a daylight dream

As I write this, I’m not sure who I am anymore. Even the nails on my hands make me look like a completely different person, for I haven’t bitten them for such a long time. I don’t think it is change that can describe this experience— rather the movement towards one’s inner truth. The path towards authenticity and all the love that is there to give makes all else shed and whither. So, I’m lighter, and  I’m at home. My intention for June was simply  belonging . I didn’t know what it meant when I wrote it down last December, but my soul spoke for me, nudging me towards finding out what true belonging meant. I always worked hard to belong somewhere: a country, city, workplace, etc. At least, I wanted to know where it was in the world that I felt at home. Travelling always made me feel the exhilaration that came with trying to find that one place that made everything flood with meaning and love. Yet, June came and showered me with a beautiful, soulful revelation: I belong whenever I choose

  I can't believe I'm writing this. Goodness, what a year! I've seen miracles before, but not this way, not in that magnitude, in that quality and quantity. I adore this post idea, and I'm quite galvanized to keep writing it every single year. I imagine myself writing " Twenty Years A Teacher ". I wonder how it would be like then. Oh, my heart shakes at the possibilities awaiting this beautiful unfolding. I'm writing this after I had celebrated the end of year ceremony and witnessed a learner crying when she received the grade of her dreams. Those children, they break my heart each time I see them. I started this year being quite awful at hugging people, getting all awkward whenever I had to be intimate. It's the last day today and I can't recognise myself as I rushed and hugged them all so lovingly. I didn't recognise myself when I smiled in pictures even though I'm quite insecure about being in photographs. I can't recognise myself at

I have only a few days left here, and I’m not sure how it is all unfolding so swiftly, yet in the perfect time. I can’t believe I’m travelling this summer to see my family— especially after all the hope that was lost, after all the pain of cutting the strings of attachments and expectations; that lifeshould go a certain way.  Reflecting upon this process, I remember myself last June. Those very days, last year, were truly painful. I had lost touch with my creativity and any perspective, and so everyday was the same. I had lost touch with the goodness of my soul that everything beautiful existed outside of me— and so I had to keep chasing and working hard for it. That course, that book, that international conference, that job interview, that demo— all was out of reach and I had to search outside of myself to make it work. Oh, I was lost. I lost myself to petty climbs when all was within all along. I look at myself, today, having lost myself to my soul. My soul that sees abundance and ri

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