Hope for the hopeless.

How’s this for a blow to a writer’s ego:

43/60 on my first paper. Broken down:

16/20 for content.

12/20 for clarity.

15/20 for conciseness.

Taken together, a grand total of 72% success. Um, whoohoo?

This is a blip.

This is what I tell myself: this is a blip. This can’t possibly be permanent.

There is no way that my professional career is over, kaput, at the age of twenty-five. Being out of work is temporary; it must be. I’m too well-educated, too smart, too young for it to be otherwise. It can’t possibly be that studying abroad in a non-degree program, followed by six months of unemployment, will be prohibitive to my gainful employment forever. There simply is no way. This doesn’t happen now. I can’t be pigeon-holed into obscurity and idleness yet. Right?

Loneliness. This too is something I will laugh at later. The convert, especially the late one, has the special privilege of feeling out-of-place and different in every situation. I am an outsider, an unknown, a minority, a mystery, to the people I grew up with, the people with whom I have all but one thing in common. And among born Muslims, there is so much running just under the bridge of my spoken words, a whole world of experience that is unknown, a whole landscape full of my regrets, my hopes, that is simply untouchable. They talk about things they dream of, new things, pure, untouched, unknown, and I’m thinking: I miss that. Or: It’s not worth it. You think you want that, but you don’t. More trouble than it’s worth. The recollection, the extra conversation I have with myself, is sweet, it is bitter, and I’m looking around for someone who knows, and there are no knowing eyes to meet mine. Alone in a crowded room.

It takes time to enter fully into a new community, and really there is no complete knowing another person. Does my mother wish that she could introduce me to her own twenty-five-year old self? Does it fill her with melancholy that at twenty-five, she still hadn’t met my father? Is it strange that most of the people in her life then are gone from it now? I doubt these are things that plague her – and yet, I don’t really know. Perhaps this happens to everyone, and the extremities of my own experience only give me the illusion that I’m the only one. I’m not the only one with a past. I’m not the only one whose social circle has shifted completely in her twenties. So what makes me think I’m so different? That I have more extravagant stories? That makes me feel older than I actually am – like there are two generations encompassed in my life. Two lives lived. I can say things like: In my wilder days…and I don’t say it often, but the fact that I can, and it would make sense for me to, sometimes makes me feel like a bit of a grandmother. You wouldn’t believe it of me, kids, but when I was your age I used to…

And then there is my constant affliction of underachievement. My brother, who is nearly two years my junior, is fluent in a foreign tongue, is on a Fulbright scholarship, and is nearly halfway through a Master’s degree. And is happily married (may God increase their happiness!). And there is me…the family diletante and court jester, theater-dance-biology-literature-politics-Islam-journalism enthusiast [note: scholar of none of the aforementioned fields]. But I’ll figure it out. I’ll do something. I’ll accomplish something. I’ll do my father proud. These are the things I tell myself in my day-to-day incompetence. Someday. Someday soon, too. I sit and watch people, people with fields of study and cultivated interests, people who have not only chosen but taken a path, and my skin prickles a little with jealousy. Just a little. I tell myself my ship has yet to sail. It’s not that there isn’t a ship. I’m just doing extra polishing. I’m thorough. I’m preparing. I’m cocooned. In just a moment I’ll emerge as a gorgeous butterfly, and then I won’t care that anyone else did it before me…

And I am hopelessly underfaithful. This is my biggest and most pressing problem. No one is promised tomorrow. I live and pray in fear of never achieving life’s only worthwhile accomplishment: closeness to my Creator. Thankfulness for my blessings. Sincere worship. I know – in my head, I know that nothing else will matter to me in my grave. I know it, but my heart has yet to ingest and implement this knowledge. Bowing in prayer, I attempt to be aware of the fact that, God willing, come the Day of Rising, I’ll be bowing before the Magnificent, the One I have worshiped lovingly all my life. I try to imagine how real that bow will be, how deep and meaningful – how fulfilling…and the same feeling I’m imagining – of urgency, of I spent my life preparing for this, I am afraid to say, does not permeate my prayer. I hope and pray that these things will get better…I imagine myself a better person, a better daughter and friend, a better sister and aunt, a better Muslim. There’s hope for me. I’ll get there. I go about doing dishes, feeding my cat, ironing and pinning my scarves, dimly aware of the fact that saints have tread this earth, and every moment was thankfulness, nothing was petulant, that in reality, they were in love – with God. They looked at their families and the people they loved, at their homes and jobs and property, at themselves, and instead of wanting more and more, instead of being laterally in the space of love, they took it up. They upped the ante. They were aware of the blessing and its Bestower all at once. And that was enough – it was more than enough – their lives inspired real devotion. I am only scraping the surface. I am thankful, but it is far too easy for me to forget that my life was given to me. I forget that I, too, am a creation, and have no claim on my Creator. It’s as though someone has handed me the keys to a shiny new Prius for no reason at all, just because, just out of love, and I’m upset because it’s not a Jaguar. I mean, who cares? Who do I think I am? Was there ever a perfect life?

Today’s lesson (and thank God for it, too): I went out to dinner with a couple of good friends, and the hostess at the restaurant was lovely, warm and nice. But her face, which was not unattractive, was completely lopsided. One side was scarred with obvious surgery, and it looked slightly pinched – as though her features had emanated from a point by her right ear. But she was friendly and completely unafraid, and quite beautiful because of it. I marveled at her. Here I sit – how many moments have I wasted fussing over every pimple, every slight imperfection – how much time have I spent searching for things on myself that didn’t meet my approval? How much time? God forgive me for every second I didn’t praise Him for every touch of beauty He gave me. What was I thinking? What did I want? What more could I have asked for? What would have been enough? Really. Insecurity is a bottomless pit. Nothing would have satisfied me. What foolishness.

The truth is, I don’t need for anything. I’m independent and mobile and self-determining. I’m free to pursue my interests as I wish. I have youth, and health, and faith, and a working mind, literacy and bookshelves of books, and more love and admiration for my friends than I could hope for. My parents love me and are in good health. I have three lovely siblings, the best sister-in-law in the world, and a cat that chirps like a velociraptor.

Meow.

I want things from life. Sure. That’s human. There is a beauty to wanting, to hope. But my fault is in allowing that to distract me from what’s there. How stupid I would feel if tomorrow I were paralyzed, or diagnosed with a serious illness. I would have missed the opportunity to recognize my blessings while I could still enjoy them. Would I feel cheated? I hope not. I hope that I can want things – a proper job, to be known, to become accomplished in some field, to feel close to God and thankful for my blessings – without feeling entitled to them. I feel that is missing the point. I don’t deserve any more than the next person. Who am I to claim a larger share of employment, of wealth, of health, of beauty, or faith, knowing that we are both creations, and that our bodies, personalities, abilities and hearts have been bestowed upon us just as our external circumstances and material possessions have? Have I a greater claim to anything? Surely not. But I forget. Again and again, I forget.

Remind me, forgive me. Mostly forgive me.

(for Nuha.)

Come crashing down.

The inevitable end of Atonement has come crashing down on my lonesome little twin bed in Brighton.

I always experience the end of books this way. Or at least the end of beloved novels. The bulk, the bulge of their momentum gathers behind me as I read helplessly on, wanting to savor the delicious details one by one, but unable to stop myself from cramming them into my head pagefulls at a time. I binge on prose. I love it, and then it ends. And I am, frankly, bereft. I grieve the loss of my looking glass into the lives of beloved characters, people I feel that I have come to know and love. People whose most intimate, solitary moments I have witnessed. They are gone, and I will miss them. I will miss their lives unfolding. I will miss looking in.

I have the sensation of a wave building especially with tragedies. Especially with tragic love stories. I want to slosh around in that moment of declaration, when the lovers are young and beautiful and full of the possibility of loving each other…I don’t want to leave. Yet the narrative moves on; it must, and I must.

The crash of separation comes down hard on me (harder, I imagine, than on others – but of course this is impossible to know), a dedicated optimist, and I remember, every time, body-surfing on Nantucket when I was about ten. It was a grey, overcast day, not very warm but not raining, and I insisted on swimming. Ten-year-olds do. The waves were huge, making foam a permanent presence on the surface of the ocean to about fifty feet out or so. Everything was grey – grey-brown beach, grey-light sky, deep grey water. And then there was me, in some horrible black-and-fluorescent swirly suit. Trying to take part in it. This one wave came that dragged me the length of its curling, pummeling the breath out of me underwater, flipping me senseless. I came up at some benign depth, but immediately was slapped down by another curl of water. And so on, until I rolled up on the grey beach, breathless, having had my fill.

This is what tragedies are to me. It’s all fun and games, however foreboding, until the letdown comes…and then I just get beat to a pulp until the end. It won’t stop; I’m already steeped way in there, a helpless observer of my own weepy fate. I suppose the end is merciful, in its way. Really I couldn’t bear to go on.

I don’t think I could write such a story. Not now; not while I inevitably cast myself as the spirited heroine (for who would cast themselves as Briony, the unwitting Iago of her own story?) . Not while she and I share the barely caged heart of a twentysomething single woman. Not while my life is to be lived, my husband, God willing, to be married, my children, God willing, to be born and raised. I couldn’t do it. It’s too ruthless. I would feel like I was cutting myself, or downing too many pills. A story decades away, in a different country, whose heroine doesn’t even remotely resemble me in appearance, inclination, or manner, is still too close to my own fragile reality. It’s that simple; to me, it is not just a story…a great one can be almost a prayer that I will ardently wish to live out.

I don’t think I’ve grown completely out of that childlike fascination with stories. I am still able to lose sense of my separateness from the page. Perhaps there is some missing developmental link there; more than one person in my life has delicately hinted to me that I lack some sagacity. I daresay they’re right; still, I’m reluctant to let go of that complete entrance into another world.

Will I forever be this girl?

[note: I really am unable to keep these posts from being appallingly personal. Perhaps I'll learn with time - until then I hope these aren't too bare to bear. So to speak.]

Yours always, with awkwardness.

I’ve been thinking about my Atonement post, and I think I’ve hit on something.

People often wonder with wide wonderment why Muslims court in the awkward and roundabout way that we do. I won’t deny it. It’s a bit strange; it has always seemed so to me. Please allow me to elaborate.

“I know, I hate that line…..for real, though, can I text you sometime?”

This is how white people do it: they walk up to each other and say things like, “Hey, baby, what’s your sign?” And then they both wink at each other, signaling that this is a horribly overused line. And then, with a little chuckle, one of them says, “Seriously. I’m guessing you’re a Leo.” They have coffee or lunch or dinner, they go out a few times, leisurely explore each other’s state of dental hygiene, they grope and caress and tackle and tickle. They meet each other’s friends and go out bowling, and then have the post-friend-meeting analysis: “So. Tell me what you thought of her. Seriously. I really like this girl.” They fight and make up, they make each other dinner, see what the other one prefers to wear to bed and learn how to make each other’s favorite breakfasts. They spend Saturdays together on the couch, at the museum, in the park. They vacation together in Peru. They experience together every known thing under the sun, they cohabitate for long periods of time, they wait for it all to be settled, and then one morning one of them turns to the other with a bright sparkly expensive thing in one hand and says, “Baby, I know your sign, my friends dig you, and you always take out the trash when it’s your turn. Nobody makes better pancakes, and you know how I love that little freckle on your nose there. Let’s get hitched.” Then, and only then, does my tribe marry.

Hooray! Bliss.

Now for the Muslims:

“This totally isn’t awkward….at….all.”

Muslim boy meets girl, and nervously looks at his feet. She plays with her skirt and they exchange salaams. Boy and girl continue to stare at their toes while they discuss every potential issue under the sun….in a fairly dry manner. Things like who will get up at three with the imaginary baby come up, things like how to deal with in-laws no one has met yet, things like childcare, how the household income is shared and/or split and spent, where the couple will live, what their best and worst qualities are. It’s all out there, a big, giant, verbal pop-quiz. We quiz each other’s friends: “Is he really that nice? Or just when he’s come round courting…?” We meet each other’s families and extended families, and ask each other how we like to spend our time, what we do on a lazy three-day weekend, and how clean we like the kitchen to be. Anything is on the table for deliberation, and most of it gets carted out for examination at one point or another. We ask each other what we do on weekends but we don’t spend weekends together. We ask each other about favorite dishes, but we don’t share them. We make extra effort to not bond. It’s extremely frustrating, trying, and befuddling. All this….and we don’t even hold hands yet. Not yet. Then, finally, boy says to girl (or visa-versa), “So, um, sister….I think you’re the one for me. Are you diggin’ it like I’m diggin’ it? And is your family diggin’ me too?” And the sister says, “Uh, yeah, brother, my family is a fan. And I guess I’m sorta into you. Let’s do it.” And they get all married and then it’s like,

Gee, what could be cuter than that?

You’re thinking what I’m thinking. Why be crazy? Why do we make it so backwards and hard? Well, I’m sure there are a lot of explanations out there, but something occurred to me, as I said, thinking about Atonement. Part of the beauty and security of Robbie and Cecelia’s love is that they have known each other and loved each other in a sort of pseudo-sibling way for their entire lives. Not much is at stake when they finally declare their romantic love; neither one will walk out the door and leave the other high, dry, and not knowing whether to call. It’s safe…because the foundations are already built. They know each other. They respect each other. They admire each other. Now all they have to do is fall for each other, and it is accomplished over the course of one sweltering midsummer day. Voila! Love blossoms, roots itself, grows. A novel is born.

So I think this is why we’re crazy. Despite appearances, it’s not a masochistic or puritanical endeavor. It’s because, well, when somebody cooks killer pancakes, maybe that distracts a little from the fact that she wants five dogs and you want five kids. Because humans are beings of extremes…and while we can be extremely rational, in love, we’re mostly extremely not. So the Muslim wisdom has mostly been to take the fun out of the before-the-wedding part, and make the after-the-wedding part pretty awesome, pretty safe, and purdy dern loving. There’s a lot, obviously, that goes into choosing one’s spouse…a person’s nature, manner, habits, desires, and background all play a part in the decision. And I guess we Muslims figure that if someone can pass muster without all of the distracting (and hey, let’s face it, lovely) day-to-day romance and affection, then adding those last two ingredients will only make a good thing double platinum.

It ain’t a bad hypothesis, now that I think about it.

Relief

Why do we ignore it when we are promised relief?

There have been times in my own life when pain stretched out in ever direction; it was all I could see, it ate every desire that I had. W.H. Auden was a description, a companion, but still he offered no relief:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
I’ve felt that…I’ve forgotten optimism in the mad ecstasy of grief. And yet it passes. The worst things pass. The worst times are got over; people make up or move on. We fall in love again, when we thought we wouldn’t. Even wars will eventually end. Every scrap of history, even our own, points to the fact that this, too, shall pass.

And yet we all drive on as though pummeling through life will win the day. Every tragedy is new and urgent, every lover must be rescued from the clutches of a breakup – it’s inevitable. Our passion overtakes us. Of course we’d be in human without it – but the balance is often overshot.

I tend to be consumed by my own sadness, however trivial, in the end, it will turn out to be. I’m stubborn, and I have a hard time accepting that what I want isn’t always what’s best….but I’m fairly convinced that learning the exercise of patience – waiting for it to get better, for the pain/grief/anxiety to subside, rather than stomping my foot as loud as I can every time something doesn’t go my way – will make for a lot more happiness in the long run than chasing after everything I want.

It occurred to me the other day while riding the subway that it’s actually very fortunate that we don’t get everything we want. Imagine that! Imagine if every toy, possession, person that we’ve ever wanted was something we had to lug around and maintain for the rest of our lives…how grateful I am that I don’t have to find space for my Barbie playhouse in my tiny tiny apartment, and that I didn’t end up with any one of the crushes I had in middle school.

I guess sometimes a pout is worth a thousand smiles. I hope I can remember that next time.

Bottle it up.

Love…….how glorious and crazy-making it is.

Falling in love is such a curious experience. It’s tempting to miss the heady ignorance of my first time, but the first tingles that come, both familiar and new, allow a sort of anticipatory pleasure that I wouldn’t trade.

Funny thing is that it’s kind of the same for everything. Sure, the first time I fell really hard it was for a guy, but now I’m all kooky over the experience of writing (and people reading it….dear Lord, what are they all thinking of me? Being anonymous – or not – not even knowing which I am at which computer, where…well it’s been less than a week, but I’ll tell you it’s fairly addicting). And over this novel. So that I experience the rest of life in terms of this one thing, and not the other way around. Time spent away from the beloved becomes interesting only in the terms that it will inform our next meeting…the seconds, hours, days, weeks between are grey.

I experienced this feeling too when I first converted, I now realize. Every new thing was something that was happening for me through the new adopted framework of Islam (and I hardly knew what that was), and it heightened, and colored, everything. I cast off everything that might come in conflict with my newfound faith with imaginary impunity. I left a longtime love with a few sentences, proud of myself, clear, free, as I thought I should be. Only weeks later, after the initial euphoria, did I even stop to grieve properly. And even then…my Islam was new, I felt new, I felt a new and better and more interesting person, and there was a whole world to discover, and it was mine.

I think it’s much the same with falling for people. Immediately we imagine a whole life as though it has already happened – it is territory, it is our territory, and the only thing separating us from the thousand mythical experiences is time. We consider the deal sealed with the first taste of mutual admiration, even if we don’t yet admit it to ourselves. Though our lives lie in wait with or without that person, that book, that occupation, it is as though we’ve come out of a long and cobwebby slumber and suddenly, yes! Life awaits!

Of course, it is much simpler with writing, with books, and even with religion. These things don’t require the consent of another party, so it’s much easier to live out the fantasy in precisely the way it is imagined.

I love that we fall in love. I love that we all do it, and still we experience it as the most uncommon, unique, particular and precious experience in all the world. I love that no matter how cynical we are, no matter how hurt we’ve been, no matter how many times we’ve tread the same exhilarating ground before, we experience it as new all over again, as soon as that first glimpse of love is there. I love that we love, and fail at it, and recover and do it again with the requisite amnesia. I love how willing people are to love. I love that we are foolish about it, and I love that with time and experience we learn to temper that with rational prudence: alone again, still giddy, we ask ourselves: is (s)he a sheep, or a wolf in sheep’s clothing? I love that it makes beggars of kings, and kings of beggars. I love that in the first stages we feel we are only the best versions of ourselves, I love that we have faith in that, I love that we let someone else feel beautiful and good and fascinating, and I love that with time we let them settle into their flawed humanity, and continue to love them anyway.

Whoever said that religion is the opiate of the masses was a fool. It is love, love, love – and what a fool I sound. I am. I’m a fool for walking around with my little notebook, and a fool for scribbling in it, and a fool for looking forward to a Saturday night in, alone, with only a novel for company. So be it. I’ll bottle it up and be regular come Monday.

(….and hey, I’m sorry about this post. I know. I know how ridiculous I am. I think the headiness of Atonement has really infected me. Don’t worry; I’ll be wry and sarcastic again soon enough.)

A little austere

I’m currently devouring Ian McEwan’s Atonement as though the act of finishing it will be some saving grace for me.

It feels incongruous, wrong, and perhaps that is part of the deliciousness of the novel. The title implies a world, or a life, overtaken by sin, hijacked. I suppose we all dread doing something unfixable, something dreadful and permanent. Something that we cannot come back from. But what may be irredeemable about the story is contradicted completely by the way it is told; I’m still stunned, hours and days later, by small details in McEwan’s prose that cause me to reexamine my own experience: the smell of cow dung is leathery. I find myself pausing and inhaling deeply, trying to remember the farm fields I regularly drive through with the windows down in a town adjacent to my home. I can’t ever remember having made the same association, but I feel renewed, somehow, by it all the same. There is no doubt that next summer I’ll be searching the air for that clean, functional scent among the cows.

And then there is the love scene, the love, the lovers. I remember being struck during the film at how artful it was: the colors, the shapes of bodies against the dark leather of bound books, splayed like giant spiders conquering a wall. And I’m left wondering if that’s not how we all want to be loved, really: for that mole, that scar, to be not a blemish, but an adornment. Something specific and extraordinary, to be kissed and adored simply because it doesn’t exist on any other person in quite that spot in quite that shape or hue. To be familiar and strange all at the same time – to be able to be remade by the beloved. I’m slightly (very) fanciful, but I like to think that we all want that. That kind of intimacy is a very human need. I think we’d all like to be examined, not for what’s right with us, but for what’s there. Acceptance pre-guaranteed, affection secured. And then we lay ourselves bare. It’s so safe – McEwan paints it – or types it, rather, exactly. And without saying so in the crude way I have.

And the smell of perspiration like cut grass. How often I’ve felt awkward to be comforted by the smell of a loved one’s sweat. How fresh and human it feels to breathe it in. How natural. I’m a bit of a hippie in disguise, but I’ve always felt that this urge we’re all encouraged to have (and spend fountains of money on) to smother every innate scent, to smooth every line, to pluck and dye and starve ourselves into severe, gaunt, unanimous perfection is bizarre. One of my favorite scents in the world is that of my sister’s bedsheets. Hers always smelled different than those draping the other beds in the house, and it was between them that I crept after every nightmare, during every insecure midnight of my childhood. Nothing can replace that for me, and it smells like person. And I like it that way. It’s proper. Someone shouldn’t only smell like Chanel, or Polo. We should smell like people. It’s so meaty and personal. Why should we want to stuff it away, ashamed of our failure to be a flower? Roses smell like roses. Let them. I’ll take in the tang of my father’s musty neck, the mildness of my mother’s hair, and be satisfied.

I know I’m focusing on scents here. But I’m so haunted. I can’t help it. This whole novel wound around an obsession with repentance is the most luscious thing I’ve ever held between my two hands. It’s ludicrous. And perfect in its irony. And the feel of reading it is so bracing and wonderful that everything is fresh, every word tormentingly flawless, and I never want it to end.

…On a more personal note (if possible): I’m afraid that I’ll never write anything so beautiful. But that failure wouldn’t be so bad. I could write something that falls far short of McEwan’s mark and still exceed my own hopes. It would be pathetic not to try, but I often feel crushed under so much beauty that has come before. To dream of joining the ranks of the published (and read admiringly, fingers clutched, breath held) seems so presumptuous. But we all have our purpose, and I can’t imagine dreaming of anything else anymore.

Start spreading the news

Ok. So I’m not leaving today, but it seems that there’s a good chance that if my current plans actually pan out, I’ll be moving. I’ll be back in the Big Apple.

I’ve gotten so used to the idea of myself as a rural girl that this is a bit strange for me. More than a bit strange. I spent my freshman year of college in New York and packed it back to the verdant country of my youth so fast, and with so little regret, that I have since considered myself a bona fide, genuine, patent country bumpkin. This is so central to my self-image that when I fell in love with a man who loved the city and wanted to stay his whole life through, it gave me serious pause. I’m a tree-hugging granola chick. No ifs, no ands, not buts – and no urge to fight the fact that I see my life unfolding over green New England hillsides. That’s me. I’m rural, and that’s just the way it’s going to be.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: Lizzy, you fool, I’ve seen your Facebook profile. You live in a city. And you’re right. I do live in a city. But Boston is to New York what a Chihuahua is to a Great Dane: lunch. Or possibly something to be squished underpaw on your way to the park. It’s peas.

In Boston, I keep my car. I blissfully ride around in traffic with my own radio blasting, and nobody’s elbows and nobody’s knees are rubbing against any part of me. In Boston, unless you’re way, way downtown, you actually get to see the sun at hours of the day that are not noon. Boston is small. It is manageable. It’s only an hour and a half from the house I grew up in. It’s not a chasm of urbanity. It’s just a brief vacation from Western Massachusetts. I figured I’d stay here until….oh, I don’t know, until I got hitched and decided to have kids and got worried about things like regular exposure to nature for the terribly small. Until I found a job that was portable enough to cart out of the city with me. Until I got sick of it. Until something drew me somewhere else. Until I got my life in order. Until I hit a brick wall…

Oh. Right. Remember last post, when I was all, “I’m a stuffed animal, and 25-and-jobless is my brick wall of pain?” That’s why I’m going to New York. Thank God I have a short-term memory and can remind myself of my own reasoning.

So: New York.

So what, right? So what if I became an urbanite? I mean, can I? Can my relationship with the city be rebuilt? Will I learn to relove the Hungarian Pastry Shop, and can I value it so much that the towering hunks of concrete, brick and stone blocking out the sun at virtually every hour of the day won’t bother my country-grown soul?

And let’s say I move to the city. What, then? Do I consign myself forever to urbanity, never to own a lawn or play in a sprinkler again? Will I become different? Will the crunchiness I hold so very dear in myself fade away with five, and then ten, years in that hub of hipness and fashion? Will I become (gulp) cynical?

The thing about me is that I’m not terribly fashionable. I’m not terribly put together, or neat, or in-the-know about pretty much anything. I’m earnest. I try to be nice. I don’t want that to be beat out of me. I like being nice.

So what happens to a girl like that in a city that’s the hottest of hot things? I don’t like hot things. I like independent coffee shops and the sound of screen doors squeaking shut. I’m sort of afraid that I’ll fade into – not mediocrity, that’s not the right word – irrelevance.

Once, in Cairo, my roommate asked me to buy her some fruit from a peddler outside our apartment building:

So I dutifully went down to buy us some nice produce. Trouble was, I’m too small and too polite to function effectively in an operation like this. It is impossible to describe to you how the women swarm around these things. I was poked, elbowed, and pushed out of the way by women twice my size and up to four times my age. See, to them, it was normal. That’s how you go to the vegetable cart. You shove the other women out of the way, pinch and sniff your veggies, stuff them in a bag and then stiff-arm your way over to the scales. You weigh your own stuff, slapping impatient hands out of the way, and then force your bills into the hands of the guy in charge of the cart. Then you charge your way out of the throng and go make yourself a nice tasty dish. But to me…I kept hoping, with the naivete of a green traveler, that if I just waited long enough, my time would come. It did….about half an hour later. The vegetable cart guy looked at my pale form waiting on the fringe as though I were from Mars. I’m sure he couldn’t imagine for the life of him what I was waiting for. I was waiting for my opportunity. I was waiting for peace and quiet. I was waiting in vain.

So this is my fear. My fear is that in New York, I’ll be waiting for the subway to be less crowded, I’ll be waiting for that shirt everyone’s wearing to be on sale, I’ll be waiting for someone to notice me and say, “Hey, you look like you need help.” And I won’t be surrounded by foreigners. I won’t be able to excuse my sticking out like a sore thumb, because these are my peeps. These are Americans too. Only, like, on speed. And in Armani. Or Prada. Or whatever – see??? I don’t even know.

What if I’m left out of everything New York-y? What if I’m so provincial that I become the last kid picked for the softball team? I’ve already been that kid. I have no desire to relive the fifth grade. I was so clumsy, and broke so many bones in such quick succession, that I earned the nickname “Grace.” And I didn’t have the excuse of growing into some long limbs that would turn pretty one day. I was awkward and short. Now I’m about to be awkward and short in New York.

Lord, help me.

An official introduction

Hi/salaam. I’m a recent(ish) college graduate and recent(ish) convert to Islam. Hence the name of the blog. By all accounts, I should be considered a “yuppie” at this point in my life: twenty-five, capped-and-gowned, reasonably intelligent….ah, if only it were that simple. The reality is that the term “muppie” applies to me only in the loosest sense. I’m Muslim, sure, but technically I’m not exactly employed. Not gainfully. Not like I imagined, in days of textbook-laden yore.

Hitting my mid-twenties like a stuffed bunny against a brick wall has made me realize several things…and wish, above all, that someone had told me the inevitability of postgraduate letdown.

I can’t help but think, “If I had only known….” But then again, known what? What would I have done differently? I’ve spent most of my life charging ahead at whatever it is that I want without much regard for wisdom, prudence, or patience. There’s not much reason to believe that my 18-22-year-old self would have really taken it to heart if someone had pulled me out of Chem 11 and whispered: Just fyi, life is going to be a black hole of confusion and poverty after you graduate. After all, my fancy-pants liberal arts college gave me every reason to believe that I would be shoulders and heads above the other struggling post-grads. In short, I thought the world would hand itself to me on a platter. Oh, how foolish I was.

If I’d known….if I’d really known, I’m not sure what I would have done. Since graduating, my life has been fairly eventful. I’ve driven across the country twice. I’ve adopted a cat. I’ve become Muslim, to everyone’s stupefaction (including my own). I’ve worked in a lab, taken the MCAT, and flirted with the idea of going to medical school more than once. I’ve been to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan. I’ve seen the Kabba. I’ve been a full-time student of classical Arabic. I’ve sat and had tea with one of America’s foremost scholars of Islam. I’ve interviewed for roughly one billion jobs. I’ve rewritten my resume about five hundred times. I’ve been engaged, married, and divorced. And lastly, but certainly not least, I’ve decided to abandon my scientific career for my own version of a little girl’s princess dream: becoming a writer. I don’t know if I would trade all of these experiences (which, I’m told, will build character in time) for a nice, shiny law degree, or a few cushy, predictable years in grad school. I’ve been in the grad school of life, baby. Now, if I can only make something of myself, I’ll be glad for the school of hard knocks.

In the meantime, I’ll be stumbling: towards faith, towards a temp agency that will take me (take that, ego), towards becoming a better person, towards explaining my transformation from a postmodern-feminist/superliberal/secularist to a practicing Sunni Muslim. [note: I wouldn't consider myself to be not a feminist, or a liberal, at this point. I'm only a former secularist. But we'll get into that later, I'm sure.]

I recently visited my alma mater, and met some professors and friends who haven’t seen me since before I converted. It’s funny; I can see the enigma running circles in their pupils. I come from a small, small school in the middle of rural New England (not exactly a bastion of diversity). Islam, Muslims, converts….these things are sometimes more ideas than real things. It’s easy to forget this in a city, where I can ride the T and see other women covering there hair and exchange “salaam” without the other riders blinking an eye. Back home – back at school, I am so much more of an oddity than I am here. Perhaps it’s because I’m white, and my scarf just doesn’t suit me. Perhaps it’s because I leaped into the deep end of faith and abandoned my “common-sense”, intellectually-responsible, secular roots. Perhaps it’s because I’m simply an articulation of an unfamiliar phenomenon. Perhaps my professors look at me the way a parent looks at a misbehaving child: this is not the way you were raised. Honestly, I’m clueless. In reality, they are as inscrutable to me as I am to them.

Still, I think it’s important to bridge these gaps. There’s no reason to think that this isn’t exactly what my education prepared me for…after all, haven’t I thought for myself, choosing a path I knew they would deprecate?

So this is the story of me. Struggling, like so many of my peers, to find a way to pay the rent, feed my cat, and maybe buy a new pair of shoes every once in a while. I happen to be doing it with one foot in my past of achievement, normalcy, and secularism, and the other in the present of unemployment, its accompanying humility, and faith. Do check in from time to time.

I’ll try to be as interesting as I can.