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

Mind Reading

Throughout history, people have dreamed of developing our psychological powers. Books like The Chrysalids explore the idea that eventually some day human beings will evolve a higher level of society, where people can communicate without talking, where people understand each other from the inside. Dozens of superheroes have been invented with the power to read other people's minds and influence their behaviour. Scientists believe that someday we will truly be able to tap into the power of our brains and talk to each other without words.

I already know how...and so does Mustafa.

The boy and I can communicate without words. Alhamdulillah, Allah made us like a team: one complements the other. Where I am reckless, Mustafa is careful. Where Mustafa is weak, I am strong. A clear example of that is simply coming to Egypt. Mustafa was the main driving force behind the fact that we are here in Egypt. Without his campaigning for it, we'd still probably in Canada. Now that we here in Egypt, I am really enjoying Arabic, and when Mustafa is down, I buck him up. Alhamdulillah Allah made us that way. It's definitely not something that happens by chance.

Even when if we are ever apart, we will still be together.

Remember that.

~Ameer

Failure

Ahhh....the word is painful.

But there is no such thing.

Most of our lives we struggle to catch up to our society. We want to be recognized for something. Deep down we have a fear that we'll live our lives in mediocrity, that our lives don't really mean anything because no one knows what we've done. That especially goes for sports or any type of competition. Unless we win gold, all that effort is useless.

Till I was about twelve years old, I hated sports and loved eating, with predictable results. After my uncle visited me from Pakistan (cue in teasing galore) I decided to change and ever since then I've been obsessed with sports and exercising (at least I like to think that). But because I was motivated by the sheer desire to look good, to stop getting teased about being fat, I didn't have the right reasons. In 2002, I trained seriously for the first time in my life in preparation for our annual taekwondo tournament. I wanted to win badly. I ran, I lifted weights, I practiced my patterns everyday...

I lost.

That was a turning point. My hopes of ever winning any competitions was shattered. "What is the point," I asked myself, "of putting effort into anything if it all comes to nothing?"

In Egypt, I've learned the answer. Because you love doing it. When I don't exercise, my body feels like a Safeway cake; soft with no substance and no energy. There's no carrot-on-the-stick now, no competition driving me on to exercise because I want to win. If I exercise or not, it makes no difference to anyone but me. But any effort I put in now is not without benefit. Someday I'll realize that any action I've done, no matter how small, helped me in some way. Before I came to Egypt, I thought that the three years we had spent studying with Ammo Rafik were useless. We weren't consistent, we couldn't understand anything; we were studying simply to make ourselves feel good. But no action is ever wasted. Ever.

It was not fitting for the people of Medina and the Bedouin Arabs of the neighbourhood, to refuse to follow Allah's Messenger, nor to prefer their own lives to his: because nothing could they suffer or do, but was reckoned to their credit as a deed of righteousness,- whether they suffered thirst, or fatigue, or hunger, in the cause of Allah, or trod paths to raise the ire of the Unbelievers, or received any injury whatever from an enemy: for Allah suffereth not the reward to be lost of those who do good;-

Nor do they spend anything that may be spent, small or great, nor do they traverse a valley, but it is written down to their credit, that Allah may reward them with the best of what they have done.
-Surah Taubah (120-121)

So for some little kids out there, don't worry. The pain you feel will dissipate, but your efforts, bi'idhnillah, will not.

~Ameer

p.s. Sauleha once told me, "I will win and I will lose, but I will never be defeated."

Ironic Immortality

Salam. Mustafa here. I'll pick up from where Ameer left off.

By the time we finished our applications, it was 2:00, and we were starving. After praying Namaz, we started walking around the vicinity trying to find a decent resturant. With traditional Ameer and Mustafa luck, we stumbled out of a sideroad into a gigantic traffic circle. It reminded me a lot of the area where the Agha's Supermarket is in Pakistan (sorry for non-Agha patrons. It's fairly hard to describe.) At the one end of the circle (I know there are no ends to a circle, but this was more like an oval) was a massive concrete building, built by a highly utilitarian Egyptian without a grain of fashion sense. This monster, we later found out, is the Mugamma, the place where we are going to have to renew our visas (not loking forward to it.) One the other side, we found out, after much pointing, gesturing, running away from bakseesh seeking police guards, was the Egyptian Museum.

(Sorry to cut it off here. will continue later).

Passports, Our Style

Yesterday was some adventure.

There is no such thing as laww ("if"), but it perhaps we should have renewed our passports before we left for Egypt. In any case, we should have at least renewed them as soon as we got to Egypt. But in uniquely AmeerMustafian-style, we left things to the last minute and so on Sunday we had to take a day-off and go to the Canadian Embassy. In the morning we feverishly checked, double-checked, and triple-checked our passports. Then as we were signing the declarations on the passports, Mustafa suddenly slumped, his body sagging as he put his forehead on the table.

"What's wrong?" I asked him.

"I signed, 'Mustafa Farooq, signed in Nasr City, Canada.'"

We thought we were in trouble then because the Internet cafe was closed and if we waited till it was open to download our forms, we might not make it to the embassy. Alhamdulillah Mustafa came up with the brilliant idea of ummm....getting another application at the embassy. (Please don't laugh). So with the name of Allah we left our apartment, walked down the road to Dhakir Hussein, hailed a taxi, and started our journey to Tahrir Square.

It was far, and the streets were packed with cars on their way to downtown Egypt. Suddenly the taxi driver pulled over and got out of the car. Mustafa and I were a little surprised, since we hadn't noticed anything wrong with the taxi, other than the fact it sounded like it was twenty-five years old, the transmission croaked like a frog, and someone really busy had done the paint job. The driver opened the hood and looked inside, pulled a wrench out from somewhere, dropped it back inside, whacked the horn a couple of times, went to his trunk, and pulled out a pair of pliers. After messing about in the engine for a bit more, he honked his horn to make sure it was it's usual blaring magnitude, then closed the hood. I am almost positive that he left both his wrench and the pliers inside his engine. Then we set off again, walhamdulillah.

I won't bore you with all the gory details of waiting in the embassy, but alhamdulillah it went well. Insha'allah we'll get our passports after a month.

I think I'll let Mustafa describe the next part, as I'm sure he knows more about it than me.

~Ameer

For My People

Nota Bene: I saw a cage perched on a balcony. The little canary inside it was singing with all its might.

Caged Bird

A free bird leaps

on the back of the wind

and floats downstream

till the current ends

and dips his wing

in the orange sun rays

and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

with a fearful trill

of things unknown

but longed for still

and his tune is heard

on the distant hill

for the caged bird

sings of freedom.

-Maya Angelou

~Ameer

Flow

The days pass by without any of us noticing it. My Bangladeshi friend, Mo'een bhai, is leaving to attend his wife's brother's wedding in America on May 1. That made me realize, we've been in Egypt for more than two months.

"Time is a two-edged sword. If you do not cut with it, it will cut you."

Alhamdulillah everything is going well, although my test today was a little crazy. I knew most of the grammar rules but still managed to make some really inventive mistakes. My teacher was in awe of me. I have a feeling that I know more about Arabic grammar than I do English, which I guess isn't really saying much anyways.

I think I need to do something different now when I'm studying Arabic, because for the first time I'm feeling a bit...not bored, that's a swear word, but a little uninterested. I don't know why. Maybe it's just that stage in the middle that Farooq bhai told me about before I came.

I really pray to Allah that tomorrow's soccer game is good. Last time there were too many players and as a result you don't get to actually touch the ball very often, and when you do, you want to keep it for as long as possible, which leads to indegenerate smashing and bashing.

We need all your dua's, especially right now.

~Ameer

Attempts

Life is a series of attempts, groping in the darkness sometimes with no sense of where you are going. Other times you think you know where you're going but you actually are going in circles.

And then sometimes you have a light with you.

Heart

Salam,

Mustafa here again. It's time to turn down the satire a bit and tap into the heart.

Because when it really comes down to it, that's all that there really is. Muslims are like hearts to one another. We feel each other beating, and when one heart is ill, the other heart aches. Sometimes our hearts ache with other things. Myself, I feel it all the time. Even in Egypt, so far away from time, trying to achieve my dreams, I still get envious when I hear about the achievments of others. I still get angry or irritable when I think about people I dislike or have disagreements with, and that's almost ludicrous if you think about it.

Another thing is the homesickness. One thing that's almost never mentioned by people who come from Egypt or Syria or what have you ever mention the homesickness. What exactly is this feeling? I mean, there's no conscious area; we just feel the pain. Sorry if my writing gets a bit jumbly here, but we're talking a language of the heart that my language skills are not up to describing. Sometimes I wish I could leave Egypt and just come home for a day. Just spend a day with Ami and Abu and the family. But I guess that's the way it's sometimes meant to be. We have to make sacrifices in order to make gains.

When I was younger, I guess I didn't understand that as well. I wished to have everything; play, leisure, happy days, high marks, achievments, my 15 minutes of fame, and ten hours of sleep. Now I'm starting to realize that they are "the things dreams are made of". What we get is proportional to the amount of work we put in and the amount that Allah helps us with.

I hope my writing isn't hypocritical, and I know it sometimes, "lacks depth, lacks worth/ lacks the distance to travel between heaven and earth" ect, but I hope it conveys what I feel. And here's a word from Tennyson's Ulysses:

I am a part of all that I have met;...

Come, my friends.'
T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
--One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-Bismillah

Mustafa

Jobs

Bismillah,

Salam.

Mustafa here. And to get things straight from the start, I am not the one who wrote the "Love" post.

I'm not brave enough.

I value my neck.

Anyhow, I decided today was a great time to submit a List of To Do Things when I get back to Edmonton, and a list of job possibilites. We'll start with the less pressing topic to get my writing fingers warmed up.

In the modern day world, young Muslims are being forced to re-examine the possible job opportunities out there (Doctor, Engineer, Taxi Driver, and every so often the lone corrupt politician.) To help the cause, I decided to make my own list after much hard thought, to save others the trouble- to find an occupation that will cause personal self fulfilment, a 7 digit salary, something that will help the Muslim ummah, and doesn't require to much work.

1. Business Conglomerate.

Seriously, we need more people like this. Imagine, if you will, a team of Uncle Syed Hasan's. Now that is something to seriously be afraid of. Twelve more guys like him, and the Edmonton Muslim community will be something to reckon with. We might even be able to employ someone to clean the masjid washrooms full time!

2. The Arts (AAAAAAAH!!!!)
If there are any people still left reading, please proceed to job number 3.

3. Mad Scientist

If we could get a mad scientist, the Muslim community would get a lot more positive coverage. Instead of constantly telling people that our religion advocates peace, we could say that our religion advocates progress. We'll put up a big sign outside the masjid "The Muslims Are on The Move!"

4. Bounty Hunter

5. Soccer Player

Muslims need more soccer players. I mean, that would take our shebab who sit and laze around all day, and convert them into mindless minions who enthrall millions by putting balls into nets. That reminds me- on my "To Do List"- I better advocate for Al- Ikhwan Youth to change their name to Al- Ahly. This would accomplish two strokes in one go ; erase negative publicity for the Ikhwan and 2. Get more Egyptians on the team.

6. Car Maker

Someone needs to tell Toyota to pick up a few of the taxi driving engineers and get them to refit the Toyota Corolla. Thousands of dollars are wasted each year by Muslims customized their cars to fit the Muslim cause. If Toyota could just make a couple of changes, Muslims would start buying their cars even more (move from the 90% of the market to 95% of the market). Here are some changes which we Muslims want:
1. Large CD with Quran ayats hanging from the rear view mirror
2. Cut the GPS scanners. Instead, put in a Halwa cooker in the dashboard
3. A tea proof cup holder
4. Clocks set automatically to MST (Muslim Standard time)- 1 hour behind everyone else.

Well that's my list. Of course, Criminal Mastermind, Lyers, and Janitors still rank among the top, but I worry. Some people are already picking up on the job that really is going to spice up our community in the coming years.

Religion Toting Thobe Wearing Police.

Wasalam,

Mustafa.

Sandstorm in Cairo

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers....

And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in winter.

-from The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot

~Mustafa

(No, this is not describing a state of mind, but a state of weather. The picture kind of evoked it. the sandstorm in Cairo today was bad enough to shut down the airport.)

Love

Today our lesson in Kitab-ul-Assassi was about "Majnoon Layla". It's the real story of Qays and his uncle's daughter, Layla. They were born about two centuries after hijra (eight century common era) in the harsh landscape of the Hijazi desert. Qays and Layla as children worked as shepherds together until the time when Layla became of age and withdrew from her work as a shepherd. But by that time, without either of them realizing it, a deep and powerful love had sprung up between them.

When Layla started wearing hijab, Qays realized his love for her and wrote a poem praising her that became famous. But that was his greatest mistake: at that time, if a young man wrote a poem in praise of a woman, he would not be allowed to marry her because that would destroy her reputation among people. Qays begged his uncle to let him marry Layla, but to no avail. In the end, Layla married another man in order to protect her family's honour, despite the fact that she loved Qays also. Qays lost his mind and fled to the desert, and became known as "Majnoon Layla" (The Insane One of Layla) or simply "Majnoon" (The Crazy) (that translation is really bad, I know, but I don't really know if there is a word in English to describe majnoon; psychopath doesn't really cut it). Layla becomes sick and dies, and upon hearing the news of her death, Qays dies also.

I know some people would be astonished that I wrote about this story on the blog, but I think that's because today we don't really know what love is; we only know about lust. You can't imagine someone actually dying or wasting away because of love. I think it's because as Muslims, we've had to force ourselves to actually go completely the opposite way; we've made the entire subject of love as taboo and forbidden in order to protect ourselves from all the filth that we see around ourselves. And I think that's better than us falling into dangerous situations, but at the same time we've denied a part of ourselves that actually exists. Human beings have hearts, and are meant to love one another, but we have to ensure that our actions stay within the limits set by Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.

The story of Majnoon Layla in my opinion is more a story about society than anything else. When I was reading this story with my teacher, conflicting thoughts were running through my head. What's better? Is it better that Layla protected her family's honour, but caused Qays to go crazy? Or would it have been better that she marry him, but have to live with the stain on their honour? Personally, I think what Layla did is better, because otherwise we wouldn't have this story.

I also think that the whole story reinforces the concept of hijab. With hijab, there are far less chances of something like this happening, and that would save a lot of people from a lot of pain.

But I hope my analysis doesn't obscure the most important point of the story: love is the most powerful force in the universe. It can move mountains, cross deserts, and change fate.

I pray that Allah gives us his love, and the love of the people he loves, the love for the actions he loves.