Dear Blog,
I’m sorry I disappeared. I’m sorry I spent more time with Twitter than I did with you. I really hope you can forgive me. I was surrounded by love, family and friends this past while and Twitter demanded so much less. I’m not 100% back yet, though. I’m writing exams till the 7th of February, but I’m hoping by then you’ll be able to fully forgive me for my hiatus.
Sincerely, Amal{ 2 comments }
“There’s no point in having a plan B, because it only distracts from plan A.” – Will Smith
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She came out of nowhere, and my first instinct was to grab my purse that I had left on the floor lest she run off with it. She just sat at the neighbouring bench quietly and watched my friends and I laugh and enjoy our last night out of the year together. This was the second time I saw her at the same place, and she couldn’t have been more than 5.
Every few minutes or so, a giggle would escape from her and I felt my heart break. This child had her childhood robbed from her, being brought into this harsh world and left alone to live a life of poverty and begging. I invited her to join us, and she willingly accepted, and she played and jumped and laughed so hard it made my heart heavy. I just kept thinking about where her mother would be, and I felt so guilty for making her feel like a criminal when she first approached us. She just wanted to be a child.
Live. Laugh. Love.
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Photo by Mr. Zee (click on photo)
Whenever I check-in for my flights, I always pick a window seat. I don’t care how far back it is, how far away from the bathroom the seat is, how long I have to wait later when I’m getting off the plane, or anything. I just enjoy looking out the window when I’m travelling and seeing something as exquisite as what’s in the photo above. It reminds me of a perfect winter day, it reminds me of cotton candy, and on a more serious note, it reminds me of how Perfect our Creator is to create such a wonder. Isn’t Allah just amazing? SubxanAllah!
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The Idea Camp – Scott Harrison from The Idea Camp on Vimeo.
Phenomenal! (Thank you, Ahmed).{ 1 comment }
Innaa lillaah wa innaa ileyhi raajicuun. To Allah we belong and to Him is our ultimate return. Sheikh Muhammad Rashad, one of the great scholars of Islam and my uncle, passed away earlier today while he was performing pilgrimage.
They say that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and they couldn’t have said it better. Sheikh Muhammad Rashad was a father figure to all those that knew him, whose constant words of wisdom and advice commanded full attention. His undying effort to build a place where we can call home and worship Allah the way that He should be worshipped, and his dream to better the community is definitely something that cannot be replaced.
It was just a short two months ago when I was at Masjid Assalam on the 27th night of Ramadan where the Sheikh, may Allah have mercy on his soul, urged the community to give for the sake of Allah and reminded us that the masjid that he built does not belong to him, but belongs to Allah and that it is our duty to fulfill the work needed for the mosque. I truly hope that these words resonate within our community and that we continue the work that he has left behind.
Although this is a great loss for people all over the world and especially for his family, those in Masjid Assalam and the general Ottawa community, he couldn’t have died a better death and that brings me a semblance of happiness. We are all going to leave this cold place of temporary existence at one point or another, none of us knowing when that moment is, but we can only wish that we too will someday die a very honourable death while we fulfill our obligations to The Most High.
May Allah rest Sheikh Muhammad Rashad’s soul in peace, make wide and cool his grave, forgive his shortcomings, and give us all patience and a high level of faith during these difficult times. Ameen.
Sheikh Muhammad Rashad (may Allah have mercy on his soul)
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Tuesday started out beautiful. I woke up feeling fresh, showered, made a big breakfast, took my sweet time getting ready and went to my 9AM class in high spirits.
Somewhere over the next 6 hours or so, I started getting very hungry irritable. My roommate and I decided to go out for lunch with a classmate. Now something very annoying about Romania is that they don’t believe in splitting bills. You eat lunch with your friends, you get one nice fat bill at the end, and everyone starts calculating how much they owe (the life of broke students), who needs to pay whom how much, and all this unnecessary nonsense that wouldn’t happen if they simply just brought everyone their own bill!
Anyway…
So we’re done eating, and I ask the waitress to bring us three separate bills (I’ve had this request fulfilled twice in the past), and she declined. I explained to her that the last few times I asked for it, I got it, and she said OK.
She came back with the little book, and we opened it to find one receipt. Instantly I was extremely annoyed. Is she really too lazy to print two more receipts? She really wants us to go scavenging the little convenience stores for change to pay each other back?
There goes her tip!
Wait, that’s not sweet enough of a revenge.
I owed about 15 RON, equivalent to about $5 (yea, food is nice and cheap here!). After examining my wallet’s contents, I decided I was gonna have a little bit of fun be evil. I got out a 5 LEI bill, 1 LEI, and closed my wallet. I opened my penny pouch, emptied it clean, leaving behind a few loonies and toonies for when I next visit Canada. I suggested my friends do the same. At the end, the table looked a little something like this, except they were Romanian coins:
Lazy waitress came back and said, “Nu! Nu!”
“I don’t speak Romanian, sorry, this is all we have.”
“Nu, Nu (insert a whole lot of Romanian I didn’t understand).”
“I don’t understand you, sorry. I asked you to bring us separate receipts. Why aren’t you speaking english anymore?”
Yea, another thing: whenever you’re protesting something, they magically don’t speak English anymore.
More Romanian.
“I don’t understand.”
“Nu! Tu inteleg, tu inteleg!” Translation: “No! You do understand! You Understand!”
“I don’t inteleg actually, but I asked you to bring us separate receipts, it would’ve been so much easier than this.”
Leave it to Amal to rub things in in an ex-communist country where she is all alone.
She was talking angrily a mile a minute and I didn’t understand what she was saying but I got the gist of it, and basically what I think she said was, “Oh, so since I didn’t bring you your receipts you leave me all these coins?!”
“Da! Multumesc!” (Yes! Thank You!)
We got up, walked out, and I felt like I destroyed the woman. For the next half hour, as I walked off the smell of food and looked around random little shops, I kept thinking about how that woman must feel, and it made me feel powerful after weeks of being oppressed by rules that don’t make sense. Then I would feel a little guilty and think maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Then I would remember how she didn’t care about having us walk into shop after shop looking for change to break our money, and I would reassure myself that she deserved it. It was a back and forth battle between the voices in my head.
I told my brother about it later and he reassured me that sometimes stupid people need to be dealt with in stupid ways for them to understand the level of their sheer stupidity. I still kinda feel guilty here and there, but really, WHO CARES?!……
…..(Right?)
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