COVID-19:So what is the truth?

Put it this way, there is a lot of disinformation around COVID-19. There is fear and anxiety and entire populations are under lockdown as an unseen virus grips the globe. Here in the UK we are being encouraged to #StayAtHome #SavetheNHS and #SaveLives. Our daily death toll (that, that is officially counted) is now reaching the 1000s. The frustration and fear has led to an explosion of doubt on social media - daily WhatsApp messages, postings on Reddit and so on.  

Official figures (for incubation, infection and death) are confusing - and in some cases - doubtful. When the epicentre of the outbreak was Wuhan, China, followed very shortly by Qom, Iran what exactly was the link between the infections between these places? When Italy and Spain, with their better equipped health services have reported amongst the highest current death tolls globally, why are the figures from Iran and China not at the same level? And what about the stories (not picked up by the mainstream media) about viral resurgence in those places? Why were the initial responses of the UK and US woeful?

And what about the lockdown - how long do these go on for? Why has there been a vehement media (BBC) and tech giant effort (read Google) to suppress debate about the rollout of 5G? Who is asking the questions about the work of The Wuhan Institute of Virology? Why is the World Health Organisation (WHO) contradictory/political? How come so many powerful investors and business magnates are being linked to the development of a vaccine solution?

So where do we go from here?

... to be fair, I don't really know ...

No one does. 

The exploration of possible answers to the question I start with requires much more than 240 character Tweets or to browse though Instagram pictures. Certainly we need much more stamina to sit, read and explore than seems to be the trend on many (most?) social media platforms. Blogging, perhaps is viewed as slightly old school, so much change has happened in the way we spread and share information over the past few years. 

I know that I have changed; my priorities, day to day worries and concerns have changed.  The way I interact with the world; be it the real world or the virtual world has changed. People around me have changed and I have lost people whom I thought would forever have been there. 

As I've soldiered on through my 40s, some things have become very real - mortality, uncertainty and illness, questions around long established relationships, new relationships, personal ambitions, identity politics, political populism and media influence, culture, tech surveillance and as I write - global pandemics. So how do we deal with these issues? Where do we stand? Where should we stand? 

Essays, conversations, snippits, therapy and social media - I've continued share. I'm not altogether sure I am anywhere nearer the answers, but I know that I am not alone in my thoughts. So when the gloves are off, and I'm free to speak, I shall return to this space to explore - my outlet and my connection. 

Stick around.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Here is the poem that inspired the title to Maya Angelou's book, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. It is the line taken from the third stanza from the poem Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar (see here for the complete works).  The poem is about that feeling of freedom, or lack of. When I think about the weather, my work, where I am, where I hope to be, then yes certainly, I know why the caged bird sings.

SYMPATHY

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!

When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;

When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats his wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

 Graphic source: Tagged

J'existe

J'existe

Lost
Somewhat adrift
Tortured and yet thankful for the opportunities

Emptied
Love hurts
Because no matter what they say, most things are conditional

Pain
Feel it?
When you love something so much, is it obession or pain?

Content
I have more than others
Yet still yearn for the past, missed chances, missed people

Happiness
Please explain this
To mean anything should happiness cancel out all pain?

Wisdom
Only it if it brings calm
I know what I know and only wish to know more if it gives me strength

Carefree
Total Abandon
I've had those moments. They are preserved like gems in my memories

Friends
Notice me
Just see me, know me, sense me, call out to me

Summer
Wish it would last
Forever and ever and ever and ever

Trust
Don't leave me
I'm still on a journey. Keep me guided, strong and in faith


Peace
To everyone
Those whom I love and those who pass me by. 

Ameen

Compassion and Courage

Compassion and Courage

Richard Adams wrote about it in his book, Watership Down. This is a book from my childhood that I would recommend to anyone wanting to understand compassion and courage in animals. It's a work of fiction of course but one of the more amazing things that I witnessed this past week was an act of compassion between our rabbits. Seems bizarre that I should mention them here when I could be writing about something related to humanity instead, but hold on, I think there is something that we can learn from a species that seemingly is only instinctual - what else would we expect from animals that are to all effects and purposes at the bottom of the food chain? 

Rabbit teeth grow permanently and must be worn down through gnawing and nibbling. The position of the teeth must line up so that they grind against each other. It is the way they are designed. One of our rabbits - Camembert has incisors that have previously required regular trimming because of the way they were misaligned. He started off not minding a routine trim (once every 6 weeks) but the frequency of the visits to the vet began to create a level of stress in him (every three weeks to a fortnight) and he went from being quite jovial before visits to very anxious when being put into a cage. Without his trim however, he struggled to eat and drink and this was potentially worse. After months of procrastination perhaps, we decided last April to make the decision to have his incisors removed permanently and he was put under general anaesthetic and operated on. Rabbits under anaesthesia have a higher failure/mortality rate that other small pets, so even that was a risk. The night he came back home from the vet, he looked weak and his eyes were either closed or weeping. I would never have thought I would be troubled so much to see an animal in such a state of discomfort and was genuinely unable to sleep until sitting with him late into the night, I witnessed him eating and taking a drink. Regular foraging/eating is essential for rabbit well-being. Camembert recovered and learned to adapt to eating using his molars and we adapted his feed in accordance. 

Fast forward to August and on our return from the middle-east, we acquired Yuki a new addition to the rabbit family in the form of a Himalayan dwarf, white with red-eyes and Siamese ear/nose and feet-tipped in grey. She is quite an adorable bunny especially with her gregarious character. Very happy to be handled, but requiring a claw clipping early on. At that point the vet examined Camembert again and suggested that his lower incisor was reemerging. It remained stub-like for months until this month it became obvious that both his lower incisors had fully emerged and that they were now beginning to curl back. Rather than a trim, we opted for a (hopefully final) op.  I feel strongly that the company that animals give to each other is important and Camembert's brother, Harrod went with him to the vets. He's the most reserved of the rabbits we have, but a brother, even when he gets grumpy at you, is still a brother. The first time around Harrod was instrumental in Camembert's recovery. Made sense to involved Harrod again this time round too.

We left Yuki at home - she's a playful rabbit, as already mentioned, but by mid-morning she sensed the absence of the other two. The day passed and when Camembert came home in the evening, he looked tired and again his eyes and movements suggested that he was in for a long night. Now I know that Harrod had nursed Camembert the first time he'd been operated on - licking him and keeping him close, but as brothers  they have been bonded since birth. To see Yuki lick and nibble Camembert when she saw him after the operation really blew me away. She must have sensed his illness and her compassion towards him was on a level that made me reflect on care amongst animals and what this means for us as people. 

I know we have people who care - who go out of their way to show that they care, but we are higher order beings, I expect us to care. However, we just as create and destroy equally and there are days when I feel that we do more of the latter than of the former. But to witness rabbits being compassionate and caring really made me think. We don't have the monopoly on compassion, on what it means to feel and care. There is much that we can learn just by observing these seemingly small things. 

Meet Yuki.
Photographed using a Samsung Galaxy S4 (Summer 2014)

Read also: Bright Eyes

Time is Relative

British Summertime: An Illusion

I get to ask a lot of questions about the start/end of British Summertime and the supposed reasons we put our clocks forwards one hour and then back one hour every Spring and Autumn.  There's not much we can do with the Earth's rotation around the sun and the amount of daylight we get depends on how close/further we are away from our winter and summer equinoxes. The continued argument about saving daylight would actually only make sense if by virtue of "springing forwards" and "falling back" we were making an impossible physical alteration by adding more sunlight to our days. What we do in our twice yearly clock adjustments, is create an illusion. The facts remain, that at this time of year, the days get shorter and the nights get longer, and of course because of the Earth's tilt, our northern hemisphere temperatures also drop, creating our long, dark and misty winters. 

So why all the fuss with adjusting the clocks? And for that matter, when we are already contending with temperature changes, harsher weather and adjusting our eyes to the dark, who cares about clocks? Does counting minutes and seconds make us happier or does it add to an already over-stressed society? Can we not challenge this Western notion of  time 'efficiency'? Perhaps, let physics and nature preside over this one.

Time is Relative

Why cannot we take a look back into the history of our ancestors?  After all, the winters were always harsh and there was less daylight (note I am speaking of the Northern European context here - but each society and part of the world would have made their own adjustments) and we exist today inspite of past hardships. As Muslims, there is always this continuing debate around our calendar - notably around Eid and right now, the exact start date for the New Year. I'm now largely of the belief that the 'exact' date/time matters only if you need to do some specific number crunching - maybe if something needs a precise mathematical measurement. For the rest of us - a date - a precise minute - counting time - has got to be fairly arbitary. 

There wisdom of our ancestors meant that 'time' was much more closely matched to our natural patterns. They also 'measured' time, true - Fajr, Zuhar, Asr, Maghrib and Isha were all good markers of the day, and were decided by amount of daylight, but clinical precision was not foremost when talking about time. "See you in the afternoon," meant that people would meet after Asr and before Maghrib, and not precisely at 3.15pm - woe betide anyone arriving for an appointment at 3.16pm. People, (again Northern Europe illustrates this very well) having reaped their harvests in autumn, would conserve their winter energy by getting up at dawn to feed their livestock and retire to their huts when it was dark to drink their hot broths and eat what they had put aside from their summer's stock, sleeping most of the winter out. In other words, over the winter, people had a different working pattern and lived according to the amount of light available. Different stresses, but compare that to waiting at bus stops in the rain trying to get home in the evening rush hour traffic when the world has gone dark. Who are we kidding? What makes that version of 'daylight' saving better and more efficient? 

At this point in the year, there is a collective slow down; hibernation for animals and stocking up for winter are natural phenomena. Apply that also to the human condition; our history bears witness to seasonal variation and not a constant mechanical expectation of the same levels of work output. What's wrong with admitting this? Would most of us not be happier simply to follow the natural patterns of daylight and live accordingly (yes, by working less) rather than attempting to manipulate time in order to drive 'efficiency'?

Read more.

Source: izquotes.com

Read more: Time

Postcard from Al Khor

I took the drive to Al Khor some days back; a route that I would take often, when I lived in Al Khor. As a family we had lots of fond memories of the place and it was great to visit some of the key places that we were attached to 13 years back. The Al Khor Community has expanded and matured, and therefore changed somewhat, as all places do, but it remained very familiar, and navigating my way round was not that difficult. I include a couple of snaps and a Google Map showing my journey from Doha.