About the Author

I’ve chosen to remain anonymous and I hope the reasons are understandable.

The battles we fight within ourselves are meant to be private. Between us and Allah. We are encourged to not speak of these openly.

But this story insisted on being written.

It is not extraordinary. In fact, the lack of extraordinariness had me worried. It is an everyday story in every sense of the word, and if it wasn’t for the encouragement from my publisher, it probaby would’ve never seen the light of day (well, technically, it hasn’t yet).

Restless Nafs Syndrome was inspired by true events. Whose story isn’t? We write what we’ve lived, what we’ve lost, what we’ve dreamed, and what we wish we’d been told when we were younger.

I am like you. A part of this community of post-aparthied, post caste-system South African Indian Muslims.

I try to be good.

I try to be grateful.

I try to make sense of a restlessness I can’t understand.

No one ever told me about the tunnel. That at some point, every woman (and man too I’m told) must pass through one. A period where everything you thought you knew tells you it doesn’t know you either.

I wasn’t ready for the rollercoaster.

But life has a way of teaching whether we’re ready to learn or not.

This book is my gift. A gift to teach you what I wish I had been taught.

Made with love, stuff I had studied and never knew I needed, and a few years of pulling my hair trying to figure out how to explain it all.

Let’s hope it gets to see the light of day. Or my thoughts die with me and all this is in vain.

Laylah