Book Review: The Sun Shall Soon Shine by Adejoke Ajibade- Bakare

When I was approached by the author, Adejoke Ajibade- Bakare to review her book of poetry, I was a little nonplussed. I love books, especially straightforward and fast paced prose, but poetry is another matter. I am never sure if I am missing something, a metaphor of some kind or an allusion to some deeper truth that the poet is revealing. I rarely read poetry, although I do love the poetry of the Sufi Abdullah Shah Qadri, Maya Angelou, Grace Nichols and the great Pakistani poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, but I did not feel qualified to comment. Then I came to the conclusion that I don’t have to judge the structure or technique of the poems, but I can describe how it makes me feel and what it evokes for me. 

The book opens with a poem about a poor mother whose children are hungry, one line stood out: “Necks extended, a plea to the steel pot”, as the children look to the empty pot for food. This poem reminded me a little Maya Angelou’s style of writing and set the tone of the book for me. 

The book is split into five sections, along broad themes, the first “Womb Tales” is around the theme of women and motherhood. I enjoyed these lines from the poem Aye (meaning Life): 

Up and about 
The adogan 
Cracking sparks of fire 
As the ogi dances 
To the rhythms set by blind hands 

I really liked the use of Yoruba words, I love that at the bottom of each page, there is an explanation of each word that is not in English. The poem gives a glimpse into a busy morning on a normal day, the poem gives a sense of a life that is not easy (“battered feet”, “blind hands”), but at the same time gives a feeling of energy and busyness (“Splish splosh into the amo”, “Cracking sparks of fire”, “busy hands”). 

The poems in this section talk of pregnancy, birth, motherhood, and loss alluding to miscarriage. There is a loving and benign father figure that appears through some of them. Often the tone is melancholy occasionally there is a glimmer of hope. In reflection of the private nature of these themes, the poems are often not clear, but allude to events in a subtle way. 

In the section called Childhood Dreams, the tone changes to a more upbeat one. “My Emmanuel” stands out with its lovely description of a young man: 

Strong arms 
Fast legs 
Broad smile 
Grinning ear to ear 
A handshake 
To show gratitude 
A hug 
To show love  

The sentences are short, clear and full of energy. The kind of poem I would love to dedicate to a beloved son. 

The section called Woes of a Nation again feels different: with more wide-ranging themes such as patriotism (Woes of a Nation: “And is there for all to celebrate, The celebration of Nigeria Anew.”), these poems have a lyrical, epic feel. Some of the poems are inspired by national tragedies such as a plane crash or the kidnapping of young boys and girls by Boko Haram, making them feel quite poignant. Others mention the land and earth, war and poverty: 

A scenery of fear, poverty and destruction 
Earth shattering sounds 
Hitting hard, sinking deep 
Like hot rocks 
Splashing blood 

The last lines (from the poem “Aleppo”) make a powerful impression and invoke strong images. Many others, remind us that we should not lose hope in Allah (SWT) and that tomorrow is a new day full of hope. My favourite poem in this section was Arise Naija, for the way it ends with a call to the people to rise and claim their land. 

The poems in the part called Soul Talk are about self-reflection and self-love. They are spiritual in nature and touch on the relationship with Allah (SWT), many of them try to inspire and motivate us to use out limited time well. Some of them spoke more deeply to me than others, I suspect this will be largely a result of where the reader is in their own journey and what resonates. 

The last section, Life’s Palaver, speaks of how we get caught up in everyday troubles, of work and missed opportunity: 

Sooner I should I have come 
Much sooner, I should have come 
The fish waits not for the fisherman 
The fisherman that is yet to come 
(From the Fisherman)  

Some of the poems describe the hustle and bustle of every day life (The Alms Seeker, Far Gosford Street, the Street that Never Sleeps), with descriptions of noisy traffic and the smell of food from restaurants, most often the narrator watching it all go by. A number of the poems in this section are about children and childhood (Golden Child, The Prince and the Pauper, Lost Time Not Found). These touch on the way children are affected by poverty or parents that are too busy for them. 

I had my reservations, but I came to enjoy reading the poetry in the concise and accessible book, I enjoyed getting a flavour of Nigerian life and I was moved by the tributes to the people of the country who have been beset by tragedy.

Remembrance Sunday: Just One Muslimah's Perspective

It was Remembrance Sunday in Britain and the Commonwealth today a day marked out to remember the sacrifices of those who fought in the two World Wars and in later wars.  The sight of the elderly selling poppies and the sight of elderly veterans paying their respects at the cenotaph each year never fails to move me.

I think the thinking around Remembrance Sunday can be less than straightforward for some people, especially Muslims.  It is easy to agree that those that fought in the World Wars, including members of my family deserve to have their sacrifice remembered and for them to be shown our gratitude. (I write about those of my family that fought here and hope to learn more about what happened to them one day if I can insh'Allah).  However the later wars, particularly the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war has left people angry, confused and frightened.  They have been fought on an illegal basis despite the protest of many poeple in this country, have left us to watch the slaughter of people we consider our brothers and sisters in faith and they have left many Muslims feeling like they are unwanted in a  country they love and are committed to.

This means that our feelings towards commemorating Remembrance Sunday or wearing a poppy can get wrapped up in what has happened in recent years. Personally I think we should separate the two.  We should be angry about the decisions of politicians who never had to see a front line, or feel the repercussions of going to war in their own lives and we should never stop speaking up about it.  On the other hand we should never lose our empathy and respect for those who left everything they loved and walked onto the battle field, people of all faiths including the numerous Muslims who fought in both World Wars.

One thing that made this very clear to me was something my dear dad-in-law once said.  He served in the Pakistani Army and was in active service during some of the wars with India, although not during the Bangladesh civil war.  As an old man he was sitting in a masjid one day talking to an elderly Bengali man, who said to him: "We are Muslim brothers, you wouldn't have shot me would you?" - To which my dad-in-law replied "Order is order" much to the gentleman's astonishment.  These young men and women did what they were told without question.   It reminded me that it is those that give the orders that should be held to account.

This week I was out shopping with Little Man and walked past a very elderly gentleman in his regalia selling poppies.  I gave little man some money for a poppy, but seeing how frail he was and thinking he may not be here next year made me turn and look the other way to hide the tears in my eyes.  It reminded me what a stoic generation he was from, one that sacrificed so much and then quietly carried on with their lives.

For those that think Muslim's have no place in their country and have never given anything to this country, the following might be of interest:

"Up to 40 percent of the Indian army were Muslim, even though they only made up about 25 percent of the Indian population.  Winston Churchill summed up the Muslim contribution in his letter to U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. He wrote, "We must not on any account break with the Moslems, who represent a hundred million people, and the main army elements on which we must rely for the immediate fighting". (source)

Muslims that fought were not just from India, but included the North Africans, the Senegalese, the Nigerians, the Muslims of Soviet Central Asia, Palestinians and many others.

Cimetière de Saint-Claude à Besançon, a French Military Cemetery in the South of France, with graves of Muslim troops who died in both World Wars (image source).

Dulce et Decorum Est, by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! - An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime ...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

[How sweet and honourable it is to die for one's country]

image source

The Wonderful Words of Maya Angelou

I was saddened to hear about the death of the wonderful American writer and poet Maya Angelou today.  I first picked up her poetry as teenager and was captivated by her direct words, their rhythm and certainly their message.

My favourite was Phenomenal Woman from the book And Still I Rise, the first verses of which celebrate being amazing even if you are not beautiful, a message that I welcomes as a young woman:

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

The full poem is here.

I also loved the poem Our Grandmothers from the Anthology "I Shall Not Be Moved":

She lay, skin down in the moist dirt,
the canebrake rustling
with the whispers of leaves, and
loud longing of hounds and
the ransack of hunters crackling the near
branches.

She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward
freedom,
I shall not, I shall not be moved.

She gathered her babies,
their tears slick as oil on black faces,
their young eyes canvassing mornings of madness.
Momma, is Master going to sell you
from us tomorrow?

Yes.
Unless you keep walking more
and talking less.
Yes.
Unless the keeper of our lives
releases me from all commandments.
Yes.
And your lives,
never mine to live,
will be executed upon the killing floor of
innocents.
Unless you match my heart and words,
saying with me,

I shall not be moved.

The full poem is here.

My favourite Maya Angelou quote: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Identity, Language and Going Back Home

The Easter holidays are at an end and the kids are back at school. Some of the children in their school have used the opportunity to travel abroad. I have been thinking about how nice it would be to go to Pakistan and see extended family. The reality is that the cost is prohibitive and it is unlikely we will be able to go on such an expensive trip any time soon.

We are on quite a strict budget but we try to plan one or two small holidays somewhere in the UK during the year. So far we have been to Scotland, the Lake District, the Dorset coast and Cornwall. We save money by trying to stay with people we know or finding a no-frills hotel, taking our own food because outside big cities it can be harder to find halal and looking for lots of free or discounted activities when we get there.

Our treks around Britain are a long way from my own childhood where holidays were spent at home or every few years meant a few weeks in Pakistan where we were immersed in the language, culture and customs of the country enough to carry them into our adult lives. We often travelled mid-term or whenever our parents felt the urge to go home, or if there was a big occasion like a family wedding. Often this was in February or March when the weather was fairly good in Pakistan.

Things seem very different now. Schools are very, very strict about children taking time off during term time in our area as it is one of the areas with a lot of children waiting for school places. My children’s school will not permit children to take time off even if a relative is sick abroad unless in extreme circumstances. If parents do make the choice to take their children away they are likely to lose their child’s school place and be fined for each child. They then have to go through the process of re-applying through the Council and may end up with multiple small children at multiple primary schools all of which are further than their original school. I have seen a child in my sons class come back from holiday and line up with his class only to be told by the teacher “sorry, but you can’t line up, you have to go to the office”. I felt so sorry for this child, but his parents had known about the schools rules when they took him out.

I can understand the schools stance. The head teacher is very ambitious for her children and has reiterated often that the children’s education should take priority over any kind of holiday. A large proportion of the school is made up of children who have extended family in other countries, so a more lax stance would mean massive problems with unauthorised absence rates.

This leaves parents with specific windows of time that they can travel with their children – the two weeks of Easter half-term in April, the six-week summer holiday in July/August or the two-week Christmas holidays. The airline operators know this and lovingly almost double their prices at this time (oh the obscene names and curses I have sent their way, I am surprised any of their aeroplanes ever get off the ground with the curses levelled at them). This instantly prices us out of the market for a trip to Pakistan. Return tickets reach almost £700 upwards per person, with children not costing much less. For the cost of our family’s plane tickets, we could put one of children through a year of private school. Even if we did want to spend that much money, we would expect to stay longer than the two weeks of their end of term holidays. As children, we would often stay 5-6 weeks in Lahore, Rawalpindi and our grandparent’s village in Jhelum.

Summer gives us a longer period of time, but with temperatures of up to 40-45C (104 – 113F) in Lahore during the summer, it turns into torture. I still have memories of suffering in the unbearable heat as a child and teenager and don’t think I want to go through it ever again. I'm not even sure it’s safe to take small children somewhere that hot where the electricity is currently available a few hours a day at best.

This leaves us looking for short, frugal trips around Britain and the possibility of saving up for Umrah (the pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia). These are pleasant and probably a lot easier than a big trip to Pakistan. Except I feel really bad for my children when I think of what they are missing out.

My trips to Pakistan as a child really made me understand how privileged we are in the West: the freedom we have as women to leave our homes without judgement or harassment, educations for our children and ourselves, healthcare. We don’t have to constantly think about where our next meal will come from. I recall a trip I made at 18 during my first year at university. I was speaking to a young woman about my age in my grandparents village who was asking about my studies. She told me she wanted to study further, but her parents couldn't afford the cost and she had to get married. It made me realise how fortunate I was.

As children we were let loose in Pakistan in a way that we were never allowed at home and which could never happen today. We would leave the house in the morning, round up all the children in the village and spend the day wandering through peoples houses, nearby villages, over fields and off to the nearest mountain. We would spend the day wandering, playing and blagging food and come home in the evening expecting to be told off. No one even asked where we had been. The freedom was exhilarating.

At one point a new road was being built beside the village. Someone left great metal barrels of tar by the side of the road. We opened them up to find that the tar had the consistency of black plasticine. It wasn't long before we had all the kids in the village pulling off chunks and trying to make things. The people in the village thought we were very strange children.

To be honest, things are no longer that idyllic. The village has been deserted by working aged people and is full of the elderly and children. My grandparents are gone and so the place no longer holds quite the pull it once did. Instead of a series of houses with yards that lead into each others, there are now high walls and big gates around each house as people have come to prioritise their privacy.

There is still much to be said though for taking my children back to immerse them for a short while in the life of the village. If nothing else they would got a powerful taster of my parents language – a soft, lilting dialect of Punjabi that is common through the Potohar plateau of north-eastern Pakistan. Fluency in Punjabi wouldn't just help to connect them to their roots, but give them access to an amazing artistic and poetic culture and heritage that spans the tragic love stories, the folk stories and the sufi poetic heritage of the Punjab, amazing scholar-poets like Bulleh Shah:

Parh parh ilm te faazil hoya
Te kaday apnay aap nu parhya ee na

You read so many books to know it all,
yet fail to ever read your heart at all.

Bhaj bhaj warna ay mandir maseeti
Te kaday mann apnay wich warya ee na

You rush to enter temples and mosques
But you never looked into your own heart

Bulleh Shah asmaani ud-deya pharonda ay
Te jera ghar betha unoon pharya ee na

Bulleh Shah you try grabbing that which is in the sky
But you never get hold of what sits inside you

Of course there is a whole enormous country outside of my grandparent’s village. My in-laws live in Lahore which is a city that I have a lot of affection for. The people are known for their friendliness and love of life – great food, beautiful people and lots of partying. It’s where the rest of Pakistan comes to for fun, but it also has an amazing mughal heritage in its buildings and gardens (my in-laws neighbourhood is called the suburb of gardens because of its proximity to Shalimar Gardens which were pleasure gardens for the mughal princesses). 

image source

The people speak a kind of strong, forthright, bawdy Punjabi alongside the national language of Urdu. My children speak Urdu, but I find the younger ones are not as fluent because they have their older siblings to speak English to. Again, I want my children to have enough fluency to have access to the culture and art. I have grown up hearing snatches of the poetry of Muhammad Ali Iqbal – powerful words that inspired the creation of a new nation:

“Wuhi jahan hai tera jis ko tu karay paida
Yeh sang-o-khisht naheen jo tairee nigah mein hai”

Your world is the one you create yourself
Not these stones and bricks which are in your sight (Shaheen)

I loved having my husband read the Urdu case stories of Ahmed Yaar Khan, a police inspector in the last days of the Raj, that give a fascinating insight into the interaction between the Muslim and Hindu communities and the British.

I hope my children can access some of this if they choose to. Unfortunately not being able to take them to Pakistan very much means that this is going to be more challenging than it would have been otherwise. Their Dad grew up in Pakistan so he is teaching them the alphabet and their grandmother is visiting this summer and has said she will bring some Urdu school books, so at least that is a start. In the meantime I have both of my boys mangling the language much to everyone's entertainment.

Picture of the Day: 11.11.13 - Armistice Day

I saw this giant poppy outside our local town hall.

I shared my thoughts about remembrance day in this post from 2008.

This year was the same.  I thought about my grandfather and his brother who fought for the British in Burma during World War Two.  I thought of my husbands great-grandfather who fought in Italy during World War One and his uncle who was one of five brothers who fought during World War Two.

“The Punjabi Musselman was regarded as the backbone of the old Indian army, and constituted about a third of the British Indian Army. Known for their reliability, they were steady men who could be depended on to carry out any task at hand.” (Military Historian Major Gordon Corrigan - source)

Men who came home and carried on with their lives, their families unable to comprehend what they and gone through.

Then I thought of the young men who have fought in the conflicts of today: Iraq and Afghanistan.  Thousands of innocent civilians dead, terrible words like collateral damage which should never have been used to demean human beings.  

With the last of the veterans of the First World War now gone, I wonder will be ever learn?   

Happy Muslim Mama (11011.2008) - For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today

Forgotten Heroes: The Muslim Contribution - Emel Magazine

Remembering a Heroine of the Second World War - Noor Inayat Khan (GC, Croix de Guerre)

Ali Haider, Recipient of the Victoria Cross

Muslim Winners of the Victoria Cross

From left to right: English Muslim World War I Heroes: Gunner Azeez Leadon, Private Mubarak Ballard, & Gunner Basheer Camp (image source)

"Dulce et Decorum Est " (Wilfred Own 1893 - 1918)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

40 Day Photo Challenge: Day 19 - Ivy

THE IVY GREEN
by Charles Dickens

Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green,
That creepeth o'er ruins old!
Of right choice food are his meals, I ween,
In his cell so lone and cold.
The wall must be crumbled, the stone decayed,
To pleasure his dainty whim:
And the mouldering dust that years have made
Is a merry meal for him.
Creeping where no life is seen,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Fast he stealeth on, though he wears no wings,
And a staunch old heart has he.
How closely he twineth, how tight he clings
To his friend the huge Oak Tree!
And slyly he traileth along the ground,
And his leaves he gently waves,
As he joyously hugs and crawleth round
The rich mould of dead men's graves.
Creeping where grim death hath been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

Whole ages have fled and their works decayed,
And nations have scattered been;
But the stout old Ivy shall never fade,
From its hale and hearty green.
The brave old plant, in its lonely days,
Shall fatten upon the past:
For the stateliest building man can raise
Is the Ivy's food at last.
Creeping on where time has been,
A rare old plant is the Ivy green.

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

I came across this poem and it moved me as a mother and reminded me of the healing power of nature:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

by Wendell Berry

image source

For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today

Today was Remembrance Day in the UK and after a week of thinking about where I stand on this I found myself standing on the steps of the Town Hall on this terribly cold day with elderly veterans of World War Two, schoolchildren and the Mayor amongst others.

I am never sure about buying the poppy for myself and my children because the proceeds of the poppies sold for this day go to assist the families of soldiers killed and injured in wars today (Iraq and Afghanistan) and this makes me wonder if I am doing the right thing.

But I thought about the men who gave their lives over the last hundred years for us and about how my people made their contribution also and deserve to be remembered. I thought about my grandfather thrashing about in the jungles of Burma in a blind panic, half-starved, looking for his younger brother and thinking about what he will tell his mother has happened to him (they found each other in the end). I thought about my husband’s grandfather driving trucks for the army in Italy, teaching himself to read so that he could write home and let his mother know he was still alive. I thought of my husband’s uncle, one of five brothers who all fought and were awarded vast tracts of land in Multan by the British who were impressed that all five sons in the family had enlisted and fought. I thought of the old man my mum told me about from her little village in the Punjab who ended up almost starved to death in a POW camp in Germany and could never forgot what happened to him.

I know a lot of Muslim’s would disagree with my decision to stand before these steps and join in the two minutes of silence. Whereas I cried whilst watching the memorial service on Sunday, one of my dad’s friends was visiting and turned around and asked why we cared – “they are not Muslims that died!” Little Lady was listening and piped up “But my mummy says her granddad was in the war, and daddy’s granddad.”

From left to right: English Muslim World War I Heroes: Gunner Azeez Leadon, Pte Mubarak Ballard, & Gunner Basheer Camp

So I stood this morning and felt the tears escape against my will when the bugle called the Last Post and the clock chimed eleven. An old soldier read out the haunting words of John Maxwell Edmonds inscribed on the famous Kohima Epitaph:

"When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,

For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today"

and the old men stood to attention as if back on duty again this day. The flag-bearers lowered their flags and the children fidgeted and everyone felt proud and tearful and sombre.

In Flanders fields.
by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Heer Ranjha

You would assume that literature reflects what is going on in a society in any given time. The ballads, epics and legends that emerge mirror the norms and behaviour of society and perhaps also its hopes.

I am starting to realize thought that the way we view a story also changes so that the story isn’t a plain reflection anymore. Instead our reaction to the story varies with the zeitgeist of the times.

What made me think this is the folk tale of Heer Ranjha, the most famous of the romantic tragedies of Punjab. Immortalised in Waris Shah’s famous poem, the tragedy of Heer Ranjha has been told time and again as a celebration of love. One of my great uncles memorized Waris Shah’s version and it is regularly recited or sung at festivals and competitions. There is a great deal of affection for this poem amongst lovers of Punjabi language and culture as it celebrates both in a country where Punjabi is often looked down in favour of the more genteel Urdu. The tragic Heer herself is celebrated as the archetypal heroine: loyal, brave and beautiful with her big eyes, straight nose, full lips and dark skin. Her uncle Kaido, who poisons her at the end, is the classic villain seen again and again in later stories and films.


The strange thing is, not long ago I heard a cousin of mine in Rawalpindi talking about how he thought Kaido was in the right. That Heer and Ranjha’s behaviour was lewd and amoral and that Kaido’s concern had been with the honour of his family (a moot point, because at the end Heer’s family agree to the marriage – and does’t this thinking condone honour killing?) This was similar to something I had heard on Urdu television on a discussion about the love-story.

Usually it’s our old people who are strict and the youngsters who fight against their restrictions. But this change in thinking reflected to me a change in religious conservatism. Our older generation had more involvement with the sufiana side of Islam. Faith and its practice was generally a private thing. They often accuse the youngsters of becoming "Wahhabi’s" for disagreeing with many of their rituals and customs.


I agree with many of the things that the youth are objecting to: the unquestioning and often uneducated reliance on shrines and pirs (saints) and the superstitions and customs borrowed from other faiths.

There is a lesson in the change in our reaction to the story of Heer Ranjha. We scrutinize our faith and reject what we deem to be um-Islamic. In doing so we have to be careful that we don’t reject our culture wholesale too. Islam does not tell us we cannot enjoy our language, our stories and poems, our dress, food and celebrations as long as they don’t contravene the guidance of Islam. When we are old and set in our ways sometimes we are not willing to see something wrong and change it. However when we are young sometimes we don’t see the depth of a matter. Waris Shah’s Heer is a love story, but on a deeper level it talks about the love of God. The message of Allah’s love for us is conveyed much more beautifully to a people who were once illiterate in the main and would have had no time for a lecturing mullah, but had all the time in the world for a well-told tale. I can relate entirely to that.



P.s. maybe thats whats called serendiptiy, but I visited the library half way through writing this and found a translation of "Laila Majnun" the great Persian love tragedy. I'm not really a fan of romances, but this looks interesting. Will have ago at reviewing when I am done.

Streets of London

We were taught this song at school as nine-year olds, and the images the words create were so powerful at that time that they have always stayed with me. At the time the poem reminded me of East London and Green Street Market which was frequented by my mum. I love London and it’s an amazing place, but this song is a good reminder of another side of my city we would do well not to forget.

Streets of London (song), written by Ralph McTell.

Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper,
with his worn out shoes? I
n his eyes you see no pride
Hands held loosely at his side
Yesterday's paper telling yesterday's news

Chorus: So how can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind

Have you seen the old girl
Who walks the streets of London
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She's no time for talking,
She just keeps right on walking
Carrying her home in two carrier bags.

In the all night cafe
At a quarter past eleven,
Same old man is sitting there on his own
Looking at the world
Over the rim of his tea-cup,
Each tea lasts an hour
Then he wanders home alone.

Have you seen the old man
Outside the Seaman's Mission
Memory fading with the medal ribbons that he wears
In our winter city, T
he rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn't care.

Poem: Martin Newall - Anthem For Essex

We live in the area between the city of London and the county of Essex and as a family love the coutryside of Kent and Essex in summer. Strawberry-picking, boot sales, country drives, the seaside and farm shops and markets are all things I am looking forward to this year (the fresh air also seems to give the little ones a good appetite and help them sleep better). I just love the poem below, it sums up my county very nicely and I just love the rythm of it.

Anthem For Essex

Tilty, Wimbish, Stebbing, Shopland
Chipping Ongar, Ingatestone
All the market towns and hamlets
On the rivers Crouch or Colne
West of Walton, east of Easton
Shellow Bowells to Hanningfield
London 's bread-bin, lungs and love-nest
Beaches, birdland, wood and weald
Essex - seaxes, sheaves and shield.

Here the horsemen met for racing
Here the highwaymen were hung
Here the painter saw the skyline
Here the tide would poke its tongue
In among the samphire saltings
While the sun set sea alight
Here the smugglers moved the malmsey
Up the creek in dead of night
Customs cutter out of sight.

Saucy , sexy, seaside Essex
Driest place in British Isles
Where the robbers took retirement
When the Sweeney shut the files
Home of rock and naughty rhythms
Pirates, Paramounts and Procul
Harum, Hotrods, Ian Dury
Dr Feelgood - they were local
With Lee Brilleaux on lead vocal.

Epic Essex , best for bike-rides
Liberally laced with lanes
Pubs to punctuate the pedalling
Flower-baskets hung on chains
Coastal Essex - secret rivers
Heron-haunted waterland
Where the silver light in autumn
Lingers for a saraband
On the shingle and the sand.

Here are tales of long-dead writers,
Ghostly bikers, missing planes
Council gardens, scrapyards, thatches
Cricket matches seen from trains
Yellow fields in dazzled springtime
Varnished by a Van Gogh sky
Blind the copses and the spinneys
Where the rooks are building high
And the world goes skating by

Where the weather-boarded cottage
Waits in moddy monochrome
Nestling with new commuters
And the future coming home
Envious London , stuck in traffic
Simmering its quiet desires
Senses Essex spanning endless
Hazier than orchard fires
Out beyond those distant spires

Martin Newall
(p.s. all these are real pics of Essex)