-
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…
-
The 10:00 AM Ramadan Heist
We like to think of our childhood memories as deeply spiritual milestones. But if I’m being truly honest? One of my most vivid Ramadan memories involves a storage room, a locked door, and a very poorly timed snack. I wasn’t even hungry. That’s the funny part. It was only 10:00 AM. But the house was quiet, the day felt long, and I was… bored. And in the mind of an eight-year-old, the best cure for boredom is a forbidden banana. I remember the strategy. I snatched the fruit and made a run for the storage room—that dark sanctuary of old suitcases and dust. I didn’t just hide; I locked the…
-
The Road to Makkah, My First Umrah and the Hijab in the Mataf
In Indonesia, Umrah is a once-in-a-lifetime dream. People save for a long time. Lots of people wait until their hair is gray and their hearts are settled. They wait until they are “ready.” But there I was in 2005. Twenty-four years old. Newly married. Carrying my first child. We weren’t flying across oceans to find the House of Allah. We were driving toward it from Riyadh. The Quiet in the Desert It was April or May—that fleeting, golden window before the Saudi summer turns the world into a furnace. We left Riyadh late, after my husband finished work, chasing the horizon into an eight-hour drive. I remember the thrill of…
-
How I Feed 12 People Every Week (The Logistics of Barakah)
People say the kitchen is the heart of the home. In a house of twelve, the kitchen is something else entirely. It hums. It spills. It overflows. It is less a heart and more a high-traffic terminal … where someone is always arriving, leaving, asking, hungry, or waiting. Between ten children (from a twenty-year-old with a real appetite to a three-year-old who survives on whims), my husband, and me, we are not just cooking meals. We are managing an ecosystem. Somewhere between the rice cooker and the sink full of cups, I realized: this was never meant to be done alone. Feeding a large family is not about culinary perfection.…
-
Iqra, When My Mind Is Full
A quiet reminder for the days when everything feels like too much. When my mind is full, I don’t usually think about revelation. I think about what’s next. Who needs what. What I forgot. What I’m already late for. My thoughts move quickly—like tabs opening and closing faster than I can keep up. And in the middle of that noise, it’s hard to imagine a cave. A quiet place. A single word. Iqra. Read. In a world that constantly demands we do—to produce, to cook, to manage, to solve—it feels like a quiet mercy that the very first command given to our Prophet ﷺ was not a list of instructions.…
-
The Forty Days Postpartum Rest We Forgot
We spend nine months preparing the nursery, but we spend zero minutes preparing our souls for the “void” that comes after the storm of birth. In Java, where my roots are, we don’t “prepare” for postpartum with a shopping list; we prepare with a shift in tempo. There is a quiet, deeply practiced understanding that a mother must be held for forty days. Traditionally, her body is considered “open” and her energy fragile. She is surrounded by her mother or her mother-in-law—whoever brings her the most peace. There are helpers, traditional masseuses, the warming heat of Jamu tonics, and specific foods designed to “seal” the body back together. But for…
You May Also Like
Birth and The Raw Truth of Surrender
-
The Books That Built Me
Before I was a mother of ten in Sharjah, I was just a girl in Indonesia with a book in my hand… and a very specific obsession. British stories. I know exactly how it started. My paternal grandfather and grandmother were the ones who paved the way. I still remember my first encyclopedia; my grandmother bought it from a walking salesgirl who came to our door every month for a year. My grandma paid for it in installments—month by month, page by page—investing in my mind before I even knew what a “future” was. Then there was the time in Grade 2. I had broken my arm at school and…
You May Also Like
The Woman Who Read Tess Gerritsen
-
When “The Best” Feels Out of Reach
We have all heard the Hadith: Often, we hear it in the context of leadership—the way a father or a husband carries himself. And rightly so. But as a mother of ten, I’ve found myself sitting with these words… a little differently. What does it mean to be “the best” when you are bone-tired? What does it look like when the “smallness” of daily life—the endless questions, the missing snacks, the constant mental load—begins to weigh on you? The “Forty-Tab” Brain The mental load of a mother is invisible because it is made of micro-decisions. From the outside, it can look like we are “just sitting with a laptop.” But…
You May Also Like
Faith Is Also Built on Ordinary Tuesdays
-
Rewatching Titanic as a Grown Muslim Woman
Around 10:00 PM, the house is finally quiet. My kids sleep early (Alhamdulillah), so by then, the noise of the day—voices, footsteps, little arguments—has softened into stillness. I sit with my laptop, the glow of the screen lighting up the room, and decide to watch Titanic again. I remember watching it twice in the cinema back in the 90s. Back then, it was everything. And yes… I had a huge crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. Watching it now? He’s… very meh And that alone tells me how much has changed. I’m not watching it as a girl dreaming of escape anymore. I’m watching it as a wife of twenty years. A…
-
Vulnerability as a Woman’s Strength
In our Deen, the roles of men and women carry a divine logic that is both simple and profound. The husband is the provider and protector—the Qawwam. The woman is the heart of the home, the one who nurtures and builds what cannot always be seen. On paper, the balance is clear. But in the lived reality of a long marriage, the heart often feels the gravity of that arrangement. The Smallness of Asking There is a specific kind of vulnerability that comes with not having your own income. It’s quiet. Subtle. Hard to explain to those who haven’t stood in those shoes. It shows up in the smallest moments.…
