In Chicago: What separates us?, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
This is a story about the afternoon I went to Target. And no, it is not about how I walked in to return a few items and buy some placemats and a pack of nails to hammer into the walls for my latest creative project, and somehow, […]

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Re-upholstered dining chairs at the PirateHouse, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.
- from “Prayer,” by Carol Ann Duffy
In mid-July, home for the weekend at my parents’, […]

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Tangier, Morocco, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
Those of you who don’t follow my Rockstar Links & Things over at tumblr (and why do you not?, is the question) are missing out on some lovely reminiscing going on today, so I thought I’d cross-post for you here.
If you click here, you can hear the Adhan [Islamic call […]

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The better to stab you with, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
My colleague ducks his head through the doorway this evening on his way out of work and calls out, “Bye, Jasmin!”
“You call me that again, and we are not going to be friends anymore,” I mutter sourly, without turning my eyes away from […]

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I posted the following link/letter to tumblr a few days ago, via Anjum and Preeti. You should be adding our tumblr feeds to your RSS reader of choice (because we are awesome, clearly), but, in case you neglect to do so, here is the awesomest email ever, in its rocking entirety, written by Karion. All […]

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I don’t know exactly what a prayer is, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
My Ramadan in disjointed pseudo-bulletpoints:
Just before Ramadan began, Anjum started a “Ramadan mubarak!” email thread. Hoda replied, “RAMADAN MUBARAK, EVERYBODY! I’m stoked!”, to which I added, “I’m kinda not stoked. Is that BLASPHEMY? (I think it kinda must be.)”
To which Anjum, being a smart […]

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TARGET dressing rooms have rocking red walls, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
Last June, my buddy A left me a voicemessage late one night after having watched the film, Paris je t’aime, which actually consists of eighteen short films by 21 directors, each of the stories taking place in different arrondissements (municipal boroughs) of Paris. Walking […]

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“What do you mean he don’t eat no meat?!”, by yaznotjaz
Re. the post title: Oh, I lowve that filum.
"Akhtar de umbarak sha!" as we say in Pukhtu.
And "Eidi ni umbarak hoviya!" as we say in Hindko.
And I’m not quite sure what the Urdu-speakers say. Probably something simple and formal like, "Eid mubarak!"
Oh, wait, that’s Arabic. […]

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Hands in supplication, by yaznotjaz
Last night, the Pakistani satellite channel, ARY-Digital, showed the Hajj pilgrims, a sea of white, at Arafat and Muzdalifah. I watched the television while eating dinner, the volume turned up loudly so that the pilgrims’ invocation echoed throughout the house:
Labayk Allahumma labayk, labayka la shareeka laka labayk. Innal-hamda, wa’naimata, laka wal-mulk, […]

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Let’s go home, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
By Tuesday or so, I had already realized this week needed to be over. My GMail status:
Dear God: Please make it be Saturday already, because this week kind of sucks. Thank you.
Love, Yasminay
The responses were hilarious:
Anjum, channeling God:
Dear Yasminay,
*sigh*, I get this request every week from you.
[…]

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A chessboard awaits potential players in an Oakland park, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
The Lovely L Lady asked me this evening, “So, what do you do during this meditation?”
“Well. I just close my eyes and concentrate on dua [supplications] and dhikr and any other prayers I have memorized.”
“Oh, good,” she said in mock relief. “I thought […]

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From the Ramadan Cookie Project 2006 photoset, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz
To state the obvious, since everyone is talking and blogging about it these days, Ramadan is here! Has been here for a couple of weeks, actually. How are we nearly halfway through the month already?
I wasn’t fasting on Monday, so I took a slice […]

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Originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
I’m so tired of constantly feeling so tired - I don’t sleep enough, I fall asleep holding books I once could have finished reading in a single day, I sleep crookedly, and my neck has been aching for over a week. Also, there’s that drama that enters my head once in a […]

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Near MACLA, downtown San Jose, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
I was taking BART into San Francisco one Sunday a few weeks ago when a young man got on the train at the MacArthur station and glanced curiously at me for much longer than I was comfortable with as he made his way down the aisle.
A […]

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Pencils so pretty, it makes you want to eat them, originally uploaded by yaznotjaz.
My (3 or more) Beautiful Things posts always contain snippets from a single given day of the week, but, in this case, I haven’t written in a while, so the following is a compilation of things from the past couple of weeks:
one. […]

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