Russia, My Russia: The Final Chapter

March 30, 2008 – 3:04 pm

The previous installment of Husam’s travelogue can be found here.

In the early morning, I took a walk across St. Petersburg that would take me all day, crossing the waters, landing on islands, and visiting both well-known and lesser-know tourist sites, not to mention discovering hidden surprises that the city still had up its sleeve.

I started on Nevsky Prospect and went up over two bridges, each adorned with a different sculptural theme. I saw a lovely church built in a style very similar to that of St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow! Hmmm… Wasn’t the original architect killed? - I wondered

I then quickly realized that St. Petersburg didn’t even exist when he was alive. Whatever his destiny was, he and his vibrant style were revived when the St. Petersburg church was built in the late nineteenth century.

This Church On Spilled Blood, as it is called, was built on the spot where on the first of March 1881, Czar Alexander II was assassinated. His successor commissioned a magnificent church to commemorate his father in the Russian revivalist style.

A park nearby lead me to the Arts Square, where the Russian Museum is located and another weird story of murder was played out in the beginning of the 1800’s. The Mikhaylovskiy Castle was built on orders of Paul I, who was obsessed with the possibility of assassination. The castle was surrounded by moats and draw bridges and supplied with secret underground passages to help in rescue. Alas, all those precautions were futile in the face of destiny, and he was murdered only 40 days after moving into his fortified haven!

At the moat I saw many young Russians throwing coins at small statue under one of the bridges nearby, driven by the belief that their wishes could be granted if their coin balanced itself on the statue without falling into the river Moyka, a tradition that has endured since since long ago. I didn’t try my luck; after all, what more can I wish for? Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in russia, society, travel | Comments (0)

The Christian Faith Through the Teachings of Paul

March 28, 2008 – 12:04 pm

My name is Grahame Belton, and I am a Christian.

Just for the record, I’m British. I mention that because I recognise that many people nowadays think that Christianity is a Western religion. I had someone say that to me: “Why should you go and preach our Western religion?”

This person was actually surprised when I informed her that Christianity originated in the Middle East. Overall, though, the conversation made me to think. I had to admit that the churches in the West have indeed “westernised” the gospel so much that they have lifted it right out of context, so to speak. So it is a good thing, as we read the New Testament, that we try and put things into a Middle Eastern context.

I would set out, as clearly as I can, what I as a Christian believe. I find inter-faith dialogue to be of great importance. Why do I believe what I believe? Let me tell you.

I call myself a Reformed Believer. I believe the same things the English Reformers believed in the 15th and 16th centuries; they, in turn, believed the same things as those in the early Christian Church. Their aim was to “Reform”, to put right those things they considered to be errors that had grown up within the Church over the centuries.

As a Reform Believer, I am interested in the roots of Christianity. In that light, the portion of scripture which, I think, illustrates in a nutshell the entire Christian faith is to be found in one of the Apostle Paul’s letters to the churches that he himself founded in Asia Minor, the Church at Corinth. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in christianity, religion | Comments (1)

My Reading Wife

March 23, 2008 – 2:20 pm

Mine is a “reading wife.” She loves to read practically anything and everything that comes by her way. Her reading habits are interesting, since she comes from a society that puts less premium on reading and more on verbal communications and images.

She is a persistent reader despite the fact that our kind of society may even look down upon people who read, because reading is not yet an integral part of our social, cultural, and psychological make up.

While in other societies it is common to see people holding books and newspapers in public places, such a sight is rare in Jordan, or, for that matter, in the different parts of the Arab world where I have also lived in. This is why I look with curiosity upon my “reading wife” simply because the reading culture or the book culture is not there to support her. In spite of that, she would munch through myriads of words, as if their meanings and extrapolations were Turkish delight.

She was socialized in a “readersless” society and had the tenacity to pick up books, opening her mind and indulge in a literature that took her far from her roots, though she continues to value our Arabic and Islamic traditions.

In between getting the house chores done, taking the kids to and from school, cooking, cleaning, and taking them (and, occasionally, me) to doctors, the flow of her reading today remains at a constant pace, a steady momentum that only she can control.

I don’t really know how she manages to find the time, but she closes herself in, finding “reading time” whenever she can. When she reads about something that really matters to her she might discuss it with me, but most modern novels, some that may be wrongly described as pulp, she leaves to herself.

I don’t mind me telling you she is putting all of us to shame, since we rarely read and looking at words on a page is not really in our blood, despite the fact our Holy Koran has instructed us it to read, and fathom knowledge; even if we have to go to China to acquire it, as the saying goes! Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, muslim women | Comments (1)

Muslim Couples and Infertility: Plan Ahead!

March 17, 2008 – 5:37 am

My friend, Noha, sat across from me weeping. She had requested to meet for coffee early that day, it sounded urgent from her voice. I’m not one to pry in someone else’s affairs, if Noha wanted to talk, I knew she eventually would.

And she did.

“I can’t have children,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked like a child who just learned that they had lost their parent forever. I didn’t know what to say to comfort her. I’ve only heard of such personal affairs in the old Egyptian classic movies I watched as a child. In one movie, the lead actress, Amina Rizk, gives up her true love and decides to share her husband with another, Huda Sultan, in hopes that her husband’s name will be passed on.

Noha calmed down once the waiter brought our food. She explained that the doctor determined that her husband was the infertile one, not her as they initially presumed. I confess, I was shocked. In Arab culture, infertility is always blamed on the female.

Even if a woman is strong enough to challenge her society and demand that the man take a fertility test, he almost would always refuse. Noha’s husband had a different view, thus the unfortunate results of the test.

I didn’t know what to say: “should I advise her to leave him or encourage her to just accept her destiny/test from God?” Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in religion, romance, society | Comments (21)

To Obama

March 12, 2008 – 2:55 pm

Hussein what you wearing
that funny looking turban for?
Man you’re in America now!
The land of opportunity
Judeo-Christian unity
respectable community
So don’t you go consorting with
Louis Farrakhan
when you could be endearing yourself
to the great American clan
Your name is Obama
So don’t you go looking like Osama
Wearing some MOOZLMAN pajama
Man you got yourself a Harvard Degree

to cleanse that impure pedigree
And with Oprah at your side
You’re sure to glide
Tell America about your papa
the one in heaven
In one afternoon a campaign boon

A reverent scene
Beside the media Queen
Spreading the American dream
We are all one in the body of Christ
So don’t you go traveling
among the disbelievers
the Allah deceivers
they may not like your version
of the great conversion
and go after your ass
till you do the reversion
Stay safe man
You’re in America now Obama
The religious freedom nation
of personal salvation

Your name is Obama
Barack allah feek

Baruch ha shem Ya Hussein
you’re related to the Queen!!*

* - See Juancole.com for Arabo/Islamic lineage of British royalty

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, election 08, humor | Comments (2)

The Phone Call from Kayfoun

March 8, 2008 – 6:01 pm

It was three o’clock in the morning when the phone rang. Sirena sat up in her bed when she heard the second trill break the quiet evening air, and an anxious feeling filled her stomach. There was only one place she hoped that call wouldn’t be coming from: Lebanon, the place her father called “back home.”

There was a war over there.

Her father had once stood with her and spun their globe. His finger covered the entire country. He pointed it out with the white crescent at the top of one nail. Sirena had squinted at the small blot, its name printed in a nearby sea. She imagined that the whole country was probably the size of her elementary school and pictured the blue and red hallways packed with tall men and women who looked just like her dad.

Sirena couldn’t remember when the war had begun. Her father said it started a long time ago. Her sister Aisha was ten now, two years older than Sirena. Aisha couldn’t remember when the war started either, but she said she was six when the first phone call came, and she could remember how things were before it happened. Aisha said Baba smiled a lot more and he used to read stories and sing songs before bedtime. Now he just tucked the covers around you and said, “I love you, baby. Sleep well,” before flipping down the light switch and pulling the door almost shut.

“The war,” Aisha had said, and she said it with authority, “changed everything.” In the last four years, there had been five phone calls, each reporting the death of yet another cousin, aunt or uncle that the girls would never meet. Of the calls, Sirena could only remember two. She was afraid this might be the third phone call she would come to remember. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, lebanon | Comments (0)

Exhausted

March 5, 2008 – 9:45 am

From explaining myself to people who believe that being married to a Muslim is similar to being Frankenstein’s bride, or Jack the Ripper’s victim.

How exhausted am I?

Imagine:

Life as a marathon.

A sweaty marathon runner with a cramp. And someone with a terrible nasal voice nagging at her shoulder, lying to her about her shoelaces. Telling her they’ve come untied.

At every mile.

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, muslim women, society | Comments (0)