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The Woman Who Read Tess Gerritsen
“Years later, we don’t only remember the stories. We remember who we were when we first turned the page.” A Familiar Name in an American Bookstore There are authors we enjoy for a season. And then there are authors who quietly accompany us through life. For me, that author was Tess Gerritsen. For years, I thought my story with her books began in 2005, during my first trip to the United States after getting married. My husband took me to what was, to us, the perfect place to spend an afternoon: a bookstore. I can’t even remember whether it was Borders or Barnes & Noble now. I only remember the…
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The Books That Built Me
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The Missing Ten Percent
Learning to Hold Appreciation and Correction Together Imagine a child comes home from school with an exam paper. He studied hard. He worried about the test. He did his best, and he scored 90%. The first question he hears is, “Where did the other ten marks go?” The question isn’t wrong. The missing ten percent exists. It can be corrected; it can become a lesson. But I sometimes wonder what quietly disappeared first in that moment—the missing ten, or the ninety that came before it? The Ninety That Quietly Disappears I think family life often works the same way. Someone forgets one thing, and somehow that one thing becomes the…
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The Lost Art of Lingering
What Riyadh’s Istiraha Culture Taught Me About Community There are many things I miss about Riyadh. The wide roads. The familiar skyline. The call to prayer echoing across neighborhoods. But when people ask what I miss most, my answer always surprises them. It isn’t a place. It’s a rhythm. One of my favorite rhythms of life in Riyadh revolved around weekends at the istiraha. Looking back, I don’t think I miss the istiraha itself. I miss belonging to a culture that expected people to linger. There was no carefully planned two-hour schedule. No one checking the time after coffee. No awkward moment when everyone wondered whether it was time to…
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Evidence
Some days I thinkI have done nothing. The house still breathes clutter.The laundry waits patiently.There are dishes somewhere.Something is always misplaced.Something is always unfinished. And yet— Today I created. I designed small signs for small hands,hoping they might rememberwhat I can no longer holdall at once in my mind. I printed, laminated, and hung them—tiny promisesthat tomorrowmay ask a little less of me. I packed away thoughts.Sorted worries.Built systemsfor a life that requiresmore rememberingthan one personwas ever meant to carry. I baked.I nourished. I drank waterin a bodythat is often tired. I searched for wordsto explainthe shape of my own mind,revisiting old wounds—not to reopen them,but to understandwhy they still…
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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 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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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…
