Eugene! a university, a college, and a ring

Two lectures in 6 hours. Eugene, Oregon. University of Oregon, the “O” U. But first, I had to run into the store with the “O” and get my granddaughter Oona a size 3 cheerleading outfit with an “O” on the front. Oh, yes.

The university is beautiful. Brick buildings that have an East Coast flavor, except that the trees are so large and healthy, and there is the gorgeous green of Oregon everywhere. Rick Colby, Professor of Religion, teaches a large class on the Abrahamic Religions and this small class called “Women Sufis” – which he told me he really enjoys. He had invited me for tea the day before, and I was happy to be talking with this man who knew so much about Prophet Muhammad’s world and Sufism.

class on “Women Sufis”

I was to address the small class. It was a pleasure after the short bookstore talks. There was time to stretch out; discuss Khadija, Zaynab and the story of the time in 629 Prophet Muhammad withdrew from all his wives (nine probably), for twenty-nine days. I reported that this had a spiritual result, and that after the dust settled, the wives became known as the “Mothers of Islam.”

I showed pictures of Sufi Women Teachers, like Asha Greer of the Ruhaniat, and Daisy Khan, a Sufi women who heads two Muslim organizations in the USA with the aim of bringing awareness to the positive side of the activities and accomplishments of Muslim Women.

Murshida Asha Greer at Lama Foundation

Daisy Khan: Exec. Director of ASMA Society

I asked the students to tell me why they were there.  After class, Rick took me to lunch at a Thai Restaurant lunch, then we met Clif Trolin, who whisked me off to Lane Community College for the afternoon lecture.

Clif is the reason I was invited to Eugene.  He came to a bookstore reading I did in Santa Fe in August and said he’d like me to come to Lane. I was skeptical. I had been trying to find higher education venues that wanted to know about what was Untold, or overlooked about early Islam, but there had been little interest. So here was Clif – a philosophy teacher who teaches religions of the Middle East – taking up the challenge and making it happen. What a delight! Lane is impressive, modern, bustling with great activity. He asked Rick Colby to include me in his teaching program.

Clif Trolin & Sarah Washburn. Lane CC

Clif took me to Sarah Washburn’s class on The History of Islam, where I was to talk about “History’s Omissions, ” an opportunity to discuss Untold.  So I touched on matriarchy at the time just before Islam, the question of the number of wives of Muhammad, and the legal rights he facilitated. Here Instructor Sarah Washburn filled us in about when legal rights came to Europe. Much later. That showed just how advanced early Islam was in championing opportunities for the disenfranchised, as well as for women! I read from Untold, and brought out the visuals after the hour break. The class was almost two hours long! There were some good questions after.

Zarifah Spain, a friend from many years ago, was hosting me at her house in Eugene. She had attended both talks with me and was driving me back to her place when I looked down at my hands and noticed my ring was missing. The restroom under the stairs at Lane. So we drove back. It wasn’t there. I scribbled a description on the back of a business card and placed it on the sink, where I had left the ring 5 hours before. The missing ring.  This happened to be the Mariam Stone that my son Solomon’s Godfather, Todd, had found – along the Silk Route in 1976, had made into a ring and given to Joe Miller, my Spiritual Godfather.

My ring is missing….

At Solomon’s Bris Ceremony, when he was a week old, Joe gave it to me and said: “This is for Solomon.” I tried to give it to him as he reached his twenties, then thirties, but he said, “You Keep it, Mom.” After Solomon died on January 31 of this year, I started to wear it, and even talked about it at the memorial. The stone came from the formation of the Himalayas, an alchemist’s stone which allows the wearer to “keep cool under pressure and allows him to transform grave, even hopeless situations into creative and positive ones!” Now it was gone. I tried to release it, holding a thread of hope that it would return to me, but felt it was really gone  and wished the finder well.

The next morning I phoned the college. Nothing. Then as I got ready to step out the door to go to the airport, and home – I got the call. A woman named Loretta at The Issue Window at Lane had seen my card on the sink and thought someone had given the ring in at her window. Yes, she had it!

Zarifa, Clif and Tamam at Lane CC

Haqiqa, who had offered me the ride, said she might just be able to make it to Lane and back before my plane took off, but it would be close. She dropped me at the airport ……and showed up with the ring just as my plane was boarding.  A security guard – I had made friends with – identified Haqiqaa and rushed the piece through security, (which happened to be next to the gate) as the last passengers showed their tickets and headed for the Alaska prop-plane.

PS, This from Haqiqa today – When I arrived at the airport it was 12:47 so I thought I had missed the connection. I almost went to the post office instead. Surely a 1:10 flight had boarded already!   But I parked in front of the sliding doors at Alaska Airlines, in plain view of a policeman sitting in his car a few car lengths behind me. A large sign in front of me said, No Stopping No Waiting – If You Leave Your Vehicle, You will be Cited and Towed. I jumped out of the car and ran toward the door. The sliding doors opened sooner than expected, to reveal a security officer walking toward me. He said, “You have a ring for a passenger?” and smiled, holding out his hand.
Joyful surprise! “Yes!” I gave it to him, “I’m on my way to give it to her.” I thanked him and he turned and sprinted toward Security.

“Take me with you, Mom…into your life, into what you do.”  This message seemed to be from Solomon, something I wrote down the week after his death, There I was, sitting on the plane with the brown fossil set in silver on my finger again, gazing in disbelief. Gratitude, I kept thinking, all the way home through tears. Gratitude.

Alaska Airlines flight to Oakland by way of Portland, seat #13c

Santa Cruz Poetry Reading

This Thursday evening I’ll talk about poetry and read the new material I’ve been writing.. Over the last year I’ve spoken frequently to promote my book, Untold, which is going into its second Christmas season. I just sent one book to Western Australia, one to Reading, England, and two to Rabat, Morocco, and I still love to talk about the stories and read poems about the first women of Islam.

Here’s a new poem about Fatima, the famous daughter of Prophet Muhammad. I’ve taken a description which comes from a hadith [canonized conversations by Muhammad and his inner circle].

“Fatima would glow. Her (other) name, Zahra, means radiant. Three times each day she shone: on those in morning prayer and on the people in their beds. Their Medina walls turned white. They asked the Prophet why, and he sent them to Fatima’s house where she prayed. The light radiated out from her. The light of her face shone on the people of the heavens and the people of earth…  When she lined up for noon prayer her face shone yellow and all those in the line shared that glow. At sunset, her face took on a reddish color, entered the rooms and the walls glowed pinkish red. The light did not leave her face until Husayn (her youngest son) was born.” Fatima, Daughter of Muhammad, Christopher P. Clohessy, Gorgias Press, 2009.

 Shine, a sonnet

         ~After Robert Frost’s The Silken Tent

 

The shining happened every day, in tent

And hut, in every room. It seemed the breeze

would linger there, as Zahra’s glow relent-

lessly lit up those praying, those at ease.

That light reached sky and earth just like a pole

star, glowing here and gleaming heavenward.

Her face. At dawn so white, it bleached the soul

of doubt. By noon-prayer yellow plucked a cord

of joy. As if the women there were bound

in Zahra’s golden ties of love and thought.

And when the swallows flew as sun’s round

ball turned red and sank below the taut                                   

line of the earth, red stayed in land and air;

Zahra’s face shone conscious and aware.

 

Robert Frost’s poetry t is entwined with this poem. Look at the last words, all 14 of them. If you get a good last word, it helps with the process of a sonnet and in this case each end-word is found in Frost’s famous and beautiful Silken Tent. There may be a term for that kind of poetic borrowing. I don’t know. But writing inside Frost like that felt like moving down a playground slide. It’s a gratifying exercise.

The other poetry I’ve been working with is Blank Verse. I talk about it in my last review G. Schnackenberg’s Heavenly Questions. You can read  my new  poem in iambic pentameter, Bequest, at the on-line Literary Journal, Scythe:  Fall, 2011 –Tamam Kahn <http://scytheliteraryjournal.com/&gt;

I’ve moved the reviews I’ve been writing to a tab at the top of this site called, “REVIEWS.”  I hope you will visit the authors I am sharing there. <>

Ramadan & Reading The Qur’an

God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth

Q: 24,25.

the Sahara Desert near Zagora, Morroco

I’m attuned to Ramadan – and the vast community which is marking the journey of the moon – by going toward this season’s blessings  so apparent to me! I intend to fast from separation from myself, my community, and from the Spirit of Guidance. I do not participate in the food fast. The Quranic verse that I picked on day 1 was Q: 3:84, the one that mentions Abraham, Moses, Jesus,  and others, and says we make no distinctions between any of them. I thought I’d pick a verse every day, but I’m still on that one. I wrote it out in Arabic and went back and forth with my lexicon. My Arabic is very rudimentary, but I love how it feels to pass behind that language curtain. The visual beauty of the letters holds me every time. [See the line from the Verse of Light at the end of this article.]

I’ve always liked the universal implications of this “no distinctions” verse.  Yesterday I was caught, netted by ’unzila ‘alayna from one of my favorite verbs NaZaLa. It us translated as “bestowed upon” but the root has a couple pages of definitions: descend, dismount, alight, go down, come down, dwell. Tanziil means revelation, a rain of blessing. The action seems to be coming from the outside. For me, the “God’s Throne” is inside, in my heart. So this is a curious transmission from the Infinite to finite understanding – all inside my Being, which is God’s Being. The translation goes: Say: we believe in God and what has been bestowed on high upon us, and that which has been bestowed upon Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac and Jacob and their descendents… Moses, Jesus and the other prophets: we make no distinction between any of them. And unto God do we surrender ourselves. <>  <>  <>

banner: "COEXISTENCE"

Michael Sells writes: “…Qur’anic Suras are at their most compelling when the exact relationship of one statement to another hangs in a balance, and instead of freezing into some clearly definable meaning, continues to resonate and pose questions that only a lifetime of searching can answer.”* *note: Approaching the Qur’an, by Michael Sells p. 27.

Part of this month of  mornings for me is a piece from Kazim Ali’s new book of journal entries, Fasting for Ramadan Tupelo Press. He is a favorite poet who has a chapter of his own sparkling reflections from each day of Ramadan. Here’s one I like:

Sixth Day: “…I love as well the cold needling rain of spring and the autumn drizzle so thick you can’t feel it but arrive home thoroughly soaked.

The soaking, I think to be covered, suffused, bathed, owned, by something you didn’t even know was around you.

I love the mysteries and the inexplainables. The Kaaba –– black house of God, called the Near Mosque, circumambulated by millions, determining the direction of Muslim prayers, the cube at the heart of the Masjid-e-Haram –– is empty inside.” <>

Best of all, this season –– I appreciate the “A-ha moments. May you enjoy many. Ramadan Karim!

God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth

UNTOLD: Author Interview

Recent news about UNTOLD:

~ UNTOLD won an International Book Award for 2011.

~ UNTOLD was translated into Indonesian and may be in bookstores there as “Untold Stories,” Kaysa Publishers, and is being considered by Garnet Press, UK.

Monkfish Publishing House interviews Tamam Kahn (2010 interview):

Q: What prompted you to write about the wives of Muhammad?

Tamam Kahn: As I traveled in North Africa and the Middle East, I felt authority and earthy power from the women who recited sacred words and sang poetry about Muhammad and his family. I wanted to discover if Muhammad’s wives had that same fierce, elegant energy. I began to read about them. I found that – according to traditional history – they did.

Q: Why do you feel this information is valuable or necessary at this time? What does it have to teach us?

Tamam Kahn: This book is meant to balance History and Her-story.  My wish is that the women in these pages may emerge as vivid individuals vocalizing the first years of what came to be Islam; that they will replace the stiff and submissive stereotypes the media often displays. In this book, we see that Muhammad was married to women born into Jewish, Christian and pagan faiths. “Untold” may inspire us to be curious and keep a flexible attitude, and if we do, we may discover all people have the same hopes, dreams, fears, and disappointments.

Q: Do you consider yourself a Muslim?

Tamam Kahn: I would call myself a spiritual seeker who regards Islam as the path of peaceful surrender to the One. For me, a Muslim is a person who walks that path. This was the “Islam” embraced by the women I write about. I am a follower of the Message of Divine Unity as exemplified by the great Sufis such as Rumi, Hafiz, and Rabi‘a of Basra. They carry a sacred outlook not limited to the form, the time, or the place.

Q: How have Muslims responded to your research and publication?

Tamam Kahn: A California Muslim woman hosting a local radio show wrote me that Untold brought these women to life in a way that no standard biography did. Through the poetry, she now imagined them as real flesh and blood women who were courageous, jealous, and fierce – in a very human way. For those who question my right to write about the Prophet’s wives, I would say I have great respect for each woman and admiration for the life they shared. That respect has opened doors that made this book possible.

Q: Does your book have a message for Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: As-salaam ‘alaykum. This book greets you on the path of peace. Come and enjoy the stories of your Prophet and his family.

Q: Does your book have significance for non-Muslims?

Tamam Kahn: This book is about a forgotten piece of history that needs to be brought out and honored. But for me it is not about Muslim and non-Muslim. It’s about our human family and the strength of women. This book may bring ease to a mother whose children attend school with Muslim children, the shopper served by a grocery checker in a scarf, the office worker whose boss has a Muslim name. CNN tells us that nearly one in four people in the world today is a Muslim, although Fox Network said it was one in five.

Q: How has the process of researching, writing, and publishing Untold changed your life?

Tamam Kahn: I’ve spent my life changing my life, so this is just another chapter.  There is a big difference between holding a manuscript and reading from your own book. This book seems to have “a life of its own.” I feel like I’m just tagging along. The directive that these women need to be known is an important one. From the opening poem: “I am here with a message: conversation with these women will never end.”

Q: Can you tell us about the research for Untold?

Tamam Kahn: I was hooked as soon as I began to read contemporary authors, Karen Armstrong and Martin Lings. From there I went to the oldest sources such as Ibn Ishaq. I traveled to Syria and received my own library card from the Al-Azar National Library in Damascus. When I’d researched and written a few chapters, I met with Islamic Scholar Arthur Buehler back in America, and he was moved by what I was doing and offered to help, not only by correcting the Arabic, but also suggesting early scholarly material that was respected in the genre of what is called “the hadith literature.” In that way I had the advantage of an academic checkpoint.

Q: Talk about the form you use in this book – narrative prose interspersed with poetry.

Tamam Kahn: At one point I had seventy poems and notebooks of research on the wives and daughters of Prophet Muhammad. I thought I’d find someone to write the back-story. I asked the wonderful master writer and Poet Laureate of North Carolina, Fred Chappell, what he would do if he were in my place. He suggested a “prosimetrum.” No one I knew was familiar with that term. It was used by Boethius in the fifth century – in his Latin Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius placed poems – each like a tiny well – in the prose narrative thread. The Consolation influenced Western Medieval thought, Dante and Chaucer. The form is generally not in use today, but it served my purpose beautifully!

Q: Who should read this book?

Tamam Kahn: This book is for anyone who wants to transcend stereotypes about Islam. Untold paints this early history with a bold, broad stroke, including Prophet Muhammad’s close and colorful contact with Pagan, Jewish, and Christian women who became his wives. Like Reading Lolita in Tehran, Untold depicts Muslim women in a new light, with focus on their intelligence and creative outlook. Book clubs will find this is an optimistic book that empowers women –– the ones who are in it and the ones reading from it! After studying Untold in an Islamic Studies class, one student was inspired to write a term paper about the first wife, Khadija. I leave a trail of research markers, so the book can be enjoyed as simple biography or questioned and investigated further. Untold is for people who discover that they want to know –– who are these women?

For more information or to arrange an interview with Tamam Kahn, please contact: <tamam@completeword.com> 

Guest of His Majesty King Mohammed VI of Morocco

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Marrakech, Morocco

Marrakech Sufi Gathering: The Sidi Shiker World Gatherings of Tasawwuf Affiliates. I just returned from Morocco. The Royal Government paid for airfare, hotel, and food for a week. I was invited to present my poetry to a conference of nearly 2,000 Sufis. It doesn’t seem possible – but it’s true. I was there in the triple digit heat, sharing a tajine, heaped with rich and delicious food or an elevator with people from Lebanon or France.

In 1998, my husband, Pir Shabda Kahn, and I went to the Sacred Music Festival in Fez, Morocco as leaders on a “sacred journey.” We returned the next three years with groups of American Sufis and visited sacred sites and caravan-ed on camels in the Sahara. Our good friend, who made this possible, was a man named Dr. Sidi Ahmed Kostas. Now he is the assistant to Dr. Ahmed Toufiq, the Minister of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs for the king. Around the Summer Solstice June 21, 2009, Dr. Kostas and Dr. Toufiq got the go-ahead from King Muhammad VI to assemble a Sufi Conference in Marrakech July 10-12. They had less than a month! I got a personal phone call from Dr. Kostas while in England, waiting to go to Germany and teach from my forth-coming book: Untold: A History of the Wives of Prophet Muhammad. Dr. Kostas wanted me to read my poetry at the conference. I said yes.

Dr. Kostas set out to invite Sufi groups from all over the world and on 10 days notice almost 2000 people accepted the all- expense-paid invitation of airfare, beautiful accommodations and banquet-meals – from Minister Toufiq on behalf of the King of Morocco. 100 Nigerians. Chinese and South Africans. Americans, Europeans, Middle Easterners. It was the Moroccan travel agent’s nightmare. The conference was tri-lingual, Arabic, French, and English, with simultaneous translation for all presentations. The weather – hot as West African summer; the hotels were well air-conditioned. Marrakech is as sophisticated as it is beautiful.  The reason for this whirlwind was echoed in the words of the presenters. Sufism is recognized as a hedge against fundamentalism in Morocco. Sufi teachers and their followers hold the notion of the true meaning of Islam as ” the inner state that causes the feeling of peaceful surrender to the protection, safety, and healing of the Divine.” The Sufi is one who carries the essence of love, harmony, and beauty, and pays attention to transforming the nafs (ego). He or she may be a warrior of the inner jihad (a phrase that means to contend, to challenge the unrefined self). Sufis are known to stand together and chant, la illaha illallah (There is no Reality but The Reality,) celebrating this in joyful assembly. My definition of Sufi mysticism is: “It is the fragrance over the flower of religion.”

The king, like his father before him, recognized it was in Morocco’s best interest to promote this fragrant fraternity for benefit, and bring together Sufis from everywhere to foster connection and mutual brother-sisterhood.

Dr. Kostas and a photo of the king

The Ministry further seeks to fund and promote publication and education toward this gentle reflection of Islam in the culture of Morocco.

Of the 2000 delegates, there were less than 50 women. Three of us presented; a Moroccan scholar, Dr. Zakia Zouanate, and an American scholar and long-time Sufi friend, Murchida Tasnim Fernandez, and myself.  Several times at the break I was the only woman in the vast, hotel restrooms. The women were a tiny minority, yet

we made our presence felt. I had instant sisterhood with the few women I saw, nodding or introducing myself to Laurence from Paris, Ikram from Fez (in the photo on the left), Hafsa from Scotland, Fatima from Nigeria, Ora from New York.

My poems were translated by Dr. Kostas, as we stood on the stage at the banquet close to midnight Saturday night. Dinner had just ended, but nights in Morocco seem to go on forever. Before I began to read, I thanked the King. (He was absent, but it’s not often you get chance to say, “I want to thank His Majesty, King Muhammad VI for his generosity ….”) Afterward, Dr. Toufiq expressed his appreciation to me for my work on the Mothers of Islam, and told me I was always welcome in Morocco. My friend and fellow poet Abdal-Hayy Moore read his poems as well.The next day, Arabic-speaking delegates called out to me in Arabic, smiled warmly, gave thumbs up or offered me their business cards.

Abdal-Hayy and Tamam: banquet poets

The conference swag was amazing; the women received silver or gold brocade slippers and a stylish silk scarf; the men, an elegant white hooded burnous, a briefcase, leather slippers, an Arabic language Qu’ran, and a beautiful sacred manuscript book.

Because my name ends in a consonant, an Arabic “male indicator,” and my husband’s with the female “A,” our invitations read His Eminence Tamam Kahn and Her Eminence Shabda Kahn. Nice.

Murchida Tasnim on Sufi Ethics

On Saturday, the international press was everywhere. I gave two interviews, one to Italian TV and the other to a journalist and photographer from Brussels. You could spot the women reporters in their casual hot weather clothes, while most delegates wore traditional robes called djelabas and some kind of head covering. The Nigerians dazzled – in vivid colored caftans and hats. The day we went to the desert, it was well over 105 degrees and all who went – nearly 2000 of us – ate lunch in tents with ceiling fans and a couple portable ACs. We were there all day. The women staged a take-over and claimed the large tent designated for us and provided with pillows, couches and a computer. Sleepy men left and went elsewhere. At 7:30 we all returned for dinner in a bus caravan accompanied by a police escort all the way into Marrakech, flashing lights and all.

The night before, we were driven to a palm garden just outside the city and entered the circle of tents on red carpets, lined with drummers and men playing long trumpets. We sat in chairs at tables of ten in twelve traditional Moroccan tents placed around a carpeted open space, desert style. The couscous and chicken arrived with a procession of tajine-carrying waiters. After dinner we listened to live Turkish music as the moon rose over the dark palms.

I return with new names and e-mails in my address file, my

Ahamed, Khalifa, and Sheik Tijani

luggage perfumed with amber from the souk, and most valuable –the gift of friendship. In this time when most people in the world are withdrawing financial largesse, when programs falter, I was conscious of how generosity on the scale of this event may bring expansion, blessing and God willing, insh’allah, the peaceful benefit of the open hand and heart.

For Italian broadcast of this event and 3 seconds while I answer the question, “What is Sufism?” see:  http://video.sky.it/videoportale/index.shtml?bcpid=1513658495&bctid=29219701001