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The Eid Al-Adha 2026 Allah Chose for Me
The Unexpected First Day of Eid There is an Eid we imagine. The one where everyone wakes up healthy. The children are dressed beautifully. The prayer goes smoothly. The food is ready on time. The family photo turns out perfectly. And then there is the Eid Allah chooses for us. This year, the two were not quite the same. On the morning of Eid al-Adha, the sound of takbir drifted through the humid air in Sharjah while I sat curled up on the downstairs sofa. A sudden stomach pain arrived unexpectedly when I woke up for Fajr, bringing my plans to a sudden halt. I had planned to be at…
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MacGyver, Quantum Leap, and My Wildly Unqualified Childhood Confidence
I sometimes think old television gave children from the 80s and 90s an unreasonable amount of confidence 😭 MacGyver made us believe intelligence could solve almost anything using: a paperclip, duct tape, and emotional determination. Knight Rider convinced us that the future would obviously include emotionally supportive talking cars. Airwolf somehow made helicopters feel deeply dramatic and spiritually important. And Quantum Leap? Quantum Leap convinced me that time travel was not only possible, but emotionally manageable. Which is how childhood me ended up creating an entire imaginary storyline about becoming a time traveler accidentally stranded in the Wild West. Naturally, I adapted extremely well. I became a cowgirl. I learned…
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Nobody Claps for the Mother Who Remembered Everything
Nobody claps for the mother who remembered everything. Usually, they only notice the one thing she forgot. It’s the child suddenly announcing at 9 PM that they need green cardboard for school tomorrow. It’s the “Mama, did you sign this?” paper appearing exactly when everyone is already wearing shoes. But beneath those frantic moments is a vast, silent ocean of things that did happen because you remembered them: the favorite snack you bought, the way everyone’s different food preferences live permanently inside your brain, and the small emotional tensions you noticed before they ever became arguments. I don’t think most families do this maliciously. Invisible labor becomes invisible precisely because…
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The Quiet Vulnerability of Financial Dependence
Sometimes I stand holding an item in a store for far too long before quietly putting it back. Not necessarily because we cannot afford it. But because I am already mentally tired imagining how to explain why it matters. I think many women understand this feeling immediately. The small internal rehearsal. How to make the request sound reasonable enough. Necessary enough. Useful enough. Worth asking for. Especially when the thing is not pure survival. A notebook. A new prayer dress. Comfortable shoes. Skincare. An iced matcha. Containers you genuinely believe will finally organize your life this time. Tiny things. Tiny things that help tired women emotionally survive adulthood. And honestly,…
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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…
