Rukhsana Khan's Blog, page 4

Making Time…

There’s a wonderful hadith that I’m reminded of. It might even be one of my favorites, and I want to share it with you.

Ibn Abbas reported that the Prophet (pbuh) said:

Take advantage of five (things) before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your riches before your poverty, your free time before your work, and your life before your death.

That basically sums up the best advice anyone can give.

Live a life of usefulness and purpose, do good things before you are prevented.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the rivalry for worldly gain and recognition. But that’s not what the goal should be.

When writing, we need to add something positive to the discourse. Something that will better humanity, not just distract them for a while.

And when, in the course of one’s career, you need to step back and take care of family, then it is appropriate to do so.

Right now that’s me.

Gotta take care of some loved ones.

I find when I’m visiting the sick and helping my family members, it makes me more grateful for my own health and strength. And it reminds me again and again of the hadith I mentioned above.

Life is short.

Make it count!

Getting Ambushed with regards to a Presentation…

This is a strange thing for me to write and even to admit to, but there have been times, over the twenty year course of my school presentations, where I’ve been ambushed by teachers, educators or other professionals who’ve taken umbrage to something I’ve said.

I’ve actually written about it before, unfortunately when I was angry, and was advised by a dear friend to modify my post to get rid of the anger, which I did.

A while back though I had a situation that really irked me.

And afterwards I realized that it’s almost always women of color who seem to do this. They get very uncomfortable with what I’m saying.

One time I was on tour in another province, doing my presentation when a teacher got upset because I had dealt with the shame I felt as a child about the color of my skin.

It’s a normal part of my presentation. I talk about how the other kids in my class used to tell me that I was brown because I was dirty and they were white because they were clean and I should go home and take a lot of baths. Then I tell them that me and my sisters did just that. We scrubbed really hard trying to get the brown off.

I do this deliberately.

There are all kinds of presuppositions involved that subtly deal with issues of racism even as the kids are laughing about how ridiculous it is.

First of all, there’s the teachers who are present. Many of them are my age. Many of them are white. Many of them grew up with these racist tropes and even advertisements of how effective soap was because it could turn a black kid white. And many of them still harbor prejudice against the black and brown children in their classes. (I’ve seen it!) By confronting the things they and their peers might have said or thought when they were growing up, I’m basically putting the teachers on notice. And having the kids laugh reinforces how ridiculous the idea is that people of color are inherently dirty.

At the same time, relating this story validates the experiences of the kids who are brown and black. Many of them might have felt the same way, and here I am debunking it loud and clear! In fact one time when I talked of this, a very dark boy, sitting at the back, who had a notorious reputation for causing trouble yelled out, “Yeah! Yeah!” when I related this story. All the kids and teachers turned to look at him, nodding his head and yelling, “Yeah!” And my heart went out to that poor kid.

Now the next presupposition that is implicit in the relating of this story is that I obviously no longer feel bad about my colored skin. The fact that I can talk about it, and even laugh about what I did trying to get white, shows that it’s not an issue for me any more!

It’s subtle but don’t think that kids don’t get it! They’re a lot more astute than we give them credit for.

So why would a teacher of color get mad at me for addressing this?

Because they don’t get the subtleties of what I’m doing and really saying. They’re looking at it on the surface, and they’re being triggered with their own feelings of growing up brown.

It’s their problem. Not mine.

They want me to do a namby pamby ‘unthreatening’ rather boring presentation that doesn’t ruffle any feathers.

Sigh.

One time it was a principal.

I’d been given an hour to do a presentation, and the teenagers were sitting so still and so engaged (which is pretty much normal for me) when the principal sent a person up to me warning me that I had five minutes left.

Fifteen minutes instead of an hour!

She was cutting me short, saying they didn’t have time.

I’ve had to cut short presentations before, but when that happens, I try to at least cover the most important points. So I do that, even though, I confess I was clearly irritated.

And then what does this principal do? She gets up in front of the group and starts yakking about this and that, and starts asking the girls what they learned from the presentation.

I sat there wondering what happened to the urgency of dismissing them? What happened to the time constraints?

And then she turned to me in front of the students and asked me to elaborate on something and finally I’d had it, and I said, right in front of everyone, I really could have used that time she’d just taken (talking about nothing) to finish my presentation.

She went on for a total of ten minutes! Oh it was awful. A power play.

But my obvious irritation didn’t do me any favors.

Apparently women of color are not supposed to get angry.

At all times we are expected to be accommodating and pleasant especially when dealing with the alpha females in their own little kingdoms.

I must be cordial.

Grrrr.

Anyway, long story short I created some difficulties for my host as he had to smooth the feathers I ruffled.

I have to remember the hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him) Do not get angry. Do not get angry. Do not get angry.

It never does any good.

Just relax, and put a negative experience behind me. It doesn’t matter if the kids didn’t get to hear everything I had to say. They heard what God intended them to hear. Just leave it at that.

And most importantly I need to get over myself.

The fear of the new and the unknown…

Had a hard time sleeping last night.

Today I was doing a custom made presentation for a school that likes to call me back every year and I always get nervous when I have to do a presentation outside my tried and true.

I was supposed to address the idea of reconciliation with grade ones and twos.

Reconciliation!

It’s a hot topic these days with the issue of Indigenous rights all the murdered and missing indigenous women. But with this age group I was only supposed to cover the topic of reconciliation in a broader way: culture, race, etc.

I had the perfect story. It’s a story of a falling out I went through with certain people who are very dear to me, where I really put my foot in my mouth.

Thing is though, I never got to tell the story.

All last night I tossed and turned wondering what I’d focus on. I had close to an hour to fill and with new presentations I often wonder how I’m going to fill the time.

But then this morning I woke up with the realization that BIG RED LOLLIPOP is perfect for themes of reconciliation!

And Voila!

I had my presentation basically set up.

I started with the definition of reconciliation that was easily accessible for grade one and twos.

I said:

RECONCILIATION is basically the process of taking a WRONG—-> and making it RIGHT.

Then I asked the kids to put up their hands if they’d ever done anything wrong.

Of course they all put up their hands (and so did I).

The rest of the presentation included a story workshop of Big Red Lollipop where we talked about beginning, middle and end.

I gave them time to discuss in groups what the ‘end’ (the reconciliation between Sana and Rubina) should be.

And I expanded the workshop to include the concepts of justice, empathy and peace. It was so easy because the themes of justice, empathy and peace are natural talking points to the story anyway!

Oh it was a good workshop! In fact I’m thinking of turning it into a regular presentation/workshop!

The kids, over two hundred of them, were totally engaged!

And afterwards the vice principal who’d helped man the microphone and got the kids to say their solutions raved about the workshop and the teachers came up to me with big smiles on their faces and also said how wonderful it had been.

 

So here, a day that began with trepidation ended with a feeling of triumph!

Oh, and on another note, just found out that Sophie Blackall who did the fabulous illustrations for BIG RED LOLLIPOP just won her SECOND Caldecott Award for her book HELLO LIGHTHOUSE! (It’s only the top award for illustrators of children’s books!) Yay Sophie!!!!!

So all in all a wonderful day!

Irony…

Isn’t it ironic that my last post was about the risk of burn out and here, in the new year, I’m already feeling burned out?

I keep hearing that Bee Gee’s song Words in my head:

It’s only words

And words are all I have

To take your heart away…

If you think about it, that’s all a book is, a bunch of words.

The aim for any writer worth their salt is to turn that mass collection of words into some sort of emotional experience, that can transcend the page.

And yet how many of the books we read really stay with us?

Had an interesting experience the other day.

Went to fill some prescriptions and the girl at the checkout counter looked at me funny and asked if I was ‘that author’. (She was a young girl, in her early twenties, and apparently I’d visited her school in the last ten years or so.)

I said, yes, I’m an author.

Then she lit up and said, “You came to my school! You signed my book!”

I said, “Which book was that?”

And she said, “Wanting Mor.”

Then she looked pensive as she put one of my items into the bag and said, “It’s the best book I ever read.”

Wow. Subhan Allah.

To be the author of anyone’s ‘best book’ is truly such an honor!

Of course it made my day. But I hesitated posting this because it just feels so braggy and I’m really starting to despise the bragginess of social media! And I’m incredibly tired of my twitter feed containing all these promotional elements of the books people are peddling!

But that’s not my intention.

My thoughts are about how very hard it is to pour your heart out onto the page, hoping the words will resonate with someone enough that they can forget they’re actually just reading words on a page, but instead almost deceive them into believing they’re the person in the story and it’s all happening to them.

Does that make sense?

Because in the end really, they’re only words, and words are all we have, to take your heart away.

*sigh*

 

The very real risk of burnout…

We seem to be living in an age of outrage.

An age of activism, an age of resistance.

It’s about time.

My goodness, I’ve been an activist for going on 30 years! I’ve been resisting for about that long too. I’ve made no secret of the fact that yes, in addition to trying to tell a good story, I definitely have an agenda with my literary pursuits!

I want to humanize Muslims!

I write stories that show we’re just like everyone else, we have happy stories and we have sad stories.

I want to make it harder for them to ‘other’ us and slaughter us and in the process I want to write something that all children (and grownups) can benefit from.

Like I said I’ve been at this for almost thirty years now!

But the problem with activism is that it’s exhausting! The problem with rage and outrage is it’s exhausting.

You have to pace yourself!

And…you have to pick your battles!

And…in the process you have to restrain yourself at times from focusing on piddly little stuff vs focusing on the big picture.

I recently scrolled through my twitter feed and saw a video showing Trump’s pathetic attempt to toss a coin during the Army vs. the Navy football game. Many retweeted that how could a man who can’t even ‘properly’ toss a coin be POTUS?

Really?

You’re going to include this in your disqualifying statements?

The risk of getting so petty is that it actually undermines the legitimate arguments you can make about Trump’s unfitness for office. And in doing so you give credence to the nefarious forces out there who argue that it’s all a witch hunt. That in our eyes, Trump can do no good.

What has always amazed me regarding my understanding of God’s justice is that if someone does even the smallest good deed, no matter who they are, God will not fail to recognize the good deed and reward it.

Even ‘evil’ people will reap a reward for any good they do. God is sublime. He is above all petty politics.

It might seem as though evil people triumph in this world but it is very possible they are actually being rewarded solely in this world and once the door closes on this world, once death claims them and they enter their graves, the punishment will begin.

I believe that God is just, and on the Day of Judgment, He will set everything, all the unbalances we see happening before us, aright in such a way that even those condemned to hell will not be able to complain of the least injustice.

The veil will be lifted and we will finally see clearly what is right and what is wrong.

In the meantime, those of us who resist, who are striving with our might and main for a better society, writing stories that can uplift the human condition (as pompous as that might sound) need to focus only on what we can control.

I follow the news but I do not despair at it because I know that global happenings are not within the realm of my control. Instead I marvel at the way people can be misled and duped! (I used to always wonder how society could go along with past atrocities like the holocaust and the slaughter of the native north Americans, now I see it happening to the Uighurs, Rohingya, Yemenis etc. and it boggles my mind.)

I am but a humble writer.

All I can do is write and tell stories, stories with purpose. It is not much in the grand scheme of things, but it is what I focus on.

There is a hadith that says that God likes best that action which even if it is small is done consistently.

We’re not talking about grand gestures, the kind that are immortalized in epic Marvel movies pitting good against evil.

We’re talking about the daily striving done, outside the spotlight, that is so very hard to sustain, and yet critical in really changing a society.

Our daily prayers for example, take a few minutes five times a day to perform, and we are required to perform them on time, every single day.

It’s all about patience and perseverance.

And making sure that in the process of seeking justice, we in turn do no injustice to others, for if we did, then we would be to blame.

There are some who believe that people who believe that war is inevitable have no business writing for children.

I once witnessed an activist I admire deliver a speech on this very subject.

But during the speech, their talk turned dark, they spoke of how they had the choice of walking out of the hall, and just leaving without speaking on the subject they had been asked to address.

I frowned when I heard that.

And then they asked the audience if they believed if war was inevitable.

I put up my hand.

Then they asked if there would ever be a time without war. I put up my hand again, even though I was obviously contradicting myself.

And then the speaker looked at the audience and said that the people who’d put up their hands saying that war was inevitable had no right to be writing for children. Because they had no hope.

Afterwards I saw the activist walking out of the hall and I called to the person, when they turned around I saw tears in their eyes.

And I thought to myself, this person has been fighting for so very long, I think they had burned themselves out.

I ignored the tears. (It’s best in such a situation not to call attention to them!) And I spoke to the person about other matters we had in common until they calmed down, and their spirits had been lifted.

And at the end they smiled and we parted on good terms.

And I said a little prayer for them.

Those of us who resist, who activate, run a very real risk of not seeing progress in our lifetimes.

We need to be resigned to that.

Burnout can actually be a sign of arrogance. Where I might think the entire struggle is only upon myself as an individual pitted against the world–and I’m tired.

Nonsense!

We are not alone!

And anyways we need to continue on whether or not we are rewarded with change in our lifetime, for change might come from those we impact. We never know when what we say will send out ripples into the world and inspire the next person to pick up the struggle.

We are only one person against the weight of the world. And we each of us have limited time on earth to effect change. God will not hold us accountable for what we cannot control.

And that is both good and bad.

Think of it.

Hitler was only one person too.

On his own he could not have accomplished all the evil he dreamed of, he needed to convince his accomplices. By using racist Eugenics arguments he was able to get his minions to do the unthinkable.

From what I understand even Hitler will only be responsible for the evil he himself preached, ordered and perpetrated.

In Islam we believe that each person is only accountable for themselves, what we say and what we do.

We believe that God multiplies each good deed we do by hundreds or thousands but punishes each bad deed only once.

From what I understand Hitler will not be responsible for the actions of his followers or for duping them. They will be responsible for their own actions because (like the conclusion of the Nuremburg trials) there is no such thing as ‘just following orders’. Hitler’s followers too were each individuals and they each had a choice, as did he, to do what was right or do what was wrong.

And even though it may seem as though the world is skewed towards evil, never forget there is a lot of good too.

Look for it.

Seek it out so that it gives you hope. Hope to keep striving. To keep calling people to their higher nature so that they fulfill their higher purpose, to do what’s good and right.

In the course of my life it has been my privilege to meet so many wonderful people who are so much better than me. I take inspiration from them even as I hope others can take inspiration from me.

And in the process I know very much that I am not alone.

There are many who are striving as I am, and we wouldn’t live our lives in any other way.

Patience my friends.

Patience and perseverance.

With both of them, if God wills, we shall prevail.

If not in this world…in the next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Glory of Picture Book Story!

On the tenth of November I conducted a workshop for Packaging Your Imagination, a one day conference for children’s writers and illustrators. It’s part of CANSCAIP, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors Illustrators and Performers an organization I joined at the very beginning, to learn the craft of writing.

Oh what a journey it’s been!

How many years did I attend, nervous beads of sweat breaking out on my upper lip as I listened rapt to all the authors I admired, hanging on their every word, wishing that I could be in their position.

Back then the conference was held at Victoria College, a small building within the infrastructure of University of Toronto. It was an old building, with limited capacity.

And the breakout sessions were in classrooms.

But here I was, in a huge auditorium with the maximum number in my session, ninety people. And what rather alarmed me was that many of them were established authors in their own right.

At one point I told myself, “That can’t be Barbara Reid in that row!” But it was!

I’ve been a fan of Barbara’s from the very beginning.

She works in Plasticine, and she’s absolutely brilliant!

Before I addressed the normal elements of story: beginning, middle and end, I tackled the idea that picture books are not a monolithic entity. There are different kinds of picture books!

And many of them have little to do with story.

My own King for a Day is about the experience of a boy in a wheelchair who has one day in the year that he rules, Basunt the day of the kite festival. Basically the reader is vicariously sharing his experience.

I call books like Picture a Tree,  King for a Day  and The Snowy Day EXPERIENCE or DISCOVERY BOOKS.

Because there really isn’t always a complete story in it, it’s more a moment in a child’s life when they’re discovering something. Or in the case of Picture a Tree the reader themselves is taking a closer look at trees. The Snowy Day is where the reader shares Peter’s snowy journey, smiling to themselves when Peter puts the snowball in his pocket to save for later. The reader knows what will happen even if Peter doesn’t.

Then there are concept books, and multicultural showcase books vs multicultural social justice books and meta books as well.

I call books about Ramadan like Under the Ramadan Moon or books about Kwanzaa or any other festivity, ‘multicultural showcase’ books because they’re not usually stories either. They showcase a cultural practice and they’re more like non-fiction information in the guise of fiction.

Whereas books that actually do have a story but also deal with social justice issues like refugees for instance, are books I call multicultural social justice books. Because these do have a story.

To see the whole presentation you’ll just have to see me do it again.

At the end I talked about story books and  how important it is to use word play and layers to your narrative.

And I ended up using Ruler of the Courtyard as an example of story structure.

And I ended the entire session with of course Big Red Lollipop.

Really had them laughing!!!

It was intense! I thought I’d have time for questions at the end, but I ended up rushing through the last bit to get all the concepts I wanted to share in.

The coolest thing was that Barbara came up to me afterwards and said how she’d learned so much from me!

I said, “You learned from me???”

And for the rest of the day I had the goofiest of grins on my face. I rode a high and people came up to me at various intervals telling me how much they’d enjoyed and learned from my session.

It was incredible.

 

Lessons from My Travels…

What possessed me to embark on three trips in six weeks?

Towards the end of September I visited Sharjah UAE for about three days. Yup. I traveled on a plane for 13+ hours to stay at a hotel in Sharjah for three days and come back.

It was for an international storytelling festival.

But the real reason I went was to meet with my Arabian publisher.

Was it worth it? I think so.

I told stories at the venue, attended the closing ceremony, and then I had a very fruitful lunch meeting with my publisher.

What I’ve found is that when dealing with international entities a face-to-face meeting can work wonders! I suspected that my publisher didn’t actually know much about me or what I can do and I was right.

Thing is publishers are like any other people these days–inundated! A face-to-face meeting forces people to slow down, see what’s right in front of them!

And I enjoyed meeting with them too!

I did not enjoy the flight back. Honestly you feel quite dirty after such a long flight. I actually saw people walking into the plane’s bathroom in bare feet and I squirmed!

Then there was the vacation to Morocco from October 7th – October 16th.

Subhan Allah, I never knew Morocco was so gorgeous! The tour guide we had explained that many American tourists found a lot of the canyons and scenery reminiscent of the American southwest and I would have to agree. The buttes and the mountains, the vast valleys with arid vegetation…breathtaking! One of the highlights was that we visited this Moroccan studio where they shot movies like Gladiator. Lawrence of Arabia was also, ironically, filmed in Morocco.

There was a lot of walking involved! But it was incredible!

Then home for about four days and on the 20th of October I was off to tour Trinidad for eight days.

But all the traveling took its toll and I went to Trinidad with the remnants of a sinus infection and feeling horrible.

A lot of people tend to look at traveling as an author as something glamorous. I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but honestly traveling is just work with more inconvenience.

I arrived in Trinidad after the flight was delayed several times because Trinidad just happened to be going through the worst catastrophic flooding it had experienced in over a hundred years.

It was so surreal to be going into a country when they’re having a natural disaster!

Even the pilot sounded nervous when he told us the main north south highway was impassable and his copilot wasn’t going home.

Trinidad and Tobago is a tiny two-island country in the Caribbean. I had always thought of it as being similar to Guyana, which I visited 35 years ago, but it’s much much smaller!

I was told I’d be staying with various Muslim families.

I have incredible respect bordering on awe for people who will open their homes to strangers. I was determined to cause as little fuss as possible.

So the flight didn’t arrive in Port of Spain till half past ten in the night and three other international flights happened to arrive at the same time. The wait to get through immigration was about an hour and a half of standing when I wasn’t feeling well, and I was wondering if the people who I was staying with had made it through the floods.

I wondered if I’d have to rent a hotel room, if there were any hotels available and whether I’d have to sleep in the airport.

But when I finally made it through and had collected my bag, there were the couple who’d come to meet me! I didn’t cry openly, but there were tears in my eyes and instantly I made several duas thanking God for them. I felt safe.

By the time we reached their home, that was a short distance away, I was exhausted and extremely thirsty! Did I mention Trinidad is very hot and humid!!!

My hostess, God bless her, brought out a frosty jug of slightly milky looking water. “It’s coconut water from our own coconuts in the yard,” she said.

There is nothing as thirst quenching as cold fresh coconut water. I think I drank about two thirds of the jug in that one sitting!

I was supposed to go down to a place called Mayoro on the south east coast of Trinidad, I was in the north west! But the roads were flooded so it was impossible.

Instead I rested up a bit at my hosts’ house and then we traveled down to Rio Claro, where the bookfair and festival was to be held in the following days. Half the main highway (the southbound lanes) were still flooded so all the traffic was using the northbound lanes as a two way route. The traffic was horrible. It took four hours to go a distance that would normally have taken half the time.

We didn’t arrive at my new hosts house till late in the evening.

I was bleary-eyed with fatigue, wondering if my head would start spinning as it sometimes does when I’m traveling too much, wondering what these new hosts would be like.

But that night I spoke to my new hostess and we immediately connected on a deep level. She told me that they’d never hosted anyone before. But her husband had heard of the need and volunteered. They’d watched my Big Red Lollipop video and thought, yes, I would be welcome.

And I was.

I stayed with them the longest. And they opened up their homes and their hearts to me, we had some fascinating existential conversations about God, faith and humanity, and when I got an eye infection, my host went out and bought an eye wash and antibiotics that cleared it up in no time.

I had brought thank you gifts and I gave my hostess hers but I still felt incredibly indebted so I offered to cook them an authentic Pakistani meal of Chicken korma and pilau if they could get me the ingredients. They only missed a couple. The meal wasn’t perfectly authentic but oh how they loved it! Alhamdu lillah!

And just when I thought I might have kind of repaid them for their incredible hospitality, they gave me another gift.

When I left on Friday morning I hugged my hostess and we both cried. She said she’d miss the sound of my voice and the conversations we’d had. And she said my coming had been a gift.

Subhan Allah!

I think of us as kindred spirits.

I spent the night at another lady’s house in San Fernando, a city on the west coast of Trinidad, halfway to back to Port of Spain.

Another kindred spirit! Oh she was such a lovely lady!

More deep esoteric conversations!

And the final night in Trinidad I spent back at my original hosts. By this time it kind of felt like I was coming ‘home’.

When we left for the airport the next day my host said to me that I had told them the first night that I wasn’t fussy, and not to worry too much about me and he declared that what I had said was accurate. That I wasn’t fussy and he’d enjoyed having me.

That was one of the nicest thing people have ever said to me!

I should mention that the guy who’d arranged the whole trip was one of the nicest people I met in all of Trinidad!

He’d basically invited me because the American embassy had complained that for its size there had been a lot of Muslims who’d gone over to ISIS and he had invited me because of my book Muslim Child, because he saw it as a de radicalizing text, he particularly liked the first story Fajr, about the boy farting during the prayer.

He said it effectively disproved the idea that Muslims couldn’t be funny.

Incredibly knowledgeable about the book business he put me in touch with so many wonderful people and all my books he’d acquired to sell, sold out!

It was an incredible visit.

I’m sure I’ll be digesting the experience for a long time. But I’ll never forget the kindness of the people who hosted me and all the warmth and love of all the people who opened their hearts to a stranger traveling among them!

 

The Complexity of Human Nature…

I remember hearing, as a child, some boys talking about an incident they’d witnessed where a girl was being sexually assaulted.

The boys were talking about how she was laughing nervously through the experience and they were confused, thinking that she was enjoying it.

The conversation was so vivid, so gruesome, so appalling, and they didn’t know what to make of it, and neither did I.

In the end they assumed she was some sort of slut and I think her reputation in the school was ruined.

I remember turning away and finding the whole situation very confusing.

I couldn’t imagine anyone laughing during an experience like that…not until I grew older.

I was extremely sheltered when I was growing up.

We weren’t allowed to go to parties, or school dances or any place really that would create a sort of opportunity to be taken advantage of like that.

I just took it for granted that we weren’t allowed.

And as a result it was easy to cultivate a sort of holier than thou attitude to make up for the sense of missing out on something that looked like fun.

I didn’t understand the laughter of that girl until I grew up.

I remember one of the first schools I visited as an author was in Sudbury. I was doing my Roses in My Carpets presentation to a group of grade seven kids. It has some pretty intense moments in it, and at a particularly sad moment in the presentation one of the kids began laughing.

I was shocked.

I asked him, ‘What are you laughing at?’ I thought he was laughing at the misery of the Afghan refugee camp I was showing them. But he looked sideways, like he was looking for help and he kept on laughing, but nervously now. Like he desperately wanted to stop but couldn’t.

And I realized something else was going on.

Over the years I realized that some children, not all, but some, react to very strong emotions and even fear by laughing.

I am absolutely positive that the girl being assaulted way back then was doing that.

She was in an impossible situation. She was outnumbered and being attacked. She was scared for her life. She didn’t dare think she could fight them off. So…she laughed. Maybe she was trying to disarm her attackers. I don’t know, but I do understand now, that laughing is not always about mirth and it’s not such a strange reaction to such a horrible situation as I once thought it was.

And this boy, when confronted with pictures of this Afghan refugee camp and this story that seemed to move him, was laughing out of nervousness.

And since then, I’ve come to accept it and not be insulted by it.

Different children respond in different ways.

Such is the complexity of the human mind.

The thing about human nature too is that it’s always evolving. Even as we gain more and more insight into cues people give that they’re being deceptive etc. people will evolve, they’ll learn not to react in those ways, they’ll do something else.

They’ll zig just when we’ve come to expect them to zag.

Which just goes to prove that there’s an awful lot we still need to learn about human nature.

And by golly, I’ll keep studying and studying it to get a better understanding for I do think that the best authors are connoisseurs of human nature.

October is Islamic Heritage Month…

but that does not mean that Islam is being promoted in any way.

Islamic Heritage month is like Asian heritage month or Pride month or Black History month, simply a chance for schools to recognize the contribution of the disparate members of our community.

Canada really does try to be ‘multi-cultural’. We try to include everyone!

We recognize that we’re all part of the whole and we’re stronger with the diversity of our opinions and perspectives.

So when a school books me for Islamic Heritage month, don’t think I’m going to come and do anything too Islamic!

I’ll tell stories–which is Islamic.

I’ll share creativity and deep thoughts–which is Islamic.

But of course there’s no proselytizing whatsoever!

NOBODY is trying to convince anyone! Ha ha.

That would be ridiculous.

These heritage months are brilliant though!

What happens is it allows kids to see themselves reflected and respected and what is most important is that it diffuses any anger and resentment.

It creates greater harmony in the school.

Like when schools have black teachers their black students do so much better!

The black teachers are not only role models for the black students they’re positive people that the other students will interact with and get used to, so that when the students go out into society they will know that no matter the color or culture or orientation, deep down we’re all human with a need to be respected.

That’s why Islamic Heritage month is important!

And hey, if the schools invite me for it, I’ll still tell the same stories, the same jokes and get the kids minds expanding with the same high level concepts I always aim for!

Because that’s just how I roll.

Yay for October Islamic Heritage month!

 

Filling your cup…

I’m a firm believer in leaving yourself open to experiences.

You never know when something you experience will make its way as an integral part of a story you will one day write.

Everything you experience is grist for the mill and it’s important to live your life really engaged in what is happening to and around you.

So recently I was invited to go on an interfaith walk.

It was a stroll through one of Toronto’s diverse neighborhoods to visit a Buddhist temple, a Synagogue, a Catholic Church and an Albanian mosque, all within 2.4 kms of each other.

I am in the midst of a big project.

I wasn’t planning to go.

I received the invitation from the member of parliament who represents the neighborhood and I thought it was just one of those generic type of invitations I could ignore.

But when they called me up a couple of days before and asked if I would come, I felt bad, and decided to do it.

We began at the Buddhist temple. It was very small, about the size of a large house with an open area, and little cushions on the floor and kind of little bench like desks above them.

We had to take our shoes off before going into the main hall where there were statues of some Buddhas in different poses and a monk in a burgundy robe who was explaining the significance of what we were seeing and answering questions.

I found the Synagogue the most interesting. It was The Junction Shul. It was tucked into a little street, one of the oldest Synagogues in the city, built in 1911, again a small building.

I had never been in a Synagogue before. There was a kind of stage in the middle surrounded by a railing made of spindles of wood. Apparently the people who’d built it had worked in the Heintzman piano factory doing the cabinetry. When we went into the basement to see where the micvah was, the basement had a very familiar musty smell that I remembered from all the years I went to the Jami mosque, one of the oldest mosques in Toronto. The micvah was a special sort of bath area for people to do their ritual bathing. It was now where they had the furnace.

What really resonated with me was the immigrant nature of the place. It had been cobbled together much through the resources and labor of the people who’d immigrated to the area. These were mostly Polish Jews fleeing the pogroms.

The Catholic church was next. It was called St. Paul the Apostle church. It was a large kind of semi modern building with stained glass windows and hard wooden pews. The minister had spent fifteen years in Pakistan and was originally from Malta.

Lastly we visited the Albanian mosque, a three story building off a store front area that was first established in 1957. [image error]

Back then Canada had a eugenics policy and only allowed white immigrants into the country. Albanian Muslims were some of the first Muslim immigrants.

The prayer hall was simple rows of carpeting.

At the end of the evening all who’d gone on the interfaith walk broke bread at the mosque. There were people from all backgrounds and then some Asian ladies who represented some peace organization got up and sang a couple of songs including Top of the World by the Carpenters.

It was somehow a fitting end to a lovely evening.

It reminded me of why I love this city and this country so very much and the basic goodness of people. We all need reminders of that now and again.