Little Feet

Little Feet

Originally uploaded by azmiat

Post processed shot taken last year when Suhayb was tiny. Using Coffeeshop Vintage Action.

 

Things to think about this week

I tend not to write great big long thoughtprovoking articles, but come across lots of interesting topics which I feel would be worth linking here.  So I will try and do a regular feature of things that have been catching my attention over the past week:

• Thanks to Real Simple for making me aware of the dangers of BPA and how to look out for it (either a PP or 7 at the bottom of plastic cartons). I will definitely stop freezing Suhayb’s baby food in takeaway containers now!
• Would love to have been at the Climate March today (was on nights, so couldn’t plan to be there), despite the climate science scandal
• I’m reading the amazing and inspirational story Three Cups of Tea about Greg Mortenson and the pledge he made to set up schools in North Pakistan
• Happy that Suhayb has learned to say ‘Mashallah’..bless!
• Delighted for my good friend (formerly blogging as Pink) who has just had her Nikah and is quite extravagantly loved up at the moment 

 

Having worked in Psychiatry for about six weeks or so, I have come across a problem which makes me quite glad that I haven’t made this a permanent career choice. I’m sure it’s something that established clinicians will have come to terms with in their own way – but how do you deal with patients who have done terrible things in their personal lives?

Of course the answer is professionally and in a non-judgemental manner. Yet even though I know this, and stick to it in my interaction with patients, sometimes you can’t help but feel complete revulsion, a surprisingly visceral reaction. I have come across patients that commit domestic abuse on elderly parents, attempted murder, sexual abuse. Sometimes it can truly be said that they are victims of their own life circumstances, or that they are so mentally ill (or were at the time) that they have no understanding of what they have done. In those situations, it could be said that there has been a failure of the system, to help those people and their victims. I suppose being non-judgemental is not about trying to decide which patients are worthy of sympathy or understanding, after all, the convicted murderer on death row is as entitled to medical care as the innocent old lady you see in the GP surgery.

 

Thought Of the Day

Edit: It should actually be ‘Thought for the Day’ as Mr C correctly pointed out

I was dismayed to learn of the clearing of dwellings in the ‘no man’s land’ of Calais – it’s a complex and difficult problem, not one that I necessarily know all the politics of, but I can’t help but feel for those stuck in that kind of bleak limbo.  I think Abdul Hakim Murad put it perfectly in Thought for the Day this morning:

Muslims are just celebrating the festival that marks the end of the fasting month of Ramadan. It’s a time of collective prayer, gifts for children, and family reunions.  As the fast is now behind us, it’s a time for gratitude, and hopefulness for the year ahead. This year’s festival has coincided with a less happy spectacle, only a few miles from our shores. Yesterday, French police moved into a makeshift camp near Calais, which for several months has been home to hundreds of asylum seekers and migrants, hoping to make a new life in the UK. The sights were predictably depressing, as the crude tents were bulldozed. Even the makeshift mosque where the festival prayers were held is apparently no more.

The French state is understandably impatient with the situation in Calais. rather than claim asylum in the first European Union country they reach, many migrants head for Britain. To some, this suggests that work opportunities, rather than a refuge for persecution, is what they’re looking for. No one seems to have a neat answer to the problem. The young men and  boys, many of them from Iraq and Afghanistan, are fleeing recent conflict in their countries. Many have paid thousands to unscrupulous people traffickers for the chance to enter the UK. Although often regarded with suspicion in Europe, they’re overwhelmingly innocent people, escaping persecution or war, or seeking an honest living.

It’s easy to forget, if one holds a UK passport, and is used to straightforward international travel, how difficult and different the world looks to those fleeing conflict zones and lack the right papers. Innocent people feel like fugitives, facing endless barriers to their movement. And even when they reach our shores, the system is becoming tighter all the time, with significant penalties for those who employ them. Even our Attorney General, ironically, was caught out, having inadvertently employed one. Yesterday, she was ordered to pay a fine of five thousand pounds.

Our country is getting richer. Many poor countries, particularly those suffering from war, are getting poorer. And the question is of course, what obligations do we, as the wealthy and priveleged, have towards to these uninvited visitors. Religion, all religion, praises hospitality. Islam, with its roots in ancient desert traditions of hospitality to strangers, is not an exception. The first muslims, exiled from Makkah by persecution, found refuge in the neighbouring city of Madina. Its people welcomed them into their homes. That simple act of trust and warmth is surely still an ideal to be cherished.

Although in our unequal and often mistrustful world, our borders cannot be open to all, we must insist that our leaders, when seeking a balance, do not allow Britain to present to the world a face of hardheartedness and exclusion.

 

Spinelessness

Yesterday I heard yet another story of a marriage that couldn’t take place due to the inanity of the groom to be. Even if successful in their careers,  well-educated, and/or living  independently, some men just seem to revert back to the village mentality when it comes to finding a wife. In this case, the couple ‘clicked’, both on the same wavelength in terms of education, family background etc etc, the superficial considerations of height, weight,skin colour, nose size were fulfilled, but for some reason the man insisted that his wife should live with his family some 400 miles away from where he worked, and  he would come along every 2 weeks or so, to see how she was and fulfil his marital duties. She would be moving 200 miles from her family and friends for this.

Some might disagree, but a marriage is a partnership between two people, and the families are an important, but secondary relationship arising from that partnership. Personally, I believe that unless there is someone in the extended family that needs the full time support and care (e.g. elderly, ill or  maybe if completely alone), newlyweds should have their own space to adjust to each other and to strike out their own path in life. In the case above, the wife is left without the support of the new husband, without the opportunity to form a proper bond with him, with her in-laws. If problems arise, naturally the husband will take the part of his family first,a s he will know and trust them better. I say he is spineless, as this lifestyle choice he is making is for the convenience of his parents, as they will get a sweet, respectful daughter-in-law who will be at their beck and call 24-7.  So many times I hear of men taking the ‘easier option’ of doing what their parents want, whether it is marrying  a cousin from abroad, living with huge extended families or  even just giving up a good match Islamically for superficial reasons – they do a huge disservice to themselves, as well as to the girls they end up marrying.

This girl chose not to put herself through this potentially stressful and damaging experience, but of course he will get married at some point, and probably on these terms. Women end up feeling (or being made to feel) that they are the ones that are ‘picky’ when they have to make the difficult choice of turning down an otherwise eligible match, yet some sacrifices are just not worth making.

 

I am moving craft/food related content to another blog, so that I can write about more serious ‘issues’ in this blog as well as the usual work/life goings-on.

Eid Mubarak everyone!

 

Spitalfields Show

A prizewinning selection of vegetables

Fresh produce for sale

 

Unfinished house

We had a bit of a scare yesterday,poor little S has been ill with a temperature for the past few days, and in the morning when we woke up he was shivering and his lips and nails were blue. Cue a trip down to A&E for 3 hours, most of which were spent trying to, as the nurses put it, ‘catch a wee’.He got better though, alhamdulillah and is now his usual pink self.

It’s been about two months since we moved in, and yet we are still without blinds, the pictures are still not up and there is a bare expanse of floor instead of a rug in the lounge. The coats get dumped on a cardboard box full of files instead of being hung up neatly. I am blaming work for this stuff not getting done, but it’s high time we got it all sorted – by the end of September I hope to have some pictures of the finished article.

I got this print for S’s room – it’s so cute (possibly a bit girly, but he won’t know any different):

The other thing I have been busy doing, is setting up my book club/discussion group. So far we have a really nice, but small group of girls together, which was the aim. There always seem to be lots of events catering for big numbers, but fewer small, regular things – I suppose because a lot of people can’t commit to regular events in busy old London. We plan to read The Cellist of Sarajevo first, which I’m looking forward to.

I’ll be popping down to the Spitalfields Show and Green Fair this afternoon, subject to S’s good health. They have prizes for cakes and jams, so next year I may come over all Women’s Institute and have a go. This year I’ll just scout out the competition.

 

I’m back at work, but strangely it doesn’t feel like I’ve been out of things for a whole year – more like the feeling you get when you come back from a good holiday. The transition has been made so much easier by S really enjoying going to nursery – he hardly takes a second glance back when I drop him off!

Unfortunately, I can’t talk about all my interesting work stories because of confidentiality issues etc, but psychiatry is certainly a very different speciality to any that I’ve worked in before. The working environment is completely different too, I’ve come to know that you have to watch your back a bit if you want to survive. I have been reading up a bit on the history of psychiatry and mental hospitals and am glad that things have changed so much in the past 50 years – patients are treated with respect and dignity. On the other hand, staff aren’t so well protected because of the freedoms that some potentially dangerous patients now enjoy – leading to a couple of nasty attacks in the past week or two alone.

It’s Ramadan, the days are long and hot, and we’re getting very little sleep. Despite all this, being in this part of London, you can really get a sense of community whilst fasting – even at work, everyone is aware that you’re fasting and of what it involves. There is a great Ramadan Special going on over on Lubna’s blog, and I’m hoping to contribute a great recipe I tried out last week. Another good event going on is Iftar 10000 – a way of fundraising and gaining reward this Ramadan.

 

My new back yard

We have been in Bethnal Green for about 2 weeks now, and I am still discovering  new corners to explore. The mix of people is a paradox -trendy urbanites with plenty of disposable income vs. disadvantaged Bangladeshis living in sometimes squalid high-rise council blocks.

I got locked out of the house last week – the door just slammed shut behind me, and I was stuck outside, with keys, handbag and phone on the inside. Luckily, the baby was in the car, and I still had the car keys. The next door neighbours, a Bengali family, stopped to say hello, as it was the first time we had met, and I had to sheepishly request a phone call to find out if Mr C had spare keys. They were very welcoming, and invited us in for a cup of tea. I noticed that the house had the exact same layout as our own house, but it had probably not been changed in the past 20 years. Onions were strewn on the floor, and an ancient industrial sewing machine stood in the corner. It turned out that the daughter-in-law, who I had been speaking with, now lived elsewhere but came with the rest of the family to visit the elderly mother on most days. She, her five children, husband and mother-in-law had all lived together in the house before they were given another Council property. It seems that many families live in even more crowded circumstances – which makes it unsurprising that Tower Hamlets has one of the highest incidences of swine flu in the UK.

I also took Suhayb out to the park yesterday; he loves the swings and plane-spotting. As I was swinging him, another woman came and put her son, not much older, in the swing next to him. We got talking, and she began telling me about herself. She is a young  woman from Sylhet, who came here after marriage. She lives in a high rise tower block which is plagued by Bangladeshi youths who, when drunk, smash windows and urinate on people’s doorsteps. She is afraid to stay at home alone, and her husband has now stopped working. They would like to move, but the council will not provide them with another flat as they have already been housed. After coming to this country, she had two children and has never since seen her parents, she doesn’t know when she will next be able to go – she said that she feels stifled (the nearest translation) in this country after the freedom of her childhood.

These two encounters have made me think about the privileges and freedoms we have here, as educated professional second-generation Bangladeshis. I also feel (maybe controversially) that some people in this community have become too comfortable and dependent on handouts – they expect housing as their right, and seem to consider work to be optional, even if they are young and able-bodied. This is only a first impression though.