When Wings Expand Read online

  Mehded Maryam Sinclair

  When

  Wings

  Expand

  THE ISLAMIC FOUNDATION

  When Wings Expand

  Published by THE ISLAMIC FOUNDATION

  Markfield Conference Centre, Ratby Lane, Markfield

  Leicestershire, LE67 9SY, United Kingdom

  E-mail: [email protected]

  Website: www.islamic-foundation.com

  Distributed by

  KUBE PUBLISHING LTD

  T +44 (01530) 249230, [email protected]

  Website: www.kubepublishing.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

  © Mehded Maryam Sinclair 2012

  Book design | typesetting | illustrations © Fatima Jamadar

  Editors Fatima D’Oyen | Yosef Smyth

  The publishers would like to thank Nuh Keller for kind permission to reproduce Qur’anic translations on pages 9–10 and 170–171.

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication Data record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-0-86037-499-2

  eISBN 978-0-86037-501-2

  To Fatima D’Oyen, who saw the possibilities and set me on the path.

  Special thanks to Besa Krasniqi and Nuh Keller, without whose guidance and assistance I could never have written this book. To the Turks I know and love, especially Sevinc, for teaching me hidden treasures. To Patricia gauch and Kim griswold for their expert comments and edits. To Kent Brown, for the opportunities he threw my way. To Reema Latif for being willing to go through every page looking for what could be better. To the Muslim Writers Awards, UK, for choosing the manuscript as a winner, and to Saddia Malek, who helped me collect the prize all the way from Jordan. To Ibrahim, for his rock-solid support. To Jed, for his continued interest and suggestions. To Hedaya Hartford, Amina Ackroyd, Zarlasht, Rohi Padela and all the others who were willing to read, discuss and help in so many ways. To Marshia Choudhury for passing the book on to its first young readers, and to those first readers and their teachers, you know who you are.

  Mehded Maryam Sinclair

  For more information about the author and

  her work visit www.maryamsinclair.com

  The body exists that

  we might grow wings.

  Abdal Hakim Murad

  …’O Lord, take us not to task if we forget or make a mistake;

  O Lord, nor place upon us an unsuperable load as You did on those just before us;

  Nor then requite us with what we have no strength to withstand;

  But pardon us, forgive us, and show us bounteous mercy,

  You are our Master: so give us triumph over the people of the unbelievers.’

  ~ Al Baqarah 2:286 ~

  Contents

  Sunday, May 4 | 08

  Sunday, May 11 | 08

  Monday, May 12 | 08

  Wednesday, May 14 | 08

  Friday, May 16 | 08

  Monday, May 19 | 08

  Tuesday, May 20 | 08

  Saturday, May 24 | 08

  Sunday, May 25 | 08

  Monday, May 26 | 08

  Tuesday, May 27 | 08

  Wednesday, May 28 | 08

  Thursday, May 29 | 08

  Monday, June 2 | 08

  Tuesday, June 3 | 08

  Wednesday, June 4 | 08

  Friday, June 6 | 08

  Saturday, June 7 | 08

  Saturday, June 7 | 08

  Sunday, June 8 | 08

  Monday, June 9 | 08

  Tuesday, June 10 | 08

  Thursday, June 12 | 08

  Friday, June 13 | 08

  Friday, June 13 | 08

  Saturday, June 14 | 08

  Monday, June 16 | 08

  Wednesday, June 18 | 08

  Friday, June 27 | 08

  Thursday, July 3 | 08

  Friday, July 4 | 08

  Saturday, July 5 | 08

  Tuesday, July 8 | 08

  Wednesday, July 9 | 08

  Thursday, July 10 | 08

  Friday, July 11 | 08

  Saturday, July 12 | 08

  Sunday, July 13 | 08

  Monday, July 14 | 08

  Tuesday, July 15 | 08

  Wednesday, July 16 | 08

  Thursday, July 17 | 08

  Friday, July 18 | 08

  Sunday, July 20 | 08

  Monday, July 21 | 08

  Tuesday, July 22 | 08

  Wednesday, July 23 | 08

  Thursday, July 24 | 08

  Friday, July 25 | 08 - Black Friday

  Saturday, July 26 | 08

  Sunday, July 27 | 08

  Monday, July 28 | 08

  Tuesday, July 29 | 08

  Wednesday, July 30 | 08

  Thursday, July 31 | 08

  Friday, August 1 | 08

  Saturday, August 2 | 08

  Sunday, August 3 | 08

  Monday, August 4 | 08

  Wednesday, August 6 | 08

  Sunday, August 10 | 08

  Monday, August 11 | 08

  Tuesday, August 12 | 08

  Wednesday, August 13 | 08

  Thursday, August 14 | 08

  Friday, August 15 | 08

  Tuesday, August 26 | 08

  Wednesday, August 27 | 08

  Thursday, August 28 | 08

  Friday, August 29 | 08

  Saturday, August 30 | 08

  Sunday, August 31 | 08

  Monday, September 1 | 08

  Friday, September 5 | 08

  Monday, May 3 | 10

  Tuesday, May 4 | 10

  Wednesday, May 5 | 10

  Thursday, May 6 | 10

  Friday, May 7 | 10

  Saturday, May 8 | 10

  Sunday, May 16 | 10

  Thursday, June 10 | 10

  Thursday, June 10 | 10

  Friday, June 11 | 10

  Saturday, June 12 | 10

  Sunday, June 13 | 10

  Tuesday, June 15 | 10

  Wednesday, June 16 | 10

  Thursday, June 17 | 10

  Friday, June 18 | 10

  Saturday, June 19 | 10

  Wednesday, June 23 | 10

  Thursday, July 1 | 10

  Saturday, July 3 | 10

  Sunday, July 4 | 10

  Saturday, July 10 | 10

  Monday, July 12 | 10

  Tuesday, July 13 | 10

  Wednesday, July 14 | 10

  Thursday, July 15 | 10

  Friday, July 16 | 10

  Saturday, July 17 | 10

  Sunday, July 18 | 10

  Monday, July 19 | 10

  Tuesday, August 10 | 10

  Wednesday, August 11 | 10

  Thursday, August 12 | 10

  Thursday, August 12 | 10

  Friday, August 13 | 10

  Saturday, August 14 | 10

  Monday, August 16 | 10

  Tuesday, August 17 | 10

  Wednesday, August 18 | 10

  Thursday, August 19 | 10

  Friday, August 20 | 10

  Saturday, August 21 | 10

  Monday, August 23 | 10

  Tuesday, August 24 | 10

  Wednesday, August 25 | 10

  Thursday, August 26 | 10

  Friday, August 27 | 10

  Saturday, August 28 | 10

  Sunday, August 29 | 10

  Monday, August 30 | 10

  Monday, August 30 | 10

  Glossary

  Sunday, May 4 | 08

  I am Nur, daughter of Firdaus and Yusuf, granddaughter of Halima. I am twelve. I live w
here I was born, in Toronto, Canada, with my Turkish-Muslim mother. My father Yusuf grew up as an American Quaker, and became Muslim when he was sixteen. My little brother is Mehmed, and he is eight. My mother’s mother, Halima, lives in Istanbul and was married to Abdallah, a Moroccan naturalist who died in a car accident in Turkey before I was born. There are more people in my family, of course; I’ll write about them later.

  A few weeks ago Mama gave me this journal. She bought it for me last year when she went to Quebec City with Baba, just after she found out she had cancer. She said she knew how hard her sickness has been for me. She scared me a little bit when she said that. She said my writing and drawing could be a medicine for me, but I didn’t know I needed any medicine so I left it sitting in my drawer until now.

  I used to write a lot, but that was before Mama got sick, before the cells in her body decided they would go crazy and do whatever they wanted.

  I’ve never had a journal as beautiful as this one is. I wanted to find the right word for the color of its leather cover, and not just write “blue” … it is a spectacular blue, not at all ordinary so I found “azure” in the thesaurus. Azure blue it is, and it reminds me of the blue stone necklace my friend Hana’s dad brought her from Afghanistan. I love staring at the color, trying to climb inside it, where I feel safe and protected. The pages have a tiny little bit of texture. I wonder if this is hand-made paper? Anyway, I like how the book lies flat when it is open so I don’t have to fight with it and it is easy to write in it.

  This journal really matters to me, so I shall name it. Naming things always makes them more important. From now on its name shall be Buraq.

  Ya Buraq, you are sooo cool, can I use your name for my journal? You are the animal the Angel Jibril brought from the heavens and which flew the Prophet Muhammad all the way from Makkah to Jerusalem in one night.

  Sunday, May 11 | 08

  Dear Buraq, today we were supposed to be going sailing on Yasemin’s family’s sailboat, Baba, Mehmed, me, and even Mama. The plan was to go out on Lake Ontario. A few days ago Mama was feeling better and she was looking forward to having the wind in her face. But she woke up in the middle of Friday night with a searing headache and by Saturday morning she wasn’t able even to lift up her head. Baba was constantly repeating “la hawla wa la quwatta illa b’illahul azeem”—there is no power or might save Allah’s—and that made me even more scared. The doctor came over right after fajr, the early-morning prayer, and said she was having a delayed reaction to her last chemotherapy treatment. Well, why wouldn’t she react, getting all pumped up with poison? It is so scary to think about what they have to do to get rid of cancer. Anyway, the doctor came and gave her two injections and the headache went away, alhamdulillah. But she still feels weak and dizzy.

  Still, she was so sweet to us. Mama was in bed, and Baba was holding her shoulders and stroking her long wavy black hair. She told us she felt sad about being the reason we were missing the trip. Good old Mehmed! He said, “That’s OK! Nur gets seasick all the time, and anyway look how gray the day is! It’s better we stay home and Mrs. Prouty can make us cookies!” Was this Mehmed talking? If it wasn’t for his shiny black hair I would have been sure it was some other child, able to talk like that. Honestly, I never knew he had it in him!

  Monday, May 12 | 08

  It’s a good thing I started doing my homework early on Sunday, because it took me all day! I was supposed to write about “what it would be like to ….” I came up with these ideas:

  Live on a fishing boat

  Live on an Iroquois reservation

  Get a gift of $1000

  Paddle a canoe to the Toronto Islands

  I wanted to add:

  Have breast cancer

  Lose your mother

  Be like everyone else

  But I didn’t have the courage to write about those.

  Especially not the last one, because I am so afraid of being ungrateful. I know we are not like everyone else because we are Turks and we are Muslims. And I know in my heart of hearts that I wouldn’t change either of those things for anything. So I say, too bad, Nur, you don’t get to be “like everyone else,” and guess what? It just doesn’t matter! And don’t forget, you have plenty of friends who aren’t “like everyone else” either! What about Yasemin and her five Turkish brothers? What about Janine from Palestine, and Hana from Afghanistan, what about all the people who go to the Andalusia Mosque, let alone all the other masjids in Toronto?

  So what I did write about was getting a gift of $1000. It was really fun! Here’s a tiny piece of my homework:

  $1000! Yikes! That is so much money! What will I do with it? I didn’t realize before what a responsibility money is—just deciding what to do with it is hard work. My first thoughts were all about new clothes and bracelets and necklaces. Then I looked around my room and saw the great maple bed Uncle Furqan built for me, the wicker chair Mama brought me from Quebec, my stained-glass lamp, my luscious cream-colored settee with its dusty pink throw—what more do I need? This much money seems too special to spend like that. Then I thought about taking my family on a vacation, and remembered with a start that Mama is too sick to go anywhere right now. And then it hit me—her medicine! I want to use the money to help buy her medicines! But first I’m going to spend whatever it takes to get her a beautiful new quilt, and some new plants for the windowsill near her bed. I want the quilt to be something that soothes her and makes her happy just to see it. Since she has to spend so much time in bed these days, let it be with beautiful things around her. She loves colors and fabric and geometry. I pray she likes it.

  I got so excited writing this. I quite forgot that it was all a fantasy! Then I remembered that Grandma gave me some money recently. It was $350, not $1000, but I can use it to buy a quilt for Mama! Last year when we went to the county fair there was a booth with home-made quilts. I took one of their flyers, because I had never ever seen anything so beautiful—the colors, the shapes. It made me want to be a quilt maker when I grow up.

  I can’t wait! I’ll get someone to take me to see them and choose the best one I can find for Mama.

  Wednesday, May 14 | 08

  Every Wednesday afternoon I have a class with Yasemin at the Andalusia Mosque. We are doing an intense study of the Qur’an with Auntie Khadija. She has been teaching us tajweed, the proper pronunciation of Arabic, for the last three years. Now that we have nearly mastered the tajweed we are reciting the whole Qur’an, memorizing it as we go, and learning the meaning of each page. I’ve always been really happy doing tajweed, but this is a lot harder. First of all, the memorizing is hard, and then sometimes the meanings are even harder. But every once in a while I come across something that just leaves me with a delight I can barely understand. Like,

  Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth—The likeness of His light in hearts guided by those verses is as a niche in which is a tremendous lighted lamp, the lamp mounted in a crystal sheath of brightest glass, the sheath of glass as if an iridescent star—it fueled from a tree utterly abundant with blessings, an olive tree in the day’s sun neither solely from the east nor from the west, whose oil is well-nigh luminous though yet untouched by fire

  ~ Qur’an; Al-Nur, 34-38 ~

  Honestly, Buraq, when I found these verses, my world just stopped. The picture they give is so clear! It felt like everything just opened out and out and out, and I was standing all alone on the very edge of the universe. And all of a sudden I remembered the lines from William Blake that we had to memorize and write about in English class. And I knew that it wasn’t just nice lines of poetry … it is what is REAL, only most of the time I can’t remember it.

  To see a world in a grain of sand

  And a heaven in a wild flower,

  Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

  And eternity in an hour.

  ~ William Blake, Auguries of Innocence ~

  When I was memorizing the verses from the Qur’an I kept feeling like something was co
ming to me, something REAL, something that would nourish me and heal me, and never leave me.

  So this is what makes Mama and Baba and Grandma so careful to never leave the Qur’an. I pray that I will never leave it, that it will never leave me.

  Friday, May 16 | 08

  My Auntie Ayshe, Mama’s sister, has come from Turkey to stay with us. Sometimes it seems like she is crying. But when she sees me, she will always smile and hug me. It helps me a lot to have those hugs, because something is really strange around here now, and I know it. Nobody’s been telling me much, but I can see how worried and sad everybody is. I want somebody to sit down and tell me what is going on, but they are all so busy, and guess what, Buraq? I realize that actually I don’t want to be told … it is too scary.

  Monday, May 19 | 08

  Buraq, today there were a bunch of announcements hanging on the bulletin board at school about summer camps! Oh, can you imagine being able to spend a week in the forest, paddling canoes and riding horses? I brought one of the flyers home. I knew there’s no way my Baba would send me someplace away from him where I would be around men he doesn’t know. I read in my friends’ magazines how everybody thinks Muslim girls are oppressed, but I can’t really figure out what all the fuss is about—I just feel cherished and protected. But I wanted to ask him anyway, to see if by some miracle I could go. Baba didn’t say no right away, he said he would talk to Mama and pray so that he could make the best decision, considering everything that is happening with us right now.

  Tuesday, May 20 | 08

  Today I had my science exam. We got an extra study break before lunch to prepare so Yasemin, Janine, and I crammed a bit beforehand. Janine had already studied a lot with her brother so she was kinda like our coach. I think I did OK on the exam but I know I didn’t ace it because I couldn’t define “terminal velocity.” Maalesh, whatever, right, Buraq? I’m so glad I don’t have parents who rank on me all the time to get straight A’s!

  I see how they both love working hard and how they do it remembering Allah, so I am trying to be like them … but working just to get good grades is something else.