Crushed Flower

The note below is just a figment of my imagination

She pulls open the curtains and watches him through the window with a wistful smile on her lips. He’s playing in the sand, a look of utter concentration on his face. He’s happily humming to himself. The world looks beautiful to him. From the dew on the leaves at the break of dawn to the crickets chirping at night. From the sight of roses to the pattering of rain on the roof.

She watches him grow, and sees a person who thinks he can conquer the world, whose real world could not contain the magnitude of his dreams, who has to redefine the borders of what was possible. His head is always in the clouds. Ideas burst like fireworks in the sky of his imagination. He lets his dreams paint the canvas of his world.

As she watches him, she wonders how long it will last. She wonders when he’ll land hard on the ground. When the world will turn gloomy on him – a crushed flower, on the brink of survival. She wonders when she’ll hear the heavy sigh, the hollow laugh and the occasional sobs.

“You know, I thought I got it all figured out,” she expects him to say. “What happened?”

“You grew up. That’s what happened. Your innocence was tainted by the darkness of people who believe that they need to step on each other to reach the top.”

“One day I had hope. I believed in the good of people.”

“But then you tasted the poison of bitterness, watched your best friends turn their backs on you in a world that knew only selfishness, greed and betrayal.”

Maybe then he might choose to close himself in his room, close himself in a shell, fortify himself between high walls. She wishes she can warn him of the long tortuous road ahead. But it’s through tasting the sorrow will he learn to appreciate the joy. She wishes she can warn him. But she pulls the curtains shut.

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Dedicated to Mona Ockba

Picture taken from http://sanalogy.net/ who runs Qamrah Photography http://www.facebook.com/qamrahuae

Originally posted in Feb 13, 2011

Syrian Children are Children Too

When a gunman entered the school and shot dead 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut, the breaking news was a heart-breaking news. We were all saddened by the story, parents of six year old children hugged them tighter, and people asked one question over and over again, “Why?” Why would anyone want to hurt six year old children? Innocent children who didn’t understand evil until the day they experienced it firsthand that day? To find six-year-olds with multiple shot wounds was so devastating, that the Medical Examiner commented,  “I’ve been at this for a third of a century … but this probably is the worst I have seen or the worst that I know of any of my colleagues having seen,” he said.

But in Syria every news is heart-breaking news. Yesterday, dozens of people have been killed and many more wounded in a Syrian government air strike that hit a bakery where a crowd was queuing for bread. Many of the victims were women and children. Just because there aren’t reporters lurking all over Syria, taking interviews about the children’s favorite color, hobbies, or cartoon characters doesn’t make them any less important.  Their mothers suffered the back aches associated with carrying them around for nine months. Some of them watched their children say the first words, and curl their tiny fingers around an adult hand, and smile for no particular reason. And some of them watched their children die from gun wounds and disappear under the rubble of collapsed buildings, forever gone.

And it’s not just Syria.

19 November 2012: one of the top stories from Gaza was , “Four children killed in single Israeli air strike.”

17 December 2012: 10 Afghan children killed in bomb explosion in eastern province.

And that’s just the stuff that happened in the last one and a half month.

But the thing is , in in Syria, Palestine, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, th0se children are grouped into numbers to reduce airwaves and sound bytes, and any resulting shockwaves that could reverberate across the world. We don’t get to hear their names, and their favorite holiday events, whether they liked to color with crayons or preferred paint. Some of them lose their parents and siblings in the same attacks, and so their names would just remain on the birth and death certificates, if those even existed.

So Syrian children are children too. They are not collateral damage. Palestinian children are children too. They are not future terrorists. In other words, Muslim children are children too. They are not a threat to anybody, especially when they’re carrying their pacifiers. So let’s not forget them.

I wanted an image of a child from Syria and many of them showed dead bodies that were too disturbing. (Image from http://theglobaljournal.net/news/world/unicef-hundreds-of-children-killed-in-syria.html)

Know Your Basics

As I’ve talked about this month, children in Dubai nowadays have the opportunity to live their dream job for one day in Kadzania and see if they’re up for it. I also discussed about Fordism of Education and how the academic experience would be better if it were more personalized. I also spoke about gadgets and their use in academic institutions nowadays. There was a post on how parents need to motivate children to excel and not expect the teachers to do everything. I also wrote about the case when failure is seen as a success.

So today I’m going to wrap up this topic with something very important. Given that the academic system will stay the same for a while – based on standardized syllabi and testing – children need to be taught the importance of developing a strong foundation for their knowledge; i.e. being pros at the basics.

Today in class, the professor spoke about someone who calculated the size of a heat exchanger in their design project, and the answer? 36 km.

He brought it up when he was talking about how it is still important at the 500-and-600-level courses to keep using consistent units while making calculations. It’s incredible to think how many engineering mistakes take place in the real world because somebody didn’t bother to check if the units were consistent or not.

The seven SI base units and their interdependency. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And to think that people get introduced to units in Freshman year of high school, or Form 1. Eight years later, they’ll still need to work with it if they were engineers. Same thing with doctors and Anatomy.

Once a professor was talking to us about how his friends disapproved of him when he made his kid repeat a year because his foundation wasn’t strong enough – even though he passed the year. I remember thinking I wouldn’t like to have my father do that, but in the end, maybe it was to the kids’ main benefit, or he’d end up reporting a heat exchanger with a length of 36 km.

Motivating Children To Excel

Many parents have unreasonable expectations of their children’s teachers. They think that just because they pay the teachers’ salaries, then they have hired a  personal coach.  They want the teachers to discover their children’s hidden talents and help develop them. But at the end of the day teachers fulfill their part of the deal by conveying material from the syllabus to the students, ensuring that students understand the material, and additionally making sure that they go home without getting hurt by other students physically or verbally.  But when it comes to discovering and developing children’s talents, the parents need to invest some time on that.

It’s sad how some parents involvement with their children is limited to paying fees, arranging vacations and checking their report at the end of the semester with a nod or a shake of the head. If the kids are lucky, their parents might distractedly sign off their diary every once in a while. I once heard a story where some children didn’t perform well in school, and their parents started to lecture them on the importance of education, and how reading would help them strengthen their English so they would understand the problems.

“We buy you books but you don’t read,” the parents complained.

Then a third person sat and read with them on the kindle and they got so excited that the next day they wanted to read again, which made one wonder, “Maybe all that the kids needed was someone to read with them.” (Or maybe they just liked the idea of a kindle instead of a physical book). The thing is, parents would buy the books and shelve them, hoping their highly-aware three year old would pick them up and read.

Then you have parents who expect all their children to be identical. If the first-born is good with sports, then the second-born should be good with sports as well, and they show their disappointment when the second-born never wins a running race. Maybe the second-born is an artist who would rather sit with their coloring crayons. It’s true schools try as much as they can to expose children to extra-curricular activities so that talents would appear, but parents seems think that is where it always stops.

“You could color during kindergarten? That’s so nice honey, you should now focus on your understanding these math formulae.”

Children need to be continuously motivation. They also need the extra investment in terms of money and effort from their parents to develop their talents. In his TED talk about the Secrets of Success in 3 minutes, Richard John said something like; it’s not always easy to push yourself to success and that’s what mothers are for. Parents could do this by paying more attention to their children instead of just hoping for nannies or teachers to take their place, they could take them to Kidzania and have them experience the different occupations there are, or they could just be there with wise advise whenever the child needs them.

I personally started taking pictures of some of my cousin’s coloring books to keep a record in case they would turn into the next Picasso, in which case I could remind them of the time when they colored ‘Snow White’ black.

Redefining Art; why should snow white be white?

It’s All Child’s Play -Part 2

Even though my kid cousins like playing with my phone, sometimes they settle for good ol’ gololi (marbles).

The past two days I’ve also been working with them to build stuff like what’s shown in the images below (a bit too Masdar-ish, if you think about it).

But it’s good to observe children as they build stuff like this, whether they can follow instructions from a book or need to be told what to do; whether they have the patience to carry something through until the end or will give up midway; whether they will give up straight away or will try different approaches until they get it. Also one thing that seemed to work was separating the kids while working on these models, so they won’t fight with each other or start throwing things around out of collective hyperactivity. Plus that way I can actually study them separately.

I wonder how long today’s children could enjoy such good ol’ games before being bitten by the Facebook and iPad bugs.

It’s All Child’s Play

I’ve been spending so much time with the children lately (aged between 3 and 12) and I am learning a few new mind games on how to get what I want from them.
1) Turn it into a Game. This is an old trick that I played a few years back. When I first came this year, I wondered if it would still work. The kids stormed my room so I told them to start racing and set the starting and finishing line outside the room. When they went out to race,I closed the door and stayed in.
They fell for it.
Again.
Another game that I made up had one rule only, “Whoever moves or says a word is disqualified.”
It also worked. Surprisingly. One person wouldn’t stay still but at least he restrained himself, and calmed down a bit which was good enough for me.

2) Incite sibling rivalry. Once I was supposed to tutor my cousin, but he didn’t want to sit and study. So I told him I’ll be teaching his older brother instead. Again I didn’t know how it worked because someone else would have said, “Ok, teach him first.” But no, the younger one rushed, got his books and started to fight for attention saying, “My exam is before his. Me first.”

3) Turn it into a challenge. Whenever I want the kids to do something and they resist, I say, “Of course, because you don’t know how to do it.”
“No, no. I know it.”
“Prove it.”

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

4) Bribe them. I bribe them with my smartphone sometimes. “Do this and I’ll give you the phone (or take away the phone).”
Most times it works.

5) Call their mother. This is my plan F, when they are sooo hyper that I can’t get them to listen to me. They get scared of their mother when she’s angry, so this always works as a last resort.

I have to admit I like playing mind games with them. After all, to me, it’s just child’s play.

Bringing a Child To This World

Guest blog by Amira J…

Last week one of my cousin had her baby—mabrook to her!! But it got me thinking about having children. If you have read my previous post –baby fever, you know I have been thinking about it. But looking at the media and our world today, it got me thinking do I want to bring a child in this world! For starters a) there so much fitna in this world among Muslims b) if you are in the western countries –its hard raising children and let them conform to Islam c) in addition to the hatred towards Muslim in western world is growing day by day d) even if you go to “home” countries there is poverty and you think how will the children survive.

Just think about it

a) There is so much fitna in our communities today, people judging others, people not following Islam properly, people looking into race, culture and such than on the person’s emaan! There so many issues going on in our Muslim communities that it’s beyond recognizable or fixable. (may Allah guide us to the right path)

b) I think the hardest thing parents face today raising children in the west, is trying to give them a chance to discover themselves but also maintain the teachings and values of Islam. With so many peer pressure from other children, its hard to instill religious values in children and not to create a misunderstanding in the children.

c) Since 9/11 there has been so much hatred towards Muslim in western countries, from USA to UK and other European countries. As more days go by and more anti-Muslim vs. anti-west continue to exist. The problem will persist to a much greater concern and the newer generation will suffer more and struggle between maintaining beliefs and trying to be safe.

d) And then even if you are in the west and the above mentioned are an issue, and decide to go back “home”. With majority of “home” being in the third world countries. A person might think how will I manage to feed my children and put a roof over their heads and still maintain a healthy life. It’s the fear of not being able to feed them and give them a good life.

As life is changing day by day and it is getting worse, I wonder how the new generation will cope with how our generation is making the world worse. I dear hope so, life changes sooner so as to make this world a better place for our future children –inshallah!

You can read the original post on; http://jabry.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/bringing-a-child-in-this-world/


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What Story Will You Tell Your Children?

Note: The first two parts (in Italics) are fictitious and are a figment of the writer’s imagination

The children sqealed with excitement when they reached the airport. As they looked at the humongous bodies of metal take flight, they raised their hands and bid farewell to the strangers in the airplane, wondering where they’ll be going.

“These planes go to the sky, above the clouds over there,” the teacher supervising the school trip told the 20 KG 2 children.

“Do they have houses above the clouds?” One child asked curiously.

“Do they have cows?” Another asked.

“Do they have television?”

“The plane is not going to stay on the clouds…” the teacher went on to explain how a plane transports people from one land to another. “So when they reach to Nairobi, they’ll have houses, cows and TV like the ones you have here.”

“One day I’m going to ride on that plane,” a child said.

“One day I’m going to fly that plane,” another child said. This comment made his classmates snigger. “Kwenda!!” (Go away-meaning “you can’t be serious”)

“One day I’m going to own 20 of those planes.”

This caused the whole group to rapture in laughter because the child who said it was the poorest of the lot. On his first day of school, he couldn’t afford the school uniform so he came wearing his home clothes and no shoes. Students saw him as the first to drop out of school and work on the tea farms.

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When the plane touched down in Moi International Airport, a robotic cry went off. When the seat belt signs went off, a man jumped to his feet, opened the overhead cabinet and retrieved a huge doll. It stopped crying. Children behind him started sniggering at the funny sight of the large black guy carrying a doll. “Mtu mkubwa, abeba dolli kama mtoto mdogo,” they made fun. (Look at that man carrying a doll like a child)

The man ignored them and stared straight ahead, his mind preoccupied with thoughts of his wife and daughter for whom he got the life-sized doll. After two years of working on his feet as a security guard in one of the Dubai malls, he was finally going home for his annual leave. He left Kenya in search for greener pastures but was met with endless miles of sand, and humidity that clung onto him in a choking grip. When he stepped out of the airplane and embraced the cold breeze, he realized he didn’t miss the heat and humidity of Dubai. He picked up his phone and hurried to dial his wife’s number. “I’m HOME!”

And to think that one day he used to dream about owning 20 planes.

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When we are children, we are filled with rosy dreams. Our imagination has no constraints about what could be done and what could not be done. Watch children trying to jump off the couch pretending they are superheroes. In our minds, everything used to be possible. Impossible was an alien word. A word that’s used by adults.

But then what happens? Life happens.

We grow up and the society around us draws constrains on our imagination. Suddenly, ”impossible” becomes part of our daily lives. Ideas are deemed crazy and infeasible from the beginning of their lives. We don’t want to sound strange. We don’t want to be criticized so we go with the norm. We dare not leave our comfort zone so that we can belong.

But what if we go back to being kids in believing that the impossible can come true, if we put in enough effort?

There’s a quote by Robert Heinlein that says, “Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.”

So what story will you tell your children? What legacy will you leave behind?

That’s my piece of mind today.

Adios

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