It's That Time

Now that I have only one month left in Egypt, it's time to step back and take a look at the trip. Please forgive me for the belly-gazing, but I think it's important that I try to analyze and soak up all that's happened.

10 Things I Would Have Done the Same

1.) I would still travel to learn Arabic.

Alhamdulillah on the whole I've really benefited from the trip. I know that this is not the end of our Arabic learning curve, there's no question about that, but it's a good way to put down the fundamentals. I also think that it was important that we travelled to an Arabic country. Even if the average person doesn't speak proper fus'ha Arabic, at least distancing ourselves from Arabic helped. Also, the fact that we were away from our family helped us to focus because we knew how much everyone had sacrificed in order for us to be here. Travelling brings with its own sweetness and barakah and you can flatter yourself into believing that you are travelling on the same path as the scholars of the past. (At least you can try.)

Appreciation for having learned some Arabic I think will come after time. Right now everything is so condensed and you're so focused on Arabic you don't really realize all the doorways that the language can open for you. Insha'allah we'll finally be able to read tafsir of the Qur'an in our morning car sessions, we can listen to Arabic lectures, we will able to taste a little more of the sweetness of language without needing an intermediary. Alhamdulillah. And this is only the beginning...I can only imagine how much fun it will be to have Arabic classes with Ammo Rafik now.

2.) I would still travel to Egypt.

I'm perhaps a little bit unqualified to say this, considering I've only ever learned Arabic in one place, but I think I would still come to Egypt again. I really enjoyed learning Arabic in such a unique place. Egypt has a large percentage of Christians living side by side with Muslims. It's a place of ancient history, with *obviously* the pyramids and many ancient artifacts. There's the Nile, a part of which (I've heard) flows in Paradise. And most of all, there are the Egyptian people. A more generous and open-hearted people would be hard to find anywhere. And despite all the hardships they've faced, they remain optimistic and welcoming.

In addition, Markaz Al-Diwan is a top-notch place to learn Arabic. I've heard tons of criticism about Al-Diwan: it's too expensive, they try to hurry you along, you have to go to class instead of the teacher coming to you etc. etc. but I've realized that having a good, orderly system makes a huge difference when learning the language. I've met some students who have been studying for a long time but still can't speak Arabic. The qualified teachers in Al-Diwan make a world of difference, irrespective of whether the student is just looking for a little improvement or if the student has not seen an Arabic letter in his/her life. My teacher, Ustadh Ibrahim, is more than just an instructor now; he's my friend, and I'll never forget him for the rest of my life.

Man, belly-gazing is fun! More things I would have done the same later insha'allah.

~Ameer

A Few Important Things:

1.) Mubarak to Zacharia bhai. May Allah put lots of barakah and happiness in his life.

2.) One week till Abu jee arrives.

3.) A Plague on Fast Food Chains

4.) Cleaning the Apartment on Tuesday insha'allah.

5.) Duas.

~Ameer

Pretty cool lesson today.

Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (the living one, son of the awake) searches for his Lord by Ibn Tufayli al-Andalusi.

It's interesting because it's a story that explores a philosophical concept: how do we come to a knowledge of Allah, our Creator? (I think the concept is called gnosis in philosophy. Possibly.) In the section we studied, the author explored how the boy, Hayy, drifts onto an island and is raised a female gazelle who recently lost her baby. The boy compares himself to the animals around him and notes a lot of differences between himself and them. Then his mother, the gazelle, dies. Hayy tries to figure out what happened to her and goes through a whole series of logical deductions to eventually conclude that something has left her body, and won't return. And he wonders: who is the one who put that thing inside her body in the first place, and then took it out?

Like I said, a unique way of exploring philosophical concepts, although the section in the book was kind of long. Yeah, really long.

I am really going to try me best to work on my conversation skills before I leave. All the words are there but I just have to drag them out by force and use them, and try to get my conversation speed up to the same level as English. As usual, "I want the impossible" (i.e. it's only been three and a half months) but if you aim for the stars, you'll at least make it to the moon. Insha'allah.

~Ameer

What did I learn today...

I learned today that not everyone has to live the same kind of life as everyone else. Today our lesson was about Ibn Battuta and his 175 000 mile travels from as far west as Morroco to as far east as China. Everyone always talks about with him with hushed amazement (making me a little irritated in the process) but after having travelled a little bit myself I start to appreciate Ibn Battuta a little more. Most of all I appreciate the fact that he actually decided to do the whole travelling thing. Some people might have thought that his life was frivolous; I mean, what's the point of just travelling from place to place, with no family, no set place, no constancy? Where is his contribution?

That's precisely the point. His contribution was his book that became a bond linking the huge Islamic empire together. Everyone could read his book and get an idea about the life that other Muslims were living in other parts of the world. And the best thing about his book is that it's not like many of the other history books written at the time; it's more a like a travel diary (and in reality it's also like a dictated autobiography; Ibn Battuta didn't actually write the book, but someone else wrote down his lectures on his travels and compiled them in a book) that describes the people and cultures that he explored. It has no pretense of flowery or figurative language, but talks to in a style that is surprisingly similar to modern fus'ha (i.e. something I can understand).

I myself probably wouldn't like to live a life like Ibn Battuta. You have to have a certain penchant for travelling to go on like that for 30 years of your life. But I'm inspired by the fact that he managed to do it...although I can't really understand it. Somehow, he never complains like us Canadians in Cairo about every little thing: the lack of home food, being away from home, etc. etc. And everywhere he went, he worked as a qadi , ruling according to Islamic Shariah.

Nota Bene to some little people close to me: I'm not talking about Islamic Civilization! This is just your older brother talking inside his head. Cool? and let's not let other people dictate to us how we should look at ourselves, our past, or our future.

~Ameer

Alhamdulillah, today we actually started Book Three, but it was a little bit like being in a desert, seeing a pool of water and not being able to drink it. My teacher insisted that we should read very carefully the whole structure and manhaj of the book so that it would be easier for us to benefit from the book as we read on. But you can imagine how impatient I was to get started; the introduction, then the first lesson, talked about all the different stuff we're about to read and...we've arrived.

You can feel the tidal wave of student about to arrive. New teachers come all the time and sit in our classes. I'm not worried about speaking in Arabic with anyone, but somehow when someone is with me during classes I feel nervous because I want to make Ustadh Ibrahim proud, but generally that has the opposite effect. The other thing is that this new book has no harakat, so it's constantly like a chess game, trying to figure out what the function of the words are in the sentence. It's harder than it sounds.

Also, alhamdulillah for Draino.

~Ameer

40 Days

The countdown is on.

Alhamdulillah we finished the balaghah book and are moving right along to Book Three of Kitab-ul-Assassi. I feel like I am getting ready to learn Arabic all over again. It is a mark of the specialness of this new stage that my teacher said, "We're going to take it real slow now." My teacher never says that. But I'll give no quarter and ask no quarter bi'idhnillah.

40 days isn't much anyways.

After studying balaghah, I appreciate the Qur'anic language more and more. It's amazing that the beauty of the Qur'an can be appreciated on so many different levels. Before I started learning Arabic, I was amazed by the Qur'an, but now I see it on whole different way. For example, we learned about qasr, which literally means "to imprison" or "to confine." In balaghah it is when we describe someone or something by having only one kind of attribute in order to emphasize the attribute. (Ok, that didn't make any sense.) An example might help.

For example, it says in Surah Dhariyat, "And We did not make jinn or human beings except for worship." That sounds pretty straightforward, but knowing that qasr is being used here emphasizes the fact that there is no other purpose for human beings. If it had been written, "And We made jinn and human beings for worship" in Arabic that might also mean that they were created for other things to: eating, playing, etc.

Alhamdulillah everything else is fine, except that it's getting a lot hotter now. Mustafa and I both use the air conditioner at night now and in the day time you really feel muggy. What scares me is how much hotter other places are, like Karachi and Saudi Arabia.

As always, we need your duas.

~Ameer

The funniest thing about writing on the blog is that as soon as I sit down to write, everything goes zip right out of my head. There's so much I would normally like to write about, like the hopefulness of the morning sunlight, the kittens who play in the shop of a bike mechanic, and little boys hugging my legs, but I forget it all as soon as I see the one eye of the computer staring at me.

Today, as usual, we went to go play soccer. Regretfully, we gave up playing with the Turkmenistanians because there really is no point anymore. None of the old guard comes to play and those that do aren't really serious about playing, which is in stark contrast to the crazy Student group we play with. The inimitable "Sheikh" Hamza from Russia was in fine form today, holding his arms aloft like a bird after he scored his goal. I just shook my head. We form some pretty strong mental stereotypes about people. The fact that Hamza is studying "Usul-ul-Din" in Al-Azhar doesn't jive in my head with the fact that he is a really good soccer player that occasionally (like most soccer players) loses his temper on the pitch. You envision people who study the din as very skinny and quiet, or alternatively jolly and very unfit. Soccer: broadening your horizons.

I bought the third volume of Kitab ul Assassi and started reading it. Alhamdulillah I can read the newspaper and stuff, but reading those old texts made me feel like I was going to have start learning Arabic all over again. There is much that I don't know; well, yeah, that's kind of obvious, but it becomes more and more obvious all the time.

But like Ammi said, I should be more thankful for what I have instead of always thinking about what I have to do. At the game I was talking with one of my teammates when we our team was off the pitch in Arabic, and it was alhamdulillah not difficult at all. *Ameer attempts to grin weakly but the smile slides off his face and his eyes refocus on the balagah book in front of him*

~Ameer

It's not often that money can buy you what you truly need, so be thankful when it does.

Alhamdulillah I am so glad that I got Ustadh Ibrahim as my teacher. He truly helps me through everything that I go through. He and I can now read each other, we can sense each other's moods and know when the other is tired, sad, or preoccupied. And our relationship is not just limited to Arabic; Ustadh Ibrahim encourages me when I am sad, reprimands me when I am lazy, gives me advice on my life, and helps me in anything that I need, whether it be something important like getting my visa or a simple as buying a belt.

Mustafa and I were talking today about our lack of true empathy towards others. We think that we meet people, but really what we are doing is meeting a shadow of our own egos reflected in someone else. We hate people for no reason whatsoever, and when you think about it, it's not that you really hate them, but that you are angry at yourself because you think you are not as good as them, or as smart as them, or as physically strong as them. It's also hard to accept the fact that just as you change, others change also. We want to control people, we want them to always remain the same so that you don't have to change your perception of them. But in order to really relate to people, you have to be able to accept them as they are without asking them to be something that you want them to be. That's something I really admire about Abu. Whenever he meets someone, he simply meets the person. That's why after about five minutes Abu becomes that person's friend.

Alhamdulillah.

~Ameer

Shakwa wa Jawab Shakwa

"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

"Every second of the search is an encounter with God," the boy told his heart. "When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I know that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I've discovered things along the way that I would never have seen had I not had the courage to to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve."

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho

~Ameer

Why do people change so much?

It is almost painful in a way. You don't know who they are anymore, you lose that connection that you once had. That's why I guess it's so important to keep in touch with someone often, even if it's just a letter once in a while, because then you know he's around, you feel like you still know them. Otherwise when you meet them you feel like you've met an entirely new person, not the person you once knew.

I think part of it is that you change yourself, without realizing it.

~Ameer

We went to get our passports today and alhamdulillah, as I predicted, it was a lot easier than I expected. Of course, there were a few interesting moments, such as when the taxi driver dropped us off in some totally different place, but alhamdullillah it could have been a lot harder. The Markaz Al-Diwan guide helped a lot as we kind of knew what to expect in terms of the whole process. First you have to fill out the application, then buy stamps for it, and then finally submit the entire application along with a photo, and photocopies of the visa and front page of the passport. We were a little tense when the lady who was reviewing our application got up and went to talk with her supervisor. We knew there might be problems because of us having two passports, the new and the old, but everything turned out alright. We even managed to get a three month visa instead of just a one month.

We realized what a blessing to know at least some Arabic when we saw this lady from America trying to get her three-month visa. The officer was trying to help her, but he hardly knew any English and she didn't know any Arabic. That tension...you could cut through it with a knife.

~Ameer

Just as I was about to finish my post on taekwondo, there was a problem with the internet and it shut down. Alhamdulillah.

Anyways, please pray for us all as the Canadians in Cairo travel to renew their visas.

~Ameer

The Fight Goes On

Normal men die once.

Cowards die a thousand times.

Martyrs never die.

~Ameer

Here We Go...

The moment we've all been waiting for...the most enjoyable part of being in Egypt...we will finally see the true reasons behind the greatness of Egypt!

We're going to get our visas renewed, insha'allah.

According to our Al-Diwan guide, it's all part of our "Egyptian experience". Oh boy. We need two get two passport-sized photographs, our old passport and visa, money, and a lot of patience. Insha'allah I'm trying to make it seem a lot more arduous than it probably will be because that way when I actually go insha'allah it won't seem as difficult.

Today the two Muhammads who work at Markaz Al-Diwan were cleaning out one of the rooms on the fourth floor. The room was previously being used for storage but now since summer is coming with its accompanying wave of new students the teachers need to use it for a classroom. There was tons of stuff inside it. Both of the poor Muhammads were complaining that every two months they have to move all the stuff right back into it. I had a good laugh with my teacher.

When they were moving all the stuff I also found an excellent little pamphlet written by Ustadh Islam Aly on learning Arabic. It clears up so many misconceptions that foreign students have when learning Arabic, and actually addresses language in general. For example, it talked about the fact that some students always care an English-Arabic dictionary around and try to learn as many complicated words as possible. They believe that a good understanding of a language entails knowing lots of words no one else knows. But eloquence, as Zachariah bhai always reminds us, is using the right words in the right place, no more, no less.

I met one student who was leaving Egypt and I asked him, "How do you feel about your progress in Arabic? Do you feel that it's been worth it?"

He said, " Yeah, I'm really happy with my progress. If I stayed any longer, all I would do is simply be memorizing new words. I can do that anytime with a dictionary in my own country."

I thought about that comment a lot and realized that it was wrong. The most important thing is to learn the correct context to use the word, especially in Arabic. In Arabic you have to worry about a lot of different things when you learn a word: does it need an object or is it lazim (certain verbs are "stand-alone"; for example, "I went," doesn't require an object)? What place does it occupy in the mushtaqqat? And most of all, customarily how do we use this word?

Another important thing I learned from the book is that learning from old and important books is not always a good way to learn Arabic. I always personally use to think that the best thing to do is study a book like Ihya Ulum al-Din or something like that and after that your Arabic would be tip-top. But as Ustadh Aly points out, language is about communication. It's important that we remember that Arabic is a living language. Some people think, "Well, I only want to understand the Qur'an; why would I need to learn to speak in Arabic?" Until you've lived in an Arabic country you don't really a get a full taste for the language. There were some articles from students who had learnt Arabic at Markaz Al-Diwan included in the book and one student gave the example of the word nazar. In Urdu the word nazar literally means, "sight". But contextually it also means evil eye, jealousy and a host of other things. The Qur'an is the same way. The more we live with the people of the language, the more potent our understanding becomes.

I can already forsee people saying, "Well, the Arabs today are a lot different than from before. Arabs don't even speak fus'ha anymore!" But I still contend that if your only contact with Arabic is in a book, your understanding will serious lack fruitfulness.

(Yeah, I am an expert now. I've spent my two months and now I can be crowned as Sheikh Toad-ud-Din. :D)

Everyone keep praying for us. Our visit to the greatest Egyptian monument, the Mujamma, awaits.

~Ameer

The Ascetic on the Fourth Floor

I really admire my teacher. The more I learn from him, the more I appreciate him. He's not so unreachable as to be impossible to talk to, but at the same time he has a strong sense of dignity that is appreciable by everyone who meets him.

These days our classes are mostly us talking about all sorts of random topics, such as the state of the Markaz-ul-Islam fire escape, Fidel Castro, and soccer.

To all the soccer fans out there, recently Al-Ahly, the biggest Egyptian soccer team, had a match with Barcelona. Al-Ahly actually is not a bad club, considering they beat Real Madrid back in 2001 or something like that. And no, Real Madrid wasn't fielding their second-string, at least I don't consider Zidane and Roberto Carlos to be second-string. But to the disappointment of the Egyptians, Barcelona whipped Al-Ahly 4-0. It would have been okay if the game had actually had some intensity to it, but Barcelona fielded all their substitutes and debutantes in the first half. A 16 year old scored and someone else headed in a ball while being completely unmarked. By the second-half when Ronaldinho and co. appeared Al-Ahly was so demoralized they were unable to stage any kind of comeback. Eto'o scored two goals in revenge of Cameroon's loss to Egypt in the African Nations Cup. Of course my teacher had to draw this all back to the decadent state of Egypt i.e. Egyptians lie to themselves, they have no idea what they are actually like.

"There is no life with despair, and no despair with life."
-Mustafa Kamel, the great 19th century Egyptian revolutionary

~Ameer

p.s. I know that was kind of random, so forgive me.

Footsteps

Alhamdulillah we are doing fine. I know we haven't written on the blog for a while, but we've just been a little busy recently. Things don't slow down much, I guess, they just keep going. You keep waiting for the time in your life when you won't busy, but it never comes. Like Imam Siraj Wahaj says, "We'll have plenty of time to rest when we're dead."

Maybe. Depending where we are.

Speaking of death, my lesson today in the Muhaddathah book was about funerals in Egypts and the Arab world and the customs and traditions surrounding it. It's basically the same anywhere in the world; we visit the family of the deceased and try to comfort them, and we pray for the deceased. These days when we do lessons in this book it's not so much the lesson that's interesting but the conversations that we have about different topics related to the lesson are extremely fruitful, especially in this level. We've talked about stuff related to history, tourism, marriage (that was very fruitful *smiles bashfully*) university, and finally, death.

Death.

Like my teacher was saying, some people think that talking about death is really morbid or depressing. It is, if you don't believe in a life after death. There's nothing you can do about it, see, unless you know that it's the thing that separates us from our ultimate end.

My teacher was telling me that last week his friend's brother died, and he went to his funeral. Apparently in Egypt it is a custom in some villages that everyone pray in a particular masjid that was built over the body of a pious sheikh. This, of course, is abhorrent to my teacher, who always errs on the side of caution, and besides, this is getting close to shirk anyways. So to get on with the story, this particular young friend of my teacher is extremely pious; when he believes something, he does it. So he announced on the microphone (in the village, things are announced by microphone; nice, eh?) that everyone should pray in a particular masjid, but not in the one where the sheikh was buried. So everyone did as he said, no problem.

Next day, in the Jum'a khutbah, the khateeb vehemently attacked the boy's decision and said he had acted without any knowledge. Oh by the way, in Egypt, generally people come to the deceased person's house for three days after the funeral. Some people also have the custom (also faulty in the view of my teacher) to read Qur'an with the intention of sending the rewards to the deceased. My teacher says that that's not from the Sunnah; the Sunnah is to pray for the deceased. Anyways, the point is that that everyone went again to the young boy's house, and everyone was abuzz with the recent criticism of the sheikh. Everyone was wondering, "Will this guy relent and follow the customs, or keep it up?" The boy got up, and spoke into the microphone again.

"The Prophet (PBUH) ordered us to make dua for the deceased person, because now he is answering for his actions. So make dua for my brother."
And the boy began to cry.

A hush fell over the crowd. My teacher said that everyone suddenly began making dua for the deceased. Probably the way I told it was mumbly-jumbly, but when we were talking about it in class both of us had tears in our eyes. I remembered my grandmother, Allah have mercy on her. That's the reality. It's the last journey, our last step...

The only thing that remains is Allah's face...

~Ameer

Ameer after a haircut.

Looks a bit different, eh?

Cairo Courses

"And now with some favorite recipes from our Master of Disaster, Gracie Heavy Hand," or so the script from my favorite Canadian radio show goes, The Dead Dog Cafe (now Dead Dog in the City). Alright, bismillah, let's get cracking on the food that makes people's mouth's water in Egypt!

1. Koshari.
It's scary, looks like a combination between cookie/cream ice cream, chickpeas, and little black pebbles, and is highly under rated. It's like the perfect food, where a whole bunch of things looking not so good turn out to be amazing.

Verdict: Mouth watering.

2. Tomatoes
Okay, to the people who started reading this blog at the beginning, you'll know that we won the Best Customer Award there and everything, but after a while, it just started to go down in our rankings. Probably eating Chicken Foukasha sandwitches isn't the most well rounded meal anyways.

3. Ustadh Ibrahim's Chicken Supreme

This one is from Ameer's teacher, Ustadh Ibrahim, trying to convince, or perhaps dissuade, Ameer from cooking at home. I guess it's up to the reader to discern his true intentions.

1. Buy a chicken.
2. Cut the chicken.
3. Put the chicken in a pot full of water.
4. Boil the chicken.
5. Test whether it is cooked or not with a fork. If red stuff comes out, not good.
6. Add salt.
7. Serve.
8. Eat.

While the first 7 steps seem very simple and easy, I somehow doubt the last one is.

Alrighty,

Wasalam,

Mustafa.

The American Dream

Judge: Cleaner owes me $65 million for pants
2 years of litigation x 1 pair of trousers = headaches for family business

WASHINGTON - The Chungs, immigrants from South Korea, realized their American dream when they opened their dry-cleaning business seven years ago in the nation's capital.
For the past two years, however, they've been dealing with the nightmare of litigation: a $65 million lawsuit over a pair of missing pants.
Jin Nam Chung, Ki Chung and their son, Soo Chung, are so disheartened that they're considering moving back to Seoul, said their attorney, Chris Manning, who spoke on their behalf.

"They're out a lot of money, but more importantly, incredibly disenchanted with the system," Manning said. "This has destroyed their lives."

The lawsuit was filed by a District of Columbia administrative hearings judge, Roy Pearson, who has been representing himself in the case.

Pearson said he could not comment on the case.

According to court documents, the problem began in May 2005 when Pearson became a judge and brought several suits for alteration to Custom Cleaners in Northeast Washington, a place he patronized regularly despite previous disagreements with the Chungs. A pair of pants from one suit was not ready when he requested it two days later, and was deemed to be missing.
Pearson asked the cleaners for the full price of the suit: more than $1,000.

But a week later, the Chungs said the pants had been found and refused to pay. That's when Pearson decided to sue.

Manning said the cleaners made three settlement offers to Pearson. First they offered $3,000, then $4,600, then $12,000. But Pearson wasn't satisfied and expanded his calculations beyond one pair of pants.

Because Pearson no longer wanted to use his neighborhood dry cleaner, part of his lawsuit calls for $15,000 — the price to rent a car every weekend for 10 years to go to another business.

"He's somehow purporting that he has a constitutional right to a dry cleaner within four blocks of his apartment," Manning said.

But the bulk of the $65 million comes from Pearson's strict interpretation of D.C.'s consumer protection law, which fines violators $1,500 per violation, per day. According to court papers, Pearson added up 12 violations over 1,200 days, and then multiplied that by three defendants.

Much of Pearson's case rests on two signs that Custom Cleaners once had on its walls: "Satisfaction Guaranteed" and "Same Day Service."

Based on Pearson's dissatisfaction and the delay in getting back the pants, he claims the signs amount to fraud.

Pearson has appointed himself to represent all customers affected by such signs, though D.C. Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz, who will hear the June 11 trial, has said that this is a case about one plaintiff, and one pair of pants.

Sherman Joyce, president of the American Tort Association, has written a letter to the group of men who will decide this week whether to renew Pearson's 10-year appointment. Joyce is asking them to reconsider...

To the Chungs and their attorney, one of the most frustrating aspects of the case is their claim that Pearson's gray pants were found a week after Pearson dropped them off in 2005. They've been hanging in Manning's office for more than a year.
Pearson claims in court documents that his pants had blue and red pinstripes.
"They match his inseam measurements. The ticket on the pants match his receipt," Manning said.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18471265/GT1/9951/

Something Less Than Spiritual

Manchester United to Win Premiership and Champions League!

Abu, I am also supporting your favourite player to score...Cristiano Ronaldo. He has seriously improved this season.

Sea

The world pours around me, blinding me with its lights and motion and sheer brilliant movement. I sat on my balcony this morning, reading Qur'an, and could see the thousands of sand-coloured apartment buildings stretching away into the distance as the sun beat down its rays, sending warning of summer. It seemed I was still in a desert, only a desert full of people and cars and buildings. The only consolation was the occasional kite (not toy-kite, hawk kite) soaring above, flying far above the ordinary and normal.

Before that I was drowning in another kind of sea, a black and white kind. Various ministers, prime ministers, presidents and other species of the jam'a ghair aqil stared up at me with their fake smiles as I slammed my gaze against the articles, hoping somehow to find a way through. I did manage to read one article..."Laughter, the Magic Cure". A little ironic, I would think.

I didn't have class today because someone in my teacher's family died. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. Mustafa was overjoyed because I now longer had any excuses left...the bathroom was awaiting in all its beauty. I am also going to try to get some clothespins before all our clothes flutter freely in the wind. insha'allah.

If we could see the end results of things, we would act a lot differently.

We would pull the hair out of the drain every day.

~Ameer

p.s. Okay that was disgusting even I admit it, but the small things are the ones that are by far the most important.

Am I Here, Exactly?

Today's class was a little less than extraordinary. My teacher was tired, but in truth I couldn't really concentrate. These days we are trying to read the newspaper, and I realize how much I have to learn just be able to read the most basic standard newspaper Arabic (ugh, I don't read newspapers in English!). I am worried: do I really deserve to be finished Book Two? I worry that my teacher rushed me just so I can say, "I finished Book Two of Kitab ul Assassi." I trust my teacher...well, that's contradictory because if you trust someone you don't worry about it. You just go along with their judgement. But when I have trouble reading simple newspaper articles, I get worried.

It might just be that my lack of confidence influences my ability to understand. I'm not sure. In any case, I need you all to keep the dua's coming, insha'allah. I'll give it my best shot, no matter what. I guess the level doesn't matter anyways; all that matters is that I've learned enough that I can come back to Canada and keep on studying without too much trouble. I think among the most important things I have to be able to do is to use the dictionary really well. If I can do that I should be able to get by. Insha'allah.

I was reading Muntaka's blog and I think that I can understand his feelings exactly: the feeling that you want to be more than just a successful professional, that you want to truly make a difference in the world and help those who need the help most. The trouble is, it's difficult to figure out what to do exactly. It's easy to say, "I want to help people," but what exactly is it that you do? Volunteer at different organizations? Teach people Qur'an? Make lots of money and spend it in the way of Allah?

Sometimes I wish I could be certain of myself, like some people are...no, appear to be. Life is uncertain, and we have to be ready to change and transform. You need to know where the boundaries are, but inside the garden there are countless types of plants and animals.

I am going home soon, insha'allah.

~Ameer