Bushra’s Blog

Today, I BARTed over to to Berkeley from my work in Oakland to go to the comic bookstore. I’ve done this a few times and every single time, the same thing happens on my return journey back to work- I get this feeling, wondering if my building is still there. I get off my BART stop, take the stairs out of the station and make my walk back to work. Of course, as I round the corner my building is there. It didn’t go anywhere. Just because I wasn’t there didn’t mean it ceased to exist.

During my two years in the Humanities program back in college, my classmates and I went through more a lot of philosophers and I always remember one in particular - George Berkeley. His theory was that if something is not perceived, who is to say it exists. Meaning, if you are not at your house, and no else is watching it, there is no guarantee that it actually exists.

I know that there are people there while I am not there so of course it still exists. And y’know what? It’ll be there even after everyone’s gone home.

Well, probably.

/random

I caught the Bollywood film 3 Idiots last week, making it my 2nd Indian movie in as many weeks. Funny enough, this was more than I’ve seen in the past couple of years. Even more surprising, I saw it at the Indian movie theater in Fremont, a place I avoid going at all costs. I hadn’t been there in several years and within 5 minutes of getting there, I realized why. But that’s another story.

When I first saw a commercial for 3 Idiots, I thought it was one of those random Indian comedy movies that’s not as funny as it thinks it is. But it actually turned out to be a rather … wait for it…. good movie. (Italicized for emphasis!)

3 Idiots is about three friends during their time in engineering college in India. Yes, it’s funny but that’s not all the movie strives to be. Instead, it adds a message in there about the pressures of living up to expectations.

Aamir Khan is great in this movie so I’ll forgive him for being what, 45? and playing a 20 year old. If anything, I forgive him for Ghajini (sorry, pretty upset that credit wasn’t given to Memento). His two cohorts are from Rang De Basanti and are great as well. I’m not going to lie to you, in addition to all the funny parts, the filmmakers blatantly try to get you all choked up at certain moments. I’m admitting nothing of course.

I texted a friend of mine who had already seen it about having watched it and she mentioned something that was on my mind as well - I just saw two Bollywood films, this one and Wake Up Sid, that emphasized the need of having a profession your passionate about.

Anyways, all in all, good “fillum”.

Check out Wake Up Sid too if you can.

Side note: I can’t believe how many Aamir Khan movies I’ve seen. Looking at this list on IMDB, I’ve seen almost all of them.

My favorite Aamir Khan movies include:
-Dil Chahta Hai
-Lagaan
-Rang De Basanti
-3 Idiots
-Earth
-Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander
-Qayamat Se Qayamt Tak (classic)

Side, side note: I implied above that I haven’t seen too many Indian movies as of late. I used to watch so many more because even though they weren’t all the best of movies, they were at least entertaining enough. I feel like that’s changed. I don’t want to invest in Indian movies that much anymore because it’ll end with me wanting those 3 hours back. That, and you can’t watch most Indian movies with the family anymore. Dunno what’s up with that trend.

On Thursday, March 11, City Arts & Lecture of San Francisco is presenting author Dave Eggers on stage with Abdulrahman & Kathy Zeitoun in conversation with Wajahat Ali.

Eggers wrote the best selling nonfiction book about the Zeitouns, who lived in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. While Kathy evacuated the city with the couple’s kids, Abdulrahman elected to stay in the city.

This seems like a really interesting event and you know what would be cool? If some Muslims showed up. We, as a people, have a hard time supporting people like the Zeitouns and Eggers (and a lot of other people and organizations) who actually give Islam a good name. Out of the 900 seats available, more than 600 have already been sold, so one should really get tickets soon. So let’s try to add some representation in there and get your tickets.

I’ve been taking Arabic at this place in San Francisco for almost two years now. For 8 of those months, I wasn’t working so I always had my homework done and vocabulary memorized for the one or two days a week I had class.

Yeah, I was *that* person.

Things were different once I started working again. As I yawned in class one evening after my first day back at work, the teacher laughed good-naturedly and said that now I knew what it felt like. It just got harder from there. I didn’t have as much as the vocabulary memorized. Sometimes I didn’t even finish my homework. I won’t even talk about the last term…

For a moment I thought about taking a break, collect myself and start back up in a couple of months. Then I thought back to why I’m doing this all on the first place. I want to learn Arabic to eventually gain a better understanding of the Qur’an, to jump start my mind in the way that learning a language can, and also to get a reprieve from the corporate life.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for my job and I’m glad I have this opportunity to work and help out at home. It also pays for these classes! However, the 9 to 5 shouldn’t discourage me from pursuing outside interests but instead, enable me to do so.

This is something I want to do. It took me years to even start up classes. This isn’t the time to take a break, it’s time to start anew, the time to step it up. I’m going to make this work, InshAllah.

But man oh man is Arabic hard…

Over on Al Mihrab, Irfan Rydhan, who I have volunteered with before on a couple of organizations, posted 5 Good Books for American Muslims (and everyone else). Apologies for yet another list but his post inspired me to come up with my own ‘five books’ and so I’ve done that below. Just like Irfan’s list, mine can be consumed by non-Muslims as well:

1. Zeitoun
With all the negative media we get regarding Islam and Muslims in the U.S., reading a book where the protagonist is a Syrian-American practicing Muslim is a welcome change of pace. Abdulrahman Zeitoun faced a lot of adversity after he opted to stay behind in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and yet despite the almost unreal circumstance in he found himself in, his faith remained unshakable. I know it’s cliche to say this, but I couldn’t put this book down. An intense true story, this book was also picked by Entertainment Weekly as the #1 Nonfiction book for 2009. What. Up.

2. Al America: Travels Through America’s Arab and Islamic Roots
This one has to be on the list. San Francisco Chronicle journalist Jonathon Curiel writes about how Muslims and Arabs have extensively influenced the United States. From coffee to rock and roll, there are many things in this country that have been shaped by Arabs and Muslims. Curiel also has a lot of supplementary material on his website.

3. The Vision of Islam
As someone who was born Muslim in a non-Muslim country, I found this intermediate ‘intro’ to Islam book to be very valuable. In addition, the authors Murata and Chittick did something that some Islamic school teachers I had when I was younger failed to do - they gave Islam a soul.

4. Waiting ‘Til The Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
Not a book on Islam but it’s still quite important. Author Peniel Joseph gives us a narrative history in which he tells the reader about a great many people and events that helped shape the Civil Rights movement, which the Muslim American community has looked to from time to time. An excellent read.

5. Lost History: The Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers, and Artists
Man, those Muslims. They have never amounted to anything… Actually, quite the opposite. In this book, Michael Morgan goes through many of the scientific and mathematic achievements made by Muslims. Just a note though, this book really is only an introduction into the topic and is not meant to be an academic work. However, it’s a good stepping stone into further study.

So there you have it. I’ll go ahead and apologize for any future lists I make but hey, doing 30 posts in 30 days isn’t too easy for me

Three years ago today my dad passed away so I can’t help the inevitable reflection that comes with this day and this time of year in general.

I was thinking about how my dad used to take a lot of pictures. We have albums full of pictures of family, friends, and some people who I don’t even recognize. In these pictures, you can see the evolution of my siblings and myself, from the cute baby years to the oh-so-awkward teenage years. We even have pictures from family trips to Pakistan where cousins who are now married and have children are all just little kids themselves.

I never really noticed when my dad stopped taking pictures and I don’t remember what exactly happened to that camera he used to lug around. He had a special bag to take it around with cushioned spaces for the body of the camera and for the flash, slung over his shoulder and ready to go when needed. Eventually, it gave way to an Olympus 35mm camera which I used a lot, taking pictures at mehendis and weddings of family friends since the mid 90s. In 2003, we were ready to join in on the digital camera craze and my dad tasked me to research and get our family’s first digital camera. Although it wasn’t technically mine (dad’s funds were used), I sort of took ownership of the camera and eventually branched out and got my own point and shoot, which eventually gave way to an entry level digital SLR a couple of years ago.

In the Bollywood movie Wake Up Sid which I just watched a couple of days ago, the main character finds his passion in life through photography. He found out that his dad used to be into photography too and when Sid asks his dad why he stopped taking pictures, his dad said it was because Sid grew up and didn’t have time for his dad to take pictures anymore.

I couldn’t help but think of my dad at that moment. One of my cousins once mentioned that I’m a lot like my dad since I always had a camera in my hand. Truth be told, I hadn’t made the connection. I had forgotten that my dad enjoyed taking pictures long before I even held a camera. While I wouldn’t categorize myself as an actual photographer, I love taking pictures and I would have loved to talk about pictures with him.

As I was recently digging through some old pictures, I came across this one of my dad. He’s either graduating from high school or college. In all honesty, I don’t know but I thought I would share:

I’ve decided to slowly start scanning in all those pictures my dad took over the years to help preserve all the memories he captured. It’ll take a while and I know that there are companies that can do this kind of thing, but I’m going to try to do it on my own.

Salon.com featured an article with what they consider to be the top quotations of the decade. This one’s my favorite:

6. “As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know they’re some things we do not know. But there’re also unknown unknowns; the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Feb. 12, 2002, effectively telling us that the government had no idea what it was doing by invading Iraq.

The above made me laugh and cringe at the same time.

While I’m talking about Salon.com, check out Glenn Greenwald’s article The Degrading Effects of Terrorism Fears, in which he argues that “A citizenry drowning in fear and fixated on Safety to the exclusion of other competing values can only be degraded and depraved.” There’s really way too much in that article for me to grab and quote here so check it out on the site. Definitely worth reading, as is everything else Greenwald writes.

Children of Dust is about the evolution of the author from Abir, Amir, and then finally, into reformist blogger Ali Eteraz. In his first book, this former blogger takes the reader through his childhood from a village in Pakistan to his life in the United States.

His father had promised Allah (swt) a servant in the form of his son if he and his wife were granted a boy. Born with that covenant hanging over his head, Abir Ul Islam, now known as Ali Eteraz, did strive to be the best Muslim he could be while growing up in Pakistan.

In the United States, he tries his best to fit in, even changing his name upon excessive teasing from classmates - Abir= “A Beer”, etc. Ah, the creativeness of classmates when it comes to foreign names. I know that pain so well. Second graders can be so cruel.

But I digress…

In college he focuses back to religion. He dodged non-Muslim girls until he came to the realization that he needed to find himself a nice, pious Muslim girl which ultimately leads him on a trip back to Pakistan. His trip to Pakistan becomes a defining event. Due to events detailed in the book, he came back a different person.

That episode is what fuels another part of Eteraz, the part that slides away from Islam. This part was … interesting to say the least. Here is a guy with a lot of knowledge about Islam who stopped believing while giving the outwards appearance that he was, in fact, a pious Muslim brother. Out of all the less than stellar acts he shares in his book, this is the one that really made me wary of Ali Eteraz. I mean, he was pretending to be a good Muslim, even going as far as getting himself elected president of his college’s Muslim Student’s Association. He only seemed to do things to get attention, for people to notice and respect him.

Due to the aforementioned, I couldn’t really decide how I felt about the author. I didn’t appreciate the kind of person he described himself to be. However, I did appreciate his honesty. We can clearly see his motivations in his life and what drives him to do what he does. You may not agree with his actions but either way, Eteraz is a gifted writer. He could have sugar-coated events and periods of his life but instead he writes a memoir that I could respect even if, at times, I didn’t really respect the man himself.

This is not necessarily a memoir of Pakistan like it says on the cover, but more like a memoir of a Pakistani- American. Read Children of Dust with an open mind to find about how Eteraz coped with too-strict imams at the madrasas in his village in Pakistan, how he escorted the Tablighi Jamat around the United States much to his embarrassment, the intense situation he found himself in while in Pakistan, and how after 9/11, Eteraz’s life took yet another turn. This book is by no means the end of the story that Ali Eteraz and so it will be interesting to see what his future writing projects entail.

As 2009 ends, I just want to say that I’m really grateful for all the things I have in my life. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of complaining as of late (apologies to the folks who have had to listen to all that) but in the end, I have quite a bit in my life and I need to acknowledge that.

Some pretty cool things have happened this year:

-I finally took my GREs. When I’ll apply to grad school is another story…

-I got a job after 8 months of unemployment. In the process, I’ve met some pretty cool people.

- The nephew and niece are just as cute as ever.

-Um, a bunch of other stuff.

-I got a nice flat panel monitor to use with my laptop?

Okay I’m reaching but I can’t seem to remember anything else to put on this list.

-Oh wait! Dave Eggers drew this really cool picture in my copy of The Wild Things:

And with that, I’ll leave you all be.

Happy New Years! InshAllah may everyone have a great 2010!

A lot of sites are not only writing about their “Top 10s” of the past year, but of the past decade. So I thought, why not do that too? I mean, my opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s.

I’ll give you a second to stop laughing…

Here it is, my “Top 10″ of the last decade. DISCLAIMER: I’m not proclaiming these to be the 10 best ever as I am well aware that everyone has different tastes. Also, I’m sure I forgot about something here or there that I wish I would have included.

In no particular order:

Donnie Darko - There’s just something about this movie… I can’t quite explain why I’m so into it. For some reason, Donnie speaks to me. All I know is that no one can ever doubt my commitment to Sparkle Motion.

Pan’s Labyrinth - I think that how one interprets the ending determines whether one is an optimist or a cynic.

Children of Men - A lot of the movies about the not-so-distant future depicted dystopian societies and this was one of them. There are some excellent scenes in this movie.

Spirited Away - I remember when I was watching this movie for the first time on DVD. I hadn’t been that engrossed in a movie in quite a while. I was so deep into the fantastical world that Miyazaki created, I couldn’t get up to make myself a mocha even though I really wanted one. That is huge, my friends.

Pride and Prejudice - I wasn’t too keen on watching this movie because I wasn’t a Keira Knightly fan and I thought the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice was really good. There wasn’t much too improve upon, y’know? And yet, I saw this movie despite my misgivings and loved it. This is probably the girliest movie I like although I didn’t think of it is a girly movie until I had let my manager borrow it and he returned it like this.

V or Vendetta - Remember, remember the 5th of November… I don’t know how many conversations this movie inspired. Everyone I know who watched it wanted to talk about it and give their take on the events that transpired in the film.

The Prestige - I just thought this movie was awesome and ended up reading the book it based on, which was great in its own regard.

Waking Life - I get something out of this movie every single time I watch it. In the simplest way to describe it, it’s an animated movie about dreams but it really is a lot more than that. Whenever I recommend Waking Life to someone I always say the same thing, that it’s not a popcorn movie that you watch with your friends, it’s a movie you have in which you have to focus and stick to it, even if the beginning doesn’t seem to make any sense. Trust me though, it pays off.

Before Sunset - I love how this sequel to Before Sunrise is set 9 years later, with the actors 9 years older themselves. I wasn’t sure which one I liked better and kept on flip-flopping between the two before Before Sunset finally won out as my favorite. Jesse and Celine had more realistic views in this movie than in the other one, mostly due to their characters’ experiences in the time that passed in between the movies. I definitely have appreciated this movie more upon multiple viewings.

Monsters, Inc.- Hands down my favorite Pixar movie. “Oh, hey. We’re rehearsing a - a scene for the upcoming company play called uh, Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me. It’s a musical.”

Honorable Mention: Volver, Once, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Persepolis, Batman Begins/The Dark Knight, Memento.

And there it is. Feel free to tell me how lame my movies are and that the movies on your list are oh so much better than mine