One Mundane Story

I’ve been thinking about this friend of mine for a while, he’d had three car accidents in the past three years. ‘An accident a year’, seems to be his fixed rate (I am not superstitious, but I hate all sorts of patterns that relate to a bad or a worsening situation)…

I’m going to call my friend A, for the sake of easy reading…

A is an excellent pharmacist, I am stressing on excellent because I know that in this country, pharmacist are taken for granted. They are thought of as educated salesmen with focus on medicine. I deem my friend A as an excellent pharmacist because of his knowledge, and his determination to use this knowledge and to subordinate his financial ambitions to his ethical obligations….on the downside, A is a bit stubborn and known to has some ego problems, well… nobody is perfect….and nobody is genuinely humble anymore…

A has bought himself a badly performing pharmacy somewhere in the country side of Aleppo, he’s invested a decent sum of money and time on renovating this little ‘shop’, but the outcome was worthy: the performance has picked up. Revenues were on a steady increase….at that moment, A’s life was better than a dream!…he bought himself a car in order to commute comfortably to and fro his workplace. It was then when the nightmare began…

On one sunny spring day in 2005, A was driving back from work, his car was rolling through this little road permeating one of the villages en route to Aleppo. He was then taken aback by a girl running across the road- she must have been running after a ball or away from an angry elder sister or a brother, it didn’t matter really… because the inevitable happened. A is a very cautious driver, but how slow you can really drive? Slower than 30 kph?

Well, the little girl survived, she sustained few fractures. But because she had earlier problems of malnutrition and lack of calcium, the coroner was not able to conclude that she won’t suffer a chronic disability until one year later. During this one year, my friend A was the only supporter for the girl and to some extent, for her family…he had to buy the milk and make sure she drinks it! Her unemployed father didn’t miss a chance to exploit the situation and blackmail A….eventually the year has passed and the final verdict was out, A was exempted from any future commitment toward the girl…

Not even one week had passed after A was relieved from this first blow, when he had received another nauseating bang on the head. He was always wary of those trailers transporting stones and marbles from the several quarries along his commuting route. But he never thought that one of those would just change lanes from the extreme right to the extreme left without prior notice. When it happened, there was very little he can do to avoid the crash. A’s car rolled for several times and then settled with her wheels facing the sky. The driver of the trailer ran away. And if it was not for a good-hearted passer by, A would have bled to death….

A was only able to walk two months later to the accident. He’d been through two surgeries to fix his broken hips and thighbones. When I visited him last year, he was lying in bed. With a post-tensioned kind of a strap fixed to his legs. The kind of mechanism they usually use to release the cartilage from an abnormal position…

All it took for the third accident to happen is a teenager driving a tractor without a license. A few mature threads of fate and reality have met at this critical nexus. The teenager decided to take a sudden transverse turn. There was again a very slim chance of averting a crash.

You don’t need to be smart to realize why accidents are on the rise. When the roads are infested with humps and pitfalls. When trucks, trailers and tractors are not restricted to the left lane. When you can’t even identify ‘lanes’. When possessing a license is not a pre-requisite to driving. You are going to have a carnage on the roads…

A was in coma for two weeks. He had a fracture in his skull. A bleeding in the inner tissue of the brain. Spent three days vacillating between life and death. Suffered a concussion and temporary amnesia. It took three months of extensive therapy to get him back on his feet again.

I saw A last Friday, he looked normal and intact. He told me that the only residual effect he now suffers from is the intermittent bouts of headache, and his inability to concentrate deeply while reading.

A could be a rash driver. He may have been hit by an envious ‘eye’. There could be some other reasons why he has been having it rough for the last three years. Or it could simply be his predestined fate… We Muslims are eventually required to believe in fate…

Man propose, God dispose…

My friend A and his series of unfortunate incidents reminds me of a line of poetry for the great Arabic poet Al Motanabi:

فصرت إذا أصابتني سهام ... تكسرت النصال على النصال


Be safe everyone…
Signing off…

I don’t understand all this fuss about getting married. Like if you don’t get hitched in 2007 there is going to be dire consequences in the years to follow. But if you are willing to plow the inevitable path now, this means that you are about to do something inconceivably significant and that you have to be super careful. Like diffusing a time bomb, cut the wrong wire and you'll lose your fingers and probably much more, cut the right one and you'll be the champ. But either way, you're gonna have to cut. Make your shot in the dark. It's either an eternal heaven or a living hell. But you are going to have to cut one of them. Time is just not by your side. You will have to memorize and rehearse some golden phrases, so that you don't mess things up before your prospective father in law, in case he asks one of those meticulous questions. As a lame person in this caliber. Someone who's clueless about all the shenanigans of the asking-for-the-hand rituals in Aleppo. Someone who doesn't feel comfortable about arranged marriages yet couldn't have a better choice this far, I find the whole prospect scary and troublesome.

There are literally hundreds of things to consider, if not more. As the case of any other expat, the worst night mare is to wake up some day to the "I-miss-my-mom-I-want-to-go-home" saga. You may say that I am being over sensitive and over worried about things, you are probably right, but tell those little hardships get diluted by the right formula, or get replaced by a good balance between how things are ought to be and how they really are, I am still going to be worked up by all the loose threads of open possibilities.

On a lighter note, I apologize for not being able to respond to all your lovely comments; it is (technically) pain in the butt to do so with all the censorship. However, I am looking forward for all your comments and feedbacks about this matter, after all, experience is the best tutor. And he, who's older than you by a day, is probably more knowledgeable by a year.

I like the new refurbishment of Aleppo Airport. You now actually get to walk through a concourse with a controlled environment between the building of the airport and the airplane and vice versa. They’ve done it in such a smart way that you will have to walk through the Duty Free in your way toward the passport control.

This may sound a normal thing to do somewhere else, but given what I've seen before (or what I am accustomed to see and expect!) this really is a feat on the part of the airport planners!....

P.S.: you may read Lujayn's comment on my previous post (Women in Islam oppressed? Give me a break!) for some interesting views...now since I am under the protective umbrella of blogspot moral blockade, and with limited circumvention option... I am afraid I won't be able to reply to all your comments, so I will be moderating them instead!

What's in an IPod?

I got a nice surprise this morning : my only Texan friend Paige has tagged me in a kind of unique tag: what kind of song do I have in my IPod?
Unfortunately, and like my friend Abu Fares, I don’t have an IPod! I only have this old mp3 player, which can't sort songs by genre, singer or album. Quite primitive!

Knowing that I can only have one play list, I always keep the best of the songs I like in there, I haven't been listening to it recently. In fact, and for some reason beyond my comprehension, I don’t feel comfortable listening to a song through earphone plugs anymore..

Anyway, here is the list of the songs I used to listen to on my mp3 player: ( a note to the FBI agent reading this; good luck with the psycho-analysis!)

· Drops of Jupiter – Train.
· Perhaps – Dorris Day
· Baker Street, Johnny Trafferty.
· Mrs. Robinson, Simon and the Garfunkel.
· Let's face the music and dance- frank Sinatra,
· The summer wind – Frank again.
· Teach me tonight! (very apt for the purpose of my vacation!)- this one was sung by frank, but the version I have is sung by an attractive young lady called Amy Winhouse (if I am not mistaken)
· That's Amore – Dean Martin…
· Round midnight – instrumental by John Coltrane.
· Crazy – Gnarls Barkley
· Talk- ColdPlay
· Talk (different version) – Coldplay
· The importance of being idle – The Oasis.
· Layla – the Oasis.
· Wonderwall – the Oasis.
· Copacabbana – Tony? Manilow
· Suddenly I see – KY Tunstall.



Quite inhomogeneous? True, but how could you do better with one play list and volatile musical mood?


I would really like to know what's there in Bu Jassem's!

Vacation

القراصية مـــنين منـــين.... يلي سقوها بدمع العين
و القلب ما يهوى الاتنين.... ايه بدو وحـدة حــلبية

Women in Islam Opressed? Give me a Break!

More of these videos at http://www.challengeyoursoul.com/

*In case you are unable to watch this video, please intimate the undersigned....

DJ

________________________

Update:

Because of the lack of a better mean to communicate the content of this video to those who can not see it, and since I was unable to find a ready transcript online, I am attaching a rough transcript which I had to make myself on a hurry, so please excuse the inaccuracies...

Khaled Yasin is an American Convert to Islam, he's based in the UK. He runs the Islamic teaching institute. This speech of his was made after the row in the UK media about allowing Muslim women the right to wear headscarves and loose garments in public.

The point of this speech can be broaden to cover more issues that the subject matter, note my emphasis!

The wearing of the head scarf seems to have become a major aggravation; why should women who wish to wear a veil (or head scarf) have become such a source of aggravation today?... I mean, if a naked woman walked in this room here (meaning wearing a bikini or a G string) she would have the right…let's say three or four of them walked in, we would be astonished but we couldn't say anything because it is accepted by the society to wear G string in public. And there are some beaches in this country and some places in this country where you got some people called them selves naturalists. You know what they are; I don’t have to tell you, they believe that they have to walk around all the time naked. We can't make a judgment call, because according to the legislation, they have the right… in fact, there was a man who was running all across the UK for three month naked. For three month with nothing but a hat and pair of boots on. … can you imagine a man running through a village with only a hat and pair of boots? *joking*…only because he's a naturalist and this is his constitutional right, and for three month nobody could say anything about it. ..Well, I say that in a society that people are allowed to express themselves that way, why should there be a problem about Muslim women choosing the preference to cover their heads, be it in the schools or otherwise, or to cover their bodies with loose garments. Why should it be such an uproar? Why there is a need for the media to assault and say 'Muslims want to take over our society' or 'Muslims want to impose their values upon us' … well I want to remind them that until 15 or 20 years ago, the nuns in the church, the catholic church, they had to wear it (head scarf).. is this right or wrong? ..and just recently, the catholic church has relaxed, the uniform code of the nun now they can show a low cleavage. They can wear a little bit of *shiekh draws a V around his chest to resemble the low cleavage*.. put the cross right there in the middle, they don’t have to wear a head piece anymore, and they can show a little bit of thigh. *joking again* ..well that's their right, we couldn't say anything about that, but when I went to church when I was 17 years old, all the nuns were looking like how the sisters (Muslim women) are dressed today! … so societies change, but why should our values have to change? ..those Muslim ladies who want to wear a head scarf and want to wear a loose clothing they're doing so because God said so, not because their husbands said so, not because they're Arabs or Indonesians or Malaysians or Africans. No, they are doing it because god said so, so if our religion, which is the same religion of Abraham and Moses and Jesus and John the Baptist, we have the same religion, and we are monotheistic people basically. Just like Jews and Christians. Taking our scripture from the same source, and we can see, and the history of our religion shows that women dressed this way consistently, then why it is an aberration because our women want to wear that today. What do they our women to do? Do they want all our women to take off their head scarves and all put on G strings? *Joking again* would that be like 'now you are all the same, oh, now it is OKAY!' …no , we say it is not okay! And we say that we as Muslims have the right to preserve what we see as decent and dignified clothing and appearance. And we think that we are fortifying, we think that we are making a good moral contribution, and we think that we are doing something that will support the morals, the principles and the status of women in this society. We say that's what we think we're doing. And do we have the constitutional right to do what we consider as a moral contribution to the fiber of this society based on our religion? Of course we do! And we don’t have to apologize, and if somebody wants to know. If we are unable to explain, then we do not have to explain. But what we should is: the people of the media or the people of the government who feel they don’t understand what's going on, we should send them to those people who are qualified to expound upon this issue in a dignified, educated way. So that people wouldn't think somehow or another that all these women wearing headscarves got an AK 47 underneath their scarves, or they got a bomb, they are coming inside somewhere with a bomb! *joking* you know, stereotypes. But the issue is, to the Muslim women in particular; you do not have to explain to anybody why you are dressed the way you are dressing, just like when others, who would undress, do not have to explain to anybody why they are undressed….

Grieving with Yazan...

Me and my fellow blogger Lujayn, had been planning for a get together for quite sometime, we finally managed to make it this evening, along with couple of other friends from the blogsphere and elsewhere...

I enjoyed Lujayn's company like I always do, and I also found pleasure in getting to know those whom I met for the first time, however, I had this feeling of sad and morose from the inside, it is not easy to have fun and rewind when you know that someone whom you care about is in a state of distress...even though I have not met Yazan in real life, he feels like a family to me. The thing with blogging is that you get to know the person whom you're interacting with to a degree that he or she settles in a dear place within your heart...

Yazan, hang in there dear friend, we are all here for you...

They are the torches of light!