Malakoot

فَسُبۡحَـٰنَ ٱلَّذِى بِيَدِهِۦ مَلَكُوتُ كُلِّ شَىۡءٍ۬ وَإِلَيۡهِ تُرۡجَعُونَ
Therefore glory be to Him in Whose hand is the dominion over all things! Unto Him ye will be brought back. (Qur'an 36:83)

My little brother Ali's heart was attacked by a raging virus. We all thought it was a flu but it turned out to be a case of fulminant myocarditis, which inflamed his heart muscle so severely that it put him into cardiac arrest less than 72 hours after the onset of his relatively mild symptoms. Less than 4 days after that, his heart was pumping with such diminished capacity that he began going into organ failure, and was immediately scheduled for emergency surgery to install biventricular assist devices (BiVAD's) to pump his blood for him. Out for two days, he awoke slowly from anesthesia and is now facing the possibility of a heart transplant.

He went to the hospital Sunday. Three days earlier he was perfectly healthy. He is 25 years old.

His brush with death - twice - has made all of us close to him think a lot about mortality. For me in particular, about how little we actually control. Scratch that. We don't control anything.

In order for Ali to have the fighting chance he now has - quite literally a new lease on life - there were many factors that had to play out perfectly, in exactly the right way, and at exactly the right time.

Saturday night Ali was at our house, knocked out on Sudafed. I was tired after the late night, but for some reason I could not fall asleep. So I went downstairs to watch TV. Around 2:30 am I heard a loud thud from upstairs. I ran into the guestroom and Ali was on the floor, kind of out of it, but conscious, and saying he was trying to go to the bathroom but didn't make it. I thought it was his flu acting up, he was nauseous, so I told him to yak. He couldn't. How could I have known that he was less than 3 hours away from cardiac arrest, and that, for all intents and purposes, he was having a heart attack before my very eyes?

He took a shower to help him relax but felt worse than before as he came out. He was on the floor and Rabiah and I were telling him he had to go to the hospital. When he raised his head finally, ostensibly to try to go downstairs to get in the car, I saw his face, and it was white. No color. I remember how his black hair and black beard stood out all the more. And then the thought crossed my mind to call 911.

The paramedics arrived, no one really taking it seriously because Ali is a healthy 25 year old. He had been complaining about the flu, after all. How could anyone have suspected a rare disease that affects roughly one in a million patients? But they got him to the hospital.

The nurses, upon seeing him, did what they could to warm him, and I think they all realized that something much more serious was the matter. The ER physician wasted no time, and within 15 minutes declared Ali had had a heart attack, and not a minor one. Realizing how little time he had, Ali was airlifted to Inova Fairfax, a premier cardiovascular institute. En route, in the chopper, he went into cardiac arrest, flatlining for 90 seconds, his first brush with death. But he came back, as Ali, with no brain damage.

As the virus ravaged his heart over the next two days, and he began to go into organ failure, the emergency surgery was ordered and the BiVAD's installed. Such treatment is not available at all hospitals. The team of nurses and doctors, calling the shots and thinking quickly, all operated to seamlessly prepare him for a successful surgey when their best estimates had given Ali 24 more hours to live. His second brush with death.

There is a long way to go. InshaAllah his heart will be able to recover on its own, given time, rest, and treatment.

But who inflicted me with insomnia the night Ali's heart began to fail him? Who put the thought in my head to call 911? Who made it all happen in the wee hours of the morning so that the ambulance arrived in only 10 minutes? Who chose the venue of northern Virginia, where he could be airlifted to a facility wherein he would receive the best medical care available? Who gave Ali the strength to explain his symptom of chest pain to the ER team, and who put the thought it their head to not part with standard procedure and do an EKG which led to the discovery of something much more serious?

It makes you think about Allah's dominion - malakoot - over all things. What has happened to Ali is a complex sequence of events. It seems that he has overcome incredible odds, and had a lot of "luck" to be where he is now. But it's not luck. It was just Allah's plan. It couldn't have happened any other way. And he may have had two brushes with death. Now this avid snowboarder, weightlifter, and financial advisor par excellence is lying up in a hospital bed, fighting for his life.

But the fact is - we're ALL precisely as far away from death as he is.

Can All Ya'll Please Shut Up For a Minute?? Please??

It's funny how when you have so many people talking about the same thing 24 hours a day, the level of collective intelligence drops. No reasonable individual would categorize a person on the basis of one statement. But to hear the media talk, one statement could cost Obama the election.

I guess it goes back to the simple wisdom of, if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all. Mary, our second mama, used to tell us that when we were little. Look at all the news channels - they have so much time to fill but not enough to talk about. So they wind up making idle chatter.

In the meantime, the average American believes everything the talking heads say, and don't see that it's all just idle chatter, and will therefore use it as guidance in deciding who to vote for, which means idle chatter is, at least in part, deciding who will preside over this country.

If they have all that time for all that "bak bak," then maybe they should remind people, over and over, to vote for the candidate whose ACTIONS suggest the strongest benefit for America. And not bakking for a week on whether one comment - even if "elitist" (and hell, so he's elitist, which of the candidates isn't?? which candidate ever hasn't been?) - should cost him in November.

My new idea for America

I was thinking the other day about the Presidential race, which admittedly I haven't been following too closely. Obama went bowling and scored a 37. I don't think I've ever scored that low. I mean, you really have to suck to bowl a 37. So Clinton tells him he has to "get his campaign out of the gutter" (har dee har har) and some old talking head on Fox or something says, "He should stick to shooting hoops!" and is promptly called out by Jon Stewart, who irreverently says "Well that was...racist!"

Anyway, I started thinking about all of the candidates. Maybe it's because it seems that someone who can only bowl a 37 has to be somewhat removed from ordinary American life. So why should he be president? Yes I know it's naive to think that the President should share concerns with the majority of Americans.

On the real, I don't fault Obama for sucking at bowling. I think it takes some guts to do something in front of the whole country he must have known he sucked at. But then, why would he feel the need to try so hard?

Because - I submit - he's not in the same circle as most people. I hate to pick on Obama - in all likelihood I'll vote for him - but like I said, it got me thinking about the divide between all Presidential candidates and the American public.

Not one of them was born without a silver spoon in their mouth. It seems to me that powerful special interest groups have all the say in who gets to sit in the Oval Office. So tight is their grip on Washington that regular people's concerns will never be paid anything higher than lip service, unless it is somehow aligned with these groups' agendas.

With gas prices going up, I get ticked off every time I fill up. Then I fight traffic (and my commute is much better than the average American's, and miles better than the average Washingtonian) and I realize I'm burning gas shifting between first and second gear so that my hard earned money can go to a government that doesn't care that millions - billions of gallons of fuel is being wasted by people sitting in traffic every day. Why? Because Big Oil is a special interest group. If roads were big enough and numerous enough to solve traffic problems, people would burn less gas and have to fill up less. (They'd be happier, but that is not a concern.) Instead, my government spends billions fighting a useless war, just so that Big Oil and its brothers can make more money. And I sit there in traffic.

Then I get to work, trying to help people who bought Lady Liberty's line about your tired sick and poor figure out a way to stay in the country that beckoned them with the beacon of freedom. I tell the poor foreigner who fell in love with a US citizen that the government will need $1,365 to get the right - oh no sorry, the privilege - to live and work in the United States. And it will take a whole year, and if the poor foreigner is a Muslim male, then security "checks" might take anywhere from 1 to 6 more years. I grow weary of telling my clients what I can't do, and I'm sick of all the disclaimers I have to give. I can't even tell people what to expect. Why? Because my government won't pay the costs of administering the immigration system. The special interest groups don't see it as an important enough concern.

And God forbid if I get into an accident on the way home and get hurt. To add to my pain and suffering I'll have to fight an insurance company, to whom I might pay close to $900 a month for my family, and who will promptly turn around and try to pay out nothing to me when I actually need it. Again, my government doesn't think it's important. Me getting affordable health care doesn't put money in the pockets of the big boys.

So - my idea for America - is that anyone who wants to occupy the highest position of public service in the land - should draw a salary of, say $50,000 a year, and all private holdings be seized and given to charity.

Something needs to be done to bridge the gap between this government of the people and the people. If there's no common ground between the governors and the governed, how can the governors possibly know what the governed need? 'Umar (RA) used to walk the bazaars of his caliphate, listening to people. I'm not saying I want to see Bush walking around Tyson's Corner; with modern communication he can get the message without doing that. But 'Umar (RA) had his ear to the ground. Will any of these candidates, with all the fancy technology and thousands of employees, be able to do the same thing?

Aaah crap. Who am I kidding...

Aging

You always hear about our culture being obsessed with youth and beauty. Today I realized it from a different angle. Most people you see on TV were born in the 80's. So now when I hear about stupid things done by celebrities I realize it's not just the stress of fame that causes them to do stupid things: it's just immaturity. I think that's why I can't stand pop culture anymore. As Cedric the Entertainer would say, I'm a grown ass man.

In other, happier news...my family is coming back from Detroit today!

9/11

It's amazing how symbols work, isn't it? A few small strokes of the pen can speak a whole word, a whole sentence, a library. 311, a music group. 411, cool lingo for "information." 7-11, slurpees, Big Eats, and loiterers. Then there's 9/11.

Yesterday whenever I'd see the date on my phone, I'd think, wow it's almost 9/11. And today every time I saw the date on my phone I felt a chill. One thing everyone can agree on is that it was a day that changed the world.

Maybe it's because I'm an immigration lawyer with a largely Muslim clientele. Or my partner is Ashraf Nubani, a lawyer best known for his role in the high-profile terrorism cases in the Eastern District of Virginia. (My partner was featured in a full-length article in a special September issue of the American Bar Association Law Journal, entitled, "The Go-To Lawyer of 'Northern Virginiastan') But as I see civil liberties erode it makes me think they won, at least something. And that disturbs me.

I'm no card-carrying member of the ACLU. But I am a father. And all of a sudden I find myself caring what the world will be like in 50 years. I grew up loving the idea of freedom, and as i got older I realized how little of it is freely available around the world. On a cops show once they showed a traffic stop in the former Soviet Union, and in their zeal to display law enforcement authority, the announcer proudly exclaimed in a voice-over of a scene where a driver was being dragged out of his vehicle, "In the Soviet Union, the cops can pull you over for any reason at all." Small, crappy example, but you get the point. So when I see it eroding in my own country, it disturbs me. No actually, I hate it.

In the immigration context I see the powers that be use every ounce of their greatly expanded authority to break up families, sometimes with a ghastly sort of enjoyment. Once at immigration court I saw a mother with two small children appear at her husband's master calendar hearing, brought into court in an orange jumpsuit and shackled like a criminal. All because of "mandatory detention" under INA 236 that robs even an immigration judge from having jurisdiction to make a bond redetermination. As they let the tall black man away one of the kids started running after him just saying "Daddy, Daddy." He couldn't have been more than 3 or 4 years old. And the ICE officer grabs the kid by the arm and sharply tells him he can't go any further. I mean, hey, this is a matter of national security. The scene brought tears to my eyes as I thought of how I would feel if my son ran after me only to be held back by some rent-a-cop ICE officer. I never practiced law before 9/11 but I hear tell, it used to not be like this.

It's a question that has been asked by all since that fateful day: What will be left to protect? With every twisting of the law for political ends, legal gamesmanship, every bit of bought testimony, selective enforcement, summary deportation, concocted charge, and denial of deserved relief, I see what's left, dwindling away, and the judge's hands apparently tied because no one wants to be the judge who dared question national security in...what's the catch phrase? this post-9/11 world.

Issa Baba

By far the coolest thing going on in life right now is watching my puttar grow up. There's just no other way to say it. It's just...cool like dat. When you see his very human reactions to things - it makes you realize how much he's actually soaking up, just being. And I'm pushed by an unconscious desire to stimulate him whenever I'm with him, though admittedly my natural inclination towards laziness allows Issa to run free and amuse himself without baba pointing out the fact that the weather is sunny in Punjabi, then repeating same in Urdu and then in English. But what got me the most was the other morning when he picked up my cell phone (yet again....grrr) and this time instead of attempting to swallow it, he held it in one hand, put it up to his ear, and began babbling, quite incessantly. And Rabiah showed me how he now stands tip toe, and can just about reach for door handles. (If a door is ajar he already knows how to pull it open, though he hasn't learned how not to jam his finger when he slams it shut again.) But apparently he's figured out the doorknob concept. He's standing and cruising quite comfortably, but no true-blue steps yet, though I don't think it will be much longer, and I'm no hurry to see it just yet anyway. He's learned to "gimme 5" (that's one thing I haven't done in Punjabi yet, cos "panj de dio" makes no sense) and I know he understands simple things like "aa jao" and "nahin." He's also developed a "shareer" look when he's about to do something he knows he's not supposed to...it's bad cos I try to say "nahin" but I can't say it with a straight face.

Anyway I should get back to work...

Second Amendment, my ass

Naturally we all want to blame somebody - or something - for the senseless massacre at Virginia Tech. Maybe it was mental illness. Maybe it was his upbringing. Neglect. Too much violence on TV. Blah blah blah.

It was more than likely a combination of factors that led him to do this. Rarely does one act driven by only one motivation.

But the thing is - these motivations are commonplace. There are a lot of mentally ill young men. There are a lot of neglected kids. Lots of people watch, and internalize, TV violence. But these people don't trap innocent people in a building and start spraying them with bullets.

The point is, a lot of things have to happen to allow such a massacre to erupt. If certain things in this process didn't happen, then neither would the massacre.

Should not we, as a society, invest some time and energy into implementing ways to derail such nefarious trains before they reach their destination?

And that's gun control. No, make that a ban. The 2d Amendment was never meant to allow such a bloodbath. Yes we can blame a lot of other things. But "The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms," deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. Then President Bush arrived at the lectern to decry the deaths of the students and their suspected gunman. As News & Observer columnist Barry Saunders wrote, "C'mon, dawg. The least you could've done was express condolences for the dead kids and their families first."

But we cling to the 2d Amendment, as if it could never be changed or limited. The rest of the world laughs at the 2d Amendment and the ridiculous gun lobby as a relic of a bygone era, kept alive by good ol' boy cash and consituting further proof that we Americans have absolutely no common sense. But then, neither do we Americans care what the rest of the world thinks of us. Just let us keep our guns, 'cos they go bang and it's cool.

Authorities found a $571 receipt for a 9mm glock, a firearm capable of rapid firing and able to deploy more than 10 bullets, purchased recently from a firearm store in Roanoke, Virginia. He had no criminal record, and he was legal. So he walked in and bought the gun. But you can't blame the storeowner. There is no way he could have known what the kid was plotting. But the system....ah....yes, you CAN blame the system. It killed 32 people.

Of all the reasons why Cho Seung-Hui did what he did, if he couldn't have gotten his hands on that $571 glock, then none of this....

What the hell. We have a constitutionally protected right to bear arms. It says so, in the 2d Amendment. It's for protection, oh, and recreational use.

I guess it's just too bad the 2d Amendment didn't protect the 32 victims of a clearly non-recreational user.