REMARKABLE
By Ras Atum-Uhuru Mutawakkil
6/21/2011

I wake every morning at 3:36 with Farrah, her rituals are mechanical. She performs the same acts and movement on the hour, on the minute, and to the second every day for the last three months. I have been observing her.

She wakes without an alarm or anyone waking her. Her alarm is primal. She opens her eyes like we see the vampirettes do in the movies when the clock strikes midnight. But Farrah is no vampire; she is a Muslim and believes that as she prays every night, Allah awards her to perform fajar salah.

She goes to the washroom and showers. Combined with her shower, she brushes her teeth and performs spiritual bathing she calls ghust, which she describes as a ritual consisting of rubbing water over the hands, face, arms, ears, and then the body. Her feet are last. She washes each part concurrently three times before moving to the next in accordance with Shafi: school of Sunni Al-Islam. Honoring her and my guess to America, Farrah allowed me in the washroom a month before ending this study and report to observe what she had been describing to me the past three months since I've commenced this experience.

And to experience the spirit of these rituals, I submit myself to immersion by performing the ritual myself the entire last month. The rituals alone have a calming effect and a spiritual transformation on me.

Farrah and I perform Sunnah Salah, two rotations, or rakhs, before we perform fajr salah, repeating the same acts and forms. Two resolutions.

After the first week of doing with Farrah, we can do it within ten to twenty minutes. Time is meaningless in this deed. From that point, we read the noble Qur'an until sunrise.

Once dawn comes and goes, we continue in meditative recitation of the perfect book.

At 7:30, Farrah wakes her three children. Little Mustafa Ajala is the oldest. He's the first one to get woken up. Farrah allows him to perform salah after sunrise. The other kids are not required, but they playfully join Farrah when she performs the last salah of the day.

As Aminah (4) and Zanab (8) fight between sleep and waking, Farrah goes to the kitchen and starts cooking breakfast. The children's favorite is bacon, eggs, and toast with grape jelly.

Once little Mustafa showers and quickly performs the salah, he joins his mother in the kitchen preparing the food. As Farrah goes to complete the wake-up call for the younger ones, she teaches them to wash their face, brush their teeth with water only after they have eaten. The toothpaste's flavor interrupts with the taste of their food.

The first week I notice how amazingly the children never complained nor resisted. As cooperative as children can be, Farrah's children were like soldiers being awaken for a mission at 4 AM. Farrah insisted that I eat breakfast every morning with them over my objections. After the first week, I became committed and dedicated to the communal discussions with them. From the 4-year-old Aminah, I fielded most of my questions. She questioned me like the FBI did when I came home from Africa.

Farrah and Mustafa wash the dishes as the other two watch cartoons. Without fail, by 9:15, we all leave the house. The children go to school and Farrah to the law firm. She is the sole partner in a growing firm she started. The firm handles mainly small suits. But recently Farrah caught her first major class action case in which she is now interviewing to hire more staff to work with her.

Farrah permitted me to sit in on two of the new cases and to a motion hearing she had to argue that morning. She was amazing for a woman who has only been in America for three years now. She took law classes online for eight years in Libya from Columbia Law School.

Farrah prevailed at the motion hearing. The court granted her the time extension to hire more staff to help handle the case.

Farrah is a remarkable person and she is a pillar among human beings. She has that quiet strength of a nation. As soon as you meet Farah, you feel that this woman has a powerful and painful story. The fact that she has no arms is compelling enough. But once you see her persistence and self-determination and independence, your heart will melt.

Farrah's backstory: born in Libya poor parents, Farrah could not attend school. She stayed home to help take care of her grandmother. Umm ajala. But she would trick the kids in her building into studying with her by faking like she was testing their knowledge on what they learned that day.

At 17, she married a Libyan navy intelligence officer. He provided the access to the world's books, knowledge and the Internet. Farrah read everything: art, science, government theory, Ancient Egypt, America.

In 2010, Farrah lost her first arm when an American drone dropped a bomb on the car of Farrah's husband. She left it momentarily to retrieve some money from the house. The blast was so powerful that it pushed her into the front door, where her left shoulder was jammed down to her rib cage. 24 hours of surgery late,r she lived but without her left arm.

As if she had not suffered enough, after losing her husband and her left arm, Farrah lost her right arm in another drone bomb attack. Mummar Qaddafi allegedly was having a meeting with his supporters in the hotel Farrah stayed in, and NATO dropped two bombs.

When Farrah's unfortunate story was spread around the world on the Al-Jazzier, I started making calls to the state department and my representatives to get Farrah over to America for some state of the art robotic arms our military personnel receive.

So that's why Farrah is a remarkable woman. We could not get her the robotic arms, so Farrah learned how to wash, cook, and care for her children by using her feet.

When we wrapped the documentary on Farrah and I went home to my husband and two children, I was emotionally exhausted yet elated. As always, I brought home gifts for my girls. Guilt gifts for being away overnight and for an extended period of time, a ritual we developed after they were born and my first away assignment.

At dinner, the girls and Carl debriefed me on the documentary.

Still in sequence with Farrah, I woke before the kiss of dawn. Instead of going back to sleep, I decided to take a warm shower. After the water was running loud enough for no one to hear, I broke down and curled up like a baby in the nook of the shower bed. Laughter and cries came out of me like a volcano.

We never know how blessed we are until we try to observe the lives and trials of others from their point of view. That night, I could not sleep so I unconsciously walked through the house, mentally logging all potential safety hazards I previously did not consider.

I used Farrah's safety standards as a frame of reference. She had a fire extinguisher in every major section in her house. I had none. She had smoke and gas detectors in strategic places the Fire Department recommended. I had two smoke detectors that came with the house.

She had grade A, B, and C fire extinguishers in her customized van. I had one in either the shared family car nor van.

Farrah had discussed with her children in depth what to do in case of a fire and emergency. So much so that they could teach safety classes to kids their own age. My girls don't even know what 911 means, though they know not to talk to strangers.

Of course, I'm aware that Farrah's standards are more rigorous because she has no arms. I know I would not have to have a foot deep and five feet long tub of water laying on my kitchen floor. When I first saw it, I thought it was for a dog to perhaps play and bathe in. But as the day passed, I noticed that there was no dog. I had meant to ask what it was for.

It became pellucid to me what the tub was for that night. I saw Farrah cooking dinner, sitting in a chair pulled up to the stove using her feet to stir the food. Little Mustafa handled the foods far as anything that had to be touched and handled by hand, but Farrah managed to do a lot. Because some spices could not be put into the food until it was on the stove, Mustafa would put everything in these spoons or ladles. Anything dangerous, she would not let Mustafa come near it, even though he felt he could and wanted to do it for her. She always told him she'll let him take over when he became 15.

The ungodly image of Farrah engulfed in a gas fire flashed in my head, and her running over to the foot deep tub laying in it, hoping by the grace of Allah that it will stop the burning as the kids or Mustafa ran for the fire extinguisher to shower her down. I blocked anything worse from my mind, like the one of the kids being on fire. It became immaculately clear why Farrah had the fire extinguishes in almost every room of her house.

With no arms, she was at a disadvantage with the most needed things in all human activities and in a crisis situation. Being the best prepared as she could increased the chances of fate being in her favor. But Farrah looks at it as Allah providing her with foresight. She knows the limits of her nature and her milieu. I notice that when she is cooking, Mustafa positions his chair away from the table and next to the extinguisher. Like a sentry protecting his queen, he watches her every move and will not leave the kitchen if she is still over the stove.

He is the same way when she drives. He sits in the front as her second set of eyes. He moves as she moves, mashing the floor as if he is stomping the break pedal. His future wife will have a very good man. But she better be simpatico to his mother, for he will not move too far away from her, if he leaves home at all. His burden or, as he sees it, duty is to shield the girls from worrying about them and to have some normalcy. They work well together. On the passenger side is a cut off switch so Mustafa can kill the motor if need ever come.

Not only is Farrah a remarkable mother and independent woman, but her children are remarkable too.

And what makes Farrah all the more remarkable is the fact that she is not angry nor mad at the people who took her arms and husband. She believes as the Qur'an teaches: nothing happens good or bad, but by the leave of Allah.

And I say because Farah is remarkably magnanimousness.