Setting sun

In the name of God, Most Merciful, Most Kind

* * *

The sky is resplendent in the glory of the past few moments.

Our window displays a crystal sky obviously protected by an invisible hand that pushes away gathering storm clouds that appear, disappear and re-appear over and over again.

A vision that is reflective of our internal battles, as we struggle to find 'home'.

And truly, the home is with God, the Everlasting. But how do we get to that home, and where do we set up shop in the meantime?

Living in Saudi, though for only a short while before this impromptu visit to Canada, had not necessarily brought me any closer to figuring anything out but it did serve as an opportunity to reflect on many assumptions that had almost prevented me from making the trip at all. Here is an entry from my journal on the flight back (with some later modifications).

July 17, 2008:

"It wasn't that long ago that I was taking a similar flight, in the opposite direction. Just three months separate that other journey and this one and in the process, dozens of realizations.

How was it possible that I, a person who sees herself as educated, open-minded and tolerant, had shrunk from the thought of moving to a country where I had come to believe represented the failure of modern-day Islam to participate in a global village which represented - at least theoretically and in varying degrees - thinking that had evolved inadvertently towards reflecting a traditional Islamic ethos, ie. human rights, justice, equality, fairness, honesty, consensus, consultation, scientific discovery, tolerance, etc.

After all, the mantra that Islam had once been a beacon of light to a (Western) world which had been shrouded in the dark ages way back when, has become stale, no matter how true it remains. And of course, with the media constantly telling me how backward everything to do with Islam has become, it is perhaps no wonder that I saw in Saudi Arabia all that was wrong with the global Muslim community, termed the 'Ummah'.

Moving through the marble expanse of a typical sparkling shopping mall in Jeddah, I would permit myself a chuckle at the common cartoon of a woman dressed in black being warned of letting her long gown, abaya, get caught in the escalator. It was slowly dawning on me that living life differently from the West did not necessarily mean that life would be completely hopeless.




Besides, it is not that Saudi Arabia had chosen not to participate in the world -- on the contrary, inter-faith discussions were held in Mecca in June, not insignificant as Mecca is the symbolic heart of the faith. Not to mention the King's overtures towards representatives of a flurry of faiths during a specially convened conference in Madrid, Spain in July.

But from the very beginning, I refused to see anything positive emanating from the desert land (except the Holy places, of course) because dark, monolithic shadows haunted my mind. The shadows of those shrouded women who were indistinguishable from one another in their black flowing robes brought out the amateur, radical feminist inside me and threatened to destroy any moment of wait . . . that moment before passing judgment, allowing the senses to absorb all that assails it and calmly, with dignity, intellectualize and even appreciate God's magnificent plan:

"O humankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another. Verily, the most honourable of you with Gos is that (believer) who has strong faith. Verily, God is All-Knowing, All-Aware." [Quran, 49:13]

. . . more on that to come.