a daylight dream

May was an expression of authentic growth, with all its phases. It was the budding of authenticity as well as its maturation. It was the tumultuous unknowingness that came along with shooting towards the sun and flowering with ease and beauty. It was everything in between, and if there is something that I deeply long for in my life, then it's the authenticity that thrives when growing towards the sun of my soul. May allowed me to get closer and closer to my truest nature: the most intimate dreams, values and quirks, too. I experienced the expression of my heart so powerfully this month. I'd be forced to wake so early and walk to my armchair, opening the balcony and just let my soul speak as the sun transformed the skies. It seems that when my soul speaks, it decodes itself through a series of heart-wrenching daydreams, ones that entail the love I wish to verily give to the world and receive in return. Of course, it was painful to feel everything too deeply. I even had to take o

Oh, how thrilled I am for the onset of summer! I don't know what has happened to me all of a sudden. As soon as May set in, it's like my childlike spirit came back to me, making me laugh in the rarest occasions, bubbling within me the most endearing excitement for the thought of a new day. It's quite beautiful. I'm so grateful for summer. I attest that summer is not for much thinking. It's detestable to stay locked in my thoughts for a moment too long when the day is teeming with youthful energy and the heat is searing through the glass windows. It's a time to be one with everything. A time to experience, to sense, to live and laugh and love. It's a time to reduce the plans into flights of dreams so intricate that they land to the ground, to become practically sound and doable. With the longer days, I feel I have a variety of things to do, even when my day is packed. It's a time to get creative and loud with bold newness, no matter how silly it may be. I

I know I keep writing too many narratives about life. Fictitious narratives on love and grief give life so much meaning and they somehow capture the essence of each and every little experience. While walking in the streets last evening, a vision fell onto my lap. A vision that truly made me let out a few fat teardrops that were silent enough for no one to notice. It was a story so saddening and sorrowful, but I'll write it out anyway. Years forward, it could make sense. Despite making up all those dreams for a beautiful life, I know it is not without grief. Sometimes I wonder if all those dreams would just become reduced to mere pictures and words when the foreordained sequence of events comes to play. Dearest one, I must admit that I envision losing you sometimes. I imagined how it would be if one day, you just weren't here. I imagined how it would pierce my heart with excruciating pain. I imagined how I would not manage to hold myself up from being struck by the notion that y

It has gone, this Ramadan. The whole of me is grateful that the month had been so beautifully blessed as it was, and I am not overreacting. It is from the very few times that Ramadan passes with little judgement and little comparison. Out of the thirty days, I could say I only had two bad ones, which turned out to be beautiful lessons. It was quite the opposite the past years; I’d have only two or three inspiring days, the rest would be filled with lingering pain and extreme loneliness, which I wasn’t vulnerable enough to heal or deal with it. Those feelings of desperation just roamed on like an incessant, dark cloud of indifference.   What made this Ramadan different for me, I wonder? It was the month of so many ‘first times’. It was the first time not to spend the nights of Ramadan walking around the city. It was the first time not to compare my situation with other people’s circumstances. Alas, it was the first time to actually feel so much joy for other people’s gatherings. M

In the light of recent events, the ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Zionism in brutal action, I felt a deep ache in my heart that spoke of awakening. It spoke of awareness, of compassion and proactivity. It spoke in the language of wanting to contribute to human causes and stir affection and loyalty towards things we should prioritise for the human's collective spirit to rise. I was never interested in politics and nor am I now. However, there is a keen interest to support fellow humans, especially humans I am supposed to be connected to with close kinship and ties. The land of Palestine is a land that I, as an Arab and Muslim woman, have a right to be close to. The Middle East in ideal terms should be connected, without borders. The land of Palestine is sacred and beautiful, like my own land. However, we have let go of our right to feel this closeness and gave ourselves away to the wide scope of globalised interactions. We forgot how life would have been different if there was a

April is going now, a quarter of the year going too. A part of me wants to hold on to the beauty of April, for there are some cherished sights that are indispensable and irreplaceable. The silk floss trees in their emerald tresses, a perfect home for the blackbirds’ afternoon songs. Mulberries, with all their simplicity, showering the roads with berries so freely. There were occasions of amiable clouds that bestowed upon the world such gentleness and ease. Those are moments not to come again, for sure. They leave my heart with aches and solemn appreciation. I think April was significant. I have cumulated so many lessons, so many changes, so many uncomfortable moments when I had to just face the truth and deal with it. The emergence of those moments was followed by so much liberation. You see, it’s relatively the very first time I live through difficult moments in non-judgment. The arrival of Ramadan would bring so much pain, comparing the state of my family with all the other examples

Insecurity is a vast word, but it is exactly what defines the landscape of my fears. In truth, the essence of everything I am afraid of, everything which makes me jump compulsively or daydream vacantly is always insecurity . I caught it by the roots this evening. I caught this tightness in my chest and swiftly drifted to my mind, and what it was that I was thinking was the notion of feeling so insecure within my own self. Inadequacy, insufficiency and imperfection were voices so feeble yet intentional, and they twist a cobweb of fear into everything I do without clearing it up.   It's beautiful how imperfection doesn't exist and is only an illusion. The truth is that everything is perfect. Even the most catastrophic events are perfect consequences of choices we make, and in that sense, nothing really goes wrong in life. Loss, illness and powerlessness are surely devastating, but they are perfect manifestations of the learnings we need to go through in our lifetime. I feel so wo

It's been a restful couple of days since the beginning of Ramadan. Not without adventures of course, since I burned my face swimming in the afternoon sun and lost track of time, walking in the hot air for more than three hours. Also, I fell a little ill with a cold, and summer colds take me by surprise. Every time I think I'm going to wake up fine, I find a flood in my nose. Those days don't sound exactly restful, but they were, oh they were. I allowed myself time to be those few days. I had things on my to-do list and private tutoring sessions but they weren't rushed. I had at least two hours for myself where I would sit down on the sofa and just read, or unwind, close my eyes for a while and wait for a poem to entice me (it never came). I must say having such an experience is profound for me, since it was hard to just sit still and be with myself. It reminds me of the quarantine, when I had so much empty time and it drove me insane. It was hard to lay down on the sofa

I've been quite inconsistent lately when it comes to blogging. I am not less passionate about it, quite contrarily, I have been giving this space so much thought, trying to figure out open doors of growth. I want to express how much this space means a lot to me, and words fail when I try to describe how much documenting my life over the past five years has shaped me considerably, giving me the chance to dream and be those dreams, with every step in this never-ending journey. I believe this blog has a future, a thrilling one, actually. I pray and believe that in not so long, I'll be documenting concrete happenings of my day that contribute to a world where one can live holistically, in reverence, in love and most importantly, making a difference. You know that I have so many dreams, right? Dreams of living in a conscious manner; not consuming much of Earth's resources without giving back, living in harmony with nature and taking inspired action to leave an impact in creative

Oh March, you are a gift placed so gracefully on my palms. No matter how much I reflect, words would fail to capture the truest essence of what you were here to teach me— perhaps that is why it took me so long to write this down. I didn’t quite know the whereabouts of a beautiful starting point, but I’ll just do it anyway. My intention was to give. Give with abundance, grace and unconditional love. Give with everything that I have within me, humble my spirit so much in order to connect with the deepest needs of the ones around me. Everyday was a manifestation of that, and it took me to places I never thought were possible. Interactions with my learners were astoundingly fruitful for we worked together to heal deep conflicts in the classroom, connecting to our highest selves with constant reminders and effective communication. I connected to parents and collaborated with them to help their children get past difficulties at school, that had little to with academics. Leveraging the level