Passionate Contention: She Seeks God, in Love

I’ve filled my life with passionate contention,
Writing, thinking, pouring, as I am wont to do -
Yet I hold secret this dimension,
The hidden ladder’s long extension,
In which I care for You –

Love is the secret that, expressed,
Out in silence comes,
The best of speech is but abstention
Not in logic compromised,
No positives, nor contravention.
It’s painted the sky blue.

Alive, my eyes beseech the flimsy atmosphere
To feed the hunger raging in me,
Consuming, burning, and outside of all convention.
Unnatural to others – can in honesty she Love this way? -
All this that I do.

It’s Love I grasp, but – a sigh - without retention.
Full as the moon, dripping its own beauty;
and yet so blind to it are we,
That I had never thought to mention
In writing, until now, the extent of my absorption
In what’s True.

The strings that bind me fast to All that is
Pull my soul tight across the board,
And tug to leave me rippling with tension.
Electricity and fire – locked, absorbed
in this blissfully resplendent false detention.
Motionless, imprisoned senses
Free my soul, as though on cue.

I’m rising up to You.

تهافت التهافت

... to borrow a title from ma'allimna Ibn Rushd, or Averroes as he is known in the West (the title translates as "The Incoherence of Incoherence," by the way). What could I mean by such a mysterious 'unwaan, you may ask? I am referring to none other than that immortal beast, the complexity of human romantic relationships.

Recently a column began circulating among my friends (and, tellingly, was sent to me by my own mother): Why the Smartest People Have the Hardest Time Dating, by a former Harvard student and relationship coach, who basically argues that smart, type-A people are so absorbed in their own work, successes, and sky-high expectations that they miss the essence of relationship: the simple give-and-take of the heart. I would agree with his observation. However, I would add that I personally haven't had this problem - strangely, I've had its opposite! I never really vetted the men I got involved with by any sort of resume-like standards, which on the one hand made for plenty of intense, deeply loving relationships, but also meant that I chose people with whom I was practically incompatible. The sad truth that experience taught me was that it takes a lot more than love to make a relationship work: it takes the day to day stuff, the unsaid understandings. The plain truth is that you usually need someone with a fairly similar background to yours in order to achieve that level of understanding and therefore, trust. People whose relationships work in the truly long-term are usually not extremely different from one another in the areas that count.

So, if I'm not resonating personally with the crux of this article, then where is the incoherence which I myself have experienced and which I reference in the title of this blog entry? In several places, all of which basically boil down to one: many people look for fundamentally different things in relationships, regardless of their intellectual prowess or social power.

To give an example, it took me a while to figure this out, but it seems that many men, though they may say they want an intellectual partner in the woman they are with, are actually quite intimidated by intelligent women and therefore can never make themselves emotionally vulnerable to one. This is true both for men with more traditional ideas about gender roles as well as men who identify as feminists. They don't want to be shut down or made to feel small by their partner, and the easiest way to do this is to pick someone less intelligent than they are. The sad part is that these men are often smarter than they give themselves credit for, but in an effort to preempt any ego-bruising, they pick women with whom they can't share a strong intellectual connection, thus cheating both themselves and the smart women out there who are longing for an intelligent mate. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) for them, plenty of women line up to play this game, showcasing their brilliance only around other women or men in whom they have no romantic interest. So the game continues, and the underlying problem is never addressed. Many smart women remain single well into their forties and fifties, while these frustrated, intelligent men jump from girlfriend to girlfriend or wife to wife, wondering why they can never find someone with whom they just "click."

I've also learned that women can be just as sneaky as men when it comes to NOT expressing what they want in a relationship. In most cultures, men are seen as having simple wants - sex - and profiled as using emotional dishonesty to achieve their ends. Women, on the other hand, are socialized to appear fundamentally upstanding, with more of an interest in long-term, emotional commitment. However, it turns out that, at least in American society, women usually don't have any clearer an idea of what they are looking for in a partner than men do. Moreover, because they have learned to wield their power in very inconspicuous ways, it becomes very easy for them (and those around them) to blame men for their own heartbreak. It turns out that both sexes are terrified of honesty, because, again, it makes a person vulnerable to lay their true emotions out on the table. So rather than saying something like, "I'm deeply wounded and therefore will never commit to you emotionally," or "I've got several irons in the fire," or "What I'm really looking for is guiltless sex," most people will play elaborate games of compliments and seduction, only to shift the blame onto the other party when they - for whatever reason - get uncomfortable with the situation.

No one likes to think they've been somehow complicit in their bad romantic experiences. People would prefer to make blanket generalizations about "men" and "women" rather than simply be honest that maybe they didn't know what they were looking for and sent enough mixed messages to make the other person's head spin. A case in point is the smart man who wants a brainy girl but can't admit to himself that what he wants *more* is a woman who is cute and sexually playful, and therefore always fall for women who prioritize their sexual appeal. Another case in point is the woman who makes sexual advances towards men, behaves distantly before and afterward, and then reproaches them for "pressuring her into sex."

So my question is, what is a smart, deeply sensitive person to do? For someone who really would like to open up emotionally (or is that way all the time anyway), is there a way to play the relationship game so that he or she doesn't get used, cheated, or deluded by false expectations?

If you have any ideas, let me know. I'm still working on that one.

Reflections on the Murder of Aasiya Hassan

Shock. Horror. Revulsion. Deep, penetrating sadness.

These were my feelings upon reading about the gruesome beheading of Aasiya Hassan, one of the founders of Bridges TV, a television station she co-created to help broadcast a more positive image of Muslims to an American audience. Her killer was none other than her husband, Muzammil Hassan, who along with her had co-founded Bridges. Aasiya had recently sought a divorce from Muzammil on the grounds of continuing spousal abuse. This was his response to her seeking legal recourse against him.

What absolute, horrible irony. How could a man whose business consisted of public relations stage a murder that conjured none other than the ghost of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda fighter whose claim to fame consisted of beheading hostages? How desperately deluded does a man have to be to conceal not only that he was battering his wife for eight years, but that her challenge to his masculine authority would be met with the most vicious reciprocation imaginable? How dare someone with such deep sociopathic tendencies even place himself in the position to speak for a community as maligned as are American Muslims? Did he not look at himself in the mirror every morning?

Most probably, the sad answer to this question is, no. The lack of introspection is a feature common to most human beings, but, tragically, it is most often so in those who are most prone to uncontrollable violence. What mattered to Muzammil was that things looked good on the surface. The significance of what lay beneath was a simple triviality – or, at least, everyone else’s problem. Certainly the concept of how his own blind spots would destroy his family and ravage his community completely escaped him. His children by Aasiya – aged 4 and 6 – will grow up with monstrous nightmares about their father, without the consoling warmth of their mother. Who, or what, will they turn to for consolation?

The logical answer is, of course, God – and this raises the question: whither Islam in all of this? There’s no doubt that Aasiya, not Muzammil, was the dedicated believer of the two. She took her children’s religious education upon herself, while he was largely absent from the mosque. Now, without her, how will these two young souls come to know God? Who will guide them? Community may be a powerful thing, but who within it will step up to extend these children a hand? Who will be their bridge to the spiritual side of life?

I hope that time will provide an answer to these questions. For now, a couple of things bear mentioning: First, This incident has provoked an immediate outpouring of support from American Muslims who are organizing around initiatives to prevent domestic violence. Hopefully this will represent the launching of a heretofore unparalleled awareness initiative. Second, I know people who work on Bridges, and who had worked with Muzammil. They were also taken completely off-guard by this sudden act of misogynistic terror. And, I must emphasize, since some (particularly apprehensive non-Muslim readers) will worry: they are not like that. They are amazing, big-hearted people. Let us not get cynical: There are genuine bridge-builders out there. And they will keep rebuilding those bridges, no matter how many times they are burned down.

PS: If you can, join the Facebook Group: In Memory of Aasiya Zubair: A Pledge to End Domestic Violence

An Apology

An apology to friends who knew a me---
wrapped up in ideas, nurturing desires
of making Right... be

What I saw was something made of-
glimpses of-
truth, compassion, and the enforcement of order.

The enforcement of justice.

What I felt would be justice
What I believed would help others
be free

Free like me?

Not one-hundred percent.

For in my overt politicization
Came a kind of indirect subjugation

To a man, to a unit, to a concept or cause
Which sometimes reflected
and sometimes inverted
the Great Truths that I knew but
for which had no words.

There is a love can't be fought for
cannot disappear
Can't be bought with the price
of derision and fear
Can't be shown on a screen,
in a book, on a throne

I repent for the malice
I've done in my anger.
I entreat you to see past the cut
of my words.
I ask you to find in my heart
a true seeker
Looking for harmony here on this earth.

I have found that no Cause is
greater than a person
That a guide can enlighten
just one human heart.
That the great human conflicts
Make of us great collectives
That vie and compete
And push us all apart.

It's important for me to say now that I see you
As a person in struggle with me in the field
No longer can my soul tolerate indignation
That gives even one whiff of dehumanization

Whether you have attacked me
Or fed me and clothed me
You are in my sight greatly cherished and loved.
And whatever you trust to be right, or believe in
Don't forget - I am with you.
Without seeing me with you.
And I'll welcome you always
By my fire and kin.

Contemporary Life

Contemporary lite smacks you across the face like a wet herring.

You say, "What the Hell?"

But it's already over.

_________________________________


I learned most of what I dislike at airports.

Overpriced food, impersonal human interaction, spoiled, emotionally manipulative chlidren (many aged 30, 40+), incremental terrorism-related panic, seas of gray carpet, the faint smell of burning fuel, televisions everywhere, all tuned to CNN, huge, sprawling mazes.

Sometimes, as I walk through an airport, draped in my coat and 3+ carry-ons (which I always manage to smuggle onto the plane), I become acutely aware of just how bizarre it all is. That human beings weren't meant to uproot themselves so often. That "wandering sages" didn't buy $450 plane tickets. That people need quiet, continuity, and rest.

This is madness, I think. It cannot be sustained.

Or can it?

All I know is my family is everywhere, scattered. I miss them.

But I want to live my life in remembrance of God - and that is very hard to do, for us so busy busy people.

The woman at the security checkpoint is yelling at me that I have to have my boarding pass, but it's in the x-ray machine.

I say it's in the x-ray machine.

She yells at me louder that I need to have my boarding pass.

I point to the machine.

She keeps yelling, now at everyone in general.

I yell back, "It's in the machine!"

This time she hears me.

Gets quiet.

Motions for me to pass.

Clunk, bang, clunk - the gray trays get stacked and tossed down and pushed along and unstacked. For two minutes my most valued possessions are inside, then they are again rearranged on my body, held together by the frame of my person.

I am: my purse (credit cards & day planner & cash); sweater & coat; jeans style (not skinny jeans - looks like I'm not riding 1st class there); jewelry (sthg-karat gold, a custom I learned in Egypt); my bag & baggage (containing the purpose of my trip, of my job, of my "success" - business, utility, and pleasure).

Ah, ya hayat ad-dunya! You follow me on me.

I suppose if I had lived on a farm 100 years ago they would have been my water pails, brooms, and livestock.

We somehow learn to carry our burdens with grace.

Yet in the meantime I am aware, so aware -------- of what is on that other side, everywhere, everything.

سوفَ يُهلكُ

I open my tray table and behold:

An advertisement for Verizon Wireless.

When they do not live off of the land, people invent all sorts of ways to beg.

I suppose I am no different from them, just another beggar. Holding out my hands to my fellow man, saying, "Help me survive!"

By the grace of God, I am helped.

People like to learn things that can be found in books. They like to listen to me speak, especially in Arabic.

Alhamdulillah.

I once saw a program in which a man had resolved to be entirely self-sufficient. He lived in the woods behind Trader Joe's and fished in the store's dumpster for sustenance.

So here I am on the plane - now descending. What goes up must come down.

Lights twinkle on the ground, drowning out the stars.

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