Her bejewelled feet or This oasis is overrated

Change is my craving. Akin to the craving of the feeling of ice cold water in my throat during a blistering afternoon in Ramadhaan on a soccer field observing our Basetsana team training for their match against Banyana. Or driving home that same day and traffic braking near lush fountains and the craving to run through their ephemereal waves.

Like Jane Eyre craved companionship being stuck in 18th century England with a narrow-minded housekeeper and a frivolous child to teach. This very comparison makes me doubt myself.How can I feel mineral deficiency when I have vibrant friends, exciting community work, a challenging career and bounteous family. Praise be to God. Yet I want DIFFERENCE. Things have become too uniform, my challenges too routine, my passions muted by familiarity. I know where this difference can be fulfilled, existing a different environment that the one I have spent 21 years in. But then I think of my first visit to Masjidul Aqsa when I crept out of our hotel room for Fajr Salaah leaving my family in a deep slumber induced by the biting Middle Eastern winter and a long journey to this sacred land. I thought only of the benefits of praying Fajr in Masjidul Aqsa, not of my parents' terror at finding me negotiate my way through a band of armed dough-faced Israeli soldiers. Maybe this burning is a positive thing, teaching me to be grateful. I have tied my camels of difference with all the leaves I have avilable yet I believe that even if they were tied with platinum-coated steel, if my Sustainer wanted them to be free they would escape: "It is not for the sun to overtake the moon, nor does the night outstrip the day. They all float, each in an orbit" (Al-Qur'an, S.36 V.40).

Mothers make the difference between deathly lustlessness and a minor flu.