Googling Ramadan

Edgware Road, London

It was warm, the kind of warm you'd appreciate after living in London for a while, a warm long july day in 2011, which was also the first day of Ramadan, and my first ramadan away from the east.

I remember all the conversations that led to that day about what seemed to be the impossibility of fasting the long hours of the day; not accustomed to the European summer, I found it difficult at first to grasp the idea that fasting 17 hours a day would be possible.

I didn't think of the fact that life during Ramadan in London would resume as normal, and how the smell of coffee, cigarettes and bread would be hovering in the air I breath. I forgot that in London, unlike other cities I've witnessed Ramadan in, the majority would not be fasting, I forgot.

I also did not think that when it was time to break the fast, I wouldn't have my TV turned on Sharjah TV channel with their famous iftar ritual every year, in fact, I forgot I didn't own a TV and that my fasting would break with me googling the time of Maghrib and comparing and contrasting the different timings between the different time-zones of the city.

It did not feel special at first.

I remember situating myself in front of my laptop with some strawberries and water since I had no dates and yogurt, and searching on youtube for the Adhan that most resembles home. The moment I'd break my fast, I'd pray and then call my friends and socialise a little with them before it was time to catch the last tube back to my apartment.

It was difficult the first couple of days, until I decided that googling Ramadan in London, was probably not the best way to spend the holy month in a city that was slowly becoming home. And so began my journey in trying to ease the binaries that rested within me about the East and the West, slowly by taking short walks around my neighborhood and trying to spy with my little eye fellow muslims. As soon as I reached the bus stop in my beautiful islington neighborhood, a woman too busy reading her novel and twirling her hair smiled at me, and said Ramadan Mubarak. At that moment, I couldn't tell if she fasted as well, or if she was indeed a  'fellow Muslim', in fact, I ridiculed my very attempt of trying to 'type' her as any kind but a fellow human being. And there it was, the bus journey that took me to the centre of what was then my universe showed me a sense of collectivity in a society that is often dubbed as individualistic. I found myself seeking that sense of closeness that I often reject priding myself that I belong to the 'I' alone, and nothing else. I found myself walking to Edgware road, the famous Arab street that always offers the best and the worst of what it means to be an Arab. I actually found myself looking for the commonalities rather than the differences I usually feed on, That Ramadan,  I became very collective.

It was difficult at times to feel the spirituality of fasting, when the coffee smell from the neighboring cafe is almost blinding to all my senses, or when the parade of the teenage drunks starts marching on my street on friday night, indeed it was very difficult to the point that I wanted badly to go back to Dubai for just a while, just to feel the presence of God again. But then I found my solace in the words written by Him that tell us, and told me that day that "To GOD belongs the east and the west; wherever you go there will be the presence of GOD. GOD is Omnipresent, Omniscient. (2:115)"

Ramadan is beautiful in London this year as well, and though I stopped looking for commonalities between me and this city, I find solace in knowing that He is here, like He is there, without the need to keep googling Him.

This post was written for Art Dubai's Blog, as part of their "Posting Ramadan" Series. Original Post can be found here: http://www.artdubai.ae/blog/googling-ramadan-by-mariam-wissam-al-dabbagh/

Say Hello and Wave Goodbye

The death of the heart is the saddest thing that can happen to you. -Chinese Proverb

I have a certain fascination with suspended spaces and time(s), such as airports, train stations and in some instances hotel rooms. There is a lure to the revisited places that often witness pleasures, pains and heightened potentials, well at least for me there is. 

I have always been attracted to such spaces, every time I travel, and God knows I've had my share in the last two years ( I've traveled through airports more than 40 times), and yet every time I do, I make sure I go at least 4 hours before my flight departs so that I'd spend some time in a terminal filled with people either welcoming new stories, or ending long ones. I'd always sit on a chair either with a book that often masks my curious looks, or a notebook where I jolt down stories i'd imagine happening in the wandering minds of fellow travelers. 

Yes, I often also spend some time imagining or at times pushing visual images away in hotel rooms the moment I start occupying them, trying to understand what stories the walls have to tell, and what shames or pleasures the white clean sheets had to witness. 

Train stations however remained foreign to me because of the nature of transportation in the city I lived in most of my life, that was until I moved to London, and they became central to my life. My last recollected memory of a train station was in Baghdad, I don't remember the name of the station, but I was probably 7 years old, excited about having our private cabin with bunk-beds to share with my siblings on our trip to Kirkuk where my Aunt ( may she rest in peace) once lived. Was there a big clock in the station? That's how I remember it, but also that's how they are portrayed in hollywood films, so perhaps my memory is tainted with western stereotypes, and romantic associations with the industrial revolution as it is portrayed in books and films I read and watched growing up. 

Until I started traveling outside what was once the locus of my universe, I began observing train stations and my fascination with them grew even more. 

I've spent some ample time in stations during my time in London, sometimes in passing as means of commuting, and others saying my hello's and goodbyes. I always looked for the odd couple that fought before one of them boarded a train away, or the ones that did not cry but laughed trying to ease the separation. I was in love with my selections, and often imagined that I would also reclaim the space when the time came to say my goodbyes, and create a counter-argument to the usual tears shed while departing. 

But that never happened, instead I saw myself narrating in my head instances when I had to say goodbye to loved ones while it was happening! It was too intense, I'd hear a voice-over in my head describing the teary eyes, the shaking hands, and the embrace that truly suspends time. My mind also directs the whole scene where people move in time-lapse, while I am standing still feeling with every passing second, a life-time slipping away. My narrative in fact, became the most dramatic of them all. 

A week ago, I revisited a station that I hate and love by chance, not intended, I found myself somehow forced to take it to reach a hotel-room I then called home. I walked in with so much caution, pretending I was a horse, that I only saw what was in front of me, and that my human eyes could not comprehend the sideways. I wanted to avoid that seat outside the station where I sat not so long ago crying because I had to live that un-coveted goodbye. I avoided the gateway which saw both the arrival of my solace, and the farewell to the arms. I tried to avoid looking at the station I was now walking through so much, that I actually missed both my gate and the train. 

And then I looked behind, and saw that clock I have always imagined in the train station in Baghdad, and saw my little self crying because her daddy then could not travel with her to Kirkuk. I also saw that with every goodbye I said in the train stations of my life, I always shed rivers of tears because in their essence, farewells are hated by me. I stopped blaming myself for my overt sense of sensitivity, and accepted that my vulnerability to separation is rooted deep in losses I've lived through in my childhood and adult-life. I accepted then only that my sadness and fascination with train stations, airports and hotel rooms, comes from my continuous struggle with the temporality of it all: of life, moments, happiness and love. 

I waited for the next train on a bench close to the one that I avoided, and I saw me sitting there crying genuinely as I said goodbye there once, and It did not bother me, in fact, I smiled at me and prayed that I will never stop crying for those who matter, but then leave. I also closed my eyes a little and prayed that the next time I am here, I am saying hello not waving goodbye.

*Title of this post is a the title of David Gray's Song found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bzdrabPpRE 

* Photographs are part of my collection of captured memories. 

The Poet & The Scientist 1.1

They left their foreign cities, and forged digital alliances to meet in the epicenter of their colonised past. She packed the innocence of her scarred life, the poetry of her ancestral belonging, and he traveled light, burdened with his manufactured convictions.

He came with numbers and diamonds, and she welcomed him with extremes of veiled chocolates, cigarettes, and her words.

In the express train, there it was: collisions of shock and anticipated pleasures as they waited to reach the centre of what they once both called home. The conversation was just about to start, but the debates were silenced, the binaries were resting, and the potentials heightened.

The conversation continued, and foreign music played in the background to remind them once again, that it was indeed all foreign, all but their coveted explosion.

Laughter, tears and music all seemed wordless at a moment when her words were silenced and his numbers were subtracted to zero. Musky scents of occupied pasts in a room that witnessed the death of poetry and the abortion of science.

He tasted pleasure, she suppressed pain and both surrendered to a moment they knew will last for as long as… a moment does.

He watched her words fall asleep, and her defenses fall as his lips stretched with a small victory that he concurred her lands, and claimed them his. She slept to dream of her words again.

Outside the small window was the remains of an empire that insisted on stealing their belonging. They denied it with the smell of coffee, fresh bread and cigarettes stealing with pleasure moments of their lives. Outside that window, was the empire, but inside the room was Baghdad.

Baghdad: loved, hated and coveted stood uncontested in her eyes, Tigris flowing signaling him to taste home, and begging her to quench her thirst.. They both swallowed home to the point of rejection.

In Baghdad, the explosions went silent too, and the unfamiliar sound of peace alarmed them that it was too, coming to an end.

The music faded away, and the conversation rested to give space for a debate that mocked the rivers and the sweaty palms. His numbers increased, as her poetry resurrected: Words he tried to erase, and softness that suffocated his resistance. He screamed for proofs, as she scribbled words on sheets that witnessed her demise.

She wore her contradictions and he fixed his emptiness as they left for the train. Quite they were, but the silence has left them. He took a glance back at the building that welcomed their wreckage, while she held his hands preparing to let them go.

She was the poet, and he was the scientist.

Talbot Square

In a little square by Sussex Gardens in London, two young girls played all day finding pleasure in the littlest things. Amazed by the great weather they were not accustomed to, Talbot Square in London became their haven: trees, grass and benches. It was situated right next to the motel, in which they stayed in with their parents and their baby sister who was too young then to play with them.
I heard this story several times from my Rasha and Tamara, who spoke about London with such love and warmth, and that square in particular. I knew that one day I will visit London just to see what Talbot was all about. Years passed, we grew older, and Rasha got married. She left the nest, and went back to the homeland with her husband.
Some more years passed, and on an idle Friday we received a phone-call from Iraq telling us of her death. I remember this day clearly like I remember what I had for breakfast today, the details of what my mother was wearing, and the smell of freshly cooked Iraqi lunch from the kitchen. I remember that my hair smelled like the new Johnson's baby Shampoo, a product I never used since then.
Fast-forward to year 2011, and 9 months into my life in London, I finally found the courage to visit that square in Paddington. I went there with so many high expectations, and excitement that I will be visiting this magical place my sisters believed was the best place to be in the city. To my pleasant shock, the square was less than ordinary, a very small green piece of land situated in the midst of motels and dark old ugly buildings. I looked around trying to find the ‘scary’ lion statue they often spoke of, and there it was a tiny statue of a gold and red colours right next to the square.I sat on a bench, and took a deep breath. I was a bit disappointed to tell the truth, and a little bit angry as well. I couldn’t quite understand why the anger when I believed that I would be smiling like in the end of a movie when the heroin visits her sister’s playground and makes a little prayer for her. The feeling of serenity escaped me, and tears started suffocating my eyes trying against my own will to leave. It was when one managed to escape my control that I realised that all I wanted to do was to pick up the phone and scold her for such exaggerated description of the square. I realised how much I wanted to have her number saved in my mobile phone, you see she died well before technology took its toll on us. Oh wait, she did manage to see my father’s first mobile phone, you know the big black block back in the 1990’s. Oh yes, I remember she laughed calling us privileged elites, since she lived in war-torn Iraq now; food and security is what she worried about.
I found myself wondering if my sister would have had a blackberry, she had to. I would send her images of myself in every spot in this city, she would have loved southbank, and would probably reply with a crying face wishing she was there with me. She would also send me a message late at night to check if I was ok, you see she loved playing mother so much reminding me all the time that she changed my diapers. I would also send her an image of the so-called great square and laugh at her lack of imagination. I started thinking about her Avatar, she wasn’t the type that changes her picture every day, or maybe she was I don’t know, I will never know.I will never know! There, right there I started to let go of my tears and surrendered to crying. I was laughing and crying at the same time thinking about the absurdity and beauty of the human mind: the mundane details that help us survive.
It has been a while since I’ve cried for you Rasha, not because I haven’t had the urge, but because like everybody else, I pretend that death becomes easier by time. You always used to annoy us with your constant ego-trips: “ How much do you miss me? How much do you love me? Am I your favourite sister/daughter?” we used to always nod and ignore you.
But here you go Rashawi, I am not ignoring you anymore. I love you more than you can ever imagine, your absence has made you my favourite sister, and mom’s one and only. I miss you so much and the thought of not messaging you in the middle of the night scares me still. Oh how I wish I can tell you about my life in London, and about my good grades. I wish you can tell me again how special you think I am, and how different you thought I was from everybody else. The day you died, you took something away from me that will never come back. This pain of losing you has raised the bar so high for other mediocre pains in my life; nothing can break me like your absence did. Even your death made it easier for us to endure other pains, you were right Rashawi, mako mithlich*.
I will visit Talbot again, look at my phone and think of you.

*mako mithlich: Iraqi for ' there's no one like you'.

The Clash of Identities

image courtesy of bbc.co.uk

I reach SOAS this morning ready for another failed attempt at making sense of “reading week” – which is a class-free week for us to catch up with our readings- there at the notorious SOAS steps students gathered with banners and painted faces to march together to the parliament house and protest the cuts on education proposed by the “coalition” government.

I stood there with awe and admiration, such naiveté towards the mere concept of expression, and democracy. I stood there contemplating whether to stand too close to “them” or sit a few steps away so that I guarantee a safe distance. I spent a couple of minutes trying to grasp what power was holding me back from marching with them and joining my voice to theirs, and the bigger question posed itself: What am I scared of?

All my life, I blamed governments and police officers for the lack of civil action and democracy, and I knew that the moment I changed geographies, that this rebellious righteous person inside of me will finally get her say, and will become a well-bannered person when the occasion rises. Yet here I was, on foreign lands, with several rights I never enjoyed walking away to situate myself and my bag on a bench nearby.

In this very cold morning and while everyone was preparing for the march, I regretted not attending “how to overcome the culture shock of being in London” seminar that was offered during orientation week. You see, I am not shocked by the alcohol, the hippies, the punks or even the porn industry in Soho; I am deeply shaken by this overwhelming sense of freedom that all of a sudden was thrown at me. I am not prepared to say what I think is “right”, nor am I ready to let go of my worst inhibitions and I don’t think I will be in the very near future.

This “cultural” shock is evident in every class I take, every assignment I prepare for and every cup of coffee I have with fellow students. You see me not sure whether I should whisper the word “corrupted government” or say it in a loud clear voice, I also constantly catch myself replacing words with politically-correct synonymous –just in case-. Who am I afraid of? I don’t know.

What are my red lines in this city? I don’t know

Who is the president I shouldn’t talk about here? I don’t know

What country am I accountable for? I don’t know

Am I now an Iraqi living in Dubai, studying in London? Or am I an Iraqi living in London? I don’t know

Am an Iraqi when I was born in Dubai, and lived there all my life? Apparently not

Am I an Emirati, given that I was born in the UAE and raised there all my life? Apparently not

So many questions that I cannot find answers for in any of the recommended readings, and books I read on a weekly basis. Neither Hunnigton, nor even Marx has the answers to this “clash of identities.”

It is a sad reality to know that the authoritarian regime that you feared all your life lies within you. With every piece of bread and every sip of water in my life I was also fed fear and cowardice. I am now comfortable with myself because I know that this “phase” is momentary, and soon I will be back to my old settings where I can exercise my right of pretending that I am the victim of authoritarian regimes, I am the “third” world, and that I am indeed just a product of colonization and imperialism, denying that I ever had the chance to challenge those notions, and break-free.