I wanted to share something profound that happened to me on Friday after the Friday prayers. It kinda stuck with me.
After moving my car I was headed toward the nearest cash machine after praying Jummah at Leeds Grand Mosque. I met a brother named Smail there, a handsome Algerian man in his late thirties. A regular at the mosque, most people know him. I approached him to wait in line he looked at me, his eyes lit up I gave him Salaams we did our buddy hand shake and embraced each other. I then asked how he was doing and he replied “Ah u know alhumdulilah… a bit up and down” i said to him i knew what he meant. “This reality is tough man that’s why i really enjoy praying at Leeds Grand Mosque it’s such a unique place with unique individuals… very special!” i said. He agreed with me. I then said “I’s like an escape from reality, i love going there!” He turned to me and said “No… that IS the real reality!” I paused for a moment, digesting what he had just said it felt so profound to me and i was surprised that i hadn’t thought of it like that before.
Two miniutes our conversation took and what he said had such an impact on me I’m still thinking about it days after.
Uncategorized Friends, Happiness, Islam, Leeds, Leeds Grand Mosque, Life, Religion
My greatest memory from a dump that is Slough!
I got to Marks & Spencers (M&S) a lot in Slough mailny when i’m lazy and mainly when i work a lot!
I’ve found this little M&S just around the corner from where i live… When I found it was like my White Castle i couldn’t believe it… such good food so nearby! When i turned the corner and saw it had a glimmering glow all around it! I’d found heaven :)
I was looking for some crisps (potato chips) a particular kind, kinda a popular they all ran out! I bumped into this old man with the store uniform on. I asked him if he had any in the back… he went and checked and he came back with a whole handful. I was very chuffed i thanked him and continued my shopping… Now waiting in the check out line the old guy asks me to come over here and opens a new till for me and starts beeping my food! I was like whoa thank you very much… done… bit of small talk, money exchanged hands and bagged my stuff and went on my merry way.
Every time i go there I’m always greeted by this friendly face and upbeat attitude. The South African accent, the smile the face it’s so genuine. The friendly banter i was greeted with and as i left… The wave good bye across the store from the exit… “See ya later bud!” the reserved english looking around thinking what just happened who broke the silence! how does he know him? haha
His story is amazing… an Italian South African in Slough… of all places in the world, Slough! No children no wife… nothing… I didn’t wanna probe too much i could tell he’d been through tough stuff and was uncomfortable talking about a few things in his life… But we both had huge mutual respect for each other. To be honest with ya i stopped going for the food and just kinda went to see him and see how he’s doing!
Just look at his face in this photo… please! Can you see it? Can you? :)
Such a kind and gentle man with such a good heart! An Angel amongst men!
Live a long and a happy life in this one and the next Mr. Galliano Burzacchi you deserve it!
Uncategorized Life
There’s this old old old man i see at the mosque almost daily. Beautiful long white beard, his face is so weathered like it has a million stories to tell, all these winkly lines on his face, topi like jinnah’s and he wears a salwar kameez with a long sleeve sweater on top. SubhanAllah this guy’s so old that he can’t stand up straight he’s like half bent when he walks around bachara it’s like he’s almost always in rukoo… When he walks he shuffles he’s feet like old people do cos they don’t have the strength to pick them up. I saw him as he left yesterday struggling to get himself off the floor, and oh no he’s too stubborn to use a chair to do his namaz, is it him being stubborn or is it valiant act in the eyes of God, showing Him that dangit I can still do it like the rest of them.
In this mosque people pull up in porches, ferraris, mercede clss and they all come in there to pray and MashAllah good for them! After a magrhib or isha jumat when all is said and done I look around at all the people there and this baba catches my eye and I can’t help but notice that all these despite all these high flying dudes with their fancy sports cars the richest man in there is this old baba you can see it, it’s on his face! :)
He leaves the mosque… and this is the best part he comes to the mosque on a bike, no not a motorbike but one of those old bikes like the ones you see in pakistan or india. The tuti puti kinda :)
I saw him leaving… inta mehnet ke saat he’s there pedleing away going oh so slowly pushing down with great difficulty with one foot then the other foot a precession of cars behind him watiing to pass… I stood there and watched him as he left. Baba was undeterred, he continued despite what was going on around him and this line of cars amassing behind him… hehe the cars didn’t own the road Baba did :)
It was the sweetest most valiant thing i’ve seen in a person it shows me truly that the human spirit is so alive in this oh so old man! God has truly blessed this man!
Keep on peddeling Baba don’t you ever stop :)
Uncategorized Life
I ask myself… If at any time I begin to lose hope in myself, let me simply look inside my heart and see all the good actions I have ever performed, from the smallest to the grandest. When I see how much happiness I have given, I easily remember the purpose of my life.
Have an amazing day :)
Uncategorized Life
Why is Takk by Sigur Rós so relaxing? Listen to it from beginning to end, bring up all your feelings and emotions of love, hate, guilt, jealousy, rage! Bring it to your soul let your soul feel it, savour it for a few moments, then digest it… let it go… and watch all those feelings fly away :)
Uncategorized Life
I play tennis and when i go home to Dhahran, i play a lot of tennis! There’s this one person who i’ve always seen at the courts for years and years upon end who always greeted me and I always greeted him in kind! He’s not a tennis player he doesn’t even work for aramco… His name is Abdul Rahman and he’s the janitor at the hill tennis courts.
I can’t remember the first time i met him it must have been around 2000 or 2001 i guess. But i remember that whenever i’d see him he’d greet me with a great big smile and i’d shake his hand and his hand was strong and tough but a weathered hand which was coarse and rough. But I always noticed his eyes when i shook his hand, because he was always genuinely happy to see me. His eyes had history and character behind them, they probably could tell some story. I think it was as if throughout his whole day he saw something familiar a good familiarity and it gave him some respite for the rest of his day.
We had communication problems he was bangali (i think) and he couldn’t speak urdu that well, and my arabic sucks so we conversed in english and his broken english was just fine. On the many occasions I got to meet him he told me his story and i don’t know why people tell me they’re stories from old men on the bench to people on planes or trains, i guess i’m just supposed to just listen, which i do. As all these labour contractors that come from abroad he has a family back home and his life here was poor. Many times i’d sit and listen to him and his troubles and i’d always try to find a way in which i could help him some how, but when we finished i think he just needed someone to listen to him and his worries, and he found that solace in telling me. He’d always say to me “brother too much tension, too much tension… i go…. i go now back home….”. He always talks about going home. He told me once that they used to get payed even during their holiday but he told me they stopped doing that. He also told me he only gets payed 350 riyals a month and he says it barley can feed himself with that much for a month. It just makes you wonder about all the money you spend when you go the mall. So his contract is ending and he said he’s going after that, he’s been here for about seven years i think.
I wanted to write about him because he’s leaving in september and i don’t think i’ll see him again unless inshAllah i get to go back to Saudi before then. And also because he’s been such a good memory in my life through all my troubles i’d go to the courts and thrash away my worries on that wall and i’d always be met by that familiar face, smile, eyes and a shouting hello from a far followed by a salaam. Always the same no matter what we have both gone through in our separate lives we both respected each other deeply and I really liked that.
The day before i was leaving i went to see him, he sits in the club house next to court 10. I caught him finishing his wudu with the bottom half of his coveralls rolled up to his knees his feet all wet. He’d been telling me about the new wooden floor they were going to put in the club house, it was finished. I said to him “you must like your new floor” he smiled and said “yah it’s very good”. I told him that i was leaving tomorrow and he asked when i’d be back and I said to him i don’t know but I think it’d be after a very long time and that’s when he told me that’d he’d be leaving in september. He asked me to sit down but I couldn’t because there were no chairs because they moved everything out to do the floor, the chair he sat in was the only one in the room. I smiled and appreciated his offer but humbly declined because I had to go. I had to say goodbye so I went to give him a hug, he gave me a good hug. You know there’s those people who give you a hug for the sake of giving you hug and then there are those people who really mean it. His hug i really felt it and afterwards we just stood their looking at each other. What he said to me next kinda touched me because this is a man who i only see sparingly here and there every few years for a few minutes at a time. He said “You a good man! A good person!” I really thanked him and i said the same bout him and he nodded and said “yah!” and pointed to me as if to confirm again what he just said. I looked at him and i said “I don’t know when i’ll see you next brother but inshAllah you and I we’ll meet in Junnah!” he smiled that big smile and those eyes acknowledged what i’d said he said “yah Junnah! inshAllah!” and we gave salaams and with that thought I left him.
He’s a good man! I love him as my brother! I don’t think they’re are many people like that left on this planet, but it really means a lot to me and makes my life just that little bit more worth while when i get a chance to bump into people like him :)_
Uncategorized Life
It was a really cold morning and i dragged myself out of bed before fajr to go for a little run. While I was running i was listening to mainly snow patrol and low and behold the track chasing cars came on and it was the background music to everything that followed.
I had ran a lot and I decided it was time to take a breather. So I stopped… I have this habit at looking at the sky I dunno why i think it’s a childhood thing so i stopped and I turned my head to looking up at the early monring sky just before fajr. i just stood there look at this beatuful night sky you could see all the different colors of the sky and all the stars that were shimmering in it, gosh they were so bright! I stood there and contemplated that moment then everything started to slow down and i felt this warmth grow inside me and suddenly i realized something… I realized that everything seemed so meaningless in this world. I mean there i was running along on a cold winter monring on the streets of slough (slough’s a dump btw) and it just kinda came to me, this moment on how everything i’ve thought about everything i worried about or was afraid of and everything that is in my past and everything that hurt so much and everything that is yet to come it all became so meaningless. Not in a bad way, not like i wanna kill myself pointless what have i done with my life kinda thing, i mean more in the way how everything comes together for you for just that one moment, that purity you see in everything in the sky in the stars the clouds the planes with their flickring lights heck even the streets and the street lights with their orange glow it just all seemed really different that morning. It was as if i was there but i wasn’t really there. Like an outta body experience i guess. It was one of those moments again that i was given something just for a few minutes where everything made sense in this world.
I sometimes i think i’m an idiot for getting out of bed insanely early in the morning to run, and i ask myself sometimes why the hell i do it, (well i know why but that’s another reason :) ) but i guess it all becomes worth while when I have beautiful moments like these. I don’t think many people would understand this but wow wouldn’t it be amazing if they did! I sometimes wonder if other people have moments like these. I then went to pray fajr at the mosque which just topped of an amazing morning and the start to a beautiful day!
Uncategorized Life
Yes I finally got a haircut at long last. And yes this blog post is about a week late but hey that’s the way it goes. My hair was long yes and i’ve lost the longish 70′s theme going on. I was supposed to get it trimmed in july but never did out of fear i guess so i’ve left it until now. My hair was long enough to my shoulders and it was getting a bit messy and needed to be tamed.
Read more…
Uncategorized Life
Man I wish I blogged this earlier, the summer back home was awesome in more ways than one. Wow did I get in shape again! Tennis, jogging, cycling it was very good, the heat was bad, really bad… but after a few weeks of climitization I got use to it and could go for a bike ride at 3pm which I could just about manage. I took my mac baby with me… she loved there… haha no serisouly though since I got my macbook i’ve learned a lot and it’s such a good system and well built. Kept me busy while it was hot outside. Tennis with my two little buddies was amazing… more about that later though. What else, now I’m trying to think back what I did… oh yeah spent some time with two really good friends of mine that I got to know very well after a long time which was nice…
I guess the most important lesson I learned there while haveing all that fun and preparing myself for the next stage of my life was somthing about planning. I know you should never have to be remindind by the many virtues of Allah but this summer I was completley taken a back by something I totally didn’t expect happening in my wildest dreams. He truly is the best of planners, i know that but when it happens to you, it really means so much more. And that’s all I have to say about that… :)
Uncategorized Life
Right… gosh again another long time since I did this. I finally got my account sorted wtih the typepad people it just didn’t seem to be going through so finally they ported me over to the uk side and it worked fine and I get payed in £’s now which’s all good. Where i’ve been and what i’ve done, this summer was amazing, I think it was amazing on a huge scale, ok i know now it’s winter but summer was good and I never got a chance to blog it… damn you sixapart billing system (the american one)!
Uncategorized Life
