Copyright © 2024, Raidah Shah Idil. All rights reserved.
I’m thrilled to share that my first set of published poems are up!
Please scroll down Cait Meissner’s website and download the free course anthology titled “Armed Only With Our Souls”. Thank you Caits and the lovely ladies of the April Digging Deep, Facing Self group – I am honoured to have tread that path of creative expression and healing with you.
To any woman who is on the precipice of change but feels stuck…I urge you to sign up, do the hard growth work, and marvel at the outcome.
I’m on Week Three of a 30 day writing course – Digging Deep, Facing Self – and my poetry guru, Caits Meissner, has asked each of us to share our favourite piece of work as an exercise of vulnerability and bravery. I’d love to hear your thoughts on my poem. It’s still a very early draft, so be gentle, and please do comment!
Nenek (maternal grandmother)
I was thirteen and
an ill-fitting shoe
in my new country
of vegemite and Uncle Toby’s
I, child of chicken rice and noodles
when Nenek died
Mak flew back with Aisyah
I wish I had gone too
to say goodbye before the end
but only two decades later
when I awoke to the meaning of my ancestry
I lost your blue-stoned ring,
Nenek,
forgive me.
it haunts me
how careless I was
while I grieved for you,
refugees were shipwrecked
drowning
trying to enter the country
I waltzed into (via aeroplane)
“There are no children in detention centres.”
said the national lie
as more and more babies were born
into a cage
Nenek, you fled the communists
on a leaky boat with Datuk
not a cent to your name
your catalyst: being at gunpoint
Datuk told the soldier
“Shoot her first.”
you fled on a boat
like so many around the world
dark night, full moon swallowing the sky
risking death by drowning
you were a boat person
scorned
like the others left bloated
in the water
but you survived
you carved out a new life in Singapore
birthed countless children
showed them how to survive the ache of life
served tea to Datuk even when you could barely walk
Nenek, I am comfortable now
calm, grounded, married
you would have been so proud
I have returned to country you fled from
lifetimes ago
you paid for this, in the terror of your
night-time exodus
huddled next to your husband
towards an uncertain future
you have secured mine.
My first publication on The Feminist Wire is What’s Love Got To Do With It?
This is my most vulnerable piece, and it was equal parts painful and purging to write. I’m still stunned and touched by the outpouring of support after the publication of my article! Thank you everyone, for your public and private messages to me, and for all of your FB shares. I’m humbled by and grateful for each gesture of support and solidarity, from friends near and far.
It’s hard being so vulnerable in the public sphere, and admittedly, I’m still feeling quite raw, but some stories need to be told. I’m hoping that what I shared will resonate with others like me, and provide some measure of comfort and support. The wounds we carry from our childhoods turn into scars which we bear as adults, and the right people will love us BECAUSE of them.
Please keep my loved ones in your prayers, especially my parents.
I’ve recently stumbled across a wonderful literary magazine called The Drum. Check it out! Being an avid fan of all things literary, I’ve come to really enjoy my stopovers at The Drum. Each poem/essay is unique; some poignant, others hilarious.
I really enjoyed Jane Hamilton’s essay “Finding Forgiveness In a Ziploc”. Her heartwarming reflection on marriage revolves around an incident at the airport with her husband and a ziploc bag. While listening to her voice, I was a fly on the wall during the dramatic, stress-induced culmination of 26 years of her marriage. That being said, I’m all for happy endings, and her thoughtful, honest and funny essay left me with a wonderful sense of hope.
There’s only a few more days to Saturday night’s event! In the spirit of encouraging more audience attendance and participation, I’d like to reassure everyone that our marriage event will not be:
1) A rant
2) Man-bashing session
3) A secret conspiracy to marry everyone off in the room (although if you do find The One there, good for you!)
What it will be, inshaAllah, is a vibrant discussion about some real issues faced by Muslims in the Sydney community. From my experience, most Muslims out there do want to settle down at some point in their lives. Everyone has different challenges in their journey towards finding their spouse – the single Muslim in his/her thirties or forties, the single parent, or the divorcee, just to name a few. We hope to bring these issues out into the open, hear what our panelists have to say, and open the floor to hear what YOU have to say.
Stay tuned for a preview of some of the questions I’ll ask the panelists on Saturday night.
Remember to register for the event by clicking here. See you there!
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen – our exciting first Sydney SeekersConversation for this year! I’ll be facilitating the event, and I’m really looking forward to talking to the panelists as well as opening up the floor for the audience. Most people have a LOT to say about marriage, so this will be interesting. Come down and join us!
On that note, here’s a run-down of the types of people I’ve come across when it comes to marriage:
1) The Eager Puppies
They’re generally younger and filled with lovely romantic ideals about marriage and its total and utter wonderfulness. The walks along the beach, the hot chocolates by the fireplace, and – of course – the epic foot rubs. Their youth is directly correlated with the distinct lack of BAD SCARRING PAINFUL experiences when it comes to marriage.I’ll get to that category later. Some do get married. And it works out! This is cool. But unfathomable to me.
2) The Jaded
Now we’re getting to the slightly older category who are getting somewhat tired of the unsuitable suggestions from well-meaning friends (read: would THEY even consider marrying the person they’re suggesting?? Um, no!). They’re starting to get a tad weary of the whole thing, and when they are broached about a more suitable potential, hackles are initially raised, and then slowly lowered. When the right guy/girl does come along, all defenses come melting down like ice cream on a hot day. Awww.
3) The REALLY Jaded and Bitter
These are the souls who’ve had many relationship breakdowns, are getting past their supposed marital shelf-life (this varies, but 30 is apparently time to hit the panic button), or who generally have a chip on their shoulder when it comes to marriage. Said chip is about the size of a boulder. Most of them have been unfairly treated at some point in their life, but as with all things, it takes two to tango, and holding on to negativity makes it a lot harder to embrace everything else life has to offer.
Deep down, they’d like to get married too. But you didn’t hear me say that.
4) The Quietly Content
These are a really rare breed, and spotting them is equivalent to finding a kookaburra in the Sahara Desert. This is a category that transcends age, background, blood type, or even gender. Sure, they’d like to get married someday, but they’re happy where they are. Some have had failed relationships before, but they’ve gotten over that REALLY Jaded and Bitter stage, or bypassed it completely. In this Zen-like state, they actually do manage to snag a spouse. Amazing.
5) The Hopefuls
I’d like to think that most people fall in this category. The Hopefuls are our lovably flawed guys and girls who are balancing everything and worry that they’ll fall apart. Falling apart actually does happen on a regular basis, but they pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and send a silent prayer for a loving spouse who’ll complete them and all that jazz. Because they’re so darned nice, they actually stand a better chance of meeting The One. And around the time when they realise they’re already complete, Mr or Mrs Right comes sailing through the door.
6) The I’m Too Tired To Think About It
This is the category specifically for single parents, usually single mums, who are exhausted from raising kids with little or no support. Of course, child-support from ex-partner is usually non-existent. These are the people who are arguably most in need of a loving spouse, but it takes a big heart to take on a new spouse who has his/her own children. Hats off to all men and women who are brave enough to step up and marry single parents. You are heroes!
A few nights ago, I watched Mona Lisa Smile on TV with my husband. He was surprised I hadn’t watched it before, with all of my interest in women’s rights, feminism and so on. While he cooked, I sat down and watched it.
I found the movie, in one word, infuriating! The movie was set in the 1950’s, and I was gobsmacked by how much these bright, talented and articulate young women worshipped the idea of marriage, and put their husbands on a pedestal. It was so painful to watch these girls attend dances and so on in the desperate hope of snagging a husband. Preferably from Harvard.
I’m all for women exercising agency. But it looks like in 1950’s America, the only agency a woman had was through her husband. There were literally etiquette classes where the (of course) unmarried teacher role-played domestic disasters, and quizzed her bright-eyed students about what she ought to do. You know, I’m all for being prepared for marriage, but that’s just going overboard. There was so much pressure for young women to be PERFECT – perfect wives, perfect mothers, and perfect housemakers. They transformed their very beings to fit this image, and moulded their souls against the expectations of their husbands. Unbelievable. I didn’t change my last name when I got married. I will always be my father’s daughter, and my sense of self isn’t contingent upon the ring on my finger.
Without giving too much away (in case you actually can stomach this kind of thing and actually want to watch it), the uppity, privileged girl in the movie who finds herself in an awful arranged (ARRANGED, PEOPLE) marriage actually does have the chutzpah to reclaim her dignity. So that’s one redeeming point.
Okay, so it wasn’t all bad. Julia Roberts played the ‘subversive’ (gasp!) art history teacher who kept telling her students then you don’t have to choose between being a housewife and getting a career. “You can do both.”And that, ladies and gentlemen, was enough to make her subversive. If I was a women’ liberal arts college teacher in 1950’s America, I would probably get my house vandalised by scandalised upper-class mothers. I would be SO subversive.
I am amazed and grateful that I live in a time where that concept is such a no-brainer, and most of all, that my faith supports me in balancing the many roles I have in my life. A woman must have time to herself to stay sane, especially in the face of so many competing demands. People come and go, things change, but the only constant is God. I’ve learned to pin my hopes on Him, and not on creation.
The world has marched on since the era depicted by the Mona Lisa Smile.
In the 1950’s, we had this:
And now, in 2011, we have this: Debunking the myths of sex work.
Wow. Now that’s a whole other point of discussion.
I really liked this article on Huffington Post – Create What You Love: 4 Steps To Improve Your Life.
The four principles Susanna Bair wrote about are:
Use love to build a beautiful and healthy body.
Use love to create the work you enjoy.
Use love to develop the relationship you want.
Use love to build a better world.
I know that starting off my day with my morning prayer (fajr) helps to remind me of what matters in life. All five daily prayers help to ground me. The key is to take my time, and not rush through them. I can measure how centered I feel in my life depending on how present I am with Allah in my prayer.
Going for a walk or doing my yoga stretches helps me feel a limber and relaxed. I do a lot of sitting down when I study or write, and that puts a lot of stress on my lower back. Moving around helps to clear my head and release any built-up tension in my back or shoulders. It’s amazing what a short 15-20 minute walk/yoga session can do.
It’s a blessing to be able to study and work with what I love (counselling and writing, respectively). I’m looking forward to completing my Diploma of Counselling over the next few months, and joining the workforce once I get enough volunteer experience. As for my writing…stay tuned for my next article 🙂
Spending quality time with friends and family is a constant source of joy, validation and support for me. I don’t have any pets, but I have three plants: Lily, Violet, and Lucky Bamboo. I water them regularly, and talk to them on occasion. I’ve heard that talking to plants actually helps them grow! I suspect it’s working lol.
Hop on over to this brilliant read: How do you find a partner if 99% of the population are a no-go by Zeynab Gamieldien. Zeynab is a fantastic writer and her blog, Love Haqtually, is a great place to read all about the quirks of the Australian Muslim community, especially on the topic of luuuurve. Man, there’s so much stigma when it comes to love and Muslims, yet we’re the ones with the exponential birth rates *facepalm*
Kudos to you, Zeynab, and to all Muslim women out there who are brave enough to tell their story. It’s refreshing to see Muslim women demonstrating agency by speaking out about their own experiences. It’s not cool to see people talking ABOUT Muslim women (“Free her from her oppressors!” etc), and it’s often the woefully ignorant who are the most opinionated. And who get the most air-time. It’s wonderful to see that Zeynab has added her unique voice to the tapestry of Muslim voices in the media, and I pray that many Muslim women will do the same. The world needs more compassion, understanding, and acceptance, and the best way to humanise the other is to give it a face, and a voice. Muslim women, for better or worse, are constantly in the limelight, and I hope that with the passage of time, more of us will be proud of the faith which us brings life, and tell our story – with a smile 🙂
Check out my latest article on lip mag – on being a hybrid australian muslim of malay descent. Ha, yes, a mouthful. This was a fun piece to write, and it was inspired by my brother Ahmad.
We know a lot of different kids and adults who also balance different cultures and expectations, and who probably experience all the ensuing mini (or major!) social gaffes. When you grow up in Australia, going back to visit Singapore or Malaysia (or your country of origin) is a combination of meeting family, getting teased about your ‘funny accent’ and having that delicious plate of nasi lemak/nasi ayam which just doesn’t taste as good, anywhere else!
Raidah Shah Idil, MG Author 