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When Ordinary Stopped Looking Ordinary
For most of my childhood, cigarettes were simply part of the scenery. They were everywhere—family gatherings, restaurants, bus stops, university campuses. Someone was almost always smoking, and everyone else was breathing the smoke. That was simply how life looked. I didn’t like cigarettes. I hated the smell, and as a child I had a rather creative solution to the problem. I thought someone should invent a smoker’s helmet—a fully enclosed helmet that kept every puff of smoke inside so the smoker could enjoy it while the rest of us enjoyed fresh air. I was quite convinced it was a brilliant invention. Sadly, no one seemed interested in investing. But if…
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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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My Thoughts on Surah Al-‘Asr
Three verses. That is all. Three short verses that many Muslim children memorize before they fully understand what they are reciting. Yet generations of scholars have reflected on their depth. A statement widely attributed to Imam al-Shafi’i رحمه الله says that if people were to truly reflect upon this surah, it would be sufficient for their guidance, because it summarizes what a person needs for success in this life and the next. Every time I recite it, I find myself asking the same question: How can only three verses contain so much? By Time. Indeed, mankind is in loss, Except for those who have believed and done righteous deeds and…
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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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Finding Home in a Changing World
A Wayfarer’s Reflection Every now and then, one of my children asks a surprisingly difficult question. “Mama, where is home?” I never know how to answer in a single sentence. Is it Indonesia, where I grew up and where so many of my childhood memories still live? Is it Riyadh, where most of my children were born and where weekends often meant gathering with friends at the istiraha? Or is it Sharjah, where we are slowly building a community that once existed only in my du’ā’? The older I become, the less I think home is simply a place. Perhaps it is something much deeper. A Heart Scattered Across Maps…
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After Allah Answers the Du’a
There was a time when every du’a felt urgent. I prayed for healthy children. I prayed for enough money to pay the bills on time. I prayed for difficult conversations to soften, and for illnesses to pass. I prayed for Allah to simply make life a little lighter, as though my heart was constantly leaning against a heavy door, trying to hold it shut. My prayers in those seasons were raw, frequent, and fueled by a deep, instinctive awareness that I had absolutely nowhere else to turn. Looking back now, I can see that Allah answered so many of those prayers. Not all at once, and perhaps not always in…
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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 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…
