love Him enough, you will become His Hands. Meaning, God’s energy will be translated through you to the rest of the creation. And so, our charity is not charity if there is no love in it. Without it, charity is just a mechanical process.

A smile is an act of charity, said the Prophet. Again, God’s energy translated through one who Loves God, to another person. This all connects back to what Iqbal said, Love is “the only force which circumvents death: for when death carries away one generation, love creates another.”

To conclude, Love is not an emotion, it is God’s energy, and the perpetual channel for our relationships with fellow beings.

... Epitaph...

We were born on the same date, him and I.
Only ninety-two years apart.



His epitaph reads,

"In my beginning is my end..."




I hope mine will say,

"In my end is my beginning..."

He is T.S.Eliot and he said “immature poets imitate; mature poets steal…”

I have yet to decide where I fall in that scale.

... Mama, mine ...

So, God claims He loves me seventy times more than Mama.

It’s God’s claim, I wouldn’t dare disagree.
.
.
.

I will only ask a further question:

Does He face the same social amphitheatre that Mama faces for me? The same jingles of approach-avoidance conflicts? The same human rushing and human deflation? Human anger, human revulsion, human worry, human fear… and human love?


Or has He only reserved “love” to feel for me?
Seventy times, or seventy thousand times… pure Love...only?
In the absence of all that is so excruciatingly human?

.
.
.
.

God is God, but Mama has a thorny task.
I don’t remember her making any claims of might, though.

... Poetic Liberal...

Sir, what is your opinion on women who pursue higher education?

Hmm, a woman who pursues her career and education is admirable – like an art work, a classy painting.

And, as a wife?

[A snooty, patronizing chuckle] You can’t hang your “classy paintings” in the kitchen, now can you? And that’s where a wife is supposed to be.

[Thinking silence] Ah, well, thank you, sir. I was having trouble defining an ass-hole lately, you just helped me out there. [Smiles] .



Courtesy for this (ouch!) humor:

Dana Tidikis,
December 9, 2005
8:34 P.M.,
My bedroom,
Lahore, Pakistan

...Bright Blue World...

It had to be Bee-Jaan.

No one else had the time, patience or discerning memory to narrate such tales to Chotoo. It had to be Chotoo, too. No one else had the big eyes and dreamy imagination to hear it and more marvelously, even believe it. The rest of them had grown up, regrettably.

It had to be every third night of that winter season.

An every-third-night-ritual of the same story.

“Bee-Jaan, tell me the story about Bilal again!”

“I am going to sleep, now, Chotoo…”

“Just once, just the part when he didn’t give the Aza’an!”

And the story was told and re-told, sometimes even thrice on the same night.

The dark-skinned friend of Prophet was restricted from giving the morning call for prayer by other fellow-faithfuls, and the morning refused to come.

“It just didn’t come, Bee-Jaan? There was just darkness?” Chotoo asked, for the umpteenth time.

“Yes, just darkness.” Bee-Jaan answered as a conditioned response.

“And if he hadn’t given the Aza’an, there would be darkness even today?”

“I don’t know about that, Chotoo. Now go to sleep.”

“Okay, just tell me, there would be darkness even today if he hadn’t given the Aza’an?”

Voices are unfaithful in small quarters and Qaari Yaqoob’s sleep was disturbed by his son’s incessant questions.

“I’ll break your legs if I hear another word from you,” boomed the father’s voice. “Go to sleep!”

May be there would be darkness even today, Chotoo told himself, if Bilal hadn’t given the Aza’an.

Chotoo was the last born of Qaari Yaqoob’s four children. Other than that, he was the little dog, little servant, little brunt-bearer, little errand-runner, little nuisance, little useless-mouth-to-feed, little everything else that human language can succumb to.

Human language, only.
Human actions have a larger scale to drown into.

In a little quarter by the mosque, four children lived with the fifty-five-year old Qaari Yaqoob and his mother, Bee-Jaan. Qaari Yaqoob’s wife was never there, but Chotoo was not sure whether she was dead or had gone to live somewhere else.

No one had the time, patience or discerning memory to narrate such tales to Chotoo.
For this, even Bee-Jaan did not seem to have the time.

Chotoo had his imagination – a bright blue world, where there were answers for everything. His was a magical world of heavens where white-robbed, saintly men and women reside, who knocked at God’s door when they did not hear Bilal’s Aza’an-call one morning; a dark-smiling man who clambered onto the pulpit to give a victorious Aza’an. That world buzzed in Chotoo’s little mind, little large mind, all night… until the sleep world of other colors would take over.

And then, there would be the morning.

Chotoo believed it was his father’s call to prayer that brought the morning, neo-Bilal’s voice. There were other prayer-callers but Chotoo knew it was his father whose voice did the trick. Qaari Yaqoob did not communicate much with his children but it was the morning call for prayer when Chotoo’s bright blue world was full of his father, saintly, heavenly folks rejoicing and white-winged angels bringing out the bluer skies.

But daylight is different in a world yet unknown to Chotoo…

A new Nazim had won local-body elections and he was a man of action. New roads were to be constructed, electricity had to be restored to some centers, water-supply had to be gauged, and sewerage had to be fixed. Since most of his votes had come from the religious faction, something had to be done about a religious center too, the mosque.

There were recommendations for new fans and new carpets but the Nazim was had other plans with such funds. Something else had to be thought of where the mosque was concerned.

“Do away with that old man, first,” the Nazim said irritably to his subordinates. “He squeaks like a dying hen in the morning. Destroys my sleep, get someone new, try one of the Afghanis, they have a good pronunciation and don’t scream as if they’re breathing their last.”

One of the buttering subordinates imitated the morning prayer of the old Qaari Yaqoob and there was a roaring laughter, amid half-hearted pleas for forgiveness.
Beyond that, human language fails.

---

“This is my mosque!” Qaari Yaqoob defended himself against the President of the mosque’s affairs. “I was amongst the builders! I laid the bricks of this mosque and I am strong enough to build it again! You want me to leave it? Shah Sahib, do you even know what you are saying? Where will I go? My children are still in the madrassah and my-”

But he lost the fort.

No one told Chotoo about the events directly but somehow, the news got to him. His father would no longer be the caller for prayer. There was a young, fair-skinned Afghani who was going to move into their quarters soon and would be the five-timer meter for the mosque. Qaari Yaqoob’s family was given a week to pack up and leave, no questions asked. Thank you very much for your thirty-year-long service.

It was the third night of winter but Bee-Jaan had no intention to perform the ritual.

Chotoo did not ask for it either.

This was their last night in that quarter and the morning-prayer was to be given by the Afghani. This was Chotoo’s war with the world, not Qaari Yaqoob’s, not the Nazim’s, not the imitators. It was Chotoo’s bright blue world against the dark world.

Minutes of darkness ticked on as Chotoo heard the unfamiliar voice booming from the loud-speakers. He heard Qaari Yaqoob mumble something and sluggishly get up from the bed.

The morning-prayer was over.

It was all up to those white-robbed men and women in the heavens and the white-winged angels. They were Chotoo’s soldiers, guardians of his bright blue world. The first pink ray entered the quarter and Chotoo felt the first tear drop down his eyes. It was not over yet, Chotoo went deeper into his imagination. Doors of heaven opened and he ran frantically inside and when he could not find any of his soldiers there, he banged at the Lord’s door himself. He kept banging and banging...

There was silence.

May be there is darkness even today, Chotoo told himself, because his father hadn’t given the Aza’an.

This was Chotoo’s victory against the dark world.
Or, if you have the sick humor for it, Chotoo’s delusion?