Naima B. Robert – Na’ima B. Robert World Book Day message
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My dear girls,
it's a pleasure to be making this video.
I'm just sad that I couldn't be there
to meet you all and have this discussion
face to face.
My name is Naima. You guys can call
me auntie Naima, Naima b Robert
and I'm a writer.
Some of you may have read some of
my books. I'm the author of From My
Sister's Lips,
Boy Versus Girl, From Somalia With Love,
Far From Home and My New One, Black
Sheep.
I am also
the editor of a magazine called Sisters, which
is a magazine for fabulous Muslim women,
and a new magazine for kids called Discover.
I'm asked several questions,
when I'm,
you know, required to talk about my writing.
And, so I guess I'll just go through
some of those things with you,
give you a bit of background as to
who I am, how I started writing, and,
maybe a bit about my journey to Islam,
etcetera.
Okay. Well,
as some of you may know, if you
did your research, if you went on Wikipedia
or anything like that, you'll know that I,
was born of a Zulu mother and a
man of Scottish ancestry. He's my father.
And, I was born in Leeds,
so near you, I think.
Born in Leeds and spent 2 years there
and then went to Ethiopia
and then spent the rest of my childhood
up until the age of 18 in a
country called Zimbabwe.
And that's where I did my schooling.
Now,
my schooling experience in Zimbabwe was amazing.
It was
a school that encouraged us to
really push ourselves or I felt that I
was allowed to push myself and I was
supported.
And, I was told to to dream big
and to basically go for anything that I
thought I could do. I was given a
lot of freedom to do things that maybe
other kids my age wouldn't have done. We
started organizations. We started school clubs. We fundraised
for our school centenary.
You know, I wrote and directed many, many,
many plays.
You know, we did we did loads of
stuff.
And that schooling experience really gave me a
lot of confidence
and made me think that I could do
anything I put my mind to.
Fast forward a couple of years, I'm in
the UK, in East London at university
and
bam
Islam comes into my life. And how that
happened was that I was actually in Egypt
for a festival
and, while I was there I started noticing
women in hijab.
And to be honest it freaked me out
because I had never really noticed them before
which is kind of strange because obviously I
was in East London so you'd think that
I would have noticed all these women walking
around in scarf and niqab and these men
with beards but for some reason I didn't
really pay attention until I went to Egypt.
And when I was there
I was very, very upset. I disagreed with
it. I thought it was an oppression.
I thought these poor women, why do they
have to look like that? Who is making
them do this? La la la la la
la la la.
And then in the end, alhamdulillah,
I actually asked somebody,
this very nice lady, masha'Allah, may Allah bless
her, with so much good because really it
was what she said to me that started
me on my journey towards seeking Islam and
seeking Allah.
I said to her, after we'd been speaking
for a little while,
why
you are so beautiful.
Why do you cover yourself?
And she looked at me with this lovely
smile and she had that noor, you know,
that there some people have just got that
noor coming out of their faces. And she
smiled at me very kindly and she said,
because I want to be judged for what
I say and what I do, not what
I look like.
And for me that was the most radical
thing that I had ever heard in my
life because nobody had ever
said anything like that or even given me
an idea that that was possible.
And so after speaking to her I started
looking into Islam. I started noticing Muslims all
around me
and I started to read the Quran
and I actually started to put some Islamic
ideals and Islamic values into my own life
from that stage onwards.
And,
after that shortly after that, I went to
Senegal to go and see sort of, you
know, a different way of practicing Islam.
And while I was there I fasted, I
covered my hair etcetera and then I became
Muslim. I took my shahada when I got
back.
Went to Regent's Park mosque and took my
shahada there.
This was now in sort of 2nd year
of university.
I met my husband in my last year,
in my 3rd year,
and I, we got married right at the
end of, my 3rd year, mashAllah.
Alhamdulillah.
And,
I had my first baby the year after.
And it was when I had my child
that I first got the idea of writing.
Believe it or not, the idea of being
a writer actually never occurred to me. If
somebody had asked me while I was young
what would you like to be when you
grow up? I would not have said a
writer. I would have said a very wealthy
businesswoman.
Okay. Not a struggling writer. But anyway,
when I had my child I
used to take him to the library and
we used to go and get out you
know you can get so many books out
of the library in the UK. So we
used to take out as many books as
we could and we loved them.
But I remember thinking to myself, I wish
I could find
books about Islam
that are as interesting, as beautiful, as inspiring,
as exciting
as some of these other books that we're
reading. And at the time, really, there wasn't
anything. So I started writing a few, sort
of, I guess you'd say, creative
books about Islam and Muslim culture.
And
it just so happened I sent them off,
and the first publisher that got back to
me wanted to publish my book about the
hijab, the swirling hijab.
If you've seen that maybe you've seen it
in the library it's available in English with
lots of other languages Arabic, French, Urdu, Punjabi
all sorts. And it's quite common in libraries
around the UK.
And so that was my first book and
after that I wrote many other books and
actually to date I've written 22 books.
A school asked me to count sort of
how many I had written and the the
final figure was 222.
Not all of them are still in print
but the main ones, if you're looking online,
if you're interested and you wanna find out
at the library, the main ones would be
The Swelling Hijab,
Journey Through Islamic Art is a beautiful one,
very close to my heart. Alhamdulillah.
The latest one is Going to Mecca. These
are children's picture books. Ramadan Moon as well.
And then I've got my,
novels
from Samani with Love, Boy Versus Girl,
Far From Home and Black Sheep, and then
my book about how I became Muslim and
the stories of myself and other converts, reverts,
and how we, we came to the Deen
and that is from my sister's lips. If
you are in high school I really suggest
that you read that because
it's a book, masha'Allah, tabarakAllah.
Many, many people have
been inspired by it and it's encouraged them
and made them feel a lot of proud
and pleasure in being Muslim. So that is,
I think, my greatest achievement to date. It's
from my sister's lips even though it's not
sort of as creative as the others.
It's the one I think that's had the
biggest impact and all praise is due to
Allah for that.
Some of you may know I have 5
children, Alhamdulillah.
I have 3 boys and 2 girls. The
eldest is 13
going on 18.
The next one is 9 and a half.
Then I have a 7 year old, and
then a girl who's 4, and a baby
who's 8 months.
And writing actually works really well when you
have kids because you basically write when they're
sleeping, which means that you don't sleep, but
sometimes it's worth it.
And, so I write around the kids. The
kids inspire me all the time.
Many of my my my best books have
come from me wanting to impart a message
to them.
So, so for that.
Sisters Magazine I started that in 2007 with
a very good friend of mine, Umzaqariyah,
and we began it as a magazine for
Muslim women,
wanting to
encourage
us to better ourselves
and continue to better ourselves and work on
ourselves as Muslim women. So that was Sisters
Magazine. Alhamdulillah. It's still out there. It's still
doing well. If you want a copy it's
going into newsagents,
you know, as we speak. And then there's
the new baby which is Discover which is
my magazine for curious Muslim kids.
And this might be for the 6 to
12 age range.
We're looking for writers for that so if
any of you have got the idea to
write and you'd like to try writing for
children that might be a good place to
start. I will give your teacher all the
links to get the, the writer's guide for
sisters and also for discover so that you
can all have a go and see if
you would like to basically write something and
put it in Discover Magazine.
I believe the sun is setting,
that is why it's getting dark in here.
Market of time is in.
I encourage you ask you if you are
interested
visit my website
naimabrobert.co.uk.
You can read my articles. You can read
up on my books. You can email me
through that. If you are on Twitter, follow
me on Twitter. That is
at naima,
capital b, capital
r, Robert. Naima b Robert on Twitter. You
can also like me on Facebook. You can
join me on Facebook. We have,
we have
a Facebook page for Sisters Magazine as well
and for Discover. So basically we're kind of
all over the place. If you're on LinkedIn,
link up, but you shouldn't be on LinkedIn
because you're only kids so I don't think
that you have to do that.
But please do get in touch. If you
read the books, get back in touch and
tell me what you liked and what you
didn't like.
Review it on Amazon. Review it on Goodreads.
Get your opinion out there. And if you've
got any suggestions for how I can improve
the stories, how I should what I should
go into next, which book you'd like a
sequel to, then please, please, please do get
in touch insha'Allah.
And I hope that in the future we'll
be able to have a kind of writer's
writing competition or something like that and I
can help you guys to improve your writing.
B'ismillah one day I will come to your
school and we will write together inshallah
and until that day I leave you with
salaam. Assalamu alaikum Warahmatullahi
Wa Barakiatum.