Friday Love: Deluge
Posted: April 12, 2013 Filed under: Friday Love, Writers | Tags: black mermaids, Deluge, film, Love InshAllah, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, Nijla Mu'min Leave a comment »Congratulations to American Muslim filmmaker and writer Nijla Mu’min on her new film Deluge! Check out the trailer below and website, here.
Nijla Mu’min is a writer and filmmaker from the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a 2007 graduate of UC Berkeley, and also attended Howard University’s MFA Film Program, where she was the recipient of the 2009 Paul Robeson Award for Best Feature Screenplay. She is a dual-degree MFA student in Film Directing and Writing at Calarts. Her short film Two Bodies has screened at festivals across the country, including the Pan African Film Festival and Newfest at Lincoln Center. Her writing appeared in The New York Times-featured book, Love, InshAllah: The Secret Love Lives of American Muslim Women, Bitch Magazine, and on Shadow and Act. She is the recipient of the 2012 Princess Grace Award Foundation, Cary Grant Film Award for her thesis film Deluge.
Literary Mama: Other Mothers
Posted: April 3, 2013 Filed under: Literary Mama, Writers | Tags: comparisons, growing, learning, love, Love InshAllah, mistakes, mother-son, motherhood, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim women, other mothers, parenthood 3 Comments »Ed note: Introducing our second monthly columnist, Aisha Saeed: mama, writer, lawyer and contributor to the Love InshAllah anthology.
It’s been a while since I last took Waleed to storytime. I need to take him. But its during his nap time. But he needs social interaction.
Bad mom if I do, bad mom if I don’t. I changed his clothes, put on his shoes, strapped him in the car seat and headed to the library. As I opened his door to get him out of the car, I looked at his feet. No shoes.
He’d kicked them off before we got out of the house, I realized. Fumbling through the diaper bag hoping for a magic pair of extra shoes, I realized I’d also forgotten his sippy cup on the breakfast table. As the sun beamed down on us, I imagined myself bringing my barefoot baby into story time, the looks of disdain of the other mothers because:
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Poetry Monday: Tanzila Ahmed
Posted: March 4, 2013 Filed under: Poetry Monday, Writers | Tags: bangla, language of love, loss, love, Love InshAllah, love poetry, mother tongue, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, Muslim women and love, Muslim women poet, poetry, tagore, Tanzila Ahmed, Taz Ahmed 3 Comments »
Original Art by Taz Ahmed
Bhohlo
You make me yearn for my mother tongue.
My brown fingers intertwine yours as I pull you, eedhigay, towards me,
Lips graze your neck, asthay, as my instincts form soft sounds,
Saved only for special people.
“Choloh” I whisper in your ear as I tug you into the dark.
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On Silence
Posted: February 20, 2013 Filed under: Writers | Tags: Cheryl Strayed, Love InshAllah, motherhood, Muslim dating, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, silence, spirituality, Wild, women writers 1 Comment »
It’s 6 o’clock in the morning and though the house is still and dark, I am awake. It is the way it is these days. As much as I want to hibernate like a bear storing up my unconscious hours like an extra padding of fat for the coming months ahead when a little one will be waking me up every few hours, I can’t. I treasure my sleep. I adore my sleep. I could sing odes, sonnets, and serenade sleep– and yet it is the very thing that eludes me these days.
Still, in some ways, the silence in this early hour, though entirely unwanted, is beautiful in its own way. I felt reminded of this yesterday at my now-weekly checkups at the doctor’s office when they strapped me to a heart monitor and left me to my own devices for twenty minutes. Or rather, they left me without my own devices as my Kindle and brand new iPhone were tucked away in a purse just beyond my reach. I lay in the quiet, fluorescent room with nothing to do but lie back and feel my son do the samba inside me.
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How to say goodbye to your mother
Posted: February 6, 2013 Filed under: Writers, Your voices | Tags: bereavement, coping with grief, grief, losing a parent, losing one's mother, loss, love, Love InshAllah, Mother-daughter, Muslim love, Muslim men, Muslim relationships, Muslim women, Tanzila Ahmed 2 Comments »
What do you tell her? If you have five years to say good-bye or no time at all, the most important thing to do is to tell your mother you love her.
Even though I told my mother I loved her before hanging up every phone call – except the last one – it’s what I seek to tell her with an urgent desperation when she visits my dreams. She knows I love her, she knew I love her, yet it’s the one thing that I can’t stop wanting to tell her, the urgency I can’t let go.
Tell her you love her, in every form of the word. You write it, feed it, squeeze it. You telepathically send it. Convey it when you hold her hand. But you must say it. Aloud. I know how you are with words, how they choke you like they choke me. It’s as much for you, as it is for her. She needs to hear it, but it’s more important you say it.
Because this love that you share with your Mom – this mother/daughter bond that happens when she starts nurturing you in her belly and giving you life/blood/breath – this is the only person you will ever love in this way. You will love your children, yes, but even then, it will be different. Your mother is your first love, the person you loved before you even existed. So tell her you love her. But know that it will never be enough. It was never enough.
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