Blogs

There is this long-simmering itch in me to bike-ride in Southeast Asia, so when my air miles and budget jive, I convince my friend and fellow Trustee Sohail Abdullah to join me on a 5-day ride from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in Vietnam to Chau Doc, near the border of Cambodia. It is a…

Back in 1980, when I moved to the US, it was really a great country to make and call my own. I had a well-paying job, was transferred to the US from Dubai by an employer that truly appreciated my worth, with the very prized Green Card in hand, work that I truly enjoyed and…

Emirates flight EK219 from Dubai to Orlando appears to be on time, so I make my way through security where a uniformed kid who still seems to be weaning off his pampers tells me I can’t take the empty bottle I use for bathroom hygiene onboard. Ah well. Aboard, I wait for an elderly Indian…

The mosquitos at Shahjalal Airport, Dhaka are deadly. They are fat, feisty and ugly, but amazingly agile, and seem to dodge my attempts to squat them dead easily; I can almost hear them laughing at my duds. Still, I manage to murder a number of them, some with my holy blood splattering the laptop screen…

I am a resident of a chowl dwelling near Malad, on the outskirts of Mumbai. It could be any low-cost housing that dots every major city in India, the location is not important. I live in a 15 x 12 feet nondescript dump with my wife, 2 kids, and my elderly parents. The parents sleep…

Sometime in May 2017, the city of Marawi, Philippines, in the Muslim south, ISIS militants lay siege, causing death, mayhem, and destruction to the people of the city. In the aftermath of the counter-assault by the Pilipino army, thirty percent of the city saw almost complete obliteration. Those who were able to escape found refuge…

Dar is surprisingly temperate in the middle of summer, when before, in January, I could not stop perspiring, even when idling in the shadows. My Indian Guru, Aliakberbhai Ratansi is finally joining me for his first ever visit to Tanzania, after futile attempts to coax him the last 21 years I have known the man.…

Kabul Trials  Next to me sits a lanky Pashtun who thinks little of poking his elbow into my ribs every time he moves his hands to spit the remnants of stinky naswar tobacco from his lips into a plastic cup. And next to him sits a burly American from New Orleans who has already downed 3…

About Fat African Khoja Weddings It’s wedding galore at Masjid al Hayy in Sanford, FL, with 3 marriages in a row, 3 times the artery-busting biryani to feast on, followed by another 3 days of gorging at Tehsina and Ghadeer’s reception held at the Four Seasons and the Ritz Carlton. Tehsina is the daughter of…

CAI’s India, Senegal, Mali, Bangladesh Sayed Kaneez Fizza is the clerk who handles all the CAI project compliance paperwork for India. She is a typical Mumbayte of UP origin, complete with the education and mindset of an urbanite Indian upbringing, including the omnipotent head-wag, which can mean yes, no, maybe or I don’t know. So…

CAI – Nothing Is Impossible! My late brother Mohammed Raza (Bha) loved to support charitable causes and was a pioneer in encouraging and funding CAI activities. He was a firm believer that his life was incomplete if his assets, however meager, were not shared by the less fortunate. This was the underlying paradigm mindset change…

Speak Not, They Are Our Fallible Ulemas! I am at my home office in Sanford, FL, at peace with the world for a change. The air outside is a crisp 48F; I am shivering when I drop Maaha Zainab at her high school at seven, when the sky is a deep ebony. Imagine! I wish…

Amongst The Rohingya Refugees – Nasser Jetha We have all been witnessing the immense cruelty and ensuing tragedy meted towards the Rohingyas in Myanmar (Burma). One persistent question haunts my mind. How can I help? Emotionally affected by the pictures sent by Yusufali of his recent trip to the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar in…

Ashoora Eve At Kasar Bagh – A Distributing Ritual Back in India, it takes me almost two days to calm down and begin eating normally, after my highly emotional, haunting and turbulent visit with the Rohingya refugees rotting at the squalor camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Since I have been away almost all active nights…