Another Crack In The Paintwork

Another Crack In The Paintwork

Another

            crack

        in

            the

                  paintwork

and I’m still waiting

expectantly, whilst the kettle boils,

the steam condenses,

droplets forming around

            another

                           crack

                                     in

                               the

                                      paintwork. 

distorted pictures colour the

landscape: leaden, barren, hollow.

glare from the electric light bulb

casting shadows of our former selves, filling

                                    another

                                                   crack

                                              in

                                                  the

                               paintwork.

doors were always closed,

windows barred, not broken, but stained.

no resentment as the light flickers out,

for it’s just

                                    another

                        crack

                    in

  the

       paintwork. 

 

Written 2000; edited December 2007

 

Chocolate Muffins and A Womanly Pursuit

Work.  Otherwise known as school.  

“What?  You’re still at school?” the auntie-types ask when they meet me.  

“I’m a teacher.” 

Nodding their heads in approval they murmur, “Nice, nice; great profession for a woman,” they applaud, patting me absent-mindedly on the arm as they silently muse over who would be a suitable spouse for me; would Jamila’s son prefer a wife who stays at home and cooks and cleans?  Who knows, maybe he wouldn’t mind; after all, being a primary school teacher is a good “feminine” job, a womanly pursuit, and she can be home at 3.30 in the afternoon to cook her husband’s dinner and make herself look pretty before he arrives.   

“I teach in a secondary school.” 

“Oh.” 

An uncomfortable stillness descends over the group as the “Aunties” stare at this curiosity who works amongst teenagers, pseudo-adults, violent and abusive; the domain where only the men are strong enough to tread.  No place for a woman.  

“So, secondary; that must be very hard,” one comments as the others murmur in agreement.  They stare at me expectantly, wanting agreement, needing it, craving it.  

“Well, no, it’s a good laugh actually; I could never teach primary kids,” grimacing on the word primary as though I had caught a scent of their cheap perfume.  

“Really?  But all those teenage boys; aren’t they hard to handle?  Don’t they talk back to you?  Don’t they make your life hard because you wear, you know, a scarf?”  Questions unravel one by one, as though untying the knots of Islamic kinship between us. They watch me with detached interest as I prepare the organised and pre-planned reply, so often needed, so rarely understood. 

“It’s really good; older kids are great, they’re not hard to handle if you know what you’re doing.  Of course they talk back to you, we expect it; teaching is all about how you deal with that kind of thing – besides I love my subject.  As for covering myself, the school have never made it an issue and I know they never will; of course kids ask questions, I expect it and invite it.  I’d rather they asked me what this dishcloth was doing on my head than they assumed I was a suicide bomber or something.  You do get the usual racism you always get.”  

I pause for effect, looking around, feeling their eyes boring into me, trying to look into my soul through my face, feeding on my curious ways.  “You know, only the other day these Year 11 boys in the corridor were talking as I walked up to them about how they would like to eat chocolate muffins.  That’s not something I can really report to management, but it’s enough to get me thinking.”   

I stop.  Realising that I may have crossed that unspeakable line; my heart skipped a beat as I looked towards the door, scanning for an escape route but upon reflection I didn’t think that the Asian Aunties would understand sexual innuendos for female sexual organs that are rife amongst the adolescents of England.  They look back interested, waiting impatiently for the punch line, the cathartic release to the racially motivated attack by these “ASBO” teens on the English corridor.  

Silence invades the room, sticking in my throat like a gluey chocolate muffin, rich and sickly.  An hourly minute passes.  

“Did he really call you a chocolate muffin?”  Wide-eyed and staring, they click their tongues in disapproval, shaking their heads, murmuring about “kids today”, how we are never “accepted in this country.”   

I breathe a sigh of relief, a smile creasing the corners of my mouth as I ponder how they would react if I explained the subtle nuances of innuendo.  I dare not.  I cannot.  Imagine telling Auntie Arifah that female loins can quite affectionately be referred to as items of confectionary found in their local bakers, their cake tins and on the shelves of the supermarket.  I could just imagine the shock and disgust as I explained it to them; I decide against it and try to retreat into a corner, a corner which I hope is closer to the door.   

But their thoughts are too loud; why would she teach in secondary school when primary school children are easier to handle?  It’s such a good profession for a woman, it helps her with her own children; besides everyone loves a cute youngster don’t they?  The disbelief is masked with a cloud thick with extortionate amounts of Chanel No. 5, the rejection of a womanly pursuit in favour of the world of rude and abusive teenagers, unwilling to learn, testosterone-charged and roaring, alien to their ears, ears so neatly concealed under clouds of perfumed gas and luxurious scarves.      

I sigh.  Alone once more, despite sitting amongst six others.  I watch them curiously, as they watch back, intrigued.   And in our silent surveillance we find understanding. 

Muslims do it Five Times a Day…

 

Haven’t you heard? Muslims do it five times a day. Or at least we’re supposed to.

But how do they find time? Well, many drop everything and get down right there where they’re standing; others prefer to wait until the opportunity arises, after all, they’re at work for goodness sake. For a few, it’s easy, the day is arranged around their five-a-day, seamlessly woven around kids, cooking and cleaning. Others strive to do it, but sometimes fail; they spend some days doing it five times, other days barely reaching two or three. Those who strive but sometimes fail can be prone to attacks of guilt, sickness, and then finally: justification.  

But my job got in the way.  I tried but I couldn’t do it on time.  I can’t just stop everything can I?

Ideally we would all arrange our day around the five dailies rather than the other way around, but that’s not always possible; nor is it likely for some of us. However, that’s no justification for missing them is it?So where do we strike the balance between dropping everything in the middle of a meeting because it’s time to “do it” and avoiding “doing it” at all costs? Let’s face it, it’s not a healthy way to live running from the fact that eventually, it’s got to be done or you’ll be asked: “Did you do it? If not, why not? Was doing it all that hard? I mean, it was five times a day, not one hundred.”

So we start small, learn to crawl before we learn to walk; do it once, feel the peace, then get up and do it again. Once you have started with one of the five, the other four should fall into place. Some days you won’t do it the full five times, other days you will, the trick is to strike the balance; fall off the wagon but get straight back on again.

Soon the pieces of the five-a-day puzzle should fall into place.It won’t happen over night, it never does; sometimes it will be a chore: “What?! It’s time to do it again!?” At other times you’ll be watching the clock, waiting for your next fix, like a heroine addict, gasping for the hit, like the dying man gasping for life.

Eventually it turns into an addiction.

I hope. I pray. I expect.

Eventually I’ll do it five times a day. Every day.

 

Life Gets In The Way…

 

When life gets in the way I find I have no time to sit and look at the simple things. Look at the patterns on the prayer mat, so intricately intertwined, after praying; the shadows cast over the garden by the trees, a temporary mark on the face of the world; the look of content concentration on my mother’s face as she watches me work.

Instead I speed-pray, folding up the patterns on the mat, carelessly crumbling them, wiping the mark off the face of the world with a quick swish of the curtains after twilight, and stride callously past my mother, avoiding her maternal gaze, pretending she is looking at something beyond me.

 

Working for a living has turned into living for work at the moment; everything else is sidelined, including living itself. I live, breathe and see work wherever I do. I seem to mentally plan lessons, think about department strategies whilst shopping for food, filling the car with petrol and showering. Dressing is coupled with a mental list of all the marking I have not done; eating married to the planning that needs to be done and sleeping conjoined painfully with the ghosts of the department’s past.

 

“Work-Life Balance”, a cliché we all know, but I seem to see no difference between work and life. Sadly for me, at the moment, work IS life, without it what would I do? Being invited out by friends has become an annoyance I could do without; who would do the planning if I went to your house? Dinner time is a chore that takes me away from the books; who needs food anyway? Every waking moment is spent thinking about and planning work-related strategies.

I don’t actually think I could life without work; it has become a blanket of protection for me, part of my psyche; I mean, when I came home from work, it would be weird to just sit on the sofa and spend time with family, watching TV, reading a book, spending longer on my prayer. It would feel strange. When I’m working I no longer think about what may or may not happen; what my parents may or may not say or do about my life no longer seems important; the dreams and hopes I’m giving up fade into the background when work pervades every pore of my existence.

Maybe I’m becoming far too institutionalised. Maybe I just like what I do. Or maybe I’m letting work get in the way of my life.

So in a bid to stop life getting in the way of my work, (or is that work getting in the way of my life?) I ask you this: “What do normal people do after work?”

Little Jimmy Strikes Back With a Vengeance!

Remember Little Jimmy and his comma?  Well, he’s back and this time it’s personal!

As it happens, teachers have fewer rights than I once thought.  It seems that Little Jimmy, not content with questioning the marking of his poorly punctuated piece of prose (and I use the term “prose” loosely) has taken it upon himself to wantonly accuse a respected teacher of physical abuse.   It is alleged that the teacher in question struck said student across the ear with a hand, in full view of two classrooms.

The accounts of students who were interviewed is conflicting apparently, which seems to suggest that that the lovely little terrors have taken it upon themselves to “re-invent” the incident, using all the powers of creative prowess available to them. 

Admittedly, it was the English department who trained them in the art of prose and narrative writing and thus should be blamed for their use of “creativity with the truth.”  It is the mark of a good English teacher to “inspire” students, and instil a love of language and the power of rhetoric which they can translate into their daily lives; ironically they have done so with great skill in this instance.  That’ll teach us to instruct them the power of well-crafted prose!  However, in our defence, if they actually physically wrote these creative lies that came out of their mouths in their English books, they wouldn’t be doing so badly in their English work.  

Not only that, Little Jimmy and his parents quite thoughtfully sold their story to the local trashy tabloids, which had disastrous repercussions for the teacher in question.  Not only has he been suspended from work during the “investigation”, his two little girls are unable to go to school due to bullying in their primary school.  Obviously, Little Jimmy has been allowed to return to school as we wouldn’t want his education to suffer would we?  He’s so dedicated to learning and acquiring wisdom that depriving him of this would suck the joy from his life.  Besides, Little Jimmy still needs to learn how to negotiate the complex world of the comma…

Obviously this incident spread around the school like head lice in a primary school, jumping and flying from one head to the next, burrowing deeper, laying eggs, multiplying, all the while evolving (if I believed in evolution that is) into a greater beast.  Some whispered about court cases, midnight raids at the poor teacher’s house, sniffer dogs rooting the culprit out from the cellar while he cowered in the corner; others announced proudly that it was “one down, another eighty to go”, while the more supportive and infinitely more “human” students – yes, there IS such a thing – stood aloof, trying not to get involved, making brief comments about the law and teaching unions, clicking their tongues and shaking their heads , smiling sympathetically at the teaching soldiers passing them in the corridors. 

Where do we go from here?  I say we egg his house.  But then I never was one for responses devoid of emotion. 

Preamble: Residential

So we had a residential at work this weekend.  The main objective I guess was to complete a lot of work with the new head of department – now known as the CDL (don’t ask what the acronym stands for!  “Ciddle”?)  So the Ciddle, the rest of the English department and I set off for the most gorgeous and exotic location that Teesside has to be pampered and preened during our 48 hour residential.

Prior to the trip we were informed, by the Ciddle, that we’d be spending the weekend with a psychoanalyst who would be assessing how we work as a team and help us resolved some “unresolved” issues.  After this had conjured up images of lying on couches talking about how we were never loved enough as children, or that many of us suffered from the Freudian “penis envy”, we were all very apprehensive.    But what happened behind closed doors is far, far worse…

Put together years of working with the same lovely people but having it taken away from you in an instant, insecurities about new staff, menopause, hormones and English teachers…

When I have come out of therapy I’ll write about it! 

Accountable

There are certain people in the world who get affected by everything.  People; what they say seems to resonate for years and years, they take things at face value, not realising that people speak without sincerity of intention. 

                “Oh of course you can come round whenever you like in years to come, when you’re married.”

This of course should mean that you are welcome in their home anytime in the future, in fact the invitation also extends to nearest kin and whoever else you might be with at the time.  However, when put through the “random sentence” translator it means:

                “You’re a nice person and everything, but a few years down the line we don’t really want to have anything to do with you, so please don’t try to contact us again.  We may have to just delete your messages and not answer them.”

The people who take things at face value are affected by the hurtful comments people make, the way people look at them, the way people turn their backs to talk to the person next to them; in extreme cases these people are affected by the way potted plants stand so resolutely in the corner, glowering at them, leafy and proud.  But only in very extreme cases.

In the case of regular sufferers of such sensitivity, they get heavily burdened with hurt whenever someone betrays them or slights them in any way. 

Take the above example; rather than translate the sentence and interpret it to mean what it was intended to mean, they take it at face value and a few years down the line, they get back in touch with the said person, and (what a surprise) the person ignores them.  Here’s the typical thought pattern that many of these scenarios follow:

Sensitive person:  Hey, I’ll get back in touch with Mr John Doe and his wife; they always said they would be pleased to hear from me.

Mrs.  Jane Doe:  Oh a message from her.  I can’t believe it.  What does she want?

Sensitive person:  Oh she’s not replied.  Well, it’s ok, I’ll just post a message on one of her lovely photos on facebook, really casually. 

Mrs.  Jane Doe:  For goodness sake, I’m going to sit here and delete her inane comments because I don’t want anything to do with her!

Sensitive person:  I’ll just check back and see if there is a reply to my comment on facebook…oh, it’s been deleted.  What have I done?  Maybe it’s because I actually convinced her mother in law to let them go ahead with the marriage?  Maybe I shouldn’t have convinced her to let her son (who I respect like an elder brother) marry this Jane Doe?   If only she knew it was me who helped with the situation…but I can’t really tell her, because she won’t believe it anyway.  And after all of that stuff about being welcome at their house and everything.    I’m so upset. 

The thought process can go on forever in the same vein, but the main point to be highlighted is that Mrs. Jane Doe is going to be held accountable for her actions just as we all are.  Whatever her reason for “blowing off” this person, she’ll have to account for it some day; it may even be within this lifetime, it may be within the next lifetime. 

Is there a moral to this tale?  I guess there is.  When you figure it out, let us all know! 

Good and Evil

The classical scholar Sufyan Ath-Thawri said, “Fear evil when you are in a good situation and expect good when you are in an evil situation.”

The Practice Sister

So after reading another blog post, I was inspired to write this…I hope the guy doesn’t mind me seizing inspiration from his idea!

To set the scene, the post was basically detailing different personality types and different types of Muslim girls, and this got me thinking, although it’s hard to bracket people into different camps, labelling them as religious/not religious or practising/not practising, I felt there was one category that people always leave out. 

Yes, it goes against the grain to put people into different boxes, and especially to box myself in, but I felt this girl needed her own personal salute.  Who is she?  She’s The Practice Sister.

The Practice Sister is clearly someone who wants to/tries to practice Islam, tries her best to listen to Islamic lectures, read Islamic books, attend events if her family allow her to.  Maybe she even used to teach tajweed in the local community but stopped due to parental requests; she likes to keep in touch with religious friends and loves to use the internet.

But there is something about The Practice Sister which makes her different.  She is the girl who brothers find it easy to confide in, and sisters find threatening sometimes.  She’s the sister who brothers do begin to consider for marriage, but there is something about her which suggests that they should tell her all of their life secrets, but draw the line at marriage, afterall, you wouldn’t want to marry someone who knew all your secrets would you? 

The practice Sister tries very hard to be a shoulder to cry on, a convenient friend, and even when she genuinely wants someone to consider her for marriage, she only ever remains the one the “brothers” use as a “friend.”  (Not that she believes there is such a thing as true “friendship” between a man and a woman in Islam – outside of marriage).  But that does not deter the practising brothers.  Ignoring the whispers inside their heads, they confide in The Practice Sister, tell her everything, even fight with her sometimes (some even keep up the pretence of considering her for marriage) but all the while, what are they doing?  Practising on her, before they actually find someone else to consider for marriage.

So they talk to her, confide in her, ask questions, learn the ways of the woman.  Sometimes even start arguments to determine how they would react if this woman was their wife.  So they converse and learn, taking in how they should and should not react, telling themselves there is nothing wrong.  Afterall, she’s a SISTER. 

But NO, I hear you cry; it is JUST as much HER fault as it is theirs. 

 And no one is arguing with you. But the Practice Sister cannot help but listen when someone wants to talk.  That’s all it is afterall, just talking, alleviating someone’s suffering.  Who was to know the brothers wanted to communicate for a long time?  Who was to know they would never marry The Pratice Sister?  Certainly not the sister; otherwise, why would she converse with them in the first place? 

But but!  No!  Maybe they saw her as a sister?!  A little sister.  You wouldn’t marry your sister would you?

No of course not.  You wouldn’t.  But you also wouldn’t let someone practice on your little sister either would you? 

We’re not here to discuss blame, that’s for another day, but The Practice Sister gets hit just as hard time and time again when she expects that brother who has been emailing her to actually get around to contacting her wali, who actually backs right off when she mentions marraige.

You want me to MARRY you?!  Really?!  Wow that was a shock to me.  I’ve never really thought of you in that way, SISTER. 

So The Practice Sister is left where she started; having helped a BROTHER get over what it was he wanted to get over (hold on, HE contacted HER from a marriage site!) helping him with his little issue he had to resolve before he actually GOT married; he’s ironed out the issue he had with how to deal with women, now he’s ready to SERIOUSLY start considering someone. 

So we say to The Practice Sister: we hope you learn from your mistakes; brothers are NOT out to marry you, but just to practice or what we call “time-pass” so don’t let them.  It does not matter if they have an issue or a problem or even that they call you SISTER.  Theys shoudl get counselling or tell their deepest darkest secrets to Allah SWt (who knows them anyway!)  Don’t be their “time-pass.” (say that with a desi accent)

And to all of those brothers (of which there are hundreds) who consider it OK to have a Practice Sister we say:

LOSERS!

Livin’ On A Prayer

A title for which Jon Bon Jovi may be well within his rights to sue me; however, despite the threat of a lawsuit and a lengthy trial, I still soldier on with the same title.

For a while people have been asking me why I named my site this, and after lengthy discussions, I have decided to once and for all, explain myself.  But rest assured, you probably won’t understand; for I’m a bit of a closed book these days, or more like a book in a foreign language.  Have you ever picked up a book in Arabic which was printed really badly – and I mean REALLY badly – and tried to decifer what it meant?  Or even which letter was which?  Well that’s me. 

Anyway, the title as many of you know is the name a well-known Bon Jovi song which I loved in my “youth”.  Yes, I was a bit of a rocker in my hey-day, a wild child and a drummer with neon pink drumsticks and a black Metallica t-shirt; the picture of defiance in every way – but somehow, I still managed to keep at my five daily prayers! (don’t ask me how that was easier than it is now!)  In these days, rock spoke to me; Jon Bon Jovi wrote lyrics especially for me; Steven Tyler of Aerosmith had my tortured soul on his mind when he wrote “Livin’ on the edge” and David Coverdale of Whitesnake saw me as his lone ranger when he crooned through “Here I go Again On My Own, like a drifter I was born to walk alone.”   And don’t even get me started on Kurt Cobain of Nirvana!

Even now, many of these classics hold claim over me, pulling me in different directions, holding great significance, making me wish I had never given my CD collection away when I, sanctimoniously considered myself more “practising” (more about that later).  But “Living on a Prayer” symbolises exactly how I, and many others, live their lives. 

We live not for the moment, but for whispered prayers in the midst of the night when things get tough.  We live not through the great pleasures of this life, of which we consider to have so many, but appreciate so little, but for the pleasure we may have later on.  Many of us live our lives from one self-induced crisis to the next, but many live through crises they cannot avoid and survive to tell the tale.  But only just. 

The Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov once said, “Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s the day-to-day living that wears you out”; and he was right.  Because things break us, break us beyond belief and when we feel we cannot go on, when we feel we cannot face another dawn, another accusation, another stab of pain, what keeps us going?  The only reason many of us who go through this are still living is we are ‘livin’ on a prayer’. 

“But do you not have faith in God?!” I hear you cry?  The answer is of course; this does not mean I’m a raging atheist, or someone who has little faith in God. 

I have long given up the hope that things will change or get better; this does not make me a pessimist, this makes me a survivor.  This does not mean I despair and think Allah (God) cannot make things better for me, this makes me someone who lives in the present, not regretting the past or resenting what the future has in store for me. 

We don’t hope for things to get better or to change, but we live on our prayers. 

As Jon Bon Jovi crooned, “We’re half way there; livin’ on a prayer.”

So in the words of AC/DC, “For those of you who are about to rock, I salute you.”