Cactus will give you proof of the power of love and respect. I wrote this book to share a real life story of a couple in an interfaith marriage. This is a story of a Muslim and a Christian displaying love and compassion for one another and remaining married and in love until death did them a part.

Cactus is my story. I share my family’s real life experience with struggle and tragedy. I tell our tale of time and fate and injustice wrapped into a special love story with elements of triumph and overcoming incredible hardships.

I want to share with you a story of remarkable life experiences and heartfelt depths of expressed emotions. The story speaks of meeting my wife and falling in love while living in a country where marriages are arranged by parents and elder relatives for socioeconomic purposes.

Through Cactus, you’ll find a story about my family’s life from different culture, religion and era; how women were raised, what the social and religious structure of the time was, and how that influenced our family’s life path, including the circumstances surrounding my own birth. What follows is my submersion into a new world as a refugee and immigrant. It transmutes into an ode to my wife and partner.

An excerpt from Cactus:

I decided to write my life story to shine awareness on what it is like to come from different cultures and faiths and to love one another despite that. I want to demonstrate that love, not hate, rules. I intend to shed some light on a few elements to do with quality of life and understanding among humans. I want the young and the future generations, from all faiths, to understand we are all one in spirit. I want to teach some lessons in dealing fairly with people.

I hope my words someday give others courage to point out the wrong from the right, accept other’s differences, and treat family members, friends, work colleagues and community members at large with respect. We must help each other to build a better world for all.

From one seed grows a tree. Imagine if the international community put human rights at the forefront of their mandate and required that each country leader pledge to do his or her best in following the international laws to treat citizens and neighboring countries with respect. The result would be freedom and peace for all. Prosperity is the right of all people. It is not for one race or one nation.

My life story is for peaceful people who care about other human beings and their wellbeing. It is a story of family life which has not ended yet but that has changed forever since my angel bird has flown. It’s about growing in what I know and how I feel. Knowing and feeling are noble parts of the life journey that can help people better understand each other. Understanding can contribute to dignified lives for all beings.

My life journey has been filled with happiness, wounds, sweetness, bitterness, joy and pain like all mortals feel. Right now, with the death of my wife, I feel helpless, but I must go on. My life can be described as dots and single letters, containing some love, some scary moments and some heartbreaking times. I must live my life with its suffering and accept my life journey and my fate.

A person is not always free; during our lives we meet people, we say goodbye to people, we hug people, we share our pain with people and people share their pain with us in return. Sometimes this cycle scares me. The years are going by so fast, like a train circling. My angel bird is gone, and my own life candle is nearly extinguished, and all the people around me have forgotten the sweet past. I walk lonely, my eyes teary. I think of my birth country, and it calls me back. I am going, I am going back.

We are stronger than life. In moments of sorrow, in moments of hurt, no matter how wounded we are, the pain cannot shake us. Until the last moments of my life, I will be the flying hummingbird who still loves his life journey and fate. As long as we are determined to live free in spite of the world’s injustice, the long dark roads we walk will not break us.