a word to the wise.

Abukar Kenshin shared an answer on Quora with you

Will Trump lead to the downfall of the USA? by David Lee Rippie https://www.quora.com/Will-Trump-lead-to-the-downfall-of-the-USA/answer/David-Lee-Rippie?srid=hdqRh&share=3640024d

​its not easy to leave your family behind to go seek greener pastures abroad and especially in Saudi Arabia.

when i left Kenya for Saudi Arabia in 2014, i left my wife and my little girl. she was only one and a half years old when i left for their benefit.

she was already walking by herself, albeit unsteadily and hadn’t begun to speak properly.

when i came for vacation in 2016, my wife came to pick me up from the airport.

my princess was asleep on the back seat and i got in and scooped her up and cradled her on my lap and when she woke up, she was in the lap of this stranger whom she didn’t know.

it took some time for us to bond again and unfortunately, the vacation was over, and i had to go back to Saudi Arabia again.

i’m always worrying.

worrying that there will be another Al- Shabab terrorist militia attack in Nairobi, our fair capital city, and that i’ll be three thousand miles away, too far to be able to keep my family safe.

worrying about the doctor’s strike in Kenya and how that’s going to imapact on my life, keeping in mind that we’re expecting a second child and that an expectant mother who went to the hospital to be delivered was turned away and as she sought means to go to a private hospital, she went into labor, there were complications and the baby died.

worrying that as here in Saudi Arabia, we’re just south of the border with Iraq and north of the border with Yemen and with the Saudi war in Yemen afoot, an extremist from Yemen or an ISIS operative from Iraq may slip through the security net and blow up shopping mall to make a political statement, with me happly sitting in my car at the parking zone.

worrying about the reckless driving style of most Saudi drivers and how, despite having taken all precautions, a young man with a Chrysler or Dodge muscle car might get it into his head to do the Tokyo Drift, lose control and hit my car (i don’t want to imagine my life in a wheelchair or my wife widowed and my kids orphaned).

they say that mixed marriages in Kenya don’t work out.

i’m a Muslim and my wife’s a Christian and we somehow make it work out.

with love, trust, empathy and compassion, we make it work out.

and if my delightful four year old daughter isn’t proof enough that where there’s a will, there’s a way, i just dont know what is.

i miss my clan back at home.

​a friend of a friend narrated this once, a couple of lifetimes ago.

in East Berlin, there’s this big public square in front of the cathedral called the Bebelplatz.

on Sundays, he would often walk to the Bebelplatz.

it wasn’t the grand architecture which took him there, it was the evil of the place.

one night in May 1933, the Nazis led a torch-lit mob into the square and looted the library of the adjoining Friedrich-Wilhelm University.

forty thousand people cheered as they burnt over twenty thousand books by Jewish authors.

many years later, a panel of glass was set into the ground to mark the spot where the fire had been.

its a window and, by leaning over, you can look into a room below.

the room is white, lined from floor to ceiling with plain shelves.

an empty library.

the sort of world we’d live in if the fanatics had won.

its a good memorial, better than any statue.

after a couple of visits to the plaza, the narrator realized that the empty library wasn’t the only interesting thing.

an old city cleaner with watery eyes, a guy whi was there every Sunday sweeping up, was a fake.

to the narrator, the sweeper’s “legend” wasn’t quite right.

he was too thorough in his work and the grey overalls were tailored a bit too well.

so one day, he asked him why he swept the square.

he said he was seventy years old, it was hard to find a job, and a man had to earn an honest living – and then he saw the look on the narrator’s face and didn’t bother lying anymore.

he sat down, rolled up his sleeve and showed the narrator seven faded numbers tattooed on his wrist.

he was Jewish, and he pointed at groups of old men of his generation, dressed in their Sunday suits, taking the sun on nearby seats.

he told the narrator that they were Germans – but like a lot of Germans, they hadn’t changed, they’d just lost.

in their hearts, he said, they still sang the old songs.

he said that he swept the square so that they would see him and know: a Jew had survived, the race lived on, their people had ENDURED.

the square was his revenge.

as a child, the square had been his playground and he said that he was there the night the Nazis came.

he pointed at the old university and said his father was the librarian and the family had lived in an apartment behind his father’s office.

a few years after the bonfire, the mob came for him and his family.

like he said, it’s always the same – they start out burning books and end up burning people.

out of his parents and five kids, he was the only survivor.

he passed through three camps in five years, all of them death camps, including Auschwitz.

because it was such a miracle that he had survived, the narrator asked him what he had learned.

the old man laughed and said nothing you’d call original.

death’s terrible, suffering’s worse; as usual, the shits made up the marjority – on both sides of the wire.

he then thought for a moment and said there was one thing the experience had taught him.

he said that he’d learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believe in God, said they were going to kill you – JUST LISTEN TO THEM.

reading: a culture.

​”when i was in school, both elementary and high, i used to known as The Walking Dictionary. can you try to live up to the same ideals?”

my late dad said those words to me when i was little.

he was a pedriatician who had to constantly be reading and attending medical seminars so as to keep himself abreast with the latest developments in pedriatrics. apart from that, he had a deep love for reading and he bought two newspapers to read everyday, all his life.

he made sure that we attended the best schools that he could afford and he made sacrifices for me and my siblings where education was concerned.

so, i started reading. making mistakes, mispronouncing words, getting laughed at, but i struggled on.

before my elementary school (it used to be called Muslim Girls Primary and Secondary School because the Secondary school was for girls only, but now is known as Muslim Academy, situated at Park Road in Nairobi, Kenya) initiated the School Bus programme, my dad used to drop us at school and pick us up in the evenings. and by us, i’m refering to his sister (my aunt), my cousin, my younger brother and i. since i was his favorite and i’d always been fascinated by cars and engines since i was a kid, i got the honor of riding shotgun with him.

he would buy the newspapers from the street vendors, thrust them at me and instruct me to read the headlines to him as he drove.

most of the times, i didn’t even understand what i was reading, but i read.

as my reading skills improved and i began getting 100% in Reading and Comprehension, my English teacher suggested to my dad that he should encourage me even more by buying storybooks and comics for me to read.

and he did.

Famous Five, Mallory Towers, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Dandy, Beano, The Fantastic Four, Asterix, Biggles and Tintin.

i started being a discerning reader, knowing what i liked and going for it and knowing what i didn’t like and ignoring it. i did NOT like The Secret Seven.

when i did the mock exams for the Kenya Certificate for Primary Education (KCPE), the entrance ticket for high school, my essay was the second best, pasted on the wall at the English Section and my dad stood there and quietly pointed it out to any parent who came ambling by. “that’s my son’s”, he’d say, and the pride that shone on his face was payment enough for all the hardwork i put in.

sure, i was weak in Math (most people usually are), but it got to a point where i just had to be included in the Muslim Girls’ team that was going to face off hated Aga Khan in the Inter-Primary Schools competitions that used to be known as Junior Quiz, because i was devastating in English, History, Science and Agriculture and General Knowledge.

i’ve never looked back. i’m still a serious reader, an omnivorous peruser of any book that i can get my hands on. i think that reading is important, especially in this era of smart phones and stupid people.

i do have a mini-library of sorts in my house, because i also love buying books, reading them and keeping them in my collection.

those who used to laugh at me and call me a nerd now treat me with the utmost respect because when they’re stumped about something, they’re often told by their peers, “go ask Abukar. that guy knows almost everything.”

and my greatest joy is that my little girl is showing signs of fully following in my footsteps. she loves reading, does her homework without being supervised or cajoled and for a four year old, she’s certainly a Wunderkind in the making.

and the main aim of my having a library in my house was for her benefit. let’s see how far she’ll progress. the future certainly looks bright for her.

so, reading and appreciating books is either in the blood or its not; no two ways about it.

here’s the church, here’s the steeple.

its Christmas Day.
Muslims don’t celebrate Christmas as a rule, (dogmatic differences of opinion), but i was born and raised in Kenya, where Christians are the marjority and my dad mostly a liberal.
growing up as kids, Christmas for us meant gifts, new clothes, and a trip upcountry to see our grandmum.
such things wouldn’t have happened if we’d grown up say in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan or Indonesia.
i got used to that feeling of joy, fun and charity towards each other and towards our friends and relatives.
i’m a migrant worker in Saudi Arabia and i’ve left my wife and daughter back in Kenya, to go work abroad.
my wife and i are in constant communication and when i asked her what plans they had for Christmas Day, she told me that she’ll be taking our little princess for a lunch outing at an amusement park near our house.
my little girl was prattling to me about the clothes her mum had bought for her for the day and for her, a day out to play, do some swimming and indulge in her favorite foods (french fries and chicken) is a memorable day for her.
as i drive my boss and his family to King Khalid International Airport, here in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, so that they can catch a flight to Dubai, where the ambience is much more relaxed than in Saudi Arabia and they can join others in the festivities of the day, i think about my wife and my daughter and the simple Christmas they’re going to have, sans môi, i ponder over the wisdom of the words, “ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL”.

i’d like to take this opportunity to wish my Christian siblings a very merry and tranquil Christmas and a happy Hanukkah for my Jewish siblings wherever they may be.
let’s all get into the spirit of generosity, charity and goodwill towards each other.

a survivor’s tale.

a friend of a friend narrated this once, a couple of lifetimes ago.

in East Berlin, there’s this big public square in front of the cathedral called the Bebelplatz.

on Sundays, he would often walk to the Bebelplatz.

it wasn’t the grand architecture which took him there, it was the evil of the place.

one night in May 1933, the Nazis led a torch-lit mob into the square and looted the library of the adjoining Friedrich-Wilhelm University.

forty thousand people cheered as they burnt over twenty thousand books by Jewish authors.

many years later, a panel of glass was set into the ground to mark the spot where the fire had been.

its a window and, by leaning over, you can look into a room below.

the room is white, lined from floor to ceiling with plain shelves.

an empty library.

the sort of world we’d live in if the fanatics had won.

its a good memorial, better than any statue.

after a couple of visits to the plaza, the narrator realized that the empty library wasn’t the only interesting thing.

an old city cleaner with watery eyes, a guy whi was there every Sunday sweeping up, was a fake.

to the narrator, the sweeper’s “legend” wasn’t quite right.

he was too thorough in his work and the grey overalls were tailored a bit too well.

so one day, he asked him why he swept the square.

he said he was seventy years old, it was hard to find a job, and a man had to earn an honest living – and then he saw the look on the narrator’s face and didn’t bother lying anymore.

he sat down, rolled up his sleeve and showed the narrator seven faded numbers tattooed on his wrist.

he was Jewish, and he pointed at groups of old men of his generation, dressed in their Sunday suits, taking the sun on nearby seats.

he told the narrator that they were Germans – but like a lot of Germans, they hadn’t changed, they’d just lost.

in their hearts, he said, they still sang the old songs.

he said that he swept the square so that they would see him and know: a Jew had survived, the race lived on, their people had ENDURED.

the square was his revenge.

as a child, the square had been his playground and he said that he was there the night the Nazis came.

he pointed at the old university and said his father was the librarian and the family had lived in an apartment behind his father’s office.

a few years after the bonfire, the mob came for him and his family.

like he said, it’s always the same – they start out burning books and end up burning people.

out of his parents and five kids, he was the only survivor.

he passed through three camps in five years, all of them death camps, including Auschwitz.

because it was such a miracle that he had survived, the narrator asked him what he had learned.

the old man laughed and said nothing you’d call original.

death’s terrible, suffering’s worse; as usual, the s**ts made up the marjority – on both sides of the wire.

he then thought for a moment and said there was one thing the experience had taught him.

he said that he’d learned that when millions of people, a whole political system, countless numbers of citizens who believe in God, said they were going to kill you – JUST LISTEN TO THEM.

there is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people don’t have until they are middle-aged. its something that can’t be taught to younger people, because its not logical and doesn’t obey laws which are constant. it has no rules. only, in the long years which bring people to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. you can’t teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to it logically – they have to learn the strange poise of walking by experience. in some way like that, you can’t teach a young person to have knowledge of the world. they have to be left to the experience of the years. and then, when they’re beginning to hate their used body, they suddenly find that they can do it. they can go on living – not by principle, not by deduction, not by knowledge of good and evil, but simply by a peculiar and shifting sense of balance which defies each of these things often. they no longer hope to live by seeking the truth – if young people ever do hope this – but continue henceforth under the guidance of a seventh sense. Balance was the sixth sense, which they won when they first learned to walk, and now they have the seventh one – knowledge of the world. the slow discovery of the seventh sense, by which both men and women contrive to ride the waves of a world in which there is war, adultery, compromise, fear, stultification and hypocrisy – this discovery is not a matter of triumph. the baby, perhaps, cries out triumphantly: “I have Balance!” but the seventh sense is recognized without a cry. we only carry on with our famous knowledge of the world, riding the queer waves in a habitual, petrifying way, because we have reached a stage of deadlock in which we can think of nothing else to do. and at this stage we begin to forget that there ever was a time when we lacked the seventh sense. we begin to forget, as we go stolidly balancing along, that there could have been a time when we were young bodies flaming with the impetus of life. its hardly consoling to remember such a feeling, and so it deadens in our minds. but there was a time when each of us stood naked before the world, confronting life as a serious problem with which we were intimately and passionately concerned. there was a time when it was of vital interest to us to find out whether there was a God or not. obviously the existence or otherwise of a future life must be of the very first importance to somebody who is going to live their present one, because their manner of living it must hinge on the problem.

genesis.

people often ask, as an idle question, whether the process of evolution began with the chicken or the egg. was there an egg out of which the first chicken came, or did a chicken lay the first egg? I am in a position to say that the first thing created was the egg. when God had manufactured all the eggs out of which the fishes and the serpents and the birds and the mammals and even the duck-billed Platypus would eventually emerge, He called the embryos before Him, and saw that they were good. all embryos look very much the same. they are what you are before you are a born – and whether you’re going to be a tadpole or a peacock or a giraffe or a man, when you’re an embryo, you just look like a peculiarly repulsive and helpless human being. the embryos stood in front of God, with their feeble hands clasped politely over their stomachs and their heavy heads hanging down respectfully, and God addressed them. He said: “now, you embryos, here you are, all looking exactly the same, and We are going to give you the choice of what you want to be. when you grow up you will get bigger anyway, but We are pleased to grant you another gift as well. you may alter any part of yourselves into anything which you think would be useful to you in later life. for instance, at the moment, you can’t dig. anybody who would like to turn his hands into a pair of spades or garden forks is allowed to do so. or, to put it in another way, at present you can only use your mouths for eating. anybody who would like to use his mouth as an offensive weapon, can change it by asking and be a corkindrill or a sabre-toothed tiger. now then, step up and choose your tools, but remember that what you choose you will grow into, and will have to stick to.” all the embryos thought the matter up politely, and then, one by one, they stepped up before the Eternal Throne. they were allowed two or three specializations, so that some chose to use their arms as flying machines and their mouths as weapons, or crackers, or drillers, or spoons, while others selected to use their bodies as boats and their hands as oars. badgers thought very hard and decided to ask three boons. they wanted to change their skins for shields, their mouths for weapons and their arms for garden forks. these boons were granted. everybody specialized in one way or another, and some of them in very queer ones. the asking and the granting took up two long days – they were the fifth and the sixth – and at the very end of the sixth day, just before it was time to knock off for Saturday, they had got through all the little embryos except one. this embryo was Man. “well, Our little man,” said God. “you have waited till the last, and slept on your decision, and We are sure you have been thinking hard all the time. what can We do for you?” “please, God,” said the embryo, “I think that You made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourself, and that it would be rude to change. if I am to have my choice, I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which You gave me, for other and doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenseless embryo all of my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron and the other materials which You have seen fit to put before me. if I want a boat, I will try to construct it out of trees, and if I want to fly, I will put together a chariot to do it for me. probably I’ve been very silly in refusing to take advantage of Your kind offer, but I have done my very best to think it over carefully, and now hope that the feeble decisions of this small innocent will find favor with Yourself.” “well done,” exclaimed the Creator in delighted tones. “here, all you embryos, come here with your beaks and whatnots to look upon Our first Man. he is the only one who has guessed Our riddle, out of all of you, and We have great pleasure in conferring upon him the Order of Dominion over the Fowls of the Air, and the Beasts of the Earth, and the Fishes of the Sea. now let the rest of you get along, and love and multiply, for it is time to knock-off for the week-end. as for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools. you will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. run along then, and do your best. and listen, Man, before you go…” “well?” asked Adam, turning back from his dismissal. “We were only going to say, God bless you.” it is true that Man has the Order of Dominion, and is mightiest of the animals – if you mean the most terrible one – but I have sometimes doubted lately whether he is the most blessed. if he were to go for a walk beside a river, not only would the birds fly from him, but the very fish would dart to the other side. they don’t do this for each other. Man may be the king of animals (or ought one to say the tyrant?) but we have to admit that he has a quantity of vices. Homo Sapien is almost the only animal which wages war on its own kind. true warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism. don’t you think that is very unfortunate?

genesis.

people often ask, as an idle question, whether the process of evolution began with the chicken or the egg. was there an egg out of which the first chicken came, or did a chicken lay the first egg? I am in a position to say that the first thing created was the egg. when God had manufactured all the eggs out of which the fishes and the serpents and the birds and the mammals and even the duck-billed Platypus would eventually emerge, He called the embryos before Him, and saw that they were good. all embryos look very much the same. they are what you are before you are a born – and whether you’re going to be a tadpole or a peacock or a giraffe or a man, when you’re an embryo, you just look like a peculiarly repulsive and helpless human being. the embryos stood in front of God, with their feeble hands clasped politely over their stomachs and their heavy heads hanging down respectfully, and God addressed them. He said: “now, you embryos, here you are, all looking exactly the same, and We are going to give you the choice of what you want to be. when you grow up you will get bigger anyway, but We are pleased to grant you another gift as well. you may alter any part of yourselves into anything which you think would be useful to you in later life. for instance, at the moment, you can’t dig. anybody who would like to turn his hands into a pair of spades or garden forks is allowed to do so. or, to put it in another way, at present you can only use your mouths for eating. anybody who would like to use his mouth as an offensive weapon, can change it by asking and be a corkindrill or a sabre-toothed tiger. now then, step up and choose your tools, but remember that what you choose you will grow into, and will have to stick to.” all the embryos thought the matter up politely, and then, one by one, they stepped up before the Eternal Throne. they were allowed two or three specializations, so that some chose to use their arms as flying machines and their mouths as weapons, or crackers, or drillers, or spoons, while others selected to use their bodies as boats and their hands as oars. badgers thought very hard and decided to ask three boons. they wanted to change their skins for shields, their mouths for weapons and their arms for garden forks. these boons were granted. everybody specialized in one way or another, and some of them in very queer ones. the asking and the granting took up two long days – they were the fifth and the sixth – and at the very end of the sixth day, just before it was time to knock off for Saturday, they had got through all the little embryos except one. this embryo was Man. “well, Our little man,” said God. “you have waited till the last, and slept on your decision, and We are sure you have been thinking hard all the time. what can We do for you?” “please, God,” said the embryo, “I think that You made me in the shape which I now have for reasons best known to Yourself, and that it would be rude to change. if I am to have my choice, I will stay as I am. I will not alter any of the parts which You gave me, for other and doubtless inferior tools, and I will stay a defenseless embryo all of my life, doing my best to make myself a few feeble implements out of the wood, iron and the other materials which You have seen fit to put before me. if I want a boat, I will try to construct it out of trees, and if I want to fly, I will put together a chariot to do it for me. probably I’ve been very silly in refusing to take advantage of Your kind offer, but I have done my very best to think it over carefully, and now hope that the feeble decisions of this small innocent will find favor with Yourself.” “well done,” exclaimed the Creator in delighted tones. “here, all you embryos, come here with your beaks and whatnots to look upon Our first Man. he is the only one who has guessed Our riddle, out of all of you, and We have great pleasure in conferring upon him the Order of Dominion over the Fowls of the Air, and the Beasts of the Earth, and the Fishes of the Sea. now let the rest of you get along, and love and multiply, for it is time to knock-off for the week-end. as for you, Man, you will be a naked tool all your life, though a user of tools. you will look like an embryo till they bury you, but all the others will be embryos before your might. eternally undeveloped, you will always remain potential in Our image, able to see some of Our sorrows and to feel some of Our joys. We are partly sorry for you, Man, but partly hopeful. run along then, and do your best. and listen, Man, before you go…” “well?” asked Adam, turning back from his dismissal. “We were only going to say, God bless you.” it is true that Man has the Order of Dominion, and is mightiest of the animals – if you mean the most terrible one – but I have sometimes doubted lately whether he is the most blessed. if he were to go for a walk beside a river, not only would the birds fly from him, but the very fish would dart to the other side. they don’t do this for each other. Man may be the king of animals (or ought one to say the tyrant?) but we have to admit that he has a quantity of vices. Homo Sapien is almost the only animal which wages war on its own kind. true warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism. don’t you think that is very unfortunate?