Thanksgiving

  

Hosanna.

Hosanna.

I praise You, My Lord.

I thank You.

I thank You.

I thank You for all the things

You have given me.

I thank You for all the things

You have,

in

Your

Infinite

Wisdom,

chosen to withhold from me.

I thank You for making me a Muslim,

a Sunni.

I thank You for that beautiful Maronite nun,

Soeur Danielle,

who, for a couple of,

mostly forgotten,

years,

cradled

me.

I thank You for my Orthodox Christian grandmother

who,

throughout

all

her

cancer-ridden

years,

loved me.

I thank You for my Kurdish Muslim grandmother

who bravely undertook the truly daunting task of

raising

someone

like

me.

I thank You for my reluctantly religious

mother.

I thank You for my ever so Deist

father,

- (I thank you for my unborn un-begotten son) -

none of whom ever gave up on me

throughout all our years of

petty squabbles

and misunderstandings.

I thank You for the years of loss

in

the

intricate

maze

of

Faith.

I thank You for my years of growing up,

maturity

and

D

I

S

I

L

L

U

S

I

O

N

M

E

N

T.

I thank You for making me fall

in love

with a Christian girl

in

a

world

still

lost

and

mired

in

Faith.

I thank You

for

the

heartbreak.

I thank You

for

the

heartache.

I thank You

for

the

misery.

The misery.

But I thank You, most of all, My Lord,

I thank you

for letting me lose faith in You,

eventually,

I thank You for the death

of love

within

me.

I thank You for the loss of all certainty,

for now, and.

E

V

E

R.

I thank You for my final all consuming

agony.

Atheistically Yours

‘Ammār,

who can no longer be ‘Abdulhamīd,

believe me.

Believe

me.

 May 1998

Note: The surname Abdulhamīd is made up of two words in Arabic: 'Abd meaning slave, and al-Hamīd meaning the Praise-Worthy, which is one of the ninety nine Holy Names of God in Islamic tradition.