A 'different' childhood

Indira Gandhi was an only child and liked playing by herself, but she liked having her mother near her always, so that she could see her.
One evening, an aunt, who had just returned from Paris, came to visit them with a gift for young Indira. It was a beautiful embroidered dress for her. Indira's mother, however, did not accept the gift, but returned it with a smile saying, "I'm sorry we cannot accept the gift. We have taken a vow to wear only khaadi*"
The visitor looked confused. She said, "Look at yourself. The thick khaadi saaree has caused your skin to become red abd sore by rubbing against it.I think you have all gone mad! You are, of course, a grown-up. If you want to be ill, I suppose it is your business. But you should not make the child suffer. It is for her that I have brought this gift."

Indira's mother looked at the lady and smiled. She called Indira and said,"Come here , Indu." Aunty has brought you a foreign frock. It's very pretty. You can wear it if you like . But first think of the big fire where we burnt our foreign things. Would you like to wear this pretty thing when the rest of us are wearing khaadi?"
Indira's eyes shone when she looked at the dress . She wanted it very much. She wanted to touch it but even before her hand came out to touch the dress, she found herself saying, " Take it away -- I shan't ever wear it."

The visitor was taken aback and said," But why not? Don't you like nice things?"
Indira replied, "ido, but..." She repeated whatever she had heard the elders speaking.
The visitor, who was a bit upset by now, replied, " All right, Miss Saint, how is it that you have a foreign doll?

Though the lady was not serious, it had a very great effect on Indira. She was very fond of the doll and could not think of it as a lifeless object. For her, the doll was her friend, her child. For many days following this , she kept thinking about what her aunt had said. She was very troubled. She loved her doll very much. Yet she felt a strong sense of duty towards her country. After many days of thought and sleepless nights, she made the decision.

With her hands shaking, she took the doll to the terrace and set fire to it.

[Memories of a Different Childhood, OUP]

New Age A, B, C

it's that time of the year again, the shops are chockablock with the trendiest backtoschool must-haves and indulgent parents acting like Noddy:
yes to the 89 riyaal bag with a picture of an anemic Mulan
yes to the ridiculous sparkly shoes
yes to the designer school uniform
yes!
I imagine kids mentally punching the air and passing the first few months of school in an orgy of mystuffisbetterthanyours..ergo myparentsarebetterthanyours..

maybe in a few years kindergarten teachers would go:
A is for Acquire
B is for Buy
C is for Consume..

I feel like MeanMum incarnate while I hustle R-R and company out of harms way, but I refuse to participate in the frenzy..
I hope R-R don't get me wrong, I *do* follow the newage alphabet, but in a slightly altered version ..

A is for Acquire alright, but I'd rather they acquire skills and knowledge than the latest gizmos

B is for Buy, fine, but I would have them purchase a modest bag and give some money to the poor to buy jannahstock

C is for consume..okay, but only so much as they can digest

ولا تعد عيناك عنهم تريد زينة الحياة الدنيا
ولا تطع من أغفلنا قلبه عن ذكرنا واتبع هواه
وكان أمره فرطا

And let not your eyes pass beyond,
to those wanting/seeking the glitter of this life.
And do not obey/follow
Any whose heart neglects the remembrance of Us,
One who follows his desires,
And his affair has become all excess.
18: 28

Ryan and The Chocolate Factory

Ryan Cooke, 14, was the most disappointed boy on the planet when he fell sick on the day his class (he was studying in the UK) was going on a school trip to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory in Birmingham, England.
And to make matters worse, 12 months later, as Ryan waited patiently for the next trip to come around, the scheduled annual visit was cancelled. But this week, Ryan’s dream of visiting a chocolate factory finally came true — and it was everything and more than he could have expected.

More on “chocolatl” (meaning “warm liquid”)..“the divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue” and a bite-sized version of the classic chocolate story

Rajab 583,July 1187

the recompense of an evil is an evil like thereof,
but whoever pardons and makes reconciliation,
his reward is with Allaah
Surely, He does not love the wrongdoers
[42:40]

Rajab 583, July 1187

This sound was heard at the Masjid al Aqsa for the first time in nearly a century..because Allaah enabled this man to open the city's door..

Cook-Clean-Care. Repeat.

Day in the Life of a Mum..then and now
In the 1950s, mothers spent about 15 hours a week on domestic chores and 13 hours on cooking, but this has fallen to 6.6 hours and 5.9 hours in 2005. The average amount of time spent preparing food has fallen to 13 minutes per meal although the time modern mothers are gaining on their grandmothers is in danger of disappearing. More than four out of 10 prepare separate dinners for their family, making up to three different meals per night.
While food shopping took up 6.7 hours in the Fifties, this has been cut to 2.4 hours today, largely thanks to the weekly visit to the supermarket. The amount of time spent on pampering husbands has also fallen - from 10 hours per week to three.
While the commitment to looking after relatives has slipped with the demise of the extended family, the number of hours spent looking after children has remained fairly constant at 25.2 per week.
One area of change is that more women are choosing to get involved in children's play rather than inviting other youngsters over and leaving them to themselves. More than six out of 10 dedicate two hours a day to entertaining their children, although watching television has replaced board games in popularity. Reading and picnics still remain the favoured pastimes.

Ed: Little wonder then, if I had to choose only one website to visit per day, this would be the one..the one that teaches Sidetracked Home Executives (SHE™) to fly ;)

Where's Rida?

okay, so *some* people (alhamdulillaah for all the ppl who read this blog regularly and give us inputs on how to improve) have been asking why we carry more stuff by Rasha and very little by Rida..no, it's not because Rasha's my first born..think again...it's because Allaah, in His Infinite Wisdom, has distributed His gifts among us as He wills..

Rasha is quite the extrovert..maa shaa Allaah she has a gift which helps her to reach out to ppl more easily..she draws and writes and so, is mostly within posting distance of the 'puter.

As the nuns who were "interviewing" her for an entrance exam to the hallowed precincts of their 100-year-old school (where she resolutely refused to utter a word) will testify, Rida is the quiet one..the one who'll put a comforter on a sleeping sibling at night and kiss their cheek, the one who'll quietly wash the dust off everyone' s sneakers unasked, the one who'll slow down her hifdh just so her sister can catch up with her, the conscientious custodian of the precious front-door key (which *every* other member of our family has kept, and lost).

They're both flowers, blooming in their own special way..and far be it from me to turn my home into a hybridizing hothouse. They both have something to offer to the world ..and on a smaller scale to this blog. Even if it's just me posting, they're both contributing.
Because they are the "we" of me.

Portrait of a Nanu

fee amaanillaah..we miss you more than we can say:'(

Tripe v/s Truth

Children in the Islamic Empire generally did what their parents did. Girls never went to school, but they worked at home taking care of their brothers and sisters and cooking. Girls carried water from the well, and they went out to look for fuel for the fire. Boys usually worked in the fields, plowing or weeding. But some boys went to school in the madrasa, where they learned to recite the Koran, and also learned how to live an Islamic life.

Friendships were less emphasized in the Islamic world than family relationships. Usually people got their positions through an uncle or a cousin. But we do still hear of close friendships between both men and women.When the free children grew up they usually got married. Most women married their first or second cousins. Islamic law allowed men to have up to four wives if they could take care of all of them equally, but most men still only had one wife. Some powerful traders and sheiks had more than one wife. Once they were married, women moved to their husband’s house and took care of his house. Women hardly ever went out of the house alone – when they went out, their husbands or brothers went with them, and they wore a veil covering their heads and sometimes their faces so nobody would see them.

Islamic law said that Muslims could not have Muslim slaves, so the slaves of the Islamic Empire were foreigners, captured in war or bought in slave markets. Even so, a lot of people in the Islamic Empire were slaves. Most of these slaves were poor fieldworkers, who worked too hard even when they were children and did not get enough to eat ...

Ed: I don't know whether we should be appalled/amused at the tripe that passes for truth..

May Allaah let us see the Truth as Truth and help us follow it, and let us see misguidance as misguidance and help us avoid it..

Ed's choice

Ed: so *some* ppl were complaining that I'm cluttering up this blog with too many random links that reflect exactly how much time I'm wasting on the net, so I figured I'd best confine myself to a single link post, for future reference and for those interested ..

Look who's scared of blogs!

what's lurking in your child's deep fried foods, processed poultry products, instant malt drinks and chocolate powder

read the story of Ahmed Deedat...may Allaah have mercy on him

did you know where (most likely) your copy of the Qur'aan came from?

A day in the life of a nightmare

Palestinian family look to Israeli pullout to end daily nightmare
(AFP)10 August 2005
DEIR EL-BALAH, Gaza Strip - Few Palestinians will be more glad to see the back of the Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip than the family of Khalil Bashir who have seen their daily lives turned into a seemingly endless ordeal, trapped in a house which adjoins one of the doomed Jewish settlements.
The Bashir’s three-storey family home, access to which is subject to draconian restrictions, is located within the confines of a security cordon around Kfar Darom, arguably the most ideological of all the 21 Gaza settlements which are due to be dismantled from August 17.
“I feel like a stranger in my own home and on my own land. For the last five years I have been deprived of the simple things you need just to feel human,” the 54-year-old Bashir, who is the headteacher at a school in the Palestinian town of Deir el-Balah, told AFP.
“My children have suffered most of all as they cannot even go out of the house to play,” added the father of five boys and three girls.
Despite repeated attempts by the Israeli army and settlers over the years to drive them away since the establishment of the Kfar Darom two decades ago, Bashir has always refused to leave his home or his neighbours.
The security measures around the settlement, which have grown steadily over the course of the five-year Palestinian uprising, or intifada, have gradually transformed the house into a virtual prison.
In a bid to fend off attacks by Palestinian militants living nearby, Bashir says soldiers have regularly requisitioned his rooftop for a bird’s eye view of the enemy. His children have grown up knowing few of the basic pleasures of childhood.
“My house is within the boundaries of an army camp and the roof has been turned into a barracks. The army has confined me and my family to the ground floor,” said Bashir.
The building is enveloped by barbed wire. A road has been specially built by the army to allow the family to reach their home but it is only open at certain times of the day.
Quite apart from the travails of every day life, the bullet holes and shrapnel scars of rocket attacks which pockmark the front of their home bear testimony to the sometimes life-threatening location.
Bashir said that he had been unable to entertain anyone at his home for years.
“The Israeli restrictions prevent me from not only receiving friends and visitors but even my relatives,” he said.
His wife Suad said it felt like she was living in a prison.
“My nine-year-old daughter has told me that she can’t wait for the Israelis to leave so that she can play on the roof,” said the 40-year-old mother.
Her 12-year-old son Mohammed said his dream was just to play football in his courtyard.
“Since the start of the intifada I have not been able to go out of the house except to go to school and I have to be back by sundown,” said the youngster.
“We are going to organise a giant party after the Israelis leave. We don’t want to see them again,” he added.

Betcha didn't know..

If someone asked me the Arabic/Islaamic months a couple of years back, I'd go Muharr..uh..mmmmm (long pause to think)...(trail into silence)... and Ramadan!!

Yet, kids as young as 3 rattle off Jan-Feb-March in rhymes.. ?

Alhamdulillaah, thanks to the fact that we live in a place where the Islaamic dates are followed, things are improving in that we now not only know the names of the months, but also a little of their significance in Islaam.

“Verily, the number of months with Allaah is twelve months (in a year), so it
was ordained by Allaah on the Day when He created the heavens and the earth; of them four are Sacred. That is the right religion, so wrong not yourselves
therein…” [9:36]

The Prophet sall Allaahu 'alayhi wasallam gave his Farewell Sermon and
said: “Time has completed its cycle and is as it was on the Day when Allaah
created the heavens and the earth. The year is twelve months, of which four are
sacred, three consecutive months – Dhoo’l-Qa’dah, Dhoo’l-Hijjah and Muharram – and the Rajab of Mudar which comes between Jumaada and Sha’baan.”

[Saheeh Bukhaari]

"We knead the dough..

..and the dough needs us" :)

Everything you wanted to know about making pizza and parathas, so now you know!

I had a dream

~*Assalamu'alaykum wa rahmatullaahi wa barakatuh~*

this morning I got up with a smile on my face :)

I dreamt that I'm in London

and it's snowing

and I'm walking

navy blue coat

white school blouse

grey skirt that

swishes around my feet like a snowdrift

and a red scarf wrapped around my head

it doesn't mean danger

it only means

that I'm cold

and I'm Muslim.

~*Rasha~*

Test

Ed: Once upon a life, I used to be a *real* Ed ...
I wrote blurbs and panned intros, waded through pages of less than perfect prose,
minded others' p's and q's more than my own and met the most amazing people every day..

...clerks and five-star cooks
...hundred-year-old hakeems and hibakushas -- people who saw hell on earth, on August 6, and lived to tell their tale.