Learning from Chickens

Shortly after Hari Raya Eid al-Fitr, I was given a lovely gift in the form of a rooster, hen, and four small chicks. The chickens are a small variety known locally as ayam katik. Although smaller and more tame, these chickens are not related to our modern poultry or egg laying machines, but are bred from semi-wild chickens similar to bantams. They are fairly self-reliant, semi-arboreal (they can nest in trees) and better flyers than the more heavily bred factory farm chickens.

The main reason I had wanted to get chickens was to control insects and produce better compost for my garden. I thought my children may enjoy them too, but I didn’t know the half of it. The kids, especially my eldest daughter KakNgah, are fascinated with them, and spend lots of time watching them just going about their chicken business. For a while, my youngest, KakAndak, who is just learning to speak, called them meow!, which is her word for cats, of course. But now she’s got it straight, and calls them ‘yam! They are surprisingly endearing, and have a grace to their movements which you wouldn’t necessarily expect. Our favorite is the way the mother hen scratches the ground with her talons with a quick “left, right” while her head looks skyward, and then quickly steps back to allow her chicks to grab the insects she’s unearthed. It’s so clearly maternal.

Another great benefit of the chickens is the rooster’s crowing. It didn’t occur to me before I got them that the rooster would crow at dawn. Well he crows! He cockles his heart out for about 15 minutes straight. It’s better than any alarm clock and there is no snooze button. The only trouble is, he’s a bit of late crower. By the time he lets loose, there’s only about twenty minutes of subuh left. That means he’s no use in getting me to the musallah for group prayer, but he has helped me from missing the prayer altogether on the occassions when I oversleep. My buddy.

Raising chickens, and connecting yourself to the land in general, revitalizes your language. There are so many sayings and proverbs related to farm life that, while still common in the language, have lost their power or beauty for city people like myself. This first occurred to me with the expression “Make hay while the sun shines”. Of course, we all know, this means to sieze an opportunity without delay. But it was just a cliche to me until I spent some time working on a farm. In order to prepare hay, which is the food source for barn animals all winter long, the grasses in the field must be cut. After they are cut, they must lay out on under the sun to dry. After they are dry, they must be baled, and after they are baled they must be collected and brought to the barn. For the length of this whole operation, sun is needed, and the more the better. If it happens to rain at any point in the process, the hay is drastically reduced in quality and can even be ruined. I still remember waking up early in the morning after the hay had been drying in the field, going out behind Abdul Haqq on his tractor, and throwing bale after bale of hay onto the trailer until the sun went down. From “cain’t see in the mornin’ to cain’t see at night”, as it were. At the end of the day, I was dead on my feet, my body was covered in tiny cuts from the hay particles, and I was blowing bloody snot from my nose from the hay dust. I now am fully aware of what it means to make hay while the sun shines.

In the same vein, there are plenty of expressions related to chickens that are becoming more vivid to me, and I hope to my children as well. I noticed that the chickens would peck and scratch without a care, and then for no reason at all, one of the chickens would squawk, jump and flap its wings for a moment, and then resume like nothing had happened. The problem? He’s chicken, of course. In English, if you’re chicken, it means you’re easily scared. In Valpo, Indiana, instead of saying “cheese!” to smile for the camera, they say “Hippy Chickens”, the hippy being how they say happy over there. There’s a lot of colorful language related to the rooster’s behavior too, but I won’t go into that!

In Malay, chickens have contributed to the language too: there’s kaki ayam, literally “chicken foot”, but meaning barefoot, cakar ayam, chicken scratch, the meaning same as English, ibu ayam, literally mother hen, but referring to a madam of the ill repute variety. I’m sure there are plenty more, and I invite my BM-speaking readers to leave them in the comments.

But my favorite expression is hangat-hangat tahi ayam, which I can really only literally translate as “hot like chicken sh*t”, but which in Malay is not crude or profane at all as it would be in English – it’s a perfectly acceptable phrase. It’s used to mean somebody who is very excited about a thing, but will grow tired of it and quit in a short while, as in, “That kid is hangat-hangat tahi ayam with his new bike – he’s ridden it all day long today, but next week it will be gathering dust.”

Unfortunately, I saved the bad news for last. It’s not all Hippy Chickens here at Bin Gregory Productions. When I first got the family of six, I bought a nice new wire frame cage for them to live. That very evening, a stray cat, of which there is a small army where I live, burgaled the cage and made of with two of the little McNuggets. Well, I cat-proofed the cage with boards, bricks, and anything else I could find, and that worked for a few days. (I’m sure my neighbors are none to pleased with my ramshackle coop. Wait till I have my camper-trailer up on cinderblocks in the backyard, then they’ll know what kind of Orang Putih they’ve got living next door.)

But while I had cat-proofed the cage, I had not chick-proofed it, and one of the chicks wandered out of the cage after lock-up time and met his doom. That left us with only one chick, who I took to calling “Lucky”. He’s the little yellow one. He was doing great, and his wings had started to grow in, which I thought would embue him with cat-evasion ability. Sadly, in the middle of the afternoon last weekend, a cat struck again and made off with him. When I arrived on the scene, seconds after the attack, the mother hen was running in circles, clucking and distraught, looking for her lost chick, while I could see tufts of the hen’s downy feathers here and there, evidence of her struggle to save her child. The rooster had run off to a comfortable distance from the scene and was making loud noises from the safety of his perch. And that is why Malays will say, “Don’t become a bapak ayam“, an irresponsible father.

As always, you can click the thumbnail to see the full picture

Postscript:

Couldn’t find room for this in the story, but wanted to mention a few famous personalities strongly influenced by chickens:

Also: Previous entry dealing with chickens in Malaysia

Learning from immigrants

Me and Omar and some other folks were flogging a horse to death over at Umar Lee’s website on the topic of immigrant muslim culture in the US. We managed to agree that [American] muslims should be

accepted as authentic Muslims without having to turn away from our cultural heritage, and there is plenty in that heritage that is not haram

and that

immigrant muslims need to realize that Islam is bigger than their own culture of origin and all us muslims have an equal claim on Islam and where it goes from here

, while allowing that immigrant muslims have a right to maintain and perpetuate their culture in the US to the best of their ability and not assimilate into the surrounding society if they don’t feel like it. Great! That was more difficult than I could have imagined, but common ground was reached on a point or two and all is good.

There still seemed to be this idea though, that mainstream American culture did not just have lots of things that are not haram, but that it is somehow equally as good as or better than traditional muslim cultures from an islamic point of view. I don’t want to start talking about my culture is 10 points better than your culture or some other nonsense like that, but I think when people talk about culture in generalities, it misses some of the specific benefits of specific cultural practices from an Islamic point of view, that we can compare and learn from. What I’m getting at here is that culture is a code of behavior: in the case of islamic cultures in general, the code of behavior is, in many though by no means all aspects, an implementation of the sunnah of Nabi Muhammad, saws. That’s what it means to say it is an islamic culture: it is one in which the patterns of dress, manners, art and architecture, family relationships, and so on, have been impacted by an awareness of Islam. With that in mind, I think it is fair to say that those aspects of an immigrant culture that are in correspondence with the sunnah are better than those same aspects of culture in America that are not in correspondence with the sunnah, from an Islamic point of view. What am I talking about? Let me give a small example:

Malays eat with their hands. Americans eat with fork and spoon. We all know, as muslims, that our Beloved Prophet, saws, ate with his hands, and licked them afterward, and he told us that those who love not his sunnah are not of him. That is a clear indication that even such mundane and seemingly unimportant aspects of life like eating our food, there is a Prophetic way to do it, and we should follow it. Malays, in their culture, have internalized and made rote the Prophetic way of eating their food, and it doesn’t matter if a Malay has completely forgotten that it is sunnah when he does it, it is still praiseworthy and carries a blessing with it that God will reward him for in the Hereafter, with every bite he eats. Of course it would be better if he took that bite with the intention of fulfilling the sunnah – the reward would be greater – but it does not take away from the fact that he has committed a good deed, and our Lord, who is Most Generous, will reward him for it. So, in the very mundane and not terribly important area of dining ettiquette, we must conclude as muslims of the Ahl as-Sunnah that Malay culture is superior to American culture.

Now, I’m not an anti-fork&spoon crusader, I’m not saying eating with a fork is blameworthy or wrong, and I’m not saying that Malay culture has the ideal implementation of the sunnah. Allah’s Beloved licked his fingers when he was done, while that is considered bad table manners by Malays. So nobody’s perfect and we can all do better. But wait, I’m just getting started.

A little while ago, I was in Singapore for a function at a mosque, and afterward, a meal was served. In the US, you could just imagine the scene after Eid prayer: everyone goes out of the prayer hall, takes a styrofoam box off a table that has an individual portion of lamb and rice inside, and eats it with a plastic spork while standing around having small talk. Contrast that with this: platters of food were brought out, with one heaping mound of rice and three different kinds of meat in gravy poured on top. These platters were put on the ground, four or five men sat around each platter, dug in with their hands, and ate that mound of rice until not a morsel of food remained, and then licked their fingers. A guy would be like, pass me some lamb, and the other guy would use the hand that had just been putting food in his mouth, tear some meat off the bone, and place it within reach. When we were just about done, a guy came over with a platter that still had some food on it, and was like, those guys couldn’t finish, and unloaded the mess of rice and meat onto our platter. Brothers and sisters, that meal pushed me to the limit of what I can tolerate, and I’m sure I’ve got American readers who are nauseated just thinking about it. But the fact is is that meal accomplished a half-dozen sunnah deeds that would not be accomplished in an American setting:

  • Eating food with the hand
  • Licking the fingers
  • Sitting on the ground while eating
  • Many hands touching the food
  • Finishing every bit of the food and not wasting
  • Encouraging brotherhood: It makes you close with your brother the way standing shoulder to shoulder in salat makes you close: You are in fact and in deed close to him. There is about six inches between your head and his as you crouch over the food.

Each and every one of those things is a blessing on the participants in that meal, that God will surely reward them for in the Hereafter, Inshallah, and you would miss out on that if you were to say, “I don’t get my eat on like that – I’m an American muslim.”

Hang on, I’m not saying American Muslims in America have got to adopt this implementation of the Prophetic Sunnah. But if we are serious about developing a new culture in the US that is both fully American and as close to the Islamic ideal as practicable, then that means finding some American way to implement the communal meal that hits all the Sunnah actions that the Singaporean way does, but still satisfies our cultural preoccupation with germs, personal space, and not letting our hot dogs touch our potato salad. If we can’t do that, if we cop-out and say we’re going to let that sunnah go, brother, it doesn’t work with our American-ness, then we have to be willing to admit, that in this particular area, however small and unimportant it may seem, our culture is not as good Islamically speaking as theirs. So, is there a way to do it? Sure! How about this: Platters of organic veggies with lo-fat ranch dressing to dip! Bowls of potato chips that everybody just reaches on into! Great big platters of Freedom Fries, with bowls of ketchup on the side! Just don’t forget to lick the salt off your fingers when you’re done.

 

Header image source

Masjid Negeri Sarawak

You’d be forgiven for thinking these pictures were taken in Central Asia somewhere, but they are from the Sarawak State Mosque in Kuching. I was on holiday for the first Friday after Eid, so I took the chance to visit the masjid with my son and nephew. As you can see, it has a very austere and imposing exterior, a giant white box perched on a slight rise in the middle of spacious grounds. It sets off the dome nicely, a turqoise shade that can be seen from some distance.

There are many things to appreciate about this masjid. One of them is the setting. The grounds meet with open land of several other institutions including the Sarawak State Library. It lends the whole area a quiet, stately air. The grounds are landscaped with shade trees which is a nice change from the usually bare masajid in town, though a lot more could be done to flatter the mosque as it deserves.

Another is the attention to detail. The mosque really only seems bare at a distance. At closer range, you can see calligraphy everywhere. And if you really take a close look, you see that the calligraphy is not a single word or phrase repeated over and over; in the case of the cornice along the inside, it appears to be the Asma ul-Husna. The interior of the dome is spectacular, with two bands of calligraphy along the base, one in red, one in black, dancing over a spiral flower motif. The black band is Surah ar-Rahman. I couldn’t make out the red. I couldn’t take a clear enough picture in the dim light to be able to examine it from the photo. The calligraphy in the gold circles reads Allah, Muhammad Rasul.

I’ll let the other pictures speak for themselves. If you hold your mouse over the photo, you’ll see a short description, and as always, you can click the picture to see the full size photo. You can also follow this link to see all my photos of the Sarawak State Mosque.

Mysteries of the Coconut: Ketupat

ketupat_finishedA ubiquitous icon of the Ramadan season is Ketupat. Ketupat is to Hari Raya what candy canes and tinsel are to Christmas: innocuous, non-religious cultural symbols that are inextricably linked to the holiday. Images of ketupat are plastered on greeting cards, banners, cut-shots between TV programs, and so on. Decorative ketupats made of ribbon are hung around desks and doorways of offices. ketupat_productionKetupat is seen all month long but only is eaten in the holidays of Hari Raya. Ketupat is a woven pouch about the size of a fist made from the leaflets of coconut fronds. The leaflets are taken from the emerging frond in the middle of the tree, before the leaflets have seperated. At that stage, the leaflets are yellowish in color, and smooth and plasticy, not unlike a brand new RM5 polymer note. When they’re woven together, they are filled with uncooked rice grains and pulled tight.

ketupat_lemangTypically, they’ll be filled with standard white rice and boiled in water. Since the ketupat is stuffed full of rice, the grains press together as they expand, and in the end you have a solid mass of white stuff in the shape of your ketupat. This is removed and cut into cubes. Rice is always finger food in Malaysia, but these cubes are even more handy for dipping into rendang and popping into your mouth.

ketupat_adabiIn our case however, the ketupat was filled with glutinous rice and then boiled in santan. The green shown in the picture is a bit of Pandan leaf, which helps the flavor and aroma. Boiling glutinous rice in santan in a constricted vessel is another staple of Hari Raya, but is normally done inside sections of bamboo. The resulting cylinders of dense sticky rice stuff are known as lemang. In our case, what we wound up with is ketupat lemang, I suppose.

Keputat ServedKetupat comes in many shapes, with the most iconic being a flat square shape. The womenfolk in my house could only recall how to make the oddly shaped ones you see above. The excuse: weaving ketupat is the boys’ job. Of course, it takes a bit of time to weave, and tender young coconut leaves must be available. For that reason, city folk and busy people will buy ready-made plastic packets pre-filled with rice. Just steam, cut away the plastic, and serve. Like all fast food, you give up a lot: in this case, the color, the smell, the subtle flavor of the coconut leaf, and the spectacle at the dinner table.

Hari Raya 06

Selamat hari raya, Eid Mubarak to all, fashionably late as usual. Hari Raya was last week, but I’m still just getting over all the festivities. Eid in Malaysia is hugely different from Eid back home. Back home, it would be morning prayers followed by donuts outside the mosque, dinner with friends in the evening and back to work the next day.
Here it is basically a solid month of frantically running around visiting everyone on earth who you know before the cakes and ketupat run out. Many people spend the whole of Ramadan getting their homes ready for the endless visits that will come pouring in. People string lights or set out kerosene lamps. People order 2 or 3 or more pairs of new clothes. It is a very merry occassion.

Now some of my muslim readers might scoff and say that such extravagant displays go against the spirit of the holiday, and to some extent it’s true. Many people spend more than they can afford to, or devote more time to the holiday to come than to the fasting and worship of Ramadan that is the purpose for the holiday in the first place.

But I don’t complain about that much, for one big reason. My children love Ramadan and Hari Raya. It’s exciting, enjoyable and memorable for them, as compared to back home, where it passed by quickly and, all things considered, they preferred Hanukah. Presents from Grandma for eight days straight: it’s hard to beat.

Hari Raya for the kids is kind of like a month of trick-r-treating, except instead of just knocking on doors to collect their loot, they have to go inside, engage in polite conversation for twenty minutes and kiss their host’s hand before they can collect their envelopes with a few ringgit in it. I think that custom is wonderful for building neighborliness and children who can socialize with adults. There must be 60 or 70 children under the age of 15 in our subdivision, and I know all their names, their fathers’ names, what school they go to, what grade they’re in and where their house is, because they have to come in, munch a cookie and tell me all that before I’ll let them go with their money.
Those are holiday shots of the kids, of course, interspersed with the post. I’ve got more to say about the holidays, and more pictures too, but I better post this now before another month and a half flies by. Hoping your fasting and eid were happy ones, and may Allah accept them from us, Amin.