Diary


It’s hard to keep up with the daily fashion show at the School of Oriental and African Studies. After a strong start, I find myself sliding into ‘slobbery’. The old, well-worn clothes - reserved for weekend lounging, are now the daily go-to outfit. It is Ramadan, I tell myself. I’ll snap out of it. Meanwhile, the parade carries on. At times, it can be breathtaking. There are so few trends in Muslim fashion. But this particular outfit was, without question, the frontier. She wore a white fotua and a lovely checkered skirt that fell just below her knees. Her hijab was loose, white - Princess Leah style. She could easily have been the poster-girl for Muslim Cool, except some would object to the length of the skirt. How to bridge the gap between the skirt’s hem and the ankle-rule of Islamic jurisprudence? It would seem an insurmountable divide. However, in a stroke of pure daring, she wore knee-high, brown-leather boots. Who needs a fatwa when you have imagination?

When I arrived in London in September, a close friend told me about the problem of people urinating in public. Reminded me of a story about a Sufi shaykh who belonged to the tradition of malamatiyya - those who were so adamant that their actions not be for the sake of public approval that they would do things to offend the public. As the story goes: the saint is about to enter a city, where people have gathered to greet him on his arrival. “They tried to accompany the great saint; but on the road he publicly starting urinating in an unlawful way so that all of them left him and no longer believed in his high spiritual rank,” Jami writes. In London, the Sufi shaykh would have to do better.

It isn’t easy going back to school after years in the ‘real world’. I feel a little rusty and well, dumb. There are the class readings which I need to read three times ‘till I get the drift. I feel like the fat kid who is told to run laps. But the fat kid, as it turns out, is building stamina and new neural connections. The other day I was able read Foucault’s essay Nietzsche, Genealogy, History without calling him names for not writing more clearly. My lectures can sometimes be quite entertaining. In an Early Christianity course, we were discussing Origen of Alexandria (185-254 CE) - a great Christian theologian. As a young man, having witnessed his father’s martyrdom, Origen sought the same end, except when he tried to achieve it, his mother hid his clothes. Later, as the professor explained, owing to a misreading of Matt. 19:12, Origen decided to castrate himself.

“Kess-trate?” asked a puzzled student, a sweet Indian nun-in-training belonging to the Jain religion. There was silence. An American girl jumped in to the rescue of the professor. “You know, when you cut off the male genetalia.” The Jain sister looked confused. The rest of class hung back. “Um,” said the American girl, “you know, the male private parts. You cut it off.” And suddenly the image emerged in sister’s mind. “Oh oh,” she said. “This is not right,” she said, going on to explain that even castration cannot eliminate lustful thoughts.

University can be such a bubble. Last weekend, I decided to get out. I took a train to Surrey with a group of students and hiked twelve miles along muddy trails on an otherwise glorious autumn day. I was trying to skirt a really muddy section by following a tight line of hard ground. “You know,” I said, as I climbed my soap-box, “The smoking debate in this country is just ridiculous and narrow-minded.” Earlier, I had heard a politician on the radio wondering aloud whether it was the role of the government to legislate whether people can smoke in public spaces. “I mean do we really want government extending in to our lives that way?” he had told the interviewer. “What a twit” I shouted. I was now on a narrow ridge, trying to keep my balance, so as not to fall in to the mud on my right. Sue - also an anti-smoking fundamentalist - was ahead of me. “Why can’t Britain be like Canada?” I wondered. There, smoking is banned in restaurants and bars in most cities, and there is growing concern over the costs to the healthcare system because of smoking-related illnesses. “Actually,” Sue said sarcastically, “it costs the healthcare system less if people smoke.” I stood still for a moment. “The more people smoke, the sooner people die, the fewer the costs to the system.”

This autumn, I’ll turn thirty-one. Last year, just before hitting thirty, I noticed a white hair in my head. An isolated incident, I told myself. But recently, I noticed another two. Often, hitting the thirties produces a monumental crisis. Not so for me. In fact, it feels like smoother sailing. This Ramadan, however, has been a constant struggle. It’s so hard to find the ‘feeling’. One night, I found myself in a London mosque. There was a tremendous hope that I was about to get out of my spiritual ‘funk’ - but in the middle of taraweeh prayer, I was staring at the street scene on Goodge. For a while I watched the bartender in the warmly-lit pub across the street wiping tables. My hopes were dashed. Perhaps gratitude is the best place to start. Here, my father, in his seventies now, can teach me something. We were driving home one day, my father was behind the wheel; the sun was setting and there was a beautiful orangy-red autumn sky. My father sighed and said, “Oh Allah, I thank you for all that you have given me; I have no complaints.” Ameen.