Proof

There are three of us, and a fourth orange chair-plus-desk sits empty to our left. It’s life at the bottom of a well this next hour; we’re looking out at a modest mostly-if-not-totally Muslim audience. We’re here to tell our stories: the tall, white redheaded brother, the punkish hijabi in a ripped jean skirt and All-Stars, the blue-eyed first grade teacher in black abaya.

I never know what I’m going to say at these things. How many times have I told “my story”? Dozens? More than a hundred? It’s always slightly different. I don’t know why. Every time I omit something else, or leave out what feels like a whole pile of important details – and have some new thing that is central to the story. Today it turns out to be the story of Islam coming and finding me, and taking hold of my heart, and dragging me, kicking and screaming (partying and piercing?) into the world of Islam. I hear myself telling it as though it’s one unified string of events and nothing else belongs in the narrative. But you can’t lay out your life at the feet of strangers in a 15-minute span. A heart can’t fit in that space.

I’m the middle person in the panel. It goes like this: The Scientist (The Rational Surveyor of Tradition), The Reluctant Believer (The Dancer), The Born-Believer. So the ginger-haired boy who inspected every religious tradition for truth and Truth precedes me. I speak next, the free spirit who lived in the same house as a Muslim for almost a decade before she noticed that she belonged to the same religion, who would get drunk and declare that she needed God (though of course I omit this) and declare things along the lines of, “I will never become Muslim if Muslims can’t have dogs,” and ask things like, “But can I still dance?” I finish, disturbed by how moved I always become when I describe the choice I felt I was making when I became Muslim (in one hand, the world; in the other, a relationship with God….), make the sign of the horns and tell them, “Never look back, right?” They laugh. I’m glad they do. It puts my feet back on the ground.

Rock hard, Mozlems. Rock. Hard.

And then there is the girl after me. In a quiet voice, she describes a shy child who imagined sleeping in the hand of God and said the shahada for the first time at fifteen, stirring pasta sauce alone in a midwestern kitchen.

And that’s it: three converts. Three stories. Three souls in three safety nets, still swinging above the spikes of a purposeless existence, praying the net holds. And as we’re swinging in our orange chairs, before the enraptured faces of those born into a safer web built by generations of their forbears, I realize that we’re a proof of the very thing we hold dearest.

Because here we are: male and female, gregarious and introverted, tall and short; punk and put-together, bearded and hijabed, intuitive and intellectual. We are dancers and musicians and engineers; we are religion majors and science geeks; we are married and single; we are wild and we are tame; we are gentle and we are rough; we are soft and we are loud. And all three of us walked some winding road to here: in this classroom, at this university, in these chairs – the embracers of this religion, this Islam, this precious hot coal burning into our palms all the time that we will not let go. We’re all three here. For three different reasons, with a multitude of different struggles.

All three of us say the same thing: the story we’ve just told? It’s only the beginning.

Safe journeys, ye travelers!

Becoming

I apologize for not having written. If you’ve held out for this long, you’re a real trooper of a reader, and I appreciate it.

I’ve spent the last month and change digesting. So much was happening all the time, and in a way I felt incapacitated in terms of writing. I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure what to say or how to put it. I was afraid of revealing too much of myself (a shocking declaration for a blogger such as myself, I know). I had to just sit for a minute or a month, and see what came out at the end. It was the culmination of a much larger, much longer process. And I will say this, and hope that it is enough, and not too much:

This year has been fascinating for me. So much has changed, and in so many ways I have come into myself and grown into my Islam. But it’s been a mixed bag. Part of that growing has been a broadening, and much of what I have encountered – thoughts, feelings, deeds – I thought I had left behind forever when I came to Islam. But eventually we are who we are. It may come under the heading of one religion, one philosophy, one world view that is coherent; but embracing something so comprehensive does not mean that we embody that idea fully. As much as we’d all like it to be different, this is, if nothing else, a process.

Maybe I was a better Muslim a year ago, or two years ago. It’s hard to say. When you take pieces of yourself – memories, ideas, longings, tendencies – and pack them away in a far, cobweby corner of your identity, is that goodness? So many of the things or ideas I embraced were not whole, were not wholly mine. I was not myself. The intoxication of a whole new way of being – a chance to reinvent myself at 23! It was all that mattered, and maybe I took that chance too much, maybe I went too far.

When I was contemplating returning to the States from Egypt, I thought it would be more difficult than it turned out to be. I thought that I had become someone different: a postmodern ascetic, taking refuge in an urban desert from the social high of a colder, more verdant city. But I came back and went out every weekend again, and loved people again, and loved them more. I hadn’t changed at all. I don’t think it’s a bad thing.

If I had to name this year, if it had to be one thing, it would be me falling into myself. I’ve unpacked everything that I tucked away in shame or zeal, and I’m in the process of going through it all: this I want to keep, this I can do without. But at last I am doing the real work of being a Muslim, I think. I feel that I went on a very long, two-year vacation, and now I’ve come back to my apartment, my storage space, and I’m going through all of the boxes. I’m deciding which ones deserve to come along for the long haul, and which can go to the recycling. I thought that I had already done this work, but it was the illusion of an escapist. The real deal doesn’t happen overnight. It’s never been that way, and it never will be. People change slowly; we may successfully reinvent ourselves, but it happens in slow, sedimentary time, not in the lightening mood that accompanies that first, inescapable “aha.”

And so for the first time in a long time I feel authentic. I feel Muslim, I feel deeply that this is who I am, and I also feel that I haven’t cut off any proverbial limbs in order to feel that. It’s not an either/or anymore. I’m tempted to call it “healthy” or “wholesome” but I think I might be dipping a toe into a pool that is a little too new-agey for me. I’ll stick with authentic. But that means that I’m stuck with myself, and I’m not so sure how I feel about that. I want to crawl back under the covers and come back out after my spirit has successfully slain my self. Can’t somebody else take care of this unruly thing that is my personality?

If sin is a fable, then so am I. I’m taking me, with a massive dose of tawba. God alone knows what the right choice is.

Sage advice

The more concerned members of my family, who would like to see me happy and settled, and have a less intimate knowledge of the Moslems, occasionally pipe up to give me some love advice. This being:

Dear Liz,

If you want to marry a pious Muslim, stop yapping about your male childhood friends hugging you on your blog. Also, never ever ever mention that you have “a past.” Also never talk about your screw-ups. The pious Muslim men won’t have it and will think you’re some sort of libertine. And maybe you are. Regardless, bottle it up and shut up about it. The Christians accept you for who you are, because, you know, we’re very reasonable people, but you know how small-minded Muslims are. So please do yourself a favor, and become someone you’re not. Or at least pretend to be someone else. Until after the wedding. Then, good luck living up to the lie! Protestantism is always here for you, should you ever tire of the charade.

Love always,

your loving family

Needless to say, I haven’t taken their advice. Why? Well, I’ve tried. Boy did I try. I tried to be what I imagined everyone would want, and I tried to ignore the pieces of me that you might not expect. I tried to ignore the fact that I’m a convert, and American, and that the culture I grew up with is very different from the subculture in which I now find myself. I tried. And it kind of backfired.

We all have our struggles, and I’m not saying that this (i.e. Islam) is supposed to be a piece of cake. It’s not. Talk to any convert. Forget that, actually – talk to anyone. What you’ll hear from almost everyone, in one way or another, is this: I wouldn’t have it any other way. But sometimes it’s so difficult I fear I’m about to bust something.

We’re all Muslim because we choose to be. Lord knows that the easier and infinitely more convenient thing to do in this society is give it up – give up the prayer, fasting, your beard, covering your hair, no gambling, no drinking, no dating, no sex. We don’t do those things because it’s fun. We do them because we’re committed to something greater than ourselves, because we want to travel towards and not away from God throughout the course of our lives, because we believe that within struggle lies growth. Like, you can’t become patient if you get everything you want the second that you want it. You’ve gotta wait sometimes. Like that.

Thing is, I do all that stuff (minus growing a beard, of course). By most people’s standards, I’m considered very conservative – even by my own family (see very disconcerting advice above). But my family, and occasionally the Muslims around me, keep warning me (between telling me that I’m CRAZY conservative like those loony fundos) that I’m too liberal. Too liberal for the hardcore fundos out there – and we all know that that’s precisely what all of the practicing Muslims are – but not what you might call a “progressive” Muslim.

Which leaves me……where?

Eeny meeny miney, community?

The bizarre thing (I find) is that some converts are able to cast off their “past lives” with total disregard. It’s like the first twenty/thirty/forty/whatever years of their lives disappear into the ether and they’re the first ones to forget about it. And I’m sitting there….wondering how. It’s not that I’m stuck in my past – it’s not that I romanticize it (Ah, the days I used to do haram things! If only I could go back!). It’s that I want to be able to admit that it’s there, and develop naturally, and without cultural amnesia. Is that so much to ask?

Sometimes I’m asking this of the community, and sometimes I’m asking it of individuals. I was at the local mosque last night, and there was a scene that recalled my early days in Islam all too well:

There was a girl laying on the floor waiting for prayer. Two women sat on either side of her. She was bright-eyed and asking a lot of questions: What do I say after the adhan? What do I do when _____ happens?

An Egyptian woman was answering her inquiries. Every sentence she spoke to this newbie began with one of two words: do or say. And I’m listening to her and thinking: You’re teaching this girl like you have a Ph.D. in prayer and you’re mispronouncing your “tha”. It’s atheem, not azeem.

Now there’s nothing wrong with this unloading of advice per se. It’s all kindly meant, and most converts (myself included) do arrive at the mosque with roughly a billion questions every other day. But still. Don’t cram it down her throat like that. Write it down. One thing at a time. Leave her wanting more, not feeling dizzy with information she can’t hope to remember – and doesn’t understand.

Here’s what I want: I want someone to say to her: Hi, salaam alaykum, welcome to the community.

How are you?

Anything I can help you out with?

How are things going for you? How is your faith? How is your family? How are your friends?

Can I grab you some tea?

So here’s what I did: I introduced myself. I said welcome into the fold, gave her my number, took hers, prayed maghrib next to her, and told her that I had to leave to give a friend a ride, but that she should never hesitate to call me at three in the morning. I told her that I’ve been Muslim for two and a half years. And sometimes it’s rough. And I get it.

The trouble is that with all of our fussing over the newbies learning all the “right” things (most of which, mind you, are not required by the religion), we teach them a thousand things a minute, tell them what to do and what not to do, and then wonder why they get overwhelmed, or why they haven’t been to the mosque in a while. There’s no real effort to get to know them. It’s not like, hey let’s go grab coffee and chat cuz we’re sisters now, it’s like, perfect yourself perfect yourself perfect yourself. Yesterday! There is no subtlety in dealing with the converts. NONE.

Maybe the right answer lies somewhere in between my way of dealing with this girl and the other woman’s. I’m not sure, honestly – I’m figuring this out as I go. But what I want is to not be imposed upon by another culture. I want to be Muslim, but not Egyptian. Or Pakistani. Or Turkish. Because I’m none of those things. I want to be Muslim and white, and for that to be my  identity. I’m Irish and Polish. I’ll be teaching my kids to pray and making them golumpkis for dinner, thankyouverymuch. I’ll teach them thikr, hopefully pronounced correctly (God willing), and read Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson with them – and Al-Ghazali. Because they will own all those things, and they should be able to. They should be proud of that. Not all of the ideas, art, and culture borne out of the Anglo-Saxons is bad. It is not all to be rejected. It is to be refined.

To be honest, I stayed away from Islam for a long time because I thought: square peg, round hole. Because I was a dancer, and a singer, and a theater chick – where was I going to put all that stuff? Three years later, I’m discovering that I can put them in a blog, in speaking, in poetry readings. But it took that long. And you know what? I hate to say it. It’s the community’s fault. We’re all so obsessed with the deen beauty contest that we forget that people grow, and it takes time to come into your own, and that’s okay.

So that’s why I put it here, I guess. It’s half declaration of identity-independence, and half prayer. I want to be able to say: I have a story, and not have everyone balk at it. Because you know what? If you can’t handle someone with a story, then you can’t handle converts. The fact that people come into this religion is purely the mercy of God – because the Muslims certainly don’t make it very easy for them. The Muslims make it so hard to be Muslim that converts’ family members tell them to hush up. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as extreme?

And maybe they’re right. Maybe I am making it harder for myself. Maybe some really great, really conservative guy who would otherwise be interested in me is reading this and thinking: never mind. You know what? So be it. Even if I didn’t have a blog, this is still who I am. And it’s not going to go away, no matter how much I don’t talk about it. And when I do find the guy for me, God willing, I want him to accept me for who I am – past, flaws, virtues, talents, quirks, all of it. What’s the point, otherwise? If you have to become someone else to be loved, then you’re not really being loved – someone else, some other identity that you’ve put on, like an outfit – that’s what is being loved. And nobody wants that, including me. I want to be loved, or bust. No masks, no pretending. And I’ll wait as long as it takes.

Slowly, oh so slowly, I’m finding people who love me just as I am, and still help me to be better – but don’t try to make me into someone else entirely. And it’s more cheering than I can possibly say. We buoy each other up, we laugh together, we protect each other, we encourage each other – but never absolutely, never with an iron fist. And isn’t that the way of our beloved Prophet, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him? Who was gentler? Who loved people more? Who accepted people more? Did he (pbbuh) teach the Muslims their religion in one day? Did he (pbbuh) ask Umar ibn al-Khattab (may God be pleased with him) to become a different man, once he came to Islam? No. The Prophet (pbbuh) asked Umar to use his talents and his personality in the service of the religion. And that was all. If that was all we were asked by the community – love what you love, be who you are, and when you can, do those things in the service of your Lord and this community – my goodness, what a relief that would be.

What my family asserts, or sees, about the community, isn’t wrong. They see us all “starched up into seeming piety” (Mansfield Park, I can’t help myself) and wonder how authentic it is, and see – quite rightly – that there’s no room for WASPs/WASMs (read: White Anglo-Saxon Muslims). My family doesn’t want to deal with all of the cultural/social/emotional confusion and pain my brother and I went through – and who can blame them? Are we really all that welcoming, if we ask everyone to be instantly different from the moment they convert? Where is our patience with people? Where is our love for each other?

What I’m hoping is that we’re moving towards a happier balance. I think we are. My brother changed his name when he came to Islam, but by the time I followed seven years later, he advised me not to (resulting in something I like to call “Lizzy pride.” I love that someone with my name introduces herself in hijab. I have such a WASP name, and I’m so Muslim. Surprise!). The struggles of the converts in the 70s, 80s, and 90s were much greater than ours. So there’s hope, I think – for the girl in the mosque yesterday, and for me. There’s hope that I can admit that I struggle, and I can sound off on my insights into the community that are inevitably through the lens of my past (both Muslim and before), and that yes, when I see the guys I’ve known since third grade and love like brothers (and who know me better than some of my family) hug me, I don’t shove them off rudely, screaming, For shame! I don’t touch boys anymore. It’s called chastity, you lecher. And that despite all that, I have friends – and hopefully, God willing, I’ll have a best-friend-roommate-husband who will love me because/despite it all.

And then I will say: I told you so. Until then, here’s my line:

It’ll all turn out all right in the end.

How will it, you say?

I don’t know. It’s a mystery.

Pinch

I dreamt that I went to Easter at Grandma’s, and didn’t poke anyone with the pins on my hijab as I hugged them. Nobody said “Oops, you got me right in the eye,” and nobody cackled too loud in response. I didn’t blush.

I went to Easter, and my grandfather said he would go see the doctor, and didn’t smoke any cigarettes, and wasn’t out of breath.

Nobody told me she had a dream that I wasn’t wearing my scarf, and how wonderful it was to see my hair. Nobody told me that wearing the hijab is like going to a Muslim country wearing a giant gold cross. Nobody said that it is cultural and not religious, and nobody said it didn’t matter. Nobody told me that I’d never get hired again if I didn’t take it off. Nobody told me nicely, in so many words, that I make everyone uncomfortable. Nobody said it was “food for thought”.

Nobody told me I think too hard about prejudice.

Nobody sold guns for a living. Nobody said they don’t believe in global warming.

Nobody told me what a shame it was that I didn’t go to medical school. They didn’t ask me why I had switched fields. They thought it made sense that I want to be a writer, and encouraged me.

When I gave someone a page from my novel, he said he liked it, and wanted to read more.

When I said that I had been hired to write for a magazine, they asked, “which one?” and asked for a reminder email. When I told them I had a blog, they asked for the address.

My fifteen-year-old cousin didn’t say that she never wants to get married. In response, I didn’t think: You haven’t lived alone in the world.

I didn’t serve pork.

I enjoyed playing dice games as much as everyone else, and didn’t wonder if it constituted gambling. I wanted to win and felt bonded by mutual enjoyment to the family members sitting around the table. When I looked around, I felt we shared more than a certain similarity about the forehead, eyebrows and lips. I looked down at the penny with which I played our game and thought we were a true manifestation of the hope stamped there: E pluribus unum.

When we left, no one avoided my head so that I wouldn’t stab her with my pins, and I hadn’t checked to make sure the ends were tucked on the inside five times. I wasn’t obsessed by the idea that I had upset my only aunt who never gets upset by hopefully insisting that some Americans wouldn’t mind my working for them, and that I don’t necessarily alienate everyone. When I told her I came from two communities: WASP and Muslim, I felt at home in both. I was sorry to go. I felt connected.

I didn’t fear that I had offended anyone by trying to worship God. And the way I try didn’t scare anyone at all.

I stand corrected.

The only thing I could think of, as is often the case with me, was a line from one of my favorite movies:

“Your words shamed me.”

[note: I admit additional shame for another reason entirely. Brazen Jane Austen fan that I am, I do not know, off the top of my head, if the line is taken unadulterated from her prose, or if it was reworded for the script. For shame, you say. I know.]

Someone has corrected me, and I believe it is of some note. A few posts ago, I was talking about fantasy, and the remarkable ability to see through a religious fantasy as it is envisioned. The remarkable part being that it requires no one else’s permission. That once a heart desires the spiritual life, it is, in many ways, already living it. No bars stand between the sincere heart and God.

This person was very right in pointing out that a relationship with the Divine requires the permission of the Divine.

As I understand it, there is some debate in Christian theology on free will. It is a problem. In other words, God gave humans free will – but knows what we will choose. So….isn’t that, like, not free will? Isn’t that predestination?

I am very fond of the Islamic approach to this problem, which I find very straightforward and not at all logically problematic. Basically, we are taught that God made us, and knows what we will choose, but that our choices are very real to us in the time that we make them. Parents often know their children well enough to predict their choices; a Creator’s knowledge of His creation is infinitely greater. It gives me a sense of comfort, actually – that God is, in a sense with me in my choices, in that He knows what I am faced with, knows my heart, knows what is hard for me, and, ultimately, knows what I will choose. It also gives me a source of help in difficulty. I pray: Oh God, You made me, and You know this is hard for me, and You know best why it it hard for me. Grant me success in this, and give me the wisdom and steadfastness to choose, and stick by, the right thing.

When I chose Islam, nothing stood between me and that choice. It’s not like being admitted into your dream graduate program, in that you can try and fail. Of course, in extreme cases, there may be practical bars to declaring faith. One may feel afraid; one’s family may forbid one, in all the ways it is able, to change faiths. But Allah knows what is in the breasts. [3:154] Whatever your state is with God, it is between you and Him, and that is all. No one can take it from you. Faith, like love, is really one of the great secrets of the heart. We can look for its outward manifestations, but as to its strength and sincerity, we can never know what truly lies in the breast of another. God knows best.

So when I say that we have complete autonomy in faith, this isn’t exactly what I mean. I mean that our hearts, created with love, compassion, and infinite wisdom, belong also to their Creator, and that it must be so, and that He guides us according to that wisdom. That it is always there. The hint is ever-present, that there is more to all this, that we might feel more satisfaction in beholding a cloud, or the full moon in a clear sky. That we might say, Subhan’Allah, Glory be to God, instead of, Wow, pretty moon. And that saying it will make a difference to our hearts. That we will be free, that the ability to say that, and the knowledge to say it, will be the dearest thing in all the world, and the things that harm us thereafter will be mere pinpricks in comparison to the pain of separation from The Most Gracious, The Most Merciful. I believe that nudge is there. It is all the other noise that gets in the way, convincing us that we are dreaming, or that our own importance is all that matters in a void of meaning. That what we can see and point to is all that is there. Pretty moon.

One of my favorite prayers begins, “Oh God, Oh Changer of the hearts…” When my heart began to desire God, and began, as a consequence, to desire Islam…I was making the choice: am I really going to do this? But even that was gently guided by The Compeller, unbeknownst to me. Even the longing was put there in mercy. How could I claim that my heart is independent? It is like that pot of tea over there insisting it is the master of its own fate.

I like to think that I don’t belong completely to myself. I feel safe, cared for, less lonely. I love thinking that God made me for a purpose, and that it is to worship Him, and that my sincerest, dearest desire is perfectly in line with what I was intended for. Of course I bungle it all the time. I feel this way when I sit and reflect, or when I pray. But in my day-to-day life, my mistakes are much the same as they ever were, and I make and remake the intention to improve myself, even as I make excuses for my sins and tell myself, This is the last time. May God forgive and guide me!

The thing about turning to God, I think, is that it can be done by the hardest heart, by the darkest sinner, at any time. He always hears that call. As long as we are breathing, the chance to begin completely anew is there. It is unlike any other relationship, because there is no limit to God’s forgiveness. And this is also what I mean. Going to your lover requires his welcome, his trust, his open arms; misuse these, and you may find yourself alone. Lovers hold each other accountable. Even a kind person, abused enough, will eventually respond to overtures of sincerity with: I can’t. But not if God is The Beloved. He is independent of need, unlike any other kind of love object, so He is limitless in His ability to hear us say: I’m sorry. Take me back.

The wisdom of fools.

I’ve been neglecting my writing. Last week, I had the excuse of a midterm. This week, I am ashamed to say that my only reason for staying away was an inability to think about anything other than Jane Austen.

You see, I am jealous of Fanny Price.

Fanny has the good sense that no one around her seems to. At eighteen, she has the forbearance to consistently refuse the man pushed on her from all sides: her rich, benefactor uncle, the cousin she is in love with, her friends, her parents, and all her acquaintance together. He has been a libertine in the past; he tells her he has changed. She is the only one to not believe him, is cast out and called a fool. In the end, he runs away with her married cousin and vindicates her refusal.

It’s possible that I am Fanny’s opposite. I believe the things that people tell me, have faith in everyone’s ability to change (hey, I’m a convert – if not me, who?), and let optimism conquer reason without putting up much of a fight.

These would be admirable qualities indeed – in a world of people who spoke only the truth, changed all the things they intended to, and lived up to expectations. Sadly, this is not the case; disappointment abounds, and it is often mine.

I know many people who are not like this. My brother, for example. He is good and wise, and it seems that he was always so. He is purposeful and deliberate. People more than twice his age seek his advice. Whenever anyone meets the two of us, or hears me talk about him, that person always assumes he is the elder sibling. Always. The reverse is true. It is also true that I am often a fool – so the mistake is understandable.

I once found myself in a situation that was truly pitiful. I fell for a man who (surprise!) said he had changed, and talked about his ability to refine and improve himself a great deal. I was impressed by the commitment to improvement he was always chattering on about. What undaunted struggle! What courage!

What blindness.

My family dutifully raised their objections, as did my friends. All and every one. And I, the loyal lover, defended my man to the last. I defended my own flawed reasoning with logical dances I can’t hope to reinvent. My elaborate maneuverings of love were so impressive and impromptu that when family recounts them for me now, I’m aghast. Really? I said that? Idiot.

A funny thing happened amidst these objections. I noticed that I was unhappy in love.

It would be so great if this didn’t feel so mournful…

Unhappy in love is an unfortunate combination, and is fraught with danger. The danger is that one will say to oneself, I don’t care. I’d rather be with him than without, no matter how miserable I am. Perhaps even more perilous is the suggestion, It will get better. He’ll change. We’ll learn to get along.

I’m not sure why, or how, but remarkably and miraculously, neither of these tempting thoughts won out. I got out. I got out fast, and reflected later on all of the building evidence of my own unhappiness that I did not see at the time. The mounting pile in the corner that suggested, oh so massively, that the man I loved was not actually the one I was involved with, but an elaborate invention we had both spun out of hope and breath and forgiveness. It was so clear in retrospect.

Foresight? We’re fresh out. Try the hindsight store next door; bitterness is on sale, and self-loathing is half off.

I’m seven years older and a good deal more experienced in relationships than Fanny, so what gives? Why does her presence of mind elude me in all the most important ways, in all the most important moments?

This is what I was thinking as I was walking to the post office today. Why wasn’t I just born wise? What is the purpose of all this fumbling towards sense? Couldn’t I have been more like Abdullah? I would have been spared a good deal of false starts and heartaches.

Then I thought: Because I’m a writer. Because I’m a writer, I was born a well-meaning, good-hearted, foolish girl. Because I’m a writer, I have some comic foibles that entertain more than myself. Because I’m a writer, there is a path to wisdom. If it had been easy, there would have been no story to tell. There would have been no point in speaking. If I were all alone, the Buddha on the mountaintop (to steal from Reality Bites), there would be no one up there to relate to me, and no benefit to all my wisdom. Because I’m down here mucking it out, I get to tell stories that are also, on occasion, lessons. It is a peerless joy, purpose. I can say, Here is point A: silliness. If you want to get to point B, which is marginally less foolish, I have recently discovered the secret to doing so, and it is X.

Actually, it is Islam, but that’s a little tangential.

My current suggestion is to read Mansfield Park. It is an incomparable study on patience, modesty, and the will of God making things turn out all right in the end. It still shocks me. Every time! It all turns out all right. Sometimes we just have to ride out the rough wave of sticktoitidness. Definitely holding to your principles is key. Holding to your romanticism, or your faith in the fancy promises of others…not always a great idea.

I know. I read it in a novel once.

 

Hope redux

I’ve been listening to a song that goes:

Stitch in your knitted brow
And you don’t know how
You’re gonna get it out
Crushed under heavy chest
Trying to catch your breath
But it always beats you by a step, all right now

Making the best of it
Playing the hand you get
You’re not alone in this

There’s hope for the hopeless
There’s hope for the hopeless
There’s hope

I hate to be trite and stupid and blog about song lyrics. It’s difficult for me to express why exactly this song is important to me…

There are few songs, to be perfectly honest, that I don’t interpret in the light of romantic love. It’s entirely possible, and even likely, that the lyrics to this song were written with that sort of love in mind. But to me, this song is a narrative of the most important event in my life.

I haven’t touched much on exactly how my conversion happened. I think now is the time to do a bit of that.

You see, I was the hopeless. I wasn’t particularly unhappy. I wasn’t depressed – far from it. I was, in every way, a very typical 23-year-old girl. I fit perfectly into the social fabric of my college. In the context of parties, I had a wild and daring reputation. I could always be counted on for a good time. I had wonderful friends, and I loved them. I had the best boyfriend in any of my friends’ memories. They were all jealous of my good relationship fortune. Seriously. And I was set up to attend pretty much any med school I wanted. The future was bright. My life was ahead of me.

You’re wondering why I was hopeless. Like I said, it wasn’t depression. I just had an overwhelming sense of having missed the point, and that is the only real name I can give to it. I was a secular humanist. Not really a classical or strict one; I believed in God, but rejected organized religion on principle. It caused wars. Each tradition claimed superiority over all others. That tendency seemed a bit arbitrary, or petty to me. And I saw pretty much every religion that could claim any serious commitment to morals/spiritual refinement as an explicit and insidious attempt to batter the sex instinct out of humanity. Which was simply something that I could not condone. I thought religious people were provincial. Inexperienced. Limited. In my noncommittal theism, I fancied myself enlightened. And liberated from the petty dogma of religion.

But this turned out to be a front. I had over-thought the problem. I was thinking, nitpicking, as my education had raised me to do. And in doing so I left out the most important part of the equation. Faith gives life to the heart – as love does. Both romantic love and faith are really acts of love, and of the heart. I had never been a cold person. I had a rich love-life, taking my boyfriend, family and friends into account. Many people to love, to spend time with, to soften me.

But I missed God. I longed for God as a lover does the beloved. For a few months I felt sort of lovelorn. I would read brief passages from the Qur’an as though they were love letters. I would smooth the printed page with my fingertips, as though it were personal. It was between God and me. Nothing else mattered. The fact that it was a holy book didn’t matter. The fact that billions of people have read it didn’t matter. I felt that it was only for me. God sent me a letter, and I wasn’t sure how to answer.

I could not accept Islam. I could not accept Islam for the same reason that I could not accept other things: it was limited, socially truncated, subjugating to women. But I could not argue with the Muslims I met. The fact was that they all had a relationship with God, and I didn’t have one to speak of. I had the impetus, but not the means. They had means.

In effect, Islam was my forbidden fruit. It was something palpable, something I could see in the Muslims I knew. Their peace, their salaam, was unmistakable. Sure, I thought it was an antiquated, arbitrary, agrarian-based tradition to rise every day before dawn for prayers…but that, and so many other traditions that seemed so senseless and backwards to me, gave them a light to live by. A light I lacked. I was going from step A to step B to step C because the steps presented themselves in that order. But there was no goal. I didn’t know what lay at the top of the staircase.

What I had wanted out of life ended by about forty, by my calculation. I wanted the right job – and I would be an M.D. before I was thirty. Check. I wanted to find, love and marry the right man, preferably sooner rather than later, and I thought I had found him. Check. I wanted kids. I would spend my thirties having children. Check. And then – when I thought about it, what then? My body would start to age. My daughters would surpass me in beauty. I wouldn’t feel the hunger of discovery in each of the areas of my life that I felt now, because they would be settled and familiar by then: family, love, career. All that would be left would be to enjoy what I could in the time I had left. And that was all. I wouldn’t be the wild girl at parties anymore; I’d be a mother. There wouldn’t be any keggers in my fifties – at least, I hoped not. All of the things it felt good to do as a teenager and twentysomething – rather, all of the rules/social conventions/laws that it felt good to break – would have lost their novelty by then. What was the point? Have kids, and then make the best you can of a marriage and wait to die? Seriously?

Even if the point was to do as much good as I was able to do – and this was a goal of mine – what would it leave? A good act is always satisfying in and of itself – I won’t deny that adopting my cat, or watching my niece for the day, or giving in charity come with innate rewards. But even these are temporary. And the effects of these acts are temporary. These things, done for their own sake, do not escape the cyclical and finite nature of life. Charity, development, justice – they are good things to work for, but their legacies (which I do not mean to diminish) are, in the end, worldly. I can touch the lives of as many people as I want, in as positive and giving a way as I can, but even those who outlive me will see their ends. And my legacy will be over. I will be over. There will be nothing left to show that I once existed. There is no way to tie oneself to something lasting and permanent by these means alone.

I didn’t see these conclusions as morbid. We’re all going to die; that’s just life. We’re all careening towards six billion uncertain ends, and we’re all struggling to make the best of our lives in the meantime. It’s foolish to ignore one’s mortality in youth. People die young. I realized this too. I wanted more. I was hungry for more. I wanted more than what I saw in my future: expensive cars, lots of sparkly diamonds, the most perfectly attentive and loving husband, a socially responsible career, lovely children. It wasn’t enough. It would end. I knew it. It was a painful awareness. There had to be more than the merry-go-round of life – the getting on, making the best of it as long as it ran, and then making an exit- and whatever more was, I wanted it. I wanted to devote myself to something permanent. Something greater, something bigger. I wanted a reason – for everything.

Once, when I was a child, I fought with a member of my family – my father, I think. I said something to him that, upon further reflection, lying in bed, I could not forgive myself for. This was my first experience of real remorse, and it came hard. I remember looking out at the street lamp from my bedroom window, and weeping, and feeling that I was lost. That it was over. I could never forgive myself.

Something happened. Something transcendent and amazing. Before I could console myself, I was consoled. And I stopped crying. It came from outside myself as surely as if my mother had come in the door in her white cotton nightgown and rocked me in her arms. I was forgiven. And then suddenly it was easy to forgive myself. This experience determined my understanding of God until I was 23. God had forgiven me.

I sensed in my heart that it was this moment – the importance of this moment – that could pull my life’s attention and give it meaning. I knew that only traveling towards this All-Forgiving One would satisfy my trajectory in any real way. Other hungers had their places and would be satisfied. But my thirst, my love, my traveling towards God could never be quenched, or trumped, or completed. This was why I admired the Muslims in my life so much. I may not have understood why they did what they did – I may have even disapproved. But they knew where they were going, and I was traveling without a map. Without a compass. Without a concept of the cardinal directions.

I try to think about why I’ve been blessed with this. With faith. I feel truly undeserving. I look around at other people in my life – good people. I don’t mean that in a bland, not-doing-harm way. I mean people who are devoted to the action of good. I know these people. They are trying to make the world a better place – often more than I am. And I talk to them about Islam sometimes, and they’re not interested. Which amazes me. Like really dumbfounds me. An early Muslim once said that if those who did not believe in God knew what happiness the Muslims held in their hearts, they would take up arms against them in an effort to win it – as though it were booty. Hearing this always makes me smile, because I’ve been in both states. If I had known what I was missing before coming to Islam, I would have tackled the nearest Muslim in the middle of the street and begged him or her to teach me what I needed to know in order to enter the religion. But that was it – before I was here, I didn’t know where here was. I didn’t know what sweetness faith held. How could I want something I didn’t know existed? They say faith has a fragrance – and those who feel attracted to Islam by meeting Muslims catch a faint whiff of it in their interactions. This was my experience. I smelled something lovely – I wanted to taste it. I have – I do. And now, now that I know, I taste, I see, I hear, I love, I feel what Islam is…if anyone took it from me (which, thank God, they can’t), I would take up a sword to get it back. Thank God there’s not a limited quantity. Whoever wants is welcome – and that is God’s bounty.

I can think of one instance that would explain why I came to Islam. One.

At times, Prophet Muhammad (may the peace and blessings of God be upon him) would put something God had said in his own words. One of the things God tells us in this way is, “Whoever comes with a good deed will be given ten times its worth or more so, and whoever comes with an evil deed will be recompensed its worth or I will forgive it. Whoever draws near to Me a handspan, I will come to him the extent of a forearm. Whoever draws near to Me the length of a forearm, I will come to him the length of two outstretched arms. Whoever comes to Me walking, I will come to him at speed. And whoever comes to Me with the Earth’s weight in sin without associating anything with Me, I will come to him with forgiveness of equal measure.” [Sahîh Muslim]

I came an inch towards God, and was rewarded with something more precious than anything else in the world. I remember it well. I shared a bottle of wine with a friend. I drank most of it. I’m a small person; I was fairly drunk. Intoxication can bring forward our basest desires – it often did mine – but this time, I was stripped of the inhibition I usually felt in talking about faith. I admitted that I wanted a relationship with God. I wanted to pray in a community. I didn’t feel at home in church. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to be close to God, but was hopeless that I could effect this change in my life. I said it all aloud, to a friend who couldn’t relate. I cried. And that was it.

Islam came from the ether and pierced my heart clean through. I didn’t go searching for it. Converts often take a deliberate survey of some of the world’s religions before settling on Islam, but that was not me. I did nothing else. It entered my heart slowly, unnoticed (I would have fought the impulse, I think, otherwise). It got to the point where a Muslim friend of mine sat me down and said, “Liz, look – I think you’re Muslim.” And I was. I took my formal shahada within twenty-four hours. [literally, shahada means witness, but it is also the name of the statement one utters to formally enter the religion: I bear witness that there is no god but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger.]

And so God rewards the sincere. And I was sincere only for a moment – and an intoxicated one at that. That was all it took – and the world was new.

So there’s hope for the hopeless, after all. God is waiting to give us what we truly want – but out of forbearance, will not force it upon us. If we want, if we confess the desire – if we ask, He is waiting to bless us.

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.)

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.