in the beginning...

باسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

i am an immigrant in this brave new world of blogging - "'a stranger in a strange land." only in the last few months have i begun to explore some of the sites which dot the landscape as innumerably as grains of sand in the desert. perhaps it was the sheer number of other postings which gave me the courage to so quickly offer my own humble reflections to such a cacophonous realm of discourse...for whomever might care to listen.

i am a son and brother, a husband and father, a student and teacher, a patient and a physician. this web-log will record and publish my thoughts and musings on subjects as personal as these aspects of my life, as well as on subjects more socially relevant like religion, politics and literature.


an award-winning photograph: my radiant wife doing yoga along lake michigan, nine months pregnant

that is a picture of my daughter on her first birthday...and this one is of my brother's son and me...

in 1998, i lived outside of jerusalem, on the road to bethlehem, at tantur ecumenical institute and i studied at both hebrew university on mt. scopus and bethlehem university near manger square. in that time i traveled a great deal, both around israel and palestine, as well as jordan, sinai and egypt. although the land called holy had occupied an enormous amount of my religious imagination and spiritual life before that year, my physical relationship with that inspiring region began during that adolescent pilgrimage of mine.

i have been a student of arabic language and literature since that time, spending a lot of time at the univeristy of notre dame concentrating on theological and liturgical treatises of ninth century arab-christian authors. i am now a phd student at the university of chicago, spending more time reading the poetry of al-Mutanabbi, the sermons of the Nahj al-Balagha by 'Ali b. Abu Talib, or the modern novels of Naguib Mahfouz.