Pains

Throughout Ramadhan I was worried that I wouldn't be able to attend the mosque for prayers when Eid arrived due to problems with my left knee. Just before fasting month I found myself unable to bend said knee properly. The problem righted itself, but reappeared on two occasions in the course of the month. It is actually possible to do prayers in congregation even if you can't perform all the movements. Doing them seated is perfectly acceptable - but I'm ignobly self-conscious about this and concerned that people will assume I just don't know what I'm doing and my dreadful Malay just isn't up to explanations. Also there's no particular reason why it should have been so important to me to attend the mosque for prayers yesterday. It just was. And somehow I coped, even though my knee was indicating it was not entirely happy with proceedings in the last sequence of the prayers. In fact, I used a chair at home for the three remaining sets of prayers of the day.

This is all by way of prelude to a bit of a catastrophe today. This morning I managed to wrench my back reaching for a t-shirt in a bag. The result is that I'm now moving with all the grace of a ninety-year-old with pain, or rather extreme discomfort, as a constant companion, except when I'm lying flat on the floor, which is often. Ah, the irony of it all.

I'm also finding myself in the grip of another form of extreme discomfort. Part of my post-Ramadhan reading has been in the form of J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. As usual Coetzee's writing is taking me to places I'd rather not go, but making it impossible for me to avoid them.

The dark places are real and must be dealt with.

Blessings

Hari Raya Puasa; Eid-ul Fitr; 1 Shawal 1431

Attended Hari Raya prayers with Hamzah and Fuad at the mosque by the sea in Melaka - near Makhota Parade. Sea breeze very welcome after a morning drive through a largely deserted downtown Melaka. Prayers were followed by a welcome cuppa at the White Coffee place opposite Makhota, a reminder of the pleasures of actually drinking during the day.

Then we did Friday Prayers at the mosque in Alor Gajah. A pleasing variety.

Much merriment & some tears seeking forgiveness and doling out the green packets. Will remember both as a fair summary of the concerns of this life when lived well.

Selamat Hari Raya to all.

Crossing The Line

30 Ramadhan 1431

Just been killing the last minutes of fasting down at the Pasar Malam at Alor Gajah with Hamza & Ashraf. As is so often the case, the final day has proved peculiarly taxing, basically because I've spent so much of it watching the clock.

So it's another year of a special and difficult variety of learning almost completed - with the prospect of learning the same lessons in new ways in years to come, God willing.

The Finishing Line In Sight

29 Ramadhan 1431

We're now in Melaka, and it took quite some getting here.

The original plan was to leave after the zuhur prayer - that's around the middle of the day. I needed to spend the morning at work helping to prepare an examination hall and other sundry matters whilst Noi was running the last of her many errands. Some fierce rain slowed everything down, reminding us that whilst Man proposes, God disposes. And then we were off, as far as Geylang where I needed to pay my zakat - the sort of annual tithe on income & property we pay, usually in Ramadhan. I have made a habit of paying most of mine at Darul Arqam, the centre for converts at which I once took classes. It's a jolly little place with, thankfully, very short queues for payment this afternoon, so we were soon on our way, after Noi had bought a few more mysterious things related to her baking at a specialist shop for all your baking needs just around the corner.

By now I was estimating we'd arrive in Melaka a good while before the time for breaking the fast. But then Noi reminded me that we'd decided to pay a visit to Alexandra Hospital to see Zainab's mum who'd been recently admitted after a fall in which she'd broken her leg. The old lady was looking quite a bit the worse for wear, having just come round from an operation, but it was nice to have had the chance to pop by if only for a few minutes.

Unfortunately back in the car park came the sudden realisation that somewhere along the way I had parted company from my employment pass. The green card is an absolute necessity for getting through immigration, and vital to the smooth running of my life here. So this was a blow of major proportions - though made a little easier by my sense of certainty that the card was in the hands of the young man I'd paid the zakat to an hour or so before. A quick call to Darul Arqam confirmed this (accompanied by huge shivers of relief from me and the missus) and off we went to retrace our steps across the island to reclaim it.

The traffic was now getting heavier, but wasn't too bad, and we finally made it out if the country by the early evening. This meant that we had to break our fast on the road, something we don't do often but to which we're not exactly unaccustomed. It was sort of fun really, stopping off at Pagoh, the timing being propitious, and dining on dates, a polar puff and water underneath the noisily gathering bird population of Malaysia.

And now we've arrived, eaten well, started to sort of unpack, and I'm gazing ahead to the end of Ramadhan,with just one day of fasting left. The truth is though that there's no real finish to any of the journeying. It's just nice to entertain that illusion sometimes.

Got Soul

28 Ramadhan 1431

These new atheist chappies who deny the existence of the soul and suchlike obviously suffered deprived childhoods. I was reminded of the richness of my own watching a lovely little documentary this afternoon entitled Soul Deep. Its subject - the southern soul of Stax: Otis, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Sam & Dave, Aretha, Booker T and the MGs.

Sweet soul music. Hymns to the Maker.

Making Over

27 Ramadhan 1431

It's remarkable how many television programmes you can watch on cable based on the notion of the 'makeover'. I can't remember when I first heard the word used in this sense but I don't think it was all that long ago. Yet now the concept is ubiquitous.

Folks in dire financial difficulties have their budgets made over; slovenly dwellings that probably constitute health hazards are made over; bodies that have piled on many too many pounds/kilograms make themselves over; people with absolutely zero sense of what to wear and how to present themselves (a bit like myself really) are stylishly made over The list isn't endless - it just feels that way.

The essential plot of the drama - for that's what it is - remains consistent: a team of 'lifestyle experts' of one sort or another are assembled to intervene. The victim is shown to be past all redemption, a dire warning to us all. No matter, against the odds our experts persevere and at some point in the mind of the victim-now-turned-beneficiary the light dawns. Salvation arrives in the 'reveal'. Saved from themselves our new man/woman celebrates a new life, or sometimes an old one which has been 'given back' to them. And all ends happily ever after - except for a sneaking suspicion that perhaps it doesn't.

Curiously this does make good television of a sort. It's difficult not to enjoy feeling superior to folks who've screwed up big-time, and then that's off-set by a warm sense of one's charity in feeling good that they've finally managed to do something about the mess they created.

Just a suggestion though. Yes, it's possible to change the direction of a life. A new, better self can be found. But not neatly edited in less than an hour.

Floored

26 Ramadhan 1431

The missus has just announced we will be eating on the floor this evening. We've done it before, she says. And I suppose we have, though I can't quite remember.

The table is unavailable for dining as it has been made massively available for biscuit trays and their attendant biscuits and all the cards and notes from Teachers' Day. Normally Noi and myself would eat at the coffee table - our default setting, in fact. But with Rozita, Fuad, Fifi & Fafa gracing us with their presence before we set off for an evening at the bazaar at Geylang that's not a feasible option. Hence the excitement of the floor as a dining area. And excitement it is, as I know well from the twinkle in Noi's eye as she made her announcement.

Yes the disruption caused by all the preparation for Raya is not really the price we pay for the fun of it all, it is the fun of it all.

Further Education

25 Ramadhan 1431

I am a creature of routine, as are we all - but me more than most.

It wasn't always this way. I remember leaving home for university some time in the last century and feeling a certain desperation to escape what I then regarded as the stifling confines of home. I no longer understand that young man.

Now away from home for one night, at a camp we're having in school for our drama guys, all my fasting month routines are shredded and the fast is twice, three times as difficult as it would normally be. Mind you, I'm enjoying the company of the young people at the camp and watching them relishing the new-ness of it all helps me understand my old self a little better.

Make it new! makes a nice slogan. If I'm not mistaken that old fascist and, on his day, wonderful poet Ezra Pound was churning that one out decades ago. But I prefer to stick to what I know, thanks, with just enough glimpses of the uncomfortably new to make me feel a bit younger. Or maybe just less old.

An Education

23 Ramadhan 1431

Sometimes I think there's very little I've ever really learned in my life. But I know for sure that nothing, and I mean nothing at all, tastes better than a glass of water, a bowl of longans, two dates and a cup of hot sweet tea when you've been fasting all day. And somehow that's enough.

On Feeling Tired

22 Ramadhan 1431

I dozed spectacularly this afternoon, as I did yesterday also. A well-timed holiday for Teachers' Day put me in a position to do so and I gratefully took advantage. This was in addition to a return to the comfort of our bed after the morning prayer where I luxuriated until 9.00 am. Yet I still feel tired, such weariness being the default state for the month. I suppose the tiredness is related in some way to fasting though I'm not entirely sure how.

Only three days of work are left (one being a Saturday I'll be spending at our Drama Camp) before we get a week off, the week in which Eid falls. So that has worked out well, and I'm thankful.

But I can't say I mind the tiredness. In truth, it's something I almost welcome for its otherness. It's a way of redefining one's relations with the world, once the potential for irritation is overcome. It's important to ride the feeling, going with the flow, as they used to say. The gift of patience is almost inherent in the inability of the body to get too excited about anything. I suppose the danger is of breeding a kind of easy passivity, but there's so much to be watchful of that passive and active states of mind seem to balance out.

The odd thing is that I can't recall ever feeling actually stretched in Ramadhan though one might assume it would be otherwise.