There is no turning back,

your destiny is waiting.

Move forward, it’s right there.

Every step you take is an act of courage.

Believe, believe in the path unfolding beneath your feet.

Each milestone shapes you, strengthens you.

And when you finally look back,

you’ll realise every struggle was a stone,

that built the person you’re proud to be.

No perfection is needed,

Perfectionists stop learning.

But you, you rise from every mistake,

collecting the wisdom only experience can give.

So challenge the challenge.

Walk through the storm.

If you stop, the battle ends right there,

and someone else will claim the title

you were born to win.

Keep going,

your destiny is waiting.

The post Flame of Becoming appeared first on MASAF.

The post One Table, Many Flavours: How does Food Unite Malaysians? appeared first on MASAF.

What do you do during your free time? I like brisk walking, especially in a cemetery. Well, my mum doesn’t like it and my friends think I’m weird. I still go there anyway. When your whole day is surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city and all you do is work your brain off, you need a little peace.

As the noise dies down, the walk to the graveyard always comes with a soothing sensation. The dead stay dead, and the living stay afar. A dead silence rushes through the rusty iron gates to fill your ear canal. Trees waving, leaves rustling, sun shining, crows cawing, you’re with mother nature and her beautiful collection of corpses. Grey tombstones and vibrant flowers make up the rest of the scene, with a sprinkle of animated bodies walking about.

Years… names… mothers, grandfathers, children. They were all once alive. Countless untold stories, passed down skills and such are now buried and gone because they’re six feet under. Dead, to be precise. They lived a happy life (or so I hope) and eventually died of illnesses, old age, heartbreaks or in a battlefield. Good or evil, they all crumbled under the wrath of time or did they… 

Now and then, you’ll find people who lived till their 20s, teens or even younger than that. After a few trips to several graveyards, you’ll realize the closer you are to a war zone, the more kinder¹ fill the land. What did they do to deserve this fate? I wonder what life they could have gotten instead of sleeping here on hardwood so young. Even naughty children don’t die, they just get coal. The red cloak figure must not have been Santa that year.

Walking up to the fellow living, you see them, one hand holding a watering can and another a colourful bouquet. They are not alone, someone or something is with them, comforting and listening to them. An old man chatting with his wife. Kids having fun around their dad. A lady wearing black standing with her husband. There’s no need to see, they feel it. 

From rock to moss, some are forgotten. But today, as I walk past your resting place, I will remember you.

Death shouldn’t be a taboo, when it’s such a pretty end to our lives. Some think that we’ll move on to a better place, and others think we’ll get a second chance. I think that we get to rest peacefully. The dead left their marks, and we hold onto it tightly for as long as we can. Now, isn’t all of that a sweet ending? I really love my “spooky” cemeteries. They are my secret little world where everything stops moving except for my mind. When it’s time, mine will too. 

One day, would you like to go to Death’s nursery with me?

¹ German word for children

The post The Cemetery, my favourite resting place appeared first on MASAF.

The post A Letter Left in Drafts appeared first on MASAF.

My dearest one,

You may think that we met not too long ago, but I have watched you for a very long time. All the love they poured into you made me alive, for I am its continuation, just in a different way. I sat quietly, waiting at the edge of every laughter you ever shared, every warmth you held close. Because where there is love, there is always the promise of my arrival.

You may not remember me as the way I am now, but I was once what you longed for and having received me from your loved ones made your heart full to the brim. 

They say love is like seeing the stars in the darkest nights, even when the sky is so cloudy that it hides the gentle glow of the moon. Yet, there it is, shining brightest among the inks that stains the sky. Like a warm hug that doesn’t seem to fade away. Like home. 

But they also say love is a tragedy, capable of inflicting wounds that cut deep into the fabrics of one’s well-being. 

It has been a while since I’ve changed form. The way you see me now has changed as well, you do not see me as I am, only as the ache that pierced your heart as if there was an invincible splinter you cannot remove the moment your world changed. 

When I first touched you, I knew it felt like time had stopped. You blinked and suddenly everything felt unfamiliar, the living room was too quiet, mornings were dull. Everything that once held meaning now trembled like glass under your fingertips. 

 As the world continued its rhythm, you stayed behind. Life moved on too fast, and there you were, moving slowly each day in your sea of thought, trying to convince yourself that it wasn’t true.  

You didn’t see me then, but you felt my presence. The heaviness in your lungs as each breath became harder to take. That was me. 

You didn’t want me there.

 You hated me for stealing what could not be returned. 

You tried to drown me in distraction, pushing me away by denying reality. 

But I stayed, not to anchor you in pain, but to hold tight the pieces of love that were slipping away too fast, the pieces that your heart can no longer bear to touch. Until you can remember without breaking.

Still, I know.  I have been cruel, haven’t I? 

I made you feel so small, so fragile, so much that you felt like you would lose yourself to the present. You had so much left to say, yet time was cut too short. 

There was a time where you felt awkward to show affection, but now you’ve reverted into a child who only knows them as your whole world. 

I made you believe you were frozen while everyone else kept moving. You saw people smile again and wondered if you ever would.

You will.

But not by forgetting.

Not by leaving me behind.

You think healing means letting me go, but healing is learning to live beside me. I am not here to drag you into the depths of your mind. I am here to remind you that love once bloomed fervently in your soul even if you don’t love loudly anymore.

That love did not disappear, it only becomes quieter, humbler, only to be heard under your breath. 

One day, you will notice how I don’t arrive as often. You’ll realize I’ve become quieter, a soft pulse instead of a storm.

 I will still be beside you as you laugh again and whisper reminders of the love that was left, the sound of their voice, the smell of their room and even the way they lit up the world just by being in it.

You’ll begin to see the world not as what you lost, but as what you still have.

And though I will fade, I will never leave entirely. I am love’s proof, the living evidence that something once mattered enough to wound you. 

When you miss them, that’s me breathing beside you. When your chest tightens at a familiar scent, that’s me too, not to make you cry, but to say: It happened. You loved. It was real. 

You’ll think of them, and instead of pain you’ll feel gratitude. 

“Thank you for loving me once.”

I’ll be proud when that day comes. Because my purpose has been fulfilled. Not in your sorrow but choosing to live despite me being here.

When you move forward, you’re not leaving them behind. 

But carrying them in every joy you let in. 

Showing them who you are today, still standing despite everything. You are proof that love does not die. It simply changes its shape, just like me.

You were never meant to stay still with me.

You were meant to grow around me, to outgrow the silence, to teach the heart how to hold both sorrow and sunlight at once. 

I will be beside you on your journey, but I will stay behind when you begin to run.

Until then, let us walk slowly, gently. You and I.

With love,

Grief

The post A Love Letter from Grief appeared first on MASAF.

The post The Disappearing Tongues appeared first on MASAF.

CHAPTER 1: The Calm Before The Storm

25th September, 2001

The early-September sun had begun to warm the town of Saint-Bonnet. Morning mist hugged the nature-wrapped fences outside a stone cottage, and the scent of toasted sandwiches spilled from its window. Sunshine poured through the glass, brushing past curled black hair with undertones of umber. Its light glinted against a jewel adorned by tender hands. A delicate band of rose gold crowned with a modest garnet, scattering a sliver of red light across the wooden countertop. Anne Dubois stood at the counter, deftly folding sandwiches into wax paper. 

“Mamaaa!” a voice called, small steps pitter-pattering closer behind her, breaking her rhythm. She turned around and was met by two small arms outstretched, wide and eager.

“Mamaaa! Allez, on y va! Papa said we’ll miss them if we’re late!” pleaded Danielle, her small fingers clutching and tugging at her mother’s sweater, as if trying to pull time forward. 

“What’s gotten into you? I almost dropped the sandwiches.” Anne turned slightly, eyeing her daughter’s bouncing form. “Is there a squirrel chasing you I should know about?”

“Nooo, Mama! Don’t you remember? Papa found a great spot to watch the deer! I really, really wanna add them to my sketchbook before they’re gone!” Her words tumbled out in a rush. She could already imagine their slender shapes emerging between the chestnut trees, soft and twitchy-eared.

“D’accord, d’accord, Daniella,” she said, tucking the last of the sandwiches into the woven basket resting on the kitchen table. Despite its worn-out handle frayed in places and half-loosened weaves along the rim, just beneath the basket’s lid was a faintly burned message carved long ago.

   “Pour les jours doux.” — For the sweet days. L & A

Two initials worn soft by time and touch, a promise etched into the grain by young lovers under the late-spring sun. Anne brushed her thumb over the words in passing, the gesture small and almost like a muscle memory of love. 

“Don’t worry, we’ll meet up with Papa and the deer.”

Sketchbook tucked under her arm, Danielle darted down the narrow hallway with her mother trailing after her, half laughing, “Slow down!”

“Aren’t you forgetting something, mon cœur?“ Anne teased.

“Huh? What is it?” Danielle blinked up at her mother. 

Anne reached into her purse and pulled out a bullseye-shaped hairclip, a gift Danielle’s father had forgotten to give. “Come, let Mama do your hair.”

Danielle trotted back as her mother stooped down to meet her stature. Anne threaded Danielle’s hair as she adorned it with the pin and clip clicked into place, glinting briefly in the morning light that spilled in.

“There,” Anne whispered, brushing a kiss on her daughter’s temple. “Perfect, comme toujours.”

Danielle beamed, her excitement renewed. She twirled with her arms out like wings before taking her mother’s hand. Lunch basket in tow and hearts alight, the pair made their way out the door. The morning sun had begun to chase away the chill, gilding the house in gold. Anne paused for a moment at the threshold, her fingers brushing the old wooden frame, a habitual farewell.

Then, with soft breaths and their hands clasped together, they walked out on the quiet path to foret domaniale.

The morning air was cool against their skin, and autumn had begun to brush her fingers across Saint-Bonnet. Their shoes crunched softly against a mosaic of dried leaves strewn along the gravel path like ribbons. Danielle reached up, catching at the low branches as they passed beneath a walnut tree, its green shells still clinging tight. A single yellow leaf drifted down and landed in her hair like a crown, unnoticed.

“Bonjour, Madame Dubois!” called an older man standing at the edge of his gate, sweeping dried leaves into a tidy pile, his wide straw hat tilted low over his brow. 

“Bonjour, Monsieur Pelletier,” Anne replied, raising a hand in greeting. “You’ll be chasing those leaves all week at this rate.”

“Pfft, I’ve been chasing the same ones since Tuesday,” he said with a mock sigh. “They’ve got a mind of their own, I swear. Leaf by leaf rebellion.”

Danielle giggled, pressing closer to her mother’s side.

“I liked it better when you were whispering to tomatoes,” Anne teased.

Monsieur Pelletier straightened with a playful groan. “Ah, but tomatoes don’t fall out of the sky! You two on your way to the woods?”

Danielle stepped forward, nodding eagerly. “We’re going to see the deer! I brought my sketchbook!”

“Well then,” he said, lowering his voice as if passing on a secret, “you be sure to draw them before they draw you. Deer are fast artists. Especially the ones near the ridge.”

Danielle’s eyes widened in delight. “Really?”

He winked. “Faster than squirrels. Slower than owls.”

She beamed, gripping her sketchbook tighter.

Anne gave a fond shake of her head. “Don’t let them run circles around you, Monsieur Pelletier.”

“Too late,” he grinned, nudging the broom into his leaf pile. “Bon courage, mes dames.”

With a wave and another soft crunch of leaves, they continued down the path. The broom’s rhythm faded behind them, blending into the sounds of Saint-Bonnet waking to autumn.

NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office

03:47 A.M. —Emergency Call Transcript (Internal Use Only)

Far from the quiet woods of Foret Domaniale, where marshmallows would soon turn golden in the glow of gentle flames, lay a dimly lit control room, its rows of monitors displaying infrared satellite feeds. A man clad in a charcoal-black lab coat stood over a sea of white coats that filled the room. The stitched tag on his chest read: Dr. Etienne Virel. Arms crossed tight, he watched streams of data roll across multiple monitors with unnerving stillness. 

One of the central screens showed a streak of burning light cutting through space. The object pulsed faintly as it descended, a flicker of something not quite natural.

“How didn’t we see it sooner?” Someone muttered from across the room.

“It wasn’t there two hours ago on radar, and there was nothing in the deep scans. We’ve triple-checked the trajectory; the object is a meteor, inbound and large. Approximately one kilometre in diameter, stony composition. About the size of ten city blocks or more than nine football fields end to end.”

Dr. Virel snapped, panicked but hushed. “One Kilometre!? An object that size doesn’t just appear past our scanners; it’s not possible.” His face was expressionless, but his pale eyes narrowed with each passing second. His jaw worked silently, as if chewing over a thought he didn’t want to voice. 

He looked to one of the senior researchers, named Dr. Kravitz. “How far is it from earth?”

“Three hundred thousand kilometres, velocity fifteen thousand metres per second; projected Earth impact in just under six hours. Location: southern France, possibly near Saint-Bonnet.” 

Another replied, eyes darting across trajectories. “You’re saying it won’t miss?”

“I’m saying this will be a direct hit. All simulations converge within a hundred-kilometre corridor. The margin of error is shrinking, not growing. This is a real threat.” Dr. Kravitz responded. A silence followed. Tense and electric

“… My god…” The words hung in the air like ash, untouched by the frantic activity within the control room.

“Sir! This just came in. We’re seeing structural irregularities. New telemetry readings show asymmetric fragmenting; the outer shell has torn apart and is expected to fall across parts of the Val de Loire region.” The message came fast and clipped, a dam of information finally breaking.

“And the core?” Virel’s voice cut through the noise like a scalpel.

“Eight hundred metres wide now but still on course for Saint-Bonnet. It’s dense, intact, and tracking straight.” The core’s trajectory burned across the map.

“So, two impact zones. One narrow and catastrophic, the other scattered, but over a major civilian region.” Virel’s lips pressed into a thin line; not a single word was uttered. Yet fears still emerged. Without a second to waste, he straightened, adjusted his cuffs, and turned to the room.

“Alert the civil protection authorities, get the director of TSC on the line, and begin phased evacuation procedures for all projected impact zones immediately! Keep the language neutral; tell them it’s a high-altitude debris event, a satellite fragmentation.”

With a final glance that silenced any remaining hesitation, Dr. Etienne seized the Encrypted Voice Terminal (EVT) and strode out, coat flaring behind him, already barking commands into the device as the doors hissed shut.

Dr. Kravitz and the others didn’t waste a second. Fingers flew across keyboards, voices exchanged clipped updates, and alarms blinked softly in the dim light. The world carried on unaware, but here, every second counted. For something ancient and foreign would break through the atmosphere.

________

Now treading through the dense bush, Anne and Danielle made their way to the campsite, following the signs left by Lucien; broken branches, bent shrubs, and scuffed earth. All leading to a tent already pitched. But Lucien was nowhere in sight. No familiar silhouette, no cheerful call. Only the buzzing of insects and birdsong echoing off the trees. Anne set the basket down, her eyes scanning the foliage. 

‘Crrrk.’ The forest held its breath, and the birds went silent. 

Anne placed a hand on Danielle’s shoulder and gently sat her down, “Stay here, sweetie.”

She straightened, heart thudding as leaves rustled behind the tent. Her fingers closed around the handle of her knife. Small, but sharp. She stepped forward, breath held, ready to fend off whatever beast awaited them. The rustling grew louder. A shadow shifted.

Then –

“BOUH !”

“AAAH!” “EEEK!”

Anne nearly dropped the knife. Danielle shrieked, then burst into laughter.

Lucien sprang out, grinning, holding two marshmallows skewered on twigs, poised on his hair like antlers.

“Lucien! Tu es complètement fou, toi!” Anne cried, half-scolding, half-relieved, slowly lowering the knife.

He held up his hands. “Whoa, easy there! I was testing your tracking skills. Ten out of ten!”

Danielle ran to him, giggling, “Papa, you scared the forest!”

“Good. Keeps Mother Nature on her toes.” Lucien winked. 

“If Mother Nature carries a knife, you’d better run.” Anne sheathed the blade, still eyeing him like she hadn’t ruled out using it.

Lucien laughed and dropped to the ground, patting the grass beside him. “Truce? It’ll be a while until the deer come. It must be exhausting getting spooked after walking all the way here.”

Anne raised an eyebrow and sat down. Lucien thought she had gotten over the scare, but her pursed lips said otherwise.

“I’ll be sleeping on the couch,” he muttered under his breath. 

Danielle plopped between them, already eyeing the marshmallows. A beam of sunlight lit her sketchbook peeking from the basket, its empty page waiting for antlers and laughter.

Soon, the three of them were huddled by the fire, roasting marshmallows as the sugar melted into amber. Birds gave way to crickets, and the hush of evening settled in as they awaited the arrival of dusk and deer.

The post Silence in Val de Loire appeared first on MASAF.

We are all witnesses. And to witness is to inherit responsibility, whether or not we ever asked for it.

People often assume I support Palestine because I am Muslim. Sometimes that’s true, sometimes it’s lazy. I ask myself the embarrassing version of the question: Would I care this fiercely if Gaza prayed differently? If the babies were baptised instead of called to prayer, would I still cry the same way? I want to say yes. Of course yes, because pain is pain. But I don’t trust easy answers. I have a body, and bodies come with loyalties.

My faith taught me to love my neighbour, to care for strangers, to protect children, and that teaching is not neutral. It binds me to people I’ve never met. Faith makes me care. But faith is also comfort, and comfort can be bias. Then again, perhaps the word bias works too hard to disguise something simpler: it is wrong to starve and bomb people.

I once met an Israeli woman who despised what her government had made of her. We sat at a plastic table that stuck to our wrists. She was in her late thirties, perhaps forty, her hair buzzed short.

“You served in the army,” I said.
She nodded. “Five years.”
“You were in prison?”
She smiled faintly. “I was a traitor.”

I wanted to sound clever, but what came out was simple curiosity.
“Then why stay? You could have left. You could have started again somewhere else.”

“I did. You leave in your mind first,” she said. “The body just takes longer to follow.”

She told me about her husband, a man from the side her country had trained her to hate. Gaza. They met at a checkpoint and, years later, re-met at a protest. They later married in Cyprus. Loving him, she said, had been the best decision of her life. It made her feel human again. But a year after their marriage, he was killed. Officially, it was “crossfire,” but she said there had been no crossfire that day. Just a single bullet. 

“He was a teacher,” she said quietly. “He taught equations. What could a man like that possibly do to a state with tanks, jets, and even nukes? How disgustingly ignorant must you be to fear someone whose only weapon was a piece of chalk?” When she spoke about him, her face didn’t move much. Her voice didn’t tremble. It was as if grief had calcified somewhere behind her ribs, permanent and unrepairable.

Then she told me about her friend, a Spanish journalist she had met while volunteering at a clinic. She was twenty-eight. A young, cheerful, endlessly talkative girl. “I never understood why she gave up her easy life to care about Palestinians,” the woman said. “She didn’t have to. She could have gone back home anytime. But she stayed.”

The journalist was later arrested and imprisoned with her. They shared a cell for three months, sleeping on concrete, whispering stories to keep themselves from falling apart. One morning, guards entered the cell and executed the journalist and another inmate in front of her. Headshots. She said she screamed until her throat tore, but no one came. No one cared.

She didn’t cry when she told me this. She didn’t even flinch. She just stared at the coffee on the table, as if it might swallow the memory whole.

Then she looked at me and said quietly, “You must hate us.”

“I hate what you guys did,” I said. “But I want to understand. You’ve lived both sides. You’ve also been caged in prison. They killed your husband, your friend. Isn’t that reason enough to hate?”

She sipped her coffee and replied, “Reason enough is that I am more Jew than I am Israeli. And Jew, to me, means remembering who I am supposed to love. If being Israeli means forgetting and killing those I’m meant to protect and claim – the Jews, the Palestinians, humans. Then I abstain from the word.”

I wrote that down with a shaking hand because it rearranged the furniture in my head. “Being Jew means I don’t lie about suffering or cooperate with it. If my state asks me to, then it is the state that has strayed, not me,” she added.

She wasn’t condemning her people. She was indicting what they had allowed themselves to become. Faith before nation. It sounded familiar, like a principle I believed in but hadn’t yet risked anything for.

That night, her words followed me. I kept turning them over like a stone in my hand. Am I Muslim more than I am human, or human more than I am Muslim?

My instinct says the two are not adversaries. My faith should widen my humanity, not narrow it. But instincts are not proof, and the world is ruthless in asking us to choose.

I tried to fit my own words around hers. I am Muslim more than I am human. Saying it felt unsettling, like shrinking the vastness of faith into a flag. I am human more than I am Muslim; that one felt like discarding the very thing that taught me to love widely. Neither answer felt right. Maybe the question isn’t which comes first, but which one I betray less often. 

I have watched a hundred videos of protests in cities I’ve never lived in, and my chest loosens when I see a forest of faces chanting in unfamiliar accents. Sometimes I wonder if humans share a universal moral code. Every religion claims to own it, and every government claims to represent it. Yet perhaps there is no universal code at all. We call something humanitarian only when it suits us.

We invent rules we can break anytime, anywhere, anyhow. We condemn violence until it needs defending. We are, truly, the masters of conditional empathy.

And yet, there are cracks in that cynicism. Protesters and activists, bless them. They are the anomaly that keeps the rest of us from collapsing into nihilism. Students who should be drinking and flirting, enjoying their youth, instead stand and shout for strangers they will never meet. Teachers, nurses, farmers – people who could stay home but choose instead to be inconvenient. I am especially soft for the older ones. They remind me that courage can be contagious. Surely you can’t run a hospital on courage, but you cannot run a movement without it either.

What I finally arrived at was smaller, quieter, and more useful conclusion: I am accountable. To God and to people.

But accountability is not the property of belief. It does not belong to Muslims alone, nor to Christians, Buddhists, Jews, or any other name we give to faith. It is the burden and privilege of being alive. Whether one prays, doubts, disbelieves, or even resents the idea of belief altogether, we are all caught in the same moral weather. The ache of seeing a child die unjustly does not ask what scripture you keep by your bedside. 

To be human is to be implicated. Believer or atheist, pilgrim or cynic, worshipper or anti-believer. The duty to care precedes every theology. It’s the one commandment we invent repeatedly, even when we think we’ve outgrown it. And maybe that is what faith, stripped of its symbols, was always trying to say: that love without qualification is the closest thing we have to proof that humanity still works.

Ask me again if I hate Israel. Ask if I am biased, if I would care this fiercely were the children to pray differently, if the rubble sounded less familiar to my faith. The answer will not change.

Do not starve people.
Do not bomb hospitals.
Do not shoot journalists.
Do not execute prisoners.
Do not bomb schools and shelters.
Do not force families from their homes.
Do not turn medicine into a bargaining chip.
Do not make language do the killing for you.
Do not teach the world to measure grief by geography.

These are not political demands. They are the minimum requirements for calling ourselves human. The bare minimum.

So yes, ask me the question if you must. Ask it with all the comfort of distance. I will answer the same way each time: as much as I hate Israel for the atrocities it commits, what I hate more is the ease with which we forget. Because forgetting is how violence survives.

But conviction is easier to write than to live. Outrage feels righteous until you notice how safe it sounds in your own room. Every time I write an article like this, a pettier voice whispers inside me, one I dislike but recognise.
Will people know where I stand? Will I look brave? Will they love me for saying what they wanted to hear?

We speak of righteousness, but we practise self-gratification. I am not exempt. I re-read what I’ve written and see my guilt between the lines. I sit in a safe room, type in safety, post in safety. My outrage is sanitised by distance and Wi-Fi. I tell myself it helps. Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t. Sometimes I wonder if I write to be good or to look good. Maybe I like the applause for being “brave.” Maybe I am addicted to my own virtue.

That’s the risk of writing; it can so easily become a performance of morality. So, I test myself with substitutions.

Would I still care if I never wrote this? If I weren’t Muslim? If no one agreed with me, no one clapped, no one watched? Would I still care when I’m tired, busy, alone – when caring costs me something?

That, I think, is the only honest test left. The test is crude but clarifying: the wrongness is portable. That’s how I know my loyalty isn’t only to my own.

But self-interrogation only goes so far, the world eventually asks louder. Back home, people often ask, “Why do we care so much? We’re a small country with our own problems. Why care this loudly about a place we cannot fix?”

True. Malaysia is not an empire. We have our own emergencies, our own awkwardnesses, our own people who simply want bread to be cheaper and buses to be on time. But moral attention is not a finite resource. We can fight our own demons and still weep for others. We can fix potholes and still refuse genocide. A small nation can have a large conscience, often larger than most.

Injustice, when left unchecked anywhere, rehearses itself everywhere. The moment we say that’s not our problem, we audition for the day when no one says that’s theirs for us.

The truth should hurt. If it doesn’t, it isn’t doing its job. Being from a small country teaches you early that your voice is not an earthquake. You speak anyway, trusting in the mathematics of many. Because what’s happening to Palestinians is not a complicated policy argument, it’s a primer on what happens when we allow a government to decide that a hospital is an acceptable battlefield and starvation an acceptable winning tactic.

If you cannot oppose that when it’s far, what will you do when it comes close?

Kerana memanusiakan manusia bukanlah tugas penyair, agamawan atau politikus, tetapi fitrah yang kita semua dustai setiap kali kita memilih diam. Kerana memanusiakan manusia ialah menolak selimut selesa, menolak alasan bahawa tragedi di negara asing bukan urusan kita. Kerana memanusiakan manusia ialah berani memihak kepada yang tertindas, walau suara kita kecil, walau lidah kita digigit takut, walau dunia memanggil kita naif. Kerana memanusiakan manusia ialah mengangkat kembali nilai yang telah kita buang, malu, empati, sedih, marah. Kerana memanusiakan manusia ialah menegur bangsa sendiri ketika mereka memuja zalim, dan menegur diri sendiri ketika hati mula letih peduli. Kerana memanusiakan manusia ialah tidak menunggu musim simpati untuk menjadi manusia, ia tanggungjawab yang tidak kenal erti berhenti. Kerana memanusiakan manusia ialah memahami bahawa setiap jasad yang tumbang di tanah asing adalah kehilangan sebahagian daripada semua. Kerana memanusiakan manusia ialah menolak untuk berpura-pura tidak tahu, tidak nampak, tidak terlibat. Kerana memanusiakan manusia bukan sekadar tugas moral, tetapi satu-satunya cara untuk membuktikan bahawa kita masih punya jiwa. Maka memanusiakan manusia, pada akhirnya, ialah menatap wajah sendiri di dalam cermin dan berkata: aku masih manusia, dan aku memilih untuk terus menjadi manusia.

-YQ (Excerpt)

The post How Human of Us appeared first on MASAF.

We take it for granted that we confer value to procreation. However, whether from a naturalistic or pragmatic point of view, neither of these positions is sufficient to justify this. Perhaps we have children because it is instinctive for human beings as animals. It is, after all, a foundational instinct that we procreate so that the perpetuation of our species can happen. The biggest threat any group of beings can face is the threat of extinction, an erasure of their very existence. As beings who seek to achieve particularity and disvalue uniformity in their lives, it is a horror to achieve the former yet have it all be done away with. 

Perhaps this is why, at an individual level, we are immensely scared of diseases that make us forget. When you are at the edge of your existence, old and frail, you are left only with the memories of the person you have become. You have exhausted much of your physiology, and your mind starts to forget, and your body starts to fail, but the memory of you remains, whether in yourself or in the markings that you leave unto the world. We associate youth, energy, and health as features of dignity. To grow old is to grow undignified. The dignity of your physiology departs, but dignity tied to your memories does not, unless you forget or are forgotten. If to be remembered is to have dignity, then we have children to have dignity.

Yet, is this not deeply selfish? Even more damning, we are severely more selfish than those before us when we choose to procreate. We always do so for selfish reasons; that is a given. However, today, the stakes we face are significantly lower than those of our ancestors. At an instinctive level, we have children to prevent the extinction of the human animal. At a societal level, we have children so they can take care of us when we are old. At an emotional level, we have children because it makes us feel fulfilled or happy. 

However, since the last few decades, the state machinery has become efficient enough to supersede the family. We do not need ‘des proches’ to care for us when we fall sick. We can just go to hospitals and be taken care of by nurses and doctors. It isn’t necessarily our children who care for us when we are old, either; there are old folks homes with enough variety to suit our preferences. Where family is no longer required for physical fulfillment, we only depend on our children to make us feel emotionally fulfilled. 

But do you not feel like this is a reason too minuscule, too selfish to ask them to go through the suffering that is life? The stakes used to be that if there was nobody readily available to take care of you, you would be left to suffer painful sickness and painful death. Today, one has children merely because they bring us happiness, we find them cute, or because we think they are proof that we once existed in this world. In any case, we will tend to treat children as a means to our own end, but barely, if ever, theirs.

We live in horror of having flesh. From a bloody, messy birth, you move from one painful decision to another. It is not that you do not have brief moments of happiness at all—you do. Yet these moments are uncertain and fleeting. For every high, there are equally low lows. Pure concepts being defined by their antonyms can only mean one thing: all the happiness you feel means you risk feeling sadness of a similar intensity. 

And it is not as if you do not know this. For every time you love someone and then not anymore, is there not a hole in your heart shaped like them? For every delightful encounter, is there not an equally harrowing departure? Our lives are defined by the certainty of sadness and uncertain happiness. Our children’s lives work similarly. If we are not happy, how can we expect our children to be? And if we know happiness is so difficult to arrive at, why put our children through the journey?

Even then, the goal of our personhood is not merely to be happy, but also to be good, and what is good is never necessarily what makes us happy. To achieve happiness is instinctive. To be good is reasoned. We will not arrive at goodness by appealing to our instinct. We do so by reasoning our way to understand the ends that are valuable and the ends that are not. Is it not our ability to reason that marks the difference between us and our other fellow creations? Many even go as far as to say this faculty of reason is what determines our moral worth over lesser beings.

But people who often appeal to reason do not find themselves in a state of happiness. They do so because it is what leads them to be good, and good things are not necessarily things that make us happy. Eating provides us happiness, but it is only good for our body in moderation and sufficiency. Exerting our bodies to help others might be good and make us happy, but we might find ourselves doing so because it is instrumental to our own happiness, and not necessarily because it is good. 

Often, to live a good life, we have to refuse things that make us happy. We must repudiate wealth, excess, and waste. We must be mindful, live moderately, and exert ourselves for others as needed. Such is a good life. It is difficult, treading between two hard places, and if we see goodness as a reasonable goal for existence, we must want similarly for our fellow humans and later our children. We want our children to be good because that is how we understand a reasonable life to be. It is not a priority that our children lead a happy life, because happiness is not what makes them good. And we can only be good if we call others to do good as well. It is difficult, then, to stomach wanting children for our own happiness, having them go through the harrowing effort that is life, and then refusing them the choice to be happy. 

If and when you do end up having children, you must provide them with the necessary faculties to be good and happy in a way in which the latter does not impede the former. However, if your children then decide that they do not want to be good or somehow believe in another conception of good that is incompatible with yours, you must accept this. You cannot ask them to return the wealth you have invested in them, or chase them out of our lives, or ask them to stay if they refuse to. Because if you do, you are treating your children merely as a means to your own ends, but never theirs. If you do, you refuse your children dignity.

The post The Trouble With Having Children appeared first on MASAF.

“It’s Groundhog Day and maybe life is on a loop

But I miss my burrow, I miss my coop

So I’m headed back down! There’s a shadow up here!

Get ready for 6 more weeks of winter this year!”

The declaration was met with cheers by over forty thousand people in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, on a cold morning just last month. Most of them had been waiting in the cold for hours, while millions of others watched the proceedings live on television or streaming on the Internet.

Punxsutawney Phil, the immortal groundhog meteorologist, had seen his shadow, which meant that there would be six more weeks of winter.

    Photo: ACE HARDWARE. February 2025.

If you’ve never tumbled into a Groundhog Day rabbit hole—or, in this case, a groundhog burrow—like I have, here’s everything you need to know: every year on February 2nd, the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil leaves his burrow in Gobbler’s Knob in the tiny town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to predict the weather. If he doesn’t see his shadow, spring will arrive early. If he does, the winter will go on for six more weeks.

Then, there’s everything you don’t need to know, but that you might like to anyway: every summer since at least 1887, Phil has taken an “elixir of life” that magically extends his lifespan by seven years, making him over 139 years old today. He speaks in ‘groundhogese,’ a language only the current president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle can understand. He has a wife named Phyllis, and they introduced twins just last year, a boy and a girl named Shadow and Sunny.

But let’s go back to the beginning.

Though Groundhog Day is now primarily celebrated in the United States and Canada, it has Pagan origins. According to Dan Yoder, folklorist and author of the 2003 book Groundhog Day, the festival of Imbolc symbolised one of the four seasonal turning points in the Celtic year, falling midway between a solstice and an equinox. It was traditionally a day meant to look ahead to the next season, foretelling the weather and family fortunes of the year. But even after Western Europeans were Christianised, the practice was so important to their cultural sense of time that the Church ‘baptised’ it into a Christian holiday. It therefore became Candlemas, or the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, in the Catholic Church.

Traditionally, Candlemas—Candeleur in French and Candelaria in Spanish—is a day when people bring their candles to church to be blessed, but the weather prediction element continued past its folk roots. In a poem written by John Ray in 1678: 

“If Candlemas day be fair and bright

Winter will have another flight

If on Candlemas day it be showre and rain

Winter is gone and will not come again.”

Therefore, clear skies on Candlemas Day meant more weeks of winter, while cloudy skies heralded an early spring.

Why the groundhog, then? In the parts of Europe that used to be Celtic in ancient times, Germans who celebrated Candlemas believed that a badger predicted the weather. Instead of Candlemas, they called it Dachstag or Badger Day. The legend went as such: Sonnt sich der Dachs in der Lichtmeßwoche, so geht er auf vier Wochen wieder zu Loche. If the badger sunbathes during Candlemas week, for four more weeks he will be back in his hole. 

As stores of food became more scarce as winter progressed, it’s said that these communities relied heavily on hibernating animals’ behaviour to predict how much longer the winter would last. This belief aligns with the animal they chose to be their weather prophet: the badger, which retires for winter sleep until sometime in February, when it reemerges to look for food and prepare for the breeding season.

So, when the Pennsylvania Dutch—immigrants from German-speaking areas of Europe—settled in the United States, they brought their traditions along with them. But instead of the badger, they chose another small, furry, hibernating, forest-dwelling mammal: the woodchuck, otherwise known as the groundhog.

The first documented mention of groundhogs predicting the weather is in a diary entry written by James L. Morris, a Welsh-American storekeeper in Pennsylvania in 1840. “Today the Germans say the groundhog comes out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he returns in and remains there 40 days.”

German communities in Pennsylvania evidently continued this tradition over the years, because in 1886 the newspaper Punxsutawney Spirit wrote, “Today is groundhog day, and up to the time of going to press, the beast has not seen its shadow.” A year later, residents hiked to Gobbler’s Knob, Phil’s “official” home, for the first time to witness his prediction. Thus, Groundhog Day was born.

So, what do the residents of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, actually do on Groundhog Day? Unfortunately, it used to be pretty grim.

Around the same time Pennsylvanians started making the trek to visit the prognosticating groundhog, members of the Punxsutawney Elk Lodge were served groundhog meat to eat. They organised an annual hunting party and held Groundhog Picnics as well as Groundhog Feasts throughout the year for those seeking to get more adventurous with their palate. But after a few decades, they weren’t able to drum up enough public interest, and the hunt was discontinued, keeping groundhog meat officially off the menu. 

Thank goodness it did, too, because the furry weather forecaster’s fame was steadily growing across the nation. Funnily enough, Clymer Freas, a Punxsutawney Spirit editor who was part of a groundhog hunting club himself, would later be known as the ‘father’ of Groundhog Day after declaring Phil to be the only weather forecasting groundhog worth paying attention to in the papers. 

Source: VisitPAGO.com

Gone are the days when one could catch a groundhog predicting the weather in the morning and have groundhog meat served on a plate only several hours later. These days, one needs only gather at Gobbler’s Knobb on February 2nd to watch Phil emerge from his burrow: a thick tree stump with a latched door carved out of its trunk and a little green plaque above it that reads, ‘PHIL.’ The festivities start as early as 3:30 a.m. for enthusiasts eager to wait in the freezing cold for a chance to see Phil up close. To kill time, they enjoy fireworks, live music, local artisans and craft vendors, and rows of food trucks.

Four hours later, members of the Inner Circle coax Phil out of his stump to share his prediction with the world. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club Inner Circle—created by members of the aforementioned woodchuck-eating lodge—comprises 15 members who, per the official Groundhog Club website, are tasked with protecting and perpetuating the legend of Punxsutawney Phil. The Inner Circle hosts the festivities every year, donning tuxedos and top hats on the big day when they help interpret Phil’s weather prediction. This year, they presented Phil with two prophetic scrolls, and his choice was communicated to the Inner Circle president, Tom Dunkel, whose role as president earned him possession of a magic acacia cane that allowed him to speak Phil’s native ‘groundhogese.’ 

But Phil wasn’t always called Phil. 

Prior to being known as Phil, he was called Br’er Groundhog or simply The Punxsutawney Groundhog. But according to the Groundhog Club, Phil was supposedly named after King Philip. But which King Philip? Germany’s King Philip from over eight centuries ago? Perhaps the one from France, Greece, or even Spain? No further details were provided.

However, the way the story goes is that in 1953, 66 years after the first official Groundhog Day, Punxsutawney sent two baby groundhogs to the Griffith Park Zoo in Los Angeles, named after Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The California Department of Agriculture rejected them, calling them “agricultural pests” and demanding they be “destroyed.”

Pennsylvanians had no choice but to take it as a personal insult, with the Groundhog Club going so far as to say they were “executed,” claiming that killing these groundhogs was “an insult to the royal family.” They worried that this incident would cause complications with England, so they decided to contact the State Department. There is no record of how the state responded, but eight years later, “Punxsutawney Phil” appeared in the newspapers for the first time, presumably done to honour the poor murdered groundhogs.

Regardless of where he had gotten it, the name stuck. But although Dunkel insists there’s “only ever been one Santa Claus, one Easter Bunny, and one Phil,” Phil has had his fair share of copycats—or rather, copyhogs. 

Among them is Potomac Phil, a stuffed groundhog who also communicates his predictions to an Inner Circle of people in top hats, but unlike Phil, he makes predictions about the weather and the political climate. There’s Shubenacadie Sam, who lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, and has almost four thousand followers on X (previously Twitter). And then you also have animal weather forecasters that aren’t groundhogs at all, like Ohio’s Concord Casimir, that predicts the coming weather by how he eats his yearly pierogis. 

While Phil’s status as the original is undisputed, he doesn’t have the greatest track record with his predictions. Much like this year’s prediction, he almost always foretells a longer winter. He’s predicted an early spring only 20 times in recorded history, the latest one being last year. The Groundhog Club insists he’s 100% accurate, but studies claim that Phil’s only had a 35% success rate. According to research made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the most reliable groundhogs are Staten Island Chuck of New York, Georgia’s General Beauregard Lee, and Lander Lil from Wyoming, with accuracy rates of 85%, 80%, and 75%, respectively.

But the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club maintains that these other prognosticators are only impostors—not that it’s done anything to quell Phil’s fame. While Phil has always been beloved, it wasn’t until the 1993 movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell that his popularity skyrocketed to new heights. Crowds soared from about 2,000 to an average of 10,000 after the movie came out, with people all around the world gathering to catch even the smallest glimpse of the immortal groundhog.

It’s true that groundhogs in captivity only have a life expectancy of 14 years. But it’s also true that Punxsutawney Phil is immortal. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

His secret? Once a year at the club’s annual summer picnic, Phil drinks a “super secret” concoction dubbed “The Elixir of Life.” Every sip gives him seven years, and he drinks three or four sips each year. The elixir, mixed by his handler and made up of ingredients from the wilds of Pennsylvania, is designed specifically for him and doesn’t work on anyone else—not on humans, other animals, or even other groundhogs. “Only on Phil because he is special,” says Dunkel, Inner Circle president.

But surely he wouldn’t be condemned to a lonely, solitary life for all of eternity? Doesn’t his wife, Phyllis, get the elixir too? According to an interview Dunkel had with the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this year, she does not.

If you also think this is cruel and unfair, you wouldn’t be the only one. Michael Venos, who runs the Countdown to Groundhog Day website, created a petition in 2022 to give Phyllis the elixir of life, too. “The Groundhog Club can just take a little extra time and pick a few extra dandelions to make the potion,” he said. “Keeping his family together will make for a happier Phil and allow him to perform his Groundhog Day duties to the best of his abilities.” The petition now only has 7 signatures out of its goal of 10. Well, 8 signatures now that I’ve signed it too.

Venos also made a startling discovery: before Phyllis, there was Philomena.

In February 1984, Philadelphia radio station WIOQ-FM sent a 4-year-old groundhog from the Philadelphia Zoo to Punxsutawney to be mated with Phil. Their wedding was presided over by Common Pleas Court Judge Edwin Snyder and announced in the zoo’s member magazine. According to the article, Philomena was sent after the zoo learnt that Phil needed a new mate, as his previous mate, Phyllis, had died.

There’s something undoubtedly sinister about Phil getting to live forever with a rotation of Phyllises and Philomenas on hand. In his petition, Venos wrote, “It’s not like Punxsutawney Phil is an action star who needs a new love interest every single movie. He’s not James Bond, Indiana Jones, or even Austin Powers. This is real life! There’s absolutely no reason not to give [Phyllis] a sip of a magical potion that will prolong her life indefinitely. There’s absolutely no reason to allow [Phyllis] to die when the key to giving her eternal life is readily available.”

At the very least, we know Phil’s monogamous, as he only remarries when his partner dies. Admittedly, he isn’t given a lot of time to grieve, not when he’s sent a new groundhog almost immediately afterwards to take her place, all while bearing the name of a previous ex-wife. None of it does much to inspire romance.

Source: Yahoo! News

However, it’s clear that Phil’s relationship with his current wife, Phyllis, is unlike anything he’s ever had. According to Josh Farcus, a member of the Inner Circle, the couple has been living in the groundhog zoo at Punxsutawney Memorial Library for the past 45 years—which means he either meant that Phil has had multiple Phyllises living with him since, or that this Phyllis has a lifespan much longer than expected of a regular groundhog. Phil also became a first-time father last year with the surprise arrival of twin baby groundhogs, a girl and a boy named Sunny and Shadow, respectively. 

Typically, male groundhogs will copulate with female groundhogs and stay with them almost throughout the pregnancy. Once the female is close to giving birth, though, the male will leave her to give birth by herself. This clearly isn’t the case with Phil, who has stayed with Phyllis long after the twins were born and has helped her parent them. Though it’s the bare minimum, it’s nice to see Phil being such a hands-on father.

While I’m usually not a big advocate for nepotism, now that Phil has offspring of his own, I had expected Phil to retire eventually and hand over the mantle to one of them. But Tom Dunkel says that the twins won’t be going into the family business, as Phil will live forever. They also won’t be receiving the elixir of life, destined to live out “normal groundhog lives” instead.

If the week I spent reading countless articles, combing through archives, and finding all I could about this beloved, furry supercentenarian has taught me anything, it’s that people love a tradition. People love coming together once a year. People love being in on the joke. People love being reminded that at a time when it might feel like all hope seems lost, there will always be something certain and hopeful they can rely on.

In just about every article, forum, and comment section I came across, people were fully committing to the bit. They knew Phil’s lore and watched the live stream every year. They argued about his predictions and critiqued his immortality. Phil was more like an old friend than a small, furry celebrity, especially one that’s been here longer than any of us have been alive and will survive us long after we’re gone.

It’s easy, then, to ask what the point of Punxsutawney Phil and Groundhog Day is. But to that I ask, “Why not?” Sincerity has become increasingly rare now that casual cruelty and disdain can be found everywhere you look. Why not let people find comfort in something so earnestly fun and whimsical? Why not let an immortal groundhog predict the weather?

Frankly, my grievances about his personal life aside, I find that I’ve developed a personal, comforting connection to Phil’s yearly predictions myself. Much like Phil, I also miss my burrow. I, too, miss my coop. So I’ll gladly follow his lead and stay inside where it’s warm, if only for a little while longer, and hope spring comes early next year.

The post The Origins of Groundhog Day appeared first on MASAF.