silence vow - day 16

"in the silence between your heartbeat bides a summon.

do you hear it?

name it if you must, or leave it forever nameless,

but why pretend it is not there?

leave that which is not, but appears to be.

seek that which is, but is not apparent."

-rumi

today, on my sixteenth day, i started to understand the purpose behind my vow. and still…

there is an unparalleled sacredness in stillness. the will to become silent eats at your ego, the part of your selfhood that you communicate to the outside tangible world, your shell. but like all matter, it recreates it in a different form: a presence within. by willing your erasure, you accept to embrace the world. 

have you ever thought about the posture of open arms? the exposed torso, lifted hands, no limb is protected by another. a state of simultaneous vulnerability and embrace.

the past days have been brutally painful. the harsher the pain, the deeper the cut. and the deeper the cut, the louder the wail. the more desperately i beg for deliverance. 

hafiz says:

"don't surrender your loneliness so quickly. let it cut more deeply. let it ferment and season you as few human or even divine ingredients can. something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, my voice so tender, my need of the Divine absolutely clear."

absolutely clear. 

silence vow - day 13

they are born in a flash, a bulb of energy, right before they fade out and die. 

ideas, thoughts, inspirations. nothing seems to be able to last. all those pretty words of the mind, they fall as soon as they rise. 

like how it amazes me how rarely people are really looking for an answer when they ask you a question. most times, they're only looking for a confirmation of what they have already preconceived. mute or not, it doesn't matter who you are to answer them. try it for yourself. wait a few heartbeats before answering, put a limit on the number of your words when you reply. 

some people don't even notice i'm silent. i can't imagine how loud their mind must be, cause i've heard how loud their tongues are. 

so you assume, silent tongue, silent mind. or the opposite, since she's repressing so much to say, her mind must be drowning in words. 

it's both. when the question is real, when a real answer is looked for, it's waves of words that surge and have to be repressed. when the question is unreal, i don't even bother thinking of an answer. 

like how i am perceived as harmless because i don't speak. harming is not always a matter of intentions. if anything it's mostly unintended. don't they say it's the closest ones to you that harm you most? i can't harm verbally, nor can i lie. 

"shall I not tell you how to achieve all of this?" the prophet (pbuh)  took a hold of his tongue and said, "restrain this."

like how, in the lack of uttered words, words that are uttered to me reverberate. they echo in my mind. imagine everyone felt the same. imagine how much we would weigh what we say. if our world is good, less harm would be done. if our world is not good, more harm would be done. 

like how your own words have a loud resonance in your head. so when you mute them, you mute the noise they make. 

and somehow, you realize, that there are voices within. noises within.

some are memories that would be replaying, instigated by something your senses picked up. some are premonitions, instigated by something your thoughts stretched to. and there are some that are neither. timeless inner noises. clear as crystal, that make utter nonsense, yet that sound utterly right. 

silence vow - day 9

run on a high, 

crawl on a low. 

i only noticed how annoyingly chirpy i am today when i had to write a work email and couldn't keep my tone remotely serious. 

there's a joy you can float within. it's a very silent space. and sometimes you need words to come aware that you've been floating in that space. as much as silence is an experience necessary to touch intangible dimensions within, so are words. 

otherwise, why would they exist?

i wish i could share my joy. i wish i could extend it to those who live in its lack. i wish silence or words were enough. 

silence vow - day 8

i just spent the past hour and a half of my life staring into the eyes of a man on a screen. 

i went with my class to watch a documentary about palestinian refugees in lebanon. i could barely focus on the content of the movie as one loud urge resonated in me; the urge to protect, to heal, to take care of that man. he showed no sign of weakness or need in any way; on the contrary, he kept displaying that smile of bravery that i know all too well. 

a smile that wants to show self-contentment; a paralyzer smile, an anesthetic, clearly here to numb a horribly gaping pain. he's a grown man, but he kept his childhood eyes. there still remains the fear and terror of what they have seen and the strongest sense of dismemberment i've ever seen. he's no orphan, but he has the panicked look of a child looking for his lost parents, knowing he will never find them. 

that man is real. he's probably smoking another cigarette right now in the confinement of the camp. camp. a bunch of concrete, dirty money and ill security entrapping thousands of suffering souls. 

i've been complaining about my lassitude, about the entrapment of my breath; a figurative one. they can't earn an decent livelihood, can't move up the economic ladder, if they were to make a family, it would be one that suffers under the weight of the chokehold, barely any education, barely any infrastructure to provide them with clean water or electricity. 

that's how you form them, those terrorists. those men all-too-willing to blast themselves for some random cause. trap them, suffocate them and make them hate their lives, despise their existence and so, that of everyone else. boom! 

no, i wish it was one of those ideal moments of, oh i've seen a condition worse than mine, suddenly i feel better. because i raise my praise and thanks to the Giver; i am already aware of being blessed. that was never my problem. 

his problem was that he had nowhere to belong to. he craves at least an illusion of stability, of constancy because in it he thinks peace will be. of course he would, he's been brought up to think he is a refugee, that he belongs elsewhere, and that until he goes back to elsewhere, until he settles down in a dreamland, he'll never be home, he'll never have peace. he'll be within war. 

men around him hold guns and point them at him (jokingly). he doesn't flinch. it feels like he wished they blew his brains. it feels like he's been run over in this life, and can't wait to leave it. he's restless, he's uneasy.

i'm looking for my home too. but it's no land, like palestine. it's no perfect  picture either, like luxury money can buy. i've been home before. i'm looking to find it again.

another point to connect to; i'm looking for the phase in which i disappear into a line.  

silence vow - day 7

there have been bombardments in my mind

and i have been drowning them out.

i have been able to do so because i live in this time,

this time of fast consumption and mass distraction.

i live in a time when i can run away from the unpleasant and the ugly within.

plug music into my ears and mute it,

yet the music i choose somehow preserves echoes, 

echoes of what will not be silenced forever.

and so i forbid myself from music,

i ban myself from distraction,

and bit by bit, i heard them again, i saw her;

a snake inside, that feeds on one piece of my heart

only one piece.

she lurks under the surface and waits,

waits for the piece to grow back,

before she strikes again.

and i, the one who claims to embrace good and evil,

am ashamed of this snake;

i can't call her by its name.

i'm ashamed of labeling her:

loneliness

"don't turn your head,

keep looking at the bandaged wound.

that's where the light enters you.

and don't believe for a moment

that you are healing yourself."*

because it's hard to admit that we are not as self-sufficient as we claim to be

as we make ourselves believe to be, as we are told we are supposed to be.

it's ugly to never be enough.

it's  a sign of weakness because it's not a sign of strength.

right?

wrong.

Healer of all, heal my bitten heart.

* Rumi

silence vow - day 6

there's a long stretch to make between the intoxicatingly sweet void of that elsewhere we reach inside of us, and the loud vibrance of the now our bodies reside in. 

i mean, i'm mutedly walking on that puff of pure joy in the morning, in the afternoon i'm laughing boisterously with my friends, so much i'm enjoying their company, and by nightfall i'm yelling my lungs out while dancing like the stupidest person on earth. and i love it all. 

yes taking a vow of silence for forty days might sound extreme; but i'm against the view that divorces spirituality from everyday life. the view that only associates society's standards of "purity" with the divine and spiritual, and everything else kind of becomes commoners' matters. so it would completely defeat the purpose according to my beliefs to do my fast on a weekend, or in a state of retreat. no. my religion is about incorporating the esoteric within the mundane; actually, it's finding the esoteric in the mundane. God isn't elsewhere. God is everywhere.

"when you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy," rumi says. you laugh with all your soul, you cry with all your soul and you pour your soul into dancing like a monkey on coke to britney spears' songs. you're alive with all your fibers. you're so present that past and future can simply never exist.  

today my brains stopped talking. my answers no longer came to my mind in words or letters, they came as pure unarticulated ideas. somehow, it make things better. 

"azza, i'm disappointed in you." my friend was shocked to see me behave like an idiot, shouting and dancing, when i was supposed to be on a spiritual journey. it's frustrating how society gives a pre-painted image to each label. a veiled girl cannot kiss a man who is not her husband; suddenly we attack her values and how she's degrading the veil. we're shocked when a man with bad reputation is seen helping someone get up; yeah he probably pushed her in the first place, or maybe he's just trying to get into her pants. how boring would life be, if categories were so set, and people were subject to labeling? 

it's why i hate labels. heck it might be why i gave up speech. come put a label on that!

silence vow - day 5

when i was three, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. the doctors said it was the most vicious type, that it was still in its early stages, but that survival rates were not too positive. 

she went home that night and made a silent prayer. she prayed to God to let her get through this, just long enough to see me grow old enough to brush my own hair.

i have memories. i was a child, but i remember; i know i have the memory of my school entrance exam, when mom was with me, but not the memory of my first day at school, when they took her to operate on her breast, though dad says he held my hand that day. i remember when she asked me if i wanted to come with her and help her pick out her new hair. i remember how it broke my heart watching her try on the fake piece on her bold head without a blink of weakness. i remember how i hated it, and how i wished she didn't have to wear it, even though her bold head scared me. i remember how she used to get cold in winter because of her chemically induced illness. i remember it clearly; we were in the parking lot. the cold wind ruffled her fake hair. instinctively she held it to her head. then she told me it was exceptionally cold that year. i remember sitting by her bed as she thrashed in pain. just me and her. lights out, because even the light made her nauseated. i dunno why, but in my memories it's just me and her; as if i was her little confider, and none of my (elder) brother or sister existed. 

today i write about this; a taboo topic in my books. something i never deal with, because i want to keep it in the black of the past. but i shouldn't. i really shouldn't. i really shouldn't fear hospitals anymore. i really shouldn't melt into tears when i walk into one. i should be proud of my mother.

today i'm twenty-three. i brush my hair every day. in fact i've been blessed with amazing hair; no one believes it to be "real" or natural. fate does find a way to be ironic. she has made it this far; we have made it this far, thanks and praise be only to His grace. 

in college, in anthropology, i learnt that silence is the label of those who are condemned to live in the margins. but someone came to me today. a usually very reserved friend; she came, and (obviously) without me asking, she told me about something troubling her. "i'm telling you this because you can't talk."

how many of us are looking for a listening ear, and only that? how many of us are looking for someone to confide in? i might have blacked out much of my childhood, but the little i remember, is mostly silent. remembering it is like diving under water; the vision waves and the sound lulls. it's my present self-assumed silence that brought back what has been sternly buried, or drowned.

so maybe no. maybe silence is much more powerful than we think. maybe silence has been overwritten and underrated because in the cacophony of our own words, we never really understood silence. silence, like love, cannot be understood. silence, like love, can only be experienced. 

so my fifth day goes to you my silent warrior. to you who have overcome a cancer that silently crept beneath your breast, with the permission of the All Mighty. it's twenty years later, and i pray to God to let you live long enough to brush my daughter's hair. happy warriors day mom.

silence vow - day 4

there's a little shop in the middle of my way down to university. in the morning, they burn incense (or maybe the people who live above it do). i've noticed that before. i have a good sense of smell. but silence somehow brings out the senses; you see deeper, you smell deeper, you listen and not only hear. i still don't know about touch. 

and you feel deeper. 

outside of messy matters, i'm on a buzz from feeling good. but when something hurts, it hurts deeply. there's nothing to numb the pain. and there's no outlet but tears. 

it happened yesterday. i felt lonely. for the first time i recognized such a feeling. i can't put music to distract myself. i can't talk to someone to make it better. i just let it crash into me. 

more people are finding out about my vow. reactions range from sheer incredulity to anger to admiration to love declarations. none of them bother or please me. 

is there salt in the salad? is she coming? i discover so many of my questions to be dispensable. that if you shut up, taste for yourself, wait a bit to see, your questions will be answered. it's a bit hard to do that on a lunch scale, harder on a gathering scale. the hardest would be on a life scale. will he come into my life? am i gonna have that volcano i keep wishing for? 

keep silent, taste for yourself and wait a bit to see. your questions have to be answered. 

silence vow - day 3

canceling so many noises makes other sounds louder. sounds that come from within and elsewhere at the same time. i can't wait until i hear them better; maybe i used to hear them clearly before i muted them, and now that i muted their counterparts, maybe i'll hear them clearly again. 

not being able to ask questions is one hard nut; but a useful one as well. because i can't ask what's happening next, or if something happened yet, i have to wait and see for myself. i realize the uselessness of so many of my questions in the presence of the necessary patience. and because i can't know for sure, i have to come prepared, more prepared than when i'm not mute. 

i have a presentation in two days that i have to make twice the effort to prepare for, because i can't talk. i have to perfect my visuals and substitute any kind of speech i have to do. i'll also have to anticipate questions and prepare visuals to answer them. i know it sounds like a lot of work to do, but it helps articulate unspoken thoughts; it helps think, and it makes all the info you store in your head so much easier to manage and communicate.

i hear boredom looming somewhere near. i'm afraid it will creep onto me once i get accustomed to my fast. it's not as though the fast was my solution to the painful lassitude i've been feeling lately; it's not. but when i started it, all traces of that boredom retracted from sight. i had hoped they'd disappear and that the vow would be the instant healer of that submerging phenomenon. 

37 more days will teach me better. 

silence vow - day 2

day 2

"what made you do this?

why would you do this to yourself?

wow i respect that…but will you pull through?

why forty days? forty days! you must be insane..."

two days ago, i decided to start a fast; a vow of silence, for forty days. 

the problem is that it wasn't a cause-effect process or reason-decision process. 

the decision came first, and (hopefully) i'll discover the reason later. 

it's what i conceive of intuition, i guess. 

it's amazing how unimportant many of our answers can be, how much we can do with little (or no) talk. what's more fascinating is how alert to the world this self-imposed sound barrier can make you. because you're trying to communicate by non-verbal means, you really look at your interlocutor. you stare deep, and sometimes your facial expressions talk loud enough to substitute for your words. in fact your face can be more efficient than your tongue. 

all those comments, thoughts, stories you want to tell, but have to gulp down; you realize how the world doesn't need them to keep functioning. 

for now i'm allowing for words, for emails, for facebook, for writing. but i'm planning on cutting down on all except for (receiving) emails and phone calls on the last 10 days. i'm hoping by then i'd be better able to bring silence into my mind as well as my mouth. that's one of my aims. 

i felt more peaceful today, more exuberant, i felt and expressed more love, but the noise inside my head wasn't too different from normal days. 

there were a few reflections, there were some introspections. people asked me what i'd bargained for my vow. i'd forgotten we can ask for stuff when we make a vow. curiously, there wasn't a specific one thing that came to mind when i thought about wishes. 

i'd faced the same problem when i blew my birthday candles. 

i'm in a state of stagnation and i don't know what i want. i know its intensity, i know its material, but i don't know what it is. all i know is, i want the volcano to erupt. is it inside of me, is it outside and it will spew lava at me? i don't know, yet.