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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…
