I honestly think the evening is my most productive time. I’ve been struggling with a something all day long. Came back to it after dinner, and — bam — fixed. So often is that the case. It’s as if peace descends.
At university, I studied for a degree that has been of no benefit to me professionally. That’s not to say it couldn’t have benefited me professionally: by now, most of my contemporaries are in director-level roles in the international development space. But even if my degree did not benefit me professionally, it has been a …
In respect to the unfamiliar, people tend to be moved by preconceived notions and prejudices alone. People tend not to engage with what is real, but with what they think to be so, projecting their own perceptions onto the subject. Long-held views, deeply ingrained, are not easily challenged by facts: it must be the facts …
I don’t know why I opened Right Move this evening. Curiosity more than anything. I regret it now, because property prices around here are just… ridiculous… impossible… eye-watering! Alhamdulilah that we have a roof over our heads. How the next generation will manage, though? Would we be able to assist our children to purchase their …
This week, five years ago, I was setting off for England, leaving my family behind again. We had a send-off breakfast down in the town, the Black Sea and Caucasus mountains behind us. It was one of those emotional meals, everyone subdued. Soon afterwards, I’d catch the service bus for the tiresome three-hour journey to …
These the words that would ring in my ears throughout my youth. At school, the boys on prefect duty, forever blocking my way. At university, the bouncer outside a bar or club. Amongst peers, the young man intent on belittling me, and isolating me completely. In those days, it would leave me distraught. I was …
It feels like we’re deliberately being held in a permanent state of agitation, as if to cause us utter despair. Somehow we need to find a way to counteract this morass with hopefulness. Perhaps we can seek that contentment the people of old had, despite real hardship and afflictions. O you who have believed, seek …
15 February 2003. We’re on the District Line from Ealing Broadway. My wife is carrying a placard with a Quranic verse blocked out in black ink. When it is said to them: “Make not mischief on the earth,” they say: “Why, we only want to make peace!” But indeed, they are the mischief-makers, but they …
Well, that’s my good deed for the day. My evening spent doing my community service to an elderly gentleman convinced his websites had been hacked. They hadn’t been. On the first site, he’d just got himself into a pickle running multiple security plugins which decided he was a brute-force attacker, locking out his IP address. …
When I was young, I usually knew when something bad was about to happen. This wasn’t prophetic presidence, though, merely the fruit of experience. Some, I suppose, might call these events self-fulfilling prophecies. One such example occurred in my final year of secondary school, as I headed for an entrance. We had two doors to …
Mrs Green, my second-year Physics teacher, once declared, “There’s no such thing as dyslexia; it’s just an excuse rich parents make for their lazy kids.” I think she spoke for most teachers there, frustrated that the school had allowed entrance to idiots like me, so clearly unsuited to such an esteemed seat of learning. She …
The powerful tend to claim to be champions of free speech. In practical terms, though, they are only interested in protecting vested interests. It is very easy for the powerful to defend absolute freedom when it comes to insulting or lying about disenfranchised groups. But the other way around? We witness daily that when the …
Daily we are reminded that we are governed by the worst of people, who have no principles, ethics or manners. Daily we learn that those who wield power are mostly liars, hypocrites and bullies. Daily we are forced to ask ourselves: “Why do we let them get away with this?” Daily we wonder: “Is this …
We’re visiting friends today. Both my wife and her friend originate from the same region of eastern Turkey. They both married an English Muslim. Both of our families adopted. We both bought modest homes so as not to be saddled with a huge mortgage. We both invested in a place over there, while we could …
