I spend much of my life holding space for other people and raising my pre-teen on my own, trying to stay afloat. It’s meaningful work, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. It also means I need time to slow down and truly listen to my own thoughts, my body, the parts of myself that get quiet when I’m always giving.

Solo retreats are how I re-tune my mind, body, and spirit back into alignment, how I find my way to feeling present in myself and connected to the Divine. This is why I make solo nature retreats a non-negotiable at least once a year, finding creative ways to arrange childcare for my son so I can get access to precious time in solitude. This time, my son was at a nearby summer camp while I was on my own in the forest. For a whole week, I could do whatever I wanted without anyone dictating my movements or needing anything from me.

I’ve always pursued what I feel called to do, I don’t wait around to find the right travel partner. Whether it means taking a flight to Iraq alone during the American occupation to get inspiration for my PhD dissertation, camping out alone without a tent in the western deserts of Egypt, walking from village to village and staying at the home of women I met along the way in countries such as Turkiye, Syria, and Romania, or going on road trips alone throughout the Middle East and Europe, most recently on a solo adventure through the countryside and cities of the Balkans, or even just moving to Turkiye for four years as a single mom.

I sometimes forget that even one of these things would be a huge deal for many, but for me, it’s just how I live my life, so going camping alone in the mountains felt like the perfect solo retreat. Sleeping outdoors is uplifting for the spirits and it’s a low-budget option to get away in an expensive state. As I build up my camping supplies and courage to go into more remote places around Caifornia, I hope to explore some dispersed and backcountry camping experiences in the future. I’d welcome company for these future adventures if I find the right travel companions.

Now, back to that one night I got scared.

It was the night of the full moon, and so much light flooded the campsite that I could see without my flashlight. Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up to the sound of footsteps crunching on leaves somewhere close to my tent, stopping and moving and circling my tent. I lay completely still inside my sleeping bag, wide awake, my heart racing and my whole body braced, running through every possibility, telling myself it was probably a bear, and trying not to let my mind go to the scarier option: a man. I gripped a pocket knife and pepper spray, ready to deploy them in an instant. What if the bear rips through the tent, since all that separates me from the outside is flimsy nylon? Or what if a man is scouting my campsite to see if he can attack me? I eventually looked around outside but couldn’t see anything, so I remained in the tent trying to sleep, but mainly tossing and turning for the rest of the night.

The next night, I was still sitting on my camp chair outside my tent when the footsteps came back. So this time I grabbed my flashlight and went looking for the perpetrator. I shone my flashlight into the darkness toward the forest, and the light landed on a deer, completely unbothered, calmly munching on the bushes growing around my campsite.

I’ve thought about that deer a lot since. How much of my fear that first night was real information and how much of it was my mind filling a dark shape with the worst thing it could imagine. I don’t think the answer is that fear is never useful. I think the answer is that much of what frightens us in the dark, literal or otherwise, is smaller and stranger and far less interested in us than we assume.

Outside of that one night of broken sleep, my time involved a lot of rest, in the truest sense of the word. I hiked when I felt like it and rested when I didn’t. I read, journaled, made art, engaged in devotional practiced, meditated, wandered the meadow and the trails. I said hello to plant and tree friends I recognized, along with new ones I was meeting for the first time.

I also toured a deep cave, where I could experience true darkness and true quiet, without light or sound pollution. Walking deeper and deeper into the womb of the Earth made me feel embraced by al-rahman al-rahim, the Compassionate, the Merciful, names that come from the same root as rahm, the Arabic word for womb. Water trickling through the mountain for thousands of years formed the caverns themselves, slowly shaping odd-shaped chambers, stalactites, and stalagmites out of solid rock, some covered with crystal formations.

Walking among the giant sequoias put me in that same kind of awe. Some of the old-growth trees would take twenty people or more, arms outstretched, to wrap all the way around the bottom of the trunk. Looking up at them, my neck craned back so far I felt myself bowing, an involuntary kind of reverence. I stood there mesmerized, some of these trees nearly two thousand years old, alive since the time of Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad.

We are nothing but a blip on this gigantic planet full of ecological diversity. Everything in this universe is in a state of submission and praise of the Divine, as it says in the Qur’an:

“Do you not see that to Allah bow down all those in the heavens and all those on the earth, as well as the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and all living beings, as well as many humans, while many are deserving of punishment.” Qur’an 22:18.

And I’m reminded that God could have created the world to be dull and static, but instead we are met everywhere we go with diversity of spaces, color, patterns, and textures. It’s a feast for the senses. At the same time, walking through those forests, I kept noticing how much the trees there are struggling, the damage from old-growth logging decades ago that the land still hasn’t recovered from, now compounded by recent fires and beetle infestation and the growing impact of global warming.

But that same week I felt a real sadness too. So many trees had fallen, gray and dried out, rotting slowly on the forest floor, and too many open spaces now stood where dense forest used to be. In the Qur’an, God gave humans the responsibility of khilafa, stewardship over this earth. Our purpose was to know and care for what we’ve been given on this planet rather than extract from it heedlessly. Everything else in creation bows to the Divine simply by being what it is. We’re the one part of creation that was given a choice in the matter, and walking through those groves, it was hard not to see how badly that choice has gone in so many places and why God gives an exception when describing how the entire creation worships the Divine, except for some particularly exploitative humans.

I went into those mountains to fill myself back up. I came out of them reminded that the work of holding space, for myself, for my son, for everyone I sit with in my practice, and for this land that we, its stewards, are failing so badly, is all one mission. You can’t separate the inner alignment from the outer world you’re aligning yourself within. Both need tending and care, rest and action, solitude and community.

Every day is Ashura. Everywhere is Karbala.

The tenth day of Muharram is here, and I find myself pausing to reflect.

Muharram means different things for Sunni and Shi’i Muslims. Right now, as I write this, some of our Sunni siblings will soon sit down to a joyful iftar, breaking fast, enjoying a special Ashura pudding, and narrating the story of the day God saved Musa/Moses and his people from the oppressive tyrant Pharaoh. At the same moment, our Shi’a siblings are in the streets, homes, and mosques, wearing black, weeping, and feeling the weight of a massacre that happened in the seventh century.

Each community is experiencing the same day of the year, but their reality of how they view and experience it couldn’t be more different. I don’t think we sit with that contradiction enough. Both are true, but they don’t carry the same weight.

Today, I want to honor our Shi’a siblings, because their story affects us all, no matter our denomination. We are in forty days of mourning, of wearing black, of sober remembrance of the brutal martyrdom of Imam Husayn, his Companions, and members of his family. The travesty of what happened at Karbala is still happening today, and we cannot look away.

The forty-day mourning practice of our Shi’a siblings is one of the most sobering rituals I have ever witnessed. Western culture does not know what to do with grief. We want to move past it quickly, finding a resolution as soon as possible. But grief that is named and held and given forty days of ritualized practice and communal remembrance actually transforms us, instead of getting stuffed down and turning into something else. We can learn so much by listening deeply and learning about these rituals and beliefs, even if they are different from our own.

I spent years deep in Shi’a studies. Some of my closest mentors and peers in grad school were Shi’a. One was an exiled Iranian clergy member who spent many hours with me reading Shi’i narratives of early Islamic history. He helped me understand how and why Sunnis and Shi’is have such different memories and records of the same time period, and how the marginalized narratives often get pushed out by the victors. I learned to have a more critical and skeptical eye toward historical sources, and in my PhD dissertation, I spent two years reading and writing about debates among Sunni and Shi’i scholars about sacred space, pilgrimage, and the bodies of the Imams in Iraq.

I have stood and read the Fatiha and prayed in the shrines of the Imams and their family in Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Egypt, surrounded by women weeping for crimes of the past and crimes of the present. I could feel their grief in my body and the powerful energy in those sacred spaces, sensing the layers of pleas, prayers, and grief released by pilgrims over the centuries, seeking solace, healing, and answers.

I understood something in those places, from attending majalis in mosques, husayniyyas, and homes, and from my Shi’i friends and mentors, that I couldn’t have understood from books alone: mourning can be an act of resistance. I know these practices and narratives can be hard for Sunnis to grapple with, but one can start simply by watching a video, reading a short account of the events of Karbala, and educating oneself about this historical event and how its echoes can be seen around us in the world today.

Karbala happened because people who were supposed to be righteous leaders chose power and political control over justice. Imam Husayn and his companions were killed for refusing to pledge allegiance to a tyrant.

And I keep coming back to the women around Husayn and how they responded in the aftermath of his martyrdom. Sayyidah Zaynab, the sister of Imam Husayn, stood before Yazid after watching her brother and the men of her family be massacred. She was taken captive and had every reason to stay silent. Instead, she stood up and gave a sermon in the court of the man who had just killed her family and told him the truth about himself without flinching. She named his crimes in front of the oppressor, with her full dignity intact, in defense of her fallen family.

She is a model for all of us, but especially for Muslim women. She shows us what it looks like to speak when silence would be safer, to hold your ground when everything is stacked against you, to resist without losing yourself in the process. Every Muslim woman is an heir to that lineage. I want us to claim it with conviction.

The phrase that has stayed with me about Karbala for years comes from Ali Shariati, the Iranian sociologist and revolutionary intellectual: every day is Ashura, and everywhere is Karbala. The choice between justice and oppression is never just a historical event; it is also the here and now. It is asking us what injustice we are being called to name and resist today.

May we all identify the Karbala in our lives and find the courage to fight for what is right.

There is a version of Islam I know from the inside of my chest, not from a book. I feel it when I’m outside doing zikr and my breath syncs with the names I recite. I feel it in sujood when my forehead touches cool earth, and my whole body exhales.

And then there is the other version, the one so many of us were handed: the one transmitted in fluorescent-lit rooms, the one that lives in obligation and the mechanics of correct form.

Most of what we were taught about Islam was taught to us by men who do not live in these bodies, by men who interpret religion to serve their interests while keeping ours suppressed. By men who do not know what it is to have a body that bleeds every month, to make sujood while pregnant or while tending to an infant, to feel our cycle pulled by the moon or to wonder why it has gone irregular.

Our bodies need to be included in our spirituality for it to be whole. Without that, a solely intellectualized form of Islam is missing something big, something primal to us as humans. This Sunday, my retreat partner Fariha Mahmood and I want to talk about what that something is, and what it feels like to find your way back to it.

Our deen was born in the open desert. The Prophet and his companions did not practice Islam in climate-controlled rooms on carpet. They lived in it. They prayed on the ground, on the actual earth. They made wudu with the water available to them and sometimes with no water at all, just soil, just the dust of the land. The harshness of the desert, the scarcity of water, the scorching heat and the brief coolness of a mud home, all of that was not separate from their spiritual life. It was the medium their spiritual life moved through. The question I keep asking myself is: what did Islam feel like in the body of someone who actually lived that way? What did it smell like? What was the texture of it under their hands and feet? What did submission feel like when the elements were not something you could turn off?

We have sealed ourselves off from all of that, and something has gone quiet in us because of it.

There is a concept I keep returning to. Most of us were taught that Allah gave us one book, the Quran, full of ayaat, full of signs. But some Islamic scholars, especially Sufis, have long recognized a second book. They called it al-Quran al-takwini, the Quran of creation, in contrast to al-Qur’an al-tadwini, the written text of the Qur’an. The 13th-century Sufi mystic Aziz al-Din Nasafi noted that the book of creation is always ready and open; every day it turns its own pages in front of us.

The word ayaat itself holds both meanings simultaneously. It means a verse of the Quran. It means a sign in the natural world; it’s the same word in Arabic but with many layers. The Divine did not give us one book, but it’s not common for Muslims to talk about reading the second one and drawing upon it as inspiration for our spiritual walking and even embodied practices.

I read this book when I walk outside and look at a leaf and follow the veins with my eyes and feel the weight of what I am looking at. That is an ayah, a sacred verse and a sign to interpret and reflect upon. I see it when the wind moves through the redwoods and the whole forest sways. I see it when the birds start chattering around maghrib time. I see it when I notice that the walnut looks like a brain and the tree looks like upside-down lungs, macro and micro reflecting each other, the outside world mirroring the inside of our bodies. All of it is scripture, divinely revealed. All of it is worship happening without us, all around us, whether we are paying attention or not.

The more time I spend reading al-Quran al-takwini, the more I want to pray and the more I feel closeness to my Creator. This doesn’t come out of obligation, but out of something that feels more like longing inspired by the creation around me.

Fariha and I want to explore what it looks like to bring these two books back together, and what changes in our bodies and in our connection to Islam when we do so. We want to talk about this with you. We’ll start the conversation and then open it up to all of you to learn from one another.

Join us this Sunday, June 7, 9am PST / 12pm EST for a live Zoom community conversation; Sign up here.

And if Sunday leaves you wanting to go deeper, this is the work we will be doing together at Returning to Rahma: A Midsummer Pause, our 4-day forest immersion in July. Inshallah, this will be the beginning of a longer conversation, and the forest is where we’ll put it into practice.

Ramadan ended nearly seven weeks ago, and the question I keep sitting with is: how much of it are we actually carrying forward? This year, my intentions for Ramadan were very simple. They centered on finding greater presence in prayer and carrying out all the prayers, even if delayed or combined. I’ll be honest, I definitely didn’t pray all of them on time. Sometimes, I sat and prayed on a chair when I was really tired, and Fajr and I are still trying to build a relationship due to my identity as a night owl and its identity as an early morning bird.

But the real win wasn’t the discipline or the checkmarks on a calendar, it was finding more presence and meaning in the ritual. But here’s what surprised me most: I realized that I cannot function while fasting without slowing down. Ramadan often shows me that I’ve been overfunctioning for years, running on empty in ways I didn’t even notice or acknowledge. I don’t know how I managed it in my 20s and 30s, but I didn’t know any other way. I’ve learned that I need to drastically slow down my life, reducing my obligations outside of regular work and parenting, drawing firm boundaries, and doing much less than I usually do.

As I shared in my Ramadan journal, I committed to daily walks and nature immersion. Those walks nourished me on an empty stomach, and I’ve continued them as an essential part of each day, as a lifeline that has helped me feel a deeper sense of interconnection with creation. My nature immersion became such a vital part of my Ramadan experience that I’ve noticed my approach to spirituality feels more grounded in my connection to nature, and I find myself exploring nature-based approaches to Islamic wisdom and practice.

The mirror that Ramadan holds up to us

There’s a metaphor I keep coming back to, and it sits with me because it feels so true. Imagine a glass of water with sediment at the bottom. Most of us don’t shake it because it’s too embarrassing to see how dirty it really is. It’s like a water bottle sitting in dim light; you don’t notice the bacteria and slime growing inside until you wash it out properly and actually look at what’s there. You might not want to see it, but once you do, you can’t unknow it, and you are motivated to wash it out with a bottle brush to get into all of the nooks and crannies.

Ramadan shakes the glass really hard. It shakes us up so we can see what we’ve been ignoring all year long. And yes, it’s uncomfortable. You might not like what you see looking back at you. But that’s the gift of Ramadan. It gives us a chance to reconfigure our lives, to work on ourselves with both compassion and accountability, so we can grow into who we’re meant to become, so we can love what we see when we look in the mirror.

Why the intellect takes a back seat

For most of the year, our intellect and our ego run the show and lead us. They convince us we’re in control and that we know what we’re doing. But Ramadan is not a month of the intellect; it’s actually a month that humbles the intellect and quiets it down so that other parts of us can rise up and flourish. Our hearts, our intuition, and our deepest soul calling get to come forward when the intellect takes a step back.

When I started eating and drinking again after Ramadan, my brain fog lifted instantly. I could think clearly in a way I hadn’t in a month. And that’s when I realized something profound: that’s how different we become when we’re not ruled by intellect and ego all the time. When we have fewer distractions, when we’re physically more tired, when we’re moving slower, we go deeper, we feel more, and we hear ourselves.

In my case, I was confronted head-on by my inner knowing about an issue that I had kept dismissing, ignoring my intuition about it for a long time. During Ramadan, it was screaming at me to listen, and because I was finally quiet enough to hear it, I did. I heard the truth about the situation, and while I didn’t take immediate action, it set me in a different direction, one I was reluctant to take, but that ultimately led me to a decision after Ramadan that was hard but greatly improved my life as a result.

A month is exactly the right length

Most of us couldn’t survive Ramadan if it lasted for months on end. A month is long enough to find transformation, however small or big we need it to be at that time. It strips us down to the basics and whittles us down to a fine edge, and we feel that stripping and whittling because it’s not all love and light; there can be a lot of darkness and despair amidst the spiritual nourishment.

And then Ramadan ends, which is necessary and wise by design. We return to eating, to our tea or coffee in the morning, to our regular lives and our regular pace. Something in us has shifted, even if we can’t fully name it yet.

The real question is: what do we carry forward for the rest of the year? What taste of Ramadan can we maintain in our lives?

Until next Ramadan

You don’t have to lose what you learned. The slowness you discovered, the presence you practiced, the mirror Ramadan held up to your life and your choices, these don’t have to vanish just because the month ended and we’re back to our normal routines. They can stay with you throughout the year.

For me, it’s continuing my daily nature immersion walks, spending as much time as possible outdoors, and finding that same quality of slowness in my prayers.

For others, it could be as simple as keeping one prayer time consistent or one practice that grounds you daily. Or maybe it’s carving out time to sit with yourself the way you did in Ramadan, even if it’s just ten minutes a week. Or you could check in with your own sediment-filled cup regularly, asking yourself what’s accumulated since Ramadan ended and the sediment once again settled to the bottom of the cup. You can ask yourself: what needs to be seen and acknowledged and worked with? Or you could remember what it felt like to be ruled more by your heart than your head, and explore how you can stay connected to that.

Ramadan reminds us that we are weak, that we are nothing without the Divine, that we are mere reflections of creation while al-Khaliq is the Creator of all things. But it also shows us that when we humble ourselves, when we slow down, when we look honestly at who we are and what we’re carrying, transformation and growth become possible. We keep walking the path that leads us back to ourselves, and ultimately, inshallah, back to our source, our Creator.

What did you take away from Ramadan? What are you carrying forward into your year? I’d love to hear what has stayed with you so far.

Here I am, catching up on my Ramadan journal entries, several weeks after Ramadan has already ended. Typical Rose, always falling behind, never quite following up on commitments, always a little flaky, although eventually completing them in a slightly chaotic way. There’s a big sign of your ADHD: you commit to something but can’t quite complete it because you get distracted by other things along the way. But hey, Rose, it’s okay whether you post or not. No one cares except you. Stop pressuring yourself for no reason, take a chill pill. People might enjoy reading your posts, but they’re not going to feel differently about you if you combine some entries, post late, or whatever. But still, it feels good to have completed my post for the special month, alhamdulillah.

Really, I’m just writing to myself as a way to stay accountable, to keep a journal and a log of what Ramadan was like for me.

I went through a rough draft of my journal entries from the last week of Ramadan to create this final entry, compressing five days into one. The last week of Ramadan

was a bit of a whirlwind, in a good way. I started to feel more of a sense of home, of community rooted in the Bay Area. Both Saturday and Sunday nights, I was able to spend time individually with really lovely friends I’m developing connections with.

Having left behind a beautiful circle of friends back in Istanbul, I find myself in a small town in northern California, having to start over. I attended two different Sufi gatherings with beautiful communities further from my home that truly nourish my soul and enabled me to meet beautiful people who live in the area, as well as reconnect with people I’ve met before. Even though the people I’m getting to know live scattered around the Bay, I am still grateful to start building connections that help me see a future where I can be rooted in the area.

The days in between are a bit of a blur. I don’t remember much. I was trying to work, but the fog in my brain was so thick. I don’t think I did much, and I beat myself up about that. But I did some things, I guess. The last day, Thursday, I remember my steps felt much lighter. I felt energetic. I could feel Eid on the horizon, so close. I could almost taste the green tea I would indulge in on Eid morning and all the following mornings. That day was a really lovely one. I felt more normal, and I think it was the excitement about the coming of Eid. While the slowness of Ramadan was delightful and heart-opening, I was clearly also looking forward to “going back to normal.”

What I remember most about this last week, other than the beautiful gatherings and time with friends and trying to find presence in prayer, is that I’m grateful to myself for taking walks, however short or long, to revel in the beauty that is spring in Northern California. Walking through the neighbourhood, getting lost staring at the blooming flowers and buzzing bees.

The weather was heavenly in the last week of Ramadan, and it gave me a huge sense of gratitude just for existing, for being able to witness the beauty Allah offers us. Because yes, we’re given so much ugliness to witness, but we’re also given beauty, and I want to acknowledge that. We can’t only acknowledge the ugliness. We must keep acknowledging the beauty. That’s what I took away from the last week of Ramadan.

Oh, and randomly on the last day of Ramadan, I discovered a bunch of winecap mushrooms growing in the mushroom patch I planted back in October. I had lost hope they would ever fruit, but it turns out the heat of the last days activated them. I enjoyed them in a sautee several days later, and they were delicious!

I could say that my favorite hobby is wandering slowly and looking at, touching, and smelling plants and flowers. They help keep me sane in an insane world.

As-salamu alaykum, siblings in Islam,

What a journey this Ramadan has been. Whether you fasted, prayed, struggled, rested, or simply tried to stay afloat: all of it counts. All of it was seen by Our Creator. Embracing ourselves with rahma allows us to hold every version of us, not just the polished, performative one.

On this Eid, I’m holding gratitude for each of you who showed up this month with sincerity. That sincerity is sacred, and it doesn’t have to look a certain way to be real.

And yet we cannot celebrate without bearing witness. Our hearts are with our brothers and sisters in Gaza, in Sudan, in Iran, and in every place where people are suffering, resisting, and holding on to hope with everything they have. Eid does not ask us to look away. If anything, it asks us to love harder, to stand firmer, and to let our joy be an act of resistance alongside our grief.

We celebrate because they cannot fully celebrate. That is not lost on us these days.

May your day be filled with sweetness, ease, and the kind of joy that doesn’t require explanation. May you feel held by your people, by the earth beneath you, by the endless compassion of Allah.

Stayed overnight with dear friends so we could be closer to Eid prayers in the morning. A house full of children laughing and playing until late filled my heart. When kids are hyped up on sugar, you know it’s Eid!

My son dressed up in his “coolest” hoodie, and I dressed up in bright colors that brought me delight.

We headed to the fairgrounds to experience a festive environment and pray with thousands of other Muslims. Five Eid prayer shifts at the fairgrounds, even more at the mosque. Chaotic and disorganized but exciting at the same time, I haven’t been around so many Muslims since I left Istanbul at the end of 2024.

There are so many Muslims in the East Bay. The global fashion show is my favorite aspect of large Eid gatherings. I’m always a little jealous (in a good way) of the beautiful clothing people wear, reflecting the richness of their cultural backgrounds.

The prayers were a blur, the speaker system barely worked, so we could only make out snippets of the imam reciting the Qur’an. As soon as prayers were over, the women got up and greeted one another, and everyone started talking at once, making it impossible to hear the imam speaking on the speaker system that was no match for a huge hall of women.

Lesson learned: praying is always best where women and men pray together, not just because it makes us feel united as an Ummah, but also, if they don’t feel included, women will completely ignore the imam on the little screen at the front of the room, carrying on with their socializing as if the khutba (sermon) weren’t an essential part of Eid prayers. Hatem Bazian looked so enthusiastic as he shared a carefully thought-out and constructed message that I am sure I would have enjoyed, but alas he was drowned out by Eid socializing.

Out of the thousands of people milling about the fairgrounds, randomly running into lovely women I know feels like an unexpected blessing.

Lunch was a juicy hamburger for the boy and a veggie burger for me. Eating in the daytime in public was fun!

Later in the afternoon, a long drive back to the North Bay to spend time celebrating with Sufi beloveds at a lovely house on a big hill.

Eid money for my son, too many sweets, ma’mul brought all the way from Amman, so much food, and caffeine flowed throughout the day. Dhikr and songs with the daf, smiles all around. Conversations flow throughout the house and the garden.

Exhausted, we drove home through the stunning beauty of the countryside as the sun descended below the horizon and the thicker sliver of the moon slowly began its ascent.

During these last days and nights of Ramadan, I search for moments of stillness, peace, and connection.

Lately, it’s being outdoors that feels the most spiritual to me, even more than bowing down in a mosque.

It was time to get grounded and feel the Earth beneath my feet. I remove my sandals and walk barefoot, feeling everything beneath my bare soles.

I walked slowly along the freshly mowed grassy path among dormant fruit trees. Fields of yellow mustard flowers punctuated the landscape of green grass. Birds sang all around me, excited by the freshness of Spring. I felt held by the glorious choir of birdsong.

I was mainly alone, just me and the grass and the blue sky, a perfect warmth that comforted but didn’t drain me.

I didn’t have my prayer carpet, but the fresh green grass was even better. The Qibla is easy to find in an open space, just look for the sun in the West, then find East and move a little bit more left to the northeast.

Each time I kneeled to the ground, my nose came alive with the scents of the ground and grass. Electric, energized, this is what it means to be alive at this moment. Alhamdulillah.

The other night, I had the only other Muslim I know in my small town over for iftar, along with his wife. I’ll call them I. and S. We connected over our mutual love of Rumi, as he is a scholar of Rumi’s poetry, life, and spiritual path. I’ve known him for over ten years and have occasionally visited him at his home in Konya to have tea. He’s an elder who has lived a long and fascinating life, much of it in pursuit of knowledge and insight into Islam and Sufism. I live in a small town in the northernmost part of the Bay Area, which is sadly not very diverse (unlike most of the Bay Area), and it’s been quite a shift, having moved from Istanbul.

Our conversation over the meal and tea was fascinating. I was also touched by their gift of rose perfume from Türkiye, which I used to enjoy using when I lived there, but didn’t know where to find in the U.S., so that was a lovely surprise. I loved hearing about his involvement in Sufi and Muslim communities since the 1970s, how he’s met nearly everyone who has come through California, as well as many of the Sufi teachers from Türkiye and elsewhere. We spoke about our mutual spiritual journeys, and he shared many fascinating stories from his experiences, some unflattering, including encounters with various spiritual teachers, many of whom are still revered by their students.

I had already shared with him about my own past experiences with spiritual and religious abuse, so his stories reminded me of the importance of maintaining one’s spiritual agency on the path and submitting only to the Divine, not to men, who can fall to their own weaknesses.

He gave me a sobering view of the pitfalls of what happens when teachers let their ego, power, and desires get the best of them. Over the past five or so decades, he has crossed paths with so many people. In between topics, he would cite verses of Rumi and even sing some ghazals. I realized halfway through the evening that I need to record our next conversation, because he is a living archive of the history of Sufism in California and Türkiye, and those stories deserve to be preserved.

I. and S. live secluded lives as introverts, keeping to themselves after rich lives of adventure and exploration. I am moved that he still manages to get to Konya once or twice a year for the celebrations around Rumi’s birthday and Urs despite his physical challenges.

As someone who is an ambivert, I love spending time in intentional community, but can’t stand superficial interactions or gigantic gatherings. I need real community on a regular basis. I know I can’t walk through life alone; I need good people around me.

I’m not sure if I’ll take hand with another shaykh again, but for now it feels both safer and necessary to remain a freelance Muslim walking a path paved with Sufi teachings and wisdom. There is so much beauty, depth, compassion, and love on this path. It’s unfortunate that one has to walk with caution, navigating the pitfalls of one’s own ego and that of others.

I’m back, well, kind of…The past few days have been difficult: a pounding headache over the past week has made it hard to do extra writing on my laptop, along with some inner turmoil that has forced me to turn inward. I am committed to writing these entries for Ramadan, but I also want to model what it means to have rahma for oneself, which means taking a break when necessary.

This morning I took a walk and tried to carry some of that slowness with me, letting myself linger, stopping to smell the flowers, watching the ducks and turtles in the pond, noticing things I usually rush past. My favorite moment was a quiet little exchange with a turtle sitting on the ground next to a rock. His head was slightly covered by a leaf; sometimes he raised it above and sometimes tucked it back under, every so often looking up at me as if hoping I had food. I just stood there watching him and thought about how his whole job is simply to exist, to eat, to keep going, and how extraordinarily good he is at doing exactly that.

It made me think about fitra, our innate nature, the design we were each given, and how rare it is to find animals who swerve from theirs. Humans, on the other hand, are always trying to go against our fitra, even when it’s impossible to do so. That kind of resistance to one’s own nature seems to be a uniquely human tendency. Our ancestors who worked the land understood rhythm in a way many of us have lost. They had intensely busy seasons and slow, dormant ones. The slow periods were not a sign of laziness but simply part of the design of the seasonal cycle.

The ducks and turtles in the pond aren’t producing anything or benefiting anyone in any measurable way, except by existing, offering us a moment of pure delight, and taking care of their needs just as they were designed to do. They haven’t developed sophisticated technologies. They don’t have smartphones or AI or electricity. They simply continue to exist in the same way as countless generations of their ancestors.

I find myself wondering why we as humans hold ourselves to such impossible expectations, so far beyond what we were actually made for. We get so caught up in the details of work, the rules of society, the demands of technology, that we forget our most basic essence, which is simply to be here.

We weren’t designed to hunch over screens, checking boxes and downloading apps to optimize our productivity. We were created to flow with the rhythm of life and the seasons. The real question is how we do that while also surviving in a society that demands we always be doing more, always be producing, always be optimizing something.

I coaxed myself to linger a little longer even as my mind was already back at my desk making a list. My body said to stay, to watch the ducks and turtles, to see if I could just exist with them for one more moment before returning to the fabricated rhythms of human productivity.

And then I think of my fellow humans, especially those whose lives and livelihoods have been stolen in recent weeks and months by those wielding evil power. Using the most advanced weapons, machinery, and technology humans have ever developed, they have somehow managed to steal the lives of girls at their school, and so many others simply going about their daily lives.

Our fitra is to exist in peace with creation. Creating technology to kill other humans is clearly against our nature. So where does resistance to evil fit into the picture? I think it fits inside fitra itself, because in true submission to the Divine, we do not cause harm or strife on the Earth. Instead, we rise up against what is evil, call it out, and resist it. That’s not a contradiction, it’s actually the most aligned thing we can do to keep the planet in harmony.

These last ten days invite deeper introspection, worship, and self-purification. The odd nights are beautiful and mysterious. Some believe Laylat al-Qadr is the 27th night, marking the Quran’s first revelation, while others say it could be any odd night. Still, most gather on the 27th.

This year, I chose to follow a nearby mosque, which declared the start of Ramadan based on moon sighting. Some years, I follow calculation methods, depending on where I’ve lived. What that means practically is that every night of the last ten days becomes a possible Night of Power, depending on when you started. If both options are valid, then every night is a possible odd night.

Anyway, the technicalities don’t matter as much as what God is calling us toward: going inward, facing ourselves, knowing ourselves more deeply, calling upon the Divine to support and guide us. Because the more we know ourselves, the more we can know God. What better way to thank God than by understanding God’s creation? And which creation are we closest to? Our own bodies, our own souls.

All of our parts matter: our egotistical self, our compassionate self, our critical self, and the rest of them. We have all of them within us for a reason. The question is how we will sit with all of them within ourselves.

-

Living in the United States and observing Ramadan is strange in a way I haven’t quite gotten used to. I walk outside and see people eating and drinking, going about their lives, not knowing that sacred time is happening all around them. When I lived in Turkey and Egypt, where I went through 11 total Ramadans, even people who weren’t fasting knew Ramadan was present. The whole society shifted its pace, its rhythm, and its awareness. Here in the US, it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist outside of Muslim households and mosques.

But Ramadan is not a sacred space; it’s a sacred time. And time is everywhere. For me, this time itself is sacred because of what it holds. But for someone else, it’s simply Tuesday.

How can it be both at once? Every day time and sacred time, simultaneously? How can the same night be both an odd night and an even night depending on who is counting? I think this is the nature of a paradox. We live inside a paradox all the time as humans. In some parts of the world, Ramadan is a sacred time and sacred space. In others, it’s sacred time alone. It depends entirely on who is perceiving it and what they bring to it.

Which raises the deeper question: is sacred time a construction of our own meaning-making, or is it divinely ordained, real and present whether we perceive it or not? For me, it feels like both. Ramadan magic seems real to me because it’s divinely ordained, but I experience it only because I have the context and the desire to feel it. Someone who has no idea it’s even Ramadan might feel something different this month, but they would attribute it to any number of things, just not Ramadan.

-

Yesterday, my son was really upset. Fasting has been hard on him physically; he’s been getting a lot of headaches, and we’ve been modifying his fast. On top of that, he’s carrying the weight of watching what’s happening in Palestine and the attacks on Iran, and he turned to me and asked: Why does Allah allow this to happen during Ramadan? It’s supposed to be a sacred month, a special month.

I told him honestly: I don’t know. I don’t have an answer for you. But I know that we’re given many trials on this planet, and for me, all of it keeps bringing me back to God. Allah keeps asking us to return, again and again. My son asked why God allows children to be killed who have done nothing wrong, and I said I don’t fully understand either, except that we trust they are taken as martyrs, that Allah wanted them sooner.

I can’t resolve his grief or the existential questions he carries. I had the exact same ones at his age, so he definitely takes after me in that way. These questions, and my lack of any good enough answer, put me in a place of shukr, deep gratitude, for everything I have, knowing it could all be taken in a moment’s notice. This entire existence, in these physical bodies, could end this moment or after ten million moments from now. We don’t know when, and that unknowing is part of the mystery of being human. For some of us, it becomes the very thing that pushes us toward deeper trust in God, a trust that there’s a plan we don’t fully understand.

Birds singing, a dog barking, and flowers rustling in the winter

Today was a lot. I’m emotionally exhausted, even if I feel okay physically.

The highlight of the day was meeting a friend in a local park for a deep chat. We then did some co-working on a bench under the shade of old oak trees. Working on my laptop while listening to children playing at the nearby playground and the birdsong relaxed my nervous system and allowed me to get into a lovely flow.

Then I returned home after my son came home, and he was in a difficult emotional state, so I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening holding space for him. There were tears, many hugs, lots of love, and some ice cream. After many hours of this, I was grateful that we came to a better place of understanding, but wow, it definitely drained me, especially while fasting.

Every stage of childhood has been different, but the volatility of pre-teenhood, the changing of moods as often as the weather changes, is humbling in ways I didn’t expect and is pushing me to grow in ways I hadn’t expected.

Tonight I picked up a book I’ve been reading on and off this Ramadan: Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice by Kazim Ali, written in an incredibly engaging way with prose that leans toward poetry at times. The book comprises Ali’s daily journaling of his experience over two Ramadans, after a period of estrangement from Islam. He reflects on what he moves through while fasting, and it’s helpful to read someone else’s parallel journey. Perhaps that’s why you’re reading my Ramadan journal entries, too?

I opened to the pages I’ve shared here and really appreciated his vulnerability, his reverence for spirituality alongside his hesitation with certain practices he might enjoy but grapples with. He wonders whether his spiritual practice is always on his own terms or someone else’s. This resonates with me deeply because salah is obligatory upon Muslims (with exceptions) and is not technically on our own terms. But I love how he brings in yoga, and how he pushes himself through difficult postures to overcome his “small” ego. This is what eventually encourages him to go to Jumu’ah prayer, not necessarily because it’s on his terms, but because he knows it can give him something good, even when it’s hard and doesn’t always feel comfortable.

The ego wants control. It wants a spiritual life; it gets to curate on its own. Perhaps that’s what parts of New Age spirituality offer, the freedom to choose only what pleases us and to leave aside what feels too hard.

As Muslims, we are asked to do hard things and to walk through them knowing they will be hard. Ramadan is not supposed to be easy. It is a challenge, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. And yet when it becomes too hard physically, a fasting person is required to break their fast in order to preserve their health. Rahma is built into the very structure of the practice.

I am grateful to have such a rooted tradition to follow, especially one that foregrounds rahma alongside ritual requirements. These practices hold deep wisdom and real benefit, but because of how they are so often presented, many Muslims struggle to find meaning and connection in prayer, even when they’ve had glimpses of something deeply rewarding within them and know it is there.

As I walk deeper into my own journey of finding presence and embodiment in Islamic ritual practice, I am falling in love with salah all over again, in a much different way than I did when I first started praying as a fervent teenager. Alhamdulillah for everything we have and everything we don’t, and for what we’ve been given, even when we can’t yet see where it’s leading.

Today felt like summer. The heat was a bit of a shock to my body, but also most welcome. I need to find where I stored my sandals because it is clearly time.

I noticed gas prices jumped significantly today. It is a small but visible ripple from the wars being waged by those in power, wars that are pulling our country and the world toward destruction. For most Americans, it registers as an inconvenience, a few extra dollars at the pump. We grumble, drive a little less, and move on. But for Iranians, Palestinians, and others living inside these conflicts, the cost is incomparably higher. They are bearing the full brunt of greed and the hunger for power, paying with their homes, their children, their lives. I think of the schoolgirls killed in airstrikes, and the countless others gone senselessly, and I don’t know what to do with that grief except to carry it and refuse to look away.

And then I go outside and put my hands in the dirt, because what else can you do?

I have been tending to a few small pots of native and medicinal plants on my porch over the past few months, gifted to me by a kind neighbor. While I may be a little late in the season for planting, I finally decided to plant them today. I stuck my hand in the soil of my small front yard, and something in me settled.

Digging holes with the trowel, breaking up the soil with my hands, marveling at the earthworms whose presence signals the health of the earth beneath us. All of it brought me calm joy. I haven’t had a garden since my last home in Los Angeles, five years ago, where I lovingly planted a California-native garden and fell in love with the whole practice of caring for a garden and benefiting from its gifts.

Over the fall and winter, I had weeded the entire plot, laid down cardboard, and spread all the oak leaves I had raked from the street. After planting rosemary, yarrow, nettle, spearmint, and lemon balm, I realized I still had plenty of space, so I headed to a native plant nursery and picked up some lupine. I still need to track down several varieties of sage and perhaps a few more of my favorite medicinal plants. The new transplants will need generous watering as they settle in and the weather continues to warm up. I am very much looking forward to tending this small garden, which has been lying dormant since I arrived here last summer.

After two nights out in the community over the weekend, I enjoyed a cozy and quiet iftar on my own. Alhamdulillah for a simple and sufficient home, enough food, clean water, and the essentials. I pray that one day everyone in the world can have the same.

Sometimes simplicity is exactly what we need.

War. It’s happening in too many places, and it’s the innocent civilians who always suffer most.

Going to iftars more than an hour away both Friday and Saturday meant I soaked up more of the Ramadan spirit and community than I might have otherwise, but it also meant less time to write, so I’m catching up on my entries now. I’m encouraging myself to post every day of Ramadan, not out of external pressure but out of genuine curiosity about what happens when I commit to a practice and simply let it unfold.

I started my morning with an incredibly gentle yoga practice as part of the Rahma Ramadan Circle, led by a friend. It was exactly what I needed to ease into the day, feeling a little more at home in my body.

My son has had a phone ban for the past week, and it has been quite a struggle at home. We definitely absorb each other’s energies, and when he doesn’t get what he wants, namely the screen, the friction ripples through the whole house. Without his phone, he ends up restless and pestering, cycling through layers of boredom. Honestly, it wears on me, too. Our biggest battle at home is about screens, and some days it feels like an unsolvable problem. Raising a neurodivergent kid comes with its challenges alongside many genuine blessings, and I keep coming back to the reminder that I am doing the best I can, and the hugs help me keep going.

I took a slow walk around my neighborhood to ground myself and notice the small things. The wispy magenta petals of a flowering bush, tissue-paper thin and trembling in the breeze, pulled me momentarily out of my own head and out of the world’s noise.

Throughout the day, my mind kept drifting to countries far from here, places I’ve actually lived in, and where I came to know some of the kindest, most generous people I’ve ever met. And then I scroll and see something that makes my brain short-circuit, like Iranians in the Western diaspora holding rallies to praise Netanyahu for bombing their homeland. I genuinely don’t know how to hold that. Plus a lot of other cognitive dissonance of how people operate and perceive the world. The gap between lived experience and what gets amplified in media and politics can make it feel like we are all inhabiting completely different realities.

In the afternoon, I was feeling pulled toward the couch but also toward community, so I gave myself a gentle push and made the long drive to the East Bay. I’m glad I did. I ended up at a church in Berkeley, which is actually a fairly common arrangement in the U.S. for non-mainstream Muslims, including Sufis, who sometimes rent temporary spaces from churches because they tend to be more accommodating than mosques for those who want to gather without the cultural gatekeeping and restrictions that can come with more traditional spaces.

There was something comforting about breaking fast and praying alongside Muslims who hold more expansive views of the tradition. I hesitate to use the word “progressive” because every label is limiting, but I am aligned with much of what this community values. These gatherings draw Muslims from all walks of life, including those still working out their relationship to Islam, those full of questions, those from the queer community, and everyone in between.

It was, in the most tender sense, a gathering of Muslim misfits. People who still love this tradition deeply but have struggled to find a place where they belong within mainstream Muslim communities. As we watched the sun sink over the Bay Area from the Berkeley hills, the Golden Gate Bridge shimmered in the last light, and deep oranges, purples, and golds bled across the sky, highlighting the silhouette of the city of my childhood. A man stepped forward and gave the adhan, his voice rising, filling the room with reminders to come to prayer, and we gathered together for Maghrib prayer.

War is on my mind, and I suspect it’s on yours too. I find moments of presence and even delight throughout the day, and then I remember what is happening elsewhere in the world. What are you doing to stay grounded while also bearing witness to the terror faced by our brothers and sisters abroad?

As we step into a glorious spring here in Northern California that is starting to feel a lot like summer, the weather is finally getting warm and actually hot today. I went to a nature preserve in the afternoon and found myself on a beautiful hillside covered with grass and bare oak trees. There was no one else around, and I realized I hadn’t prayed yet and didn’t have a prayer mat. At first, I was going to let that stop me, because I usually pray on a carpet. But when I looked at the lovely grassy patch around me, I realized I wasn’t scared of a little dirt.

I prayed directly on the soil and grass, and let me tell you, praying on the ground is completely different than praying on a carpet. As long as I can find an area free of human-made “dirt,” I will try to pray on the ground more often. I’ve almost always used a carpet or fabric, but now I’m changing my practice.

Praying on earth and grass felt so grounding, even more so than praying on a carpet outdoors. Each time I prostrated, my nose and forehead kissed the ground. I could smell the gently crushed grasses and plants beneath me releasing their scent, strong and pervasive, making me feel alive. I felt an energetic connection with the ground, as if I was plugging my body into it and charging myself with the energy of the earth.

After the prayers, I did a walking meditation, chanting various names of Allah that came to me as I walked. By the end of my time in that open space, I felt refreshed and held, as if the earth itself had received my prayers and sent something back up through my body. I had started the day with a pounding headache, and it was noticeably less intense by the end of this practice.

I’m trying to find small glimpses of beauty and goodness in the world during such heavy times. This is one way I am doing it. How about you?

After returning home, I decided to go to an iftar in the East Bay, because that place always feels like it calls to me, and I wanted to be in community. I ended up at Lighthouse Mosque, a simple and small inner-city mosque that doesn’t have amazing facilities but has a sense of warmth and belonging that many other mosques lack, no matter how fancy their buildings are. It helps a lot that women are not hidden away and feel more included in the community; my nervous system relaxes a bit more because of that. For iftar, they offered hamburgers, French fries, chicken, and rice. As a vegetarian, I was grateful they also had falafel burgers. The community there is extremely diverse and often warm, and I enjoyed speaking with several women during and after iftar.

After iftar, we heard a talk from Butch Ware, who is now running for Governor of California. It was a powerful talk in which he drew on the teachings of Malcolm X and other radical Black leaders, pulling from his expertise as a historian to make the case for why Muslims should be engaged in electoral politics and how we can make a difference. He compared his agenda to that of the Black Panthers, which makes me wonder whether he’s too far outside the mainstream to ever win, but even having a public platform probably matters. I hadn’t given much thought to the gubernatorial race yet, but Ware made some genuinely compelling points, so I might as well put my vote toward someone more aligned with my political beliefs.

It was definitely the most political talk I’ve ever heard during Ramadan. Ware received a strong round of applause at the end. He is an eloquent and powerful public speaker, clearly skilled at rhetoric.

Praying taraweeh at this mosque felt comfortable. The imam recited Qur’an quickly but clearly, and I found myself able to follow along with the Arabic. While the last time I prayed taraweeh at a mosque closer to home, I felt tense and out of place, Lighthouse somehow softens me and enables me to simply enjoy the communal prayers.

We’re past the midway point of Ramadan, and I imagine I’m not the only one wondering where the first half of the month went. The days have moved slowly in the moment but somehow also quickly in retrospect. It’s interesting how time can be so stretchy depending on the context.

The chaos and violence of the world weigh heavily on those of us with a conscience, and I know that many of us are finding it hard to know how to balance our everyday life with witnessing what is going on in the world. I am finding my refuge on my prayer mat more than usual these days. Du’as can be a powerful medicine when we feel helpless and ineffective.

Despite a pounding headache that felt like a gigantic hand was squeezing much of my head, I still managed to go for a stroll in the neighborhood and see what I could notice. Spring in Northern California can be glorious, with perfect weather, blooming flowers and trees, and stunning blue skies. Alhamdulillah.

Seeing California poppies in their full majesty brought a big smile to my face. The way they grow everywhere like weeds, yet they are the state flower, so they’re somehow regal. Stunning and resilient, they are definitely my favorite flower native to this region.

Tonight in the Rahma Ramadan Circle, I brought a newer translation by Camille Helminski (link here) to reflect on together. Lately I’ve felt the need to slow down with things that are common in our everyday lives, to give them a closer read. We had been using a different translation of the Fatihah to open our sessions, but I wanted to bring in a fresh perspective.

Now, of course, all translations are just interpretations, and each one brings with it the subjective biases, worldview, and interpretations of the translator. This translation is no exception, but Helminski is clearly trying to make the Qur’an accessible to English readers on multiple levels, including its formatting without verse numbers to make it more readable, and introducing new ways of thinking about verses that many Muslims recite multiple times throughout the day without contemplating their meanings deeply enough.

Back when I taught about Islam to university students, I enjoyed teaching courses on the Qur’an. My favorite days were when we would bring many different translations of the same verses and consider the differences in meaning between them. It can be striking to see how many ways there are to interpret the same passages, giving non-Arabic speakers a glimpse into the depth of the Arabic language and the Qur’an itself.

I’ll leave Helminski’s translation here on its own without my commentary, as I’ve reached the end of my capacity for today. While I would translate it differently, I do appreciate her attempt at liberating the Qur’an from a much harsher approach that can be common in various other translations.

I’d love to hear how this translation lands with you, and what you notice about it that offers a different way of understanding the Fatihah.

Some thoughts I’ve had today: I always found it interesting how we say “I’m fasting,” whereas in reality, fasting makes me slow down. I’d rather say “I’m slowing.” We say “I’m fasting” as if it’s an action, like we’re doing something. But fasting is the absence of an action. When we fast, it means we’re not doing something we usually do.

Muslims who are able abstain from food and water. Those who aren’t able can fast from other things that are part of their everyday routine.

Isn’t it interesting that we make such a big deal of fasting, talking about it as an action, when it’s really about doing less, not more. Ramadan forces us to slow down our daily routine. It gives us more time in our schedule, in the hours we’d otherwise spend eating, drinking, and preparing food.

To fast, I’d say, is to slow down.

Maybe we should just call it “slowing.” The practice of slowing can really help us lean into what Ramadan is about: slowing down, noticing, having more time in our day, doing some things more often that we don’t usually do, and doing less of the things we usually do.

While walking, I saw a cat relaxing in the middle of a grassy lawn. Cats have always been my teachers, and watching this cat lazing around reminded me of my need to slow down and listen, and observe more.

When we fast, all of a sudden, perfectly acceptable things, like eating and drinking during the daytime, are no longer acceptable for those who are fasting. And drinking, which is usually a requirement for staying healthy, is also suspended, for those who are able.

When you’re tired, when you’re not drinking caffeine, when you’re not eating or drinking water, you find yourself alone with your thoughts throughout the day. You can’t do as much as you usually do. And we’ve got to face the fact that this is a month of slowing down.

We’re lowering our need for stimulation, resetting our body, mind, and soul for the rest of the year.

I wonder what it looks like for you to slow down. We all have to slow down differently. It doesn’t look the same for all of us. Some people continue in very high-pressure jobs and obligations, while others have more spaciousness that allows them to be more still during the month. But we can all find moments of slowing down, whether in everyday tasks, in the number of activities we take on, or in the amount of stimulation we let into our lives. There are ways to reduce some of that, even a little.

And a snippet from my evening: tonight I went to the gym and was pleasantly surprised to run into an elderly Sufi master and scholar of Rumi, who is, as far as I know, the only other Muslim living in our small town. He was doing his post-iftar workout too, and I loved seeing him in his gym clothes, dedicated to keeping up his health at his age. He sat on the rowing machine next to me, and we chatted until I moved on to the weights. I’ll be having him and his wife over for iftar next week. I’ve known him for quite some time, visiting him at his home over tea when I used to come to Konya every December for Rumi’s Urs. But running into him at the gym was a first.

I couldn’t write my entry yesterday, so today is a two-in-one entry. I could have pushed through my fatigue and written a Day 12 entry, but I realized it wasn’t urgent enough to exceed my capacity.

The conflict/war is getting worse, and I see everyone has become an expert on Iran overnight. I prefer to get my information from people who actually know what they’re talking about. I mourn the loss of lives and wish “my” country would take an ethical decision, but it seems like a pipe dream at this point.

Despite having lived in Iran for a time, and having spent years studying the language, culture, and society, and then teaching Iranian history and how its current theocratic government and political theology work, I still consider myself an amateur and won’t be offering my analysis. My conclusion is simple: the entire situation is frightening, and none of this is good for anyone except the wealthy elite who manufacture weapons and profit from war.

I daydream about the US one day directing its resources toward domestic concerns like education, healthcare, and social services instead of supporting and intervening in corrupt regimes abroad. That would seem like a much better use of our collective wealth. Instead, the poor get poorer, cuts to basic programs like Medicare and Medicaid keep increasing, while the bombs and military spending keep growing.

Monday was full of administrative and household tasks, but what I really needed was community. Having iftar alone every night definitely gets old, especially as my son doesn’t want to join me as often. I was dragging my feet about whether to go to an iftar with one of the Sufi communities I love spending time with. When I asked a local friend if she was going so we could drive together, she said yes, and I was relieved to have someone who could nudge me out the door. The drive is over an hour, which feels long. But having iftar with a group of people who had also fasted that day was exactly what I needed.

I’ve leaned into seclusion this Ramadan, an involuntary seclusion of sorts, and breaking it every so often feels necessary. After iftar with this lovely community, we had a meshk, opening with the invocation of God through the names: ya Salam and ya Fattah: the One who is peaceful and brings peace, and the Opener. I appreciated having the chance to go around the room so everyone could share their prayers and process our grief in community.

Tuesday, around 3:30 am, was the full moon eclipse. I had hoped to wake up for it, but my body refused, and I slept right through. There is a special prayer Muslims can pray during a lunar or solar eclipse. I often struggle with suhur as well. I usually manage it for the first week and then quietly give up. In normal times, I don’t have my first meal until around noon, so eating at 5 am just doesn’t sit well with me.

During my walks yesterday and today, I took real pleasure in noticing ayaat all around me, subtle reminders of the miraculous nature of existence. On today’s walk, a woman walking her dog came up and asked me in Arabic if I spoke Arabic. I was genuinely startled, because apart from our little falafel restaurant in town, I’ve never come across an Arabic speaker here. She had a big smile and looked so excited. I responded that no, I’m not Arab, but I do speak Arabic, and she immediately launched into an excited introduction in her lovely Palestinian dialect. We walked in the same direction and talked for a while. Before we parted, we exchanged numbers, because that’s just what happens when you find someone who speaks your language in a small town like ours. We have plans to go for a walk together soon.

Reading the news headlines and seeing videos of bombs has sent me into a freeze state. There’s not much I can do except pray and speak against unjust killings. Staying in a freeze state just makes things worse for the people in my life and me, but it’s what happens when you car, you go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn state.

The weather here was warm today, and I went for a walk to bask in the warmth. I sat on a bench in front of the library and closed my eyes, enjoying the sun heating my skin after several months of not feeling warm enough. Alhamdulillah for sunshine.

Grounding myself, tapping into my senses, noting what I can hear all around me: sounds of cars driving by, children laughing, people chatting nearby, the electric sliding door opening and closing. What can I smell?: the smell of fresh flowers blooming in the flower bed behind the bench, the faint smell of exhaust from the cars. What can I feel?: the warmth piercing through my clothing, my palms rubbing against one another softly.

And what do I say?: ya rahman, ya raheem, ya lateef…I take a few breaths, and I remind myself of where I am.

I realize that while breathwork and grounding practices can’t solve a global conflict or even my own small problems, they can bring me back to myself, back to my present reality. Nothing gets solved or even analyzed; sometimes I just need to be “am-ing” (a word I made up; it refers to being in the state of “I am”-that’s all, nothing happening except existing).

I open my eyes just as the sun is hidden behind a cloud, and it gets slightly cooler. I get up, heading into the library to surround myself with things that still exist, that are still real: books.

War. I’ll leave analysis and predictions to the so-called experts. This is not a place for that. I’ve never been fond of any politician; I can’t place my faith in them, nor can I trust them. While some people seem to have much certainty about facts and positions, the main facts I look at are the rates of innocents who are hurt or killed in the crossfire of leaders who are power hungry and on ego trips, playing chess with one another. I mourn for those who lose their lives, livelihoods, health, and well-being as a result of unnecessary war and conflict.

I am always on the side of the people, and I support people’s desires for freedom and autonomy. I pray that Iranians can soon live in a country where they have their full rights, where people of different persuasions and identities can live together and make space for one another. I am wary of this happening through the intervention of the US and Israel. We’ve seen this before, and it didn’t end well last time.

I don’t connect with headlines and select photos and stories that news agencies and social media algorithms share with us to give us a glimpse of what is going on. I connect with individuals, personal stories, and intimate encounters that reveal more than a generic news article or clip ever could. It’s through my travels, friendships, studies, and other real-life experiences that people and a place become real to me. So allow me to go down memory lane for a moment and share some beauty, to reflect on the beauty that is Iran and its people.

I have a deep love for Iran, first having traveled there accidentally as a backpacker and college student during a trip to Eastern Europe. I found myself in Bucharest in 2001, having intended to travel only in that region. But then I found out that the 20-hour train ride was only $15 for third class, so I made the leap and headed east. These were the days of internet cafes, no cell phones, and I didn’t even have a guidebook. My only travel insights came from basic Google searches and mainly from meeting other backpackers in the cheap hostels I stayed at. From Istanbul, I kept heading east with backpackers I’d made friends with, and since they were heading to Iran, I wanted to join them, even though I had scary and negative perceptions of the country from growing up with films like “Not Without My Daughter” and various propaganda. Instead of hordes of angry mobs chasing after us as we saw in the movies, we were met by groups of young people fascinated by Westerners and wanting to practice their English. They plied us with questions, showed us their jeans under their dresses, and invited us to meals. We spent a month wandering through a piece of heaven for those who love art and architecture, and encountered the most generous and kind people we ever met.

Later, when I was in graduate school and had been studying classical Persian literature, I had the absolute pleasure of heading to Shiraz for the entire summer during my PhD studies, where I stayed with the most generous and sophisticated family. The father was an open-minded but practicing turban-wearing member of the clergy and professor of Islamic philosophy with left-leaning tendencies, and some days I joined his classes at Shiraz University and other days I sat with graduate student tutors to study Persian literature, specifically the poetry of Hafez, Saadi, Rumi, and the other great Persian poets.

In those hot days, I wandered extensively around the ancient city of Shiraz, exploring every nook and cranny, chatting about Persian poetry with everyone I met, ducking into every imamzadeh I could find, drinking tea in the garden teahouses, munching on delicious faloudeh at the end of a hot day, cooling off in small neighborhood mosques when it got too hot, savoring classical Persian music on summer nights in the sprawling gardens of palaces, and sitting with my host family for so many meals and conversations, welcomed as if I were a member of the family.

In between my studies, I wandered around the country on my own, going as far as to Kurdish villages on the border of Iraq to Tehran, Qom, Qazvin, Mashhad, Isfahan, Kashan, and numerous other towns and cities along the way, hosted by warm and hospitable families everywhere. I visited the graves of my favorite poets and scholars, and spent much of my time lost in the narrow streets of old cities, mesmerized by the domes, tiles, and peaceful vibe. I connected with people who had a level of generosity and gracefulness I have not encountered anywhere else in my travels.

This is what I can share for now, but I have so many other rich memories of that time in Iran, and I’ve been longing to return, though it’s never been the right time. I pray for an end to the chaos and senseless killing, and for a day when all people can sleep peacefully without worrying about bombs being dropped on their homes.

When we feel helpless and fall into despair, our prayer carpets are always waiting for us. May hurt people learn to heal and stop hurting others, and may they come to experience the utter tenderness of the Divine. I seek refuge with the tenderly compassionate Creator and pray that al-Rahman’s rahma becomes manifest on this Earth.