Saying my tearful goodbyes to Tongva Land (aka Los Angeles) & California from Egypt, for now. My heart breaks as it opens for new adventures.
I have always been aware of my status as a settler colonizer in the lands of Turtle Island. Yes, my family are immigrants from North Africa & my father sought asylum as a refugee in the US. But I am still aware that the US is an illegitimate settler colonizer state & it’s the original inhabitants that must give us permission to enter & stay in these lands.
As per the Quranic command to not enter another’s home unless permission is granted & to greet the inhabitants when we enter, I do not feel my family currently has permission to return to this land that I love so dearly, that I grew up in & call home.
Why do I feel permission hasn’t been granted? Because right now the majority of the human inhabitants of CA & LA view me & my children as bioweapons.
If my healthy children need to be masked, isolated & injected w/ experimental gene modifying drugs to be accepted & participate in society, then that is a definite “no you are not wanted here,” for me. Permission has been denied. & this has broken my heart in a thousand pieces.
As a child of diaspora, I finally after 40 years of feeling rootless made plans to root myself in California a few years ago. To buy a home & settle down.
But I plan & God starts laughing. 🙃
I began to lose my communities about 2 years ago, first my Sufi community fell apart. Then COVID hit & i lost the remaining communities i felt i belonged to.💔
My best friends & Sufi teachers left the country, just as my BIPOC, childhood Muslim communities & even my familial lines chose the timeline of death & disease & vibrated out of my life.
I lost ALL of my communities there this last year. Only less than a handful of my friends remain in my trusted circle & in my life. This for me is another sign permission has been denied.
I resisted these signs for quite some time, as I had planned only to visit Egypt & return to CA to complete my dream of settling down next to my family there.
But sA, Allah’s plans are the best plans.
Al7 opportunities have opened up for us in such beauty, abundance & flow here since we arrived that it became clear, despite my resistance & attachment to CA, where we are meant to call home base for now.
Cairo is our new home base.
I will always be American & particularly an Angelina so I am still keeping my practice open in the US with no changes except for some time adjustments I need to make on my end. I hope to be going back & forth, but Cairo is where we will be rooted for now.
I say for now because as a child of diaspora who landed in LA as an infant, I feel I have some kind of soul contract with the lands of Tongva and CA. Contracts that have yet to be completed. I have a feeling & pray that we are one day granted permission to return. This has not been an easy decision for me, I am still balling now as I write this goodbye.
We love you Tongva Land & insha Allah we will be back soon! 🐻🐚🌊