Advice from a tree

I had one of those weeks where I felt like I was grappling for a moment of peace and there wasn’t one free for the taking. Under the weather and yet working until 8 p.m. each night dealing with a flood of news – including the sombre and irritating headlines coming out of Egypt with the second anniversary of the Jan. 25 popular revolt – it was tough to find a tranquil moment to pause. 

Perhaps that’s why I’m having a tough time falling asleep tonight as I attempt to unwind for what I hope will be a rejuvenating weekend. Yet as I sit here sleepless, the labours and stress of the past five days have already faded, and what is sticking in my mind is the moment of calm that I did, indeed, find in the chaos.

During a 20-minute break the other day, I took a rare afternoon stroll around the complex of buildings near my office, passing by cafes and restaurants which were, as usual, teeming with professionals having lunch breaks or business meetings. With no appetite to mingle, I settled on a bench in the grassy field situated below the bustling bistros, a pretty palm tree by my side, to enjoy some pleasant afternoon sunshine.

As I looked at the tree, I recalled an e-mail I had received the day before from a colleague that was entitled, “Advice from a tree,” which had been making its rounds through social media channels. It included a simple-yet-beautiful list of counsels on what we can learn from trees, namely to:

SubhanAllah moment

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I love it when I have a SubhanAllah moment.

It’s one of those defining moments during which you witness a miracle of nature or are reacting to a turn of events that shows the inherent destiny of things. It reminds you of the perfection in all that God ordains, so much so that in the very instant it happens you say, SubhanAllah, meaning “Glorious is God”.

I had one of those moments today. I’ll try to recreate it but I’m certain I won’t really be able to capture its significance because, in the end, it was quite mundane occurrence.

My mom has this jeweller from whom she likes to buy ornaments – earrings, rings, bracelets – from time to time. A couple of years had passed when we last visited this jewellery shop in October. Nonetheless, when we walked in, the same young gentleman who had served us previously was there, and the shop was as it had been: warm and welcoming.

This time, the jeweller was married with a baby daughter, who lived with his wife at their home in India. He happily showed us a photo of his bundle of joy. My mom instantly felt comfortable with this gentleman and, while there are literally hundreds of other stores around town, she decided she wouldn’t like to shop for gold trinkets anywhere else.

Last weekend, my mom thought we should pay the jeweller another visit – this time for herself. While she is always helping my sisters and I find nice things for our wardrobes, mom rarely takes the time to choose items for herself. It was her turn. But alas, we arrived at the shop to find it had shut down.

It was quite disappointing. This world is full of places and people, but only a handful of them leave an impression on you and bring you comfort. My mom’s instant reaction was one of anxiousness. She wondered what happened to the jeweller, hoped that he had kept his job and not been let go and sent home.

A week passed, and this morning my mom asked me to give this gentleman a call on the mobile number included on the business card he had given me a few months ago. I did so promptly, only to find the phone switched off. He must have left the country, we deduced immediately. 

Our day carried on and later that afternoon, we found ourselves at a different mall across town that we rarely visit. My mom suggested I check with the information desk if the jewellery shop had a branch at this mall. Perhaps if we visited it, we could inquire about the fate of the employees in the other store and potentially locate this gentleman. Caught up with errands and grocery shopping, we didn’t make it to the information desk. That would have to wait for another day as it was getting late.

My sharpened pencil

I'm taking part in an online exhibition called "Muslim Women's Arts & Voices," which is being organised by the San Francisco-based International Museum of Women and is set to launch in early 2013. Muslim women from around the world will be engaging in monthly workshops and discussions in different cities and contributing works of art/writing/poetry/photographs/video, etc, for the exhibition.

We had our first workshop in Sharjah, a city in the United Arab Emirates, earlier this week and I felt so enlivened and inspired by the richly diverse and talented women I met. We were asked to bring one object to represent our identity. I had jotted down some ideas on what I would like to say about myself -- as well as the object I chose which was, simply, a sharpened pencil -- prior to the workshop. Thought it would be relevant to share these here, too!

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My name is Daliah Merzaban, I have Egyptian roots, I was born and raised in Canada and I’ve lived in the UAE for seven years working as a financial journalist, analyst and editor. In my current role, I’m an emerging markets editor at Bloomberg News covering finance in the Middle East and North Africa.

That’s my day job. But what I have become most passionate about in the past few years is uncovering the layers of my faith in God through Islamic spirituality, and I write about this journey on my blog, which I started almost two years ago, as well as for the Huffington Post.

For my object, I wasn’t very complex, I chose a pencil and the notepad that accompanies it. If I am to choose one thing that I have carried with me throughout my life it is this item: I’ve been a journalist since I was 17, and before that was always very interested in creative writing, poetry, short stories, from a very young age. So the written word is what I spend most of my very long hours in the office and my free time working with.

I also chose a pencil because before I truly embraced my Islam, I perceived faith as something I needed to enter into with my eyes closed, without rationale, analysis or intellect. To my surprise, as I have investigated Islamic teachings more thoroughly in the past three years, I realised that it was through the acquisition of knowledge and use of reason and logic that certainty of God’s existence becomes most palpable. For me, the pencil is a very simple representation of the acquisition of knowledge, which is a fundamental right for every human being.

In the Quran in Surah 96, God reveals to Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, a verse through the Angel Gabriel whereby he orders the Prophet to "Read!" Saying: “Your Lord is the Most-Bountiful One. Who taught by the pen. Taught man what he did not know.” I think these words underscore our responsibility as Muslims to acquiring knowledge to gain a more thorough understanding of our faith.

A pencil is not permanent, it needs to continue to be sharpened and it represents my understanding that I’m on a journey of discovery and I don’t have all the answers. I need to always keep an open mind, and a blank piece of paper in my notebook.

(Read about how studying Arabic reignited my love of pencils and the written word here)

The 40-day spiritual challenge

When I decided to get my spiritual routine on track more than two years ago, I did it in 40 days.

Drawing from the example of an acquaintance who was following a Sufi-inspired programme for attaining consistency in prayers, I decided that I wouldn’t miss any of the five daily prayers ordained by Islam for 40 days, or about six weeks. I wrote the start date on my BlackBerry’s digital calendar, and kept virtual track of my progress each day.

Under the challenge described to me by this individual, if you miss a prayer –because, for instance, you slept through the alarm and missed the pre-dawn prayer known as fajr, or the mid-afternoon asr prayer passed you by because of a long drawn-out business meeting – you have to start back at zero.

I was determined not to let that happen since, to my surprise, the prayers weren’t as tedious as I’d always imagined them to be. They were, rather, a much-welcomed, regularly timed respite from whatever pressures the day had in store for me. I was told that once one completed the 40 days, with the right intention, s/he would never willingly miss a prayer again.

Whoever devised that programme was perfectly right because, give or take a few days of sleeping through my alarm, I haven’t allowed a prayer to pass me by since June 2010, when I started the 40-day spiritual drill.

Courtesy Flickr

It’s difficult to describe just how, but reaching the milestone elevated me to a higher stage of spiritual understanding of my obligations toward our Creator. Life began to revolve around my prayer schedule, rather than a previous strategy of squeezing them in here and there when possible. I am now able to detach from even the most hectic of schedules for quiet prayers like clockwork every day.

During the 40-day prayer course, I read the Quran for the first time and recall being struck when I came upon a passage that described how Prophet Moses, peace be upon him, received the 10 commandments during a 40-day retreat on Mount Sinai.

That sparked my curiosity about the significance of 40-day spiritual workouts in the history of our faith. Prophet Jesus, peace be upon him, too fasted for forty days and nights in the Judean Desert. The Last Prophet, Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him, spent the same amount of time meditating in a cave on Mount Hira when he received, at the age of 40, his first Quranic revelation.

Moment of clarity

When endeavouring to explain to someone how I uncovered my spirituality, I usually say it happened quite suddenly, in a moment of clarity.

Throughout my childhood and young adult years, God remained in the background of my consciousness. I believed in Him, and performed some rituals of worship to express this belief. Yet He rarely crossed my mind during day-to-day life, and I felt it was more important to focus my attention on intellectual advancement through academic and professional avenues.

I held myself to an elevated standard in work and study, always getting high grades on exams and maintaining a diligent work ethic that opened many opportunities for advancement. I sought happiness through ties of family and friendship, and on a couple of occasions, came close to forging a sincere commitment in marriage.

However, as it turned out, life was full of all kinds of mishaps and disappointments. My professional success was overshadowed by office politics or ill-intentioned colleagues who managed to drain my enthusiasm. Love relationships that seemed to be headed for marriage would unravel due to dishonesty and lack of integrity. And family ties would be put to the test by financial and health difficulties. The belief in God lurking in the background of my life wasn’t sufficient to help me deal with what was flooding in its foreground. 

With my lack of attentiveness to the practice of faith, I was unable to understand why God constantly placed hurdles in my path and left me to wallow in despair. It was as I was passing through one of these hurdles – frustrated, anxious and impatient to discover an answer – that I came to that moment of crisp, unhindered, spiritual and intellectual clarity.

In the Quran, which I hadn’t read up to that point, there is a description of a veil over the eyes of those who aren’t receptive to God’s message, a barrier that makes it inconceivable for them to understand faith in the true sense. Only by seeking answers with an open mind can one overcome this barrier. God refers to a divine light that, when it shines on the heart, lifts the veil and illuminates a holistic understanding of belief in God and the purpose of life. 

In my moment of clarity, it was as though I was moved from the former state to the latter state, from the “depths of darkness into light.”

“He will provide for you a Light to help you walk; He will forgive you your past: for God is Most Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (Quran 57:28)

A break in the clouds, photo courtesy of Flickr

It happened one morning before dawn more than two years ago. Unable to sleep I sat in my living room trying to decipher how to cope with the latest predicament; trying to understand why I deserved it. In a moment of inspiration, I knew the answer. What I perceived as a disappointment was actually a blessing, for it prompted me to question my state of existence, preparing me to be more receptive to God’s message and mercy.