and i will never learn to say goodbye to yesterday.
“Are you still sick from, like, 5 weeks ago?” L’s roommate (“the other Yasmine”) exclaimed when she heard me speak a few days ago, and all I could do was shrug helplessly and nod. I remember when I came down with the flu a year ago, […]

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cloudy days.
Last Saturday, while on the road early in the morning, I listened to the Burdah for the first time in almost a year. The recitation is beautiful, the solos are simply amazing, but I realized it’s always going to remind me of this day.
I either slept through or skipped most of the cognitive psychology […]

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Less than two weeks ago, we drove up to Sacramento to visit our relatives when we heard the news of our bhabi’s sister’s death.
Towards the afternoon, I took the opportunity to escape the endless crying and sad, drawn faces by ushering my niece, three-year-old Zaynam, and her one-year-old sister – my cousin and bhabi’s […]

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I knew it was a red car.
Three boys and a girl were killed, and another girl critically injured, in that freeway accident last Monday. Local articles have referred to it as “grisly,” “high-impact,” “ugly,” and “tragic.”
It has been difficult to escape the aftermath of the accident over the course of the past week. You […]

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After four years, the sixty-mile drive to school has become second-nature. I scoff at people who complain about supposedly long drives, dismissively citing my own daily commute to school as “nothing.” It has come to the point where I don’t even have to concentrate on driving; I get from Point A to Point B – […]

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surely we belong to God and surely we will return to Him
Everyone, please take a few moments to pray for Arshad’s father, who passed away Saturday.
I wish we could do more, Arshad. But all we truly have to offer are prayers. So - May God grant you a reunion with your father in Jannat-al-Firdaus, […]

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I, who supposedly never cry, watched my face crumble in the mirror as I stood before it early yesterday morning, arms raised in the act of wrapping a scarf around my head, my mother standing next to me as she relayed the message.
I left the house less than ten minutes later, and cried all the […]

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I helped pick out a bouquet of flowers today.
As a single, random act in and of itself, buying flowers really isn’t all that hard. “Ooh, look, these are so pretty,” we said, and grabbed an armful of three different types. As the lady took apart the bunches of flowers and skillfully re-did them as one […]

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For all my joking that my mental age is in the single digits (and, hey, it is, okay), all I really want is to be fourteen again.
I was still two weeks shy of my thirteenth birthday the year I traveled to Pakistan, in the midst of Ramadan, for what would ultimately become an eighteen-month stay. […]

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I know you probably have a “Surah Ya-Seen day” once in a while, too. You may call it something else, but I bet it’s still comparable to mine. Perhaps yours is known as “The Day from Hell” instead. I’ve always called mine “Surah Ya-Seen days” simply because it makes me feel less pissed off that […]

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I lean back into my seat in the university library’s 24-hour room, wince at the unrelenting hardness of my wooden chair, and ruefully wonder what possessed me to study here. I think longingly of the small, private, third-floor room where I usually study: broad tables with polished black surfaces, muted voices, chairs with cushioned seats. […]

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