Weaving Lived Muslim Experiences into Fiction: A Conversation with Leila Aboulela

In this conversation, you can listen to me conversing with one of my favorite novelists, Leila Aboulela. 

What's even more remarkable about Leila's work, apart from her delicious writing style that makes me wish her books and short stories never end, is that she intentionally brings Muslim characters, usually women, into her work as the protagonists. 

Leila describes her work as centering Islam, giving Muslim readers a chance to see themselves in her work and for non-Muslim readers to get a glimpse into the fictionalized, nuanced, and non-stereotypical lives of Muslims.

Apart from discussing the spirituality of her novels and stories, I ask Leila to share more about herself and her spiritual journey. We hear more about what motivated her and how her life experiences inspired her writing, especially that of her Muslim women characters. 

Whether you're a long-time fan or new to Leila's work, this episode promises an enriching and heartfelt conversation about the intersections of spirituality, creativity, and the power of storytelling.


Find Leila Aboulela online here:

*http://www.leila-aboulela.com

*https://www.instagram.com/leilaaboulela/

*https://www.facebook.com/laboulela/

Transcript

Leila Aboulela

Dr. Rose Aslan: Assalamualaikum Layla, it's wonderful to have you here on Rahma with Rose today.

Leila Aboulela: As salāmu alaykum. Thank you for having me.

Dr. Rose Aslan: I think it's absolute honor, as I was mentioning in our conversation beforehand, because I read all of your work, and I'm such a big fan, really, and it's just like your work is such a pleasure. so much for being here. But it's also really important because of the stories of the people you tell that are not in the mainstream, fiction and out there.

And so I've just always really deeply connected with your writing since I started reading it. Oh, I don't know, 15 years ago or more. I was quite young when I started reading your writing. And, The one thing I've always especially appreciated in your work, among the many things, is your journey and your focus on Muslim women and from different backgrounds.

And that's kind of why I wanted to invite you on the podcast.

Leila Aboulela: thank you. So how did you find out about the books?

Dr. Rose Aslan: How, oh my God, I don't know.I have no idea. It was so long ago. I do not know. I must've come across it in a library.

Leila Aboulela: that's nice.

Dr. Rose Aslan: I read maybe the Minaret or something first. I don't remember, but as soon as I started reading it, I was like, I need to read everything. even today I recommend to a friend to read The Kindness of Strangers.

We're talking about historical fiction and what a good storyteller you are in terms of bringing people together. To that experience of what people's lives were like, and just you bring that world alive in ways that history books don't. And it just is such a rich description and so colorful.

Leila Aboulela: Thank you. Yes,

Dr. Rose Aslan: or two ago, the bird summons, which was such an interesting, surreal, but very different than your other genres.

And that is the story of Muslim women trying to Find themselves. And when I read that book and other books, I was like, I want to know more about Layla Abu Ala and her journey. How did she come to write all of these beautiful, mystical, surreal, historical works of fiction? But who's the person behind it?

Leila Aboulela: Thank you.

Dr. Rose Aslan: So, I appreciate you coming and being willing to be vulnerable and share more about the person behind this amazing work of literature.

Leila Aboulela: Inshallah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: So can we start with the question I ask everyone? can you remember when you first started getting interested in spirituality?

Leila Aboulela: Oh, I was always interested in spirituality. I always felt I had a connection to Allah Almighty, even as a child. my parents are very different. from each other and they're very different from me. I didn't feel that they made me. I felt that, I was in an individual and I felt that I had a stronger connection, a spiritual connection to, my creator, but also my mom was very religious and my grandmother.

And they're very well read in Islam. So, they taught me how to pray. they were always there to, guide me, to talk to me through things. I studied in Sudan. I was in the, the Sudanese, curriculum had a very strong religious, education,syllabus.

And it was one of my favorite, subjects. So Islamic studies was one of my favorite subjects and, and I learned a lot. So I had a good sort of grounding, I would say.

Dr. Rose Aslan: what, how would you describe this path in terms of, was it, and how did you connect with it more in terms of what were you taught and how did you choose to follow that path? I suppose your personal journey within the knowledge you were given at home

Leila Aboulela: guess I was the feeling I had was one of responsibility that I was responsible for myself, for my actions for,that there was a goal to life that there was a, and a kind of an end and that Islam was a guidance. And so, that was what it felt like. and then,I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the praying. I enjoyed the fasting. because I went to an American school, which was very unusual, I could tell that there was a, I was from a very young age, inoculated, let's say to kind of like Western influence.

And, so it wasn't, Something felt sort of strange. It was very much an awareness that Islam is an individual matter. my mom and grandmother were very much opposed to political Islam, I would say. They didn't think that was the right way to go. To them, it was a very personal journey.

And this is what they kind of passed on to me.

Dr. Rose Aslan: beautiful. Thank you for sharing. And then as you grew older and became more independent, what was your journey like, your spiritual journey like then?

Leila Aboulela: Well, I, met my husband when I was 13, actually, and I liked him and I prayed that we would get married and having this experience of praying for something and then it happensis a very big deal. Of course, it kind of affects your life and especially at a very young age.

and I used to,spend a lot of time reading the verse in the Koran about, that Allah has created from you, from yourselves,like a mate or a soulmate and that, he's created, sympathy between you and mercy between you. and so that became for me like, a very big thing.

And I wanted very much to,live this verse. it was one of the first verses that had a big sort of impact on me. And I guess, in Western terms and in modern terms, being 13, being 14 is a child and you're not meant to think about things like that. But in the society where I grew up, In Sudan,we kind of matured early earlier.

And, and so it was one of the things that kind of shaped my spirituality, I guess. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Is there anything more in that path as you went to, beyond, the school system and, that you can share more about your path?

Leila Aboulela: Well, I guess, learning the Quran, learning that life is that being sort of seeing the difference between worldly things and eternal things and realizing that worldly sort of pleasures, like money or success and all of that, that this wasn't what it's all about, that there is more than that.

I think this was a very sort of important, lesson,for me. And it's a very hard,to learn this lesson and people sometimes just say it, it's just words. We just say, Oh, it's not important. We know the hereafter is more important without really meaning it or because if you really mean it, then that is really very, a big deal.

and I think that, we are programmed to love life. We're programmed to want to survive. we have all these passions that are in us are to get through life, to get the world moving. and being passive is not a good thing. I don't feel that this is what Allah Almighty wants people to be passive, to just sit at home praying and hiding from the big bad world.

I think we need to be out there. struggling through it and making our way through it, but at the same time, protecting ourselves and preserving our values. so feel that is sort of important. And at the same time, not, we need to be out there struggling, but at the same time, knowing that this isn't what it's all about.

 It's tricky to explain, but yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Yeah. So what you're saying is that we need to be active, we need to be agents of change and not rooted in materialism, somehow also connected to the divine and being aware of that at the same time. Is that

Leila Aboulela: but also not knowing what the change is going to be. So also we shouldn't assume that this is the right thing to do is this or that and the other, because we don't know Allah might have other plans for us. So we might start a project thinking, Oh, this is a good thing to do.

I know I'm confident, but then that might not be the case that maybe Allah Almighty doesn't want you to become a doctor or doesn't want you to be the one who is going to, build that mosque. Maybe he wants somebody else to do it. you can't dispute that.

you just have to try your best at the end of the day. And, I think the beautiful thing about Islam is how it's intention. It's the intention that matters that it's not the result. So, so yes, you can want,and then if you do get a result again, it's an honor that you get the result.

And again, you mustn't be big headed thinking that you made this result happen because,we wouldn't have done it if it wasn't Allah's will, I guess. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Tell me more about how did then, in terms of finding your calling, would you say your calling is as a writer then, in terms of to create change? Or how do you create change?

Leila Aboulela: Well, I didn't really head out to be a writer. I mean, I always enjoyed reading a lot. I didn't get good grades at school in history. and I got very good grades in math. So I felt very much that my mother wanted the good grades. So why, I thought, why should I go into college and study literature?

and history and just get poor grades. Why don't I just do what comes easy to me and what gets me the good grades? And so I went into statistics and economics and, but you know, I was always reading. I was always thinking about what I read and then it was only after moving to with my husband that I started to write seriously.

And I started to consider becoming a writer. And, it kind of took off from there. So as soon as I started attending creative writing workshops, we used to read our work out in those days, there wasn't email and there wasn't,printing facilities to share your work.

So we used to read out the assignment and people afterwards would say to me, Oh, this is very nice. this is really good. And they encouraged me to send my work out. So I started sending it out to, little literary magazines and then I got published and then I,and I found an agent and then I started to write a novel and then it got published and, slowly, things started to build up over, over time.

And,I found that, wow, I, this is what I'm doing, but always my intention, when I first started out, it was. that I wanted to put Islam in, in English literature. I felt that it wasn't there and I wanted to put it there. And, that to me was important because when I was reading and I've always been an avid reader, I read with Muslim eyes, if I could describe it that way.

And I always, in the same way that African children would, be sort of, mesmerized by things like strawberries or snow or feel that, they're not, represented. I was also the same with regards to, walking down the aisle as a bride or, all these, people who couldn't get divorced and things like that.

So I was always aware of that. I was always I mean, Jane Eyre was, for example, one of my favorite books and I would be thinking, well, poor Mr. Rochester, he couldn't marry Jane and Bertha at the same time because, polygamy isn't allowed and divorce isn't allowed. And so I, I responded.

personally to all of these books that I read with a Muslim response. And I am horrified to this day that all that English literature is taught all through the English and the Muslim world without the students being encouraged to respond, you know, in a Muslim way. and that, that to me is very surprising because, I mean, that's what I do and still do as a reader.

So I wanted to because, writing is an extension of reading. I wanted to put that in my books, I wanted to do that. And.whether, Alhamdulillah, I hope I succeeded, but whether other people pick that up, and of course other Muslims have written before.

I mean, I'm not, the first Muslim to write,but, I've also feel that a lot of, Muslim writers 

 have put Islam in fiction in a cultural way.the Sudan,Islam is then part of the scenery. It's part of the kind of the nature of what people do and what people eat.

And, so, but I wanted to kind of go deeper than that. I wanted to have a, A whole novel, a whole world, which moves with Muslim logic, which kind of has a deeper sort of connection to religion. Yeah. That's

Dr. Rose Aslan: you kind of became this novelist who your work is saturated with Islam. I felt that when I first started reading, I was like, this is different. I think maybe one of the first times I started reading your book is I want to read works by Muslim women specifically.

I've always been on this mission to find more and coming across your work, I was like, Wow. Because everything I've always read, especially growing up in the United States, everything was by, white Americans and Europeans. And that's when I look back and all my favorite writers from my childhood, that's who they are.

Mainly white men, not even many women. And I remember when I found your books, I was like, This is very different to get the intimate live of devout Muslim women, like in London and in Sudan is something that's very unique to be available and written originally in English. I had never come across that personally in it.

And I did feel like you infused that. Every word in a way that's very needed and we still don't have enough compared to everything else that's out there in the West. Yeah. Tell me more about how it sounds like how you're describing writing. It's like a spiritual practice. Would you describe it something like that or how would you describe

Leila Aboulela: I'm not sure. I mean, I've been asked this question before, but I don't really think of it as a spiritual practice because it's very much, when you're writing fiction,you're kind of wading in murky waters,you're dealing with people's not the dark side of human nature, but also their desires, their pettiness

So you're not really in a very refined sort of place as, as would be in a spiritual matter or it would be if you're reading, the stories of the Sahaba or the life of the Wasallam, that is, that would elevate you. But I think My stuff is very much dealing with the day to day, down to earth, kind of, stuff, world that people have to kind of live in.

So, I guess that's what I,that's where I am with it, kind of very, down to earth, but at the same time, there's always the hope, there's always the uplifting, I find that even if I'm writing about a character who's not a Muslim, or a character who is not a very practicing Muslim, by the end of the novel, they've moved closer to Islam.

and, It seems I do this even unconsciously. And even with my last novel with River Spirit, I mean, I started off with a young girl, Aquani from the South Sudan, who is not a Muslim. I mean, she comes from an animist background. And, By the end of the book, she is a Muslim, but that journey, has happened off stage.

So you can read the book without realizing that she had become a Muslim. You have to really be,very into, the rules of fiqh to kind of get that, oh, she must have, she must have converted to Islam in order to marry whoever she's married. But it's something that is happening off stage and, In a strange way, I didn't need to bring it on stage.

For me, it was enough that,it was there. So I guess the, this feeling of upliftment, maybe this is what you're meaning about it being, there is a sense of the characters being uplifted or having a spiritual journey, I guess, within the novel.

But there is still the very down to earth nature of their lives. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Yeah, thank you for sharing. That's really insightful to hear how you think about your character development in terms of their personal spiritual journeys too. because when I think about, the fact that you do write about, The hard stuff, the stuff that, for example, in mainstream Muslim communities, they don't talk about.

It's taboo, right? Muslims don't talk about a lot of things. There's so many taboo things. And I wonder if fiction gives you more of a, permission almost, because some of the Muslims just won't read your books because they don't read fiction, but also because it's not real per se. It's fiction that maybe, can you speak about things that would be harder if it was non fiction?

Leila Aboulela: Yes, of course. This is one of the definitions of fiction that I like, that it allows you to speak about things that you wouldn't normally speak about in polite society. At the same time, as Muslim writers, and I would give this advice to other Muslim writers, If you go too far in that direction, you're normalizing a lot of haram stuff.

And that is also not a good thing. That's not what you want to do. so you need to also be careful that whatever you're going to talk about. if it's something haram, you need to make sure it is presented as being,as being haram. Otherwise your work is just going to become seedy.

 It's just going to do the wrong, it's going to actually damage, the person who's reading it because all you've done is just, you've, you have given a stamp of approval to something which shouldn't be approved. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: interesting. So how do you navigate halal and haram? Because of course, not everything is black and white. And I'm curious, as a Muslim, how do you figure this is not haram, like not that haram? Or like, how do you determine what is tasteful and acceptable and what is not for you? Where's your line? How do you come up with it?

Leila Aboulela: it's tricky, but I follow my instinct, but I'm sure that, I mean, for some people, maybe they wouldn't feel comfortable with that. Or some people might see it as being too strict. I guess everybody then would have a kind of an assessment of their own, I suppose.

But I, and I also try to be faithful to the background. Of the character I'm writing about. So if the character has a certain, comes from a certain culture, comes from a certain,social group, then I would, present them that way and be kind of faithful to, to, to that.

And I've, I've traveled in the Muslim world. I've seen so many different kinds of Muslims and I've seen how, something could be so important to a group of Muslims in a certain place, and then in another place completely, it's like not such a big deal.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Exactly.

Leila Aboulela: and that is, it's fascinating, of course, to see all these differences.

and in, in my writing, I try and be true to, that so that it feels authentic to the reader. that's also important. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Interesting. So how nowadays you described a little bit of your path as a young person and then as a writer, like, how would you describe your spiritual path now? And yeah,

Leila Aboulela: Well, I felt now, I recently turned 60 and, Alhamdulillah, that was like a big, quite of a big deal for me. And, so I feel now that,this, the 60s are meant to be for Muslims, like a time when,they're wrapping up, everything else is extra, this is the kind of the average time when, I know people are, living longer, I suppose nowadays, but, 60s has always been the, this kind of the traditional, time of death.

So I feel. I'm more kind of like wrapping up my life and,thinking about what I've done so far. Alhamdulillah, I feel I've done a lot. I don't. I feel happy with what I've done. I feel, Alhamdulillah, fulfilled. I've been on, I've been on Hajj, I've been on Mu'amra twice.

I'd like to go again if I can. it's a good feeling in a way. And, and of course the things that. Disappoint me. It's interesting that also the things that I would say, oh, I'm disappointed in that are also worldly stuff.

So it's almost as if the world is gonna disappoint you this way or that way. it's always, I had a lot of ambitions about my career, for example, it didn't take place and, I wanted to go back to Sudan at one point, and now there's a war. So the world is always going to be disappointing,to, to us, no matter how much we, so we chase it.

And then at the end, looking back. you,it's some,it's a thing that's not going to deliver. The world is not going to deliver. And the true happiness and the true success is with Allah Almighty. And that's the.that is the fulfillment.

the time when I spent, praying, reading Quran, that's the real time, and all the other stuff.disappointed me at,at the end. it, and it, at it as expected, I suppose. Yes.

Dr. Rose Aslan: you mentioned reading Quran, praying, I was going to ask you, what are some of your favorite verses that you've heard? Favorite practices. And you mentioned those two. I'd love to hear like how they play a role in your life. Those, prayer, Quran, anything else that is important to you. Cause I like for listeners to understand how do different Muslim women, how do they find meaning?

What practices are working for them? Just so they can say, okay, like this might work for me too.

Leila Aboulela: So I feel so privileged that I, I can work from home or I can write from home. And so one of the things that, I feel like to express this is that I pray Doha every day. It's one of the things I like to do and that's in the middle of the morning and that is hard for someone who's, out of work, at work.

I've also, since the lockdown, Alhamdulillah, I've been praying, I've been fasting Mondays and Thursdays and, and I enjoy that a lot and I keep thinking, well, I might not be able to do that as I get older and so now is the time to, to do it, to really to get into it.so I, I enjoy that very much.

I, I read, hezb every day. Not ju I read a he every day I read the sur scene and,I read the dthe book on the S. So,

Dr. Rose Aslan: the books of the, I will say in English, the praises on the prophet, lecture poet, beautiful Sufi poetry. Yeah.

Leila Aboulela: yes.

Dr. Rose Aslan: what do each one of these practices do for you in your spiritual and daily life?

Leila Aboulela: well, they ground me. I feel the fasting helps a lot with my mental health. if I'm like anxious or agitated, the fasting calms me down and then, I get so happy when I break my fast and so that gets rid of any kind of depression or anything. The kind of the lift,there's a lift that I get when I break my fast and that to me is like a kind of the lift that,that, that pulls up my, my, my mood.

So that. that is kind of very special for me. I wish I could do more Quran, with other women. I would like to do that, but I'm not doing that at the moment. I guess this is what I feel I miss out. I would love to do that. I used to go to a group, but there was too much discussion. And it kind of ended up being, Oh, this kind of,everybody's going on a hot topic and, I'm not into hot topics.

And disputes and this kind of discuss, I could hold my own if I have to, if I'm put somewhere, I'm not gonna, just keep quiet and roll over, but I don't seek them out. I don't seek out. I think that's detrimental really to your spirituality.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Lovely. And as someone who's a creative person, I'm so inspired by your work. How do you bring spirituality into your creativity? Like when you're coming up with these stories of Muslims, what are you doing to get to that place of creativity?

Leila Aboulela: Well, it's not bringing it in as in it's all organic. it's all together part of it. it's not a matter of squeezing it in. it's, it just should be, a part of the life of the character. Every character is facing a challenge. relating to their time of life relating to their circumstances.

So they are facing a challenge. And how are they responding to this challenge as Muslims, I guess that's that's what it is. So, the in real life, we face challenges, and different challenges. The thing in what you're doing in fiction is that you're shaping this into a story.

because real life is kind of like all over the place, but with a story, you're giving it a shape and you're giving it a bit of a drama to get to, beginning, and so that's what I do. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: Yeah, that's lovely. And I keep on thinking back to Bird Summons, especially because it is like a specific journey of a group of Muslim women on this pilgrimage, right? To the, the grave of this, Muslim woman convert from years ago, who died years ago. So tell me more about that book. Maybe you can give a brief synopsis for people who haven't read it yet and hopefully they will pick it up.

but then also what. Went into that. I'm so curious about that book particularly, as this is a podcast interviewing Muslim women about their journeys and this is what this book is

Leila Aboulela: Yeah. So in Bird Summons, we have these three women who, live in Scotland. They belong to the Arabic women's Muslim group and, they go on a journey because,one of them tells them about the grave of Lady Evelyn Kobold, who was a convert to Islam. A revert. And she, went and did the Hajj in the 1960s, and wrote about it.

So she is,she's considered the first European woman to go on Hajj,on record. And she wrote,she wrote about it. So she was a very unusual woman. She was an aristocrat and she, grew up. in Egypt,surrounded by nannies who were Egyptian and who took her to the mosque and she grew up like, hearing the Adhan and feeling this kind of, spiritual connection to, to, to the Adhan.

And, she's, she was very wealthy. She lived in this huge estate in Scotland and she went shooting for deer and she was not a conventional Muslim. She didn't mix with other Muslims. She didn't wear hijab. She didn't, but she, to her, this was just her thing, her lonely,thing.

And she,lived to be a very old in her 90s. She ended her life in a nursing home and she, wrote in her will that she wanted to, to be buried on her estate in this wilderness in the highlands where the, the stags could walk over her grave and she wanted to have a Muslim burial. She was very sort of, sure about that.

So, I had read about her, but I also read an account of the imam. in Woking, which is in England. And the Imam describing getting the phone call in the middle of the night saying that there was this woman who had died up there in the highlands and he's expected to take the train and he takes the train and he describes the hours and the freezing weather and it's snowing and it's,January and they have to go and they have to dig through the snow in order to make the,the grave and there's all these Scottish people around him.

He's the only Muslim. And, and,and there's the tartan and then there is, and so he describes this. And I found that incredibly moving. this idea of this old woman all by herself in the middle of nowhere. wanting this Muslim, Muslim burial. So, I got really into that.

And I,but really the novel started with the women, the three women going on this journey. And, And even that this idea of them visiting the grave actually came at a later stage in, like in the second draft of the book. So it was all about them and their problems and how they are full of all these problems, one of them Is kind of like flirting with this fiance that she knew on social media.

She knew him in Egypt and now he's kind of popped up in social media. And then one of them is very young and she's kind of wants to take off her hijab. And one of them is such a caring mother to her disabled son that she's kind of neglected everything. So they're all kind of consumed with their problems.

And then they set out on this journey. And, and then the book also has this visit from the hoopie bird. It was my first, it's, not many of my work has this kind of magical, elements to it. But this one has the hoopie bird and the hoopie bird comes and he tells stories, to one of the women.

And so the book kind of, has this kind of mystical side to it, I guess, with alongside the problems that the women are having in their day to day life. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Rose Aslan: of, of, of farar of the conference of the birds and SuPM. And so that's thinking about those journeys, it felt like a mystical. Book in a way, and it was the magical serial surrealism was unexpected in a beautiful way. it was, yeah, just the way you weave that team together was absolutely beautiful because I speak up Muslim women's spiritual journeys.

I write about it. Other people write about it, but you created magical surrealism about it in a way that I had never experienced, in a way that was very unique. and just for me, it just, Gives a different insight into spirituality, perhaps, that people, the readers can come away with, something unique.

Leila Aboulela: Yeah, I got the stories from the Fereydin Atta, the Conference of the Bird. So I read the Conference of the Bird, as part of my research and I read, Rumi's, animal stories that was also, and Kalila and Dimna. So it was a lot of, reading these stories and being inspired by them.

Oh, I kind of think of myself as being on in a canoe and that my life is a river and I'm in a canoe and that sometimes it's smooth and then sometimes the water is choppy and I just have to get over that, that it will end, it will go back to the, to the peaceful water and that this is just a hard part that I need to navigate, I need to be alert.

I need to, be careful, be watchful and, and it will get better. And I try and remember my myself that when it was smooth, it was smooth for a long time. But, I was taking it for granted that it was smooth. And then now, just, Just it's getting choppy. Just I'm facing one problem and I'm falling to pieces. I need to be strong and keep going and it will,it will get there. Yeah. So, I think there's always, tests from Allah SWT. There's always,and that we kind of have to go, we have to be strong and we have to go through it.

 my weakness It's lost, I guess if I lose something, I, I feel very sad about it.and, it takes me time to recover.and so I,I'm not happy with myself. I should be stronger because I know that,life does involve sort of losses and so when this happens, I need to, say, well,why not?

I mean, I think the opposite people naturally say, why me when something bad happens to them, why me? I mean, they know that everything around bad things are happening all over the place. And then when something happens to them, they say, why me? But I think that we should say, well, why not me?these things are happening.

They're part of life. we were never promised that this was going to be easy. There was never any promise that life is going to be, a bag of roses and all that. It's not Disney. This is all nonsense. We know that life is going to be hard. So when something happens. We should be like, well, yes, why not me?

it has happened before to other people. Everything has happened before to someone else. There's really nothing bad that's new,and so We need to kind of be like philosophical about it and to say, yeah, this has happened to other people.

And now I know how that feels, I guess. Yeah. 

I'm not sure what to say, to be honest. I think that as I said,yes, what is happening in Sudan is very bad now. it's, and it's poised to get worse. And it's the kind of The worst case scenario that anybody would have ever sort of, expected. and because Sudan is originally a very poor country, originally,it has a lot of, problems.

 it's a difficult place. Even the weather is difficult. Even the resources are difficult. So it's, It crumbles once it's hit like that by such a calamity. It crumbles easily.whereas other places somewhere like Gaza, for example, there is an infrastructure. Palestinians are much more in general, more.

well off than the Sudanese. there was better, facilities. There was better,the population were better served with,medical facilities and all of that. So that's why Sudan sort of crumbles. And even though there isn't the kind of the malicious, sort of genocidal intent in Sudan,it's people fighting each other.

There's a lot of looting, there's a lot of chaos. There's a lot of,a lack of, of control in a way. still it's, the situation then becomes bad and what is worrying very much is that,that there, there's a famine that's beginning to start now because of people not being able to, well, the first year they were able to, grow the crops, but There wasn't a way of distributing them.

And then the second year, now we're into the second year, there, there isn't a way of growing, these, these crops. But again, if we look historically, there was a war before the one that was described in the book in River Spirit and we, and Sudan got over it, Sudan, managed to, to survive.

And, so yeah, there's hope in the future. There's hope that wars come to an end and, periods of peace do happen. rebuilding happens as part of, human nature that people will have the passion to, to rebuild. They will have this kind of the commitment to, to rebuild and, And human beings are very,they're flexible, they're innovative, they're, they have a strong sort of will to survive. and so it's a very bleak time now. And, it might continue to be bleak for, for the next year or so, but then ultimately I think, the peace will come.

Insha'Allah.

 I think people, we should try and be grateful. I think that gratitude is the key to happiness. It's the key to uhs spiritual growth. And I think that,we should, so many times people have complained and then things got worse. They don't get better. And so you think, well, maybe you should have been grateful earlier on, when it was actually fine, when it was relatively fine, I guess.

So yeah, I think, somehow modernity and capitalism want you to be dissatisfied. So the dissatisfaction will cause you to work harder, earn more, shop, and all of that stuff. dissatisfaction brings more dissatisfaction and I think that,being able to be grateful and, focusing on this gratitude and thanking Allah Almighty for what He's given you.

I think that is so importantand people should, try and find, we have a lot to be grateful for if we don't realize. And sometimes that is the meaning that it could be some of the wisdom behind losses in life that we only realize.

We can only feel grateful then if we've lost something and then regained it, or we've seen someone else lose it and then we say, oh, but I have that. I should be grateful for that. So I guess it's the wisdom would be great. 

Thank you. And thank you for asking questions that other people don't ask. So that's good. .