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Faith Is Also Built on Ordinary Tuesdays
I think when I was younger, I imagined faith would feel more cinematic than it actually does. I imagined spiritually strong people as calm and refreshed all the time. People who prayed every salah with perfect focus. People who read Quran peacefully for long stretches without interruption. People who woke up for tahajjud with glowing skin and emotional stability. I thought closeness to Allah would feel quiet and uninterrupted. But adulthood, especially motherhood, feels very different from that. On a Tuesday morning in Sharjah, faith sometimes looks like searching frantically for one specific white school sock while the clock is ticking and we should have left the house five minutes…
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Ordinary Mondays Feel Like Mercy
Today I opened WhatsApp to do one thing. I still do not know what that thing was. Somewhere between replying to a cousin, checking a message from another mother, and opening Telegram for a school update, my original reason for picking up the phone disappeared completely. For the past couple of weeks, the sky had been quiet. No interceptions. No sudden sounds overhead. Just stillness—the kind of stillness that slowly tricks you into believing life has returned to its normal rhythm again. Then last Monday, there were a few interceptions again. Suddenly, the Telegram school groups became alive all over again. The groups themselves are actually very organized; alhamdulillah, only…
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The Secret Engine Room (a.k.a. The Side Garage)
If you walked past our villa in Sharjah,you’d see a house like many others. A front door.Shoes (mostly) lined up.A version of us that looks… organized. But that’s not the real story. If you want to understand this house—this operation—you have to walk to the side. To the place the architect confidently labeled:Garage. We don’t park cars there.We hang laundry.Rows of it. A forest of metal racks,flapping cotton,socks that have seen things. This is the Engine Room. The Law of the Sun Yes, we have a dryer. It exists.It works.It is… mostly decorative. Because I am married to a manwho looks at the Sharjah sunand sees: free energy,maximum efficiency,and possibly……
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An Example of My Jumbled Mind (The Forty-Tab Brain)
I talk a lot about having “forty tabs open,” but let’s be real—it isn’t just about being busy. It’s a survival mission that lives entirely inside my head. And look, I’m not trying to make myself sound like the center of the universe. I know, deep down, that life would go on even without me. The world doesn’t stop because a mom takes a break. I also don’t want to belittle the massive part my husband and kids play in keeping this family moving—they are the ones spinning the wheels every day. But even when the wheels are rotating perfectly, the mental load is just… there. It’s the invisible architecture.…
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The Trail I’m Leaving Behind
I really have to share why I started Barakah Roots—not as a “brand” or a project, but so you can understand why I am here, opening up my house and my head to you. I was born in 1981. I’m a child of that bridge generation—the ones who remember the silence of a house before the internet lived in our pockets. Now, it’s 2026. I live in Sharjah, managing a house of twelve. Ten children. A multicultural marriage where we are constantly translating our very souls across different languages and unspoken codes. Most days, I am the logistics officer for a small army. My mind is a Forty-Tab Brain. I’m…
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The Tuna Heist and the Moussaka’ah Mistake
Before I was the mom of ten, I was a girl with a tangled tongue in a very cold room. My husband and I were traveling to California to meet his parents. They hadn’t been at our wedding; they had never seen my face. This wasn’t just a trip; it was a Grand Opening. And looking back, it was the first real test of my Hayaa, my nerves, and my stomach. The Tangle of Tongue The US Embassy room was clinical and freezing. I sat there, a new bride, feeling the heavy weight of a secret: a tiny life was already beginning inside me. When the interviewer asked about my…
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Finding Stillness on the Rug
We are often told that prayer is a sanctuary—a brief, quiet retreat from the friction of the world. And in its essence, it is. But if I am being honest, in the middle of a restless afternoon, it can feel like one more weight on an already full day. Sometimes, the adhan doesn’t sound like an invitation; it sounds like a clock counting down the moments I don’t have. The Friction of Focus In a home with ten children, “silence” is a luxury I rarely find. I have stood in prayer while a toddler used my dress as a tent. I have recited verses while my mind was calculating how…
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Laundry, We Will Always Have Laundry
There is a woman—me— with a house full of twelve people. Alhamdulillah. It is loud. It is full. It is alive. And always— we have a hill of laundry. I fold. I sort. I have my kids on folding duties. Small hands matching socks, older ones complaining in silence, everyone moving somewhere between help and chaos. And somehow, it still multiplies in the dark. Sometimes we fold as best as we can and just tuck things into drawersthe ones we promise we will revisit in six months. Maybe. We fold once a week, on the weekend. Five, six, seven,basketfuls of clothing. It is an everlasting job. Sometimes, I just close…
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Hijabi’s Path to Jane Austen’s Longbourn
It might seem like a stretch. What does a 19th-century Englishwoman—preoccupied with balls, bonnets, and social standing—have to do with a 21st-century Muslim mother of ten in the UAE? On the surface, our worlds are oceans apart. But when I open a well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice, I don’t feel like I’m reading about a stranger. I feel like I’m looking into a mirror. The Path Through the Woods I’ll admit, my love for Austen didn’t start with the dense, original prose. English is not my first language, and the intricate, looping sentences of the 1800s were a challenge to grasp. I took the scenic route. I started with…
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Hayaa in a Loud World
Hayaa is often translated as modesty.Bashfulness.But for me, lately I realize thatit has never been just about what I wear. It is a feeling.A boundary.A quiet awareness.A secret cave. I’ll be honest,be truly honest.I don’t show much.I don’t always know how. There is a bashfulness that sits heavy on my tongue,making me shy to reveal my needs,shy to say what’s in my heart,shy to let the world see that I am tired. I used to wonder:Am I being too difficult?Is my silence a barrier to love?Am I expecting them to read my mind? I stayed quiet to avoid being a nag.I stayed quiet to keep the peace.But I am learning…
