i admit that i was a little upset when i was writing that last post, it's just that at times i have to face the fact that ramadan has no lasting effects on me. this time was very hard, but i have to think about the good that came out of it--

my ramadan this year was hollow, i feel hollow inside, but i mean, that's how i feel all year. i had to work much harder this time because i didn't have that inner radiant glow that usually made things like prayer easier. but, i did prove to myself that i can do it--i did prove to myself that i CAN keep it up all year. i just need to remember that somehow.

i'm, again, a little bit hesitant about ending the ramadan diaries, because they chronicle almost every up and down, and this year, it's a whole lot of mumbling and complaining and feeling lost. i'm almost happy to end them--but i'm also sad, because it does mean that ramadan has ended, i'm turning the page, and i have to face another year when i'm on my own--which is what i was any way this month. as hard as i want to try to believe that allah didn't enter my heart on purpose so that i could pull a rocky and be the best i could be on my own, i'm also afraid because--what if allah's sick of me? what if i'm beyond saving?

i need to hope, and believe, and it's easy to say all this but i have GOT to do it--i have got to be the best muslim i can be all year, rearrange my priorities, and stop slacking off. who knows what i will be like by the next ramadan. who knows if i'll even see the next ramadan. insha'allah i will, and insha'allah i'll take this newfound work ethic and go with it--i'm entering uncharted territory, but i'm armed with faith and trust in allah's mysteries.



it's eid today.

i do NOT want to talk about how i feel that ramadan has ended.
i do NOT want to talk about what i learned, or didn't learn.
i do NOT want to go into how worthless and horrible and awful i feel right now, and i especially DO NOT want to talk about my complete spiritual weakness and painful stupidity.

what happened to my ramadan? i spent an hour yesterday yelling NOT NOW at the sky (or god?) and i'm shaking right now because i am upset at myself and i'm too embarassed to admit that ramadan this year was awful. i have to wait another year for this to happen again, and to be honest, if my next ramadan is like this one, i have nothing to look forward to.



i just came back from a chaand raat party, which was pretty nice, i took amna with me because she was homesick and i admit so am i. it was pretty nice i guess, i got over chaand raats a couple of years ago when i was still mostly in the 'no. i couldn't really enjoy it, because i'll admit, my entire day was terrible. i woke up a little before 1 pm--which i haven't done in months, so i feel insanely gross--and i went to get a few things and i came back and i just sat around until 6:30 doing random things--it was a five hour fast, it was ridiculous--what am i doing. tomorrow is the last day of ramadan and i completely wasted this one.

i am so frustrated when i look back at this month, because it was so much struggle the entire month when i was unbelievably bogged down with work and responsibilities, and now my last two days have been relatively easy-going but i haven't DONE anything with them--even the 29th last night was incredibly lame because i hung out with friends until 1 and then by then i was too tired to do anything, i just kind of prayed and fell asleep. i am disgusting, today was disgusting, and i don't know what's going on with me.

have we not expanded your breast for you?
and we have taken off from you your burden -
which had weighed down your back-
and we have exalted for you your remembrance.
so verily with every hardship there is ease-
again, surely with every hardship there is ease.
so when you are free resume your striving in worship-
and turn only to your lord.

[surah al-inshirah 94:1-8]



i'm kind of wracked with guilt at the moment, today at work someone anonymous asked me if i wanted anything to eat cos she was going to get some and i said no dude, i'm fasting. a couple of minutes later she asked me again, and i said no babes, i'm fasting and she said oh right! anyway when she came back like twenty minutes later she offered me some of her food and at this point i got a little bit annoyed, so i said I'M FASTING so sternly and meanly that she kind of mumbled something and went to the other side of the room. i am like such a fasting dumbass, there, i typed dumbass and i'm not going to delete it so that the world can see my true colors, i don't know how to fast, you'd think that after eleven years i'd learn something at least



just now for the first time in my life i had suhoor with someone who wasn't my family without my family, amal and i totally got up at 4:45, surprisingly chipper as we are probably looking at about eight hours sleep total in the last two nights (actually she's probably even less she's insane). so she made halwa and i made eggs and we microwaved parathas, and as we are both nerdy and fans of benedict anderson's work, we talked about diaspora theory over our breakfast. but i mean it's kind of true, who knows what they have for suhoor anymore at our respective houses, we're just trying to recreate our imagined community. err--

so it was my responsibility to wake up people this morning, which is always exciting and fun but this time i had four people instead of the traditional one-once-in-a-while. a rundown: 1) the first obviously worked, cos it was amal, 2) the second one said something really incomprehensible, even though i was half asleep this person made no sense so i let it go, 3) the third one i rang twice then stopped because i was afraid (it was aliyya, sister is scary), and 4) the fourth one was even more awake than i was so i'll admit to some jealousy. so i mean, that's two for four, which i won't complain about it's a decent track record.

amal and i had a ball though, we just ate and talked and ate and talked and laughed, and then i told her about my liter of water every morning and my subsequent natural alarm clock (am i crossing a line for the RDs oh well) and we ended up laughing hysterically, and i don't know, we should have had some chai in our hands, you know, that's what i felt like. it was fantastic, and when i back to my room for fajr, it just feels good, you know, i wanted to listen to a happy naat for the first time in a long time instead of the usual soulful stuff, and i am even chipper enough to write in the RDs. however, i AM going back to bed because after last night's midterm i have decided that it's best not to fall asleep during chem lecture ugh



today i was thinking, it's been a couple of years since i've accidently eaten while fasting, and this is something that i'm pretty proud of because i guess the entire time i know that "dang, i'm fasting." i actually have two really vivid memories of eating while fasting during ramadan--the first was when i was in the third or fourth grade and my dad had just gotten a new computer in his office so my sister and i were over there playing an aladdin video game, and i wandered off while it was her turn and ended up by the fridge, and all it had in it was slimfast for my dad's patients but i ended up drinking like two cans and then got water from the water fountain and midway with the water i realized that i was fasting, and i almost threw up. the second one was maybe a year later or earlier i had gotten a bag of candy in class, and when i came home i was just chilling, or maybe were about to go somewhere, and i started eating the candy and my ma happened to see me and she said, "sanah, you're fasting," and i stopped completely dumbfounded and surprised at myself. there are other memories too, but those two really stick out for some reason. they say that if you end up accidently eating during ramadan, it's allah's way of helping you out so you shouldn't beat yourself up over it, which i think is really adorable, and maybe that's the first time i felt a connection with allah, like it was just me and allah sharing a little something, it's a nice feeling.



for posterity's sake, i want to say that i had an amazing 27th--my resoluteness in prayer is working really well, and i like prayers now because they are like little punches of appreciation to allah instead of like these long-drawn chores--if i don't let my mind wander they happen relatively quickly, which i know is a hecka duh-ish statement but i decided to learn from firsthand experience i guess. but last night i kept on crying over the idea that ramadan is gone and i barely noticed in--other than that amazing sunday, i haven't felt what i normally feel at all.

also, why is it so easy to talk to allah? even though i feel like we're estranged at the moment, i still pour my soul out to allah even though it's hard to feel the receiprocity, really. but i did get a great feeling last night, of a physically cleansed heart i honestly felt like the area between my ribs was overflowing with water and my heart was bobbing in it. amazing. i have also decided to make it a lifelong habit to read surah mulk after every isha'a prayer, insha'allah. there are 70184501 verses in there that i love, but this one captures so much:

the one who created the seven heavens one above the other--do you see any flaw in the creation of the most gracious? look again, do you see any cracks? look again, and again--your eyes will come back bewildered and defeated [surah mulk 67:3-4]

my last ten days are totally being snatched from me, and my only consolation is that after tomorrow night i have the last three days of the month completely to myself. all last week i have been working on assignments due and studying midterms, tomorrow is the most insane one and then i'm done for maybe three weeks. i missed the 21st completely, the 23rd was amazing (because it was saturday night and i dropped a class that day), and the 25th, which is traditionally my favorite night, i barely remember. i remember that i got through all the extra bonus prayers, and i was aiming to read surah fath seven times, but around the third time i started falling asleep, so i stopped.

i know i complain about this a lot, but everything would be so much easier if i was in some kind of huge muslim country or something, i wouldn't have midterms right now in fact workload would be shamefully decreased so i'd just be chilling qur'aning it up or just praying extra nafls or whatever, have the tv on so that it'd be blaring some kind of islamic program. i wouldn't only be relying on my stomach to remind me that it's ramadan, but everything in the world would be telling me this. but honestly, two midterms and two papers in the last ten days of ramadan is not conducive to anything, really. i know everyone says that you get lots of divine celestial credit or something for struggling to be ramadan-ish in a place where no one cares about it, but i honestly don't need to think very long about what god gives more cred: making time to pray while reading ochem or reading the quran at your leasure.

what's more is that usually when i break fast it's a good time to think about the day, but the last three days have been scarf-food-run-out-door days, i've had stuff at 7 pm every night (review sessions, incidentally). actually, i'm hecka complaining, i'm going to cool off and UGH study. in terms of positives: i have no class tomorrow and tonight is the 27th, so hopefully i'll rock it.



so today feels like ramadan, the weather is freezing cold and gray and everything is deliciously lazy and quiet. every thing has come to a standstill (which unfortunately includes midterm studying), and for the first time this month, i feel like i'm fasting for ramadan, i'm in the month, and i am completely completely happy. i fell asleep while i was reading physics and i woke up ten minutes later to asr athan, and the feeling was serenely perfect, even though i was half-covered in drool.

today was one of those days again when i couldn't get enough of the qur'an, especially after last night which was the twenty-third i was feeling good, and i wanted to continue the feel-good path, and i came across this verse which is now making me think that surah ar-ra'd might be my new favorite:

"he it is who shows you the lightning sometimes to inspire you with fear and sometimes to inspire you with hope, and he it is who brings up the heavy cloud on aerial wings laden with rain for your good" (ar-ra'd 13:12)

maybe i was meant to connect with this verse and we finally found each other after years of searching, and maybe it's fitting that i found it in the coldest day of the month so far. while i wouldn't normally take weather into account when thinking about spirituality and religiousness, i think that this year was the first time in my twelve-odd years of fasting that ramadan fell when the weather was still hot. i started fasting in north carolina, and since the move to california it's been in the dead of winter--or as much "winter" as there can be in fresno. but this time i have been fasting in t-shirts and sunshine, which is not how ramadan should be. but i've found my ramadan spirit!..in the last week, which is pretty lame, but i thought i was done for, i thought i was lost forever, but things are ok. next year i'm moving to alaska for september.



i don't know what's happening this year. i have been waiting almost three weeks for the ramadan spirit to come to me. and this year, i haven't had any ramadan spirit, not like i've had before. this year i've worshipped a lot more, thought a lot more, and cried a lot more, because i just can't find my rabb, i don't know where allah is or why allah left me. what have i done this year that's so terrible?

it's just not fair for this to be punishment, for my ramadan to be ruined. last year i could feel the air thick with allah's love, and this year i feel so abandoned. i don't know what i've done, but i want to be forgiven because this is the only time of the year when i can stand myself, and this year, even that's harder.

i need some kind of sign, as vague as that is, i know it when i feel it, but allah's forgotten me, i have no part in the luminous book, and every atom is being accounted for except for mine, because it's the last ten days of ramadan and i am at a complete loss.



i'm taking 19 units, and this coming week is when all the major assignments are due, so i have two papers and three midterms coming up, not to mention that on the last friday of ramadan, i'm going to be in chem lab. this is the same problem i had last year, only magnified tenfold. i know it's hard to feel sympathy for me.

i told my ma this, and she said that she's jealous because i'm working towards my education, which is also worship, it's like worship 24/7. i know that she was trying to make me feel better, but to be honest i don't think that anyone can understand what ramadan means to me--i know that everyone loves it, but in the context of the way i live my life, --



we're in the last ten days of ramadan



this is an inordinately long time for me to have not written in the diaries, and i mean--i don't know. sunday was the one year anniversary of the earthquake, and i stupidly went to iftar that night. someone who was in islamabad when it happened talked about how he told himself "this is it" when the first quake happened, and he went on to say how he tried to reach his friends in mansehra, and when they tried to go to balakot it was completely blocked off. this made me kind of start to cry, because it was still like that in july and august getting into balakot is still not a guarantee, and i felt incredibly ridiculous for getting emotional; i was sitting across from anum who lost two friends in the earthquake, and here i am, all of my family fine, being more sad than she was. of course it doesn't feel right.

i know for a fact that if katrina hadn't happened near ramadan last year, i wouldn't have had nightmares about it. if the earthquake hadn't happened during ramadan, i wouldn't have gone to kashmir this summer. last year's ramadan was deep and intense because i could see the world falling apart literally, and this year, i don't know--am i desensitized to it? was last year a one-time deal?

right now i'm thinking about riaz, the 23 year old cook at PIMA, who went to the store at around 7 in the morning so that he could get food for his family for iftar. the earthquake happened while he was at the market, and when he got back, he found his wife and daughter alive, but his house collapsed, and his one year old son dead. what kind of a ramadan day was that.



again, today was one of the most soulful days i have had so far, which is strange, again considering what i did, which was basically nothing. i spent four hours at the mall, i hadn't been for weeks, and spent money and felt lovely actually, not ramadan-lovely but another kind of lovely, in fact i think that i shop during the rest of the year to fill some void in my heart that only this time of the year can fulfill, but maybe that's too farfetched. when i came back i had like a couple of minutes, and then i went out to dinner with the girls, broke fast in the car on the way there and supplied amal with an oatmeal bar (that's like three days in a row of providing iftar, however lame). and while i didn't turn my ears of when were playing music in the car, i don't know why but when i got home i was kind of ravenous to listen to a naat, so i put some new ones that i barely listen to, and this one line came on:

people seem to bruise my heart
they seem to pain me
only you can keep me going, god
only you can keep me going

and i don't know if i can explain how it made me feel. after a couple of hours of this i went for the quran and again i had this urge to read and read until i couldn't think straight anymore, and so i did read, until my voice cracked, and in the last two days i've read more quran that i've read all year, and the way it seems to make me feel so happy with myself and content is inexplicable, just reading and reading until i'm out of breath and can't see the page very well because of emotion honestly.

but at the same time i feel very lonely, i feel like allah has left me, and i feel so alone and lost and hopeless, and when i read a verse in the surah i was reading tonight--

"and you (muhammad) are busy in any work, and recite any quran from him, and you (mankind) perform any act, we are witness over you when do you commence it. and nothing is hidden from your lord, not even an atom's weight in the heaven or earth, nor what is less than that or greater than that, but it is written in a luminous book." [yunus 10:61]

i thought i would never find allah, because it felt like even a speck of grain had more hope for it than i do. it doesn't feel any better right now, but i feel like the last two days have been good practice for my life beyond ramadan, to do what i have to do with sullen determination, and hopefully allah will be back with me, maybe not during ramadan, but after i hope.



today had the potential to be an absolutely horrible day of fasting, but it turned out to be not so bad. i woke up for suhoor and promptly fell back asleep missing the first lecture of the morning, but i made it to the next one and after that i had lab from 1-5, but i stayed later because things were going slow, so i got home pretty late and i guess i got distracted and missed asr, because i was exhausted. then i missed maghrib because i decided to eat before i prayed, which is a bad call when you are eating with people you enjoy hanging around. so basically, what was the point of fasting if i did absolutely nothing. what's more is that tonight was jose gonzalez, so i put on his album and completely broke my traditional no music during ramadan rule i'm such a loser.

but the good things were really good--amal and nabill were over at maghrib, and the moment the athan started playing i basically ran to them with a bottle of gummy vitamins--the only food i had in the room--and they broke fast with them. again, i provided fasting people with something on which to break their fast i'm totally making things happen for myself. then stuti and i walked over to EBF at night and we get there and it is packed because nothing else was going on and he's not playing yet, so we stayed for about five minutes and left, so i didn't break my rule too horribly. and last but not least, although i stupidly missed three prayers, i made them up with isha (ramadan goal alert) and what's more even though i am ready to fall asleep and can only thing of how much my feet hurt from standing/walking all day, i even got a little quran time in. so today was lame yes, but it was a learning experience, in that i learned that coming across a couple of hurdles along the way doesn't mean that it's a downhill experience from there--so even in the rest of the year when i feel myself weakening, i shouldn't just let go completely but just remember that ups and downs happen to everyone.



so confession: ever since i heard hisham mahmood last year talk about how maryam fasted after she gave birth to jesus, i have wanted to try her way. back in those days, fasting meant abstaining from all speech, and this way maryam was able to justify her silence while jesus, as an infant, answered the accusations that people had for her. this seems honestly like the most thorough way of fasting, because even without realizing it, sometimes i really horrible things--i.e. gossip, bad words, just stupid things in general. that almost negates the whole purpose of fasting, so i figure that keeping away from speech in addition to food and water will help me get to that third level of fasting that i almost reach every year but always fall hecka short.

anyway, this brilliant idea came to me mostly yesterday when i was sitting listening to the qur'an and realizing that the only reason i was sitting there so peacefully was because i was exhausted--the last two days i've been drinking so much water in the mornings that i barely have room for food in my stomach and therefore it hits me much earlier. anyway i realized that while i'm really into ramadan and fasting and feeling allah all the time, sometimes when i hang out with people or talk or whatever i get incredibly distracted because i enjoy talking to them and forget all the pains of fasting--i want to be aware all of the time that i AM fasting. i wish i could switch this around, because while i'm fasting i'm hecka talkative, and when i'm not after sunset i get really silent, and every time i do open my mouth it is only to say something brilliant like "i'm thinking," which incidentally i said to three people yesterday.

this all came to me yesterday so i decided to try it out today, and ok duh it's a thursday i have school and i have friends in the dorm and i'm not going to be quiet, so i tried to stay in my room and shut the door and instead of feeling aware of my fasting i end up humming songs, or singing them, or mouthing the words, or have them playing in my head and i try to clear it out but then another one pops up. it's the same couple of songs, and it's actually a pretty random but pretty cohesive playlist which i should definitely compile after ramadan: the velvet teen - counting backwards, arcade fire - neighborhood #3, kelis - caught out there, cat power - evolution, jose gonzalez - lovestain, pj harvey - is that all there all there is, astrud gilberto - fly me to the moon, radiohead - lucky

so while today was a failure in silent experiment, the fasting itself is good alhamdulillah. i'm getting tons of qur'an in and i am using silent determination in the prayers, i'm trying to win allah back on my side (i'A i'll feel it soon) and yesterday basically sealed the deal because i was afraid that i'd never be able to provide anyone food with which to break their fast, but then it turns out that lazy aliyya hadn't eaten yet, so i found her a grape and pop there we go. i prayed for this a couple of days ago and it came true! "whoever gives food to a fasting person to break fast shall have their sings forgiven, and will be saved from the fire of hell, and they shall have the same reward as the fasting person without that person's reward being diminished at all" [tirmidhi]. all RIGHT.



after two days of fake fasting, today i am back to the real thing, and ironically enough it is super hard, but while my stomach is consuming my every thought i can totally feel everything else weakening--my desire to talk or to watch TV or a movie or whatever, the need to read the awful truth, even to kick back and think. i figured that this would be a good time to read the qur'an, and i started reading surah at-taubah which was revealed during a really intense conflict, and i don't know what happened but all of a sudden i felt like i was one of the prophet's followers with him while he related the contents of the surah, and i felt like despair and some hope and encouragement, and for this one flash i thought i saw a tent by a palm tree in the blazing sun. well obviously it's raining here today and cold as anything, and i have a very overactive imagination. but that absolutely brought a new life to the surah, which i almost never read. especially this one verse,

"those who have believed and have emigrated and have struggled hard in the way of allah with their wealth and their lives are far above in rank with allah" [surah at-tauba 9:20]

i can't imagine how a group of dejected, defeated people risking their lives to stand up for their beliefs (that is one overplayed phrase, i know, but there's no other way to describe it) were feeling when they heard this encouragement from god. i would want to be angry despite the encouragement, but i'd be too afraid--i mean, it's god after all. but then again, to be acknowledged by god..i can't even imagine--i would be too shocked to feel anything, good or bad.

however, i couldn't do that for too long either, which is a drawback of a growling stomach--yes, you can't concentrate on bad things, but doing good things gets a little harder too. so yes, i feel like a pansy, but i'm going to just zone out until it's time to break fast, listen to surah at-tauba instead of reciting it, the whole point is to breathe some kind of life into my dead heart after all.



i guess i know exactly what the meaning of ramadan is, but i never really understood the meaning of fasting until yesterday--it does require a lot of patience self-control. yes i know, did it really take me this long to figure this out have i not been listening to everyone i know for my entire life--but it really does, and i finally get it! i learned this when i woke up for suhoor yesterday and remembered then midway throughout the day that i still was excused from fasting, needless to say, i felt ridiculously lame, and the entire day not only was i hungry for no reason but i kept on craving praying or holding the quran to my heart and reading some of it. this rarely happens on normal occassions, when i see those as things i should do, not things i want to do. but i guess that this is what happens when you're fasting from fasting--that's exactly what i'm doing, i'm abstaining from something that gives me intense pleasure, and dang it's hard. normally in fasting i never learn about patience and self-control, because honestly, i have no other choice but to not eat (it's unfathomable to even want to break this rule), and the only thing that requires a little hard work is not gossipping (maybe it's time to cut out tmz.com after suhoor) and not having more than one glance..haha.



i was reading this book in urdu about the blessings of ramadan (they publish hundreds of them but this is the one that they have featured on owais raza qadri's website, so it's bound to be good), and there was a list of du'aas for different times during the month, some for the first night and for the last ten days etc etc, but then there was this one du'aa for the last day of ramadan, and i don't know what happened but i have never been so sad in my entire life--since last ramadan--. i'm still "getting used to" the month and any progress i had made is probably shot down because i haven't been able to fast for the last few days, and the fact that it's only a month it has to end came as kind of a shock. honestly this is ridiculous, i'm caught off guard every year, when will i learn?

i'm actually pretty embarassed to write down the amount of times that i end up crying during ramadan--literally doubling up, fist clenching, pleading-more-than-crying crying--because not only is it embarassing, but it's also pretty personal, just between me and allah. sometimes it's so exhausting that it seems ridiculous to take time out to do anything else, just keep on asking allah for forgiveness and love and direction until i croak. other days, no matter how hard i try, i can't feel anything. and that's the essence of ramadan though: i can always feel my heart ready to explode with tears--most of the year, i wonder where it is, but at this time of the year, i can physically feel it even as i write--my heart is brimming with something, i can feel the hollowness of my chest and the exact place where my heart is anchored, and i can breathe easier, and sometimes if i don't think about it, i can hear my heart beat so loudly that i get frightened, and i have to try to coincide the heartbeats with allah's name, i have to.

"seven kinds of people will be shaded by allah on the day of resurrection, when there will be no shade except for allah's shade. they will be: a just ruler, a youth who has grown up in the worship of allah, a person whose heart is attached to the mosque, two people who love each other for allah's sake, a person who is invited to sin but declines, saying "i fear allah," a person who gives charity in such secrecy that their left hand does not know what their right hand has given, and finally, a person who remembers allah in seclusion and whose eyes are then flooded with tears." [bukhari and muslim]

tears are one of the blessings of ramadan, and they are one of things i miss the most about it--i can't cry like this for the rest of the year, not in grief or anger or sadness, these are the strangest kinds of tears that rarely occur again throughout my non-ramadan life until i have these flashes where i feel the urge to reconnect with allah.



today i was thinking about how when hearts are hard they're so rusted with their own refusal and hopelessness that it seems impossible to make them beat again, but then when allah wants to change this it happens at once, and i honestly feel like my own heart, which had been completely hardened and unable to feel any kind of special love or affection for the prophet, is now all of a sudden cracked open and there's light spilling out. i didn't realize that i could feel this way, and honestly i feel like my faith is complete, alhamdulillah. this sounds like i didn't love the prophet, and i mean i always respected him, but there are people who are just crazy wild about him, and i never understood that. i was always grateful of course, but i didn't feel uncontrollable love, until now, when my affection for him is steadily increasing, alhamdulillah alhamdulillah alhamdulillah.

but i was thinking about it--and through no merit of my own--i realized that the prophet was a gift from allah to us muslims. he sacrificed so much of his life to spread the word to us, to remind us of the way of life that we keep on forgetting. every religion essentially says this, and this is what i love about religion, that it's all essentially the same with different guidelines here and there. it's near impossible in today's world of mass communication to fight for what is right and true and good, and i can't even begin to imagine what circumstances he had to face then. this is rambling, but what i mean is this--how can i not love the prophet? how can i not love a gift that allah has given to me, how can i not thank allah profusely for giving such an ideal person--the way he lived his life was heartbreakingly perfect--?

this realization occured gradually, and i hope that its intensity grows. i've been listening to this one naat by owais raza qadri all day today, which i've listened to for a while now, but it never hit me until now, and my lame homespun english translation can't do it any justice

if begging weren't possible through allah's love for you
then this hapless beggar could never get by

this year's ramadan goals are more different than i would have guessed for myself last year, but i'm progressing in so many ways in regressing in so many others, and what's more, the world is changing so quickly and profusely that i have to change in order to keep my footing.

1. FINISH THE BOOK ABOUT THE PROPHET BY MARTIN LINGS: i'm talking about the blue one that every muslim family here has but may or may not read. i started in the summer but got distracted a third of the way through, but now i have all of ramadan to finish it. i just feel like something clicked this year, but how it happened was unfortunate--first those derogatory cartoons (islamica magazine published a great reaction) and then the pope's comments a couple of days ago. actually, i don't know if i'm more upset at the pope's insensitivity as a muslim who strives for interfaith dialogue or as an anthropology student. i really loved the whole WWJD thing from when i was a kid (i think it's still big?), and i try to think of that, with jesus, muhammad (s), any prophet. think about their sacrifices and how they would handle themselves in a world like ours, and think of their absolute love for their people--that's us, disgusting and lost--and it clicks.


2. MAKE A PRAYER BOOK: i'm going to map out the whole week, i'll have what du'aas and surahs to say when all planned out, complete with translations. i have decided that if i add variety to my prayer of eleven years, i will regain interest, concentration, and importance in it. if i do the math, i have done the same rakaat 80,300 times in my life, so i figure that a change will do me good.


3. START MAKING UP MISSED PRAYERS: this is another way that i can lend importance to my prayers. lord knows how many fajrs and asrs i have missed in my life, and while i don't think that i'll ever be able to make them all up, i can start from now on. "the first matter that the slave will be brought to account on the day of ressurection is the prayer. if it is sound, then the rest of his deeds will be sound. and if it is bad, then the rest of his deeds will be bad" [tirmidhi]


4. PRAY TARAWEEH AT LEAST TWICE A WEEK: this is a ramadan tradition that i always miss out on, and i want to do it every year. i have no excuses this time, i never did, but now i really don't, as this is my ramadan to reclaim salaat.
   

so irony of ironies, the moment i catch the ramadan spirit again, it turns out that i can't fast for a couple of days--which i guess it's ok, because it will make me realize what i'm missing out on. by the way, i'm running like a well oiled machine, which is surprising--i get up promptly for suhoor, eat for fifteen minutes, drink a liter of water, wudu, and do fajr followed by quran and naats, which lasts for like an hour, then i read the celebrity gossip blogs. i can't help but feel that that last item is questionable, but until i don't get a straight up answer, i'm continuing with the awful truth.



i think i've reclaimed my ramadan. i realize that the last two posts were possibly the most depressing things i have ever written in my life, and while i won't lie that they were accurate reflections of my feelings at the time, i have had time to think about all this. i was reading what i wrote about the last two ramadans, and my problem has been the same every year: uh, i can't pray, i suck at praying, i haven't done anything really bad but nothing really good either. i figure that if it's troubling me so deeply this year, then i really am more committed to making a change, and i've decided that my best strategy for prayer is to go for silent determination--for now--until i can do something else.

i'll be honest though, i feel kind of lighter inside, and now that i'm almost done unpacking and in a couple of days i'll have finished all of my back-to-school stuff, i am confident that my ramadan is going to be awesome again, i'A. because if it's not, then it just doesn't make sense--it's sanah, and it's ramadan--the only reason i make it from one year to the next is for this time of the year.



this morning i was reading this hadith:

"there is no muslim who attends a prescribed prayer and does wudu for it well and is humble in it and its bowing, without that being expiation for the sins before it as long as the muslim did not commit any major sin. this will always apply." [muslim]

and this is encouraging, but also somewhat confusing, because my major sin is losing the importance of my prayers. but i am so determined to reclaiming my prayers, i mean i have to, and look, i am now facing the consequences of messing up all year: i can't even enjoy my ramadan to its fullest extent because i am wracked with guilt and self-doubt. this is honestly the worst punishment ever. i could also look at it in a different light: that ramadan came just at the right time, because there is still a chance for me to fix myself up and relaunch back into the ramadanless world.



normally i start out the ramadan diaries by praising ramadan's status as a reset button for my life, the one time in the year when i get to make up for my insensitivity and stupidity throughout the rest of the year. but today is the first time that i felt that i've taken too much advantage of this idea. my last two ramadans were ecstatically wonderful--i've never felt the level of spirituality and oneness i feel then, and most likely this year will be the same, obviously, that's the honest-to-god miracle of ramadan. but what about the rest of the year? any momentum i may have gained from last ramadan is completely gone right now, and has been gone for a long time.

this year, i haven't done anything in my memory that i could count as a grave sin, like sneaking out of the house or going to a club or whatever. but at the same time, i haven't done anything good. i've felt allah in my heart all year, but we haven't had a heart-to-heart. what happened to qur'an or heartfelt du'aas or memorizing surahs? after a while, i felt like it was futile to even talk to god because i hadn't done anything like that in such a long time--what use am i? staying completely static at a lame level is just as bad (or maybe even worse) as doing something terrible and then repenting for it.

and the most frightening thing about this year was what happened to my prayers. they are lifeless, i can't concentrate, i can't feel, and i treat every single one as a chore. even during laylatul miraj, the night when allah blessed muslims with prayers, i couldn't do anything special in my prayers. i can't feel them anymore, it's like my heart hardens to all spirituality every time i stand on the prayer rug. i don't know what's wrong with me, i don't know why this is happening--eventually, my du'aas started becoming more detached because i was too embarassed of myself, but i didn't try to remedy the situation. now they're completely helpless, even when i try. i have no emotion left in my prayers.

yesterday, i was at home and my ma and i went outside to look for the moon around maghrib time, and although of course we didn't see it, at that very moment like a slap in the face my eyes started watering and my heart became so heavy and i knew that moon or not, ramadan had started. and when i prayed maghrib that evening emotion came back, and i wondered that maybe allah hadn't abandoned me completely, i was still hanging onto allah by a thread of some kind of intense faith, and all day today, i've been crying on and off thinking about ramadan and the blessings it's dropping on me that i can't handle, that i don't deserve.

i'm wrestling with a lot of guilt. i don't know how all of a sudden my heart is full of feeling again, it's amazing because i haven't felt this way in so long, but i can't enjoy it, because i'm almost positive that when ramadan ends, this feeling is going to go away too, and i'm afraid.