“To Him We Belong. And To Him We Return.” – (Quran, 2:156)
Dear Fellow Warrior,
There is no perfect end of the year. No perfect close. It just needs to close. You need to cross that finish line. Because time never stops; it is the only resource that will always remain scarce.
So I didn’t want to end the year on this blog with my last poem, even though it was an unapologetic, cathartic, and necessary truth.
I will be performing The Prisoner of Conscience: An Ode to Solitude at Busboys & Poets tomorrow. It was the first poem I wrote this year, and I believe it would be beautiful to end the year, taking the mic, by sharing that poem, for the purpose of ending a dark chapter of my life, hitting refresh with new hopes to redirect and build community.
What my last poem symbolized, hopefully the final poem in the Suicide Note Series, is more of a survival declaration. And it needed to be that strong and powerful.
You can see it being performed here:
Please feel free to read the description to get some context on the YouTube channel. But I just want to add that I truly appreciate Glo Shine, the host, and her comments about my voice. As you know, I have been fighting to find and nurture my voice for many years now, and this is why I get on the stage: to challenge myself.
Prisoner of Conscience relates to the Punished for Surviving, and I submitted it to my first-ever big poetry contest during Ramadan and before heading to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. While I didn’t win, I then submitted it as my first piece in The Memoirist, an indie publication on Medium.
You can find the Medium link for that poem on HERE.
I just needed to share that as my final open mic poetry night at the end of this year.
I will update this post with the video from that experience tomorrow night!
But you will also be able to find updates in my final Newsletter for Sword Substack: The WkQ Letters, as well, where I curate all the content from Chronicles of a Warrior KQueen, into one Quarterly post before the end of the year.
Thank you, once again, to the person who made such a generous pledge to the Sword Dispatch! My first big supporter for that newsletter, which I just started this year. It came in right around Giving Tuesday, and truly it was such a generous gift by a wonderful person. Thank you, Frank!
Just that one pledge made the almost 10 years of writing in this space with over 230 articles totally worth the courage, energy, heart, and efforts! Alhamdullilah.
So I want to end the year on the Chronicles of the Warrior KQueen with a small tribute to the One who is responsible for my Survival through it all…
This painting is the final painting of the calendar year 2025, created on the last Jumuah of the year. I have gifted this to my father. And I hope to make another piece for my mother as well.
I tried to paint a galaxy background and then inscribed what is certainly the most beautiful word in the Arabic language.… Allah.
This year, I fell in love with Allah in a way I have never experienced before. The most transformational part of this year was witnessing and experiencing the House of God, putting my entire hand on the Kabaah… and saying Allahu Akbar. I could not have done that without my brother, Sabih. And all of my family members who got me there. I will always cherish that moment.
This love for Allah can become a truly overwhelming sentiment that I am still trying to understand.
Faith is always a work in progress. I know I have to get to know Allah more. Returning to the study of his names and attributes, especially, has been a big part of this process.
The Prophet (pbuh) said, “Whoever memorizes the 99 Names of Allah will enter Paradise.” (Sahih Muslim)
I hope to begin a painting series in the new year and throughout Ramadan, of the 99 names of Allah… on my YouTube Channel. Here is a video of my painting the Shahada and the Kaaba for the first time after returning from the Pilgrimage this year:
As I found myself journaling over the past few weeks, I felt inspired to write a Love Letter to Allah on Christmas day, while also painting my 7th painting of Christmas.
In this year’s Christmas piece, you will see three Christmas trees decorated with ornaments symbolizing the colors of the Palestinian flag. At the top of the trees sit symbols of the three Abrahamic faiths. They are surrounded by symbols of other spiritual traditions inspired by the cover of Frithjof Schuon’s The Transcendental Unity of Religions.
It is a book that reflects on the idea that beneath our different religious traditions exists a shared spiritual truth about dignity, unity, & reverence. I often return to this book when thinking about faith, coexistence, and divine symbolism. I’d like to make another painting of those symbols in the future.
I love this tradition of mine, to wish my Christian friends a happy Christmas. It is truly a beautiful Christian holiday. And I honored Palestine the past three Christmases for a reason. I believe it is important to remember that among the things that all faiths can agree on… is that there can be no situation in which the brutal slaughter of 25,000+ children can be justified. Our Palestinian brothers and sisters deserve dignity, freedom, and justice.
I will share more about this tradition of mine in a forthcoming Medium essay titled “Painting Christmas as a Muslim,” so please look out for that in the new year. I will share more about honoring Palestine on Christmas in this future article, and also the other Christmas trees I have painted over the years. (Before Ramadan, inshaAllah!)
Seven is a special number in Islam, and in a year of spiritual significance, having completed my first pilgrimage during Ramadan, there is some serendipitous synchronicity about this being my seventh Christmas painting. I wanted to continue this tradition and share why I paint Christmas trees as a Muslim.
The holidays are also a time for gratitude and to think about people enduring struggles far greater than our own. I think of Palestine, Sudan, and others, but also of people in our own lives who should not be forgotten.
It is also a time for giving as well. If you are able to offer some support to my community-powered educational crowdfunding campaign I began this year, please feel free to learn more HERE. I truly appreciate your support as I continue my academic journey. I am with gratitude in being able to complete what I set out to do this year for my academics as well. And it was truly incredible to be in those spaces again, honoring and embracing a return to the crown, my true identity.
I could not have done that without Allah.
I want to take this moment to also gently remind people to reach out to anyone you may know who may be spending the holidays alone and offer them greetings and blessings. And if you know anyone who needs support, and you are in a position to give them a helping hand, please do!
On the Love Letter that I wrote to Allah… I hope to share that right before Ramadan, which happens to be the Valentine’s Day week. Valentine’s Day, in recent years, transformed into a different meaning for me, considering what happened on that day almost three years ago (a workplace bullying incident connected to DEI challenges I endured at that time), which negatively tainted my favorite holiday.
It will be even more meaningful for so many reasons to complete this letter to Allah on that day, especially right before Ramadan. InshaAllah.
Over the years, I have written multiple love letters…
Among the first I published here on my blog was a love letter to Pakistan.
Then to my “poverty.” (Performed on Valentine’s day a year after the DEI challenges. Please see Video HERE which addresses that as well).
Then to the “buree nazar,” the evil eye, al-ayn.
Then to the children of Palestine… for the Letters for Palestinian Childhoods (L4PC) online and traveling exhibition.
Then this year, right before my 41st birthday, a Love Letter to My “Ajnabi,” my estranged lover. …which I still believe could be one of my masterpieces…
In many ways, we are always writing letters to Allah. I realized I have been doing it in my journals over the last few years.
I wanted to share that letter before the end of the year, but I decided to keep it to myself a little longer and polish it with care.. I don’t think it could ever be complete. I will publish it on my Warrior KQueen blog, and hopefully it will become part of the collection of WkQ Letters I will publish together in a book one day. As I noted earlier, I will share this letter before Ramadan, inshAllah.
For now, the featured painting stands in its place as my final painting for the year.
I usually paint the moon on New Year’s Eve as I have over the past 7 years, but I have come to value that moment differently now.
It is strange how much begins to change when you truly understand how temporary this life is, and how much we must keep fighting for Jannah…where we may have the chance to meet Allah (swt).
Old habits sometimes resurface, trying so hard to resist the inevitable changes taking place within us. But the faith comes out stronger. Alhamdullilah.
I want to thank those who accepted me through the stronger inward revolution and spiritual transformation I experienced this year.
Maybe you saw me practicing my freedom of religious expression a little more than before. Maybe I was speaking the “language of my soul” a little more than usual.
Thank you to those who did not change how they treated me because of it. I appreciate your patience and tolerance. Thank you for understanding the need for people to turn toward faith, to seek refuge in Allah, in order to cope with the brutal challenges in this short life, including the traumas of marginalization connected to our identities.
This refuge should never be the last resort. But if it is, then it becomes a reminder that it should have been the first. This has been a tremendous year of survival, hope, resilience, healing, recovery, and love in so many ways, and even if I couldn’t get where I needed to be, I am ending the year with significant gratitude to Allah and hope for more blessings and change in the new year.
I just want to add that many people misunderstand when a woman of color, with many marginalized identity factors, speaks with integrity, courage, strength, conviction, and owns her story. You will always come across people like that. It does not mean that you stop speaking, telling your story, and owning your voice.
May Allah forgive me for where I keep falling short, and keep my faith firm through these ongoing trials.
They tried to take the “Allahu Akbar” away from us again this year, didn’t they?
Clearly, they did not succeed. The Inward and Outward Revolution continues…
And Alhamdulillah, The Creator, The Most Merciful, is sufficient for me.
May Allah bless me and all of us with the love of those who Love Him in this new year…
Allahumma inni as’aluka hubbak, wa hubba man yuhibbuk, wa hubba ‘amalin yuqarribuni ila hubbik.
Hasbiyallahu wa ni‘mal wakeel. Allahu Akbar.
La ilaha illa anta, subḥanaka, inni kuntu minaẓ-ẓalimin.
Wishing you all a safe, blessed, and happy new year!
In Solidarity, Peace, Warmth, and Blessings,
Your sister, Dr. Elsa, Warrior KQueen
“She wasn’t looking for a Knight. She was looking for a Sword.” – Atticus
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Thank you for reading and engaging!
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