Ramadhan and another year

Apart from birthdays, Ramadhan always signify the passing of another year to me. In the past 23 years, I've celebrated Ramadhan in three countries (Jordan, Malaysia, and Australia), five states (Terengganu, Kelantan, Pahang, Irbid, and New South Wales), and countless homes and houses and residencies.

It marks the celebration of new people in my life, and the departure of dear ones. I lost my dear calico Tompok during Ramadhan, she waited a week for me to come home from college. I welcomed my second niece a couple of days after the celebration of the month three years ago. I remember outstaying my visit to Terengganu, paying dues to friends and friends of friends with my brother. Last year, I celebrated Ramadhan by going to class - feeling nothing but empowered with the new things I learned about media and advocacy.

Strangely enough, Ramadhan in Sydney never feel so out of place. Perhaps because religion has always been a private matter to me, and in between waking up to the quiet morning and breaking my fast and praying in the evening, I don't feel the need to remove myself from the surroundings which are completely oblivious to the presence of Ramadhan. On the contrary, such differences often offers me a clarity of mind, an opportunity to return to myself at the end of the day and engage in conversation with God and the universe about what I'd like to see in the world in my lifetime.

These days, when I break my fast - sometimes in the class with Tim Tam in hand, sometimes at home with a cup of coffee and a plate of scones, sometimes in a cafe with much longed for cappuccino - I look back at my past Ramadhan, strewn with tales and stories of families, friends, and dear ones. I also wonder at the future, who and how and where am I going to share my Ramadhan with next.

If there is anything I learn about this month, perhaps I'd agree with how spiritual and sacred and special Ramadhan can be; because somehow throughout my lifetime and especially so as I grow older, in presence of dear ones or without them - I never feel alone in Ramadhan.

Of friends and new companion

A friend was going out on a blind date, and she was asking me what if she doesn't like the guy, what if he doesn't like her, what if they don't like each other. She said he looks nice, but she doesn't have a good feeling about him. What if the cultural differences is too wide there is no way of reconciling them even if they are attracted to each other?

One thousands and one questions ran through her head, and she's getting anxious about their impending meeting in the evening.

I smiled, and I rubbed two palms of my hands together. Love, human beings, and relationships is my pet subject. I toiled a good two years of my life, crying and laughing when I wrote a book about it. You see, I told her, human interaction is something we've all missed nowadays. No longer we are allowed to understand, to observe, and to discover the beauty of human emotions the way people used to do 200 years ago.

These days, when we love, we love fully. When we hate, we hate fully. Life is no longer about teaching ourselves to tame, or to let our emotions run free. We know what we want, and what matters is getting them. Human relationship has become so simple these days. To us, life is like a series of walls with doors and windows, and all we need to do when we like or dislike someone is open or close those doors and windows.

Friends? Accept. No friends? Ignore. Friends? Answer. No friends? Screen. Friends? Follow. No friends? Block.

People used to get stuck with the person they loathe for weeks sometimes. People used to have to wait for months to get their letters answered, even when there is no guarantee they will receive one. People used to reserve their judgments until they meet in person.

All we need to do today is Google the person's name, check him or her out on Facebook, and read what he or she blogs about. We have the full liberty to shut and slam our doors to anyone we think we're not going to get along with. Considering how easily we can terminate our relationship these days, no wonder societies are getting fidgety when it comes to forming new relationships.

Our social circles are getting smaller, we choose to hang out only with people we like, we ignore those we don't like.

Go out and have fun. I told her. There is only so much you can think and worry about, and I don't think you want to go there. Enjoy the first smile and the twinkle in his eyes when your eyes met. Watch his face light up when he sees you, his whole body language relaxed when he watched your smile. Experience, feel, and notice his presence beside you. Don't let the moment passed because you're too worried about what he might think of you. Talk to him, and listen to him.

Even if you end up disliking each other later on, you'll have your integrity intact, and you'll be proud to know you didn't spend 1% of your life worrying about what a stranger might think of your life. Because obviously, you know better.

Beyond race

I GREW up in a small town in Terengganu and enjoyed the liberty of running wild and free with my bicycle, and my brothers and my friends. My world was small; it revolved around the town and its people, my family, and my Nancy Drew series collection.

When my father took me along on his business trips to Thailand or Singapore, I played with other kids as the parents sat together and talked business. Life was easy and uncomplicated, and I don’t remember pointing out differences between other people and myself.

It was only when I went to school that I learnt that boys are off-limits, and good girls pray, read the Quran and wear tudungs. There were no children from other ethnic groups or religion in my religious boarding school.

After 10 years in this environment, I’ve forgotten they existed. For a long time, they were simply etched in the background of my life like white noise on television. I was indifferent and uninterested to differences.

What dominated my mind at the time was how to become a good Muslim, how to please my parents, and how to become the best student sitting for the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM).

What matters was living in a Muslim community, working in sincere piety for my religion, and fending off temptation.

Not the same

The first blow came in my pre-university years when I learned how religion is not a guarantee to good sense and company. When a Chinese family friend offered me a lift from the airport to school when I first arrived in Kuala Lumpur, she received nothing but rude scowls from the college security guard.

“What do you think you’re doing, not wearing tudung and wearing skirts around?” he pointedly said as he stopped the car.

I was burning with shame and anger, and what was worse was that I didn’t even have the guts to defend my friend.

The incident opened my eyes and shook my world. A question suddenly dawned on me, “What’s so special about me now? What makes me different than other people?”

In between reconciling with what was real and what was not, between getting frustrated with certain people and being simply myself, I began to shed my outer shell and embrace the world as if it’s a whole new classroom.

Suddenly, I saw things differently. Suddenly, I recognised the presence of my fellow countrymen who (despite our differences) share my dreams and hopes. I said to myself, “there are so many great things and great people out there, how come nobody ever told me about them?”

Celebrating differences

I tried to learn many new things. I tried to move away from conventions thrust on me, and tried to see how things look from different perspectives. Unfortunately, not many people share my enthusiasm.

While people from my own religion and culture labelled me a rebel who is too liberal for her own good, people from other cultures thought I’m just another Malay girl who has everything ready on her plate. While people from the village said I’m too Westernised, people from the city saw me as not being progressive enough.

In the end, I got tired of trying to fit in and fled to Australia to further my studies. It has been almost 18 months since I boarded the airplane with relief because I thought I’d be able to finally chart my own course. But I am still a misfit in the local Malay community because I live in a house with students from different countries, I live with men in my house, and I live with non-Muslims.

But who cares whether you’re a Malay, Chinese, Indian, Arab, or Punjab? Who cares whether you’re a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, or Jewish?

I don’t. I accept that we are all different. I understand that my parents sent me to a religious school in the hope that I could go through life with the best education about life and society; something they didn’t get a chance to do when they were younger.

I did not regret going to a religious school, or burying my nose in books and magazines in search of all things to clear my confusions, or being perceived as different to many people – the experience has brought me where I am today.

But if I was given a chance to turn back time, I’d ask my parents to send me to a national school where I could be friends with children from different races.

In case I ever forget; I'll remember these

Someday I'll feel like I'm nothing but one little dot on earth, insignificant and too small to see. Someday I'll feel like I'm going to be crushed by fear and devastation and disappointment, the feelings so strong I dissolve into nothingness and disappear. Someday I'll feel like I'm drowning in stormy seas, dark, quiet, and lonely.

Someday, when I feel all these, I'll remember;

I've walked through the magnificent Petra of Jordan when I was eleven, and I saw a part of me dancing in circles, shaking hands with the ancient ruins and elders. I've loved a cat for ten years and I slept by her side until the day she floated away to the sky, and I know in every cat's eyes now they always see in me her fire, their long lost friend. I've walked on Taman Negara Pahang's (Pahang National Park) canopy walk, and I saw an empire of green grass, blue sky, and white rivers unfolded before my eyes like the Kingdom of Terabithia. I've made friends with a sun bear, I've seen a free deer solemnly walked in the dark, I've hugged a palm civet, I've waved to the majestic hornbills. I've taken a 5-hour road trip and I sat on nothing but the bus floor, and I've never felt so free and alive. I've roamed my country with my friends by my side, laughing with them on the lake house where there was no light at night - only us, the sprawling black lake, and smiling stars on the sky. I've ridden along the Bendelong coast, and I've fallen free down the slope seeing nothing but beauty, magic, and a world full of possibilities. I've taken the solero shot and screamed and laughed by my brother's side, and I talked and talked and talked to him like nothing is going to change in our world. I've fallen in love, and I've felt like the luckiest girl alive.

If I ever wonder why the world feels as if it's going to crush on me, I'll remember the world has lifted me up too, soared me to the sky, and danced to my delight.

I'll remember all these, every time I'm beginning to forget.

There is something about me and god

And for thirty years he has not prayed, has not received communion and has not gone to church. And this is not because he knew his brother's convictions and wanted to share them, nor was it because he has resolved something in his heart, but simply because this comment of his brother's was like a finger being pushed against a wall that was on the verge of collapsing from its own weight. - Confession by Leo Tolstoy

If God is made of kindness and good hearts and generous friendships, I wonder at His magnanimity. For it's something I'm awarded in abundance lately, and let me tell you, I'm not really the best of all believers.

Aussie footy, seafood platter and a conversation

As it turns out, 2009 showed me how I could celebrate my first day of Ramadhan (the Muslim’s fasting month) in ways I could never have imagined. As I sat in the restaurant, as the waitress came and put in front of us a big seafood platter, as we began to eat and talked about our stories – I uttered to myself a prayer of gratitude.

From an outsider’s point of view, I’m certain all they can see is one old man sharing stories with three young people – a young woman in tudung who everyone seems to mistake for an Indonesian (or Iranian at times, for reasons only known to the guesser), another young woman who no one can seem to correctly guess where she’s coming from, and the old man’s son, a young man who looks every part an Asian, but who is as Australian as the next man cheering at Australian rugby matches.

However, what is unknown to them is the most precious thing for me. In the Land Down Under and miles away from my own home, I feel like I am a step closer to finding the missing piece of life’s puzzle which perplexed me in my younger years; I did not understand why I never had a friend who was not Malay, and what the real rationale for religious school was when I couldn’t see how kindness transcends religion, culture, and ethnicity and how a society’s greatness comes from its ability to see similarities beyond differences.

Naturally, I cannot speak for the mass of Malaysian youth who have a myriad of different experiences growing up in different environments and cultures. But if I could tell them one thing, I’d tell the stories of the old man I met last night – about how he grew up running around in Klang with his Malay and Chinese and Indian friends, how he went to the birthday party of his Malay friends and came back with a handful of pineapples tied to his bike, and how only one of his friends has a radio in the house and his friends had to come over to listen and memorize the songs for the rest of the week.

“Ask your father,” the old man kept repeating. “He would know what I’m talking about.”

What breaks his heart, however, was watching our generation grow up in the isolation and confines of our religion, culture, and ethnicity – when we never bothered to see beyond what was given to us and make the best out of it.

How many of us ever think to ourselves when we see what’s going on in the television, “what is right and what is wrong with the world and why it happened?” How many of us ever think to ourselves when we wake up in the morning, “today I want to break boundaries!” How many of us ever walk past a stranger on the street, who is as different to us as we are to him or her, and say to ourselves, “how about today I look at the world with my own eyes, and put away these rose-tinted glasses society has given me in the past 20 years?”

When my friend and I parted with the old man and his son, clad in their green and yellow Australian rugby jerseys and scarves, I felt as if one knot in my life has been undone and ready to be braided again on a new canvas. It was a meeting between generations, between cultures and nationalities, and despite coming together as citizens of different countries, I felt as if we all came from the same place with the same hope in our hearts – to see Malaysia as one again as it had been once before.

You know I'm trying and you don't mind

Sometimes I feel like I hardly know myself. At one time I found myself wishing nothing more for the happiness already firm in my grasp, at another time I crumble at the mere mention of the past already forgotten. At one time I gave the world the biggest and the most selfless smile I could muster, but when I saw the big smile on someone else's face I feel the tiny painful stabs in my heart. I've forgotten what it feels like to see a smile which could light up the sky and cut open the sea of my emotions. Sometimes I go through life trying to accept everything, trying to not be mindful of little things, trying to mend my heart around the little gaps which left me breathless in my sleep. All I am asking from the world is to let me be invisible so nobody can see how frail my strong heart can be. But there are times when I am afraid I've shaken the world out of its rhythm, when I feel I am lost at the end of the tunnel and the other side of life is coming close to swallow me, when I thought I've failed to uphold my promise in being brave and strong and courageous - someone sat beside me and hold my hand and told me it's okay and I looked at the eyes so pure and I wonder how can it be real? How do I know if the world is not going to crush me? Sometimes when I talked to God and I told Him I'm ready to go through life on my own, He shook His head and He laughed and He sent me someone. I wonder to myself whether He doesn't trust me or He was trying to make a joke or He meant the best for me. When I was eighteen I learned how it doesn't take the world to break my heart, how sometimes painful things even when I erase them from my memories they come and beat me in my nightmares, how my wound left its scars on me and stays with me all my life. But now I learned too no matter how my heart get torned apart it always learn to love and heal itself again, I learned kindness is the first thing God decided is a gift to me, not wealth or beauty or grand things, and I learned if I give the world a chance even when I'm afraid, it'll take me in its embrace and treat me like a long lost friend - warm, generous, and full of surprises.

Where art thou?

"And especially Bim. And then he left and we wrote letters - he wrote great letters - and it turned into something else. Something better. He was my dear reader." Addison said. "For a very long time, he was the first person to read every book I wrote."
Rima had her doubts. The box she'd seen in the attic was not the sort of box you put together for your dear reader. "And then what happened?" she asked. She didn't look at Addison's face. She looked at Addison's face in the window, her ghost face, just visible underneath the bright spot of the reflected table lamp.

"I was hoping you'd tell me," Addison said.

- The Case of Imaginary Detective by Karen Joy Fowler.

Letters to a Friend: A Confession

Cowper St, August 6, 2009

My dearest,

Some day I will relate to you the story of my life, and of how those five years had been immensely transforming to the way I think about life and the world. It's about those time when we try to make sense of life choices, when at the same time we're struggling to find the grounding faith to prop us up against the world and its folly. For now, I will tell you about the time when I had the most tremendous fun in our motherland.

To begin with, I was always able to roam freely on the fertile land of our country; on foot or on the wheel, accompanied or on my own, sad or glad. Once my brother told me, "the trees and the wind and the soil remember you wherever you go", and I instantly saw the world as if it has opened its arm and embraced me. The trees linked their arms together when they saw me, the wind pushed me with its gentle hand to face the majestic sun, the birds sung to me and the cows nodded their head to me lazily. Do you think it's absurd if I tell you I'm always at home when I'm on the road?

The first time I rode off to the far northern island was the time when I began to learn my friends by heart. Oh yes, my friends - did I ever told you about them? My tower of strength, my pillar of joy, my shining beacon of hope. Strong women you don't want to meddle with, and the kindest men you'll find in your lifetime even in their imperfections. Sometimes when I meet them in my memories, I was embarrassed to see how they had readily accepted me in my darkest moments. As if all my ridiculous tantrums was nothing but of a child yet to find her own peace with the world.

We explored the world together, my friends and I. From toiling the muddy and grassy swamp, singing pitiful ballads to our heart's content, cooking the best of meals and the weirdest ones, sharing geeky jokes about love and relationships, laughing together everywhere we go like brothers and sisters, paying dues to each other families as if they are our own - I don't remember the time when my friends had not been by my side.

The time when I first learned to drive my car, the time when I refused to get into the water, the time when I fell in love with a man. My friends are the first people you will find most literate about my life. I think when I decided to leave them, I was scared to be the one who get left behind. But now I see, the rock and stone our friendship was built upon is not going to change by mere passing of time.

One day when you get to meet my friends, I'm certain you will understand. Because as I am blessed to find you, I am blessed to be granted the chance to spend the best of my times with them. And as you are too, they are my kindred spirits.

Yours devotedly,
Ati A. Aziz.

The cloud of unknowing moment

When I walked home from class tonight, I thought about how my life might be viewed from other people's perspectives. I remember talking to my two friends over dinner some time ago, I was listening intently to their love stories when suddenly heads turned to me.

"So, why don't you tell us your stories." She looked at me conspiratorially. I sat back, amused. "What stories?" I asked. "Juicy stories, love stories. You must have some." I looked at both of them, and I shrugged my shoulders helplessly. I told them my juicy stories. But apparently it wasn't juicy enough when my friend asked, "How old are you again?" Her forehead was marked with concern. "24." I smiled. "What a waste." I laughed at her remark.

I walked home today and I looked up at the sky where the full moon sat idly and I asked myself, "What if I feel fine with the way I am, right here right now?".