#997 Good hijab days

Yeah, sisters. You know what I’m talking about. That day when your forehead-to-hijab-ratio is perfect and the color matches and the pins don’t poke and the tassles don’t fray and as you go through your day it maintains the same position as when you first put it on and not a single hair flies out of place. Aw yeah.

Remember that day when you were the only hijabi at Really Big Freakin’ Deal Conference and feeling a bit out of place? And those adorable little old ladies came up to you and remarked on how lovely your scarf looked, and how they looked forward to seeing what you’d wear the next day?

Or when your high school English teacher told you she wished she could have met you when she was going through chemotherapy, so you could have taught her how to wear one? (Okay, that one was a little depressing but she was a super awesome teacher so you forgave her for that.)

Zabardast!

#998 When your non-Muslim friends remind you to pray…better

It’s prayer time. You glance at the clock, toss a note on the desk, and haul it to your friendly neighborhood stairwell.

Your co-worker fixes you with an appraising stare as you return to your desk. “Are you sure you prayed enough? That seemed pretty fast!” You know she’s only joking…somewhat.

It’s not as bad as the time after the MSA meeting when she said, “Now I know you couldn’t concentrate with that fine-looking brother in front of you.”

#999 The unexpected salaam

A few years ago, I was in the process of transferring from one school to another (one state to another, one life to another) The bureaucratic hassle was, well, a hassle.

Here is an excerpt from a much longer, boring post in which I rambled on for a bit about record transfers and missing books and fines:

I was feeling kinda down as I was walking to the library. Then this woman who was walking out said, “Assalamu Alaikum!” in the most beautiful, cheerful voice imaginable. “Wa Alaikum Assalam Wa Rahmatullah!” I replied out of sheer happiness. It perked me right up.

What better way to brighten someone’s day than with an epic greeting of peace? It’s like a tiny taste of Paradise on earth. <3

MUMTAAZ!

#1000 Al-Khwarizmi

Long before Harry Potter started reading A Compendium of Common Curses and Their Counter-Actions for his Defense Against the Dark Arts class, and when people treated fictional characters as, well, fiction–there was a totally legit book called The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing and there lived a not-so-fictitious man by the name of Abu  Abdallah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi.

In addition to rockin’ a really fine turban, al-Khwarizmi put his considerable intellect to work in developing the fields of mathematics, geography, astronomy, and cartography (thanks Wikipedia!) with a modest little contribution called algebra.

That moment in your high school math class, when the teacher stopped instruction and turned on the TV instead so everyone could watch, horror-struck, as the towers fell, and you felt a little sick to your stomach, not because you were scared of what could happen, but because of what you knew would happen, that they would all look out of the corners of their eyes at you, the kid with the funny sounding name, and wonder if you had anything to do with those terrorists ayrabs cameljockeys sandniggers. Were you an infiltrator?

You blinked down at the equations in your cookie-cutter McGraw-Hill textbook, and comforted yourself with the restoration al-jabr and balancing al-muqabala of numbers and thought, It’s too late. The infiltration had happened centuries before, and it was leaping out at everyone from the pages of their books because before there were Muslims who brought down towers and people, throwing everything out of order, there were Muslims like al-Khwarizmi who brought down numbers, reducing them to their component parts and bringing it all back into harmony.

He’s got a crater on the moon named after him and his face on a stamp.  Bet he knew how to use a lota too. Take that, Kepler.

#1001 The professor always remembers your name

It’s the first day of class. You’re desperately trying to become one with your chair as the professor calls out roll. Inevitably, after all the Ashleys and Lindseys, Mikes and Johns, and Jacob Finkelstein, he arrives at your good name.

You cringe and sink down in your chair a little more.

The professor pauses, squints. He opens his mouth, and like being faced with an overstuffed burrito, struggles to wrap his vocal cords around your Muslim moniker.

“Ak…med?” he queries hesitantly.

“It’s Ahmed,” you correct, emphasizing the breathiness of the letter. But it’s okay, you think, resigned.

Just before you can open your mouth to convey this thought, the professor speaks.

“Ahmed,” he says, surprisingly well. “I’ll have to remember that.”

And he does.

That’s pretty darn awesome.