Critical Mass
by Sukaina Juma
25 May 2012
At certain times of the day, she feels light headed. She has to sit down: either on the grass, or on the pebbled pavement.
When they get back to the house so she can get ready for the second
wedding in her extended family, she has to take five minutes of sitting
on the carpeted floor and close her eyes and steady the whirring
energy at the back of her head.
She wonders why.
Then realises that perhaps it's concussion.
The skin at the base of her skull must have split at the first contact
of the ceramic. The pain was instantaneous, unbearable. She heard him
slam the front door shut as he left the house in disgust.
Her friend was right. If she couldn't come up with another strategy to
make him be quiet and get away from her, she would groove in this
pattern - again.
Repelling a menacing, verbal attack from the old, familiar, paternal,
ancestral, unaware, threatening masculine energy with a physical attack
on the self... because she deserved it.
She screamed, screamed, screamed.... the pain was really different from the previous pain.... and she swore at herself.
Why would she do this to herself, again? After so many years? This is
her defunct, teenage behaviour, her old pattern of unbelievable
dysfunction. Reminiscent of a vibrant history of violence.
~~~
A few weeks before, she was asked: "Why do you hit yourself?"
Her wound was clearly demarcated on the left part of her forehead. A
huge bump and a small, bloodied wound. There was also a cut on her
hand, resulting from picking up the broken pieces of ceramic on the
floor.
She couldn't comprehend, or it was meant to be misunderstood.
"Why do I hit myself or why do I hate myself?"
A smile. "Both. If you didn't hate yourself, you wouldn't hit yourself."
Blankness. "I don't know."
What is there to love?
~~~
She didn't feel the steady trickle of blood until much later...
actually, it was the metallic smell of congealed blood that first took
her notice a few hours after the actual event.
She then placed her palm on the nape and touched blood-matted hair for
the first time. Cool. Another experience checked off the list.
There was no way she could wash her hair, the wound was open. There was
also no way she could wear a head covering. It hurt too effing much.
She also didn't want to show submission to a Lord when she treated her
own precious body with such disregard.
She got herself out of the house, after asking for her entourage to
protect her. First, someone told her to visit the cemetery. She hadn't
done that in quite a while. But her legs couldn't carry her that far.
She didn't even feel like eating.
Someone called her a few hours afterward, after she had distracted
herself by surrounding herself with people who would not see her
through the myriad clothing racks and glitz and affluence.
"Are you still alive?"
"Yes, pretty much. You can't do much damage with a mug."
And then... she thought of the smell of blood, the congealed mass, the
fact that she couldn't put her head against the seat of the car or on
her pillow because of the pain...
"...actually, I didn't realise it would be so bad." She says this because she bled.
She doesn't need the human support, she has done worse without a single soul knowing or caring. Just so that she could sleep.
The Divine presence was there. And on the off-chance it wasn't, that too was perfect.
She didn't tell her that she had bled. It wasn't important. Besides, it
was several younger versions of herself screaming for attention, not
this 28 year old crone.
It is interesting to be split into several versions of oneself, to view
oneself dispassionately and to know that one is doing everything
because this is the work. On another level, it really is all redundant
and mundane.
And absolutely heart-breaking.
"You want everyone in your vibration to worry about you."
This doesn't register. It is not the first time she asks the caller to
repeat the mystical phrase. After the fourth repetition, she realises
that it is not just plain stupidity, or defence mechanisms. Or the
inability to understand encoded messages because she is a measly medium
evolved being (MEB).
She has lost enough blood to be lightheaded and disembodied. It doesn't make sense because it doesn't need to make sense.
It also doesn't have to be completely true.
As Wayne Dyer says, guilt and worry are two absolutely useless emotions.
At least her vision has cleared, the shops in Wimbledon sparkle in high definition in the spring sunshine.
"Did you want to kill yourself or just kill the problem?"
"I think it's the first one."
"Liar, liar! When people want to do something, they find ways of doing it."
"If you give me your foolproof plan, I promise to follow it step by step."
They both laugh. At the end of the day, this linear living is funny business.
The car drives into an underground parking lot and the phone connection
is severed, and the energetic connection is also severed... once
again.
It sometimes feels lonely to have a really small soul family.
Especially when more and more of the existing soul members are choosing
to drift away to join higher vibrating souls.
And create entirely different destinies.
***
She thought that the cousin's sacred marriage ceremony, which is famed
for opening up the connections to the Heavens and to dissolve the veils
and blocks would shift the energy.
The scholar spoke of marriage... as the recognition of two souls
completing one another. Of the masculine and the feminine joining and
leading one another to a new level of perfection.
To look for the beauty of the Soul in the person you choose to marry.
This biryani wedding is possibly the most beautiful, soulful and loving ceremony she has ever attended.
Perfection.
Perhaps the ego-mind had succeeded in completely disassociating her
from her roots. The last time she had been to this mosque was three
months ago.
Perhaps, as her dear Imam Ali (a.s.) has said, look to the truth of what is being said, not to who is saying it.
But there was never any guarantee. Most of the lectures made her skin crawl, so she'd rather not go.
***
And yet, the pain of hearing those words on marriage and love and soul to soul union simultaneously accosted her.
Because of a fated encounter that brought distant news of a third union of two destined souls, minds and bodies.
Because she had deluded herself about her own love story... and the
marriage contract and sermon verberated as though she were at that
inevitable third sacred ceremony.
The naive, sentimental 26 year-old inside of her commanded attention.
The heart is deceitful, above all things.
She got up with the excuse of needing water.
She was ever grateful that this mosque was on her home turf, and that
she was not having this meltdown in Stanmore, where she had been the
previous weekend.
It was the result of His Infinite Mercy that her conscious mind had
temporarily forgotten the reality of his exchanging wedding vows with
his bride only a few weeks ago.
It must have taken place in exactly the same mosque. Possibly on the
very the day that the Shi'ite mourning period ended. The day they wear
red in celebration.
She had shared the same energetic space with the both of them, only with linear time and reality separating them.
It is a blessing that she can not read energies as yet.
The Universe is kinder than we give it credit for.
There are no mistakes, coincidences or shortcuts. Everything happens exactly as it is meant to.
Unfolding in Perfection.
***
She had had an amazing time at her other cousin's wedding. Wedding cake, plus three other kinds.
She met relatives she had last seen while at university. Her younger
cousins were the same loving, angelic beings as she had remembered
taking care of and playing basketball with during her time in Canada.
The youngest boy was pure light. He allowed her to ruffle his spiky hair
as many times as she liked. She finally understood why she liked doing
that to boys. It reminded her of stroking a cat.
***
She wearily clambered up the stairs to the children's section. She
usually ended up doing that every time she went to the mosque. She
could only feel at ease around animals and children. Sometimes, the
children even smiled back.
That night, she was the only one there.
She cried for a bit. Sat down, and let the light headedness take its course.
She took out a turbah from one of the baskets and prostrated and her soul wept out all the crap once again.
Her carefully applied eyeliner and mascara smudged and created blackness around the eyes and onto the whiteness of the tissue.
Clearing, clearing.... it had been one and a half week since she had last cried.
Her soul had tried out laughter in the mean time and had liked it.
The soul also liked variety and desired a thorough, deep, profound cleansing.
"Please help me. Let me look less like death. I consciously choose to not go through this again. It's absolutely ridiculous."
She looked out of the window to the new crescent moon and the two
solitary stars... the man giving a wedding speech said they were
Jupiter and Venus.
***
Her mother had been calling every day... and most times, she had not
been able to answer. In another room, or on the Tube. Or just didn't
hear the phone ring.
They finally connect.
"Are you okay?"
"Yes, just on my way to a friend's and then to the cousin's wedding tonight."
"Oh right, I forgot it was today. Look nice, and have fun."
"Yes, I'm just writing out the wedding card right now."
" I don't know why I am so worried. Are you sure you're okay?
Everything will be fine, have faith in God. Things come in their own
time."
She tells her about something completely separate, that did have an impact, but not the core cause of her injuries.
The mater says she'll give money in charity.
***
She couldn't eat the biryani, samosa or baklawa.
That's what happens when you buy doner kebab and chips at 3pm with a
friend and hang out at Streatham Common for three hours, talking
randomness.
She felt sick, and restless. Nowhere to go. So she went up and down the
stairs, finding solace in the dark quiet upstairs, then going down
finding solace in the chatter, the perfume and the glinting sequins of
the variously coloured cloth.
She wiped off the trails of eyeliner, reapplied her lipstick and tried
to make her hair look less straw-like in the bathroom mirror.
She practised her smile to match the occasion of her third (or fourth) cousin's marriage.
***
And yet, the grace of God encompasses even the most miserable of creatures....
They recognised her from when she was little, they remembered her
mother's name. They shared memories of when she was "this small" and
would knick their purses during the lecture, and then have her mum look
for the owners later on. They told her to visit the mosque more
often.
One of her aunts asked her to visit the family in Kampala.
***
Kampala. That was the last year her grandfather was alive and would buy
her "jugoo" (roasted peanuts in their red skin) rolled up in a
newspaper cone when they went to the post office. That was the year
they went to Jinja to eat freshly caught and cooked fish.
She remembered the scent of the wet, red earth after the torrential
rain would rain down relentlessly on the grooved metalled sheet roof
for an hour and then magically stop and the sun would force its way
back into their reality. The peat would smell of baking then...
Kampala... lush, green... Africa.
Roots.
Roots that dig deep into the Earth, grounding one into the reality one finds oneself in.
She shivered as she remembered dodging the flying cockroaches at the cemetery.
It was a time of limbo - a year's reprieve from the business of living
"real life". Amazing how, even in the depths of luscious Africa, one
can find oneself in chains.
And continue the business of pining for, yearning for the impossible. And living in a constant daydream.
She had written a story about a powerful witch in a forest for her English project that year. She got the star for best story.
Hardly surprising. She is extremely good at telling stories.
***
Another aunt said she looked uncomfortable and flustered, and asked if everything was okay.
"Yes, I've just got a fever and a virus due to the change in the weather."
"Yes, but you had that same fever last weekend at the other wedding."
She smiled.
What can she say?
Last weekend was actually a good weekend, chère tante... and one cannot stop one's menstrual cycle, can one?
I've been trying to look and feel less than death, chère tante. I even pinched my cheeks and splashed water on my face.
I suppose the loss of blood has done funny things to me on both occasions.
***
They smiled at her. They asked her if she had eaten.
They hugged her.
They called her by her name.
They remembered her.
***
She stands outside the mosque, and carefully registers the people, and the building.
She grew up as a child here.
The brickwork is familiar. The air smells the same. A letter is missing from the name plate of the mosque.
She thinks to herself, "If they add another L instead of an S, it'll
read Illamic Centre - a centre for llamas. Oh, I think I am so funny!"
As she waits, yet another ritual from the past, she turns her back away
from the madding crowd and looks to the sky for the two stars, Venus
and Jupiter. She can't see the crescent, nor two stars. Just the one.
"I need help, here."
***
At least she cleans up nicely.
She had bought clothes of the latest style from Southall two weeks ago
so as to blend in with the rest of them. So as to measure up, not show
up as a sore thumb. She had a hair straightener to tame her unruly
curls. Her sole pair of heels matched with her sole evening bag: both
an elegant, sateen black.
She had asked for her head to be healed during the night so that she
could wash her hair: the invisible stitches threaded their way in the
depths of her sleep.
Rinse and repeat, three times.
Imagine rainbow showers clearing off all the karma, the stuck energies, the core root cause.
Then take a ritual ablution to greet the new month, to wash off the
blood, to wash off the heaviness, the hate, the grief, the confusion,
to wash off the cords, attachments and blocks: to purify with a
thorough purification.
Her legs ache. Her feet ache. Her head hurts.
Funny how that bruise from September re-emerged a few weeks ago, in sympathy. In order to clear the trauma created.
Or so she cleverly deludes herself into thinking.
***
"You are rotting," can also be misheard as "You are rotten".
A natural progression for carcasses.
***
Still waters run deep;
deep waters can also be mistaken as still,
they may be whirlpools of despair that sink all who come into contact with them.
Even lighthouses and rescue ships.
***
The message behind the words
is the voice of the heart.
~ Rumi
Seek not here the words,
Search them elsewhere.
Sing to me in the silence of the heart
And I will rise from the earth to hear
Your winning song.
~ Rumi
