Kautsar Abd Rahman

My super-cool wonderful tokmak yang comel

After our Maghrib prayer and story-telling from the war years

You know your mum is hinting at something when she gives you a corset to wear 8-hours a day “to tuck it all in”.

i wish!

I saw two young girls begging.

By Taksim Square, under the lamp post near the Metro.

The elder of the two is two.

The younger one could only crawl.

She was smiling, laughing and cooing.

With dirt all over her face and twinkle in her eyes.

Her elder sister hold on to a plastic container.

She just curiously look around her.

As if seeking out for someone whom had put her there.

Occasionally she would smile and try to keep her baby sister out of people’s way.

A woman talked to them.

I saw them smile and shrug shoulders.

They look as happy as larks, singing high up on the trees,
amidst shocked pity looks, they smile back.

If you haven’t watched Up yet, I suggest you do. It’s animation. It’s Disney and it’s obviously unrealistic (like your Watchmen and Ghostbusters) . But it is not as happy as your Little Mermaid and Sleeping Beauty. There is, for one thing, no song at all. At all. And it involves dying dream, death of lover and wife, murder of adventurers, psychotic old man who would become Machiavelli to reach his dream, a boy abandoned by his parents and the inability of the main character’s wife to get pregnant. Not your usual Disney’s cup of tea. Plus the writings in the movie is Russian – adding more depth to the story somehow. Or maybe it is because we bought a pirated version which was supposed to be for Russian audience. Hmm.

This movie is uplifting. Unlike the recent movies I’ve watched – Time Traveller’s wife and Benjamin Button- which just gives this tug of mortality in your heart, Up begins most sweetly depressing but gained its momentum into suspense and rekindling of love, feeling and emotion in an old man besotted with his dead lover. It just scream : FOLLOW YOUR DREAM!!

The main character, Carl Fredrickson and his dead best friend, wife and lover, Ellie had a long-lost dream to go to Paradise Fall in South America since they were just kids but like normal people, they never really work hard at it or push their normal life away for the sake of the dream. It’s only when they’re really old that Carl bought a flight ticket to South America, which by then was too late. Ellie died before he could even show her the flight tickets. Very, very intense sad moment. I could have sworn there were tears in my eyes – and they’re cartoons! More sad things happened before tadaaa~ Carl went on to the most extraordinary voyage to Paradise Fall!

Some people wait until it’s too late to catch up with their dream and gets buried with it. Some people got the chance to chase it somewhere in their life. Some people don’t even have a dream. And some people just push it aside. However one sees it, dream is very possible if you put your mind to it. Problem is, what if you don’t have a dream?

Is a dream something you yearn for or is it something you desire? Or could it be just both?  Winner of American Next Top Model, Eva said her dream came true when they announced her the winner. So she worked hard for it – and her dream is her life. What if your dream is not your life? For example, you’re a modest student but have dreams to change the world in weird ways that is not possibly done? Could it even be a dream if it is not possibly done? Some people have a simple one and others don’t. Mass dreams are like wanting to get rich and living the life!

Everyone has one, and it’s never too late. In the book Secret Garden, the author tried to convey a message of the boundary of time – saying it is never too late. It’s too cliched for it to even ring true in your mind.  Only a person who had achieved his/her dream would believe heartily in it. Never too late for anything. Put your mind to it now.

My dream would be to travel the world while volunteering.What would yours be?

I have always thought the start of Ramadhan to be the starting point of something good. I was not at the height of anything that I could be proud of, religiously, and I thought Ramadhan will surely be my saviour. I had neglect any effort to redeem my soul, hoping Ramadhan would take care of it. Surely, like how it has always been,  Ramadhan will come with a breeze that lift my spirit and make me smile. It has always been a custom to me personally that I pray Tarawikh, as many days as I can during that month. It’s been 9 days now into Ramadhan and I haven’t perform any Tarawikh. Of course, guilt is stacking up like crazy, not to mention sin.

I realized, somehow, I have taken my good life for granted. Before this, I cherish the arrival of Ramadhan, expecting myself to make the best out of it. But this time, I have to admit, I expect Ramadhan to make something out of me. I expect Ramadhan conceal all these holes and wash away the blackspots in my heart. I expect Ramadhan to open Quran on my lap and wash me with ablution. I was pathetically left unattended.

I thought it is inevitable that Ramadhan will bring those holy goodness into my soul, it always had. But this year is a puzzling one. I have starved myself silly for nothing. And I dont even make anything out of it. It feels empty. And oh, how I hate it.

There had been time I have been quite lost. And everytime, something will pull me back. A lot had pulled me back, really, but I kept myself blinded. Now, nothing even pulls me back. I am truly lost. And no light shines. I am ignorant as I have never been before, and I sit down and make friend with it. It is a horrible feeling that eats into your soul.

When this awful feeling hit, I know it means I have to do something with it. Nay, I could no longer expect miracle to drop on my lap, like it used to. I have to WORK for it. What?  Sigh. I want to be enlightened. I didn’t think I have to work for it. Why couldn’t I have the feeling of wanting to read Quran and pray?

It’s now that I feel, whenever you have the little nudge in your heart that tells you to pray – that guilty feeling that you need to pray, it’s a blessing you should be grateful for. I do not have that nudging feeling anymore and it feels empty. Imagine if I could have the feeling of wanting to pray, it would be a nikmat.

If you are reading this, you have reached into the core of me. This is where I keep a little black cyst that is currently steadily growing in size.

It is worse to be the person who walks in the darkness after a lightning strike to show you the way for a split second, than the person who had always been in darkness. To know the dark after you have seen the light is like being thrown into abyss of despair after you walk in the sunshine. Only fools would admit themselves to it.

So, if you could, would you please throw down a rope for me?

Summer 2009 in Turkey was a haze of swirly emotion, with brain-rupturing intoxication amidst splendid new territorial excitement that sticks to my mind like an enigma. A Summer fully cramped with 30 happy things from 19 different countries and a bunch of students, high on sugar and roller-coaster mood swing who would catch you off-guard like a bug flu, a pleasant one that it.

It’s from here on that I experience strange encounters, the joy of independent travel, the irresistible hiatus of one’s paranoid brain system and the humbling thoughts of a masquerade.

the best day

The shocking discovery of self in regards to me not wearing the hijab has left me in a blurry mist, taking from under me the support system which held me thinly together, now broken. Going back to bare-self, luring my soul to seek deeper and deeper into my core and save it for what its worth. An inexplicable journey of which I am still hitch-hiking on, waiting for the next less dodgy driver.Hopefully one who would enlighten too.

The people I met here were simply awesome.

happy things

Knowing I would be with them for a mere 5 weeks made it more amusing to laugh at intolerable bits and enjoy the laughable ones. I love the girls I travel with, and how we got along together. The bond between us is as unforgettable as the male organ-shaped stones that tower in Cappadochia. It would be like a vortex that traps all these delicious memories in my nerve system, ready to pull me up when I slip down Life’s potholes and minefields.

To the happy things of Myself-My World Project Istanbul 2009,  we will never meet most of us again, I miss you.

So it’s been almost 3 months, phew!

A lot had obviously happened within those times, that it would be almost impossible to recall them! Such pity though, I was hoping to capture my memories of my times in Turkey and London during Summer, and immortalise them here.

Luckily I have my travel journals. Everywhere I go, I have my travel journals. Journals, because I get new ones to each destination I go to. Like an aligator-theme recycled notebook for my Australian trip. And a red, ottoman-inspired leather-bound notebook for my Turkish trip.

I also like to keep junks from my travellings, and treasure them properly until I get home. And then I would get slightly amused by all the bus tickets, food receipts, tabs of all sort and brochures I took along the way that would head straight into my drawer, abandoned.  I try to convince myself that I would do something with it, so they never get thrown away. When the nostalgic mood kicks in, I would cut and paste the papers into their respective travel journals, in memorial. I would post a picture of my Australia’s travel log one day. It’s really pretty

And, of course, I love my passport for all the stamp-marks in it! In Turkey, I even asked the immigration officer to stamp it properly so I could clearly make out the shape, date and mark on the page. He looked at me, annoyed, and stamped really hard until the mark smudged from too much ink splattered from the stamp-thing! Geez, attitude!

Travelling rocks  Will update you soon.

p/s: the theme lay-out seems a little bit teenage-y, but I like the clean design and fresh, white page