Eastern European Muslim

Everything is growing. New, modern houses emerge from places where there was once nothing but rubble. Old houses are being renewed by their new owners who appreciate their values - you see mosaic doorways, colourful front door windows, sophisticated colour paints and terracotta vases by the doors. It's the same place yet the air talks about new life here. It was once a dirty suburb - now it is a modern residential area for families and professionals where they can plan their future. The place has not stayed the way it was long ago. It managed to take the tide and to transform itself into a new quality. It did get outside help (the nearby Olympics nearly a decade ago poured new investment into the area) but it didn't stop there. Walthamstow reinvented itself as a new centre of humane living for all. Multicultural, definitely, but it's not even an issue anymore. It's for the people. How did it happen? How did this dirty, boring, sometimes even depressing area become a co...

As we have entered the last third of Ramadan, the heaviness this Ramadan brought has vanished and has been replaced by a new force of doing all possible. This Ramadan has been the most difficult so far of all the 19 years with late hours, my son also fasting and morning schoolruns. Or maybe because since I have realised that life is not a creamy cake I had one Ramadan I was pregnant with severe iron deficiency so obviously I didn't fast, and last year Ramadan was in lockdown, and it was all about discovering how easy life could be... But now here we are, with my adolescent complaining about Ramadan being a race with time with no time to relax and why Allah wants us to suffer and I know it's not the point but I also find it difficult to feel the sweetness of Ramadan like all the previous years. When I lived my life in a comfortable lukewarm lie - that was increasingly becoming uncomfortable and cold. Then after "loss of lives, wealth and fruits" I found myself sitting ...