nushmia .:.

MILWAUKEE, WI — Man leaves his friend, telling him he’s busy with something, starts following me and asking if i’m a student, etc. He then asks my name, to which I say I can’t tell him. “What?! You got something against black people?” he says. To which I respond, “NO, I’M BLACK TOO.” No response. I have communication issues.

Hong Kong Homelessness

OK. So I’m not the best writer, and I don’t claim to be, but I do love recording memories. So my writing in these blog posts is more for remembering than for being interesting, and it might bore most people. So if you want, you can just look at the pictures :) I’ll be updating my blog a lot in the coming days!

I first arrived in HK on an unexpected overnight layover—I was dazzled by the pointed hills, calm water, the fresh air of a foreign land.

The next time around dind’t quite have the same sparkle. My friend Uzma and I arrived in Hong Kong on a whim, and on one of China’s biggest holidays, the Chinese National Day. We were told by the train station’s hotel coordinator that the price of any open hotel room was ‘dreadfully high’.

He passed us the address for a hostel. One piece of advice, don’t try to guess the exchange rate. I thought I remembered the rate from my previous visit and tried to pay our taxi $5 HKD instead of his expected $15 HKD. The address for the hostel was also the address for several trashy night clubs. We couldn’t stay there long.

We ran to every hotel in sight, all were booked except the Sheraton, which started at $370/night (read: out of my budget!)

We went down to the subway and had literally nowhere to go. Amidst our stress we saw a frozen yogurt shop, dropped everything, forgot everything. Food has always been a changer of my moods. I had remembered hearing the Mong Kok district was ‘cool’ on Lonely Planet, so that became our destination. But on the way, I saw a map, witha giant icon of a mosque, labeled ‘Kowloon Mosque’. Bingo!

We thought perhaps we could find a Muslim there to advise us on our temporary homelessness. Trying to ignore the heart-shattering ‘no non-Muslims allowed’ sign at the mosque’s front door, we found a light in the masjid, in the form of a lady’s halaqa.

I thought that Uzma, always as loud and outspoken as she is, would be able to speak on our dilemma. I returned from my missed prayers, coming back to see she had only bashfully asked them about good places to eat. Since Uzma couldn’t, I was forced to brave up, and admit to the group of women that we had not place to sleep that night (and it was already at least 9 p.m.). Immediately, they started coming up with ideas. They decided to end their halaqa early and two of the women took us to a couple who they thought could find a place.

The apartment was small, in the center of the city, above a night club (surprise, surprise). The floor was covered with crumbs and ketchup, because the apartment’s main area doubled as a halal restaurant. We found a middle-aged Pakistani man videochatting with his brother in Rawalpindi. He had a tired Indonesian wife, and a frantically happy 1 year old son. Our two new mosque friends quickly spilled our story (in Bahasa Indonesia, I think?), and the man  quickly replied.

“Don’t worry, you two are my sisters in Islam, I’ll find you a hostel. Worst comes to worst, you can sleep on the floor in our computer lab.

We slept on the floor of their computer lab that night. It felt so good to be sheltered. The next morning we easily booked a ‘Muslim’ hostel for the next night and went wandering for the day.

The next night at the hostel was an even bigger nightmare. Not only was it above a brothel (we’d have to cover our eyes while entering the building), but we were notified the sheets hadn’t been washed, there were strands of hair from the Imam who had stayed there the night before. So, we slept on the curtains.

In the middle of the night we heard banging on the door. “Lisa! Lisa!” A man was at our door. We didn’t understand what to do. All of a sudden, another voice, “No, stop, they are Muslim!” We didn’t know what that mean. Uzma had trouble falling asleep after that, but I slept well :)

From then on our trip was relaxing, enjoyable.

Moral of the story: Plan your vacations! Don’t plan your adventures!

Lifeless on Dawn.com

The ‘Lifeless’ video I made two years ago was posted on Dawn today. Here’s the video and what I wrote about it (in like two minutes, and they posted it, and i’m a terrible writer, AH!)

Here’s the video:

I had always wanted to experience washing a dead body. Not only would it be an honor, but it would also help me understand more about what will be one of my first experiences after my own death.

For a school project, I decided to make a video reflection on death, narrated by two women who regularly wash Muslim bodies in our Raleigh community.

I used this project as an opportunity to learn about the different aspects of death: I finally helped with a body, I visited the cadaver lab at my university’s medical school; I witnessed a burial for the first time.

One of the most difficult shots in the video is near the end, for which I had to lie down in a freshly dug grave. I’ve heard that a historic Islamic scholar dug his own grave and would lay down in it every morning to remember where he was headed. It’s funny to me that most people don’t notice this shot unless I point it out. That’s perhaps symbolic of the fact that all of us, including myself, are largely inattentive to our own end.

“From the earth We created you, into it shall We return you, and from it We shall raise you a second time.”

In the meantime, what can we do to prepare?

One of the narrator states, “Only goodness will count in the hereafter.”

Fear of God

If you should rise from Nowhere up to Somewhere, 
From being No one up to being Someone, 
Be sure to keep repeating to yourself 
You owe it to an arbitrary god 
Whose mercy to you rather than to others 
Won’t bear to critical examination. 
Stay unassuming. If for lack of license 
To wear the uniform of who you are, 
You should be tempted to make up for it 
In a subordinationg look or toe, 
Beware of coming too much to the surface 
And using for apparel hat was meant 
To be the curtain of the inmost soul. 

-Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold, 
Her hardest hue to hold. 
Her early leaf’s a flower; 
But only so an hour. 
Then leaf subsides to leaf. 
So Eden sank to grief, 
So dawn goes down to day. 
Nothing gold can stay. 

-Robert Frost

The lights are on, but there’s no one home. 

Shaykh Hamza at the Grand Mawlid

Just copy-pasting my friend Maahum’s live-tweets from the Bay Area’s Grand Mawlid. Wish I was there. Some day, iA.

Great minds think alike and fools seldom differ…spies are taught to agree with you so you tell more and more - Sh Hamza

It’s not just the 1% causing the problem. We are all the problem. It’s 100 %. change yourself, live ethically - Sh Hamza

You can’t guide someone if you hate them. If you hate them you want them destroyed - Sh Hamza Yusuf

We are only the species on this planet for whom enough is not enough. The zebras know the lion won’t kill every zebra on a hunt - Sh Hamza

What’s wrong in this world? That’s a good question to ponder - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf

People can’t watch news anymore. They have to watch Jon Stewart because it’s so depressing - Shaykh Hamza Yusuf