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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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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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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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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.…
