The Year of Goodbye

Sometimes I’ll come across an old chipped dish belonging to a set that made its departure long ago in a donation box to the Salvation Army, or an orphaned shoe that once was a staple in someone’s wardrobe, and for just a second I’m transported back to a different era.  For a second it’s 2004 and my favorite shirt is a pink peasant top my mom bought from T.J. Maxx, my mom is wearing a lot more cotton two piece scarves, and my dad still owns carpenter jeans.  Or for a moment it’s 2006 and I can feel the grain of the hardwood floors beneath my feet as I slide around the kitchen eating my after school snack.  And when I open my eyes to a starkly different reality it never ceases to amaze me how imperceptible change can be in the moment.


My mom had me when she was 21.  For over a decade it was just me, my mom, and my dad-- two kids with a kid trying to figure the world out.  The thing about being the eldest child to young parents, is that in a way you all grow up together.  While my parents may see themselves as they are in the present, I will always see them as a collage of all the versions in their evolution.  That’s because all of those versions were the ones that raised me.

There was the young and spontaneous version.  The one where a spur of the moment camping trip was a valid excuse for me to skip school for a couple of days.  Or where my mom would wake me up at 1 am because she couldn't sleep and wanted to play instead.  The version where a random Wednesday midnight breakfast with their friends and 7-year old wasn't a problem.

There was what I would like to think of as my parents Renaissance, where they discovered a whole new type of Islamic scholarship that moved their hearts and related to their lives.  I watched it inspire my parents as they spent Saturday mornings soaking in lectures about history, language, theology, and philosophy.  And as I sat next to them, eating my snacks from a tupperware container and coloring, I too entered the colorful worlds of seemingly faraway places like Mali, Mauritania, Moorish Spain, the Ottoman Empire, or the battlefield with Khawla and Nusaybah.  I watched my mom transition from her job in the corporate world into her first job in the non-profit sector and remember her voice turning reverent as she told my dad at dinner one day "Ed this work touches my soul".  There was what felt like the weekend in middle school my dad decided he wanted to open his own counseling private practice.  We spent a whole afternoon trying to pick out a logo that said all he wanted it to say, and when he finally found it, I remember his eyes lighting up as he explained to my (not very interested) self about what an important resource an American Muslim therapist was for an American Muslim community.  Then there was the casual weekend conversation when I was 7 that led my parents along with 5 others on their decades long pursuit of building an authentically American Muslim community so that their daughter and any other future children would never see their faith as an antiquated remnant from a world they couldn't relate to.

There was also the more energetic and no nonsense versions of my parents.  The version where after saying “no” to cleaning my room at nine, my parents proceeded to haul all my furniture, clothes, and toys out of my room and making me earn it all back day by day because “if you don’t want to clean your room, we’ll make it easy for you”.  To my brother Zayn: you're welcome, I wore our parents down a lot for you.  Or there was the time where my best friend and I were convinced the basement was haunted by a ghost, and my parents decided to leave a creepy message on the basement wall from said ghost to mess with us because they thought it was funny (but of course, what else would any sane, loving parent do?).  Or how the day I broke my arm, my parents so compassionately decided to call me Gimpy for all six weeks that I had to have the cast on.


I guess what I’m trying to say is that being up close and personal with my parent’s dreams, disappointments, and evolution as adults taught me that life is all about building.  Sometimes inspiration may strike, but more often than not, inspiration is found through the lens you choose to look at life with.  It taught me that failure and gray areas and confusion aren’t negatives in life, they are the most critical and defining moments that shape you.  For every failure and disappointment my parents were met with, I just saw them reposition, readjust, and keep moving on.  It’s a trait I think I’ve naturally inherited, persisting and sometimes pushing almost bullheadedly until God allows things to work out.  Despite the thousands of “teachable moments” my parents tried to utilize, I learned the most observing my parents in all the moments they never saw me watching.  What I learned was how to take failure with as much grace as success.  I learned that it doesn’t matter how bright the sun is shining if you never open your blinds—so much of life’s joy is in gratitude for what is right in front of you.  And most importantly, I learned that faith is not wearable; it’s reflected in the decisions you make in the dark corners of your life, the way you carry yourself in the face of vulnerability and defeat, the amount of compassion you wield in the presence of a person or situation you believe deserves none.  None of those things can be taken on or off, only forever nestled within the synapses of your neurons.

If I could tell parents of American Muslim teens anything, it would be this: the next few years are going to be gone in the blink of an eye.  Pretty soon, you’ll be left with an empty room (regardless of how long you try to delay it), and the foundation for a lifelong relationship having been laid down.  So choose your battles wisely (no matter how pressing every single one may seem), love abundantly, forgive easily, and last but not least, stop holding your cards so tightly to yourself.  Your children will have a window into your soul and your failures whether you communicate them or not, because the eye that sees your unsaid truths is the gift your children were born with.  You might as well be frank with them, so that when they make their own inevitable mistakes at the critical junctures of their lives, they know they’re not alone when they finally call home.

Know that your children are not and will not ever be you.  You can give them everything you never had, only to watch them choose differently than you ever would have.  Focus on teaching your children how to think instead of what to think.  Give them frameworks and schemas from which to make sense of the world, but never do the sorting for them.  Doing so may mean some uncomfortable variances in perspectives at times, but all of these things mean that you did your job.  After all, your children were not made for your time, they were made for the days you will never see and for times you will never have to encounter.  And because of that, they have to be different in composition and make-up than you.


So to my Tias and my Tios, my abuelita and my big daddio, thank you for showing up.  Thank you for being there for every single birthday, holiday, and big moment in my life.  Thank you for teaching me about character, compassion, hope, grace, and most importantly, how to make a good bathroom joke or two.  To the Khallas, Khallis, and Aunties in my life, thank you for teaching me about strength and womanhood, for putting me in my place when I needed it, and for showing me how far a good attitude and a humble heart can get you.  To the Ammus and Uncles in my life, thank you for looking out for me always, for letting me wrestle you, and for modeling for me what it means to live with integrity.

And finally to my parents: there’s a thousand things I could say to thank you for the sacrifices and sleepless nights I’ll never know about, but instead I’ll pick just one.  Growing up, my mom used to talk about how the Taj Mahal was the most epic testament to love on this earth.  But Shah Jahan only joined marble and the world’s jewels to create a building.  My parents on the other hand spent the entirety of their youth joining hearts, lives, families, and lifestyles for no other reason than to create a community for me.  One that was made up of people from all different faith communities, different ways of practicing, cultural backgrounds, and ethnic makeups.  One that was free of judgement or expectations.  One that no matter what place in my life I was, I could always feel comfortable in my own skin.  And in my eyes, there could be no greater act of love.

To the community that raised me, to the aunts and uncles and aunties and khallas that yelled at me like I was their own, to the people who have ever knowingly or unknowingly touched my life, know this: if I ever manage to accomplish even an atom of good in this world, I’ll owe it all to you. And finally, to mom and abbu, thanks for letting me grow up with you—it was the best ride a girl could ask for.


Until the next era of my life,


Samar

The Bridge

It's a Wednesday night and I am proctoring a statistics exam.  The professor is a petite, slight woman from India.  I had been talking with her daughter whom she had brought with to the exam who wasn't older than eleven.  We complained together about the woes of fourth grade math and how art class was definitely way more fun.  The professor came up to me afterwards, "I'm glad you talked to my daughter; before, she seemed so.... " she stopped, in a way that I had seen a thousand times before in the elderly of my own family.  It was this search, this wandering endeavor to grasp at a word that did not exist.  At least in English.  It's a frequent thing for a linguist's brain.  However, for a person whose native tongue is no longer the currency of life, it is never ending.  Suddenly I am transported back to a thousand family parties with my great aunts and uncles on my mom's side.  Brilliant people who could be rattling off a whole stream of jargon only to stop indefinitely in search of a word as powerful and potent and perfectly fitting as the one in the language they grew up on.  They would stop to try to explain it to me, "you know Samar, kind of like..., but more..." and you could feel their frustration at finding a word in English that held only a pale comparison in their minds.   

December 28th, 2014

We are in a Jeep, driving through the countryside of India to get to the small town my mother was born in.  The name of the town means "New York" which is almost kind of laughable in its irony because I actually could not think of a place more unlike New York.  

We wind through the roads and it's almost stereotypically idyllic as we see women working rice paddies, little girls in braids down their backs and school uniforms riding on motorcycles five at a time, and brightly colored saris on the women selling produce on the huts on the sides of the road.  There are green, green hills dotted with colorful flowers that come rolling down, and the sky is this shade of early 2000s prom dress pastel blue.  The trees have grown all the way together to create this tunnel of extra fresh oxygen to combat the humid, dense air above the road we are driving on.  The men and women on the sides of the road sit by their vending stalls and drink bottomless cups of tea.  And if I ever snickered before when learning about the concept of a collective conscience, I was sobered by its existence as this place I had never once set foot in before, this rhythm of life that was so drastically different from the way I had grown up, somehow felt like a warm embrace.  

We are met in the town by a man on a motorcycle named Saleem.  In true Indian fashion, apparently he is a distant uncle of mine.  I shouldn't be surprised by now, but I can't help but be.  I am always amazed at the depth of the Indian value for relationships.  Their ability to maintain even the most distant of kinships is remarkable, I'm reminded of how any free time my grandmother has is going through her worn phone book to call every distant relative near and far to check up.  In the Urdu language, there is a specific name for every familial relationship imaginable, connections that aren't even deemed worthy of maintaining here at home.  I think that speaks a lot to the nature of the Indian people.  

The man on the motorcycle invites us to his home and inevitably we are force fed and made to drink endless rounds of tea to the point of tooth decay.  No, I'm serious.  These people are the masters of guilt-tripping and force feeding--they have made it an art.  As I sit in a room with two girls who are distant cousins of mine, I stare at them closely looking for the proof of the blood we share.  I find nothing but the same warm shade of brown in our eyes.  As I sit and converse with these people, I find myself amazed that family works this way.  Decades without meeting, utterly different lives in opposite parts of the world, but a smattering of similar red and white blood cells renders us as guests treated with utmost dignity and love.  As we prepare to leave, my Aunt looks at me and searches my face, as if she were trying to commit it to memory.  She pulls me back and squeezes my hand hard and looks at me, her eyes filling up.  And in that moment, I know the unspoken sentence between us, that there is a very good chance we may never meet again.  And as I smile and hug her goodbye, I sit in the car and wonder how it is that the world works this way.  How you can meet someone for the very first time and last time all in the span of an hour.

As we drive back through the countryside, I am listening to my mother talk to my relatives in that classic Indian way.  The inflections in their voices go up and down like the scalloped hedges of the palace bushes.  It is a tennis match of sarcasm and colorful analogies, sly wit and humble charm.  It’s only mildly more intense than what I grew up with--if I asked my mother if she loved me, it would be a solidly thick, sarcastic "no" immediately--but for the first time I can appreciate it.  It represents a culture of people that were incredibly adaptive, resilient, witty, and strong.  People that survived everything and did it with a rueful sarcastic remark or two and a smile.  People that were smart, kind, and hardworking.  People, that I have the honor of coming from.

Growing up, the precariousness of language has always fascinated me.  With three sentences, you can scar someone for life or leave them inspired forever—or if you’re an Indian parent, both, all at once, over and over.  I have always been amazed by how the differences in language, produce different strengths and weaknesses of their respective speakers.  For example, English is a very quantitative language, it is precise and scientific; incredible in its efficiency.  But for a poet in English, there are frequent lexical gaps.  There is love, longing, remorse, passion, but beyond that, the words to convey love and pain are rather few.  In English the strength of writing depends a lot on the structure of the writing to convey an idea.  Contrastingly, in Urdu, there is a word “parsu” which could mean anytime from ten years ago, to Tuesday of last week, to four years in the future.  The word “kal” can mean either yesterday or tomorrow, and even that is pretty lenient.  It could mean two days ago or four days from now.  Urdu’s quantitative measures would drive a scientist to jump off of the tallest point in Agra Fort.  But when it comes to expression of the self, Urdu is bursting with words.  The word “fanaa” means destruction of the self through love, but with a positive connotation.  It’s sort of like loving someone so much that your regard for yourself is thrown by the wayside.  The word “takalluf” means the politeness of a guest to their host’s offers.  As a teen sitting through family parties on my mom’s side, I was often frustrated as I listened to my relatives converse in Urdu about a topic I knew in English like love, disappointment, or frustration.  However, the words they used in Urdu were words I could not grasp fully because they did not exist in the language I grew up speaking.  Words with connotations and subtle undertones that required an immersion into the culture of my people to fully comprehend.  This winter, over the dusty streets in the market nestled beneath the Charminaar, I think I finally got a sliver of comprehension into this complex, vivid, nuanced culture I come from.

What I am trying to say is this:  when you know where you come from, you know your weaknesses, your predispositions, your baggage, and your biggest strengths. When you know these things, and you have faith and spirituality in your life, you are absolutely and utterly powerful.  You can take on anything life hands you.  A lot of parents try to transmit culture to their kids in this prepackaged bundle on the grounds that it is this slowly disappearing world they have to help preserve.  Which it is.  But that makes it seem like this un-relatable burden for your child.  Culture is different from faith.  And those two things cannot be transmitted hand in hand, because there is a good chance it will make your child want to run away from both.  But culture has to be seen by your child as this comprehensive understanding of the gears within them, like a way to make their seemingly un-relatable quirks relatable.  Because no one wants to feel like this oddity, we all want to know that there is a reason for the way we work the way we do.  Knowing that is the doorway for slowly understanding and coming to terms with your biggest weaknesses and natural predispositions.  Understanding these things will be your child's biggest asset in life.

The word the statistics professor finally chose was "morose".  A word that exists in both Urdu and English and means “sullen, displeased, unhappy”.  Sometimes that bridge between two seemingly contrasting places can be built with more ease that we anticipate.

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.  

To my own personal superman

A few weeks ago, when I had finally climbed into bed after a long night of homework, I heard a noise downstairs and started to tense up.  But then I remembered--like I always have for the past twelve years--that my dad was right down the hall.  So I turned on my side and went to sleep. 

I am only just beginning to realize that I am one of the few girls who still sees her dad as the strongest guy in the whole world.  For the longest time, I thought that was every little girl.  But the older I got, the more I saw that most girls didn't see their dad as superman the way I did and still do.  It wasn't just in the sense of brute strength (anyone who has seen my dad knows he's not exactly 6'10 or 300 pounds), but my dad has always been an unconquearble tower in my eyes because of his character, because of the way he walked the walk in a manner that I could only hope to mimic one day.  You see, although I myself am not a man (I know my muscles may make it seem otherwise), my dad taught me what it meant to be one.  A man isn't someone with giant muscles and a macho, overly confident attitude.  A man is someone who will take in a daughter that isn't his own and love her better than if she was.  A man is someone that isn't afraid to stand up for what is right, regardless of the consequences.  A man is someone that isn't afraid to show that he has a heart, emotions, and can be caring and kind.  A man is someone that loves God.  My father is the best testament to manhood that I have ever come across. 

My dad is silent and strong.  I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever heard him complain once.  There are so many times when I have made him late for work because I am slower than a turtle in the morning (but somehow I can still be awake enough to talk his ear off on the short five minute drive to work) and never once has he lost his temper at me for it.  And I'll be the first to admit, I am a difficult daughter.  I am stubborn, scatterbrained, messy, opinionated, and at times, completely irrational.  But my father's patience astounds me.  He listens to my petty dilemmas and treats them as seriously as he would a client whose life was falling apart.  Sometimes I will have said something and look over at my dad who is completely silent, and I think he's tuning me out, only to have him give his take on the situation five minutes later.  That's my dad.  He's patient, cautious, and thorough.

I remember one day in the middle of my junior year, I was hysterical because my grades weren't where I wanted them to be and it seemed that no matter how hard I tried, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it.  And my dad looked over at me and said "Samar, you're doing it.  You're doing it right now."  And he probably didn't realize it, but it meant the world to me to know that he was my biggest supporter, that he would be cheering for me no matter what the event was.  My whole life he's protected me wholeheartedly and determinedly, and he's managed to somehow let me stumble and learn my own lessons all while he was still guiding me.  Sometimes I'll say something, or relate my opinion on something and he'll press his lips together and stay silent.  And in his unspoken language, I know that means that I wasn't being benevolent or open-minded enough in my perspective or actions.  My father has never once told me what to believe or who to be, but I've picked up invaluable lessons on character from just watching him be him.  There are no attempts to teach or "be a role model" in the way my father has lived his life.  It's always been just him simply trying to be the best he can be, and that is probably what inspires me the most every single day.

In all of the thousands of yellings and groundings from my mom, it was the calm patience of my dad's that made me feel the guiltiest.  My dad has yelled at me probably like five times in my entire life, but everyday he teaches me something new in his own silent language.  It's his unspoken acts of love like pulling into Jewel to let me buy BBQ chips after I tell him I've had the worst week ever, or tolerating my out of tune, offbeat singing along to the radio every time we are in the car together.  It's the way he comes home after a long day of work and still manages to be energetic and wrestle and talk football with my brother and listen to my mom talk about her day or help her around the house.  If my family is a bed of flowers, my father is the soil that holds us all rooted together.  And I hope that one day I will be lucky enough to find someone just like him (minus the ever growing belly and love for fishing and lame jokes preferably). 

So to the man who is my best friend, my number one fan, my inspiration, and my hero, happy father's day.  I love you.

I guess what I'm trying to say, is that fatherhood isn't just changing diapers and walking your daughter down the aisle.  It's all the moments in between.  And as obvious as it seems, that means that when you're really tired and all you want to do is watch the game on T.V., you sit down and talk to your daughter instead.  Or when you're in a really bad mood and the last thing you want to do is give your daughter a ride somewhere, do it anyways and do it with patience and love and understanding.  As John Mayer says: "Fathers be good to your daughters, for daughters will love like you do."

~Samar