Raising American-Muslim Ambassadors

"Mija, don't miss a day of your life.  Find ways to make each day matter-- to you, to another, to the world.  Remember that we are all part of something bigger than life" my grandma on my dad's side wrote to me in a letter that she gave me before I went away to college.  Today, on a day soaked in exams, stress, and a bitter cold reminding me of winter's existence, I find myself re-reading it and remembering a lifetime of memories with a full heart.  How could it be that eighteen years could pass by in such a blink of an eye?

My dad converted to Islam when he was in his early 20s.  And when he converted, he made it a point to not let his observance of a different faith and its traditions get in the way of the close relationship he had always maintained with his family.  My parents made sure that my Christian side of the family felt as included in our lives as our Muslim relatives were.  At my parents' wedding my mother walked down the aisle to Pachelbel's Canon in D, my father wore a shervani (an Indian version of a suit), and my parents released butterflies at the end of their ceremony.  Their wedding was a symbol of what the rest of our lives would be: a completely distinct hybrid of east and west, new and old, and just pure wonderful.

I grew up having cookie baking parties with my grandmother the weeks before Christmas, playing with her three dogs (and feeding them food I didn't want when my mother wasn't looking), having wrestling matches with my uncles, and having family sleepovers the night before Christmas at my grandparents' house.  But never once during any of this was I confused about my own identity.  My parents would explain to me on the way to Christmas celebrations "Samar remember that we don't celebrate Christmas, but we believe in Islam that you maintain connections with your family no matter what, so that is what we're doing.  This is how you show family that you support them and that you appreciate them".  So they would give us Christmas presents and we would give them Eid presents in return.  They would make us marshmallow free sweet potatoes on Thanksgiving and make a few batches of turkey bacon and turkey sausage for us on Mother's Day breakfasts too.  It was the most compromising and dynamic union I had ever witnessed and not a day goes by that I'm not grateful for it.

My parents also balanced that by raising me in a circle of the most knowledgable and innovative western Muslim scholars.  From the age of seven I sat in circles with people like Dr. Umar, Shaikh Hamza, Dr. Ingrid Mattson, Dr. Sherman Jackson, and Dr. Abdul Hakim Winters.  Not only did my ambitious 28 year old parents make me sit in on these circles at 7, I also got quizzed on what was said during these lectures on the way home.  In addition to learning about Islamic ethics and values, I also learned about Christian and Jewish ones as well.  I sat in on synagogues, went to various different church services ranging from monastaries to evangelical congregations.  My parents thought it was imperative that I learned about other faiths than my own so that I could have the knowledge to choose my faith on my own accord because when you choose something for yourself, you are much more likely to hold fast to it and value and appreciate it.  It also provided me with the tools to combat the post 9/11 misconceptions with my own unique perspective and insight that were the result of my unique upbringing.

Recently, at a Muslim Student Association gathering on campus, I found myself frustrated that many of the members stuck to one another like the grains of sticky rice.  As I overheard many bits and pieces of conversation, it saddened me that there were repeated fragments like "yeah, I have this friend but she's nonmuslim..." as if it discounted the friendship.  Growing up, I quickly realized that my Christian family members were some of the best people I had ever come across.  They were moral, and ethical, caring, and open-minded.  They were people that were fearless when it came to standing up for what was right.  It was my grandmother who taught me how to truly care about a person, and my grandfather taught me how to be dedicated and do the absolute best in whatever I did, regardless of what that was.  My uncles taught me how to find the humor in the mundane and how to always make appreciation and love known.  And my aunts taught me how to be patient but fierce and resilient.  When push came to shove in my silly suburban teen life, it was often these people that I went to for advice and comfort over anyone else, even my Muslim relatives.  And in my mind, that says a lot.

What I'm trying to say is that this divide where we try to shelter our children from other faiths, where we take them from one Muslim place to another, and then send them to commuter colleges with more Muslims, and then get them married and have them live inside of this Muslim community and then still complain about how "no one understands Muslims" or that people are being "ignorant" or that systems are "stilted" towards certain people.  Because the reality is that we live in a predominantly Christian society, and shutting our youth up in little bubbles isn't the answer.  Teaching them how to coexist, how to not think of people outside of the Muslim faith as the "other".  If we want people to start understanding Muslims, writing books and making documentaries is not the way to go about it.  It's by having human ambassadors of what an American-Muslim looks like, and acts like, and what they stand for, and the absolute best ambassadors are your children.  Raise them to be that way.  This means that many of the previous stigmas of the first generation Muslims like talking to the opposite gender and having friends outside of the Muslim faith need to be re-thought because we are living in a place where Islam needs to be fitted to its new vernacular finally.  We need to be bold enough, and forward thinking enough to see that.  There I plant my foot.

Samar

Musings on Mom

When I was four, I used to imitate my mom on business calls on my pretend phone in my pretend office.  I'd rush around frantically talking to imaginary people whose names were remarkably similar to the real life people that my mom worked with.  I too, was a business woman.  When I was seven I'd sit in the bathroom when my mom wasn't home and play with her makeup.  I never dared put it on my own face though because that would be waking the beast.  But I'd smush around the lipstick on my fingers reverently, as if the magic that made her who she was was hidden deep somewhere within that tube of Bobbi Brown.  When I was nine, I'd watch my mom get ready (although she didn't know it) and wish that my hair wasn't quite so frizzy and that my glasses could become invisible so that I could be as pretty as her.  And at twelve, I'd always bury my face in her clothing so I could inhale that distinctly unique blend of facewash, perfume, and mom.  I'd smell it wafting down the hallway as she went to leave the house, and I'd stop and sniff for a moment, and wonder if that was ever something that my daughter would do.  Don't get me wrong, if you go through my diaries from my childhood, most of them are a comical soap opera about how my mom wouldn't let me do something or the other.  But it didn't change the fact that at every party, every family gathering, every public outing, I would find myself looking over at my mother after I said or did anything, looking for signs of approval or disapproval in her demure face.  When I was fifteen, I begrudgingly thanked my mom in my head as I found myself saying the same gems of wisdom to my friends that she had given to me.  I found myself repeating aphorisms about boys, and life, and self worth, and dreams that my own mother had passed on to me.  And at seventeen, my heart broke when I realized I could never be who she was.  I was headstrong, passionate, stubborn, a procrastinator, a dreamer, and for lack of better adjectives, an artsy fartsy hippie.  And believe me when I say those are nice qualities for a character in a book but not really a real human being.  Me to my mother's detail oriented, realistic, organized, steadily driven, consistent, mathematical and scientific mind, was a combination like fire and ice.  My poor father.

As a teen, in my mind, my mother was the cause for global warming, WWI as well as WWII, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the extinction of the dodo bird, the debt ceiling, and the fall of the US Postal Service.  Oh and last but certainly not least, the ruining of my life.  That's because my mom wasn't exactly a Pintrest mom that made me fresh baked cookies or told me to have a good day at school and if she ever used the word "sweetie" it usually was drenched in sarcasm and meant that I was in deep, deep trouble and she was trying not to kill me.  I learned to interpret her silence as approval and...well there was NO interpretation needed when there was disapproval.  She couldn't tolerate small talk (and if you have a teenage daughter you do a lot of that...you have to listen to who likes who and why Jennifer told Lauren that she was dramatic and like LAUREN isn't dramatic at ALL...you get the point).  If I wasn't going to talk about saving the world or getting married, my mom really didn't want to hear it.  

But as my life went on and I met girls who could only talk about other girls and hot guys and makeup, deep down I became sort of glad that I didn't have a Pintrest mom.  I had a mom that was a fighter, a warrior, a game changer.  I had expectations on me far greater than just graduating and having a job and a family.  My mom expected me to do something truly great for someone greater than myself because of all I had been given.  And while most days I could only focus on the lack of fresh baked cookies and smiles, and how hard she was on me, I was so thankful deep down that I had a challenge so seemingly insurmountable to face.  What's life if it's easy?

It's August now.  I'm packing up my whole life into boxes and staring at a terrifyingly blank new slate.  It's the beginning of the rest of my life.  And as I look around my room, I start to get choked up realizing all the unspoken acts of love my mother had done for me.  The room that she had decorated for me, the all white fairy furniture we'd picked out when I was in first grade, the poem she'd given me when my brother Zayn was born that talked about doing good even even in the face of disaster, the starfish she'd brought back for me from Mexico one summer, the calligraphy scrolls with my name on it that she'd brought back from China, and the purses she'd brought back for me from Dubai, the stack of classic novels she'd bought for me at seven and insisted I read.  It hits me then that there's never been a moment where I haven't been on my mother's mind.  I'm seared within every nucleus of every cell that makes up her body.  In every wrinkle, every smile, every tear, every drop of sweat.  I'm there.  And in that moment, I realize that often times the strongest love is the one that is unspoken.  I'd just been too immature before to understand that. My mom may not have always voiced her support for me in the typical cheerleader way, but looking back, she'd always been in my corner, even if it seemed like she had been against me.  That's because sometimes the best thing for your child, and the nice thing aren't always the same.    

A mother daughter relationship is probably one of the most complex things on the face of the planet.  It's frustrating on both ends, it's painful, and you come out of it with about 20 pounds you can't get rid of and stretch marks that don't seem to fade and a sassy little monster that resides in your home.  But I promise you, that there will be a moment where things click into place.  Where you are no longer seen as the enemy, but as the demanding ally instead.  Where we can see the good in what you did and not merely our petty frustrations.  It's a process, it takes time.  But I promise it'll happen.  Whether it be at 15, 17, 25, or 50, it will happen.  But there is a moment in everyone's life where you learn to zoom out of the tree you were looking at, and choose to see the forest instead.  

So to my Benito Mussolini, to my Stalin, to my jail master, my warden, to my teacher in sarcasm, in strength, in wit, and most importantly, resilience, thank you. You were my Mussolini, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.  I'm pretty sure I would be in jail and with some drug problem if I had a Martha Stewart as a mom because I wasn't always exactly Red Riding Hood myself.  I love you. 

My Desert Epiphany

Sometimes I'll be sitting in school in the middle of listening to a lecture on atomic bonding, or discussing idomatic expressions in Spanish, and my mind will wander off always to the same spot.  I'll close my eyes for a second, and suddenly I'll be back on the dusty streets of Cairo, listening to cars fly by, incessant honking, and the unique smell of exhaust, gasoline, and shawarma all combined together.  I'll smile as I remember being warmed up by the care of strangers on the street and the sound of Athan in the air as much as I'll remember being warmed up by the hot Egyptian sun.  And I'll open my eyes again and wonder in confusion how a place so unlike home managed to steal my heart so thoroughly.

The college search is over.  And as I sit in my car (yes it finally happened, the world's biggest clutz now can legally operate a two ton vehicle) on a bleak "spring" day, the familiar panic hits me.  What if I mess up?  What if I don't make it?  What if I realize that I'm not good at anything or that I don't have the real world skills and I end up living in my parents' basement forever and ever and have to unload the dishwasher seventeen times a day for the rest of my life?

So I start scrolling thorugh my phone aimlessly, trying to avoid the fear and stress about my future that weighs on me heavy like a boulder.  And I come across a journal entry Egypt Samar had written on her phone.  I say Egypt Samar because Egypt Samar had a lot of time to sit and look out at the Cairo sights and the Red Sea and just contemplate.  Egypt Samar saw the world in a completely different light once she was immersed in a land where poverty and wealth lived side by side.  Where she was reminded every day that she owed something to the world.  Darien Samar gets caught up in her everyday life back home and sometimes forgets just how extremely privileged she is.  She opens her extremely full fridge and complains about there being no food because no junk food is there.  Darien Samar can on occasion be heard whining about how she has no clothes to wear or how life is so unfair because she has to take three tests in one day. 

July 24th, 2012

My entire teenage life I've been preoccupied with what I now realize as the very western concept of "finding myself". When my parents announced during the middle of my junior year that we would be spending a month of summer break in Egypt, I wasn't too pleased. It was supposed to be MY summer with MY friends and MY idea of fun. Looking back, I now realize how small-minded and suburban of me that was. But finally I accepted the trip for what it was, and decided to use it as a way to figure out who I was supposed to be and to find out what it was exactly that I was meant for.

Needless to say, I was slightly irked when after a week in Egypt, I had seen no burning bushes or messages written in the sky for me. I was stuck with the same old confusion and that sense of timidness when being faced with a completely blank slate. Staring at the pyramids, and swimming with a sea of fish in the red sea merely reminded me of my insignificance to the world.

Two weeks later, on a dusty jeep ride through the desert, I started to notice the drastic difference between the quality of my life and the quality of the people's lives around me. I had no doubt that were they to see my home, or come to my school, they would be held speechless. As I stared at the thin, middle aged Egyptian man driving the jeep on a blazing day while fasting, I realized that for me this was a cute adventure. But that for this man, it was his life. This was what he had done, does, and probably will do for the rest of his life. It made me feel like God had put more responsibility on my shoulders since he had given me considerably so much more.

That night, laying out in the middle of the White Desert, out under the open stars and absolute silence, I realized that "finding myself" was a pretty stupid concept. I had known who I was going to be all along. It was as innate to me as the ability to breathe. The person I was supposed to be was already in the making. I had just been looking for an easier shortcut the whole time. You see, the person you are, the kind of life you want, the kind of relationships you desire, they don't just have some magical switch to turn on at age 25. Finding yourself isn't like a mining project where you just happen to come across the mother load, it's like a construction project-- built by a series of life decisions and life experiences. From my choice in breakfast food, to the things I chose to let myself say, moment by moment and day by day, I had been determining who I'd be all along.

As Americans, we look for the shortcut for everything. From frozen meals and prepackaged masala mixes, to shake weights and Jenny Craig programs, the American philosophy that time is money could not be more apparent. But talk to the man down the street from me who spends hours cooking fresh bread, or the woman who brings us home cooked meals, and I'm sure they'll tell you that time is much much more than money. It's an investment. After being in a Muslim county, I have fallen in love with the often neglected Muslim traits of generosity, ethicality, humility, conversation, and of course, sly humor. If I've learned anything else besides my broken Arabic, it's that attaining character is a long and arduous process. Having a quality life is much harder than having a quantity life. But it's these things that give a Muslim country its flavor and rich, memorable culture and vibe.

By the time the sun had risen, hiding away the stars and casting its bright rays on the rock formations around me, I knew that I had a lot of work ahead of me. But I also knew that I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.


I take a deep breath and face the music.  If I truly want to be a person of character, a person that is a doer, that changes things, no day is acceptable to slack.  It won't always be fun, it'll be really painful and hard sometimes, and yes, I will most certainly fail a few times along the way.  Character is the result of doing all those seemingly inglorious and boring things first like praying all your prayers, eating healthy, trying not to say mean or bad things even when you want to, and always curbing your desires and your nafs even when you don't want to.  It's these things that get you to the glorious, cool aspects of being a doer like volunteering in war zones and protesting and starting foundations and projects for the service of others.  You can't take shortcuts.  College isn't any different.  It's all in what I make of it moment by moment that will determine who I become.  There is no snap moment of failure, failure is only when you take the backseat in your own life.

There you have it, my desert epiphany.








 

To all you lonely teens

All you lonely girls and boys out there, I thought you should know, you deserve a round of applause.

To all you lonely girls,
I am no different.  I drown my solitude in Snow Patrol lyrics and cry my heart out to Coldplay
I too, foolishly hope that someone will write me 365 letters for a year professing their love.  Instead I get spam college brochures from College of Dupage.
I too dance in the rain and stare at the stars on a cloudless night.
I'm a dreamer, just like you.
But girls, lets all just keep this in mind:

Beauty isn't something some guy gives you by telling you you're beautiful,
Beauty is in your soul; the way you carry yourself, the grace with which you deal with the curves life throws at you.
And your importance to this word is intrinsic to who you are, and distinctly unique to you.
It's not defined by how many guys want you, or how many friends you have, it's defined specifically in your own strange way.
Girls, you're the strongest thing this world has.  You embody resilience.  Don't barter what makes you beautiful in exchange for a more conspicuous way of life.

To all you lonely girls, that sit at home watching reruns of Drake and Josh and Fresh Prince of Bellaire on the nights of Homecoming, Turnabout, and Prom, I too, will be sitting there with you.
I will be dancing around to Lupe Fiasco in my pjs, like the loser I am, and proud of it.
Because I for one, will never have to deal with the pain of being ditched by my date, or trying not to wipe my makeup off, or the all too painful and self esteem lowering rounds of dress shopping.
Because I for one, will be able to say that I respected myself every single moment of my existence,
Because I for one, will never have been defined by a man.

And to all you lonely boys out there, that walk down the hallways with no small hand clasping your own,
To all you lonely boys that play X-box on prom night instead of getting dressed up in your best suit and buying a corsage,
Don't listen to what society tells you.
You are men.
Quite possibly the best ones out there.  You will be the ones that can love, cherish, and respect your wives, that can raise equally strong, ethical, and genuine children.
It's hard I know,
Believe me I can empathize.
But it's worth it.

No girl will ever break your heart,
No girl will ever impede your ability to trust,
Your friends will respect you even if they don't say it,
Because in your steadfastness to the path, you will exude a confidence that will awe them.  And leave them trying to unlock your secret.
To all you boys out there, who follow rules that seem to be incredibly outdated, just remember, it's all for a reason that you may not just yet have the capacity to understand.

To all you lonely teens,
Just remember, that just when you think you're all alone,
You've got a friend up above, watching, caring, and loving.
And you've also got me.