The Hayaa Oasis

From ‘The Private Journal’ of Umm Idris.
A parenting reflection on 31.07025, 12:00pm.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I had quite the revelation about something in my childhood. It happened when I was taking a breather from the chaos my children were creating in the living room of our home. As I took a large gulp of water and looked out of the kitchen window, I mentally joked with myself, “Goodness, if this is how much my kids can test me now when they can barely form clear sentences, God must be preparing me for quite the rollercoaster journey in their teenage years.”

It got me thinking about my early teenage years, back when I was only just hitting the age fourteen while frantically trying to figure out my identity and how to fit myself right into the brutally judgmental social world. Those were the years that could make or break a young person’s life. What you put out into the world inevitably cements your social status amongst the vultures running the school, eagerly feasting on the next pathetic social roadkill they spot. Back in my early years, I was not the roadkill. But I wasn’t in the vulture squad either. No, I was the social reject that was passed from one group to another because it wasn’t social suicide to be associated with me, but no one truly wants me there. Like a dessert tumbleweed aimlessly drifting, I was simply blown about in what I would call the moral ruins of society. Where teen trends have thrived, I was left far behind. Safe to say, I never kept up in the race to be accepted because I had no means of conforming to the mainstream of any kind.

But that is not what I recalled. No. It was the evening where I was just weeks away from the year-end exams and I was about a year or so in from finally having earned the privilege of upgrading the comparable brick Nokia to a touchscreen Samsung (though with a removable phone battery still). It was a birthday gift and a reward for extremely good academic results for the year by the way, one I didn’t expect but had longed for out of embarrassment from having to explain to so many peers why I did not have a phone of my own. It was cringeworthy during that time to see a kid with a button-operated Nokia around every single other teen who had already upgraded from smartphone to smartphone way ahead of you. You can pretty much guess how attached I was to it, and how quickly I fell into the hole of accessible entertainment and keeping up with the forever-running friend group chats till the late hours of the night.

My sister had come up to me to chastise me for not prioritising my revision while I grumbled and went to charge it before going to get ready for bed. My father, who had just returned home, overheard this and decided to intervene and ask me to hand my phone to him. Puzzled, I did so, thinking he wanted to confiscate it as punishment or something of that sort. Until he suddenly flung it from one end of the house to another (at least 7m far), smashing it against the cement wall violently. Only it didn’t satisfy him. He got up from the chair he was on to walk over to the battered device just so he could violently slam it again and again down onto the tiled floor. When he was satisfied at the carnage, he looked at me with a smirk and told me to go to sleep. I remembered being so shocked and shaken that I hyperventilated to sleep, barely able to breathe as tears kept flowing down my cheeks. In my daze of packing my schoolbag, I had taken a plastic ruler and held it tightly in my fist as I lay in bed, barely hearing the hushed tones of whispers discussing what had happened. When I woke up to go to school the next day, I already had red scratches on my wrist. And by recess time, my friend (at the time) laughably pointed out how ridiculous I was carrying a ruler around in my pocket all day. But no one noticed that for a week or so after that night, I struggled to go to sleep, having felt heightened anxiety whenever I arrived home and grew heavily withdrawn in school. Nor did anyone notice that my wrist was constantly sore and red with streaks of new scratch marks that overlapped old ones as time passed.

I don’t remember how I got out of that headspace, but I recalled classmates who sat near me taking notice of my drastic change and began treating me with a level of gentle warmth so striking to that of what I was experiencing from my own father. I think it wasn’t that he smashed my phone that deeply affected me. Upon reflection, it was the callous choice of breaking something I had worked incredibly hard to earn (something which he never purchased for me, never congratulated my success on and in fact, didn’t even know what it was for) and in turn severely damaging my trust in him. Today, I realised that that incident did lasting damage to me. Even my husband notices it. I develop strong attachments to my belongings and grow increasingly uncomfortable when other people use them or hold onto them when they borrow it for too long. It was one of the many incidents that nailed the coffin to the relationship I have with my father today. One where I have buried the broken trust, faith, and hope long ago. But that is a story for another day.

As my children squeal and laugh away in their playrooms, I think deeply about the lasting damage hasty discipline choices can do to a little person. It is… for all intents and purposes, a childhood trauma. A traumatic experience for a little kid or perhaps barely a newborn teenager that felt insignificant to us could be weigh unbearably heavier for a child who was barely out of leading strings and still trying to understand the world. What may seem light to you, might just shatter the fragile relationship you have with them simply because you neglected to notice what they valued or treasured. It didn’t have to be something materialistic. It could have been something you said, something you did or a reaction you gave. And for the one who couldn’t take it, only He knows what such a response or decision you make as the parent could drive them toward the extremes so much so they themselves do not realise it themselves. And for me, that was exactly the case. In the haze of my shaken reality, I didn’t even realise I was self-harming.

That memory of that week or so I had was vivid and striking for a reason. Till today, I recall the heat that spread slowly on my face, the cold sweats that made me shiver in the night as I gripped the rule tight and dug its plastic corners into my palm. It was so easy for no one to notice that I had become dangerously close to making real progress in the act of self-harming and becoming suicidal. Not over a smartphone. But from experiencing a kind of betrayal from a parent who is supposed to guide, nurture, and correct. Not berate, beat, and destroy. Of course, such an incident was one of the far many that piled on over the years. I wonder if I was only lucky I had classmates who quietly noticed and stood by me silently without ever asking until I got out of that headspace.

My kids haven’t even reached disciplinary years, and I am afraid of just how easily one can turn into their parent in the heat of rage and frustration. I just hope and pray that I will be another sibling in my family to break that cycle. I realised that as a parent, there is always an instance where you could fall short, but in that moment is also the greatest opportunity for character growth. They say the things your kids do to drive you wild are often the very childhood triggers you are forced to discover in your adult years so that you can work on them and heal from them. In my case, it was the need to break the perpetuating cycle of quickly losing patience with them. Some days I fall severely short that it is almost disgraceful. Embarrassing even. Others, I am humbled to say that I handled it a lot better than even I imagined. I wonder if I can be the parent who understands that my child may have certain priorities and needs to value something that contradicts my own. If I can accomplish this, then I am at least halfway there. And if I can maintain a level of kindness and calm I never received in my childhood, then that is all the gentleness my children will ever need in my parenting.

May Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) forgive the shortcomings of my parents and grant them mercy for they are only human and they did their best to raise me when I was young. May Allah (subhana wa ta’ala) guide you (dear reader) and I in our parenting journey and help us learn from the mistakes of those before us so that we can raise even better Muslims who will proudly represent the ummah when return to our Creator in our old age. Amin.