a young pakistani doctor blogs...

The O'level Dilemma

2006-12-02T12:04:00.000+05:00

On Monday or Tuesday, I will be going to Peshawar. I need to go in order to finally get around to getting my PMDC registration done, something which, until now hasn’t been a priority with me. To explain why I need to do the registration now, I have to explain Shakir’s story.

Shakir did his O’levels outside Pakistan and his A-levels in Pakistan. He did very well in both and was admitted to Aga Khan, where he completed his MBBS last year. Since then he’s gone on to score a 99 in Step 1 and a 92 in Step 2. He’s currently in the US on the interview trail along with the rest of my friends, Uzer, Hussain, Moiz, Usman and Aya. After his MBBS exam, Shakir when to get his PMDC registration done. As it turns out the PMDC required his Matric and F.Sc scores. Shakir had done O’levels and A’levels instead, so it was a simple matter of getting these scores converted, which was a routine affair.

When he went to get this equivalence certificate from the relevant office, he was told that from 2005, a rule was passed that made it mandatory for any Pakistani in the O and A levels system to have done Urdu, Islamiyat and Pak Studies, otherwise an equivalence certificate would not be issued. Shakir had done his O and A levels in long before this rule was introduced, but apparently, they were applying it retrospectively as well. This meant that Shakir, who had not done these subjects because he did his O’levels in a foreign country, was now required to pass O’level Urdu, Islamiyat and Pak Studies before he could be given his equivalence certificate. Shakir went to everyone he could, including the big guns at AKU, asking for help to be exempted from this rule. He tried very hard and ran everywhere, but the rule would not be changed for him. He had to do these three O’level subjects in order to get his equivalence certification which he needed to get his PMDC registration, which he needed to get a residency in the US.

After finding this out, he put the matter side and studied for his Step 1 and Step 2 exams. He scored very very well on both exams, and right after he passed the Step 2 exam, he moped for a while, then finally got the O’level books for Urdu, Islamiyat and Pak Studies and started studying for the October/November O’level exams.

So here was Shakir, a doctor, from Aga Khan, who scored 99/92 on his Steps, studying for his O’level exams. As a result of this experience, the Aga Khan Medical University has reportedly changed it’s prospectus to warn incoming applicants of this problem.

Now while this sounds funny and completely insane at the same time, it had another level of relevance to me. I, like Shakir, also did my O’levels from outside Pakistan and A’levels within Pakistan, and I, like Shakir had not done Urdu, Islamiyat or Pak studies. I actually cannot even read Urdu, let alone pass the O’levels in it.

The crux of the matter was/is the equivalence certificate. Therein lies a crucial difference b/w me and Shakir. Aga Khan recognizes O’levels/A’levels as is, they don’t need an equivalence certificate in its stead. However all government colleges in Pakistan, including the one I went to, required an equivalence certificate, and so when I applied to my college, I had to have one made. At that time, there was no rule that required Urdu/Islamiyat/Pak studies to be done, so I never had that problem. So I had made my equivalence certificate before entering college, whereas Shakir had not.

However the problem has been bugging me because things can still go wrong for me. All of my original equivalence documents are still with the college. What if they’ve lost them and I need to get new ones? That’s not impossible considering the gross incompetence of our Student Affairs Section. What if the PMDC requires new equivalence certificates and won’t accept the ones I made in 1999?

When Shakir told me his story a couple of months ago, I brushed my own concerns away because I had already made equivalence certificates before. I decided I’d embark on the bureaucratic adventure of my PMDC registration after my Step 2 exam was over in March.

However, since then I’ve made a firm commitment to be in the US to give my Step 2 CS exam by mid-April (I applied for the exam they other day). My father then reminded me that if I’m going to be in the US by mid-April, then if the PMDC gives me any trouble, I might not be at hand to try to fix the problem. Hence I have decided to get this headache over with now.

I called the PMDC registration a bureaucratic adventure. Here is what I need to do in order to get my PMDC registration done:

First I must get my medical transcript from my college. But they won’t just give it to me if I show up, no, no, no! That would be far too easy and simple. In order to get my transcript I have to prove that I have no outstanding dues from any department associated with the college. This means I have to get a signed release form (clearances) from the people in charge of those departments. The departments in question are:

The transport department (to make sure I don’t have outstanding bus dues).
The library (to make sure I don’t have any books left with me)
The accounts section (to make sure my fees are all paid up)
The sports department (don’t ask me why)
The boy’s hostel number one,
The boys hostel number two,
The boy’s hostel numbers three. (Even if you have never lived in any of the hostels)
I also have to get an unemployment certificate. I have no idea why, but the fun part is that it must be done from some mysterious office miles away from the college.

I’m pretty sure there are a couple more departments I have forgotten that will make their presence felt when I go there. To add more fun to this trekking adventure, most of these departments are located far apart from each other. The hostels, for one thing are a 15 minute walk from the college and from each other. To make things even more fun, it is wholly possible that the people in charge of any one department might be on vacation or at home sick from naswar poisoning, and if that happens, I absolutely have to wait until they are back before I can complete my clearances. If even one person is away on extended leave, I am stuck until he comes back. The guy in the transport department is particularly notorious for being difficult to find. To make my life even more exciting, all these people have to sign the same piece of paper (the clearance sheet). I’m literally going around collecting signatures that attest to the fact that all my dues are paid up. If one person is missing and I decide to come back later, I have to take this paper with me, so I can’t even leave anything with him to sign in case I am not there when he decides to return to work.

When all this is done, I will receive my medical transcript and all other original documents (including my equivalence certificates) from the student affairs section.

After that is done, I have to have the detailed marks certificates (DMCs) of all my years in college (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th) and get them, as well as my photographs, my equivalence certificates (let’s hope I don’t have a problem there!!) attested. This can be done by only 3 professors in our college, so I had better pray they are there. When this is done, I have to lay these documents down humbly at the feet of our local PMDC office (assuming the man in charge is there) and beg them to have them processed.

After these simple steps are done, I will receive my PMDC certification in a month’s time.

Unless of course, my equivalence certificates are lost, or the PMDC decides they will not accept them. In which case, I will have to learn how to read and write Urdu, cancel my plans to go to the US and sit for my O’levels.

And you thought Frodo had it hard?

Convocation

2006-11-26T00:20:00.000+05:00

My convocation is in a few days. The time when they give us our degrees for all the pain and suffering we subjected ourselves to for 6 years. I will not be going, even though my fiancé (and class fellow) has repeatedly asked me to come. When I left Peshawar after the last viva more than a year ago now, I turned my back on the place for good. It would be nice to meet some people again, but there really isn’t anyone whom I’d be looking forward to seeing again.

Why is it that after 6 years of living in a place, I have no real friends to call my own in Peshawar. Does it say something about me? Or the place that is Peshawar? A part of me is bitter and angry that I seemed to have spent so many years in that place riddled with self-loathing and - yeah, let’s just say it – in hate for the entire city. I hated the mentality of the people there, who seemed light-years behind the rest of the world. The biggest enemy the pathans have are themselves, not Some Great Big Evil Western Devil, but the devil in themselves. I am reading “The Crisis of Islam” by Bernard Lewis these days and along with the many interesting things he has to say, he points out something that struck a chord. He talks about the influence western imperialism had in the 19^th century over the countries it conquered:

“The contrasts can be seen very clearly by comparing the countries that suffered under the imperial yoke, like Egypt and Algeria, with those that never lost their independence, like Arabia and Afghanistan. In Saudi Arabia universities were late and few. At present, for an estimated population of 21 million, there are eight universities – one more than the seven institutions of higher education established by the Palestinians since the Israeli occupation of the territories in 1967. Slavery was not abolished by law in Saudi Arabia until 1962, and the subjugation of women remains in full effect.”

Peshawar, which borders Afghanistan, has also evolved from the fortune or misfortune of not having been influenced by the more positive aspects of Western “imperialism”. To this day, Punjab, the province that had the heaviest British presence prior to independence is the most culturally and economically advanced part of the country. It’s certainly an interesting thesis: to suppose that Western imperialism of the last century had some positive imprint on the lands that it ruled.

In the last couple of months, I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a group of friends from AKU, 3 of whom live here in Islamabad (Uzer, Shakir and Hussain). The other two are fellow bloggers Usman and Moiz. They are a very close knit group and meeting them made me realize what I had missed out on in Peshawar. I thought Peshawar was an extremely insular and backward place. Hussain and I would argue when he was still here in Islamabad over which city was the asshole of Pakistan. He insisted it was Karachi, while I said it was definitely Peshawar. While physically, the two places might look the same, Hussain and his friends had each other, and a world-class university that brought the best minds in Pakistan together under one roof. The year that I joined my college, there was an enormous and violent fight between the Jamaat-i-islami students and the outgoing final year students over the right of the latter to celebrate their passing out by playing music in the college and dancing (after the classes were over of course). In the ensuing battle, several people were sent to hospital, some with serious injuries and gun-toting jamati-i-islami students fired indiscriminately, although miraculously, no one was hit. The worst of it was that after the dust settled, the principle of the college was thought to be involved in organizing the mess, siding with the jamaat in order to teach the outgoing final year students “a lesson.”

These things just don’t happen in a civilized place. The exam system was horribly flawed, there was widespread corruption in the administration, professors more interested in flirting with the girls than teaching, unethical practices by the doctors, and a student population who had never talked to a member of the opposite sex until they entered the college.

I don’t mean to say of course that all this is the case because the NWFP of Pakistan was not as soundly colonized by the British as the rest of Pakistan. Of course not - but it’s just interesting how the above passage in the book leapt out at me. I was born in Saudi Arabia and lived there till I was 17. Then I lived in Islamabad for 2 years before going to Peshawar for another 6 years. It’s strange how I seem to have lived in those two parts of the Muslim world which are the most retrogressive in the world (barring some war-striven countries in Africa). I never fit in in Peshawar, and I would never want to live as an adult in Saudi Arabia (growing up there was great though).

A friend of mine who has lived in the US for the last 10 years, having been born and raised in Jeddah like me, told me once that he “was a westerner” before he arrived there. I know what he means and in a sense I think I am one too. I used to think I want to come back after my residency and work in Pakistan, to “serve my country” so to speak. Now I don’t know. I don’t know where I belong. Having spent my teens in one country, my 20s in another country, and making plans to spend at least 6 years of my 30s in a third country, I don’t know where I belong. I don’t want to spend another 6 years like I did in Peshawar, not fitting in, not making close friends, not being comfortable with where I live.

I guess the convocation and my total lack of interest in it unleashed a big can of worms. Sorry for the rant folks.

The Last Big One

2006-11-20T14:34:00.000+05:00

When I was in final year of medical college, and I started to appreciate more of the medicine that I saw in the hospital, I started enjoying it a lot more. During this time, I would practically live in the hospital, staying on late, although we were not required to. I loved interacting with patients, learning from doing and being in that general environment where very smart people working together towards a common goal. I learnt a lot faster by doing and observing than I did from reading the same stuff from books. Now, after the interminably long Step 1 prep is over, and I’m well into my Step 2 prep, I I’ve reached a stage when I’m heartily sick of reading stuff directly from books and learning stuff that way. I can’t wait to go to the hospital again and learn in the context of brutal 12 hour days. I can’t wait to be done with these exams.

Inshallah, this Step 2 will be the last exam in my life where I will have to lock myself up with the books for several months at a time. After this, my learning will come from patients, seniors and consultation with the books on matters I am unclear about. The learning process will move from theory to practice. Besides the fundamental paradigm in the method of learning will be the new company I’ll keep. I’ll be actually working with real life people, and not staring at dead paper all day long, in a room by myself.

Studying for hours and hours, month after month from books is no longer working for me. I’m just pushing myself the last mile for the Step 2 exam. After this, I’ll never have to go through this torture again for as long as I live. I will use books, of course, but not as intensely as I am doing so now. Not ever again, thank God.

On Guilt

2006-11-18T14:14:00.000+05:00

I’m reading Karen Armstrong’s The Spiral Staircase these days. It details her transition after she abandoned her life as a nun. The following passage really made me think and put a whole new perspective on guilt and repentance:

“One of the good things I had leaned from my superiors was that guilt could be pure self-indulgence, a wallowing in the ego. Guilt, I was told, usually sprang from misplaced pride; it might simply be chagrin that you were not as wonderful as you hoped.”

Al Jazeera International: First Impressions.

2006-11-17T03:53:00.000+05:00

Al Jazeera has come out with a 24 hour English language news service. I remember reading about Al Jazeera planning to roll out such a service a couple of years ago, but was disappointed to hear nothing more on the subject in the year that followed. As it turned out, the English version of the station had hit quite a few technical snags along the way. I guess they were overly optimistic in predicting the channel would roll out in 2005.

I had a very suspicious view of Al Jazeera a few years ago, and like most, associated it as Bin Laden’s mouthpiece. That, coupled with the fact that if came out of some small country in the Arab peninsula suggested it was nothing more than government sponsored anti-American drivel. The channel properly came into my attention when I heard about Bush’s “joke” about bombing Al-Jazeera a couple of years ago. I read up on it, and then found a blog of an Al Jazeera staffer and learnt to my surprise that it seemed like a very progressive effort, with particular attention being paid to eliminate as much bias as is humanly possible from their stories. I also read up on Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar and patron-founder of Al-Jazeera. I saw he was a genuine modernizer and founded Al Jazeera with a vision of an unhindered, unbiased Arab news source. Gradually Al Jazeera seemed to turn into the “good guys” in my mind.

So I was very curious to see the kind of fare they would offer in the English version of their service. I had read that Al Jazeera offered a people-centric approach to the news. Rather than going to diplomats and government spokesmen for their news, they went directly to the people on the ground. I didn’t really get this concept until I saw their broadcast today. There were two in-depth stories of life in Darfur - one of a UNICEF aid worker in the region, and another of a bright 13 year old girl whose had not seen her parents for months, but still studied in the rudimentary school at the refugee camp and wanted to grow up and be a doctor. Then there was a program called Witness hosted by Ragieh Omar, who visited the town of Dewsbury in England where one of the suicide bombers of the 7/11 attacks in London came from. He interviews many residents of the town, comparing the perceptions that the media has assumed about the place to ground realities and presented a convincing thesis that in the town, where a third of the population are Muslims, there are no religious or ethnic tensions between the Muslims and the non-Muslim population, and that far and away their biggest problem is rampant unemployment (40%), and drug addiction. The local population expressed their frustration that politicians choose to use the town to score political points and sound bites while their economic troubles were completely ignored.

There was also a long interview on a group called Combatants for Peace, a group headed by a former Israeli military pilot, and a former Palestinian Fatah activist (who spent 10 years in jail) who were promoting a non-violent approach to the resolution of the Palestinian crisis. Then Harold Pinter came on, much to my delight, and voiced the strongest condemnation of American policies that I have ever heard on a news service. I had my mouth open in surprise over how strenuous he was. Throughout the day I noticed there were no ‘bubble-gum’ news stories to ‘lighten’ things up. No news on Britney Spears’ divorce or the new James Bond film, thank you very much.

I had a positive first impression from what I saw but it will be months before the channel forges a definitive identity for itself and the final verdict comes in as to whether this turns out to be a truly unbiased, honest news service, or just the Arabian answer to CNN.

The Hudood Law Amended

2006-11-16T13:15:00.000+05:00

The Hudood Law pertaining to rape has finally been amended at long last. Previously, if a woman was raped in Pakistan, and sought to seek justice from the police, she needed to provide 4 male witnesses to the act to prove the charge. If she failed to do so, she would be charged with adultery and locked up in jail. This is such an obviously perverted misinterpretation of Quranic law, I cannot imagine how it was ever introduced by sane people in the first place. As Musharraf rightly said in his speech to the nation last night, it is something to be deeply ashamed of.

We Muslims have allowed our under-educated, ignorant religious leaders to romp over us for too long. As expected, the bearded ingrates of the MMA are strongly protesting the amendments, claiming that they will turn Pakistan into a “free-sex” society. They believe the Hudood laws on rape should have stayed the way they were. I shake my head in anger, shame, and bewilderment that people like this should ever have found their way to parliament.

I think it’s important for mainstream, practicing Muslims to come out and say that more often then not, the ostenable “religious leaders” of the Muslims do not represent the sentiment of the masses. Whenever Muslims bash the mullahs, they seem to be the ‘liberal extremists’, who are usually Muslim only in name, having rejected the religion for all practical purposes. I think it’s time that Muslims who do pray regularly, and who do hold their religion to be an integral part of their identity to come out and say loud and clear that most of the time, the mullahs are not speaking for them at all. We should acknowledge that the mullahs do not hold an absolute grip on our sentiments. We are not obliged to follow their lead. We should acknowledge that the religious education they receive just like other parts of the education infrastructure of Pakistan, is simply not good enough to warrant the degree of power they assume for themselves when they are done with their studies. People like the MMA, who oppose the amendment to this bill, who claim it is done on the behest of the US, who claim it will increase promiscuousness, are either shockingly displaced from reality, or are outright hypocrites, beating the war drums just to gain some political leverage.

There is no excuse for their position. I don’t just disagree with these people; I hate them and everything they stand for. May Allah punish these corrupt Mullah bastards for all the damage they have done to our society. Amen.

Plans

2006-10-28T14:55:00.000+05:00

My Step 1 result came back a few weeks back. The score was lower than I was hoping for. I got an 85, when I was hoping for something more than a 95. I was disappointed but didn’t stay down and out about it for very long. To be honest, I was just glad it was over and I didn’t have to study all that useless junk again. Step 2 and everything after is more clinically oriented and hence a lot more interesting.

The story of my result deserved a few entries here, but I had just fallen out of the habit
writing anything down here. My result seemed to have been displaced by the USPS, and I had to wait an excruciating 5-6 days before it finally turned up. It was an incredibly tense time for me and one that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The result finally arrived about a month after I gave the exam. I hadn’t started studying anything till then, despite previous lofty goals (and Aya’s incessant urging) of starting on the 15th of September. I was impossible to concentrate, with the result pending. I certainly didn’t “relax” much during this time, I was just freaking out all the time, wondering what would happen. After the result came out, I spent a lot more time trying to truly relax. I watched all 5 seasons of 24 back to back. It was quite an experience and took up some 2 weeks. I loved the show and was totally addicted to it. Ramadan was here and as we all know it’s tough to study much during Ramadan, although I did give it a go and got something done. Now that it’s over, I’ve finally gotten into the groove of studying, but I feel kind of weird. For step 1, I had a great deal of impetus and drive. So far for Step 2, I feel like I’m going through the motions only. That worries me, because I need to score well on Step 2 in order to help compensate, in as much as that is possible, for my Step 1 score. I plan to give the exam in the 3rd week of February. Thereafter, I’ll be going to the US to give the Step 2 CS exam, the third and final exam needed to get my ECFMG registration. That will be in March, and the plan is to get externships after march all the way upto October in order to get the much coveted US Clinical Experience to put down in my CV. I’m hoping a good Step 2 result, certification before applying to the programs, applying early, and USCE will make my application strong enough to see my through.

Will write more later.

Friends

2006-09-16T14:41:00.000+05:00

I’ve quite done with my 2 weeks break from the books and am ready to get back to it. I’ve started my CK prep now. Yesterday I opened the cabinet where I stuffed all my books in indiscrimately after the Step 1 exam and chased away all the spiders and cleared the cobwebs. I’ve gotten started with surgery and hope to take the exam by December 31st.

On a less dreary note, I’ve been fortunate enough to make some new friends recently. Moiz was in town for his CK exam a few days back and gave me a call and said we should meet in person. So we met up for dinner. Moiz was with two other friends who had the CK exam the same day, Murtaza and Hussain, both of whom live in Islamabad. The four of us hit it off very well. We had a great time and I really liked the company. I made it clear to them I’d be seeking them out from now on. I’ve had no friends in Islamabad, and the sudden materialization of two people who live here and whose company I enjoy is very good news for me. Uzer, another blogger, also lives in Islamabad. Hussain lives a 5 minute walk from my house, and Murtaza a 5 minutes drive, so that’s really cool as well. We didn’t as Uzer to join us because he’s knee deep in his upcoming CK exam, but I look forward to meeting him as well. From what I’m told, Uzer and I share a lot in common. Moiz called me Uzer V. 2.0.

The days after

2006-09-04T12:05:00.000+05:00

Sorry for not writing earlier guys. I had problems with Word for Blogger and I just can’t write anything unless it’s on Word.

First off, I’d like to thank everyone for being so supportive since my last post. I feel much better since I last wrote and I’ve put the exam behind me and gotten on with the serious business of enjoying myself for a little while until I start my CK prep. I also have to single out Aya for all the support she’s given me during my entire prep. She would be the go-to person when I needed to whine or when I felt terrible, which was often. If I score well in this exam, I’ll owe a lot to her for it.

A friend of mine called me yesterday. He was my senior in college and a good friend of mine. He did very well in his own step exams and during the time I was there in college, he always brusquely stated that if I don’t do well in the steps, he was going to kick my ass. He had a lot of expectations of me. I was afraid to talk to him because I thought he’d be terribly disappointed in me if I told him about my impressions of the exam day. However, he just laughed when I told him and said that when he left the exam, he honestly thought he had failed (he got a 94 in the end).

In any case, it doesn’t matter… time to move on and regale you all with thoughts of my brilliant reflections on Life, the Universe and Everything.

These days, I’m competing for the world’s laziest slob position. I’ve been doing little but watching movies, reading Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, and playing abandonware computer games. I would have wanted to travel, and go away somewhere, but alas, in my impecunious state, this is not an option. I plan to watch some classic movies during my free time now. I just went through The Lord of the Rings again. I have the Back to the Future trilogy on my desk and may watch it for the 5th time. I’m going to get The Godfather trilogy and other Al Pacino movies as well. I’ve also had long walks in Capital Park on the cards before, but I’m feeling so lazy these days, I can’t seem to get around to getting my butt out of the house (unless I’m driving to get a movie).

Keep coming, DrPak is back and I’ll be writing far more frequently now.

The Step 1 exam

2006-09-02T02:08:00.000+05:00

It has been a long time since I wrote here. The last 40 days or so have been quite a roller-coaster ride for me. Since the last time I blogged, I went into overdrive for the Step 1 prep, studying some 10-12 hours a day. I was consumed by the exam and although there were many moments when I felt terrible, insecure, scared and unready, I never let it overwhelm me. I plodded on, drawing from reserves of nerve and fortitude I didn’t know I had.

The night before the exam, I had a very good night’s rest. I slept for more than 8 hours and slept well.

The exam itself however is a different story. I went into the exam expecting to find it manageable. I expected to walk away feeling that it was reasonably easy and that I had done a good job. I expected to finish the blocks well before the time was up and add the time left over to my break time. This did not happen. I barely finished the blocks with more than 2 minutes to spare, and there were questions on the exam that had me sweating from my ass. Overall, it’s been very difficult for me to gauge my performance on this exam. Two days have passed now and the emotionality is ebbing away from the experience and I’m thinking more logically about it.

My Qbank scores had not been encouraging. There were blocks where I was way over the mean, but my final score was not very high compared to some of my more accomplished peers. However, I didn’t finish all of Qbank either, only some 67%. I tell myself that had I finished it, the average would have surely risen because the scores from these practice blocks go way up at the very end. I did do a lot of questions however, about 2500+ in all, using Qbank and the new usmlerx. I wanted to finish both question banks, but just couldn’t manage it.

I think to some extent, the negative feelings I have developed since the exam are due to my very high degree of suspicion when answering even apparently easy questions. I always, always thought they were out to trick me, and even when I answered an easy question, I moved on feeling I had missed some trick they put into the question. Also, I expected a lot of straightforward presentations of cases, but the exam frequently tried very hard to present the same thing in a totally new light. I had to think quite hard to see through something.

There was a feeling of being swept away by this exam. I didn’t feel like I was in control. I felt like the exam was in control. I answered 350 questions in 8 hours and its astonishing how little of the exam I actually remember now. I think I’ve recalled some 15 questions till now, although I’m not really trying to remember anything. This bothers me a lot as well. How many questions was I unsure of? How many did I just guess based on some vague recall of a concept? How many did I frustratingly get wrong because I couldn’t remember that concept even though I had done it before?

I simply don’t know. I was leaning forward, scowling at the computer the whole time. It was like a brutal, vicious fight, not an orderly, gentlemanly game of cards. I came out of there initially feeling relieved that this thing was finally over, but the doubts started soon after. I’m trying to forget the exam now and move on, trying to relax before I start my Step 2 CK prep soon. When I get tense or feel bad about the exam, I tell myself that I tried my absolute best. I was as hard as I could be on myself and pushed myself to my limits. The rest is in God’s hands. Whatever score “my best” translates into, I have to accept that and be content with that. I feel no regret right now over the amount of effort that I put into this exam. I think I should have started doing questions much earlier in the game, but that is a strategic error. There was no shortage of guts and heart in my efforts, and there at least I’m satisfied.

Great weather

2006-07-24T14:47:00.000+05:00

The weather here is absolutely gorgeous. I can see the margalla hills from my window looking clean and ‘washed’ after the heavy downpour we had last night. Everything looks green and fresh and I’m in a great mood. Study is going well and the view outside my window is amazing.

I hope Moiz is getting some of this kind of weather over in Jhang.

Never in Pakistan

2006-07-23T00:09:00.000+05:00

I don’t follow the news as much as I am used to, being caught up with my prep, but it’s impossible to ignore the situation unfolding in the middle-east. I usually flip to Sky News when I’m having lunch to catch up with the latest situation. I must say, Sky News is a refreshing change from the CNN and BBC bull$hit I have been used to seeing. It asks the difficult questions and gets a very middle-eastern perspective on the situation siding squarely with the civilians who are caught up in the crazy conflict.

This conflict has literally exploded out of nowhere and there is every danger of it spreading. Every time I switch the TV on, things seem to have gotten worse. Syria and Iran are separated from this unholy mess by only one degree of separation and if Iran gets involved, God knows where this will end.

Musharraf commented on this situation in his speech to the nation recently where he almost disdainfully said a nation this can only happen when a nation is weak. He said this could never happen with Pakistan. I agree with him there. Pakistan is not so bad off that another country can simply attack its capital as it pleases without any repercussions. It seems incredible to me that Israel is bombing the hell out of Lebanon without the Lebanese being able to do a damn thing about it. There isn’t even any talk of the Lebanese Army, if it exists at all. It’s as if Lebanon is a helpless baby, completely unable to defend itself. I can understand the disdain in Musharraf’s voice when he commented on this, and for this I’m happy we’ve got an army that would never put up with this sort of abuse.

Dazed ramblings...

2006-07-21T21:45:00.000+05:00

Just a thought that occurred to me as I was studying, you know how the mind wanders…

Samuel L. Jackson is the King of cussing. No one can cuss like him when he’s in his element in a scene. So for absolutely no reason, this scene from Shaft popped into my mind as I was studying Genetics.

Samuel L. Jackson is Shaft, a hard street-smart cop working in a racist precinct. A fellow officer makes a seemingly racist comment, and when Shaft objects, the officer says sarcastically,

“Hey Shaft, maybe I should take a workshop in Ethnic Sensitivity,”

To which Shaft replies with an edge,

“Maybe I should workshop my foot up y’ass!”

Haahahahahaha…

Okay… back to work…

My ears... oh my ears!

2006-07-21T13:10:00.000+05:00

Well, it’s Friday again, and we all know what that means – well, for me anyway. It means the mosque near my house will turn on its loudspeakers at full volume and line up a bunch of little kids who’ll take turns shouting naats out to the rest of the world in scratchy, brass voices. The assault has started here and it’s relentless. One kid gets off, and another comes on. The voices range from exuberant to mournful, but in all cases, and I mean ALL cases, the product is nothing but noise pollution. I don’t see the spirituality in this exercise.

Blech day

2006-07-20T00:06:00.000+05:00

Today wasn’t a good day. I didn’t get all that much done. I woke up feeling nervous and jittery and for most of the day I couldn’t sit still. I developed this overpowering feeling of edginess and just couldn’t concentrate. I hate days like these. I hate that days like these even exist. It makes you feel as if nothing is really in your control, which I suppose is true.

Being objective, I think I have a good chance of doing really well in the exam, which is 40 days away now. It seems impossibly close after so many months of studying and worrying about it. However I need to have no more days like today. I called my fiancé up in the evening and talked to her for a while. She suggested that I start jogging again. Even though the weather is terribly hot these days in Islamabad, I’ve moved into an air conditioned room of the house where I spend most of my day (only sleeping in my own room). Getting really hot from a jog in this weather shouldn’t be a big problem if I have a really well cooled room to come back to when I’m done. I used to jog regularly before and I found it was great for getting those endorphins out and elevating mood, and improving concentration. I stopped because it became too damn hot. It’s still very hot, but I think I should be able to tough it out for some 40 minutes out there, happy in the knowledge that I’ll be headed back to a nice cool room.

Book blues

2006-07-18T10:10:00.000+05:00

Yesterday blew in terms of studies. I didn’t get much done. I was listless from the start and grew depressed as the day progressed. It was a bad case of the book blues. However rather than beat myself up about how I was falling behind, I decided to take it easy on myself and hope that tomorrow (i.e. today) would be a better day and that this funk I was in was my mind asking me for a break. I can’t afford any breaks right now, so I don’t know where this is going to leave me. In any case, I slept a full 8 hours and woke up refreshed, eager to begin a new day. I hope it pans out really well today.

House Doctor

2006-07-17T09:57:00.000+05:00

Just got time for a quick scribble. Study is going well. I’m a little behind in my timetable, but I think I can catch up later on.

Just wanted to share a thought. It’s not easy being the only doctor in the family, especially one who has no clinical experience and has learnt everything he knows from the books. I find myself facing strange situations where family members come to me with all sorts of arcane symptoms I’ve never heard of. I wondered why that happened so often and I finally figured it out.

When patients stir themselves to go see a doctor, the symptoms for what they have are well-established and therefore far easier to make sense of. For a ‘house doctor’, so to speak, a visit to the doctor is as far away as the door to my room. So I get bombarded with all sorts of symptoms a real doctor may never see because they are not serious enough for the patient to want to go to the trouble of visiting a doctor.

Case in point, once my father comes to me and complains that when he pulls some of the hairs on his belly, it itches him. He asked me solemnly what this odious sign must portend. I was at an absolute loss. I’ve never even heard of something like this. Can you imagine someone going to the doctor when having this be the chief complaint? Another case in point, my bhabi recently complained of a ‘discomfort’ in her chest. No fever, no cough, no nothing… just a vague discomfort. Does it hurt a lot? No. Is it a sharp pain? Not really. It is a dull pain? Ummm… no. Does it hurt when you breathe? “Hmmm… no, not really. It’s just some discomfort. Where does it hurt exactly? In my chest.

These days I’m reduced to telling everyone to wait for a few days, and to let me know if the symptoms get any worse. I’m sure they all thing I’m a worthless doctor. Like what kind of a doctor is he? He’s telling me to wait till I get even sicker before he does anything. Hahahahahaha

Ah well, back to the grind.

Plugging on

2006-07-16T09:23:00.000+05:00

Yesterday was a very busy day. I got 10 hours of work done, but even then fell somewhat sort of my targets. One thing that helps the study is really sound sleep. That is why, determined to do even better today, last night I skipped dinner and only drank some milk and honey before bed and made sure I was in bed on time. You sleep better on an empty stomach, believe me. The milk and honey is to quell the hunger pangs so you can get to sleep.

It’s the next day now and I feel refreshed. I hope I can catch up with my targets today and better yesterday’s run. I try not think about how much work I’ve got left and how this and that is going to be done, and when to do it in. I made a general time-table for the next 6 weeks, and a more specific schedule for the next 5 days. I’m just taking it one day at a time right now, blocking out all the worries and uncertainties of the days ahead. I feel like an invisible clock suddenly started counting down.

Okay… I had better not go on talking like this or I’ll just freak myself out. I hope today’s a good day as well.

Early Bird

2006-07-14T05:27:00.000+05:00

Today I woke up at 4:30 am to start off the day. I just prayed Fajr and am getting to work now. I went to bed at midnight, just a few hours ago. I’ve tried this timetable before, where I’d wake up really early, get a whole lot of work done in the morning session, then sleep for a few hours in the afternoon, waking up refreshed to start the second half of the day. The last couple of weeks, I’ve totally stopped sleeping in the afternoon, and left me feeling really tired by 8-9pm, which kind of wasted the 2-3 hours before bedtime (midnight) that I could have used to study in.

I’m not feeling very sleepy right now, but recently, I’ve released I’ve got stress-induced IBS. It’s not a very big problem really, but still kind of weird to have it.

Anyway… back to the grind.

Gulp!

2006-07-13T15:19:00.000+05:00

I’m going through a mini-panic attack right now. My Step 1 exam looms every closer and I’ve got so much left to do. I’ve constructed a time-table for myself, of what needs to be done, and how to divide my time till the fateful day on the 30th of August. It may seem like a lot of time to you guys, but to me, it feels like the exam is tomorrow and I don’t know anything.

Do remember me in your prayers. As some of you, who have been reading this blog for a while know, this exam is a very important one for me.

I’m going to just ignore what needs to be done in the next month and a half, and just concentrate on what needs to be done now, today. I have to get better at blocking stuff out and keeping my nerve under pressure.

Ah, what a life I lead…

All I can do for Abeer Qasim Hamza

2006-07-10T22:20:00.000+05:00

Since reading about the gang-rape and murder of a young Iraqi girl Abeer Qasim, her parents and 7 year old sister, by five American soldiers, an incident to which I wrote my initial reaction here, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I have been profoundly moved by the incident.

I was finally moved to action today and proceeded to work on the wikipedia article about the incident. I had read dozens of news reports over the last few days and thought the wikipedia article could use a lot of work. I ended up rewriting 99% of the original article, and also added a picture of Abeer’s ID card which proved her age was 14, not 25 as some US military statements had been claiming. The wikipedia article is titled the Mahmudiyyah incident, and can be found here.

This is all I can do for you Abeer. The world will forget about you in a week’s time. I’ll stay back and make sure you get your due page in history, a well written and more importantly, an accurate account. You won’t be forgotten.

I’ll keep working on the page as events unfold.

Article

2006-07-08T11:03:00.000+05:00

The following is an excerpt of an article written by Paul Craig Roberts I got from www.antiwar.com. According to wikipedia:

Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration, and a prolific and popular journalist. He is nationally syndicated columnist for Creator's Syndicate and Investors Business Daily. He is a former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Scripps Howard News Service. He is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology and he holds a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

The except follows:

Many Americans are so unsophisticated that they refuse to believe anything bad about their country. They regard acceptance of unpalatable truths as disloyalty. This failure of American character is why Bush has been able to get away with transgressions that scream out for his impeachment and trial as a war criminal.

The premeditated rape and murders are just the latest in the long line of horrific war crimes from Abu Ghraib to Haditha. Bush supporters are still in denial about each incident. It is amazing that Bush supporters think we have a John Wayne military when, according to news reports, recruitment problems have resulted in the military accepting felons, drug users, thugs, low-IQ high school dropouts, and illegal Mexicans promised green cards for signing up. Apparently, the same people who make America's streets unsafe for Americans make Iraqi streets unsafe for Iraqis. In response to the declining caliber of new recruits, some of our best troops are refusing to reenlist. Several have written to me that "the Army has left them."

Whoever put out that propagandistic slogan, "support the troops," and the ribbon decals was a master propagandist. "Support the troops" means to deny the reality of the war and the behavior of the troops.

To this day, the Bush regime and the neocon Nazis have not told us the reason for their invasion of Iraq, the destruction of its towns and infrastructure, and the slaughter of its citizens. Every reason Bush has given has proved to be a lie.

There is no more reason for U.S. troops to be shooting up Iraq than to be shooting up Canada, Scotland, Holland, Spain, Taiwan, Florida, Virginia, or California. We are killing Iraqis for no other reason than that they resist our invasion and occupation of their country.

It is proof of the collapse of American morals and the fallen character of the American people that the American public and its elected representatives in Congress refuse to rein in the Bush regime and hold it responsible for its monstrous crimes.

America has become a land of evil. The rest of the world hates and despises us. And we are going to pay a terrible price for it. Bush's belief that our superpower status makes us immune to the opinion of others goes beyond hubris into insanity.

The rape of Humanity

2006-07-05T22:49:00.000+05:00

A former American soldier Private First Class Steven Green of the 101st Airborne Division has been charged with the rape and murder of a 15 year old Iraqi girl, the murder of her parents and her 7 year old sister.

Apparently Steven Green and three other soldiers spotted the 15 year old while on routine traffic patrol. They followed her to her home and spent the next week planning/fantasizing sexually assaulting this minor. According to different reports on the matter, the girl’s parents had noticed the soldiers’ interest and later, unwelcome advances, towards their daughter and were troubled enough to talk to a neighbor about hiding her in their house so the soldiers could not find her should they have a mind to come after her later on.

A week after they first noticed her, Green and three of his friend stormed into the house, ordered the girl’s parents and her 7 year old sister into another room at gunpoint and shot them dead.

Then they proceeded to gang-rape her.

Then they shot her dead.

Then they burnt her body to try and cover up their crime.

It sickens and weakens me to write this. I really don’t know how to put my feelings down here. There are so many emotions rushing inside of me. I feel rage at this war crime. She was just a kid. 15 years old. Her 7 year old sister was even younger, brutally shot dead in front of her parents. I try not to think of what she must have been going through, having heard gunshots in the other room, followed by a deadly silence only for that horror to be followed by the interminable ordeal of her being gang-raped by the so-called Liberators of Iraq. What must the parents have been going through when they saw the soldiers burst in.

The injustice of it all is enough to keep you up at night, to drive you crazy if you were to give in to it. The temptation to condemn every American soldier is great. I feel bitter towards a corrupt American government and towards a docile, seemingly unconcerned American public in whose name an entire country is being raped. I feel angered that many Americans still feel they have the moral upper hand in this war - who still feel that “supporting the troops” somehow means supporting the corrupt war their leaders have conned them into entering. I feel angered knowing that there will be many more girls like this innocent 15 year old who we will never know about. I feel heartbroken that the United States, which was capable of so much greatness, and held so much promise, capable of spreading so much good throughout the world is choosing to use its power in this way.

Atrocities occur in the Muslim world everyday, perpetrated by Muslims on other Muslims. So why is it that when it is an American that rapes and murders that we feel so much worse?

For me, its because I feel I’m entitled to expect better. I know how hopeless we in the Muslim world are. I see the breakdown of morality in my country everyday. From where I stand, things in the Muslim world won’t get any better for at least a couple of generations. We’re steeped in a Dark Age right now and I’m not naive to think that Muslim governments would ever act any better than Western ones. If there is any hope that improved education and improved economic conditions led to a greater sense of humanity, then surely that hope lies with the West. But from what we’re seeing, there seems to be no connection between a sense of humanity and freedom from hunger, poverty and illiteracy. The moral fabric of the Muslim world is in shambles but the West, while richer and more educated, is just as worse. What hope is there then for humanity?

This is not just about a 15 year old Iraq girl. This incident is a perfect analogy of America’s relationship with the rest of the world. America could have helped that girl get a decent education, a decent job, a decent life, with a chance to raise her own kids, free from tyranny and fear. That will never happen now, and for millions of Iraqis today that dream will continue to be denied.

By the way, the girl’s name was Abeer.

Understanding Islam - 3: Will only Muslims go to Paradise?

2006-07-03T09:57:00.000+05:00

Here’s another article from the www.understanding-islam.com site. Too many Muslims believe Islam to be some exclusive club that they have been blessed to belong too. They believe that because of their religion, they and they alone will go to Heaven. This exclusivism is dangerous on two levels. Firstly it provides room for hatred against all non-Muslims (after all, if God is going to condemn them, why shouldn’t we?). We’re seeing the destructive effect of this hatred in the likes of sectarian violence and blind hatred of “the west” everyday. More importantly, the exclusivism also causes many Muslims to divest themselves from Islam’s true purpose, which is closeness to God. Rather than working hard to develop their spirituality, a struggle that lasts a lifetime, most Muslims think that after having said the kalima, they are going to go to heaven anyway, so that department is taken care of. Sure they may be in Hell for some time for not praying, not being honest, etc… but hey we said the kalima so eventually we’ll be shifted to heaven.

I’m not saying most Muslims are going to hell. I’m saying they’ve taken it for granted that they won’t simply because they are Muslims. This assumption has stalled their spiritual endeavors and will continue to harm their spiritual efforts as long as they believe Heaven is separated from them by a simple utterance of the kalima.

The original article is here. The question is followed by counter-questions and answers here, then here.

Title:
Will Only Muslims Go To Paradise?

Question:
We believe that those people who believe in the oneness of God and in the last prophet only they will eventually be forgiven by God. But most of us are Muslims only because we were born in Muslim families i.e. by chance not by choice. I am quite sure that had we been born in India or America or elsewhere, we would have taken up that religion and the chances of converting to Islam would be pretty dim. We are lucky enough to be born in a Muslim family.

The crux of the matter is that a person is molded according to his surroundings and he adopts those values and religion, which are inculcated in him. Then don't you think that those who although are not Muslims because they are not born in Muslim families but are very pious in their lives should be forgiven? If they are not, wouldn't it be injustice with them?

This question really pinches me that despite all our bad deeds, we will eventually be forgiven by the Almighty just because we recite the KALIMA, while a person who has been very good to other people and has led a very pious life will be sent to hell, just because he was not born in a Muslim family.

Waiting for your answer

Answer:
Your question pertains to the criteria of success in the hereafter.

Success in the hereafter does not depend on whether the world knew me as a Muslim or a non-Muslim. It is whether I really was a "Muslim" or a "non-Muslim". A "Muslim" is a person who truly submits to the will of God.

What one believes in largely depends on what he thinks and knows to be true. And that in turn, would depend on his knowledge and exposure. An honest person, who with all his honesty searched for and submitted to God's will, is a true Muslim. And only that "Muslim" qualifies for Jannah

Yes, I do agree that we, Muslims(?) have a certain advantage if we approach the issue from the perspective you have mentioned in your letter. However, this advantage, places a very big responsibility on our shoulders too. Now, a Muslim is also responsible for showing the right path to those who have gone astray. If we do not fulfill our responsibility, it maybe that the so-called Muslim are collectively held responsible for those who went astray, just because the Muslims, as a group, did not fulfill their responsibility.

Who knows, when the curtain is ultimately raised on the Day of Judgment, many whom we thought and knew as Muslims, are amongst the Kaafirs... just because of their attitude of infidelity.... and many of those whom we knew as non-Muslims are found among the Muslims, just because of their true submission to (whatever they honestly thought to be) the will of God.

The Day of Judgment would be a day of absolute justice. No one will be able to object regarding the ultimate justice done by God. No one will be punished, because he lacked knowledge.

There are two basic qualities that will be judged:

1. Whether one really searched for the truth; and

2. Whether one submitted to what he believed was true.

On the other hand, two qualities are bound to doom a person:

1. His carelessness and arrogance in his search for the truth; and

2. His arrogance in submitting to the truth.

Now, my friend, you can surely see that from this perspective, Muslims and non-Muslims stand on the same grounds. We, as Muslims do not have any advantage, besides the one, which puts a heavy responsibility on our shoulders. While the non-Muslims do not have any disadvantage, besides the one, for which they may be given a lot of allowance.

Understanding Islam 2, Ayesha's age at marriage

2006-06-25T13:17:00.000+05:00

Here is issue that bothered me a lot. I heard many Muslims defend the idea that Ayesha (ra) was 9 years old at the time of marriage or consummation of the marriage. When I read this answer on the understanding-Islam site, it just blew me away. This answer was written in 1998. Over the years (since questions from people are routinely accepted at the site) there have been a series of rebuttal questions to this original answer, forming a long chain of animated discussions on the subject. The original question/answer is here , which is followed up by this, then this, this, this, this, and finally the last answer written on the issue to date here.

Title:
What was Ayesha's (ra) Age at the Time of Her Marriage to the Prophet (pbuh)?

Question:
What was Ayesha's (ra) age at the time of her marriage? It is normally believed that she was nine years old at the time of her marriage with Mohammad (sws) was consummated. I do think it was according to the traditions of the Arab culture, as otherwise people would have objected to this marriage. But unfortunately, the modern day man is not satisfied with an answer as simple as that.

Answer:
To begin with, I think it is the responsibility of all those who believe that marrying a girl as young as nine years old was an accepted norm of the Arab culture, to provide at least a few examples to substantiate their point of view. I have not yet been able to find a single reliable instance in the books of Arab history where a girl as young as nine years old was given away in marriage. Unless such examples are given, we do not have any reasonable grounds to believe that it really was an accepted norm.

In my opinion, the age of Ayesha (ra) has been grossly misreported in the narratives of the incident. Not only that, I think that the narratives reporting this event are not only highly unreliable but also that on the basis of other historical data, the event reported, is quite an unlikely happening. Let us look at the issue from an objective stand point. My reservations in accepting the narratives, on the basis of which, Ayesha's (ra) age at the time of her marriage with the Prophet (pbuh) is held to be nine years are:

Most of these narratives are reported only by Hisham ibn `urwah reporting on the authority of his father. An event as well known as the one being reported, should logically have been reported by more people than just one, two or three.

It is quite strange that no one from Medinah, where Hisham ibn `urwah lived the first seventy-one years of his life has narrated the event, even though in Medinah his pupils included people as well known as Malik ibn Anas. All the narratives of this event have been reported by narrators from Iraq, where Hisham is reported to have shifted after living in Medinah for seventy-one years.

Tehzeeb al-Tehzeeb, one of the most well known books on the life and reliability of the narrators of the traditions ascribed to the Prophet (pbuh) reports that according to Yaqub ibn Shaibah: "narratives reported by Hisham are reliable except those that are reported through the people of Iraq". It further states that Malik ibn Anas objected on those narratives of Hisham, which were reported through people of Iraq (Vol. 11, pg. 48 - 51).

Meezaan al-Ai`tidaal, another book on the narrators of the traditions of the Prophet (pbuh) reports that when he was old, Hisham's memory suffered quite badly (Vol. 4, pg. 301 - 302).

According to the generally accepted tradition, Ayesha (ra) was born about eight years before Hijrah. However, according to another narrative in Bukhari (Kitaab al-Tafseer) Ayesha (ra) is reported to have said that at the time Surah Al-Qamar, the 54th chapter of the Qur'an, was revealed, "I was a young girl". The 54th Surah of the Qur'an was revealed nine years before Hijrah. According to this tradition, Ayesha (ra) had not only been born before the revelation of the referred Surah, but was actually a young girl (jariyah), not even only an infant (sibyah) at that time. Obviously, if this narrative is held to be true, it is in clear contradiction with the narratives reported by Hisham ibn `urwah. I see absolutely no reason that after the comments of the experts on the narratives of Hisham ibn `urwah, why should we not accept this narrative to be more accurate.

According to a number of narratives, Ayesha (ra) accompanied the Muslims in the battle of Badr and Uhud. Furthermore, it is also reported in books of hadith and history that no one under the age of 15 years was allowed to take part in the battle of Uhud. All the boys below 15 years of age were sent back. Ayesha's (ra) participation in the battle of Badr and Uhud clearly indicates that she was not nine or ten years old at that time. After all, women used to accompany men to the battlefields to help them, not to be a burden upon them.

According to almost all the historians Asma (ra), the elder sister of Ayesha (ra) was ten years older than Ayesha (ra). It is reported in Taqreeb al-Tehzeeb as well as Al-Bidayah wa al-Nihayah that Asma (ra) died in the 73rd year after hijrah when she was 100 years old. Now, obviously if Asma (ra) was 100 years old in the 73rd year after hijrah, she should have been 27 or 28 years old at the time of hijrah. If Asma (ra) was 27 or 28 years old at the time of hijrah, Ayesha (ra) should have been 17 or 18 years old at that time. Thus, Ayesha (ra) - if she got married in 1 AH (after hijrah) or 2 AH - was between 18 to 20 years old at the time of her marriage.

Tabari in his treatise on Islamic history, while mentioning Abu Bakr (ra) reports that Abu Bakr had four children and all four were born during the Jahiliyyah - the pre Islamic period. Obviously, if Ayesha (ra) was born in the period of jahiliyyah, she could not have been less than 14 years in 1 AH - the time she most likely got married.

According to Ibn Hisham, the historian, Ayesha (ra) accepted Islam quite some time before Umar ibn Khattab (ra). This shows that Ayesha (ra) accepted Islam during the first year of Islam. While, if the narrative of Ayesha's (ra) marriage at seven years of age is held to be true, Ayesha (ra) should not even have been born during the first year of Islam.

Tabari has also reported that at the time Abu Bakr (ra) planned on migrating to Habshah (8 years before Hijrah), he went to Mut`am - with whose son Ayesha (ra) was engaged at that time - and asked him to take Ayesha (ra) in his house as his son's wife. Mut`am refused, because Abu Bakr had embraced Islam. Subsequently, his son divorced Ayesha (ra). Now, if Ayesha (ra) was only seven years old at the time of her marriage, she could not have been born at the time Abu Bakr decided on migrating to Habshah. On the basis of this report it seems only reasonable to assume that Ayesha (ra) had not only been born 8 years before hijrah, but was also a young lady, quite prepared for marriage.

According to a narrative reported by Ahmad ibn Hanbal, after the death of Khadijah (ra), when Khaulah (ra) came to the Prophet (pbuh) advising him to marry again, the Prophet (pbuh) asked her regarding the choices she had in her mind. Khaulah said: "You can marry a virgin (bikr) or a woman who has already been married (thayyib)". When the Prophet (pbuh) asked about who the virgin was, Khaulah proposed Ayesha's (ra) name. All those who know the Arabic language, are aware that the word "bikr" in the Arabic language is not used for an immature nine-year old girl. The correct word for a young playful girl, as stated earlier is "Jariyah". "Bikr" on the other hand, is used for an unmarried lady, and obviously a nine year old is not a "lady".

According to Ibn Hajar, Fatimah (ra) was five years older than Ayesha (ra). Fatimah (ra) is reported to have been born when the Prophet (pbuh) was 35 years old. Thus, even if this information is taken to be correct, Ayesha (ra) could by no means be less than 14 years old at the time of hijrah, and 15 or 16 years old at the time of her marriage.

These are some of the major points that go against accepting the commonly known narrative regarding Ayesha's (ra) age at the time of her marriage.

In my opinion, neither was it an Arab tradition to give away girls in marriage at an age as young as nine or ten years, nor did the Prophet (pbuh) marry Ayesha (ra) at such a young age. The people of Arabia did not object to this marriage, because it never happened in the manner it has been narrated.

Just a roll of the dice?

2006-06-25T00:57:00.000+05:00

We are 4 brothers, completely different from one another. Literally, it’s as if all 4 of us were adopted from families of different genetic pools. Not only are we nothing like each other physically, but our personalities could not be more different. It’s quite striking really, and unfortunate. We brothers aren’t really close to each other. I don’t know how things turned out to be this way. Maybe it was growing up in Jeddah, where we had no cousins to hang out with to see how ‘normal’ brothers interacted. Maybe it was because our eldest brother, who should have taken the lead, was never affectionate, using us as objects of his amusement and service more than anything else. I wish that weren’t the case. I’ve seen brothers who would do anything for each other, and while we four are certainly never hostile with each other, there isn’t an over-abundance of warmth between us either. We all have our separate lives now, our separate destinies. I wonder if it’s just a part of growing up to drift apart slowly. I wonder if it’s because of the weird family dynamics we have that has resulted in this or if it’s just how things work out for most families.

One the subject of how different the 4 of us have turned out, in the extent of our achievements, in our attitudes towards our parents, and in our temperaments, my father once told me that children are a gamble. You can try to do everything right and still they turn out very badly. With other kids, you just gently nudge them in the right direction and things seem to magically work out. That has definitely been the case with my own family. I’m still uncertain though to what extent my father’s ‘gamble’ theory is correct. I think there must be always been a way nurture can overcome nature to move a child along a road that leaves him well adjusted, hard-working and happy. Then again, I know of kids who have completely ruined their lives even though their parents have tried everything to help them. Maybe these parents did something wrong. It’s disconcerting to think that children can be a family’s downfall.

When they are born, there is nothing but hope and love in the parent’s hearts. How painful it must be to have that sentiment betrayed.

Khutbah

2006-06-23T13:28:00.000+05:00

I’ve had the most terrible attention span this morning. God, I could barely concentrate for more than 5 minutes before being distracted by the smallest thing. Talk about ADD.

I’m going to this mosque near my house for Friday prayers soon. I don’t really enjoy listen to the imam of the mosque. He has nothing new to say during his khutbahs, only regurgitating stuff he’s probably memorized years ago. He’s also got the most boring, cadence to his speech. He breaks his sentences in two, pausing randomly in the middle before continuing. I think he believes this lends an aura of authority to his voice. He’s also got a wholly artificial, overly done, high-pitched quiver to his voice when he’s reciting the Quran.

Friday khutbahs should be informative and though provoking. The imam should work hard on composing it, making it relevant to current events and situations. I’m absolutely sure very few imams of mosques actually sit down to think hard about what they’ll be saying in their khutbahs. The imam of the mosque I’m going to is just like thousands of others all over Pakistan. He memorized the Quran when he was a kid without understanding a thing he was committing to memory and then managed to find a job as an imam of a mosque. He’s got three meals a day and a place to stay. Occasionally he’s invited to a wedding to preside over the nikah. That means even more food! What more does he need from life?

Choice

2006-06-23T01:16:00.000+05:00

For some time now I’ve believed that a large part of why many Muslims have an exclusivist, insular bent of mind was because they believed in an interpretation of Islam that (incorrectly) stressed such a mindset. The “Understanding Islam” excerpt that I posted a couple of days ago was an eye opener for me when I first read it. My heart sang because this is what I truly believed and here was an Islamic scholar who stated the same thing. God loves all of mankind, not just the Muslims, and everyone has a fair shot of entering paradise, irrespective of his religious creed. I thought that if only more Muslims believed in this idea, tolerance and open-mindedness would quickly flourish in the Muslim world. More Muslims would aggressively reject the likes of Al-Qaeda and sectarianism would die out. Having achieved that, it would only be a matter of time when socioeconomic prosperity was ushered in.

These days however, I’m beginning to feel that I’m thinking about this backwards. It’s not because of a particular Islamic interpretation that has Muslims thinking narrow-mindedly, but rather they feel comfortable with this outlook and therefore gravitate towards a particular interpretation of Islam that allows them the luxury of this mindset.

A few hundred years ago, as the Western world rose to dominate, perhaps the Muslims gravitated towards a belief that allowed them to feel good about themselves while being subjugated by a foreign power. How many Palestinians would feel comfortable if told that the Jews had as good a chance of entering Heaven as they do? Not an awful lot, I’m sure. It’s easy to hate. Hatred is a quick-fix balm - something that serves to release the rage. It’s far more difficult to quell that anger, to remain calm and look inwards for strength to overcome what we feel is unfair subjugation. If somehow an interpretation of the Quran allows you to keep feeling that hate, then what more do the Muslims need? God Himself has spoken. We are better than they. We have something to feel good about in ourselves. I don’t think then that if more Muslims were made aware of Islam’s non-exclusivist approach that it would really make much difference. Too many of them are mired in a comfortable mindset of exclusivist hate because of the present global situation.

I think being a good Muslim is hard work. It’s about making difficult choices. It’s about taking the high road. Its about saying no to anger and hate because that is what Islam teaches us. It’s what Martin Luther King, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi all did.

Once while I was living in Peshawar, a tableeghi jamat told me a story of one of the sahabas, I think it was Umar (ra). Umar was fighting on the battle field with the leader of the opposing army. He overpowered the man and was about to kill him when the man spit in his face. Umar was enraged and got up, disengaging without striking the man again. When the man got up from the ground, he asked Umar why he didn’t kill him and Umar replied that he was furious just then at him and it would have been wrong to kill him in anger, if the larger purpose of doing God’s work was subjugated to his anger. Ironically, the tableeghi didn’t really appreciate the deeper implication of this anecdote because he went on to talk about the infidel non-Muslims and how they would all rot in hell if we didn’t save them.

It’s about choice. We can choose to live righteously, centering ourselves with worship of God, or we can choose to use flimsy interpretations of the Quran to provide an excuse for our pig-headedness. We could choose for Islam to be about a personal connection with God, and about living life with an uncompromising sense of morality, or we could choose for Islam to be some sort of secret password we need to give at the doors of Paradise. It’s far easier to believe the later, as it suits man’s base instincts, but the road to Paradise is most certainly not paved with seething anger.

blech

2006-06-21T23:47:00.000+05:00

The last few days study has been blech, and I’ve been feeling blech and life has been blech. Yes, it’s been blech all around. Last night for some weird reason, my heart rate dropped quite significantly. It was down to somewhere in the 30s. While I’d like to think this was because I’m in such great Lance Armstrong-esque shape I know that’s not the case. I took a few puffs of Ventolin, which I always keep handy to get the heart rate going again and the lungs opened up. I had this problem all the way till I finally got to sleep. When I woke up, I felt terrible. Extremely groggy and even depressed. I think the breathing/heart-rate problems preventing me from getting much restful sleep.

Another thing that really pisses me off these days is the glaring lack of hygiene in the kitchen. We’ve got swarms of cockroaches emerging at night and they crawl all over the dishes and other stuff in the kitchen. I keep telling my parents to get some professional pest-control service in tow so the roaches can be annihilated once and for all. I also pointed out that if the drain on the floor of the kitchen were properly cemented in place (instead of lying on top of it detached), the roaches wouldn’t be able to get in. My father insists the problem is under control because they got a big can of baygon roach spray that they use. I point out that the problem is obviously out of hand, to which he claims that the kitchen and household is my mother’s “department” and washes his hands off the whole thing. My mother for her part makes some excuse or other because she really doesn’t think much of the problem. We have a maid that cooks for us as well. Besides cooking, which she is very good at, she’s also responsible for cleaning and stuff. The gripe that I have is that I seriously doubt she washes her hands carefully before cooking for us. She can spend half the day wiping the floors and cleaning the bathrooms, and then use the same unwashed hands to cook our bread. I’ve asked my mother if she washes her hands when she cooks, and my mother says that she does, but there is no soap in the kitchen, and I doubt the maid (or my mother for that matter) go specially into the bathroom to wash their hands before handling food.

There’s a deep seated inertia to change that’s pervaded my household. The TV downstairs for example has a problem in that the picture flickers out and only comes back if you get up and jiggle the cable wire around a little. This happens ever 10-15 minutes. The problem has long been diagnosed as a very simple affair. The socket that the cable wire goes into is loose and dislodges by itself. It only requires a good repairman a few minutes to fix the problem. Now get this: This problem has been going on for the last 12 months. When I ask my mother why no one has bothered to fix it, she complains that no one is ready to take her, and when I ask my father, he says it’s not his “department”. My 36 year old elder brother who lives with us most of the time has never taken it upon himself to fix this problem because he’s got his own TV upstairs. My mother doesn’t want to ask him to fix it because she doesn’t want to owe him any favors. My 32 year old brother, who doesn’t have a job has never learnt to drive and so this automatically excuses him from the responsibility. My father could do it easily over the weekend, but it’s not his department.

It’s just a screwed up, stupid, banosi household I come from. I want to get out of here as fast as I can.

Understanding Islam

2006-06-20T23:54:00.000+05:00

I’ve mentioned in passing, in several posts of mine in the past, how the work of the scholars at Al-Mawrid have changed my life and opened my eyes to an Islam that resonates very closely with my own internal sense of what is right and wrong, a sense that Islam teaches us we are all born with.

I grew up in Saudi Arabia and over there, the “brand” of Islam we were exposed to was Wahabism, which is a very literalist interpretation of the Quran, Sunnah and Hadeeth. To a large part, this interpretation of Islam has also been practiced in Pakistan. I never felt comfortable with it and it was only when I came across the work of the Al-Mawrid scholars that I truly felt comfortable with Islam. I never believed that religion was about blind faith where you suspended normal logical processes and just ‘leaped’ forward to accept something that your mind could not. It was hugely gratifying when I came across the www.understanding-islam.org site and saw that Islam could stand up to scrutiny and that many beliefs that were being propounded in Wahabist Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan were simply incorrect.

From now on, I’ll try to reproduce material from the understanding-islam site regularly over here. I used to send out such material to friends in emails a few years ago, but no one seemed to appreciate it. I firmly believe that if a renaissance is to occur in the Muslim world, it will be borne from the work of these scholars’ whose legacy includes Hameed-u-Din Farahi and Amin Ahsan Islahi

To me, the Al-Mawrid work is a big deal. I want to shout it from the rooftops, I want to grab people and ask them to take notice. Look!! Why don’t you see how beautiful this thing is? I discovered the site a few years ago, and it frustrates me that today, when the Muslim world needs scholars that appeal to one’s intellect and not to their emotions, Al-Mawrid is largely still untalked about.

Anyway, I’ll let their work speak for themselves. I’ll choose material from their site and post it up here. I’ll also provide the link to their site where I got the material from. The site was created by Moiz Amjad, who is just one of the scholars of Al-Mawrid, and the first one who established a net presence.

My first entry goes right to the meat of the matter, in my opinion. The original link is found here. And a far more detailed discussion of this concept is given here by Khalid Zaheer.

Title:What Will Happen to Jews and Christians?

Question:
There has been recent discussion about the fact whether Christians and Jews will be going to heaven along with Muslims (insha'Allah).

The argument is such: Christians and Jews who are isolated from Islam have the possibility to go to heaven but those who have been exposed to Islam do not. Also certain verses in the Qur'an concerning Christians and Jews going to heaven have been nullified by later verses.
Could you please comment on this because it does not make sense considering what I have read in the Qur'an?

Answer:
The Qur'an has very strongly negated the idea that the Jannah or the bliss in the life hereafter - the Paradise - is the right of any particular religious group or creed. Whether one ascribes to the Muslim or to any other belief, the criteria for success in the hereafter is going to be his true faith in the Almighty and in the Day of reckoning.

According to the Qur'anic view about life each individual, who lives on the face of this earth is being tested by the Almighty. Whether born to Muslim or Jewish or Christian parents, each individual is being tested for his honest and unbiased search for and surrender to the Truth, as he sees and understands it. To go through this test, God has bestowed upon us the sense and the intellect to judge right from wrong.

A close look at our general attitude towards religion and religious beliefs shows that we normally go through life with the beliefs that we inherit from our parents. If we are born in a Muslim family, there is a greater chance that we shall remain Muslims through out our lives. The same holds true in other cases as well. But unfortunately, this passive belief shall have absolutely no importance on the Day of Judgment. Whether we attended the Sunday Church or the Friday Congregation shall only have a secondary importance. The first thing that would be judged is whether the individual truly searched for the Truth or not and then, whether he lived his life in accordance with that Truth or not.

In the light of the above explanation, in my opinion, success in the hereafter is not dependent on ascribing to any one or the other group. It is basically dependent on my attitude towards searching for and submitting to the Truth. Thus, those Christians and Jews, who, without any prejudice, had searched for the Truth and had submitted to it, shall be among those who are successful in the hereafter. While those who called themselves Muslims in this world, might fail in the hereafter on the account that they did not seriously and without any bias, seek the Truth or that even after knowing the Truth, did not submit to it or lived their lives in accordance with it.

This is the general principle of success and/or failure in the test of the life of this world. Thus, the criterion of success or failure is one that depends purely on the internal mechanism of the human soul and intellect. Because we cannot say that a particular person has rejected Islam (or whatever we hold to be the Truth) after being thoroughly convinced that Islam is the divine truth, we therefore, cannot pass a judgment regarding his success or failure in the hereafter. It is only the Omniscient God who really knows whether a person rejected after being truly convinced of the Truth or whether his rejection was because of some misunderstanding or some unanswered questions in his mind, regarding that Truth. On the day of reckoning, God shall give His decision on the basis of His absolute knowledge about the reasons of the rejection of the individuals.

According to the Qur'an, when a messenger of God (Rasu'l as distinct from Nab'i) is sent towards a people, he removes all doubts that lie in people's minds regarding the Truth. He answers all their questions. Truth becomes evidently distinct from falsehood. Those who accept his message, accept it with full knowledge of what is right and what is wrong; and those who reject his message, reject it after gaining full knowledge that it is the Truth that they are rejecting. It is because of this particular position of the messengers (Rasu'l) of God that it becomes evident that those who are rejecting his call are rejecting the Truth, and those who are accepting his call are submitting to the Truth. The former are thus bound to be thrown in the hellfire and the latter are promised the everlasting bliss of paradise. Therefore the Jews and Christians who lived during the life of the Prophet (pbuh) and yet did not accept his message are doomed to the severe punishment of hellfire. We, even with our limited knowledge know about this fact, because if, as the Muslims hold, Mohammad (pbuh) was a true messenger of God, then those Jews and Christians who lived during the life of the Prophet (pbuh) knowingly rejected the Truth. They shall have no excuse for their rejection. It is these Jews and Christians that are sure to be doomed.

As far as the Jews and Christians of other times and places are concerned, they are subjected to the same test in the life of this world, as everyone else including the Muslims. If they submit to whatever they truly believe to be the Truth and live their lives in accordance with that Truth, they shall be successful. The case of the Muslims is not any different.

6 things

2006-06-20T16:53:00.000+05:00

I’ve been tagged by Zak for 6 weird things about me, so here we go:

I’m terrible at small talk. I tend to divulge top-secret confidential information to people just to have something to talk about other than small talk.

I have simply zero sense of direction. I mean ZERO!! I get lost in fricken Islamabad. I hold my breath when turning a corner while driving to a certain place, hoping it’s the right place. I’m still am unable to drive to the place I went to school here in Islamabad for two years. I mean I can get myself to the general location, then I just drive around hoping I bump into the place I’m looking for. Now that’s weird.

I’m so fascinated and enthralled by Dubai and New York City that I waste hours looking for pictures of these places to use as my desktop wallpaper. I’m got a fine collection. Today I’ve got a picture of the Dubai skyline as it looks at night from the sea.

I don’t feel like a Pakistani, or a pathan, or an anything. I still don’t have sense of belonging to any one place. (Probably explains my fascination with NYC and Dubai, where you’ve got people from all over the world living together. It suits my sense of not belonging to any one place)

I’ve spent some 80 percent of my waking hours the last two years sitting in the same chair studying for one exam or another.

Hmm… can’t think of another one, sorry…

Maulana Rant

2006-06-10T12:36:00.000+05:00

When the socio-economic levels of a society goes down the toilet, all aspects of its civilization go right down with it. Muslims have been amongst the poorest of nations for a few hundred years now and along with other things, our scholarship has been abysmal as well. This has inevitably affected the quality of our religious scholars, the so called ‘ulema’. The vast majority make a mockery of the sacred position society has elevated them to. Society has entrusted them to serve as guides on the road towards spirituality, but on the whole they have betrayed this trust. It’s not their fault I suppose. I’m a doctor, and I’m relying on Western medical textbooks to teach me medicine. Throughout my years of studying medicine, not once I come across a Pakistani textbook I could rely on. Western medicine has been leading the rest of us for hundreds of years now. I can still be a great doctor because I have access to Western textbooks. But what about our ‘ulema’. As original sciences have deteriorated to laughable levels in the Muslim world, so has religious scholarship. The difference is that while we have Western sources to learn science from (so we can still become doctors, build dams, airplanes, roads and so on), our religious scholarship is still stuck centuries in the past because we can’t (or don’t?) use Western resources for this purpose. Instead, religious scholarship in this day and age consists of memorizing opinions of scholars who lived in a different time and who would turn in their grave if it were known to them that their life’s work had turned into intolerant dogma.

Who is to blame here? I would have been a terrible doctor if I did not have Western material to study medicine from. The religious scholars of today don’t have anything comparable to fall back on. The best minds of the ummah don’t go towards religious scholarship, so it’s not surprising the ulema cannot emerge from the prison of dogma that it has found itself locked into.

If there is any hope, I see it in the scholars of Al-Mawrid, whose work had literally saved me from abandoning Islam a few years ago.

What brought this rant on?

This did.

the birthday girl

2006-06-10T00:07:00.000+05:00

I decided to get my fiancé the DVD set for the 1st season of House MD. You guys can say what you wish, but I know what’d she’d like. I had sent her some ER episodes I had downloaded with bittorrent and she absolutely loved those.

So I went to the store and asked the guy there if they had “House MD”. After the inevitable looks of dazed confusion (why do I always have to repeat what I’m looking for three times in a book or video store?), the guy’s gaze wondered over the huge shop he was in charge for as if he had X-ray vision and could do a quick search from the comfort of his chair. He slowly answered that they didn’t have House MD. Not believing him, I decided to look for myself. In about 30 seconds, I was back at the counter waving the House DVD set in his nose. He didn’t look the slightest bit embarrassed at his incompetence, looking only at the price tag to see how much money he was going to milk out of me.

I had gone to the shop prepared to do battle. The thing is, when I bought my own House MD DVD set, it wasn’t the original set, but a really crappy, internet-downloaded version that wasn’t even HDTV. I didn’t know this, because the DVD set looked pristine and sparkling from the outside. I let it pass and watched the DVDs anyway, but what really irritated me was when 2 DVDs from the set didn’t work. I went back to the shop and raised hell, demanding my money back. The guys there apologized and promised to replace the two DVDs the next day. I didn’t like the idea of having to come a third time, but I caved in because there wasn’t much else I could do. I wanted those two DVDs. So I went back again the third time only to have them exclaim that the guy didn’t come today, so if I could please come the next day…

I shouted at them a lot and came away with my money back and a promise never to come back to the store again. Sure enough when I went to get DVDs for my fiancé, I went to another store, but not wanting to get screwed again, I insisted that the guy check every single DVD in the set before I buy them.

The first DVD looked alright… it loaded up and stuff. I told him to move on and check the second DVD, and then out of instinct when it loaded up, I told him to play an episode. And hey presto… wouldn’t you know: It didn’t work!! I was so pissed. The idiot was standing there banging on the remote to the DVD player and the thing just wouldn’t move past the main menu. As the guy stood there like a moron, another clerk came from the upstairs section of the store. He looked like a total jerk; I didn’t like him at all. He had an argumentative scowl on his face and the idiot clerk asked the mean clerk if they had another set of House MD. “Why?” he asked. The idiot clerk replied this set wasn’t working.

Get this: right in front of me, the mean clerk says “don’t open the box sets here. If there is a problem let the customer come back and deal with it.” I snapped back at him telling him I wasn’t so free that I had time to come again to sort out defective DVDs. He got me really worked up. I mean, what a jerk. Talk about poor interpersonal skills.

The mean clerk went back up without replying. It was established that they didn’t have another set of House MD. Just then I turned my head a little and guess what I see! The DVD set for ER Season 1!! I had been looking for this for months! Every time I went into a DVD store, this was the first thing I asked them for. Nobody had it, and this was the show I really wanted to see. After all this time, I find it there in that store. I never even asked them if they had it, because I didn’t expect they would.

Anyway, I grab the ER set and tell the idiot clerk to check these ones. He looks at the set dubiously and primly walks over to the mean clerk and tells him the customer wants to check these DVDs. I’m walking right behind the idiot clerk ready to make sure the DVDs are checked. The mean guy turns to me and tells me they can’t remove the wrapping around the box sets. He said the “goras” that come here insist that the sets be wrapped up. I told him that the House DVDs weren’t working… we had just checked them right now, wrapping or no wrapping, no one would buy them. I told him if the ER DVDs were working I’d buy them, and if not, he shouldn’t be selling them anyway. He knew I had trapped him there because I had the evidence of the House DVDs to throw at him. He suffered a long constipated silence before finally grunting to the idiot clerk to go and check the DVDs.

Thankfully, the ER DVDs were all working fine. All were the real thing, and not some cheap internet knockoff. I really really really really wanted to get an ER set for myself, but I didn’t have any money left.

So I sent the DVDs off to the birthday girl. I won’t get to watch them, but she will, and she’ll love them, and that’s fine.

Gifts

2006-06-08T14:39:00.000+05:00

It’s my fiancé’s birthday day after tomorrow and I wondering what to get her. For my birthday, she sent me a T-shirt (which I happen to be wearing right now). I was thinking of getting her the House MD Season 1 DVD set. I have the set myself and I think she’ll love it. She really liked ER, and shows like House MD are twice as fun when you try to follow the medicine behind it.

It’s either that or Hugo perfume for women. I’m not sure which one to get. I think she’ll enjoy House more, but don’t girls like perfume and stuff like that a lot?

Other than that, my studies are going on really well these days. My spirits are high. I hope it stays that way. If I happen to be peaking right now, it’s really good timing.

Third Culture Kid

2006-05-28T16:22:00.000+05:00

I never knew there was name for this. I used to call myself a ‘vacationer’, because when growing up, we’d come to Pakistan only for the vacations. ‘Third culture kid’ is a great description and the wikipedia article is dead on. I can totally relate to it.

Go Moiz!

2006-05-25T11:27:00.000+05:00

Moiz is taking his Step 1 exam as I write this. We wish him the very best!

What women want.

2006-05-23T14:46:00.000+05:00

An old friend of mine called me after a long time. We used to be really close a few years ago. I was going through the combined nightmare of living in Peshawar and worried sick about losing the girl who I am now engaged to. This friend, let’s call her E, was engaged for 2 years in her mid-twenties until her fiancé broke it off. She had this amazing job in the textile export business in that she used to travel a lot to exotic places. She’s been to Hong Kong, Singapore, Austrialia, , places in Europe… all around, she probably visited a few dozen cities all around the world during her tenure. I met her through a mutual friend that I knew from the understanding islam forum. She was 28 when I met her. Her father had died long ago, and her mother was old and worried sick about her marriage. She had no brothers that could help with regards to the marriage thing. She had a lot of faith, and an excellent understanding of Islam. Although it must have been really hard for her to ward off her worries with regards to her single status, she managed to keep it together most of the time. I do remember though that she freaked out once soon after her 29th birthday.

In our stupid Pakistani society, an unmarried 29 year old woman is in a really bad situation. I sympathized with her and wished God would sort out her problems. I had demons of my own to exorcise at the time and we relied on each other a lot for mutual support. Her older age came in handy when I needed someone more mature and experienced at life to turn to for advice in the many twists and turns of my own life.

This was about 2 years ago. Fast-forwarding, and skipping over a lot of events, today she’s now happily married to a good man. She insisted that I come to her wedding, but it was smack in the middle of my final year exams, so I couldn’t. Today, out of the blue she called me up and we caught up with each other after a gap of half a year. It’s funny because only the other day I was thinking how every girl I’ve ever befriended has eventually drifted away from my life. I’d be great friends with her, and we’d know each other really well, but eventually circumstances change, we no longer saw each other as often and before you know it, a year or two passes before I realized we haven’t talked. I kind of thought this would be the natural course of events for any Pakistani girl I knew. After marriage, a Pakistani girl practically leaves her previous life, to start up another with a new family. Thereafter, her husband’s family is her own, and she sees a lot less of her real family. It’s sad, and that’s why you’ll see a lot of crying at Pakistani weddings from the bride’s side of the family. She is literally taken away from her real family unless her husband happens to work with them or live close by. I sort of accepted that along with her family, a girl would also leave her friends behind because that has been my experience.

She called me today and it didn’t take me long to pry out some mother-in-law stories from her. The MIL relationship has been close to my mind mostly because I’ve been reading a lot of sometimes sobia’s blog. Sobia is an American who married her Pakistani husband without knowing that she was also marrying an army of in laws, including an incurably exasperating mother-in-law. I asked E, who lives with her in-laws how she is getting along. She does have complaints, chief amongst them that she doesn’t have her own space and is expected to spend all her free time servicing or chatting up her MIL.

E gave me some golden advise today, which I should write down her so I don’t forget. That is: a woman needs to have her own domain. It can be a short, ratty apartment with a tiny kitchen and bathroom, but it must be hers and hers alone. No interference from any other woman can be tolerated for very long. For all the men reading this blog, get a pen and etch this into your skulls.

There have been no fights because E is an extremely diplomatic person and knows how to avoid any ill-will (although she would be hard-pressed trying to deal with Sobia’s MIL). However she has reached the stage where she told her husband, who is the eldest son by the way, that she wants to move out and live somewhere by themselves. Her husband is willing, but says that they can’t just move to another house in the same city, it would be colossally unbecoming for the eldest son to move out of his parents house to go live somewhere else, ostensibly because he wanted to be away from them. So to “solve” his problem, they are going to find a job in another city. They are going to go to Dubai next month and stay with close friends for a while as he goes job hunting there. It is kind of bizarre that they have to actually move to another country in order to get some space for themselves, but believe it or not, I can totally relate. Why do you think I didn’t get married until my Steps were done first? If all goes according to plan, me and my wife will be on a plane to the US soon after the wedding. I have a brother there and we will spend quite a while doing our CS and Step 3 exams, and going for internships. I’ll be more comfortable living with my parents when I’ve got a job contract in my pocket making the transitory nature of my time with them a certain thing.

Is this crazy or what?

Capital Park

2006-05-23T00:30:00.000+05:00

I went out for a long walk to Capital Park today. I didn’t feel like jogging, so I decided to go for an enormously long walk instead. It was great. Capital Park is an enormous park right in the middle of Islamabad. I happen to live a 15 minutes walk away so I decided to go there. This is when I wished I had a camera to take pictures to put on my blog. The park is a really well-maintained, open-aired, beautiful place. If it weren’t so flat so you could see apartment blocks miles and miles away, you could honestly forget you were in the middle of a city.

I used to come to Capital Park everyday a few years ago in the summer vacations for long walks. It would give me some time to be alone and to think. I also like look at the other people who come there - an eclectic mix of Islamabadis from all walks of life: Those who are obviously elite, wearing gaudy, tight-fitting shorts with overflowing bellies striding along as if they’re in a big hurry. The ones who are obviously middle-class – the father looking pleased with himself for taking his family out, and the wife concerning herself with having a good time and some “enjowhyment”. Then there are those who obviously rarely come to the park. Mostly young men in shalwar kameez and sandals, walking slowly with their arms behind their backs, stealing glances at the woman then exchanging grins with their friends.

The air is clean there. It smells of grass. I came back refreshed and relaxed. Maybe I’ll start going there for my exercise. Certainly Capital Park has a pleasant ambiance and is a million miles away from my books. I also called my fiancé and made up with her, so all around, it was a good day.

Dark thoughts

2006-05-22T15:00:00.000+05:00

I’ve done gone and been lazy again. I haven’t been jogging regularly for about 10 days now, and a slow, insidious depression is creeping in. I must go out today, if not for a run, then a long, brisk walk, alone with my thoughts and far away from these wretched books that keep plaguing my conscience.

SMS love

2006-05-22T01:24:00.000+05:00

Women are sensitive creatures. I’ve been feeling a little down the last couple of days, and when I get like that, I tend to isolate myself. I don’t want to talk much, preferring to be alone. I usually get over my mood after a spell, but for the time that I feel that way, I can come across as cold or unsociable. It’s just one of the many bad habits that I have.

My fiancé and I are not together (otherwise I would say my wife and I). She’s in Peshawar and I’m in Islamabad, and for the last 8 months, we have maintained our relationship over the sms’s and phone calls. It’s not easy, but we make it work. We have our rough spots, and I’m certain its because of the nature of our relationship right now. An sms can’t tell you how you’re feeling. It doesn’t carry the tone or weight of your voice. It doesn’t replace a laugh, a smile, a kiss or a hug. So when I felt down, I didn’t sms her as often as she would have liked, something to which she took exception. She send me a few angry sms’s telling me I was ignoring her and that she resented it. I, being unsociable, didn’t feel very motivated to defend myself and gave up after a few half-hearted sms’s.

She’s been angry since yesterday. She got even more withdrawn today because I was supposed to call her tonight (on the land-line) and talk to her for about an hour. I didn’t do that, because of my crappy mood.

I’m thinking of starting tahajjud prayers soon. I need some food for the soul to pre-empt these dark moody spells of mine.

Crackerbox Palace

2006-05-08T13:58:00.000+05:00

I’ve always loved this song by George Harrison. After the Beatles split up, I think George produced the best solo songs.

I was so young when I was born
My eyes could not yet see
And by the time of my first dawn
Somebody holding me...they said

I welcome you to Crackerbox Palace
We\'ve been expecting you
You bring such joy in Crackerbox Palace
No matter where you roam know our love is true

While growing up or trying to
Not knowing where to start
I looked around for someone who
May help reveal my heart - someone said

While you\'re a part of Crackerbox Palace
Do what the rest all do
Or face the fact that Crackerbox Palace
May have no other choice than to deport you

Sometimes are good . . . sometimes are bad
That\'s all a part of life
And standing in between them all
I met a Mr. Grief - and he said

I welcome you to Crackerbox Palace
Was not expecting you
Let\'s rap and tap at Crackerbox Palace
Know that the Lord is well and inside of you

Fake?

2006-05-07T21:59:00.000+05:00

The other day, I took my mother to see a nephrologist. I wanted to consult with one to discuss what I thought was a decreased creatinine clearance as per the MDRD formula applied to the serum creatinine (translation for non-med geeks=I was worried her kidneys were damaged so I took her to a kidney doctor).

We took a taxi to get there because the car was not available. When we got into the taxi, the taxi driver got to talking with us. Before we had turned the first corner, he revealed that his 16 year old daughter had cancer “of the tummy”. My mother told him I was a doctor, so he turned to me and aked, “Doctor saib, tell me something. Are cancer medicine expensive?” I was not really familiar with the cost of “cancer medicine” and asked him if he had gone to Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital, which is a top-of-the-line hospital in Lahore that treats 90% of its patients for free. He said he had gone there, and they did agree to treat his daughter for free, but he needed to buy the medicine himself. It would cost about 70,000 rupees, which was probably 8 months salary for this man.

My mother was very sympathetic toward him and said all the right things. I, being a retard in such things, sat in contemplative silence. He complained bitterly of how cursed he was to be poor and not be able to take care of his family. He said he had no brothers, no father and no sons. No one to help him out. He had 3 daughters, all of whom were unmarried and he himself was a diabetic. After he talked about how terrible life for a poor man was in Pakistan, he turned towards religion and stated that God is the one who gives help to the helpless. After reaffirming this idea in several ways, he started praying out loud, muttering the same prayer in Arabic over and over again. And not just for a minute, but for the rest of the journey – meaning for 10 minutes. It became awkward after a while, because his voice would crack every now and then. His naked vulnerability was disconcerting.

In the back of my mind, I started to wonder if he was faking it. But why? For money? Maybe a generous passenger would give him a few hundred more rupees? Pakistanis are the most philanthropic people on earth, I’m sure many of his passengers would give him extra money if they thought the cause was genuine. He was an elderly person, in his 50s, and he had an honest, open face. It seemed unlikely he was faking his problems.

Maybe this was his way of begging. Maybe he was so desperate for money to treat his daughter, that he exposed his anguish to anyone whom he thought might be able to help. Maybe he did receive thousands of rupees everyday from passengers who were moved by his story, and maybe every rupee of this money went straight into the treatment of his daughter’s illness. Maybe he just had no other way. He never asked for money outright, but perhaps he made a decision to open himself up to receiving charity from anyone who wanted to be charitable. I can easily see, in my mind’s eye, a well-intentioned passenger giving him thousands of rupees to help him out.

But then again, wouldn’t this be the perfect scam? I mean, go around driving a taxi, and for the 20-30 minutes that people sit in your car, hold them hostage to their conscience by a display of brilliant acting? Is it not possible?

Anyway… my mother’s kidney’s turned out to be fine. A little damaged from a few years of undetected diabetes and hypertension, but that is mostly under control. She has really bad arthritis in both knees and she’s used a lot of NSAIDs these last few months (one of the reasons I was worried about her kidneys) to no avail. I’m looking into a good rheumatologist and am thinking of intra-articular steroid injections because nothing else has worked for her. Will have more on that in the days to come.

Words to stir

2006-05-04T23:37:00.000+05:00

From Aedh wishes for the Cloths of Heaven (with minor alterations)
HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue, the dim and the dark cloth
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloth under your feet.
But I being poor, have only dreams;
I have spread these dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly.
For you tread on my dreams.

From a Robert Frost poem
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

A little whining

2006-05-04T09:36:00.000+05:00

These last few days have been messed up with some problem cropping up everyday. Study has suffered for it. Today I’ll be taking my mother to a nephrologist because her serum creatinine suggested a below-normal creatinine clearance. A week ago, I also restricted her salt intake and got her blood pressure to drop down to 140/70, which is not too shabby.

I really hate it when something crops up to throw my whole day off kilter. I’m very fastidious about having nothing more time consuming planned in my day than a jog. Besides a guest who decided to drop in from the blue, who I had to spent a lot of time with, because he came just to see me, my water cooler broke again and it was a pain in the you know what uninstalling the cooler from it’s resting place and hauling it off to the side so I could steal my brother’s cooler and use that instead. I’m not sure why the room cooler broke again, the second time in two weeks. The people who came to fix it said it was because I was filling it with water while it was still on. My mother thinks it’s because I use it too much. My brother’s theory, which he propounds with a suspicious degree of passion, is that I’m a big jackass who breaks things. I hope the first theory is correct. I can easily turn the cooler off while it’s being filled. As for using it too much, I don’t have much choice because other than early mornings, it gets really hot up here in my room. It the cooler goes bust again, it must be due to my excessive use, and since that is not easy to avoid, I might be forced to pack up and haul everything downstairs where it’s much cooler. I’d rather not do that because I really like my room.

On a less whiny note – the last few days, I’ve been breaking up pieces of toast on my window sill in the hope of attracting some birds. They’ve been coming by regularly and it’s a pleasure to watch them feed. There are a lot of trees around our house, and many birds. They fly up to the window and since they can make out my outline from the outside, they constantly peer in suspiciously in between bouts of rapid pecking. It’s nice to watch, but they never stay for long.

A blanket and hair-dryer

2006-05-01T00:35:00.000+05:00

Some people, lazy day-dreaming types like me, can spend a lifetime capturing a childhood that came and went by. Childhood is probably the only time a person ever experiences pure, unadulterated happiness. An adult, even one experiencing the intoxicating high of falling in love, or a spiritual experience involving a nirvanic connection with God cannot compete with the happiness of a childhood that has never known any real sadness or seen this ugly world for what it is.

When I was really young, perhaps 6 years old, I remember being tucked in by my mother. When she left the room, I remember feeling a burst of happiness as I lay there in bed. My parents had bought a hair-dryer that day and I was looking forward to exploring this fascinating creation tomorrow when I woke up. I was also covered up in a new fuzzy blanket which I also thought was incredibly exciting. I remember kicking my legs under the sheets in happiness and thinking to myself “what more do I need?” My life was complete.

I’ve often tried to recapture what it felt like to be alive at that time in my life. I just wanted to feel that way again. I’ve since learnt that this behavior is called regression and is a defense mechanism. Before I knew what it was called, I knew there was something odd about wanting to go back to the days when I was a child. The world cannot be faced the way it is by a child. You need to be an adult, bitten and stung by life before you can stand a chance of getting by with minimal hassle. Childhood, I suppose is a God-given gift, hopefully to be looked back at fondly; a memory best left in the past.

Downswing

2006-04-29T14:01:00.000+05:00

I’m feeling depressed. I didn’t study much yesterday, getting caught up a few things at home. I went to bed feeling miserable, but woke up early and got to work. I had barely gotten moving when a friend of mine from Peshawar came to the house for a visit. I like this guy a lot and it was great to see him again. He wanted to stay for some 3-4 hours, but I had to tell him I have work to do and it would be inconvenient for me. He seemed disappointed and I felt like a jerk because he had come to Islamabad mostly just to visit me. He left after two hours, and then my father called me to his study. He wanted to talk about my older brother’s marriage. My parents made a lot of mistakes raising my older two siblings. It’s too long a story to get into now, suffice to say that the conversation just ended up depressing me. He then also discussed my own marriage and expressed his concern that the mehr my fiancé’s family asked for might be too much for him and asked me what he should do if that happens. We had this conversation before several times and every time it ended up upsetting me. They just remind me what a backward and ignorant culture I was born in.

Lock them up!

2006-04-29T00:05:00.000+05:00

I was coming back from my jog today when I chanced upon my mother walking back with my two nephews from a trip to a nearby park. I walked back with them to the house. The younger nephew, M, is 4 years old now. I missed most of his first two years, bogged down as I was in a particularly difficult period in med school at the time, but saw him a lot of him in the last two years, when my visits back home were somewhat more frequent. Both my nephews are great, and I have a lot of fun with them. Although the older one, S, who is 6 is a lot sweeter, more outgoing, and generally happier a child, it is M whose company I enjoy most. He’s very moody, instantly breaking into a wail when he doesn’t get his way and keeping his sonata going for astonishingly long periods of time, oblivious to the world around him. Rarely, he throws genuine tantrums but mostly he just cries obstinately, although the sound is never annoying.

Today, when I was walking them back home, M would run about 30 feet ahead of us on the sidewalk. I was watching him nervously all the time, thinking of a million and one ways he might get hurt. Someone could screech up in a car and whisk him away. He could bump into someone on the sidewalk. Worst case scenario, he could veer off the sidewalk and start running obliviously towards the road. Past experience has demonstrated that both my nephews are much too smart to do anything so careless, but nevertheless, I kept watching nervously. When it was time to cross the road, I held S’s hand and told him to hold M’s hand so we could cross together. I waited for a break in the traffic and as I saw one, started walking forward with them. M didn’t walk however, but started running and was soon leading me and S. I had started walking before a car had fully passed by us, because I didn’t know if we would get a cleaner break in traffic than that. The car still hadn’t passed us completely and M got about 10 feet of it, scaring the bejeebers out of me. The car passed and we crossed the road safely to get to the separator between the two roads. There was another road to cross, and after the scare I had already gotten, M looked frighteningly chirpy and impulsive, still forging ahead of us. I told him to stop running but he wouldn’t and before he got near the second road, I let out an Almighty yell telling him to stop right now. He froze in his tracks and looked back. I took his hand and made sure the second crossing was much safer than the first. Only when they were finally back home did I relax completely. My mother, who has raised not only four sons, but also many of her younger siblings didn’t bat an eyelid. I envied her conviction that the kids could safely run around in the open outside the house. If I had my way, I’d lock them up inside the house all day and never let them out.

Upswing

2006-04-28T13:20:00.000+05:00

My work is moving along well. My energy levels are quite high these days, something I attribute to a bout of jogging I did a few days ago. I discontinued the jogging because I had a cold and didn’t feel like running with a runny nose and scratch throat. I’ll start again tomorrow.

The sense of urgency and purpose has returned. I have to say, part of my return to form was due to admitting my study problems to Aya, who then proceeded to give me a proper dressing down and gave me some sound advice on how to overcome them. I took her advice and it worked out quite well. One nugget was disconnecting my internet connection in the mornings. I’ve admitted it before; that I’m quite the net junkie, spending hours clicking away like a zombie before realizing how much time I’ve wasted. Getting some 4-5 hours of work done in my morning session gives me a great boost and the momentum sees me through in my evening session.

On Life

2006-04-22T23:45:00.000+05:00

I went jogging today in the afternoon. I was feeling really lousy and depressed before the jog, but when I came back my mood elevated markedly and I felt a lot better. Note to self: be regular at exercise, it’ll stop you from wanting to kill yourself.

Life is full of ups and downs. How many times have I felt that it might be better if I weren’t born at all? How many times have I felt happy to be alive and thankful to God? How many times have I wished I were living in some monastery, far away from this life and all the things that make me unhappy and unsure of myself? I have felt ecstatic, happy, blessed. I’ve felt miserable, suicidal, cursed. Sometimes it’s seems all so futile. We go through all these emotions, these colossal vicissitudes of life – we try hard to make something of ourselves. One problem or crisis resolves itself in our lives and another soon follows. There is really no end, no objective that needs to be fulfilled for us to attain happiness. Perhaps life is all about finding happiness in the tragedy of our lives.

Feeling lousy

2006-04-22T09:49:00.000+05:00

Yesterday was another crappy day. I felt inexplicably tired all day. Maybe it’s because I have stopped jogging and a few liters of blood have now decided to form a lake in my legs. I decided then try to do the whole jogging bit in the morning, as opposed to the late afternoon. So I woke up today at 7am and quickly washed up, put on my joggers and went out by 7:30. Outside, it dawned on me that by 7:30 there is an unpleasantly sharp sun out waiting to pound down on me. Delicate and precious that I am, I decided to turn back home and rustle up some breakfast, another healthy activity.

Soon after, I decided to move the cooler used in my brother’s room to my own room, thereby solving the problem of my broken cooler and allowing me to move back into my room. Of course, this will create a problem for my brother, but I think I have more right to his cooler because I am upstairs more than he is, and more importantly, he’s not here right now to stop me from taking it. I asked a cousin who was visiting us to help me move the coolers. They are situated outside the room, exposed to the elements, supported by metal pedestals and positioned so that the fans blow into the rooms through their windows. It was a dusty, dirty job and I felt really tired afterwards, which might be the allergy, I don’t know.

I think I’ve really got to get my butt off this chair and start jogging again regularly. Morning jogs won’t work because the sun will only come out earlier with every passing day and I don’t see myself jogging at 6 am to beat a hot sun come june/july. I think I’ll have to stick with the late afternoon jogs. I hope that will go someway towards upping my energy levels. Feeling tired all the time is lousy.

Crappy day

2006-04-21T08:22:00.000+05:00

Yesterday was a pretty crappy day. My brand-new room cooler, which was doing a great job until now, decided to go into retirement. My room is on the top floor and I’m separated from the roof only by the ceiling. The roof, unfortunately is smear with deep-black tar and soaks up the heat during the time the sun is out so that around noon, the heat starts radiating down from the ceiling in waves and my room actually becomes warmer than the outside. I’m going to have the roof painted white, because even with a functional room cooler, it makes no sense to have such grossly inefficient thermodynamics to contend with.

I was forced to shift all my stuff and hijack the adjacent room, my father’s study room, in which there’s an air-conditioner. The AC works great, but the room is small and cramped, and I’d be glad to move back to my own room. My parents are out of town, so the room is all mine for now. The problem of the room cooler will be fixed when they return because everybody knows I’m too precious and special to indulge in such menial tasks as returning a broken room cooler.

My allergy returned last evening. I had stopped taking loratadine after a few days because I thought I’d be over the allergy by then. The stuff is not really as non-sedating as they say, although perhaps I’m being over-sensitive on that score because I’m always looking to have a really clear mind when I’m studying. I can easily bypass the problem by taking the stuff at night, which is what I did last night.

Lets hope today is a better day. Full of tons of studying, no allergies, and the cool, soothing hum of the air-conditioner.

Allergy

2006-04-18T14:48:00.000+05:00

The other day I rearranged the furniture in my room. It took a long time because I also had to clean the mess I made while moving the stuff around. For a day afterwards, I had a stuffed nose, irritable eyes and a general ‘I don’t feel so good’ feeling. I realized that I might be having an allergic reaction to all the dust that was thrown up during the process of fixing up my room. I went to the drug store to get a non-sedating anti-histamine (loratadine) and I’ve since felt a lot better.

I realized retrospectively that I had been suffering from a mild allergy for a few weeks now. I sometimes needed an inhaler and a nasal decongestant spray to get to sleep comfortably because my airways felt ‘tighter’ around the time I got to bed. I didn’t think much of this at the time, thinking that I was just being fastidious, but with the loratadine the breathing problem vanished and I woke up today feeling fresher and more alert than I had felt in a while. The allergy had been draining me of strength and even though I resorted to an inhaler and a decongestant at night, it never occurred to me to think I might have an allergy.

It’s strange how doctors loose their objectivity when it comes to their own health.

On another note, while writing this entry my Orange Card for the Step 1 exam arrived along with an orientation CD. I’ll formally schedule the test date soon.

Here comes the sun.

2006-04-15T14:15:00.000+05:00

I called my fiancé last night and we agreed on a new timetable. Step 1 will be on the 15th of August 2006, and Step 2 will be on the 15th of January 2007. My fiancé works about three times harder than I do, and I trust her judgment. I felt much relieved after the plan was formalized and this morning I woke up with a familiar urgency (no, not the urinary kind) getting down to work fairly quickly. I worked steadily throughout the morning, my enthusiasm slowly returning. It’s shaping up to be the end of this dark cloud I’ve been carrying around with me for the last few weeks. I feel vaguely excited at the prospect of the challenge that lies ahead and am starting to believe that everything will, at the end of the day, ‘be arright’.

Arrivals

2006-04-14T00:21:00.000+05:00

My fiancé’s orange card has arrived and mine is one the way. I’m going to call her tomorrow and we’re going to decide on an exact date for our Step 1 as well as discuss exactly what we want to do after our steps. We’ll agree to a new, well-thought-out plan, draw up a good schedule, and stick to it.

On another note. Aya is also on her way back from Pakistan. It’s ironic that when she came here (to attend a wedding) we almost lost touch completely and it’s only when she returns to the US that we’ll be able to communicate via GoogleTalk regularly. I’m glad she’s “coming back”.

Tomorrow I hope things change for the better. I’ll get cracking with the books early, try to wade through as much material as I can in the morning session because by late afternoon I’ve always slowed down considerably.

I think, I think

2006-04-13T11:49:00.000+05:00

I think I’m honest enough with myself to realize that my decision to delay the exam is also a result of my own terrible study habits and my terribly low stamina for studying. 8-9 hours a day would be a very good day for me. Unfortunately, they have not been very common these last few months. There are also days when I just can’t bring myself to study at all. I make up some excuse and tell myself I can’t study much today, or if I don’t have an excuse, I promise myself that ‘from tomorrow’ I’ll be a new man; that I’ll change.

For quite a long time, I’ve externalized my shortcomings. Yes, I thought I was a horrible person for not reaching the goals I had set for myself. Yes, I was evil, and useless, and lazy, and unreliable. However I always thought that if circumstances had been different, then maybe I might be different too. If I had gone to a better college, I would be motivated to work harder. If I had friends for support (when I was in Peshawar), if this happened or if that was possible. However, the motivation to excel should be independent of external circumstances. My life might be crap, but that doesn’t mean I should wait till it gets better to have the will to work my ass off. I kept blaming my lack of motivation on external factors and although I hated myself for never working hard enough, at the back of my mind, I always had an ‘excuse’.

My younger brother, who is an academic giant, spent one year at home. He had finished his A-levels and taken his SATs and wanted to apply to universities in the US. He had the grades required to get a scholarship. Indeed, he had a full scholarship from LUMS which he turned down so that he can redo his SATs and score amazingly in them. For one year, he was stuck at home, with no friends to call on, no social life to speak of, just studying for his SATs, and learning C+. I thought it was a terribly depressing way to live one’s life, but he persisted and scored a 1540 in his SAT I (to his immense disappointment, as he was aiming for a 1600). He didn’t get a full scholarship to any of the Ivy League schools in the US, so the next year he won the LUMS scholarship again and went to Lahore, where he excelled there. This January, he started working in Microsoft.

If I was stuck at home (not a very pleasant prospect, believe me) I would feel depressed and sorry for myself. I’d moan about what a miserable life I had and that depression would definitely impact on my studies. Rather than make the most of the situation, I’d look at all the negatives and let that bog me down.

Recently I’ve come to realize that I’ve got some really bad habits. I also realize I’ve really got to stop externalizing my problems. If I think that a place or a situation is somehow ‘draining’ me of the motivation and discipline I need to study, I’ve got a big problem right there. I’ve also believed in the past that if I was always regular in my prayers, in reading the Quran, etc… that this would give me the ‘center’ and balance I needed to discipline myself in studies. This too is another way if externalizing the problem. I shouldn’t rely on God to change me, or help me change. I have to make my own decisions in life and I can’t pray hard and long, asking God to do things for me. This again, was an externalization of the problem. I was not relying on my inner faculties to overcome my study problems. I was not relying on my own sense of discipline and work ethic, I was relying on prayer to make me all better again on the inside, and that in turn would then help me in my studies.

The source of my study problems lie within me, not in the outside world. I’ve got to change my own way of thinking and looking at my world, and not try to change my world. If I’m not studying right, I’ve got to look no further than myself to get to the root of the problem. Its not just study problems that result from my tendency to externalize my problems- it’s just that study problems are the most obvious manifestation of this weakness of mine. I’ve got massive flaws in my personality. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and I never seem to want to look into myself for the answers. It’s always the environment I’m in thats at fault. If only circumstances were different…

I don’t know if I’ll ever get to solve this dilemma of mine. For too long now, I’ve been plagued by the insecurity that comes with unfulfilled potential. I know I have it in me to reach for the stars. No matter how badly I’ve done in the past and how much I’ve disappointed myself, I never doubted my God-given ability. If I don’t do well in life and don’t achieve my goals, it will be because I didn’t fight to overcome these bad habits of mine, always blaming my environment for my grades rather than looking for the cause in myself.

The first step to redrawing my inner circuitry is recognizing the problem. I hope this post is one step forward in what will undoubtedly be a long journey. I also hope it isn’t followed by two steps backwards later on.

I'm back

2006-04-12T14:17:00.000+05:00

I think I said once on the blog that if I’m not writing for a length of time, it usually means things are not going well and indeed this has been the case during this long absence.

Around the middle of March, I slowly came to the realization that I’m not going to make it for the 2007 match. To make 2007, I’d have to finish both Step 1 and Step 2 CK by September at the latest. I talked this over with Aya and Moiz and a few other friends. They all initially encouraged me to give it a try, so for about another week I tried working some 12 hours a day, which is what I needed to do to make 2007. However, I failed miserably and, discouraged, decided to forgo the 2007 match. I talked it over with my fiancé, who also said she didn’t feel ready enough to make it for 2007. Since then I’ve mostly been amotivated, feeling like crap and wondering what I’ll do in the year 2007, after my steps.

I’m tied into the Steps along with my fiancé. We are both planning to match together someplace and so we can’t really afford not to do well in the Steps. I felt that if we both got low 90s/high 80s, it might be trickier to match together in a good hospital than if we both got high 90s. This has always been a consideration and it was what forced the decision to let go of 2007. If I were going it alone, and a double match was not mandatory, I would have gone ahead and been happy with whatever score I got, using it to get into whatever program I could. However couple matching is no joke and the couple trying to match in the same place must be in a really good position when they apply, otherwise if they don’t match in the same hospital, or the same city, one will have to give up a year and gamble their career on getting a match in the same city the next year.

It has been difficult giving up on 2007 and abandoning a plan that had been in my mind for the better part of a year. After these steps, I will get married, and not having a good job is also somewhat of a concern. I hope we can both get paid house jobs somewhere in Islamabad, otherwise being married with no money at all does not seem like a great prospect to me. It’s definitely something that needs to be sorted out, but for now I’ve got to put it on the backburner, redraw my study plans and find it in me to pursue them with some motivation. The prospect of making the 2007 match was a huge motivating factor for me because I wanted to be independent and this was a great way to go about it. I don’t have that motivation anymore and it’s been tough to muster the same sort of interest in the books that I used to have. I’ve lost a considerable amount of steam and my study has gone down the toilet as a result.

As always, when I’m not doing something productive with myself I feel like trash. My self-esteem has not been at enviable levels these last couple of weeks. However here I am, putting in a blog entry, so something must be up.

Nothing is ‘up’ really, it’s just that I’m finally learning to live with my decision, and am feeling hopeful for the future. Knowing that you’re not going to be starting your residency anytime soon has been difficult to swallow and as weak and pathetic as I am, it’s taken some time for me to adjust to the new reality of the situation. I’ve decided on a date in August now, and am aiming for a 99, and am hopeful that I will get it, as will my fiancé. After we score brilliantly on our steps, we’ll start a house job together in Islamabad. I’ll work very hard and hone my clinical and diagnostic skills during the house job and do my best to publish something to boost my CV. I’ll go to the US around May next year to give my Step 2 CS exam so that I’ll be fully certified when ERAS opens in September and so I can give Step 3 as soon as I go back for the interviews in October. It’s a plan, and I’m learning to feel more and more good about it.

Rai

2006-03-15T19:28:00.000+05:00

Unfortunately, Rai deleted his blog. I can’t give you the link to his blog, because he’s deleted it. He has been one of my favorite writers. A visit to his blog would guarantee a much-needed laugh. I’m sorry he’s deleted it, but then, knowing Rai, he’ll be back in a few days. At least, I hope he is.

Let's get organized!

2006-03-04T15:36:00.000+05:00

I’ve started a google group:
http://groups.google.com/group/AGABBIP
All blogspot.com bloggers who wish to organize themselves and protest in a single voice please come here. Any others who wish to join are also welcome. You don’t have to be a blogspot.com ban victim to be driven to action by the ban. Anyone who condemns this half-baked attempt at righting a wrong with another wrong is welcome to join.

We’ve got 10 members so far, and I’m hoping our numbers will grow exponentially from here onwards. I’ve detailed a plan of action at the group, so please visit it for details, and sign up. We’ll get the ball rolling very soon, Inshallah.

1 million down, infinity to go

2006-03-04T04:59:00.000+05:00

On a brighter note, wikipedia hit the milestone of hosting 1 million articles in English!

Banned!!!

2006-03-04T04:39:00.000+05:00

The Pakistan authorities, in their efforts to keep this fair land pure and clean have decided to ban blogspot.com. This was done in response to a Supreme Court ruling ordering all sites that contained the blasphemous cartoons to be blocked. Since there were some blogs out there that reproduced the cartoons, the Powers That Be decided to block access to the whole of blogspot.com. As we all know, when you block a site, the content immediately evaporates, ceasing to exist, thereby instantaneously solving the dilemma of any offense it may have caused and making the world a better place to live again. Darn it, if only Bush had similar foresight and just banned Sheikh Osama Bin Hulk Hogan…

On a less sarcastic note - I’ve set up a google group and am putting the word out to fellow Pakistani bloggers to join so we can organize ourselves to launch a disciplined, intelligent protest in the print media to have this ridiculous ban revoked. If they want to ban the cartoons, let them do the hard work needed to pin point the individual sites. Why not just shut down the whole damn internet for God’s sake! I for one am not going to rely on their good graces to thoughtfully revoke the ban all by themselves. I plan to make a lot of noise.

Let’s see how they can shut us up!

Lockdown

2006-03-03T12:48:00.000+05:00

Well, Uncle Bush will be visiting our fair city tomorrow. I shudder to think what kind of security cover this city will be held hostage to while he’s here. In 2000, when Clinton came, he arrived in an unmarked small white airplane. Air Force One was actually a decoy. Then when he drove through Islamabad, all local traffic literally evaporated. Even pigeons that flew overhead were arrested and charged for suspicious activities. There were dozens of limousines in his motorcade and it was not known which one he was in. He only stayed for 5 hours, and when he made a speech on TV, he looked scared to death as if the microphone would explode or something. This was before 9/11, before the Afghanistan war, before the Iraq war, before Abu Ghraib. Before Uncle Bush. Hell, we even liked Clinton a little bit. Ridiculous Clinton and the stained blue dress.

I can’t imagine what security in the city will be like tomorrow. I better not fart in the wrong direction, even though I’m not going to step out of my house as long as Uncle Bush is here.

Food for thought

2006-02-28T16:36:00.000+05:00

This is an email a friend wrote to me today. He has lived in the US since 1998:

Abu Sa'id al-Khudri said, "I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, say, 'Whoever of you sees something wrong should change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot, then with his heart, and that is the weakest form of
belief.'" [Muslim]

Some of you know this already: A few weeks ago, the student newspaper on my campus published 6 of the original 12 Danish cartoons. People got mad. Others got mad at those who got mad. We had a meeting at the Islamic Center one night to discuss the whole problem and possible steps to take. I was going to say it, but someone said it first: Muslims only seem to care when something bad happens to them (as a group), and not to others.

I wish that were true, as sad as it is. But the fact is, sometimes they care only if it happens to THEM, as people, and are uninterested if it happens to Muslims elsewhere.

The protests around the world were didn't help matters at all.

Earlier this week, I was looking at the newspaper to see what events were going on that day on campus. Two lectures sprung out: One was discussing the whole cartoon issue. Another, at the same time and building, was a talk on Darfur by a Sudani who had once been a slave at the hands of Muslims there (himself being a Christian).

Darfur, unfortunately, is a case which Muslims seem to quietly sanction. Someone sent an email to the mailing list of the Islamic Center emphasizing the importance of going to the talk regarding the cartoons. After all, people made a big fuss about it - it would seem silly not to bother to show up.

I didn't reply to the list, but just to the person, and said that no matter how important the cartoon issue was, the Darfur talk eclipses the cartoon issue by a long shot. I know he agrees with me, but he didn't want to suggest it to the people in general. Too touchy an issue.

Darfur is a sad living example, among many in the past, that is the hypocrisy of the Muslims today. That which states that something is bad if the US (or this vague "West" ) does it, but everything is kosher if anyone else (including Muslims) are the offenders. We get riled up over Guantanamo Bay, but not over Darfur, or East Timor, or the regular abuses that occur in prisons in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Rwanda? Where's that?

At a local level, here in the US, I've heard and can believe that there was almost total apathy in the 60's and the 70's on the part of the Muslims to the injustices against the Black population here. Why else do people think I say that the Nation of Islam was a great organization for them, despite the hatred that stemmed from it?

There's a question that is often posed to Muslims here. It's one that gives some people sleepless nights. It's this, "Why do you guys march and protest when the US does something wrong, but not when your own governments/people do it? Why don't you condemn their sins?"

When this whole cartoon issue erupted, a bunch of people were stating that as an Islamic Center, we need to send out a press release condemning the violence elsewhere (this was before it was published here). Ultimately, they did, but it should have been stated more strongly. Not a "it is unfortunate that this happened...", but a "We condemn their actions, and hope justice is brought upon them..." After all, that's what they'd say if the Americans were the guilty ones.

This isn't a small problem. The Muslims who were brought up here see the whole hypocrisy of their parents and the Muslim world. They repeatedly ask their parents and the people in the Islamic Center why we're not doing anything about it. When nothing happens, and people continue to protest the actions of Israel or the US, the message to them is clear: it's all politics, and has nothing to do with Muslims. And then the newer generation distances themselves from the rest (majority) of the Muslims here. I simply can't blame them.

In the wake of the local paper publishing the cartoons, we got a representative of CAIR from Chicago to come down and give a talk. For those who don't know, CAIR is the biggest civil liberties group for Muslims in the US. Before, they were smaller and spent most of the time just reporting both positive and negative stories about Muslims in the US (hate attacks against Muslims, etc). Now they're much stronger and have a fleet of lawyers who sue when things go wrong. They're also very good at putting public pressure on groups that discriminate against Muslims. Outstanding organization.

The representative who came down here was asked during Q & A by an American, "Why not condemn the actions of Muslims around the world?". The representative said, "Muslims do condemn it. Just Google for it. My job at CAIR often involves staying up late at night writing press releases for condemning the wrong actions of Muslims in other countries. But you have to understand: I don't have to do this! There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and it's silly to ask me to apologize for someone's actions half way around the world. Just as it's silly to ask Phillipino Catholics to apologize for the sectarian violence in Ireland."

Very true, if one were to ignore the Hadith on the top of this email. But I won't hold any grudges against someone who wishes to remain silent on all these issues. I will pick on those who selectively condemn people based on their own political agenda. If you're going to criticize the US, then criticize all who do wrong. Don't defend the atrocities back home because they're Muslims.

But that brings out another problem. Those Muslims who come to the US tend to get alienated from those back home. "He's gone to the US and has forgotten us." Making large protests and condemning them will perhaps sever relations (on a group level) with those at home. People simply don't want that. So here's the bind that the Muslims here are in. They want very strongly to remain a distinct group from the non-Muslims here. They get alienated from those back home if they hold views like the ones I'm positing above. And then they're left alone, and sometimes miserable.

Over here you find lots of individuals like this. They more or less "leave" the Muslim community because of too many arguments with the Muslims here on these issues. They still pray and fast, etc. But they don't get close to non-Muslims either. They just live alone. Go to work. Come home. Very little serious contact with anyone. Everyone dislikes them, for doing what is perhaps the right thing to do.

I looked up that ex-slave on Google, and saw some speeches he had given in other campuses. He has an axe to grind with the world for ignoring the whole Darfur situation. He has a bigger axe to grind with Muslims, particularly for the slavery situation. He wasn't exactly diplomatic about it. After reading it, I was depressed and just walking around the building where I work. I bumped into another Muslim, whom I had convinced to visit the Darfur talk. I just told him that I was too ashamed to show my face there.

I didn't go (fortunately, he did). I didn't go to the cartoon talk either. It just seems almost an insult to go there when there's a much more important issue in the same building.

If I stay in this country, I wonder if I'll have any friends here 10 years from now.

Early bird

2006-02-28T07:12:00.000+05:00

There’s something about the early morning that makes one hopeful. The day is stretched out before me - fresh, new and untouched, free to turn into what I make of it. I’ve had problems waking up early these last few days because of I felt uncommonly tired all the time. Whatever it was that was bugging me is gone now and I feel eager to get the ball rolling. I hope I’ll be able to reverse the bad spell of the last few days.

Note to self: always try to start the day early. It’s the best thing for studies.

Gift of nature

2006-02-26T16:41:00.000+05:00

I went out to get a bulb for my lamp. It had stopped raining a couple of hours ago and the clouds had cleared remarkably fast after what was an unseasonably heavy rainfall. The clouds were cotton-white, the sky a deep blue and the sun was shining brightly and gloriously down on this fair city. The combination of a bright sun, a cool breeze, the Islamabad greenery and the ‘clean’ look that comes from heavy rainfall was very uplifting. It seemed as if you could see the leaves on the trees of the Margalla hills. My mood was down somewhat because of (what else!) my study woes, but as I walked to the market near my house, my spirits lifted and I forgot about my problems for a while. I wonder if there is a place in the world where the weather is always this glorious. I’d think seriously of moving there.

Deconstruction

2006-02-26T10:21:00.000+05:00

A lot of the times, when my studies seem to overwhelm me and my goals seem unattainable, I fall into the habit of daydreaming of being a rich, famous writer. I’ve already written about this defense mechanism before and I’ve explained how I realized it was a stupid, and counterproductive defense mechanism through writing about it on this blog. I would fall too deep into this fantasy when I’d be having a bad day and it would become difficult to crawl out of that mindset and throw myself into my studies again wholeheartedly.

Recently, I’ve realized that the very idea of being a famous writer is hinged, in a fundamental way on my possible my mental fatigue from all this endless studying and worrying. I’ve been doing this for so long without a break, my fantasies are all about how I’d never have to work as hard at something I don’t like (i.e. studying) again. Of course writing is not easy, but with a good-selling book, I can easily afford to take a year or so off, according to my fantasy. It’s good to deconstruct one’s self and analyze where these feelings are coming from. I suppose this isn’t something a good vacation can’t fix. Unfortunately any real break from studying or planning my career will be impossible for at least another 12 months. If things don’t go according to plan, I might not have a vacation for a looooooong time, in which case I’ll probably have some really serious mind games to play with myself.

Drizzling

2006-02-25T10:13:00.000+05:00

Study-wise, I’m doing better than before, my average slowly and steadily creeping up. Yesterday though, I felt lethargic and unmotivated. My energy levels dipped and I didn’t do as much work as I would have liked. Its strange how a single bad day can throw my whole time-table out of whack and send my spirits plunging. I went to bed depressed, having lots of dark thought as I tend to do when I feel this way. I hope today will be a much better day. I don’t feel like studying at all, but I’m just going to forget myself and plunge myself into my book and try to hit double-digit study hours.

On another note, the weather in Islamabad is great these days. There’s a light drizzle making everything wet. The trees are clean and green. It’s nice to be in Islamabad.

The mullah and the donkey

2006-02-23T20:57:00.000+05:00

A donkey strayed into the mosque of a mullah who was known for his highly charged and vitriolic views on most matters religious. Upon seeing the donkey, he quickly grabbed a heavy staff and began beating the donkey out of the mosque. As the donkey ran out injured and frightened with the mullah hot on its heels, the Wise Man of the village chanced to be walking past. He stopped the mullah and asked him what why he was treating the donkey so harshly. The mullah replied that it had entered the mosque. The Wise Man of the village shook his head and admonished the mullah.

“That’s just an animal. Its stupid and has no intelligence, that’s why it entered the mosque. After all,” the Wise Man of the village said, “you don’t see me coming to your mosque do you?”

Spread the word.

2006-02-20T22:34:00.000+05:00

I condemned, as I’m sure most Muslims did, the publication of the offensive cartoons of the Prophet. I believe freedom of speech is a great thing. It’s an essential tool any open society must have in order to retain the capacity for self-criticism and thus continual self-appraisal and correction. However, using this much-cherished freedom to insult and offend runs counter to the spirit of a democracy, where many people with differing opinions, beliefs and values must learn to coexist in harmony. This is an abuse of a freedom that is meant for much nobler end. If a publication released well-argued criticisms of Islam or the Prophet (no matter how harsh it appeared to us or how much we disagreed with it) that would be a different matter altogether - such expression of ideas must be protected vigorously. However the cartoons were just plain insulting and derogatory. If instead of the Prophet, these cartoons addressed issues of race or Judaism and were made in the same spirit, they would be roundly condemned as being racist and anti-Semitic (and rightly so). As such, these cartoons express nothing but ignorant bigotry, a shameful action defended ignobly enough, with cries of ‘freedom of expression!’

Having said that however, I condemn even more strongly the nature of the demonstrations erupting all over the Muslim world. I believe the majority of Muslims are dismayed as I am to see bored, testosterone-pumped young men running around with stones and guns, firing in the air and damaging the property of fellow Muslims. Where does Islam sanction such actions? Do these people think God will not make them answer for the damage they’ve caused or the lives they’ve stolen? Do they believe they have some holy sanction from God to act like this?

And how loud are our good maulvis shouting to condemn the lives lost due to the protests they have organized? Do they care more about an insult made by some obscure foreign country than innocent people dying of mindless violence? Why haven’t they breathed fire on TV strongly condemning the violence and warning those who continue to act this way that they are breeching basic Islamic notions of peace and decency? Instead they make speeches fanning the flames, ensuring that more violence occurs and more lives are lost. I recall a hadeeth by the Prophet where he said that amongst the first people to enter Hell will be religious scholars, because they misused their position and betrayed the trust of their station.

Where is the moderate ‘silent majority’ in condemning this violence? Isn’t it time we spoke out and condemned segments of our own population for its actions? Isn’t it time that we take back our religion that has been hijacked from us? Who is the greater enemy of Islam here? The ignorant cartoonist? Or the violent ones amongst us who act as they do with impunity and with no fear of reproach from fellow Muslims? I think its time the silent majority stopped being so silent. I urge all the Muslim readers of this blog to post the following statement on their own blogs.

I strongly condemn the publication of the bigoted and offensive cartoons against the Prophet. However, I condemn in much stronger terms the violent reaction some Muslims have had to the publication. This reaction runs totally counter to my Islamic beliefs. They must be stopped immediately with an exhaustive investigation launched to arrest and punish the perpetrators. As a Muslim, mindless violence in the name of Islam is far more insulting to me than for an ill-informed, publicity-seeking newspaper to publish cartoons of my Prophet (pbuh).

Spread the word.

More shit hitting the fan

2006-02-16T20:12:00.000+05:00

The Abu Ghraib scandal promises to get much worse. Following the release of new pictures released by an Australian television network not 24 hours ago, salon.com has announced that it has the entire Abu Ghraib file- all the pictures in existence along with many videos depicting abuse. Very significantly, although I don’t know if this will become a big issue, there is also a picture of a file showing that some of the interrogations were carried out by the CIA.

I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. If any good comes from this, it would be a change in the consciousness of the western mind that the universe revolves around them and their own particular morality. Maybe this, along all that has occurred these last few years will convince the American public to take stock of what their country has turned into and start cleaning their own house to prevent something like this from happening again. It’s time for ordinary Americans to step up and take responsibility for this. This is being done in their name. It is their names that are being dragged through the mud.

The full extent of the Abu Ghraib abuse will soon be very evident. If ordinary Americans let this scandal slide as well, then they will really have failed everything they loudly claim to stand for. There will be nothing left to the American experience to admire anymore. Why try to emulate them in any aspect of their lives when this is what it will get you? If American society as a whole does not recoil in disgust and be angered into action by the atrocities committed by their democratically elected government, what does that tell the rest of the world about such a society?

The new century

2006-02-16T00:59:00.000+05:00

A new video showing Iraqi children being brutally beaten by British troops.

New pictures of the Abu Ghuraib showing that the things that went on there were much worse than previously imagined.

Hamas voted into power vowing not to compromise on their stated aim of destroying Israel.

Iraq descending into a deeper quagmire of violence.

Violent protests over the Muhammad cartoon with more western publications republishing them defiantly in the name of free speech.

Iran officially resuming its nuclear program.

Is it just me, or did the world seem a lot simpler last century?

in absentia

2006-02-15T12:57:00.000+05:00

It’s been too long since my last post. Initially the reason for my absence was because I was doing very well in my work. I was doing an average of more than 8 hours a day and even went up to double digits once. I thought the ball had finally started rolling and that it would be downhill from here. My stamina was at its peak and my tolerance to this boring life I lead was at an all time high. I was very confident about the future. I was so engrossed with the books; I didn’t have much time to write here.

A few days ago, I started feeling uncommonly tired at odd times in the day. Usually when I get up in the morning and start my day, I’m feeling very fresh and alert all the way till the afternoon at which point I get some sleep. Recently though, I had a lot of trouble getting out of bed and felt impossibly tired at 10 am. My concentration lagged and my study suffered. I didn’t know what was wrong and initially just put the fatigue down to a quirk, because I was following a time-tested timetable- I knew it worked and I knew my diet was fine too. The fatigue got worse the next day at which point I also started feeling a little dizzy and my heart rate also went down considerably. This was followed soon by diarrhea. Then I learnt that my bhabi, my father and my nephew also had diarrhea and felt poorly. There was something we all ate that made us sick.

I didn’t blog anything here because I was feeling so miserable, partly because of my illness and partly because of how it was affecting my studies. I hate studying, and if I must do it, I have to be at my physical and mental peak. I relate it to the kind of condition a professional athlete must be in to perform optimally. I was feeling very tired, very slow and it was difficult for me to get any work done. My study over the last four days has been very poor, breaking my momentum to a screeching halt. Needless to say, I feel terrible about it. I’m at a stage when the performance curve must be going up, not coming down. I had marked 10 hours as the absolute minimum I needed to attain from here on out. I’m about 3 and a half months away till the exam and have an absolute mountain of work left. I need to gather my strength and move forwards and try to overcome all the negative energy that’s been accumulating in me over the last few days. This is definitely not something I needed right now, but I’m going to try my best to get back on track. It takes such a long time to build momentum, stamina and a good degree of self-confidence. I hope I can just snap back to my mindset of a week ago quickly. I can’t afford to feel the way I do now.

I don’t feel better yet, but it’s been 4 days of poor work already and the depression and guilt is building up such that I have to try to make the most of today or I’ll really get messed up in the head.

The USMLE Step 1 is not for the faint hearted. That’s for sure.

My fiance is back on board

2006-02-06T00:55:00.000+05:00

My fiance’s mother is back from her Hajj visit and it’s a big relief. The care of the house fell to my fiancé in her mother’s absence and this took a lot out of her, causing her studies to suffer. Now that she’s been relieved with her mother’s arrival, she’s firmly back to her incredible study hours and I have no doubt that she will soon not only catch up with me, but also blaze on past and leave me fretting for going too slowly myself.

I am really happy this problem has been settled. She’s getting total support from her parents with her Steps and if everything goes according to plan, we’ll take these exams at the same time, get married around September, and go for our interviews and the CS exam soon afterwards. It would be a dream come true for us to match as a couple and work together.

The Muhammad Cartoons

2006-02-03T16:49:00.000+05:00

I am somewhat bemused at the entire Muhammad (pbuh) cartoon incident. I really don’t know what to make of it. I hadn’t formed a solid opinion to the incident although I watched as the controversy grew from a few news articles at the bottom of Google News to front-page headlines.

I am a Muslim myself (in case you have come across this blog through a blog search engine), and I cherish my Muslim identity and think of it as an essential part of who I am. That being said, my reaction to the whole thing has been one of cynicism. I’m always going to be a lot harsher with us Muslims for our weaknesses than the non-Muslims who might make such weaknesses evident.

There is no Muslim economic superpower. No Muslim country holds much real clout in world affairs. Saudi Arabia had the potential to be a leader of the Muslim world if it weren’t governed by a small bunch of corrupt leaders who don’t have a voice of their own in the face of American influence. So when a newspaper of a small European country whose most famous exports are butter and chocolates publishes these inflammatory and outright racist cartoons, they don’t really care what effect it may have on Muslim sensibilities. Do you think if there were a similarly insulting set of cartoons about Jews, that the butter-exporters would have let the matter linger for so long? No, and the reason is not that they like the Jews more than Muslims, but simply because the Jews are far more influential in world affairs. They have enormous clout. Why? Not because they have magical powers, but because as a collectivity, they are the most highly educated and accomplished of people in the world. Even though their numbers are tiny, these people are so ingenious and hard-working that entire governments will be moved into action if someone offends them.

Do you think if somehow the Chinese were pissed off at the butter-exporters, that there would not have been an immediate apology followed by some prompt head-rolling? That’s not because the Chinese have magical powers either, but because they have clout when it comes to world affairs. The Americans can never push the Chinese around, and it’s only because the Chinese have elevated themselves to a level where they cannot be pushed around.

Yes, it hurts to have our prophet insulted, but rather than bring ourselves down to a level where we have to fight with the government of these butter-exporters for an unqualified, no-nonsense apology, without any ‘freedom-of-the-press’ bullshit, we should focus internally and examine our weaknesses. Why is it that there is no credible Islamic voice in world affairs? Why is it that when a 1st world country decides to walk all over us, we are powerless to resist? There must be something wrong with us! How much longer are we going blame our problems on the west before we look to put our own house in order? I guarantee you that if we had economic and military influence today, it wouldn’t take two shakes of a cow’s teat to get an apology from these butter-exporters and a law passed soon after that banning incendiary and racist publication. They don’t care what we think and will never care unless we are as educated, as rich, and as powerful as they are. Then they’ll listen and then they’ll care what we think. Then we’ll be able to tell them what they can do with their damn butter.

Paperwork 2

2006-02-01T17:22:00.000+05:00

I managed to hunt down my batchfellow. He doesn’t have a mobile and hardly ever uses the net, so this was not easy to do. To my relief, he said he actually did have his ward cards with him, and would give me the dates by tomorrow. I’ll apply online as soon as I get that data. I know it’s possible to apply without this information, and just give my final year clinical clerkship information, as some friends of mine have done, but I don’t want to bend any rules here. Experience has thought me to play it straight, because you never know when some slight discrepancy will come back and bite you in the ass.

The study hours graph is going up. Contrary to popular perception amongst the readers of this blog, I am not studying 8-10 hours regularly a day. The average is less than that although I’m trying hard to get it up and meeting with some measure of success. Nevertheless, I am plagued by my slow progress and need to notch up the hours to regular two digit figures if I’m ever going to be able to finish the material in time.

Paperwork

2006-01-31T16:19:00.000+05:00

My Step 1 application will be fired off pretty soon. However I’ve got a big problem with my clinical rotations list which they require for the application. I don’t have the timetable of my 3rd and 4th year clinical rotations on me and I’m wondering how the hell to get them. There is this one friend on mine in Peshawar who can help because he’s a super geek who would most likely keep such records till he 56 years old and also because he was my batch fellow for those years and therefore had the same rotations schedule. I’m trying to get a hold of the guy.

Of course I can’t rely on the college administration to help me because they are a bunch of worthless good-for-nothings. I have to get this matter sorted out soon. It’s distracting me somewhat.

Sangfroid

2006-01-30T23:24:00.000+05:00

This is a great word. Wikipedia explains it as:

“Sangfroid is an English term borrowed from French; sang meaning "blood" and froid meaning "cold". Though the direct translation is "cold-blooded", sangfroid is not a synonym. While "cold-blooded" refers to ruthlessness and disregard for humanity or feeling, sangfroid merely describes an icy calm, a steadiness of nerves in the face of unsteadying conditions.”

Romper Stomper

2006-01-30T21:50:00.000+05:00

The stress of my step exam is taking its toll. I’ve been feeling very irritable these days. Things that otherwise wouldn’t have bothered me let loose a seething, smoldering volcano of a temper. I don’t think anyone in the house has noticed because I’m quite able to keep it under wraps. Of course it helps to have my own room where I am not disturbed, but still, I’ve had to work a lot harder to keep the lid down on my temper these last two days. When I went out for jog today, I pushed myself a little harder, trying to sweat out the anger, and it worked well for a few hours before my slow study pace got me worked up again.

There are no pithy words of wisdom to accompany this post. No profound insights into how human nature changes in the face of adversity. I just want to pound on a punching bag till I wear myself out, preferably with a colorful assortment of swearwords that I’d grunt out between clenched teeth with every punch to the bag.

Putt-putting along

2006-01-29T00:56:00.000+05:00

Today I felt extremely irritable during the evening. It’s a good thing I have my own room, quite isolated from the rest of the house. Interaction with humans might have ended in unfortunate ways. The main reason behind my low-grade smoldering temper was my lack of speed in ploughing through the material. I’m having insomnia with the occasional bad dream and my mind hasn’t been getting it’s 8 hours of rest these last couple of days. Inevitably, my brain protested to this and went down into 1st gear and I found myself reading the same paragraphs four times before finally realizing I had already read it before and didn’t understand it then either. It was like driving uphill on CNG in a second-hand Suzuki.

I’m making it a point to eat an early light dinner, get into bed early, drink my milk and honey to bring on the sleep and try to try and relax and not get tense about things. When my brain is working, it works well so I hope with some proper rest, tomorrow I’ll be back on diesel.

Sleeping amidst the ruin

2006-01-28T01:31:00.000+05:00

There was a news story in The News the other day about the capture of three murderers who had killed a surgeon back in November of last year. The surgeon had come from America after having worked there for 31 years and brought his expertise and experience back to his country to construct a state-of-the-art hospital in Peshawar. He was a very rich man and happened to befriend three thugs who eventually took advantage of his kind nature and killed him in his house after forcing him to write a whole bunch of blank cheques. What was disturbing was the murderer’s description of how they killed this fine man, who would have been an immense resource to his country had he lived longer. They were invited by the surgeon into his house (they had been friends with him for months), talked to him in his house for 2-3 hours before suddenly turning on him. They overpowered him, tied him up, gagged him and then discussed what to do next. One thing led to another and they forced him to sign blank cheques and then tried to strangle him. Despite their best efforts, he didn’t die of the strangulation, so they whipped a knife out and slaughtered him like a goat. What was disturbing in the interviews of the killers was how they described the doctor pleading for his life in the hours prior to his murder. He didn’t die quickly in an unexpected ambush. His fate hung in the balance for hours as the three men probably searched the house. He was tied up for about 7 hours before they finally killed him. What must he have been going through?

The good news is that the Islamabad police caught these guys after a lengthy, professional investigation. All three are in jail, and hopefully the police are periodically beating the shit out of them for what they did. They snuffed out a man who came back a successful surgeon to serve his own country. The doctor was a dollar millionaire who could have easily spent the rest of his life in ease and comfort in his retirement age, but chose instead to start off the arduous task of building a hospital in his hometown.

My father was so moved by this story (I hadn’t read it myself until my father gave me the paper) that he told me he couldn’t sleep that night. He said it just shows how base human beings can get and how no one can really be trusted unless they are known very well to you. He decried the tragedy of it all. To lose someone in such a tragic way, and a surgeon at that! My father got really emotional when he was talking about it.

I read the story in a far more composed manner. I pursed my lips and tut tutted as I read along. Ever since the Abu Ghuraib incident, I’ve developed a resistance to being shocked by these kinds of stories. Its not that I care less or anything. Its more that I keep telling myself that no one will ever escape justice. You may get away with harming your fellow man in this world, but there will be a Day of Judgment where God will preside over affairs and everyone will get what’s owed to them. This world is temporary and we’ll all destined to move on to another, eternal plane. I’m comforted by the thought that the life we ultimately live is infinite; that we never really die, but just move on to another plane, and that one Day, God will balance the scales. No matter how atrocious the crime, no matter how harrowing the details, it is but a blip in our existence, and even so there will still be a day God will set things right. That helps me sleep at night.

Spiritual Conundrums

2006-01-27T09:20:00.000+05:00

I often feel frustrated over the absence of ‘Islamic’ role models that I could look up to and seek guidance from. This world is confusing enough as it is without trying to formulate a working belief system that does not clash with the present day global mindset. We muslims have a long way to go before we can adapt entirely, as Muslims to the modern world. As it is now, a Muslim CEO of a Fortune 500 company (is there one, btw?) would run the company in a completely secular style without his Islamic beliefs entering any part of his daily working life. The company would be professionally run, because doing so otherwise would cost his job. He would have to be honest, because otherwise he might get thrown in jail for coporate fraud. It would donate to charitable causes, because of the tax benefits of doing so. There is no Islam to that. All these actions, while admirable are in place simply because of a well-evolved financial system, not because of any moral scruples on the part of the Muslim CEO. If that be the case, then its not surprising that the CEO would easily be able to detach himself from his Islam when making business decisions. His Islam would come into play in his 5 daily prayers, his personal charity, etc… etc… It would be a wholly private thing. Is that the way it should be? I don’t know, I don’t really have anyone to look up to for guidance.

There was this one medicine professor in Peshawar that I befriended. He is retired and I visited him several times in his home. The first visit was business, I needed his help with something and someone referred me to him. Subsequent visits were mostly social visits where we discussed religion for hours. He’s quite a legend in Peshawar (as a doctor) and I found him to be an extraordinary man. A devoted, pious Muslim with a large library of Islamic books, but a very compassionate, openhearted man as well. These days, the piety of a Muslim seems to be considered directly proportional to his beard length, his ‘strictness’ as to his interpretation of Islam, and his hatred for the West. It also helps if he’s got a maulana prefixed to his name - that seems to add to his piety, apparently. There is no shortage of such ‘role-models’ but this ‘brand’ of Islam doesn’t resonate with me at all. This kind of Islam seems to be full of conflict, hardships and hating rather that about inner peace, reconciliation and dialogue. This brand of Islam seems to suffocate one into a rigid, immutable way of life. I’m not buying it. I can’t believe this is what Allah intended for us.

It’s difficult to live in this secular world without a role model to walk you through it teaching you how to incorporate Islamic values into a largely secular world. How do you go about being a good Muslim without seeming like an anachronistic outcast in today’s world? Those who blindly say ‘Islam is the answer’ paint a very complicated world in black and white. It’s not that easy, I’m afraid. The millions of Muslims out there who are loosing themselves to a ‘western’ way of life aren’t stubborn or stupid that they can’t see the ‘answer’ right in front of them, they are confused. Some can never reconcile their religion in the first place, seeing it as outmoded and backward in today’s world. Some try their best to adopt what is generally considered an Islamic way of life and feel they just can’t do it.

I don’t have any answers here. I’m just as confused as the next guy. It’s one thing to have clear concepts on what your religion is all about, and I believe I’d got that settled quite well. It’s another issue altogether trying to translate those ideas into practice. As any doctor will tell you, it’s one thing to study medicine from books and another thing to practice it proficiently. We’ve got residency training programs, professors, medical colleges and universities to help us with medicine, but where do we learn to practice Islam?

c'est la vie

2006-01-26T14:51:00.000+05:00

Days are measured in terms of how many hours of studying I did. They are then classified as good days or bad days. My mood swings up or down with the hours. I feel like I’m riding an emotional roller coaster, to borrow a cliché. Life sucks right now. I’m not feeling too happy about things, but I still head my head above water and didn’t allow myself to get depressed.

But this morning’s events really got me down. My grandmother went into overt heart failure and my mother went over to Bannu be with her. Then my bhabi just cried in front of me when I went down to eat lunch just now. She was complaining that my mother treats her very badly. She looked very subdued and depressed. My bhabi never cried in front of me before. I didn’t know how to handle it, and just stood there like an idiot asking her to tell me what was wrong while she was shaking her head and fighting back the tears.

And I still have to study for another 6-7 hours.

What a life.

Intelligence test

2006-01-25T10:34:00.000+05:00

I wasted more than an hour on this so I might as well brag about it here to have something to show for my lost time. I got 20 correct before I decided to stop wasting time and start studying.

And please, spare me your snide remarks about how inaccurate and biased intelligence tests are. Get 20 right yourself before coming here to lecture me.

D's Dilemma VI

2006-01-23T02:01:00.000+05:00

Something drastic needed to be done to save the situation. D’s father was not backing down. Now, in response to the phone call D’s father made to W, W’s father ordered her to drop the matter too. Both sets of parents were now pulling their children away from each other. Both sets of parents insisted on it and now, drastic measures needed to be taken.

D had another week left in Islamabad. He was on compassionate leave from work. His employers insisted that he go back home for as long as he wanted to, to attend to the fallout of the October 8th earthquake. He had already spent two weeks here before the repercussions of his father’s September phone call to D blew up in his face. W called D up and was frantic. Her father insisted on extracting a promise from her that she would drop this matter. He objected to D only on the grounds that his family was obviously never going to accept her, and seen in this light, he had a perfectly legitimate point. After all, he said, I didn’t raise you to give you away to a family that will make your life miserable the moment you enter it.

For next few days, as his flight drew nearer, D moped and wondered what to do. I was all out of ideas at this stage and did my best to comfort him and keep his mind off things. A few days before he was due to leave, W asked to meet him so they can discuss their future. D borrowed an apartment from a friend of his so he and W can have the discussion in private, without interruptions. It was still Ramadhan, and they agreed to meet after iftari. D told me about the meeting and I was eagerly awaiting his phone call at night.

D called me a few hours after iftari. It was late and he asked me to come over (to the apartment he had borrowed). I noticed his low-key tone and drove over there right away. W had gone and D was alone in the apartment.

W had called the meeting for one purpose only, and that was to say good-bye and to get closure. She told him that she could never go against his father’s wishes and that she had to submit to his demands that she drop this matter entirely and sincerely. She said tearfully that it didn’t seem that things would ever work out between them and that if D’s parents ever did come around (and that too seemed unlikely) it was improbable that her father would ever forgive the phone call D’s father made to her.

D listened to this in tearful silence. He agreed with her that at the moment, things didn’t seem like they would ever work out. However, he affirmed that he would never give up on her and he would continue to work on his parents. ‘Eventually,’ he said, ‘they have to give in, I’m not letting this go.’ D explained that he was going to emotionally blackmail them into accepting her. He wasn’t going to fight with them, but just let them know that he was completely miserable because of them. That should bring them around eventually. W countered this by telling him that as far as she was concerned, it was all over. She came here to say goodbye and not to plot strategies for the future. She told him not to give her false hope and that he should also start to accept the inevitable. D said that he wasn’t ready to give up hope, but that he understood her position and respected it.

W said goodbye and left.

I sat with D was he narrated what happened. He had been crying before he called me up and looked completely defeated. He looked tired and broken.

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“What I said. I’m going to go back to London, I’m not going to call my parents. I’m not going to do anything to assure them that I’m happy with the way things turned out. I’m not going to call them up and start acting normally as if everything is just fine when its not. It won’t be a pretense, man. I’m fucking upset. I can’t deal with this and also act happy at the same time, especially towards my parents who caused this mess in the first place. Let them do what they want to do with that. I’m going to be myself. They made my life miserable because of their stubbornness. I’m not going to hide that from them. Let them live with it, like I’m living with it. I hope they eventually come around when they see how miserable I am. If they don’t, then they don’t.”

I spent a few more hours with D, trying my best to cheer him up. I returned home pretty late and later that night he called me again and we talked some more. His parents did notice a change come over him. He wasn’t hostile or rude towards them, but his relationship with W was now ended, from W herself no less. He was profoundly unhappy and his parents noticed. They didn’t say anything and a few days later he left for London.

It was D’s sister who eventually told D’s parents that W had broken off the matter once and for all, and that the two were no longer speaking to each other. D’s parents had finally gotten their own way. However, D was still holding out hope that his misery would somehow penetrate his parent’s prejudices and they would finally come around to see things his way. True to his word, he stopped calling home every week like he used to. The only information D’s parents had of him came from his sister who was working in Scotland and called D up regularly. D’s sister argued for him wholeheartedly, but eventually she tired of having regular fights with her parents over D’s fate. She got heartily sick of the entire fiasco herself and tried to avoid talking to her parents as much as possible because they would always bring the matter up whenever they talked.

D had given up trying to reason with his parents. He had written thousands of words in emails and spent endless hours on the phone patiently arguing his case. He finally just left the matter up to his parent’s sense of compassion. He was not actively doing anything further to change their minds, but he certainly wasn’t going to let them off the hook for what they had done. He was miserable and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. He was working 12-14 hours days at his job and was glad for the distraction.

His parents did not relent or show the slightest sign of softening on their position. His father would regularly write emails telling him that he was an unfaithful son and that he had very clearly been wrong about the whole W affair. D didn’t bother replying to these emails. He was bitter that even after it was all over and it was confirmed that W had broken things off, far from trying to reconcile matters between them and clear the air, his father was still trying to crush him into subservience. His father still wanted him to ask for forgiveness for all the wrong that D had committed.

D’s parents would call him on some minor pretext or the other every few weeks. The conversations would always be stilted and terse. No mention would ever be made about the real source of the problem and when the sterile banter was quickly exhausted, the phone call would end.

As the situation developed, a gradual change came over D’s attitude. He was no longer seeking to emotionally blackmail his parents with his misery. As the weeks rolled on without any sign of progress, and as the farewell meeting in the apartment receded further into the past, D began to lose all vestiges of hope. Even if his parent suddenly decided that they would accept W, it would never work now. Too much anger had gone into the process. The relationship between W and his parents would be poisoned and doomed to fail. There could be no way things would ever work out after all the hate and anger of the last seven months.

Today, on the 22nd of January, D called me up again and we talked for about an hour. I hadn’t talked to him for more than a month and I was hoping he would have some good news to report. He didn’t. He had given up totally. He had no hope left and wasn’t holding out any. He didn’t know how things with ever be the same with his parents now, but he was working 12-14 hours a day these days and that kept him from thinking too much about anything. He said all his friends from the Islamaabad clique in which he had first met W were gone. They left their jobs or finished their degrees. He was the only one there now.

“So how do you spend your time?” I asked him today.

“I don’t have much time to spend man,” he replied. “I wake up early, get to work by 9, come back at 6 or 7, clean up, iron my clothes for tomorrow, watch some TV then go to sleep to start all over again the next day. There’s nothing to look forward to.” He paused. “And I get really lonely.”

Aya's score!

2006-01-22T10:22:00.000+05:00

Aya got her score back today. She scored an awesome 94. I’m really happy for her and feel boosted myself. It’s made my day.

Movie, anyone?

2006-01-20T13:16:00.000+05:00

Electricity was gone since morning. I didn’t get any work done since I’m so hooked on the lectures, which are on my PC. I can’t really read directly from the book anymore. Moron that I am, I need someone to explain it to me nicely. I wasted 3 hours of the morning, and soon I’ll be taking my mother to a cardiologist to get this blood pressure business of hers sorted out by a specialist once and for all.

I hope I get some good work done today. Yesterday was an okay day, even though I didn’t feel at all like studying, my stamina for sticking to the crappy books was probably increased because I saw a movie the night before (Batman Begins) and I really enjoyed it. Good movies make you forget your worries for a while and engulf you in another world. This can be quite refreshing if you’re sick and tired of your life at the time.

It’s a good pointer really: every few days, go watch a good movie and clear your head.

I’ll go get another movie in a few days.

All I have are dreams

2006-01-19T12:08:00.000+05:00

I do not want to study. I have absolutely no desire to study. I have no enthusiasm left for these books. I want to run far away from here and go to a place where no one can find me. A place where they speak English so I’m not lost or hapless in this foreign place. Perhaps New Zealand, or Switzerland, or Scotland. Also, I’ve got to have a million bucks with me too, so I can spend my time leisurely. I’d go for long walks, read books, watch movies, sleep and not worry about anything.

But alas, I am destined to be impecunious in the foreseeable future, so I must stay where I am and face my battles.

Back to the books, whether I like it or not. A job that can’t be left undone.

Gerberization

2006-01-18T10:18:00.000+05:00

Yesterday I just felt terrible. I was stuck in pharmacology in the mysterious world of eicosanoids and felt really bogged down. I was continually distracted by my Step 1 application problem until the very end when it became clear I wouldn’t have to go to Peshawar myself. It was just a really bad day. Study was poor, mood was poor, and everything sucked.

Khair, I decided to just let it be, have a good night’s sleep and not let it worry me. Its not the ability to study 8-10 hours a day in a short time span that will make a difference, it’s the ability to raise myself up from lows like these and not let them get to me.

I just wish I didn’t have anymore bad study days. I just afford them anymore.

Defalterization

2006-01-17T16:55:00.000+05:00

Wow, it’s raining pretty heavily over here. The weather is great, Islamabad is getting a proper washing down.

Study is faltering a little I’m afraid. Yesterday wasn’t good at all, just a few hours of work, mostly because I was kick starting the ECFMG registration process for my Step 1 exam. It was quite distracting because I have determine whether or not I would need to go to Peshawar for this purpose. I’m still sorting a couple of things out. I hope I don’t have to go, I’ll waste at least 2 days there. Today is somewhat better. I didn’t sleep that much last night so I was feeling sleepy in the morning. I just had to sleep in the afternoon today and now I’m up again and feeling deliciously refreshed. I think I’ll get a lot of work done today Inshallah.

Nothing much to report. Just me being myself.

In brief...

2006-01-15T23:44:00.000+05:00

Studied a lot. Good day. Really tired. Will blog tomorrow.

A great innings.

2006-01-15T00:56:00.000+05:00

Studied for 9 hours today, so it was a great day. The morning started off slowly, with my brain in 1st gear, but as I persisted, it woke up in a couple of hours and my speed increased a lot. As I went on, the hours went by quite quickly and it didn’t seem like such a big deal as I reached the 9-hour mark. I guess I’m improving my stamina. I also started jogging today, so that’s more good news.

I did a lot of work today and I’m pleased with myself.

I’m dead tired though. Am going straight to bed. Let’s hope I clock in 10 hours tomorrow. I’ve learnt the hard way not to let myself get complacent after one good day of hard work. It’s not the one good day that matters, but having these good days persistently.

On the front foot.

2006-01-14T00:35:00.000+05:00

A far better day today. I seemed to have overcome whatever it was that was bogging me down before. It wasn’t easy to clock in the hours at all, but I persisted and around the afternoon today, the inertia seemed to have lifted and my brain finally started cooperating without me needing to force it too hard to concentrate. I slept a full 8 hours the previous night and combining that with a light lunch allowed me to get through the afternoon without any afternoon drowsiness. I didn’t go jogging today, but definitely will go tomorrow.

Still, while it seems my graph is on the up, I have yet to hit a steady 10 hours a day run rate. I’ll have to hit a few boundaries tomorrow to get things moving. The number of overs left only decrease with each day and I’ve got to better my strike rate.

Here’s one series I can’t afford to lose.

Blech!

2006-01-13T00:00:00.000+05:00

Today totally sucked. It was a pretty bad day. Over the last two weeks, I’ve gradually been mounting pressure on myself to perform and for the most part I’ve been able to get the job done. At the end of the day I would move forward and did so without much trouble. Today however, I felt sleepy and tired all day. I was a little feverish and tachycardic. I’m not sure why that is, but it really drained me quick. I went to sleep in the afternoon and even had a ‘nightmare’ (I suppose I should call them ‘daymares’). I’ve been moody and my fiancé is pissed off at me as well.

Just one of those days when you feel you’re not up to it and you begin to wonder if you ever will be.

Aya suggested that I start jogging in the mornings. I really do need to exercise. I spend so much time in this chair of mine, I’m afraid I’ll develop DVT one of these days. I’ll try to take it up, cuz I’m totally out of shape!

Let’s hope tomorrow is a better day.

feeling weakish

2006-01-12T13:09:00.000+05:00

I don’t know why, but I’ve been feeling really weak since yesterday evening. I didn’t think much of it yesterday, and I thought I’d just sleep it off, but I’ve been feeling very tired this morning as well.

It might be due to all the meat I’ve been eating. Protein needs a lot of water to digest and I might have dehydrated myself. I’ve filled up a pitch of water now and will drink a lot of water hoping to flush the fatigue out of my body. I shouldn’t be feeling like this. It’s strange. Mebbe my body is fighting an infection and I’m feeling some subclinical symptoms. Some vitamins might help too.

D's Dilemma V

2006-01-12T00:20:00.000+05:00

D lost a lot of family in the 8th October earthquake. He lost 4 first cousins and about 30 second cousins, aunts and uncles. He flew in because he wanted to do what he could to help his family there. He didn’t lose anyone close to him, so he was quite calm and collected.

I met him the day he arrived. I went over to his house, glad to see him again, even if it was under such circumstances. He was going over to Muzafferabad the next day. His parents were making arrangements to take lots of food and blankets with them to take to their relatives. I didn’t seem much of him for a few days after that. He said they were probably going to bring back dozens of relatives who lost their homes back to Islamabad so they had a place to stay while they got over their shock. He had really sad stories to tell me – of mothers dying while running to protect their kids, or people being reported alive in a certain hospital only to be found dead underneath the rubble later on. The earthquake has been an enormous tragedy.

In spite of it all, when things settled down, he met up with W and they spent some time together, also happy to be with each other despite the circumstances. I broached the subject of W with D during one of our endless drives throughout Islamabad. He said that it was impossible to bring the topic up now. Not only did his dad just get operated on, but considering the recent earthquake and it’s fallout, it would be extremely insensitive and inappropriate to bring a topic like this up at the time. He was staying in Islamabad for about another two weeks, but he wasn’t going to bring the topic up. He would have to wait another month, at the very least.

So D and I would hang out. He would come to my house almost every day and we’d go out somewhere. Sometimes we’d pick W up as well and we’d all go out for a drive and a bite to eat.

About a week before he was due to leave, D called me up and told me he was coming over in 5 minutes. He picked me up and I immediately sensed something was wrong. He looked as if he had been crying. Not a good sign. He drove quickly to the markez nearby and got out of the car to get cigarettes. D had quit smoking about 10 times since he first got hooked. I kept pestering him to quit and he did, not because I told him to, but because W did. He’d quit and then start up again later, usually when something went wrong. He was not smoking when he came to Pakistan, so when he got out of the car to get cigarettes, I knew something was up. I got out of the car too and waited quietly for him to walk back with his cigarettes to tell me what had happened.

“It’s over man. This time it’s really over.” He said, unwrapping his cigarettes.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Her father found out about the phone call.”

“What phone call?”

“The one my Dad gave her. The one where he told her to forget all about me and that it wasn’t ever going to happen.”

“Shit!” I said simply. “How did he react? Who told him?”

“I think W’s mother told him about it. Anyway, he got really pissed off and wanted to know my dad’s number so he could call him up and give him a piece of his mind. He was really angry that someone called his daughter up and talked to her like that.”

He took another puff from his cigarette.

“So you think all that smoking is going to solve your problems?” I asked him sardonically. He laughed sheepishly despite himself, as he always did when I brought this topic up.

“Anyway, W’s mother managed to calm him down somewhat and he said that he would sleep on it. The next morning he sat downs with W and tells her to drop the whole thing. He ordered her to drop it, and he’s not the type who will tolerate his orders being disobeyed. He told her that the boy’s family will never accept you if they’re saying such things at this stage, and that he would never ever allow his daughter to enter a home where she might be miserable or treated like a reject.”

I took this in and was quiet for a moment.

“I can’t blame him,” I said at last.

“Yeah, neither can I.” He replied. “I’d do the same thing.”

“So what now?” I asked.

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”

More later.

Off with its head!

2006-01-10T15:23:00.000+05:00

Great! Now we have a goat ourselves bleating its brains out. I don’t think I’ll be getting much sleep today - or the next 24 hours come to think of it!

A doctor and writer

2006-01-10T02:18:00.000+05:00

Didn’t study much today, just a few hours, because I had to take my mother to the hospital for a check up. That took a long time because we had to wait for the good doctor to show up. I knew it would waste most of the day, and was mentally prepared for it because I figured if I help my mother out, as I am supposed to, Allah would put barkat in my work tomorrow. My mother is extremely happy with the amount of fussing I do over her these days. The doctor told her I was doing an excellent job and that made her even happier (and proud).

The doctor was very pleased by my careful attention, and the report I had written for him summarizing all the lab results and my efforts over the last month. He told me to strike out the thiazide and add metoprolol. My mother will start the altered drug regimen tomorrow. I hope the blood pressure goes down to ideal levels. I’m looking for 120-130 systolic.

I was really really drowsy in the evening and was trying to work when I got an email from the editor of the publication I occasionally write in. Among other things, he wrote:

“I really enjoyed your "XXXX" piece - a candid and humorous account. I'd have been quite proud of it if I’d written it. We'd love to have more of your insights coming our way soon.”

Being one who is highly prone to manipulation through flattery, I decided work was going too slowly anyway so I’d complete an article I had on ice for the last 6 months. I had written about 600 words 6 months ago and didn’t know how to continue so I just kept it in limbo and forgot about it. I dug it out, got down to figuring out an ending, polished it off quite nicely and sent it. I’m pretty sure it will get accepted. The editor is a big fan of mine now!

A bad day for studies, but I feel good.

Just another day.

2006-01-09T01:57:00.000+05:00

A good day today. I did a lot of work, but I could have done more. I clocked in 8 hours, and could have easily gone to 11 if I hadn’t taken so many breaks. The Kaplan videos and Goljan audio lectures make the material a lot more pliable and progress is correspondingly faster. I get a lot more work done in a shorter time because of these materials. I really need to up the hours to a regular 10 hours/day minimum.

I’ll be taking my mother to the hospital tomorrow for a consult with a cardiologist. I finally got her blood pressure down to a constant 155/70, from 180/70. It’s a significant decrease with a zero side effect profile for the drugs she’s using and ample room to increase the dosage and also add another one to get the blood pressure down even more. Tomorrow’s meeting with the cardiologist should help in figuring a plan of action from here onwards. I’ll write a report in the morning before we go to summarize all the lab tests we’ve done and the progress of the anti-hypertensives I’ve been giving her.

So study is going well. The 8 eight hours today came with little difficulty, but again, there is room to do more. I have less than 5 months to go for the Step 1, and I don’t want to have any regrets later on. The last two days before this one were not very good (why do you think I’ve been posting stories and other useless stuff?!). I only studied 3-4 hours because I got fed up of the books. To remedy things, I went and got a movie (Gothika) to get out of the whole USMLE frame of mind. I don’t watch TV or read books, and even my ‘breaks’ consist of roaming USMLE forums, so I felt a movie would do me good. Sure enough, last night I watched the movie and today felt refreshed enough to get back to some kind of form. A bit of distraction can go a long way.

The afternoon naps and the 5-6 hour of nocturnal sleep is doing wonders for my concentration. I’m really glad I stumbled across this sleep cycle. My internal clock is so fine tuned now that I wake up myself these days just a few minutes before eight, just before the alarm wakes me up. The afternoon sleepiness comes with almost clinical precision at exactly 3pm and I quickly get to sleep. When I wake up after the afternoon nap, it’s like starting the day all over again. I think the milk and honey I have before I go to sleep at night makes a difference too. I put in a lot of honey, and I’m sure I’m feeling some of its beneficial effects. In any case, the value of a regimented discipline routine for studies is very obvious to me now. Good thing I figured it out this soon.

Not the most exciting of matters to be blogging about, but that’s about as exciting as it gets around here these days. At least I gave you a story with acid attacks, sex and suicides? That should make up for it somewhat.

Baaaaaa!

2006-01-08T14:39:00.000+05:00

I hope I can get some sleep (afternoon kip). There’s a bunch of goats bleating their heads off outside. Well, a few days later, their heads will literally be off, so things will quiet down. I’m like my afternoon nap a lot now. Can’t imagine how I survived before without. The only problem is the noise. Not just goats, but other sounds of the outside world filter in with astonishing fidelity through the windows of my room.

Just dropping a line. Study going well, alhumdulillah.

Burnt.

2006-01-07T13:51:00.000+05:00

Here’s a short story I wrote about a year ago.

Lubna hid the black jar in her purse as she entered the apartment complex. She stared down in front of her as she strode silently towards flat 3C. This last month had been the worst one of her life. She was torn inside and the endless crying brought her no comfort. Her broken heart finally closed up again, hardened with hate, fury and a bitter love. She came today to get revenge. She didn’t care about the consequences of what she was going to do. She might be killed for doing this, but death ceased to scare her. It might even be welcomed.

She reached block C, the third of 5 buildings in the complex of flats. He lived in the 3rd apartment, on the second floor. She knew he would be in at this time. She knew all about his habits. She once thought she knew everything there was to know about him. That all changed a month ago when the troubled relationship was ended with a phone call.

‘Look,’ he said, after some hot words were exchanged, ‘I can’t believe you ever thought I was going to marry you. Go look at yourself in the mirror. You’re a dog. I was just fooling around. I might have said some mushy stuff now and then, but we were just playing around. Don’t deny it, you knew that too. Don’t pretend this was about anything other than sex.’

You’re a dog. She could never get the words out of her head.

He was the first man she ever met that told her she was beautiful. She wouldn’t believe him at first, thinking it was only the love talking. But he said it so much, in time she came to believe it. She began to look at herself in the mirror, and the nose suddenly didn’t seem too large or that crooked. The lips didn’t seem too thin. And her hair was nice too, if she brushed it just right.

He was a hafiz-e-quran, and he was a doctor. That was proof enough that he was noble, and although the relationship became overtly physical, she was married to him in her heart and she didn’t believe she was doing anything wrong. Sure her parents might have killed her if they ever found out, but she surrendered herself totally to her love. There could be no one else. No one could make her feel beautiful or special. They would get married when he finished his house job and started his specialization. He promised over and over again.

She knocked on the door. She knew he’d be asleep. He always slept in the afternoon. He unzipped the purse and took the black jar out. It contained about half a liter of liquid inside. She gingerly undid the lid, and held the jar ready. She heard him shuffling inside to answer the door.

The problems started when she started pressuring him for a formal proposal from his parents. It had to be formalized, she explained. Her mother kept bringing her marriage up, and soon something had to be done about it.

His mood would change drastically whenever she brought the matter up. He would suddenly become silent and sullen and complain that she was putting too much pressure on him, an unemployed doctor, just starting his professional career.

In the beginning, she felt ashamed of herself for making him angry. He obviously loved her a lot. Why should she make life harder for him? She stopped insisting after the first few times, but when a strong rishta came to her home, and her parents fought with her for rejecting it, the matter became urgent.

He started becoming distant; calling her less, and ending phone conversations quickly with some excuse or another. The situation at home became tense, and she found it hard to sleep well at night. She became irritable and more insistent that he formalize the relationship soon. They started having fights for the first time.

You’re a dog, he had finally said.

She heard the dead bolt of the door being unlocked from the inside, took the lid off the jar, and cocked her arm.

He opened the door and looked at her sleepily. He had barely registered her when she thrust the jar at him, unloading its contents full onto his face.

Some of the liquid splashed onto the wooden door, hitting it with a hiss and producing a thin white fume of smoke.

He screamed as the concentrated acid ate his face. It was the primal shriek of a wounded beast. He staggered back and hit the floor, scratching at his face as blood poured out only to be darkened and congealed by the acid boring in from the outside.

The shrieks stunned the neighbors into immobility. It took a few seconds for the nearest one to regain his presence of mind and run outside to see what happened. He was an army officer who had seen his share of injuries, but what he saw writhing on the floor of his neighbor’s apartment made his blood run cold. His training kicked in, and he immediately recognized what the source of the injury was. He dragged his neighbor, whose screams were interrupted by gurgled strangling sounds as he tried to draw breath to the bathroom where he turned the shower on and forced his agonized neighbor under it.

The army officer’s wife had come out in time to see her husband drag a body into the bathroom. She looked at the woman standing outside the door. She had fallen to her knees and stared numbly inside the apartment. Her pain was gone – replaced by a cold horror at what she had done.

Dr. Afzal Latif’s face was permanently scarred by 3rd degree burns. He was left blind in one eye. His lips, left cheek and part of his tongue were pierced by the acid. When his family found out about his attack, they immediately rushed to the hospital and stood by his side as he lay unconscious, drugged by strong painkillers. They lodged an FIR against a one Lubna Sadiq, a girl they had never heard of before.

Lubna Sadiq was finally traced about a week later by the police. Her body had partially decomposed and the smell alerted her neighbors who broke into her apartment and shrieked in horror at the figure that hung suspended from the ceiling fan. No suicide note was found, and the police could not establish a reason for her acid attack. They suspected an affair gone wrong but Afzal’s family members, and more importantly, his roommate, strongly denied any affair. The police were puzzled. Afzal’s reputation was impeccable. Family, close friends, fellow doctors and even patients in the ward who had known him only for a few days all had nothing but praise for him. He was a decent, competent, respectable human being.

His roommate was beside himself with grief. He had been Afzal’s classfellow and room mate for six years. He was on duty at the time of the attack. They had grown together and were inseparable. Afzal’s parents were touched by the amount of attention he was giving to their son. He was always there in the hospital room, red-eyed and exhausted. He would get the medicine and administer them. He did everything he could to keep Afzal comfortable and was prone to fits of uncontrollable sobbing many times a day. Afzal had always been there for him. Afzal was the one who took care of him when he had meningitis. He was the one who helped him through studies and exams. They were going to specialize together. They might start their own clinic one day. Their families would be like one family.

He looked down at his friend’s face and the unbearable sadness welled up in his heart again. Afzal was drugged and unconscious. There was no one else in the room.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I should have listened to you. I should have told her I had a roommate.”

.

2006-01-07T02:19:00.000+05:00

What? You expect me to post everyday?