Category Archives: Sufi

Honoring poet Mirza Ghalib

15 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Mirza Ghalib, Poetry, Sufi

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Yesterday we went to Mirza Ghalib‘s resting place. It is located in Nizamuddin neighborhood in Delhi, not far from Hazrat Inayat Khan’s dargha. Today was his URS celebration, which we attended in 2007. So in honor of the great Urdu poet and master of the ghazal, here is a poem by him:

Let the ascetics sing of the garden of Paradise –

We who dwell in the true ecstasy can forget their vase-tamed bouquet.


 
In our hall of mirrors, the map of the one Face appears

As the sun’s splendor would spangle a world made of dew.


 
Hidden in this image is also its end,

As peasants’ lives harbor revolt and unthreshed corn sparks with fire.


 
Hidden in my silence are a thousand abandoned longings:

My words the darkened oil lamp on a stranger’s unspeaking grave.



Ghalib, the road of change is before you always:

The only line stitching this world’s scattered parts. (trans. Daud Rahbar)
 
 
Ghalib

Mirza Ghalib was born in Agra December 17, 1797, and  died in Delhi on February 15, 1869. He was a very liberal mystic who believed that the search for God within liberated the seeker from the narrowly Orthodox Islam, encouraging the devotee to look beyond the letter of the law to its essence. His Sufi views and mysticism is greatly reflected in his poems and ghazals. As he once stated: 

“The object of my worship lies beyond perception’s reach; 
For men who see, the Ka’aba is a compass, nothing more.”

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Ghalib believed that if God laid within and could be reached less by ritual than by love, then he was as accessible to Hindus as to Muslims.

He once wrote in a letter to a friend: 

“In paradise it is true that I shall drink at dawn the pure wine mentioned in the Qu’ran, but where in paradise are the long walks with intoxicated friends in the night, or the drunken crowds shouting merrily? Where shall I find there the intoxication of Monsoon clouds? Where there is no autumn, how can spring exist? If the beautiful houris are always there, where will be the sadness of separation and the joy of union? Where shall we find there a girl who flees away when we would kiss her?” 


Info on Ghalib ~  http://www.poemhunter.com/mirza-ghalib/biography/

Peacock in the courtyard of Ghalib! photo by Shabda

Peacock in the courtyard of Ghalib! photo by Shabda

<>   <>   <>

New York Peace Walk, and remembering the Plaza

15 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by in Events, New York Peace Walk, peace pilgrimage, Plaza Hotel, Sufi, Travel

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Last week Shabda and I were in New York City for a gentle Peace Walk, inspired by Jack Kornfield. Buddhist, Muslim, Sufi, Jewish, and Christian leaders, we set the pace. I know that the power of that intention of peace held by nearly a thousand people walking in a line makes a kind of rain-of-light that falls on the intended wounds in our earth, and acts as a balm. When a Yogi sits in a cave peacefully, the crime rate in the world drops a little bit. And I believe this is practical thinking, not airy-fairy silliness. So I walk for Peace on Earth, particularly in the Middle East.

New York City knows pain. I feel when I am there, a kind of collective experience, a bit of the maturity the Europeans have. To give words to the feeling: Yes, we have known the harm of 9/11 directly, and that teaches us to overlook our differences and acknowledge a kind of brother-sisterhood beneath petty competition. It is just a layer, a whiff, like the smell of chestnuts, or the subway heat coming up through a sidewalk grill on a cool day. I notice it. I honor it.     I am sensitive right now to loss. <>

 THE PLAZA HOTEL

It is right to mourn
For the small hotels of Paris that used to be
When we used to be….
                        The Lost Hotels of Paris ~ Jack Gilbert
 

A day or so after the walk, I went to 5th Avenue and Central Park. We were meeting my sister-in-law for a stroll in the park. I was drawn to the Plaza Hotel. It is one of my childhood homes, and this year I have been going inside them all: near Chicago this spring – my own house of the first eighteen years; my deceased Grandmother’s beautiful place two miles away; and now the sublime Plaza, her sister, my Great Aunt Marie’s home for part of every year in the decades when the Plaza served as residences as well as hotel rooms. She was one of the last of those who got their mail there, and called it “home.” My eccentric Great Aunt took a special interest in me. She had no children of her own. My mother was unable to care for me in my teen years, and I was sent away to school, then college just outside New York City. Mrs. Paul Healy the permanent guest on the 13th floor was a kind of mother to me. My time with her was the sixties.

Me and Aunt Marie back in the day

Aunt Marie married the man who founded Lyon and Healy music stores, which did well in the depression. He played high-stakes Bridge on the French Riviera. Paul Healy died early, but she was a financial genius who played the stock market from the 40’s through 60’s, so she could afford this life in her widowed years. A strong independent woman!

She lived in the Plaza spring and fall, The Everglades Club in Palm Beach in the winter, and Claridges in London and the Meurice Hotel in Paris in the summer. She wore a reddish wig she called her transformation, gold lace-up heels, fancy French clothing and white gloves every time she went out. She would send me to Elizabeth Arden’s to get cleaned up, have my messy curls set in a Mad Men bee hive.

I’m ready to go…right out of Mad Men

We would go downstairs to the Persian Room for dinner to see Diahann Carroll sing: Everything’s Coming up Roses. I loved bringing my college friends to meet my “Auntie Mame.” For them it was a movie. Sometimes she fixed me up with men friends in their 50’s because at age 85, we all seemed young to her.  She had hopes for me that I would marry “royalty,” but those were dashed when I became a hippy in the late 60’s. She stopped writing me. Wouldn’t speak to her beloved niece who had moved to California and disappointed her so. I was bereft when she died before she saw my life bloom…

So as I walked from palatial room to room, the Palm Court, the Oak Room, The Edwardian Room, where we shared quiet dinners, [now a fancy men’s boutique,] I gave a silent thanks to my wacky, wonderful Aunt Marie who shared her glorious Manhattan with me years ago.

New salon where the Persian Room used to be: The Plaza

Writing in Mendocino with Wendy Taylor Carlisle

14 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by in book awards, Lama Foundation, Poetry, Sufi, Untold, Wendy Taylor Carlisle

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I leave Saturday, July 14 for Mendocino Woodlands for our annual Sufi Retreat. This year I will have Wendy Taylor Carlisle, my favorite poetry companion, to teach the afternoon writing class with me. We have traveled together and studied the written word since the mid-1990’s. I organized a small book tour in California for her when her second, award-winning poetry book, Discount Fireworks was released in 2008. After years of reading my prose and poetry,  She edited Untold. Every word. I could not have done it without her. I am lucky. She is as good an editor as she is a poet! Wendy received five Pushcart Prize Nominations, and many awards. < http://www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com/&gt; She just moved from Texas to Eureka Springs Arkansas.

If you are coming to Mendo for the week and plan to write, you are in for a treat.  If you would like to come for a day or 2 you are welcome to join the class. It goes from 4:30 until dinner in Dining-room Right. Here is a sample of Wendy’s words, a stretchy modern sonnet: Please note that the format is not exact.

THE CIRCUS OF INCONSOLABLE LOSS

There is only one ring for those sweating horses with the preternaturally                                                                                            
flat backs and the fat smooth rumps from which ladies
            in stained tights vault onto the sawdust
                        or another horse.
 
Only one ring for the hung-over clowns and their Volkswagen,
a car so old it must be pushed into the one ring
            which is also the one for the acrobats and the tigers and contortionists
                        and dogs that walk on their hind legs,
 
then stop to scratch their necks, itchy under spangled ruffs. Above them
wire walkers and trapeze guys swing,
                        mayfly-graceful. Under them the one ring
                                    reminds the audience to celebrate, each in their own
 
constrained and special way,
the emptiness they’ve come to in the spaces where other rings should be.

                                                            –from Rattle #32, Winter 2009

Wendy shows humor and skill in equal measures.

 
Snow White reconsiders (two versions: the first became a sonnet)
 
At first I knew nothing about him, imagined
his wide shoulders, his eyes dark as cloves.                                                                                                                                         
My hand tightened on doorknobs;
he could be in any room. On the dining
 
table, the plates waited for his thumbprint,
each single knife yearned toward his grip,
 
I made the seven beds: I swept,
a trace of aftershave seduced a napkin.
 
The old woman brought me a coffin.
I bit, climbed in, was caught and paned, a kiss
galloped toward me carrying salvation.
 
Impact. My lashes sprung, inaction
was out of the question. The apple had been irresistible
but what woman doesn’t later regret her appetite for fruit?
 
An early version: After She Finds Her Prince, She Reconsiders
 At first I knew nothing about you,

Tamam and Wendy in Quito…

eyes dark as cloves.  My hands tightened
on doorknobs.  You could be in any room.
Every table was set for you.  Each decorative platter
waited for your thumb-print, every perfect cloth
lacked only a trace of your aftershave
I swept the kitchen, I made these seven beds.
Eating an apple, my eyes widened impossibly
imagining  you, galloping toward me through the trees.
 

Wendy at Murshid Sam’s Dargah, Lama Foundation

Eugene! a university, a college, and a ring

21 Monday May 2012

Posted by in DJ Solomon Kahn, Eugene, Morocco, Sufi, Untold

≈ 6 Comments

Two lectures in 6 hours. Eugene, Oregon. University of Oregon, the “O” U. But first, I had to run into the store with the “O” and get my granddaughter Oona a size 3 cheerleading outfit with an “O” on the front. Oh, yes.

The university is beautiful. Brick buildings that have an East Coast flavor, except that the trees are so large and healthy, and there is the gorgeous green of Oregon everywhere. Rick Colby, Professor of Religion, teaches a large class on the Abrahamic Religions and this small class called “Women Sufis” – which he told me he really enjoys. He had invited me for tea the day before, and I was happy to be talking with this man who knew so much about Prophet Muhammad’s world and Sufism.

class on “Women Sufis”

I was to address the small class. It was a pleasure after the short bookstore talks. There was time to stretch out; discuss Khadija, Zaynab and the story of the time in 629 Prophet Muhammad withdrew from all his wives (nine probably), for twenty-nine days. I reported that this had a spiritual result, and that after the dust settled, the wives became known as the “Mothers of Islam.”

I showed pictures of Sufi Women Teachers, like Asha Greer of the Ruhaniat, and Daisy Khan, a Sufi women who heads two Muslim organizations in the USA with the aim of bringing awareness to the positive side of the activities and accomplishments of Muslim Women.

Murshida Asha Greer at Lama Foundation

Daisy Khan: Exec. Director of ASMA Society

I asked the students to tell me why they were there.  After class, Rick took me to lunch at a Thai Restaurant lunch, then we met Clif Trolin, who whisked me off to Lane Community College for the afternoon lecture.

Clif is the reason I was invited to Eugene.  He came to a bookstore reading I did in Santa Fe in August and said he’d like me to come to Lane. I was skeptical. I had been trying to find higher education venues that wanted to know about what was Untold, or overlooked about early Islam, but there had been little interest. So here was Clif – a philosophy teacher who teaches religions of the Middle East – taking up the challenge and making it happen. What a delight! Lane is impressive, modern, bustling with great activity. He asked Rick Colby to include me in his teaching program.

Clif Trolin & Sarah Washburn. Lane CC

Clif took me to Sarah Washburn’s class on The History of Islam, where I was to talk about “History’s Omissions, ” an opportunity to discuss Untold.  So I touched on matriarchy at the time just before Islam, the question of the number of wives of Muhammad, and the legal rights he facilitated. Here Instructor Sarah Washburn filled us in about when legal rights came to Europe. Much later. That showed just how advanced early Islam was in championing opportunities for the disenfranchised, as well as for women! I read from Untold, and brought out the visuals after the hour break. The class was almost two hours long! There were some good questions after.

Zarifah Spain, a friend from many years ago, was hosting me at her house in Eugene. She had attended both talks with me and was driving me back to her place when I looked down at my hands and noticed my ring was missing. The restroom under the stairs at Lane. So we drove back. It wasn’t there. I scribbled a description on the back of a business card and placed it on the sink, where I had left the ring 5 hours before. The missing ring.  This happened to be the Mariam Stone that my son Solomon’s Godfather, Todd, had found – along the Silk Route in 1976, had made into a ring and given to Joe Miller, my Spiritual Godfather.

My ring is missing….

At Solomon’s Bris Ceremony, when he was a week old, Joe gave it to me and said: “This is for Solomon.” I tried to give it to him as he reached his twenties, then thirties, but he said, “You Keep it, Mom.” After Solomon died on January 31 of this year, I started to wear it, and even talked about it at the memorial. The stone came from the formation of the Himalayas, an alchemist’s stone which allows the wearer to “keep cool under pressure and allows him to transform grave, even hopeless situations into creative and positive ones!” Now it was gone. I tried to release it, holding a thread of hope that it would return to me, but felt it was really gone  and wished the finder well.

The next morning I phoned the college. Nothing. Then as I got ready to step out the door to go to the airport, and home – I got the call. A woman named Loretta at The Issue Window at Lane had seen my card on the sink and thought someone had given the ring in at her window. Yes, she had it!

Zarifa, Clif and Tamam at Lane CC

Haqiqa, who had offered me the ride, said she might just be able to make it to Lane and back before my plane took off, but it would be close. She dropped me at the airport ……and showed up with the ring just as my plane was boarding.  A security guard – I had made friends with – identified Haqiqaa and rushed the piece through security, (which happened to be next to the gate) as the last passengers showed their tickets and headed for the Alaska prop-plane.

PS, This from Haqiqa today – When I arrived at the airport it was 12:47 so I thought I had missed the connection. I almost went to the post office instead. Surely a 1:10 flight had boarded already!   But I parked in front of the sliding doors at Alaska Airlines, in plain view of a policeman sitting in his car a few car lengths behind me. A large sign in front of me said, No Stopping No Waiting – If You Leave Your Vehicle, You will be Cited and Towed. I jumped out of the car and ran toward the door. The sliding doors opened sooner than expected, to reveal a security officer walking toward me. He said, “You have a ring for a passenger?” and smiled, holding out his hand.
Joyful surprise! “Yes!” I gave it to him, “I’m on my way to give it to her.” I thanked him and he turned and sprinted toward Security.

“Take me with you, Mom…into your life, into what you do.”  This message seemed to be from Solomon, something I wrote down the week after his death, There I was, sitting on the plane with the brown fossil set in silver on my finger again, gazing in disbelief. Gratitude, I kept thinking, all the way home through tears. Gratitude.

Alaska Airlines flight to Oakland by way of Portland, seat #13c

Meditation Retreat

10 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by in Sufi, Uncategorized

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This time of year I generally spend ten days on a hill in Sonoma County alternating between meditation and playing the djembe, a large drum.

There are fifty to eighty of us who gather  and create a held space which can allow the world to unwind out of the head and nervous system, so the heart have room to experience and express feeling – to clear.  The mind can open, and there it is! Nature and other brothers and sisters on the path of waking up and serving love, harmony, and beauty –  here we are in this place. New challenges and old rise like bread, to be noticed tasted, and released. Over and over. And the meals. Did I say the food was wonderful? Great cook!

This morning, after three days, I did some poetry writing and was amazed at the clarity and power of the words that appeared on my computer screen. I have been working on a piece for several weeks, but during this couple hours each line of words flew toward completion.

So now I go back to  five more days of sitting  on the cushion, twenty minutes at a time, and then rising to drum, feeling complex rhythms in my body as I play alongside  the master drummer.  <>  May the way continue to open! <>

Lama Foundation, and some good reading

25 Thursday Aug 2011

Posted by in Kazim Ali, Lama Foundation, Poetry, Robert Bly, Sufi

≈ 1 Comment

View over the Rio Grande looking West from the Dome at Lama

I’m back from nine thousand feet up in the Sangre de Christo Mountains above the Rio Grand River. My body feels strong and balanced.  It seemed a bit survival-like up there at cloud level. My brain seemed quiet and  breath labored as I climbed the trail to the grave site of Murshid Sam Lewis, to pay my respects.I’ve been doing this since 1975.  This year there was time for long meditations in the DOME, where I sat on an old-board floor with adobe walls crafted in eight facets. The room wrapped me in an earth blanket of calm and certainty. The dome arched above with its glass star at the top. This architectural jewel is over 40 years old and survived a fire that took most of that mountain some fifteen years ago. It feels like home.

Back in California, I pick up Kazim Ali’s wonderful book Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. Today I read the chapter: Twenty-Second Day.

I have always loved that a “day” in the Islamic calendar begins with the setting of the sun and continues through to the following sunset…. The body is like a day: it begins with the darkness of evening, ends with the ebbing of light.

Mmmmm. This kind of discovery tastes better than the fresh tomatoes in the garden.

The Dances of Universal Peace

Arabic writing goes from right to left, and its history is defined by a line of ancestors beginning with Grandmother Eve down to those who live on earth today, so the past streams out in front of us and the future flows behind us. Now there is the pattern of a day beginning at sunset and my brain is playfully awake with possibilities. I could work this into a poem and feel the patterns of the ancient desert people as they seem draw close, while I tap into this view of the day and night seen through this new lens.

Lama Foundation

While on Lama mountain I read a wonderful new book of poems by Robert Bly. I savored it. I gave it away and am now waiting for the next copy to arrive so I can’t check the poem I offer here for accuracy – the title poem from this beautiful and masterful collection:

 
                                                                                                  
 
 TALKING INTO THE EAR OF A DONKEY  by Robert Bly
 
I have been talking into the ear of a donkey.
I have so much to say! And the donkey can’t wait
To feel my breath stirring the immense oats
Of his ears. “What has happened to the spring,”
I cry, “and our legs that were so joyful
in the bobblings of April?” “Oh never mind
About all that,” the donkey
Says. “Just take hold of my mane, so you
Can lift your lips closer to my hairy ears.”

 

(From Talking into the Ear of a Donkey, W.W. Norton, ©2011

view of Lama from Ghost Ranch, across the desert

Ramadan & Reading The Qur’an

03 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by in Kazim Ali, Morocco, Ramadan, Sufi, Uncategorized

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God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth
Q: 24,25.
the Sahara Desert near Zagora, Morroco

I’m attuned to Ramadan – and the vast community which is marking the journey of the moon – by going toward this season’s blessings  so apparent to me! I intend to fast from separation from myself, my community, and from the Spirit of Guidance. I do not participate in the food fast. The Quranic verse that I picked on day 1 was Q: 3:84, the one that mentions Abraham, Moses, Jesus,  and others, and says we make no distinctions between any of them. I thought I’d pick a verse every day, but I’m still on that one. I wrote it out in Arabic and went back and forth with my lexicon. My Arabic is very rudimentary, but I love how it feels to pass behind that language curtain. The visual beauty of the letters holds me every time. [See the line from the Verse of Light at the end of this article.]

I’ve always liked the universal implications of this “no distinctions” verse.  Yesterday I was caught, netted by ’unzila ‘alayna from one of my favorite verbs NaZaLa. It us translated as “bestowed upon” but the root has a couple pages of definitions: descend, dismount, alight, go down, come down, dwell. Tanziil means revelation, a rain of blessing. The action seems to be coming from the outside. For me, the “God’s Throne” is inside, in my heart. So this is a curious transmission from the Infinite to finite understanding – all inside my Being, which is God’s Being. The translation goes: Say: we believe in God and what has been bestowed on high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac and Jacob and their descendents… Moses, Jesus and the other prophets: we make no distinction between any of them. And unto God do we surrender ourselves. <>  <>  <>

banner: "COEXISTENCE"

Michael Sells writes: “…Qur’anic Suras are at their most compelling when the exact relationship of one statement to another hangs in a balance, and instead of freezing into some clearly definable meaning, continues to resonate and pose questions that only a lifetime of searching can answer.”* *note: Approaching the Qur’an, by Michael Sells p. 27.

Part of this month of  mornings for me is a piece from Kazim Ali’s new book of journal entries, Fasting for Ramadan Tupelo Press. He is a favorite poet who has a chapter of his own sparkling reflections from each day of Ramadan. Here’s one I like:

Sixth Day: “…I love as well the cold needling rain of spring and the autumn drizzle so thick you can’t feel it but arrive home thoroughly soaked.

The soaking, I think to be covered, suffused, bathed, owned, by something you didn’t even know was around you.

I love the mysteries and the inexplainables. The Kaaba –– black house of God, called the Near Mosque, circumambulated by millions, determining the direction of Muslim prayers, the cube at the heart of the Masjid-e-Haram –– is empty inside.” <>

Best of all, this season –– I appreciate the “A-ha moments. May you enjoy many. Ramadan Karim!

God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth

Saved by Beauty: a new book about Iran

03 Friday Jun 2011

Posted by in Iran, Poetry, Shams-i-Tabriz, Sufi, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

On a Thursday  a couple weeks ago, Roger Housden launched his new book at the Marin bookstore  Book Passage. He shared the stage with Peter Coyote who asked him good questions. About 100 people turned out. Roger told the audience: “When I went to Iran I wanted to meet the creative people. Iran is 3,000 years old! Human rights, Sufi traditions of love and wisdom. I wanted to see how these were carried on in present day Iran.”

Roger Housden

Roger Housden has written a fine book.

Saved by Beauty, Adventures of an American Romantic in Iran is an elegant bridge between cultures. I read this slowly, tasting the literary flavors – not my habit, since I read quickly – even with poetry. I’m not into sappy “romantic” stuff. But this book is fresh and compelling. Unexpected. He is detained by Iranian Security. I mean really detained and questioned over and over. Scary.

There are gardens. “Paradise derives from the old Persian word for “garden,” pardis,” Roger writes. “So important was the garden in old Persia that when a new city was planned, the gardens would be planted before any foundations were laid.” You will want to read this chapter. He sketches the garden of Naranjastan in Shiraz with words that seem to be colored with artist’s pastels. Back in the hotel he checks in with the poet Rumi, whose book he carries on his journey. He opens to these words: Remember the proverb, Eat the grapes. /Do not keep talking about the garden./ Eat the grapes.

Some chapters are spicy. He is welcomed by Toufan, highly placed in the sophisticated Iranian film world. She is a woman who lived in L.A. for years, then moved back to Iran after her thirteen-year-old daughter suggested it. When Roger said he’d like to meet a Sufi Sheikh, she told him, “Sufism is all the rage here now… it has become fashionable with the upper classes the way Kabbalah has in the West because of Madonna.”
A friend in America gave Roger a jar of marmalade to take to her as an introduction. Toufan began the chain of connections that would bring him to the door of many creative and interesting Iranians.

She introduces Roger to the artist Haleh, who says: “Women in Iran today are breaking the hijab of expression, both politically and artistically. Women are expressing themselves now in every art form in a culture where they have been taught not to reveal themselves… And you know what gave them permission? The Revolution. The Revolution created a new form of language for foreign relations that was unapologetic, angry, and direct. That had never been known in Iran before…”

He travels around the country by himself and discovers Iranian Judaism, the Zoroastrians, and the Sufis. He savors the visual elixir of the heart of Isfahan – the Royal Mosque. He writes, “Isfahan is the Florence of the Orient, without the tourists.”

People, places, and a stunning experience that is life changing. He takes us along through the police interrogation. He emerges a changed man. “And yet, the very absence of my well-worn identity felt like a sudden breath of freedom: like taking off a tight fitting suit I had not even realized I was wearing.”

Saved by Beauty by Roger Housden, Broadway Books, Crown Publishing, 2011.

Damascus, and wishes for peace in Syria

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by in Damascus, peace pilgrimage, Sufi, Syria

≈ 2 Comments

It’s sad to consider Syria and how it is thrown into the news these days. The country comes across as a place of oppression and cruel dictatorship, a place where the USA has “invoked sanctions.” Along with many other countries in the region, the young people are burning with a desire to be a modern democracy – a painful process. To me, Syria is like a venerable great-grandparent, a country containing one of the oldest continually occupied cities in the world. I want to honor this place and the people who were friendly and kind to me.

I fell in love with Damascus in 2003. I was alone in that city, alone in my hotel, as my

with Shabda at Ibn Arabi's shrine

husband and the group stayed at Dar Meir Musa a couple hours north in the mountains. But I felt at home here. My husband, Shabda, was on a TV show like 20/20. One man with a mop stopped me in the hall. “Salaams. I see your wife on TV!” He meant “husband.” English is a rare language here. I felt safe.  It’s like this: if I set my handbag down on the busy sidewalk and walked away, someone would grab it and run after me, calling in French and Arabic, eager to say that they are returning this to me!  But that was before the city was flooded with Iraqi refugees in the last 5 years. Still, you could NEVER do that in New York or Rome. In any Western city. My favorite memories are strolling the streets after the Ramadan fast-breaking meal among the families and baby strollers. At about 10 pm it felt like a festival. One evening I bought a warm nightgown with the word “dream” set in small crystals on the practical grey fabric. I still wear it – 8 years later – and dream of Damascus.

Prayer for Syria 2003                         
I
Let there always be sky
choreography;
pigeon flocks in formation
Brown, cream and pinto,
wings sunlit, dull,
then colored again –
wings above Damascus, lifting my eyes
higher than the minarets.
The flock comes apart – bird by bird
onto the coop below my window
while the world of Ramadan breaks fast and
clusters of girls and women
pressed into gray winter coats,
scarf-headed, more modest than pigeons, stroll souk
and sidewalk.
II
Syrian Times tucked under my arm,
I pass through groups of Saudi oilmen,                                                                                                     slow and easy on the sidewalk, clicking
beads in the morning sun.
Brown cloth falls from their wide shoulders,
lifts in the breeze of the revolving door
of the Cham Palace Hotel,
where the concierge sits at her desk, flipping
her dark hair absently with a gold pen.
III
In the bird market, pigeon buyers
assemble an all white
or black collection; match feathers to                                                                                                          a herd of goats. Chickens
have learned to stay put,
tethered by kitchen string above
a box filled with rabbits whose soft
feet never touch the floor.
IV
What am I tethered to, and with whom do I weep,
soar and turn? Muslim women here correct me
in the saint’s shrine; they are trying to
squeeze me into the only flock they know.
I say: let Syrian women be safe from harm.
May they find themselves on sidewalks
decked in winter coats vivid as tumeric, coats
colored lemon rind or pomegranate juice.
V
Parting from this city with its ancient trees, sweet
with songbirds, we arc above the earth
rising 37000 feet over the pole.
Let there be connectedness and peace – a wish held by
all who fly – between the ground we rise from,
and the place we land. <>
 

With regard to the “Arab World,” Chris Hedges https://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/02?print writes: …So I was in the Middle East in the days after 9/11. “We had garnered the empathy of not only most of the world, but the Muslim world who were appalled at what had been done in the name of their religion… And the tragedy was that if we had the courage to be vulnerable, if we had built on that empathy, we would be far safer and more secure today than we are.”

If you want to read more about MY ADVENTURES IN SYRIA, go to SEARCH under Tamam’s links on screen right and type in: “Syria.”

the Islamic Cultural Center, Oakland: Hadith talk

18 Monday Apr 2011

Posted by in ICCNC, Mayor Jean Quan, Sufi, Uncategorized, Untold

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children's art: Islamic Cultural Center

A comprehensive book on HADITH in an easy-to-read format. That is, the transmissions of what Prophet Muhammad did and said. This was compiled and written down centuries ago and is now revisited by an American man born in 1977. I ordered the book and then went to hear him speak.

Jonathan A.C. Brown

Jonathan A.C. Brown was invited to the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California (the ICCNC), an impressive building near Lake Merritt in Oakland. I had never been there.

main hall ICCNC

An old Maonic Lodge, what a cool place!

Hamza (Jason van Boom) is Director  of Developing and Marketing for the ICCNC and interviewer for the series: Islam and Authors.  Sounds promising; Islam and Authors.  I like the sound of that series. Hamza said they are considering my book, UNTOLD for a future talk.

Jonathan A.C. Brown, assistant professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Washington, is fluent in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Latin, French, and German. He studied Arabic in Cairo Egypt, has a Ph.D. from University of Chicago and a magna cum laude Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University.

Brown's talk on Hadith In his talk Brown said, “The real discourse in Islam is what you do with the hadith. Look at it as something alive even if you don’t agree with it (a particular hadith).”

I liked this: “Imagine you are talking for 23 years and someone kept track of what you said.” That describes the context for the hadith quite well. It would follow that there would be contradictions, as happened with Prophet Muhammad.

I look forward to reading this book, Hadith, Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Oneworld (Foundations of Islam series), 2009. Chapter seven is about Hadith and Sufism.

~After the talk my friend Hadia and I went to Pho 84, a small Vietnamese Restaurant on 17th street.

with Her Honor the Mayor

Mayor Jean Quan  and her husband Floyd Huen and a congressman arrived. I introduced myself, and Floyd took the photo of me and  the first woman mayor of Oakland ­– a no-nonsense, friendly person. I wanted a photo to go with the one I have with Mayor Gavin Newsom of SF!

I enjoy the quirky randomness of attending a serious lecture in a city just an hour from my home and ending the evening with Hadia discussing the good old days in Maroc –– then a photo–op with the Mayor of Oakland.

Life is good. <>