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 Diary >> Affan Chowdhry The New Statesman suffers from historical amnesia The Height of Opulence in Abu Dhabi Where the wine flows like lassi Q in the News Iran's mystery DJ Women slipping thru’ the gaps >> Samira Ahmed The Rock Star and the Mullah >> Fareena Alam "A modern day hippie in search of love" >> Abdul-Rehman Malik Handing Victory to the Terrorists >> Shami Chakrabarti and Megan Addis Who is Sania Mirza? >> Siraj Wahab Democracy Inside Out: The Case of Egypt >> Louay Safi Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years >> Isla Rosser-Owen Raising Aspirations >> Raihan Alfaradhi Bleedin' Islamophobia >> Yakoub Islam Disappeared in America The Muslim Blogosphere >> Shahed Amanullah Blogger's Manifesto >> Haroon Moghul The politics of common purpose >> Ian McCartney Waking up to Progressive Muslims >> Nazim Baksh The Shariah Firestorm in Canada >> Faisal Kutty Renewing Our Faith in Common Ground >> James Abdulaziz Brown Hafiz Gulammohammed Bora >> Fuad Nahdi Chicken Soup for the Muslim Soul >> Sana Khatib Mourning the Unknown >> Abu Anon Youssou N'Dour wins world music award Fun times for Oxbridge Muslim Alumni Deenport Mania Book views |
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Diary Page 9 **** I am already thinking about my musical selections for the BBC Radio Four program Desert Island Discs. Whenever they call, I’ll be ready with my choice of music that I’d like to take to a desert island. 1. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai - from the Bollywood film of the same name. Pure fun. I could spend my days doing that shoulder thing that Shahrukh Khan does. 2. I was impressed with Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City who was on the show recently. She chose My Favourite Things by saxophonist John Coltrane. To be different, I would choose They Say it’s Wonderful from an album Coltrane did with crooner Johnny Hartman. Vocal and instrumental gold. 3. I would never leave the ‘Queen of Soul’ behind. Aretha Franklin’s early gospel singing is a treasure. But I would have to go with the more popular song Spanish Harlem. 4. Anything by Sam Cooke would be brilliant - like Chain Gang - but I’ll take the rousing Harlem Square Club recording of Bring it on Home to Me. 5. Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On is one of the finest albums from beginning to end and the title track is timeless. 6. No snickering at this next selection. I would feel obliged to honor the Doo Wop era - which sustained me during my teen years in the eighties. Earth Angel by the Penguins. 7. The theme song for the TV sitcom Three’s Company. Stop laughing, please. 8. There are so many fabulous Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan songs. But I would choose a Paris recording from the 1980s: O Muhammad, call me to Madinah. If I had to pick one song from the above eight, it would be the Nusrat song. One book to take along: The Ikea Catalogue. Luxury to take along: North American crunchy peanut butter, because the Brits just can’t get it right. **** One recent winter afternoon, while talking to a classmate, my voice suddenly cracked. She looked at me bewildered. “What’s up with your voice?” “I don’t know,” I said with some concern, “It’s like I’m going back in to pre-puberty.” But that is not where my voice settled eventually. The first week I sounded like the Godfather. By the second week, it was as though my voice was being dragged along rocks. By the third week, I began to imagine a life where my voice would be a continuous assault on peoples’ ears. “Well I don’t think you need antibiotics,” said the doctor. “Well, yes. I don’t like antibiotics at all. But it’s been so long and I’m not 100 per cent yet,” I said, with a note of desperation. “I could write you a prescription, and if you don’t get better you can use it.” I hate it when doctors give you choice. I did not take the prescription. Two weeks later, another unsuccessful visit to the clinic and I lost faith. I decided to take my health elsewhere. The new clinic was too busy for a same-day appointment. I returned to my room with literature on the new clinic. I popped an Echinacea pill - which I was beginning to suspect as fake - and started to read about my new doctor. She was an expert in women’s health, family planning and genito-urinary medicine. I wanted to scream - except I can’t hit those high notes anymore. After dinner at a friend’s place, I arrived at the Charlton train station well ahead of the last scheduled city-bound train. I continued to wait on the platform 30 minutes after its scheduled arrival. The cold cut through to the bone and I was beating myself up for not wearing my winter jacket. My hosts had told me to come back in case the train didn’t show up. I thought: ‘Why wouldn’t it show up?’ It was almost midnight and I was cursing Southwest Trains. I walked to the main road, to the nearby bus stop. Unfamiliar with the area, I was unsure about which bus to take. I waited a long time, and when no bus showed up, I started walking to a different stop around the corner. Of course, just as I arrived, I looked back at the stop I had just left - a bus was pulling up. This happened several times, in fact. I found myself running between two bus stops, just missing one bus after another. I felt like a dumb rat. I did this for 30 minutes and then I stopped and thought: this is cruel, this is wrong, this is uncivilised. I cursed the city, the transit system, and myself. I thought about going back to my friend’s home, but it was too late by then. Eventually a bus arrived and it took me to North Greenwich tube station. However, the last train had already left. I boarded bus 188. Nietzsche once said: “Never trust a thought that didn’t come by way of walking.” I would add cars, trains, and buses to that. In travel, we are in between where we begin and where we hope to end up. Perhaps we see our personal trajectories more clearly. The daily disappointments suddenly seem so small and irrelevant. During that ride, I thought about the narratives that I was born into - they are like heavy doors that won’t budge. I find myself in between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’ - moving so slowly. Sometimes I wonder: “Lord, am I even on the right bus?” The bus sped along unfamiliar streets. People - drunk and sober - got on and off. But I was a passenger till the very end. All the way to Russell Square. |