Comeback Story

In everything that happens there is some good. We just don't know what it is, and may never know till we go back to Allah subhana wa ta'ala.

Two days left...no matter how much I tell myself that time will fly, I am not able to understand it, just like a baby floating in his mother's stomach cannot understand how big the world really is. I float between exuberance and fear. I am joyous because I am insha'allah going back to Ammi and Abdullah and Khadija and Sauleha and Khala and Khalloo and Nana and Iman and Amin and everyone in Edmonton. What a great city we have. Our numbers are small but we are such a strong and active community, and the people who live here are role models for me. At the same time I fear the judgement of others, which is silly, because I didn't learn Arabic for people. I know that when I go back that there will be people who come to me and say, "Oh, you learned Arabic?" and then start talking to me in aamiya . What will I say then? "Oh well, actually you aren't speaking Arabic!?"

Abu gave me some advice. He said, "Treat what you've learned like treasure. Don't expose it to just anyone. Just like you keep jewels in a safe place, keep you Arabic hidden. That way all your work isn't destroyed in the fire known as showing off."

The trouble is, a lot of people love to wear their all their jewels, spattered all over their bodies. The gaudy look has a way of enchanting the viewer, making him believe that the wearer is truly wealthy. In Pakistan some ladies, if they see someone else wearing a certain kind of necklace or earrings, will go to the jeweller and ask him to make the same one just so they don't have to feel inferior.

I look at the stars, and ready myself for the dawn.

~Ameer

I wake up after only seeing the beginning of my dream...but I will grasp whatever happens after that with both arms.

~Ameer

My field of vision blurs as life roars ahead. I cannot imagine that my four and half months are up, that this is it, I'm going back. I'm waking up now after my dream, that period between sleep and wakefulness where you want to do both. Fear dominates my horizons; will all the work I've put it in go to waste where I go back to land where the bakers do not speak to me in the language of paradise? Will I forget?

Will I forget what I've learnt? Will I go back to being the same as I was, the little kid who wanted to stay in Canada so that he could play soccer all summer? Will I actually now take what I've learnt and apply it, use it like I've dreamed of?

Insha'allah.

Labayk Allahumma labayk.

~Ameer

Ahh...what it is this thing we call human beings? I can't understand it. The thing that really is me, the real me, who is it? Where is it? As I was walking to class, and watched all the people working on their various things, it occurred to me that I won't even be here in two weeks. And no one will even notice. Our lives aren't like that. No more what kind of people we are, we affect the thing around us, for better or worse. My teacher has changed me; I've absorbed his habits and ideas without even noticing.

Another crazy idea is that this body that I have, the one that I am always trying to make stronger, will only stay with me for a limited time. The real me, Ameer Omar Farooq, will leave this physical vehicle and go on somewhere else, someplace eternal. When you actually think about that...there is much that we do not understand.

Anyways, please pray that we benefit from what we've learned.

And that we persist.

~Ameer

Sleepy camel, woken up

Abu, in the shadow of the pyramids (maybe the other way around)?

New arrival, in the focus. My Abu.

Reading Qura'an, on a Golden Day, in the Golden City

Prone. Exhausted. Very Tired. Sleepy. Alhamdulillah.

Now

Saving the world...the dream of every young person with blood and a heart. We want to lift the suffering from people, remove poverty, wipe out injustice, and help everyone to live in peace and serenity. Too many of us tire ourselves out waiting for that moment when we can start that movement, make that discovery, and do something "really worth doing." People my age live their lives depressed because we are afraid that we will end up working our whole lives for "the big fridge" or "shark tank" or whatever term you want to use for living your life for the here and the now.

But don't abandon your dreams.

Start living them. Now.

Farooq bhai, or Omar bhai, or Murtada bhai, may never get awards for advising us to go Egypt. No one will probably ever know, or ever really care. But those few hours they spent with us did change the world. My life, and Mustafa's, will never be the same now that we've at least got a basic grasp of Arabic. A part of everything we read and enjoy and benefit from will go to them in terms of rewards.

So I've decided...I will live my dreams. Only I will start now, insha'allah. I will help the people around me, the people that I know and the people that I don't. Because if I do that, a wave starts; it begins with me and I feel its ripples come back to me. So oh my brethren, don't wait for the opportunity that never comes, the ideal job that doesn't exist, the period of leisure where you'll be free to do what you want, don't wait for it. Life is too short. One minute you are fine and the next you're gone and you can't delay that moment for even a second.

And to a certain lady out there, I pray for you everyday, everytime I read my Qur'an. I pray for your health, and I am certain there is something good in whatever happens.

And to certain other people out there, your effort is never lost. But please, make sure you rest and recharge and don't try to do everything. As the Arabic saying goes, only someone who has something can give it.

And please pray for me, all of you.

~Ameer

5 Things I Would Have Done The Same, Cont.

3.) I would have bought the same apartment.

Alhamdulillah, this is one thing that Allah really made easy for us. I know that the rent is pretty high but it definitely has been worth it. Alhamdulillah the apartment has really become (oh boy I am about to use a really horrific cliche) "home away from home"; whenever we go travelling to the pyramids or the museum and stuff we always have a huge sense of relief when we arrive home. It has a vibrant vitality to it. Alhamdulillah. I haven't seen a nicer apartment than ours in our entire trip. Having a place where we felt comfortable helped a lot with helping us to keep fresh and rested.

4.) I would not take any roommates.

I know that a lot of people really enjoyed having roommates, like Arif bhai and Atiq bhai. They said their stay in Egypt was more exciting when their friends were still with them. I also think that if I had a roommate who was better at Arabic than me, it would have helped me to improve my conversation skills (which I think still remains my weakest area).

But on the other hand, knowing myself, I probably would have despaired of ever being able to reach the same level as my roommate. It also would have been hard to adjust to another person's schedule, ideas, and suluk. The advantage with Mustafa and me (other than that I can boss him around :) ) is that we both can read each other really well and we know when to back off and give a guy his space.

5.) ....

I can't think of anything right now. Those were the most important things, I guess. In all, the trip I think was successful alhamulillah. The only thing is that it might have been good to stay a little longer, but I don't think i would be able to handle staying away from Ammi and Abu any longer.

Well, insha'allah Abu is coming tomorrow night. I pray he get's here safely with no problems.

Marhaban bikum fi misr!

~Ameer

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