Brooklyn Bedouin

Conversations with a Pakistani Christian...

He started the conversation talking about a Muslim “Uncle” who was rather secular and then went back home to Pakistan and came back talking about Allah this and Allah that. – seemingly hyper religious. 

My Pakistani friend expressed concern about something in particular. He told me that because he is Pakistani and Christian (and in Brooklyn his community is small, and the majority of Pakistanis are Muslim that he grew up around Muslims) saying As-salaamu-alaikum (Peace and Blessings be Upon You) was like saying whassup, how ya doing – hello; normal and easy to do.

So when this particular uncle came back with his new found so-called religiosity and with some of his other newly religious uncles (older brothers) they informed him that they would no longer accept hearing the traditional blessing in the form of a greeting from him simply because he was not Muslim. WWPMD?

I mention this conversation because it led to another series of conversations that illuminated something quite troubling in regards to racism, halal, and the importance of knowing where your food comes from as well as illuminating that so-called religiosity from the outside says nothing about a persons inner state. 

In the Christian tradition there is a principle of the charity and sharing of the message or sharing the good news, not everyone has to do that per say, but it is considered part of your good works. Some people make it their mission or their calling and others simply are a good example and live their lives with such good character that they call people to their faith by their example.

Islam has a similar ethic. Dawah, which means to call, to appeal, or missionary activity, or a good wish, among other meanings. For some that means specifically and actively calling people to Islam but to others the application of this principle is the same as it is with Christians  - it is how your example resonates in such a way that calls people to your particular path. You example of good character can speak much louder than your words. 

If you are telling people that they cannot give you greetings of peace and blessings because they are not Muslim then you are not setting a good example. In fact you are setting a very very BAD example. 

That same cab driver was so hurt by this “uncle” (who was the father of his friend) because their families had broken bread many times and their kids play with one another as well. The uncle closed a door and destroyed a bridge between two families based on some absurd interpretation of his own bigotry.

Speaking of bigotry. The same Christian brother, lets call him Vic, lives in an area where he has the option of going to halal delis that are near one another. He goes to one all the time where the brother that works there has as his workers some Mexican gentlemen who do the behind the counter cutting of the meat. One day he decides to go to the other deli where the brother behind the counter tells him that he sees him going into the other deli all the time and has been wondering when he would stop byt HIS halal deli and proceeds to tell Vic that his deli is MORE halal because he cuts the meat himself… that because Vic’s usual place has Mexicans cutting the meat it is LESS halal. WHAT??!! WWPMD?

And speaking of Halal… Vic also related a story of back in the day when the meatpacking district was still the meatpacking district and when some of his Pakistani friends would be told to go out and get halal meat. Instead of going to known halal meat dealer they would simply go to the meatpacking district and come back with meat killed any old way and tell people it was halal.

Leave it to a Pakistani who can “pass” as Muslim to call out the Muslims. A moral of the story is watch where you get your meat. If you are trying to keep Halal then you better know where the meat was killed and who killed it etc.. Do not take it for granted that Halal and zabiha mean those things but don't always operate with suspicion when you eat at a Muslim persons' home. If they tell you the meat is halal that is between them and Allah. 

This leads me to the future: Green Deen Food is Clean Food for the Future.

In a little land called Green Zabiha where you know that your little chickens roam freely and eat off the land, that they are vegetarian fed and happy chickens. In Green Deen, InshAllah, I will tell you more about the alternative to racists and questionable zabiha… the everyday people making Green Zabiha happen now!

WWPMD? What Would Prophet Muhammad Do? - peace and blessings be upon him. 

bb

Signs for those who Reflect

Literally everyday of Ramadan has its own miracles. Today was not different. Even still, I am stunned by them and anticipate them. It is like knowing that The Creator is going to do something special for you (besides properly apportion you for the environment, order the stars and planets into fixed orbits, make an invisible energy field called gravity keeping everything in its place on earth, make plants and animals our friends, protectors, and sustenance, and rain water on us so that our bodies stay moist – oh and perfectly position my heart in relationship to all my other organs so that I can live – plus making my soul and literally everything else: time, love, feelings, etc…) Still, everyday I feel like Allah gives me a special opportunity to reflect in a way that is like a mini revelation. In Ramadan I suppose I am keenly tuned in.

It is the month that the Angel Gabriel would relate the signs of Allah in the form of Arabic verse, and ordered divinely to our Nabi (saws), so that now we have a collection called The Quran. SO being open-hearted an able to discern the previously indiscernible is quite likely.

Regarding my heart… a dear friend sent me this:

There’s this pace in all of us that wants to love, a soft childlike place – the place that can connect easily to spirit, to God, to joy. This place is the most exposed and hurting during times of heartbreak. Much of the time, we aren’t as connected to this part of us. But in heartbreak we can connect easily, we are constantly mindful of this soft part. We have a unique opportunity to open up to this part – to fall in it – to let groundlessness be grounding. We can see with new eyes when we are seeing from this soft place – we can see ourselves differently and move in different ways. If we allow it, we can learn, grow, and love, pray, eat, sleep, and work more intensely & with more presence and awareness than ever before. We have new insight, we can become more awake. If we don’t fight it. This is ultimately a chance to surrender.

So with these new eyes, with this open heart, with a situation where I needed to really take a look at myself and find out what I can do to get myself right within I have been spending more time around the elders in my Muslim community. As a result I came across a recurring friendship with Brother Abdul Qadir, of Masjid At-Taqwa, the special assistant to Imam Siraj. He and I have been talking, building, me listening and learning from my elder. This is a miracle in itself – time with an elder black anchor in my community. Especially since both of my grandfathers passed long before I could come to know them.

Well, it turns out that this brother also has a role in my life that I did not even know. It has to do with him and my mother. Here’s how she tells it:

“I was a freshman in college, he would sell Muhammad speaks, on Franklin Ave, I  started buying the paper and would go to this progressive afro centric shop to get black stuff …  that sorta stuff was still relatively new in 1970. We would talk about the Nation and eventually invited me to the mosque on 116^th street first, its’s where I first took shahada, prior to taking that I was in college taking a religious course, I took theology and liberation, that and other courses, one of instructors was a Muslim from Egypt, gave me a Quran he got in 1952, the year I was born – I was planning to convert, serious thinking, I had gone to the mosque on 72^nd and riverside [now the 96^th street mosque] and went a few times, and never felt quite at home and that is why I joined the nation of Islam. He would come by the house and sell the paper, and soon I became active with the paper, then I became one of the secretaries, over the years we would always recognize one anther. [as the community grew more insular and less accepting of difference] He was one of the people that was never harsh, never judged me”

Brother Qadir did not take me under his wing because he knew who my mother was. But when he did find out he shocked me and mentioned the street where my mother grew up. After that we became buddies. Last night after iftar at Taqwa (Imam Siraj returned yesterday too and I handed him a date that he broke his fast with!) we rushed to his house and ate some strip steak, green beans, and brown rice his wife left for us. A wonderful circle of faith and fellowship in black and Muslim Brooklyn – that is a Ramadan Miracle, and its one for the ages.

bb

 

The Heart and why you should Quit Smoking.

I see this arab brother every year. He is frail but sturdy, scraggly but tidy. He drives a cab – a favorite profession amongst immigrant Muslims in NYC. He always smiles and in his voice you can hear the effects of too many years of inhaling smoke, the smoke from Marlboro cigarettes, on his throat – but it is till nice to hear his voice.

We first met when I too enjoyed that pastime from time to time. knowing full well that it was a nasty and dirty habit and that it was no good for me. Still, our propensity is to think of goods and bads, particularly when it comes to matters of the physical body, purely in terms of scientific ramifications. We never think of the unseen.

I recall him standing outside the Masjid one day during Ramadan, we had just broken our fast, and it was still decent weather so people were not huddled inside. The after sunset prayer was offered, and the meal was eaten, but other people – like him – had other more important matters to attend to. He needed a cigarette.

I looked at him when I exited and laughed a little and asked if he was going to give them up for the month of Mercy – Ramadan. He smiled, he knew he should have but he did not. Now, I see him often. We sometimes arrive at the Masjid for the mid-afternoon prayer around the same time, just after the larger group has prayed, and so we pray together. Almost everytime I see him I ask : “you quit yet?” and he laughs and says, “no, but I should” and then we laugh and go about our way.

Yesterday, after being reminded of the importance of the dua just before you break your fast, i was sitting in the same masajid where we often run into one another, I made that dua and wiped tears from my eyes - praying of matters of the heart nonetheless, and I looked up. The man who calls us to prayer was walking towards the Mihrab, the part of the mosque that is pointing to Mecca, and then my buddy passed by me. I asked the same question:

“you quit this Ramadan?”

“no, no,” he laughs, “they’re ready for just after prayer” he said, pulling a pack of Marlboro cigarettes out of his pocket.

Then I told him what made me never want to even think about smoking again. What made me truly ashamed for my soul and for the souls of others that smoke and for the souls of all the people in the world that are connected to those that smoke. It all started when I read a translation of the writings of a scholar named Ibn Al-Qayyem, well- really it started when a Shaikh from Turim said in a class:

“tell me one part of the Quran that talks about your brain, you can’t,” he continued, “Allah mentions the heart repeatedly but not the brain”

The heart.

We live in such a cerebral place that we can rationalize near anything. We can come up with a reason to kill someone. But our heart would have us shaking and convulsing at doing such a terrible act. Similarly to our addictions, our compulsions, our inner truths, our illusions. We can rationalize and intellectualize all of those things to be truths, or that we have our addictions under control, that we even have our emotions under control, or that our illusions are real, and our hidden truths no longer exist – but our heart, our heart forces the truth out – always.

It is this pulsating glob of flesh that sends blood to every part of our body – literally having an effect on the entire magnificent system. In Ibn Al-Qayyem’s writings I learned a simple scientific truth of the heart – that it is a warm organ and it is surrounded by a cooling organ – the lungs.

The translator added: “the lungs have been made as a ventilator for it (the heart) and they constantly blow on it (to keep it cool). This is because the heart is the hottest of the body parts. Rather it is a spring of heat.”

I understand now that when we smoke we are inhaling the corrosive and the burning and it is enveloping our heart - already hot and now we singe it from an outside source. We stain and put a mark on our hearts. We already deal with heartache and sorrow, but the heart can overcome these things, it is built to hold and to forget and to stay beating. 

Now, I also understand that in the realm of the unseen:

The translator added: “The heart provides energy to the senses, a non-physical energy that does not require any particular paths and nerves to be it carrier”

What then are we constricting when we inhale pollutants? What about the pollutants in the air or in the food that we eat? I focus on the act of smoking because it is a deliberate and conscious act that is preventable. It is the cause of millions of deaths every year and yet we knowingly choose to engage in it. For a moment think again about all of the things you inhale on a daily basis. If you could control all of it in a positive way – would you not?

The rational mind can kill another. The rational mind can kill itself. The heart is unable to cosign on this.

The Prophet (peace and Blessings be Upon him), reported by Al-Bukhari and Muslim, said:

“Verily, there is in the body a piece of flesh, that if it is correct, the rest of the body will be correct due to it, and if it is corrupt, then the rest of the body will be corrupt due to it. Verily, it is the heart.”

I shared this with the brother. He shook his head. I patted my hand on my heart and asked him if he would start thinking about his heart when he took a drag of his cigarette. “ I need to” I replied.

If you smoke. So do you. The Creator Knows Best.

 

bb

 

Outside My Home

I walk outside my house…

   5am to pray, brisk walk

  with remembrances, blessings on my lips

the woman has a cane, a hat, long pants

   long shirt, august, sloppy; all black

 you a muzzlum; she calls?

yes

 can you go to the store for me?

no

 

I walk outside my house…

  9am to work, briskly gliding walk

with heartfelt forgiveness asking on my lips

  the woman, dripping sweat: her cane does not

    touch the ground, her hand extended

as she grinds across the street; 4 hours

   You got 50cent she asks?

No; to the bus I go.

 

Two old latinos make me smile

   they slap and laugh and greet;

    old buddies from Macondo…

 

underground now with stalls and starts

  reading the back pages of other peoples papers

a wrapped wristed man, shuffling

  Repetitive stress! Repetitive stress!

     …baggy pants like its 1993, a cap, a bag, an addiction stare

He argues with a woman over a drink…

   the drink that spills on the subway floor

she is nodding, daring gravity…

   

…

with his portable video game player

   round his neck; like keys, like money, ID, or a

  metro card, a passport – he sits curled, screams at Her

   -calls her stupid, busted wrist stupid, spilled drink

  Stupid; grown man playing games – stupid.

 

Everyone else is reading to disconnect

   Kindles, newspapers, Bibles and Qurans

 

I imagine that Surah called Tawbah;

I see myself in Masjid Al-Haram; the Sacred Mosque

Enveloped in the light of Angels I cannot see

Bathed in the sound of blessings I can hear

   But find no origin

Anchored by my heart to a posture

  Of Forgiveness; Mercy, Humility

Exorcising demons.  

 

I look up to see the couple shuffling slowly

   out the door; aching faces as they leave the train

Oh, I know, that devil…

   That Heroin is at it again!

 

People are still reading, still zombied, en route to working

   …still tourists, its still August, all muggy

they open maps, the readers find seats and settle,

   and eyes looking up and down

to the speckled white and black,

 

to the ad that says:

 

and who doesn’t like to travel?

i arrive. 10am. work.

Be Still My Selfish Heart...

Prayer in the mosque. When I can make it happen, which generally happens to be everyday recently becasue I have the opportunity with my fixed location, to walk to a busy workingman’s Masjid in the middle of Manhattan’s busy 29^th street.

There, cab drivers, pedi-cabbies, and street vendors intermingle with lawyers, engineers, and other working stiffs like me – folks doing advocacy work, or advertising, or food service, all to pray their regular daily prayers – the ones we make in the middle of the day.

I pass by all manner of vendors on the way there. Blessed to walk past the rows and rows of the agriculture center called the Flower or Garden district (adjacent to the trinket row along Broadway) and nestled in the middle is a Muslim thoroughfare that bustles day and night with those who submit to the way of peace.

I mention this walk because I do it briskly. Whispering prayers and blessings along the way. Mostly, I ask for forgiveness. Other times I praise The Most High. Nothing special, it is something that people of faith do everyday.

Lately I have been talking about food. The appetite has waned and I am more conscious of those who do not have food to eat. Yesterday I prayed the just after sunset prayer on 11^th and 1^st and arrived with a big jug of water and some bananas. Those went to a woman in hijab begging outside the mosque. Who knows her story. She gave me a wonderful blessing that made me cry. Today, still thinking about food, and walking along this busy thoroughfare stuck in the middle of trinkets and the greenery of the garden district I happened upon a simple reminder.

You see, most African-Americans ancestrally hail from West Africa but we know very little of who and where we came from. On my walk I pass by vendors of Africans that in the Giuliani era would have been beaten back. In the Bloomberg era, commerce of all forms is supported. They seem to be making out there but they still have not forgotten where they come from. 

Everyday a small group I pass huddles around one another over ONE plate of food. They all have spoons and forks into the plate and they eat and eat well. It is not that they cannot afford to all have their own plate – which is how African-Americans are oriented – but that they understand and value the idea that is a core principle in Islam – and one that Allah has been reminding me I have been blind to:

 

“None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” 40 Hadith

The Love Lost Train

Air conditioned Q Train

    The Love train

The lost love train

  A woman fans herself incessantly

Her face; her curly hair

   Her wavy skirt shaking with the movement

toes peek; she reminds me of a girl I knew

   a black magic witch who needled me

whose olive tint fed me

   like a drop of water from an underground pipe

      landing on my lips

 

at the transfer

 

  a man stands drunkardly; the edge; a precipice

he holds onto the banister, eyes cannot see straight

     reminds me of years I once lived

not drunk, not stumbling,

    blind nonetheless

 

the faces of the city In gaunt and long

   with open books and stares

 into speckled silence of walls and floors

    gazing open eyed at the last place I saw

rehashing the fear

rehashing the doubt

   the end.

A period.

 

Making it to the J and not the Q

   On the long way back;

conditionally , disbelieving, ruined, scared

    on the walk past a big belly man

who found his place to sleep splayed

    concrete

hot  streets

       Home.

Something to reflect on from the Qur-an

This passage is from Surah At-Talaq:  "And unto everyone who is conscious of Allah, He (always) grants a way out (of unhappiness and despair), and provides for them in a manner beyond all expectations:  and for everyone who places his trust in Allah.  He (alone) is enough.

Verily, Allah always attains to His Purpose:  and indeed, unto everything has Allah appointed its (term and) measure."

 

excerpt from Paradise Pedestrian

Ode to fresh fruit…

Winter never looked so,
    Far, interred in memory.
On the last breath I know, the now.
A lovers time.
Tall trees speaking in pairs,
 A companion, a friend from the eons of light
Speaking to the waves, magic mists, blue-

Found these dreams,
Olive tinted, fluttering legs in the crush
Body glide, never tasted so good;

Fresh fruit…

Fruit on a tree in Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy

Guess who's name is carved into the Brooklyn Museum?

In the 1980’s I waited on the corner of Washington and Eastern Parkway, diagonal the Museum, for the school bus that would take me to P.S. 307. Out of school I was allowed to go– with no adult supervision – only three places: the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Public library, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I particularly liked to fall asleep in the Cherry Esplanade and hideout in the Japanese Garden, I loved books, but I think my favorite was wandering the museum for hours in my own imagination.

I lived three blocks down from the museum, before they changed the original City Beautiful front for a modern one with exploding fountains and glass and steel. I still miss the cobbled stones that provided an entrance in days gone by. Anyways, the Museum…

I was walking by their late one night when I looked up, like I had done many times before, and saw the statues with names of famous men underneath. For many days in my childhood I would stare at those names and think about whom they were and what it took to get your name carved in stone thousands of years and miles from when and where you lived.

Well, the other day, I noticed another name that [perfectly] did not have a statue above it and [curiously] did not belong to a European derived great thinker. He was on the left side of the part of the museum that faces Eastern Parkway, on the same side as Laoste and Confucious. A man that billions understand is the Seal of the Prophets...

See for yourself:

 

Poetry for The People.

The sun sneezed

   

An arc of green soaked

    and red stained

black brick

       A translucent menagerie

   Embracing the Walt Whitman in us.

     … the effort

    touching bark and concrete

       rolling around in the blades of grass

the weeds. the weeds.

    You do not understand them….

And if only you did.

 

The sun inhaled so all we could see

   Were its covered lids; the clouds.

The arch passed through the space between

    Becoming a rainbow

   A palette of forgiveness

That nothing but the Brooklyn London Plane

    Could touch. Could feel.

… the mist paints my dry lips…

 

signs, if you do not want them…

    send them away.

Then hug the weeds

Then kiss the brick

Then read Walt Whitman

      And inhale old Brooklyn.

Where he sun meets the sky

    Meets the earth

Falling embers of the cosmic

    As dancing mist.