Stories We Live and Grow By: (Re)Telling Our Experiences as Muslim Mothers and Daughters

313 Pages·2019·3.31 MB·English

by  Muna Saleh

Stories We Live and Grow By
Stories We Live and Grow By
(Re)Telling Our Experiences as Muslim Mothers
and Daughters
Muna Saleh
Stories We Live and Grow By
(Re)telling Our Experiences as Muslim mothers and daughters
Muna Saleh
Copyright © 2019 Demeter Press
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Bism’Allah Al-Rahman Al-Raheem For Malak, Ahmad, and Maya.
May the stories we plant together root and sustain you
the way they sustain me, and may Allah (SWT) grant you innumerable
blessings in this life and in the next.
I love you.
And in loving memory of Sittee Charifa (Um Hussein) Bekai, Jiddee Mahmoud
(Abu Hussein) Saleh, Sittee Khadijah (Um Ahmad) Tarshahani, and my dear
cousins and brothers Billal and Yehia Al-Bekai.
Allah yirhammun wa yija3l mathwahun al Jannah ya Rubb. Ameen.
Acknowledgments
Safaa, Rayyan, Ayesha, Zahra, Layla, and Maya
Being alongside you as a friend and co-inquirer has been one of the greatest
honours of my life. Thank you for your love, time, friendship, and for trusting
me with your stories—I love you all.
My incredibly loving and supportive husband Wissam El-Haj
Words cannot express how much your love and encouragement have meant to
me over the last several years. Thank you for the early morning and late-night
Tim’s coffee runs, letting me sleep in after countless sleepless nights, and your
unparalleled patience. I love you so much.
My beloved parents, Nadia and Hussein Saleh
May Allah (SWT) bless and guide you and keep you in His mercy now and
forever. Thank you for your love and everything you continue to do for me. I am
who I am because of you.
My beautiful grandmother, Sittee (Allah yirhama), the strongest woman I
know I have been so blessed to have grown up in your light. May Allah (SWT)
reunite us in Jannah.
My best friends and sisters Suha, Fatima, and Eman Saleh
Thank you for being mothers to my children and for everything else you do.
There is no way I could have engaged in this work without you. I am so blessed
by your presence and love.
My brothers Mohamed and Walid Saleh
Thank you for always being just a phone call away (I know you both will
understand the reference to the inside joke). Love you both.
Jean, Janice, Vera, and Florence, four incomparable scholars and friends
Thank you for all your time, love, and support during my doctoral program and
beyond. I have been so blessed to grow as a scholar alongside you and am
forever grateful.
Jinny and Hiroko, the most amazing friends, sisters, and response
community Thank you for your love, the laughs, and for the breakfasts, lunches,
dinners, desserts (especially the ones in Toronto!) and – of course – coffees. I
have been so blessed to be alongside you both. I know we will continue to be
friends/sisters wherever our futures take us.
My wonderful friends and extended family
All my wonderful friends, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins, Alhamdulillah for you all.
And especially to A3mty Fatima and A3my Hassan—I am honoured to still
think of myself as Muna Abu-Ka3kee. Allah khaleekun wa yizjeekun kul khair
ya Rubb. Ameen.
My dear sisters of the heart (in alphabetical order)
Amanah, Amany, Angie, Charifa, Cristina, Deebe, Elham, Esra, Fatima, Hiba,
Janine, Kali, Linda, Marina, Mariam, Nahla, Nanna, Nariman, Nawal, Nouhad,
Rana, Rodaina, Saja, Samar, Siraj, and Zahra. I love you all so much and look
forward to many more years of love, laughter, and friendship insha’Allah.
I would also like to acknowledge the generous funding of this research by
Killam Trusts Receiving the Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Scholarship
allowed me to focus upon researching alongside co-inquirers for over two years,
and I am eternally grateful.
Finally, I would like to gratefully acknowledge the University of Alberta’s
Faculty of Education for its support in my doctoral studies (this book is a revised
version of my dissertation), and Concordia University of Edmonton’s Faculty of
Education for its support as I continue my love of teaching and research.
Contents
Preface
(Experientially) Rooting a Research Puzzle
Chapter 1
Rooting (Autobiographical) Stories to Live By, With, and In
Chapter 2
Rooting and Growing (Chosen) Narrative Inquiry Communities
Chapter 3
A Narrative Account of Living and Growing Alongside Rayyan and Safaa
Chapter 4
A Narrative Account of Living and Growing Alongside Zahra and Ayesha
Chapter 5
A Narrative Account of Living and Growing Alongside Maya and Layla
Chapter 6
Composing Our Lives in the Midst of Arrogant Perceptions
Chapter 7
Planting, Living, and Growing Stories of Relational Resistance
Chapter 8
Imaginatively Composing Our Lives …in relation
Chapter 9
(Re)telling Our (Own) Stories
Works Cited
Glossary of Arabic and/or Islamic Terms
About the Author
Preface Spring 2014
It was a busy after-school day. Noor, Yehia, and I had just finished supper, and I
was trying to persuade baby Hannah to eat so that we could go cheer Noor on at
1
her soccer game. My cousin Billal (Allah yirhamu ) was co-coaching her team
this year, and he usually drove Noor and his daughter (Noor’s friend and
teammate) to the field in time for pre-game warm-up. Yehia, Hannah, and I (and
Wissam if he was able to leave work early) would join them later.
I was calling out to Yehia to get the bug spray ready while trying to feed an
uninterested Hannah when Noor rushed into the kitchen to fill her water bottle
for the hour-long game. She was in full soccer gear, including her team jersey,
shorts, shin pads, and knee-length soccer socks. Looking at her I thought, for the
umpteenth time since she was a baby, about how fast she is growing (she will be
in grade six next year!). A few days earlier, the children and I had visited my
childhood home and I told them about the time their Jiddo, Khalto Suha, and I
planted my grade one Arbor Day tree seedling some thirty years ago. I thought
about how some plant roots can grow deeper/wider than the stem and branches
grow tall/wide … and I wondered what stories are alive in Noor. What stories
are being planted in her, what stories is she planting, and what stories sustain
her as she continues to compose her life?
Unaware of my musings, Noor rushed back out of the kitchen. Before she left
the house, however, she yelled out, “Bye Mama, make duaa for us!”
Always my love, I thought as my entire being smiled, always.
(Experientially) Rooting a Research Puzzle
Neither myself nor my narrative can have, therefore, a single strand. I stand at
the crossing point of too many social and cultural forces; and, in any case, I am
forever on the way. My identity has to be perceived as multiple, even as I strive
towards some coherent notion of what is humane and decent and just.
(Greene 1)
As I reflect on my experiences as a Muslim woman, mother, (grand)daughter,
educator, researcher, and scholar, Maxine Greene’s words help me to appreciate
the intimate ways that experience and identity are narratively connected
(Connelly and Clandinin, Shaping; Crites; Sarbin). She reminds me that the
stories of my being and becoming are shaped by an intricate multiplicity that
cannot be understood independently from each other. The stories in the
forthcoming autobiographical sections illustrate that I live—and live in—
multiple interconnected, familial, intergenerational, cultural, temporal, spatial,
social, linguistic, institutional, faith-based/religious, and personal stories
(Clandinin, “Engaging”). My body knows these stories (Johnson); they have
shaped, and continue to shape, me in indescribable ways as I composed my life
alongside co-inquirers, family, friends, and others. However, these stories are
neither fixed nor frozen. Rather, they are fluid, shifting with time, new
knowledge, changed perspectives, diverse places, and relationships. They have
been told and retold, lived and relived (Clandinin and Connelly, Narrative)
innumerable times as I continue to compose my life with improvisation and
imagination (Bateson, Composing).
Maria Lugones refers to the fluidity and multiplicity of identity as “a plurality
of selves” (14). She highlights the movement among and within the selves we
embody in particular times, situations, places, and relationships—in various
“worlds”—in her discussion of world-travelling. A “world,” Lugones elucidates,
“need not be a construction of a whole society. It may be a construction of a tiny
portion of a particular society. It may be inhabited by just a few people. Some
‘worlds’ are bigger than others” (10). Reflecting upon my ongoing
autobiographical narrative inquiry (Clandinin, “Engaging”; Saleh et al.,
“Autobiographical”), I think about who I am, who I have been, and who I am
always in the process of becoming in the worlds I inhabit. I think about how I
have mainly felt a strong sense of belonging, of being at home, in my familial,
school, and community worlds. Lugones, however, reminds me that world-
travelling can occur with varying levels of ease. While I acquired the ability to
travel to, within, and among the worlds I inhabit, there have been worlds where I
was constructed in ways that did not fit my construction of myself. As I
approached this research, I thought about my travel to, within, and among
multiple worlds amidst shifting levels of ease, and I wondered …
I wondered about Noor, Yehia, and Hannah and how they have experienced—
and how they will continue to experience—their childhood worlds. I wondered
about the experiences they will have as they compose their lives as second-
2
generation Canadian Muslim children. I wondered especially about my eldest
daughter Noor, who at close to eleven years old was poised “at the edge of
adolescence” (Brown and Gilligan 1) at the commencement of this research,
would experience her time in the spaces between girl and woman. Over twenty-
five years ago, Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan discussed how adolescence