“and We have made Our Signs visible to those who can See” – nuts, 3 mins of survival and why i’m thankful to be african/rural

this is a true ”filfil” post, the “filfil” of sukkar&filfil; analytical, a tad sattirical and very human. it is likely to be rather long (i don’t know, i haven’t started yet). a lot of you won’t enjoy it very much; it isn’t terribly amusing (it isn’t “sukkar” afterall), is rather heavily-worded (i call it “rich, good english”) and it can be unpleasantly familiar. depends who you are, what you like. for those of you who have waited for a post and got this, i hope you enjoy it. if you don’t, you have been warned.

i’ll shut up and start for those of you yet reading, who haven’t turned to a more jovial blog.

the title is a verse frequented regularly in the Quran, in various forms (my favourates involved “those with minds/those who often remember”). one day, i hope i can count myself in one of these categories; the same day, inshaAllah, i hope i have done everything i could, should and would to be one of them, and that i don’t regret anything in the lease; the same day, inshaAllah, that HE smiles to tell me that i indeed did belong to one of these categories. 

sunday happenings…

so pourqoui je ne blog pas cette demanche? well, several reasons, which amount to it being a “care for yourself” day

 i bathed for an hour; massaged my head, tended to my hair, felt my body for signs of recent damage (including dry summery skin and the hideous inconsiderate spots which form in annoying places – not the places you’ve just seen in your mind, khud baalak menel 7ood!)

then took tender loving care of my hair (yes, i did repeat hair twise; it is very important to me), ate delicious italian/somali pasta avec le mince meat, then realised the importance of petroleum gelly (aka vaseline, the good unaltered kind) in calming fiery, dry cheeks. watched almost 4 hours of roger federer not knowing quite when to give it a bloody rest. i then blubbed a little for andy roddick’s sheer resilience and persistence (something which i thought would never happen, but plenty of these happen nowadays – must question my morals and principles).

tangent: i now wonder whether (or when? i can’t quite decide) i would reach a stage of my life where i shan’t regret having a man run around for me 4hrs non-stop, and i answer him with an ego-shattering “no”, because it was much simpler that way?! i wonder if i haven’t done that to several men already… and then i wonder if i am in a naive hallucination or am flattering myself unnecessarily.

anyway. then i was forced into an assignment which wasn’t mine, which i unreluctantly accepted (the person forcing me means a great deal to me; the person i am doing the assignment for also means a great deal to me, but doesn’t appreciate it/quite know it). i finished it at 1am monday morning to a standard pretty close to prefection – i often assume  proudly before i start assignments like this that : “no one can do this better than me”; when i do finish the assignment, i think “damn! no one has/can done this better than me!”. only happens if it requires art/vision.

monday happenings…

i handed the assignment, with much unease, to loved one number 2. like i said, loved one number 2, as much as they see the world with mechanical eyes, often miss that which is closer to home, and don’t much value things (dead or alive) as they should be valued. the assignment required proud, confident and animated handling; loved one number 2 failed to deliver on these accounts. what loved one number 2 fails to see is that this hasn’t as many consequences on me as it has on him; granted, a little of my heart goes into through my hand, everything that passes through my hand, but i have a surprisingly big heart – something which isn’t mechanical and thus doesn’t register in the mind of loved one number 2 as something of value. no matter. it was his assignment.

i’m rather glad this happened to me (the bit where he didn’t appreciate “my” assignment); there are many things  which i don’t appreciate enough about my Allah while HE stays with me, Ever Patient. it never siezes to surprise me how small events like this (and smaller still) piss me off no ends, whilst i commit worse sins under His Watchful Gaze, and HE doesn’t execute me immediately for them; whilst if i was my own judge, the number of the times where i would horrendously torture and punish myself in order to feel a little cleaner, is countless.

today, during my first aid course, the lady mentioned that (imagine a refined cockney accent, but still cockney) ” ‘coz we’re in such a toxic environment, you know, it’s like, that’s why we’re suffering from so many allergies nowadays. and it is, honestly, it is increasing”. i thought things would make much better sense if she said “sterile environment”. she was talking about the “silly allergies” (i used to call them that, anyway; no i’m not so sure anymore), like nuts and eggs. i used to find it very stupid and unbelieveable that people could react so violently to such timid things. i was thankful, nevertheless, that i was african and raised in a rural/humble/beautiful (delete as you prefer)  backdrop. i saw the image that lay below my eyes, spread out on the book. an “ideal” aryan young boy (yes, i rode with hitler at the munich putch of 1923. heavens no, i meant the child was blond-haired, blue-eyed), maybe 5 years of age, with swollen, redder-than-fresh-tomato-skin lips and scorched rash-y skin. he looked beautiful, innocent. i don’t think he was asking for sympathy, but i couldn’t stop myself from giving him some, anyhow.

the very same boy i described above

he had anaphylaxis, symptoms of which i described as above, but which also include chocking, swollen neck, shock. internally, the arteries’ muscles dialate and relax; blood pumped out from the heart wades through them forcelessly. it doesn’t reach places which need it (hungriest=brain). within 3-4mins, a stroke can occur in which can paralyse parts of the brain, and thus stop the functions it had controlled. within 3-4mins, you could die.

from the smell/taste of a nut or an egg. sub7anaAllah. how weak we are. and others wage biological/chemical wars and develop military-purposed nuclear technology; as if we haven’t found enough ways to die naturally!