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About Asbah Alaena

I’m Asbah. A servant of Allah who is a muslim by birth and choice, Accountant by way of studies, an artist at heart and a Unschooling mom to 5 kids. This blog had been my major writing rendezvous when I was young but post Gaza things have take a different turn. I hope to write more about our unconventional life choices specially in todays day and age.

Pancakes.

My kids love to help me in the kitchen, the get to play with water, pretend they are cooking by stirring pulses in pots and they get to mix! and they love mixing and mixing! what an awesome feeling it must be for them.

Even my 20m old come over and ask if he can ‘hep’? (help) and when I ask how he responds ‘miks miks’ (mix! mix!). So this fine morning kids wanted to eat (read MAKE) pancakes and we gathered our basic ingredients to start working. (it yields almost 10 pancakes) Continue reading

Healing a Broken heart.

I am a woman, a wife, a mommy and a human being. And that being said I proved I have survived heart aches.2781bec9b54da09c878a245200b9156b

Years ago when I first realized that there is something missing in my heart, a strange feeling of being incomplete, a craving of being loved despite the flaws and shortcomings I have – I thought this is the sign of my coming to age, my time to look for a potential mate. Continue reading

A beautiful afternoon!

Grrrr!! I am angry. I am frustrated. I am upset and I am tired!!!
The sun is still bright, and there are still kites in the blue skies. A faint sound of airplane and my baby’s pause to salute this magnificent sight – an airplane in skies. She’s driving her car in reverse and then ahead again and shes looking at me for approval, a gentle nod, a kind smile, anything! It will make her feel nice probably the same way I sought for my mothers approval. I craved for that! And it already seems eons ago.
There are birds and chittering of kids! a one shoe-ed ib wants me to kiss his hands and his bib!

Honey came all the way up to give me this cup of soothing chamomile.

I hope all this pleasing life, ibs laughters and this tea makes me forget my strange sadness! I go cheer my girls achievement of taking the log out and climb it. And I live this fleeting surpassing beautiful life!

Paper door charm

I am not allowed to drill a hole anywhere in my place or pin a thumbpin or nail a nail! how sad is that? well, very.

This restriction and an extreme shortage of craft supplied here in Cayman Islands, made me think of possible creative home decor with just colored paper, glue and pair of scissors.

I made this pieve using  the toilet paper technique, but instead of the toilet paperI rolled up around 4 inches wide paper strips and glued them to look like toilet paper roll. I had then cut them in 1/2 inch pieces and glued them to look like a flower. orange in the middle, pink flower and green leaves.

Oh and yes! i taped it to the door. you remember no holes?? yeah!

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a substentially ordinary day in the life of significantly noone

Written this two days before Ramdan, editted and posted here 🙂 critic is always welcome.

having slept early last night vowing to wake up at the crack of dawn, the eye opening ceremony revealed 5 47, a very serene morning light made its way to my room as i became gradually aware of the fact that the fajar time was passing fleetingly and that also made me realize my vow i made the night before. nothing however, encouraged me enough to jump out of bed, recite the dua, march to the bathroom and offer salat. I guess this ordeal is about to deliberately fall in the abyss of absurd immoralness, lose the track of iman/faith/dogma/believe and for once swagger between the rationality and irrationality of ibadah.
I am doomed.
and most sad is the fact that this facet is conscious, just to fall as low as possible harboring the desire that Ramdan will somehow revive in me the zeal i savored for long, that i boisterously possessed, cherished and thought will always remain, which however passed as quickly as i never thought it would.

i re slept, to dream about the nonexistent beings, non-existent feelings, non-existent non-existence. I drown deep into the fake fakism and nihilistic nihilism. nothing exist. eulogy to my narcissism.

re-woke at around 9 15, the time i should be at office, ideally. Jumped out of bed, and would later lean to the stupidly puffed face and eyes that appeared in the mirror. did not iron my abaya, the practice i had been accustomed to for a week or so, put thick layer of kohl to conceal swollen eyes, i’m wearing kohl more now, more than i ever ever did. i dont know why is this for.

I took time in doing everything, plaited my hair instead of the customary bun i do, took out the most worn out abaya, the only difference was my new chappals.

I made it a point to be late. too late to be late, guilt was overpowering me again, and still when i reached office none of the seniors had arrived, i was partially relieved, partially frustrated.

The song i randomly heard at in the morning kept on reverberating in my mind, which i shamelessly acknowledged, having my eyes fixed at the thick purple clouds overcasting the skies and the brilliant green that is littered at the hills, silence obstructed me. I kept on reading stupid random blogs at gprs.

very reluctantly completed the tests i was supposed to do, kept on blaming everyone for everything that went wrong and that didnt go wrong, drank awfully too sweet tea and wondered the wondering.

i was empty, the kind of empty that echo everything, and my idiosyncratic everything means sadness. i paid a tad too much attention of every one passing by and desperately tried to make your face in their faces, i am not used to looking at people’s faces specially when i am driving and when i am thinking.

i find it irritating, the ordeal of looking at others. but today i elusively made it a point too. I sought for you in everyone. I think it is partly because of you too, my slipping is because of lacking the mentor that you so much used to be for me.

so then, i didnt want to work, the wave of nostalgia that drowned me a week back was still dragging me to deep waters and i found myself scratching old memories I’d dumped to mourn later. Lay-ter. my later was not never. My Never was later. So, I threw them, consciously aware, in the dank gloomy corner to rot, so that i would take them out later, when the realization that living without you was so much possible, would atleast become less painful if not painful at all. and the I, presumably valiant enough to bear all the broken jagged pieces of self, moved on to the course of perfunctory life.

Maybe the reluctance came at other thoughts and facts like that i saw my-would-be-could-be-prospective better half’s picture last night. i told mom i was not interested in being into such relationships. the relation with pictures and email ids and phone numbers.

I hadnt been online for a long time and pretended that i didnt want to in the first place. i reckon i have stopped persuading myself with my own stupid vindications.

I struggled with tears, with the nightmarish reality and almost real dreams, surreal, i could almost touch it, taste it, feel it and own it. Almost.

Then he gave me another stupid test to make and even upon my telling him that it is useless, he insisted. So I made faces and did it. Living has become lying blatantly for me. The irony of my breathing is that my truths metamorph in sheer vicious lies. the jukebok of paradoxes i possess makes me the joke that i am to myself in my head and beyond. The jovial self is thin peel over the crude-skin monster taht I am. an avid dreamer is escapist, who try to run from reality and hide in the invisibility she’s created for herself. the silent. the empty. the i.

Feelings do surface in the perfectly calm seas like sea-serpents, but then they’re too ephemeral to understand, consider or even feel it. SO, I the very garrulous, with absolutely no desire to speak words, switched to this pixel nebula to satiate the desire of doing the talking.

My plan for Ramdan is done, and I with all my heart, want that this time i do accordingly, that this time i learn to improve and improve as well. and i no longer get caught in the trite rituals without soul, without purpose, without the divine intoxication, amen.

I got an early off. so, I came down, sat in the car again wrongly parked, heeded to the market which was full of people, freakishly i reversed to get back home instead, past the adnan sidiqqui’s angry poster, past the bubbly’s child’s picture, past the lemoun pani wala, past the crowded marketplaces, past the man who’s new car i was about to hit, past the happy and seemingly happy people shopping for ramdan, past the birds, past my loneliness, my stupidness, my madness, my in-capabilities, my my-ness, my life.

i drove into the sun.

Urdu poem

My second Urdu ghazal.
I’m not very well versed in urdu/english or for that matter in any language. But still, this is a meek attempt to express the feelings i have:

munafqat chupi rahi ata’atoun kay wujood mai
muje jan’natoun ki talab rahi, in dozakhoun ke jumod mai…

kuch aysay bazi hari hay ke zikr bhi muhaal hai
kisk aur ko sanam kea aur pari rahi sujood mai

mayri sab ebadatain bay samar mayri sab reya’zatain bay asar
mai dhondti rahi manzilain wo pinhan rahin Duroud mai!

sans layna qarz tha tayri bundigi ka mayre Allah
mainay zindagi tayag di kabi jhoot mai kabhi soud mai!

Achievement.

Just to keep the track of things,

I have Alhamdolilah learnt the names of Allah SWT!
and working on learning the names of The chapters of Quran!
the surats InshAllah ta’aala will follow next!
May Allah give me courage and iman and save me from the whispers of shaitan and shar of my nafs. amen!