The Heirloom Project

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I love the little things that connect us to our past. Hand-me downs, keepsakes, trinkets. I don’t mean the super-expensive, antique-stuff that needs to stay behind locked doors and never touched. I mean the scuffed, messy, worn and torn little things that carry weight in their memory.

I love the little things I’ve been handed every now and then from my mum in the past – silver dishes bought in Pakistan, a badly scratched gold ring she bought with her first pay cheque and somehow made its way to me and which I wore on my thumb for a while. A few years ago, she gave me my dad’s old camera, an old Canon AE-1 from the seventies in a battered, crumbling leather case. I’m nervous about shooting with film, and that manually too, but it’s loaded and I’m hoping it’ll help me create some pictures worth holding onto. In fact, I happen to have some of my dad’s photos taken with that same camera – Piccadilly Circus in a black and white blur and Big Ben, asymmetric and blue-skied. It’s nice to have some of the things he once held in his own hands.

That’s why I’ve loved looking through The Heirloom Project, an online photographic collection of inherited ‘stuff’ that would perhaps, ordinarily, mean nothing out of context. But in context, of memory and ownership and belonging to someone once dearly loved, they become special treasures. The Heirloom Project has been put together by photographer Joakim Blockstrom – he has been asking people to let him take exquisite, simple photos of their heirlooms and then share their stories behind them. There’s a crumbling leather-bound family ledger that one woman found in a loft; her discovery of family paperwork helped her trace her London roots. There’s war medals, bundles of handwritten sermons and – my favourite – a little carved hedgehog called Humphrey made by a much-loved, much-missed grandpa.

I don’t have anything from my grandparents, but I love these kind of stories that connect us back to people from long ago (it’s sort of what I’m doing in my book, too), and I love that they can be preserved, in some way. I look around me and wonder what I might pass down, what might be worthy of lasting. But I guess the worth of our things and our chaos and our legacy can’t be measured by anything or anyone other than those who cherish us. Do check out Joakim’s project. Perhaps it will stir you too.

On Father’s Day

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When Father’s Day popped along, all Clinton-card and cheerful, three months after my dad died I hated it. Furiously. On my walk from work to the tube station, I’d pass a card shop near Bank with its balloons and its cards and its ‘Best Dad’ crap. Everyday, I willed myself not to look – don’t do it, don’t do it-  and then one day, a voice inside my head said: just stop. Just have a little look. And so I did. And I stood there, hot and angry and panicky and itchy, fury and resentment spilling in messy mascara-run tears and a clenched jaw. That same voice inside my head said three words – the three words that grief diminishes into on the days it simply can’t be fathomed and you’re too tired to try to make sense of it: It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you all have dads, you all have this and I don’t.

It’s not like Father’s Day was ever a huge, massive deal in our house. Recently, we’ve started taking my mum for Mother’s Day lunch, but mostly both parental-celebration days were just spent quietly at home. I know people hate these days for their commercialism and consumer crap, but I always liked marking it in some way, just because. For Mother’s Day, there’d always be breakfast in bed. A cake in the oven. An offer to make dinner or do the ironing after homework was done. Flowers and some other surprise. For Father’s Day, there’d be a cup of coffee ready, the way he liked it. A card, scored with scribbles of ‘Thanks for everything’. A pair of socks with something funny about dads on them (I kept the last pair I ever gave him for myself). Kisses on a stubbly cheek. On Father’s Day, we’d make chicken the way he liked it, baked in some foil-wrapped concoction of soy sauce and sugar that he picked up from Ready Steady Cook. Mostly, he’d spend the day doing what he liked best, in the garden with a cap on or, if one of the boys had stolen it, a handkerchief notted around his forehead, toiling chest bare in the sun, skin going pink. He’d come in hands muddy, smelling like the outside, like the grass, like the flowers, like the earth.

Seven years later, and I’m okay with Father’s Day now. The dark envy, the fury – that’s all gone. It’s just time, that’s all. Father’s Day reminds me of those entirely ordinary Sundays when the windows would be open and my mum would do the laundry and my dad would mow the lawn and things were simple and unfussy and we were all together, all of us, just like normal. Normal is far too underrated. Those days were perfect. Sure, those days are gone. But time passes and I’m okay. I’m good, thanks.

Happy Father’s Day.

The women’s stories we don’t hear

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It’s been a grim week of interviews for me this week so far. I’ve spent the last few days talking to a number of Muslim women for a piece I’ve been writing on Islamophobia after the Woolwich murder. One was followed and verbally assaulted on the eve of an EDL protest, her hijab grabbed twice. Another was blocked in her car by two white youths in the car behind, aggressively mouthing insults and swearing at her and her three young children sitting in the back seat. One woman was pushing her children’s buggy through the park when man on his bike caught up with her, slowed down, looked at her and then spat at her and her babies.

Some newspapers (the Telegraph, the Mail) have gone out of their way to imply that Islamophobia doesn’t exist and that the statistics around attacks don’t reflect reality, but this excellent piece points out that most people on the receiving end of this kind of hatred don’t take it to the police because they know nothing will be done. That was the way the women I spoke to this week felt too.

Really, it doesn’t matter if there’s been a ‘spike’ in attacks or not – whether it’s one attack or 100, people getting on with their everyday who had nothing to do with the acts of two crazies don’t deserve to be spat on or terrified or harrrassed online just because they happen to belong to a certain faith. No one does. Women don’t deserve to be terrified to leave their houses. Nobody’s children should be spat at or threatened. Ever. It’s funny how people are on the whole ready to take on board discussion about the online abuse that many female journalists (including myself) have written about – and yet, the online threats and trolling reported against some Muslims on social media are somehow deemed really not that serious after all.

Double standards. It’s tiring.

Stay away from shower gels (and the internet): what pregnant women can and can’t do

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My midwife loves the internet. At my first appointment, she wrote down three websites for me to look at when I got home. The first was for the NCT. The second was for the NHS website and its pages on pregnancy. “It’ll tell you all you need!” she said jollily. “Everything about what you can and can’t eat. It’s really very good.” The third was for Mumsnet, “where you can talk to people and make friends online.”

My midwife loves the internet so much, she’s just cancelled the NHS parentcraft antenatal classes, the alternative to the NCT, because of it. “We just thought there’s so much good information on giving birth online anyway,” she said, when she called to cancel my class which I’d booked for September. “It’s probably easier for you.”

It’s not though, is it? Sending a pregnant woman to find out everything she needs to know about being pregnant and giving birth into the wild and uncensored world of the internet is like sending a deer on to the M6 at that bit where three lanes become four and everyone speeds like Lightning friggin Mcqueen (I am slowly learning my Disney references). Once, I Googled ‘riserva cheese + pregnant’ to find out if I could eat it and was left so confused, I ate it anyway (the same with coleslaw). A brief foray into a Mumsnet forum after feeling a twinge and a cramp was enough to convince me I was having an ectopic pregnancy, leaving me in a blind sweaty state of hot curious panic until my husband called my mum, ever the queen of reason, and she told me I needed to calm the hell down and relax. I’ve stayed away from reading pregnancy forum chats since.

But official guidelines, though they may be “official”, aren’t always that helpful either. Sometimes they are – it’s handy to do a quick Google of ‘NHS pregnancy paracetamol’ to find out what you can take when you’ve got a headache. But sometimes, all they make you do is stress out even more. Take today’s report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) which says that pregnant women should avoid unnamed chemicals found in common household goods, including things like shower gel, tinned food, plastic wrap and – wait for it – non-stick frying pans. At the same time, it said women shouldn’t have to “wrap themselves up in a bubble” and then goes on to seemingly negate everything by pointing out that it’s “unlikely that any of the exposures are truly harmful for most babies” and that “it is impossible to give an accurate assessment of risk.”

Oh. Okay then!

Every pregnant woman wants to do the best by her unborn child. And every pregnant woman worries about whether or not she is doing the best she possibly can. But sometimes, telling us constantly every few weeks in the form of some official report or the other about what we can eat, drink or do, isn’t what we need. Telling a pregnant woman to stay away from non-stick frying pans when she used one this morning (most mornings, in fact) to make breakfast isn’t what she needs to hear, especially if you then admit you’ve got absolutely no basis to pin this on. On the radio, a doctor commenting about the report said he was advising women to use organic products. Some people have come out and called this report confusing and scaremongering. It is.

Tracey Brown from a charity called Sense about Science, has said the most sensible thing about this report yet:

“Pregnancy is a time when people spend a lot of time and money trying to work out which advice to follow, and which products to buy or avoid. The simple question parents want answered during pregnancy is: ‘Should we be worried?’ What we need is help in navigating these debates about chemicals and pregnancy. Disappointingly, the RCOG report has ducked this. As the report itself shows, there are many unfounded rumours about links between particular substances and pregnancy outcomes. By contrast, we have plenty of evidence that stress is a major risk factor in pregnancy. Researchers and professional bodies should not be adding to it.”

If there was proof to this report, then yes, I probably would empty out my cupboards of anything vaguely low-level toxic. But that’s the thing. There’s no proof provided – just a general conclusion that somethings might be bad for your unborn baby, but then again, probably not. So: why worry us in the first place?

Pakistan on film

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I’ve just written a feature about Pakistan Calling, an initiative which explores the unseen sides of Pakistan through beautifully shot short-docu style films.  Thought I’d share one or two of the beautifully shot videos here.

This one is about Mera Karachi Mobile Cinema, a pop-up cinema which tours the slums of Karachi and encourages street kids and people living in the poor corners to film their everyday on homemade mobile phones. The cinema team sorts through the footage, then organises free screenings for them, using a converted rickshaw turned into a projector. It’s a clever way to spark off dialogue and offer those who are usually ignored a chance to voice their narrative. Also, in the areas they show the films in, nothing usually good or nice or upbeat ever happens. This is changing that:

Also giving a voice to street children is this video, I am Agha. The film makers followed a little homeless boy, who by my guess can’t be more than eight or nine-years-old, for a day. It’s pretty heartbreaking; Agha has to collect rubbish everyday and sell any paper he finds to shopkeepers, when what he really wants to do is go to school and have some toys. The film makers are encouraging people who watch the video to donate to the Azad Foundation, an organisation which provides shelter, education and counselling to Pakistan’s street kids:

Totally unrelated to Pakistan Calling is this trailer I found, for The Other Half of Tomorrow. It’s a documentary film about the women in Pakistan who are working for change in their own way. It shows that there are hundreds of ways to be a female role model and inspire and empower other women – whether it’s through setting up schools for girls, inspiring creativity through poetry, defying convention by playing cricket or simply making music. ”The courage to raise your voice is the courage to change the world”:

It’s a shame that this stuff doesn’t really get the coverage it deserves – for some reason, initiatives like these are considered too niche. That’s funny, because anything else to do with Pakistan that fits a certain negative narrative (eg the news of an RAF fighter jet escorting a PIA plane, which turned out to be a family feud) makes the headlines even when it’s not anything vaguely political, but this stuff, the stuff that matters in the background that proves people and charities might just be trying to change things, doesn’t. Oh well. Leaving that aside, these videos are incredible nevertheless.

 

On worrying

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Recently, I wrote about anxiety for the Guardian. It was an eye-opener, because some of it resonated with me.

I interviewed some people who’ve been diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder. Their anxiety had got out of control, to the point that they were constantly worrying about worrying so that they couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate and sometimes felt like they couldn’t breathe (cue hot, furious panic attacks). They couldn’t turn the volume down on that annoying voice inside their head telling them that they weren’t good enough, that they were faking it, that everything was about to go wrong.

One of the women I spoke to (curiously, more women than men suffer from this) pulled all her eyelashes out, one by one, everytime she felt fraught with anxiety. That’s when she realised it had all gone too far.

Alarm bells, albeit slightly muffled ones, went off for me, because I know I worry sometimes unnecessarily. Yeah, I once bought Mexican worry dolls like these:

Guatemala-Handicrafts-Worry-Dolls

I worry about work. I worry about falling behind and not being good enough, at all sorts of things. I have a worry face that arranges itself like so sometimes. This, in itself, isn’t really a crippling problem. I mean, it’s annoying but, really, it’s only human (right?). Plus, for me, my worries are often triggered off by something – a deadline, or lack of, mostly – so it’s not like anxiety is always there in the way it is for those who suffer from it clinically. But it was scary seeing how anxiety can get out of control, and that to some extent, we’re all vulnerable to that. Sometimes worries can get too much, sometimes we put too much pressure on ourselves, and the more we do that, the more self-consuming and destructive anxiety can be.

After I wrote the piece, I made a promise to try to keep my worry levels in check. Mostly, that involves shutting down Google Docs when work is stressing me out, switching to something entirely different instead (worthily going for a run but also it may or may not involve watching this, this or singing along to this) and not beating myself up about it. Oh, and being nice to someone else for absolutely no reason also helps – it takes the focus off all that damned energy-draining introspection.

But also, I made a promise to myself not to beat myself up about worrying in the first place. Just because you worry from time to time, doesn’t mean there’s something intrinsically wrong. Sometimes, it’s just your brain having a bad day.

One of my favourite blogs, Make Me Joyful, wrote about something vaguely to do with this the other day (have a read) – about how it’s fine not to be upbeat all the time. And you know what? That, too, is totally okay.

The lost art of writing love letters

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Last year on our first wedding anniversary, my husband gave me a love letter, folded into a tiny square tucked in turn into a tiny envelope like something out of the Borrowers, left for me to find. He may cringe at me telling you this, but it was rather lovely. It was rather perfect.

I carry it in my purse. If I sound saccharine, perhaps it’s because it runs in my genes. In her room, my mother keeps boxes stuffed with treasured letters from my late father, written mostly during their first year of marriage, while my dad lived here and my mum, newly-wed, awaited her visa to join him from Pakistan. They are love letters from a pre-email, pre-texting age; romance flourishing between the folds of the limited space of an aerogram. I’ve never been allowed to look at these letters too carefully, she always smiles wryly when I ask if I can see, but I’ve caught glimpses of them from time to time. My dad’s writing, scribbles squashed tightly together on faded weightless blue paper, rushing to say I love you, I miss you, I’ll see you soon.

I love this stuff. I think it’s amazing that she will always have this.

My parents were romantics. They’d leave each other love notes in the wardrobe. They called each other jaan, darling in Urdu, all the time. As children, we’d summer for three long months every year in Lahore but my dad would always have to leave and come back early for work. Even then, in a few weeks apart, they still wrote to each other. I love you, I miss you, I’ll see you soon.

It’s quite the blueprint for marriage. Nobody writes love letters anymore, not really. Texts and emails are lovely too, but then you upgrade your phone and suddenly those late night texts and xxx’s disappear forever. Or one day, you just get mad and delete a bunch of stuff only to regret it the next day. But in a handwritten letter, there is the imprint of someone’s pen on paper, there is meaning to memory, there is something to trace with your fingertips. It is harder to throw away.

I recently came across this Ted talk by a young American woman, Hannah Brencher. She runs The World Needs More Love Letters and sends handwritten-letters to strangers worldwide, encouraging people to write more and think more. Over 10,000 people have signed up to join her. She said this and it made me smile:

“The mere fact that somebody would even just sit down, pull out a piece of paper and think about someone the whole way through with an intention that is so much harder to unearth when the browser is up and the iPhone is pinging and we’ve got six conversations rolling at once – that is an artform that does not fall down to the Goliath of ‘get faster’, no matter how many social networks we might join. We still clutch close these letters to our chest, to the words that speak louder than loud, and we turn pages into palettes to say the things we have needed to say, the words that we have needed to write, for far too long.”

I have written three letters in the last week. I’ve written more about it in the Guardian today. I hope to write more letters, soon. Let me know if you do, too.

Airport frisking

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On my way home from Copenhagen a few weeks ago, I got frisked at the airport.

I set the security buzzer off. No big deal, it happens sometimes. Then this guy came along, pointed at a stool, told me to stand on it and proceded to frisk me, front and back. I totally get that he was doing his job, and that airport security is vital. I dispute that in no way. But it felt very weird, having a man pat me down like that. It felt wrong. It felt inappropriate. I didn’t know whether to say something, or whether, especially with a name like mine that could potentially set off hundreds of security checks, to simply not draw attention and just stay quiet. I took the second option while clenching my fists and grinding my jaw.

Even though I didn’t say anything, I thought about whether I was overreacting to even think there was something weird about male staff patting down female passengers. When we landed, I found a member of security staff at Gatwick airport, and asked him whether there are any rules about male airport staff frisking female passengers. The guy I spoke to was emphatically aghast – he told me it’s not allowed and it shouldn’t happen at any airport. In America, it is against Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) protocol for male security to frisk female passengers. A spokesman for the TSA told the New York Times:

Males pat down males, and females pat down females: that’s the policy.

I tweeted something about being frisked and everyone urged me to complain. So I did. I started with the Danish Embassy. Here’s what they said (my bold):

Thank you for your below e-mail of yesterday’s date regarding your complaint about the frisking procedure you experienced on 31.12.2012 at Copenhagen Airport. I fully understand that the procedure, as described, was felt as humiliating by you.

The security procedures in Copenhagen Airport are handled by CPH Security, Copenhagen Airports, and according to their web page (link), a passenger is entitled to be screened by a person of his or her own gender.

You will probably appreciate that the Embassy cannot intervene in a matter between a traveller and Copenhagen Airports. Hence, you are recommended to approach Copenhagen Airports directly in order to lodge your complaint with them. I sincerely hope that your follow up with CPH Security, Copenhagen Airports will satisfy you and help to prevent that others will find the frisking procedures at Copenhagen Airport as humiliating as you did.

So then I contacted Copenhagen Airport. Here’s what they said:

I sincerely apologies [sic] for your unpleasant experience at our security check.

If the passenger concerned wishes for the inspection to be carried out by a member of security of the same sex, this will always be possible, as stated on signs at all check points at Copenhagen Airport. If, in future, you wish to be screened by a woman, please let security know.  

I didn’t see a sign, but I would have appreciated it if the man on security that day might have asked if I’d rather a female colleague conduct the search instead of just going ahead. Afterwards, I was annoyed at myself for not having had the guts to have said anything there and then, instead showing my frustration through flinching. Another woman has complained about being frisked by male staff at Copenhagen Airport specifically here. In her account, a fellow female passenger complained of having her breasts touched inappropriately by male security.

I’m not comparing my experience of being frisked by male security to the harassment that happens to women all the time because I’ve convinced myself there was presumably nothing malicious about it – airport security is hugely, hugely vital, and I should have been searched because I’d set the buzzers off. But I shouldn’t have been searched by him.

Just because he was doing his job, doesn’t make it feel any less inappropriate or, well, humiliating to stand on a box and have a man pat you down. I just wish this guy would have thought to have offered me, as a woman, the choice to be searched by a woman – not wait for me to have seen an alleged sign and respond to it. That’s all. So the reason I’m writing this is just because I think it’s important for all women travelling through airports to know that in many countries it’s a breach of protocol, and they simply have the right to ask if they ever feel uncomfortable about being patted down by a man at security, and also not to feel intimidated or worried that they can’t ask for fear of making a darn fuss. There you go. Just remember that next time. That’s all.

 

Rape: Pakistan must look in the mirror

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Last week, a four-year-old girl was raped near Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

Her uncle and her mother found her lying in an alleyway next to her home, crying in pain. Since then, doctors have been trying to save her life.

Earlier this month, a nine-year-old girl was raped, also in Bahawalpur. At the time her story appeared in the press, she too was left fighting for her life. She was kidnapped from outside her house by three women and a man, and then gang-raped by three other men. Afterwards, she was beaten up. The rapists left her bleeding in front of her home and threatened to kill the girl’s mother if she reported them.

In December, two girls were raped in Pakistan’s province of Sindh. One was 14, the other was six. Both were Hindu and reportedly targeted not just because of their gender but also because of the faith they happened to be born into.

All of these cases are beyond sickening and unthinkable. What does it mean for society or for humanity when a child as young as four is raped?

In India, thousands of people have been protesting in the streets calling for justice for the 23-year-old woman who was gang raped and beaten by six men. With the world watching, the whole of India has shown its outrage. It is a country reeling from a nightmare; clammy with fear, there is the realisation that she could have been anyone’s sister, daughter, mother, niece. That rape could happen to any woman, that it does happen to any woman, and that it needs to stop.

The same realisation needs very urgently to take place in Pakistan too. Who can forget the case of Mukhtar Mai? In 2002, Mai was raped by 14 men, on the senseless orders of a tribal court which decided she should be punished for an alleged affair her 12-year-old brother was having. Six of the 14 men were caught, convicted and imprisoned. But in 2011, Pakistan’s Supreme Court released five of them and overturned their convictions. The Supreme Court’s actions were as senseless as that of the tribal court which condemned Mai in the first place. Those rapists are now free. Meanwhile Mai has to live every day with the memory of the emotional and physical pain they caused her. When she heard her rapists had walked free, she told the BBC: “I’m hurt and upset. I’m going through the same things I went through in 2002. It’s brought back all the pain.”

But it seems Mai’s case has been forgotten, because little has changed for women like her, except it’s not just them but their children getting raped too. Around 2,713 cases of violence against women had been reported across the southern states of Punjab over the course of 2012, according to the Awaz Foundation Centre for Development. But of course, most rape or abuse cases against women never even get reported. To its credit, the Tribune Express, an English-language newspaper in Pakistan, published a list of all the rape cases it reported on over 2012, under the heading “Pakistan’s shame.” It said rape cases in Pakistan are “largely confined to formulaic articles in the press, slow-moving cases in the courts and frequent dropped charges due to bribes, threats of further violence and family pressure on the victim to avoid further ‘shame’.”

I don’t know if the four-year-old girl who was raped last week has survived, because her story was only published in one Pakistani newspaper and there’s been no update since. There are, apparently, three local police officers assigned to her case to find the rapist, or rapists. I doubt three officers is enough. That little four-year-old girl and her family deserve justice. Justice, and more.  She deserves to grow up safe and loved. She deserves to be able to go out and walk down the street when she’s older, without the fear of a man grabbing her or groping her or pushing her to the ground, leering or jeering. She deserves to be believed, not to be told that  if anything ever happens to her again, it’s her fault. She deserves not to grow up labelled as ‘used goods’ because of a brutal violation a man put her through. She deserves for her rapists to be caught and convicted and not let out by a legal system that can’t offer its women the rights and protection they deserve. It is what the young medical student from Delhi deserves too.

And it is what Mai deserved, but had taken away from her when the Supreme Court let her rapists walk free. India is looking at itself in the mirror. Pakistan needs to too.

 

My New Year’s resolutions

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I never really used to bother with things like New Year’s resolutions. They seemed pointless, inevitably made  to break or forget about. For the most part, they are. There is proof of that too.

But then last year, I worked my first year of full-time freelancing. And it was tough. But it was also good. I learnt a lot, about work and writing and ideas and editors and stuff, but also, crucially, about myself. Things I didn’t know about me before. And it made me want to try harder and be better and not worry so much. So yesterday, I made New Year’s resolutions for the first time ever.

On the first day of 2013, I sat down and made my resolutions to the soundtrack of Jessie Ware, armed with a bit of self-help (cringing slightly at typing that) on how to set goals and stick to them. I’ve made a list of three things to work on for the year. They are promises to myself mostly related to work and also beyond. Be kinder to myself; be a brilliant writer; make the most of those days when it feels like I’m not getting anywhere.

I’ve written my resolutions down in an Orla Kiely notebook that would otherwise never get used and now sits prettily on my desk. In the notebook, there is other stuff – like how to get over that feeling like you are faking it that we might all sometimes feel but don’t ever talk about (thanks, Psychologies). I have set myself yearly goals and monthly ones too. Hell, maybe I’ll do little daily ones as I go along just for the extra ride and the thrill of crossing it off my list! (I’m actually serious).

I draw the line at a vision board, even though my best friend does one every year. I’ll admit I may have scoffed at her, albeit adoringly, for doing this in the past (sorry, K). But that was before I tried this whole-resolution thing for myself and I completely get that idea of how sitting down and thinking about what you want to do and how you’re going to get there makes you feel better, hopeful. It just does.

Apparently if you declare your resolutions in some way you are more likely to stick to them. So my declaration has been made. I won’t beat myself up if things don’t work out the way I’d hoped. I will wake up early. I won’t force myself to sit in front of my computer screen when it’s totally futile because the words or the ideas just aren’t there. I won’t worry so much. Don’t sweat the small stuff, and so on.

Maybe I sound naive, and by all means, feel free to check in with me on this next year, but I think my resolutions will stick. Or at least I hope they will. It’s exciting stuff, this New Year business. I hope your year is, and stays, brilliant.


Merry Christmas, Scrooges!

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Among all the Christmas adverts on telly right now there is one that makes me chuckle quietly. It’s not particularly a genius display of Mad Men-ish-advertising skill, but it still gets a giggle out of me, even if I couldn’t actually remember which company it was for before I sat down to write this and had to Google it.

The advert I’m talking about is this Tesco one. Like I said, it’s hardly groundbreaking or gone viral or anything (2,470 hits? Pull your finger out Tesco, John Lewis is on, like, two million something). But it still makes me laugh. Some family sits around the dining table for Christmas dinner, pulling crackers and wearing colourful tissue paper hats. Except for one kid who, with his Bieber-esque hairstyle and furrowed brow, is clearly supposed to be far too cool to be down with this stupid Christmas stuff. He will not wear his crappy paper hat. Nope. He won’t smile. He’d rather be anywhere else but here, frankly, surrounded by his gawky idiotic family. Stupid bloody Christmas.This teeny boy makes me laugh because there are so many ‘grown-ups’ who act just like him at Christmas time, miserable, shouty-moany people who think Christmas and family stuff is a load of crap and that those who join in are missing a few brain cells and clearly not clever enough to see through the shame of it all. ‘Consumerism!’, they cry. ‘Commerical nonsense!’, they say banging their point-making fists on the table.

Someone I once worked with used to go on and on constantly about how much they hated being forced to spend Christmas with their family and pretend like they got along – grumbling about having to buy presents and pretending like they were grateful for what their grandma got them. Talk about bah-humbug. These kind of shouty-moany people are all like the moody boy who won’t wear his paper hat on Christmas.

Today, I wrote about how much I love Christmas (if you can’t already tell), for the Guardian’s Comment is Free. I do. I unashamedly love it. I can’t pretend like I’m too cool to spend time with my family or that I don’t enjoy seeing our long dark evenings brightened up by fairy lights. Call me rose-tinted and Disney, but this is the stuff that puts a smile on my face. Two years ago, my family went on a winter holiday to Oman – my brother and I genuinely missed England and our cold, cold Christmas so much that we vowed to each other we’d never go away on Christmas day again.

Growing up, I never exchanged Christmas presents with my family (although I did offer wrapped up Body Shop dewberry gift sets to school friends as per the norm in the nineties) so I’ve never really seen Christmas as this great big consumer-fest of giant wish lists of expectations that other people complain of. Last year was the first time I bought Christmas presents for family members, specifically my in-laws with whom my husband and I will be spending the season with again this year – and I loved picking presents out for them all. If you don’t want Christmas to be all about consumerism, it doesn’t have to be – all my Christmasses growing up were about friends, family, good food and staying home, and being grateful for it all, and I still loved it.

I was expecting the moany shouty types to be out in force below the line on my piece today. Sure, there were a few (some called my version of Christmas a ‘fantasy’; one chap said he ‘loathes’ Christmas for its ‘stupidity and hypocrisy.’) But I was warmed by the number of commenters below the line who said they loved Christmas too.

By the end of that Tesco advert, the moody boy bows to the slightly alarming display of peer pressure (including a grandad stomping his walking stick while chanting ‘hat! hat!’ to the soundtrack of T-Rex) around him and sticks aforementioned paper hat on his head. And, finally, he smiles and joins right in. So you see, secretly, even all the grumblers love Christmas too. Have a good one!

 

The Guardian: How do Muslims celebrate Christmas? Turkey, Top of the Pops and Shloer

by

I absolutely love Christmas.

Baking mince pies, choosing presents and then wrapping them all up and writing Christmas cards … I’m possibly not nearly cynical enough, but I love all the festive stuff that goes with this time of year. I love how everyone gets a day off. I love how everyone travels back to their parents’ house on Christmas Eve, like some sort of ritualistic voyage. I love the telly listings and the food and the noise of everyone being together. Love it. It’s up there with Eid. This year, I’ve outdone myself – I organised my Christmas presents last month.

Some of my favourite childhood memories are of Christmas day – the family round the table, my dad carving a huge halal turkey which we’d have ordered weeks in advance, heaps of brussels sprouts, sticky carrots and roast potatoes and a bottle or two of Shloer (our version of a, er, posh non-alcoholic drink) to pass around. We’d play Scrabble and Monopoly and watch the Queen’s speech, Top of the Pops and the EastEnders Christmas special. Sometimes my mum would do the Asian thing and we’d end up with 40-odd family friends joining us, which would mean less leftovers, but that was OK too. Last year, my Christmas-loving brother was in charge of the menu – he went so far as tracking down an organic, halal goose.

Christmas in my Muslim home was obviously not a religious thing: it was (and is) about being on holiday and getting together with friends and family, something festive and bright to cheer up the winter drear. I imagine this is how it is for most people.

But at school, where we kneeled every morning after assembly for the Lord’s Prayer, it was different. I was in every school nativity play, often a wise man with a keffiyeh-styled tea towel on my head, and I sung hymns and carols in every school Christmas church service, ending with big happy shouts of “Merry Christmas everyone!” and plates of mince pies passed round as we’d bundle out the church door.

The traditions are passing on: soon, my four-year-old nephew will be making his debut in his school Christmas play. He plays the part of a hen. We are not sure how that falls into the Christmas story, but we are rolling with it, in the spirit of the season.

Growing up learning about one faith at school and practising another at home, where we had Arabic lessons, read namaaz (prayers), fasted and celebrated two Eids, wasn’t as confusing as it sounds. I can’t really explain it, but somehow, we just got it and we still do.

When it came to Christmas, as Muslim kids we always knew that Jesus was our prophet too, which justified in some way our enthusiasm for the season.

We may not have had a Christmas tree and our parents may not have given us Christmas presents (another way they differentiate Christmas from Eid: my family only exchanges presents after Ramadan, whereas on Eid-al-Adha we give to charity rather than to each other), which was sometimes tricky to explain at school, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t still take part in it. After all, at the crux of it, pushing the consumerism to one side, Christmas is all about goodwill, forgiveness, thanks, charity and gratitude – and that’s what Eid is all about too.

Lady Warsi recently said Muslims “should” celebrate Christmas. But what she ignores is so many of us – along with people from all faiths and no faith – already do. Whether it’s cooking a Christmas dinner, decorating a Christmas tree or joining in with carol singing, so many of us “minorities” Warsi refers to are keeping traditions, albeit little, secular, seasonal ones, alive in our own homes, in our own ways. It’s something I’ve seen my parents’ generation, who arrived here in the 60s and 70s, do for decades. Those of us who “do” Christmas do it because we want to.

This year, I’m celebrating Christmas with my in-laws. They are Christian (my husband converted to Islam), and last year was the first time I spent Christmas with them. I won’t pretend I wasn’t at first anxious as to how it would be, but it turned out their Christmas is no different to the Muslim-Qureshi version of it I’ve always known, except they had a tree and gave each other presents. But other than that it was the same – lots of family, lots of food, lots of chatter, natter and fun. I’m guessing it’s sort of the same everywhere.

Though Warsi made her point clumsily and patronisingly, it surely can’t be a bad thing to celebrate different traditions from cultures and religions that aren’t necessarily your own (if that’s what you want to do and don’t want a government minister telling you what you “should” be doing, that is).

I recently invited a young couple, who weren’t Muslim, over for dinner during Ramadan, as part of an initiative to bring people of different backgrounds together: it was brilliant. When I was at school, I went to pujas with Hindu friends, our Christian next-door neighbours send my family Eid cards and gifts, and vice versa on Christmas. My mum always prepares trays laden with Eid food for the neighbours – a friendly, simple gesture that says so much about people living side by side, believing different things but not letting that get in the way of normal life and friendship.

It’s simple really, it just comes down to thoughtfulness, respect and having an open mind. Sharing religious or cultural celebrations opens traditions up, so that we can all get to see, and be a part of, the best, warmest and most generous, most welcoming parts of society. If it sounds like I’ve got that fuzzy feeling, it’s because I have. What can I say, Christmas does that to me. And that’s reason enough for me to celebrate.