“If it is established that a person is a beginner in his understanding of the Arabic language, then he is a beginner in understanding Shari’ah; if he is average in his understanding of Arabic, then he his average in his understanding of Shari’ah and if he attains mastery in his understanding of Arabic, then the same will hold true for his understanding of Shari’ah. Thus, [if he masters the language] his understanding of the Shari’ah and its objectives will be like the understanding of the Companions.”

Imam al-Shatibi al-Muwafatqat vol. 4 pg. 115

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The streets are rainbowed with Ramadan decorations once again. The Faynoos lantern that comes in dozens of sizes, shapes and colors can be spotted hanging on the streets, on bags in the shape of keychains, in malls, and off of balconies. The colorful string-lights that line the masjids and buildings illuminate the night and draw your eyes towards the minarets. The tables and tents set up to feed people during the blessed month are being lined with chairs…ready to feed the fasting. All of these wonders said, “Welcome to Egypt” last year when I arrived in Cairo just before Ramadan in 2007. It served as such a warm welcome. Although the decorations and preparations are the same as before, this year it’s a stark contrast for me emotionally. I’m almost sad to see it again because this time Ramadan doesn’t mark the beginning of my stay…it marks the end of it.

Something I’ll miss the most about Ramadan in Egypt is the wake-up call we get for suhoor every morning. They call them the “Meseharaat” and their job is to walk the streets at tahajjud time every night banging their drum and calling out to the people to wake for Qiyam and Suhoor. There’s this loud thump thump - thump thump they beat on their drums and the follow it by calling out…

It’s kind of in ‘Aamiyyah (local) mixed with fus-ha (classical) Arabic. From what I understand he’s calling the servants of Allah to declare the Oneness of Allah, to get up and declare the Oneness of the Permanent One (Allah - ‘azza wa jal -). He wishes everyone “Ramadan Kareem!” and advises that the pursuit of fasting is better than sleep so he tells the sleepy heads to get up! He ends it by telling them to declare the Oneness of the One Who Provides (Allah).

We will be praying Taraweeh tomorrow night insha’Allah (Sunday, August 31st). I’m so excited about getting the opportunity to pray Taraweeh in Egypt again…the masajid here are blessed with Imams with astounding recitation. I did manage to record most Ramadan nights last year, I just couldn’t upload them as promised because of the slow connection speeds here…but I plan to add more pictures and audio to this blog after I return home next month, insha’Allah. In the mean time, I’ll try to catch up on posting…so wake up everyone! Ramadan Kareem :)

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That there says “welcome” in Arabic. Welcome to Cairo. The second most populous city in the Arab World and Africa.

It is very important that you read and take heed of the advice that is to follow. Three females have been mugged right in in front of Fajr Center in the past two months (all separate incidents). They were just walking to school with their handbags when a car pulled up, yanked their bags off of them and drove away!

It’s not a common occurrence but it DOES happen. I have lived here for almost a year now and alhamdulillah I haven’t encountered any crime however, hearing of these stories made me realize that foreign students are an easy target. I dress simply and try to blend in so I’m always mistaken for a local (yes folks, even my Converse shoes don’t stand out because - believe it or not - they’re just as popularly worn here as they are in the states!)

1. Don’t wear big fancy handbags that attract attention/ that are easy to grab.
2. Don’t take your wallet with you every where. Only take as much money as you think you’ll need and a little extra in case of emergency. Always leave your Bank cards and passport at home (unless in case of necessity)
3. Don’t bring a fancy mobile phone/cellphone with you - come with a simple unlocked quad-band phone that will serve it’s purpose and not attract attention
4. Don’t wear gold on the street
5. When walking on the street, walk as far away from the cars as you can and stay closer to the buildings.
6. Be aware of your surroundings, keep a hand on your bag and make sure it’s always closed tight and close to you.
7. Walk with confidence, don’t look vulnerable. Avoid speaking other languages loudly (apart from Arabic). Don’t tell people you’re lost or that you don’t speak Arabic. It’s better if they just assume you’re a rude snob who doesn’t want to talk to them vs. them figuring out you’re a foreigner. It is crucial to familiarize yourself with some local words…which is why I highly recommend buying the Lonely Planet’s Egyptian Phrase-book before coming.
8. Don’t give money to any random beggar. This may surprise you but trust me, some of them will stalk you or send their family members to follow you home and harass you for more money (this has happened to me and many people I know) - So since you will be unable to distinguish the good from the bad, just avoid it altogether. There are other safer ways to give charity (such as to the Egyptian National Food Bank, Masjids, Islamic Relief.)
9. Don’t DRESS like you’re in your home country. Come on, you’re in Egypt. Do you really want to wear clothes that say “Hi, I just arrived from America and I’m loaded with dollars. Come mug me.”
10. Don’t pull out your camera everywhere you go and look like a tourist.

I hope this post doesn’t put anyone off coming to Cairo to study. Pick-pocketing and mugging happens in all major cities across the globe. You just have to be extra cautious whenever you’re living in an unfamiliar place. Overall I feel very safe in Cairo alhamdulillah and if you follow my advice, I’m sure you will too!

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This balcony is so different than the one that came with out first Cairo apartment ten months ago. This one sits close to the street two floors above the ground and has a big fancy railing offering privacy. It has painted roman pillars and terra cotta walls with white tile flooring. Very grandeur compared to the balcony on the eighth floor of our first building. The first balcony, and the last. Between them were three others, each offering very different views, each carrying different memories.

The first: Eighth floor overlooking Asim Abdul Hamid Street, Nasr City

By far, the best. At times all seven or six of us were out there at once. Since it was summer we’d sit there at night where the breeze was cooler than being inside. It was also a good WiFi spot. Qur’an was recited. Deep conversations were held on that balcony. Advice was given. Tea was sipped. Binoculars were put to use. Stories were told. Jokes were made. I remember one night in particular I believe it was in the first week of Ramadan, Sammer and I sat out there with flash cards testing each other on our Arabic vocab. We wanted to begin practicing our Arabic before our Fajr Center classes were scheduled to begin. We mastered all of those words that night together. We would stay up out there until the old man with the drum would walk down our street calling out to the sleeping buildings waking them up for tahajjud and suhoor. “O Servants of Allah!” There was a creepy lookout post on top of the building across from ours and it strangely resembled the one at Gitmo. We found that disturbing and would use the binoculars to look at it to see if anyone was looking back at us.

The second: Sixth floor overlooking Medan al-Arab, Maadi

We lived a few floors above Fajr Center’s Maadi branch. I’d get up in the morning and peep out the balcony past the big tree to see if my teacher had walked into the building yet. It was next to the train tracks so I’d see the train come and go. The masjid in the distance would attract a large crowd every jumu’ah. I tried to sit out there and listen to the khutbah when I could, although it was usually too faint to understand. I missed my family the most from this balcony and would distract my thoughts with my MP3 player while staring at the billboard for Close-Up toothpaste. I only remember one night I had company on this balcony, and that was only briefly. Such a contrast compared to the previous one.

The third: First floor overlooking Medan al-Arab, Maadi

The worst. This time we were facing the back of the building. Our view was hardly picturesque. It was the crazy, noisy, always busy intersection known as Medan al-Arab. The phantom ice-cream truck noises we heard turned out to be the signal sounds on motorcycles. Many a zuffa (wedding procession) we heard from there. Beeeeep Beeeeep BeepBeepBeep! The dogs and cats were always fighting and the cars always had somewhere to go. This balcony was enclosed so it offered nothing nice and the only thing that sat out there was my wet clothing.

The fourth: Sixth floor overlooking Masjid Bilal, Nasr City

Beautiful view of the minaret, the masjid, and the garden. The Somali restaurant on the ground floor could usually be heard. The best athan I’ve heard in Cairo is the one from Masjid Bilal, it came through clearly and loudly. I could sit and listen to the Jumu’ah Khutbahs without having to strain my ear one bit and I was able to record Shaykh Rida many times from that balcony. On Eid morning I saw the crowds coming towards the Masjid and video recorded it. Later that day I sat out there and watched cars drive through huge puddles of blood left over from the sacrifices. It was winter when we lived there though and usually too cold to sit out.

The fifth: Second floor overlooking Mohsin Rushdie Street, Nasr City

This is present tense but will soon be past because this is going to be the last balcony I will call my own in Cairo. It accumulates more dust than people and I’ve only seen one wedding from up here. I like seeing the moon reflect off the shiny white tile floor at night and right now the sun is rising on the building tops. When the Bawaab’s children come to visit they peer through the railing and wave hi to their parents from above. This is the only balcony I’ve had in Cairo without any chairs. Perhaps that’s why as beautiful as it is, it remains unwelcoming.

One of my original roommates, one who I enjoyed many nights with on balcony number one, will be returning on Saturday insha’Allah. I will have to make this one feel more homely in time for her arrival in hopes of rekindling those balcony memories from last summer. After all, I’ll be leaving soon and returning to flat Florida, where there are no balconies among other beloved things Cairo has to offer.

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Abdullah b. Zayd Al-Numayri reports that Al-Hasan Al-Basra said:

They (the heretics) were destroyed by their inability in Arabic (al-’ujmah).

Al-Bukhari, Al-Tarikh al-Kabir Vol.5 p99.

And Imam ash-Shafi’i said:

People didn’t become ignorant and didn’t differ amongst themselves except because they left Arabic and leaned towards the language of Aristotle.
Quoted by Al-Suyuti in Sawn Al-Mantiq p15.

He said on p22:
I have found Salaf before Al- Shafi’i indicate what he did:
That the cause of heresy (al-ibtida’) is ignorance of Arabic language.

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Assalamu `alaykum,

February 23rd marked our 6 month mark. So far it’s been about 6 months of surviving and 5 months of studying. …Ash3uru bil-7uzn wa nafsul-waqt ash3uru bis-suroor…Ironically, I’m sad because I feel so happy here and I know it will not last. With each new day, milestones like delving deeper into Balagha and Sarf are just around the corner for me but not long after that so is my return date. We have been maintaining our intensive hours (6 hours a day/5 days a week) and alhamdulillah we will be starting level 7 tomorrow, if Allah wills. We are trying to maintain a pace that allows us to finish 2 levels per month. Through constant revision of grammar and practicing vocabulary, we believe this is attainable so long as we take final exams every other weekend. This inevitably means we will be taking exams every single weekend (the pattern would be: Midlevel, final, midlevel, final…etc). There’s only one thing standing in our way. I never thought I’d say this but:

H o l i d a y s    a r e     s u c h     a     w a s t e     o f     t i m e !

In our situation - on our time limit - we will only be able to finish all 13 levels by the first week of June if we stick to this pace and NOT take any breaks (other than weekends). Fajr Center said they are going to try their best to assign us a teacher who will be able to accommodate this request for us. See the problem is, Fajr awards every teacher the right to take a week off after every 75 hours of working. At the pace we’re going, we’ll be completing 75 hours every 12 days, so we simply cannot afford to be taking a week off every 12 days, that’s just absurd!

I hope it works out for us insha’Allah. Tomorrow we find out if our new teacher will be willing to accommodate our No-Holiday demands. If she can, then I think I will celebrate with a nice hot glass of sahlab, insha’Allah!

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[I wrote this post in December but I forgot to post it so I'm putting it up now. Kind of late, heh]

The other morning, after another night of insomnia, I looked out our window from the sixth floor, and a morbid thought came to mind. What if there was an earthquake and the building- with it’s 12 floors- just collapsed. This thought stayed with me as I went from window to window, craning my neck just to weave my eyesight past and in between all the surrounding apartment buildings to catch a glimpse of the sunrise. Homes built upon each other, stacking up high, forming concrete towers that crowd the Cairo skyline. Imagine if they all…came tumbling…down.

Have you ever had those moments where you imagine the worst happening, see the scene unravel in your mind, visualize it….and then it happens - either to you or to someone else - and you say to yourself, “SubhanAllah. Thank you Allah for preparing me for this”?

A couple days later this is what permeated the headlines:

“Death toll in Egypt building collapse rises to 20″

SubhanAllah. You’d expect a building structure like this to collapse:

Something weak and made of wood. Not the macho mabaani of Egypt, right?

………………………………………………………

Wrong.

And to Allah belongs all that is in the heavens and the earth. Wa la howla wa la quwwata illah billah…

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“Is it thy will thy image should keep open my heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumber should be broken while shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou sendeth from thee?…Oh no, thy love though much is not so great-

It is my love that keeps my eye awake.

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat to play the watchmen ever for thy sake.

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, while others all too near…”

Question:

So do you get homesick often in Egypt?

My Answer:

Since childhood I’ve been good at blocking out my homesickness whenever I’m away. I’ve taught myself to channel it and only let it out once in a while, mostly to myself and always to Allah. Maybe it’s something I’ve acquired from necessity. I am very content here and honestly in no rush to go home. I do miss my loved ones a lot and think of them often. I am beginning to think that might have something to do with my nightly insomnia. So I dedicate the above, Shakespearean sonnet number 61, to the two people I spend precious moments with before I go to sleep every night, the two people I love and miss more than ever: Mom and my ‘baby bro’ Adam.

At the start of my travels I found deep comfort in the following supplication for travel:

‘Allaah is the greatest, Allaah is the greatest, Allaah is the greatest,

How perfect He is, The One Who has place this (transport) at our service,

and we ourselves would not have been capable of that,

and to our Lord if our final destiny.

O Allaah, we ask You for birr and taqwaa in this journey of ours,

and we ask You for deeds which please You.

O Allaah, facilitate our journey and let us cover its distance quickly.

O Allaah, You are The Companion on the journey and The Successor over the family,

O Allaah, I take refuge with You from the difficulties of travel,

from having a change of hearts and being in a bad predicament,

and I take refuge in You from an ill fated outcome with wealth and family.’

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SubhanAllah.

I had a dream about a ferret type creature. I dreamt it belonged to Sammer and she asked me to pet-sit for her as she went out. The ferret was soft and brown and it only wanted to be held (I was under the impression Sammer spoiled it ;). While petting it, loving it, and giving it my undivided attention, a group of people show up at the house and start partying. They were several in number, each one obnoxious and loud. In my dream I kept telling the unwanted guests to Shh! because You’ll scare Sammer’s pet! when suddenly it leaped out of my arms and ran away. The rest of my dream was me panicking and searching around the house for the darling little creature before Sammer arrived home.

I woke up and on our morning walk to catch a taxi to school I shared my dream with Sammer. SubhanAllah to my surprise she told me she TOO had a dream of a ferret type creature! We were a little weirded out by the whole thing and each of us began describing the creature exactly as we had seen it in our dreams. You’ll never guess what happened next…

SubhanAllah, right at that very moment a creature that looked EXACTLY like what we saw in our dream comes scurrying along the street next to us! We were complete disbelief and kept saying to eachother “SubhanAllah it’s the ferret! We must be dreaming! Are we dreaming?” In the whole 6 months we’ve been here not ONCE have we seen these creatures in Egypt nor did we have any prior knowledge to their presence in the country. It’s amazing how that strange occurrence was written in our destiny long before that day!

We walked faster along the road trying to keep up with the curious little creature that seemed to have leaped right out of the dream dimension we’d only just left a couple hours before. There he was, in plain sight and then suddenly, we lost him as he ran down into a garage. We were left dazed and laughing to each other hysterically wondering if it had all been a result of lack of sleep. First we couldn’t believe we both dreamt of the same thing, the we couldn’t believe such a random creature found its way into our dreams, and lastly there it was right before our very eyes. SubhanAllah is all I can say.

Later on, internet searches confirmed that what we saw might not have been a ferret after all but it appears the mysterious little guy was an Egyptian Weasel:

“Didn’t expect to find these in Egypt, did you? These are weasels, just like the ones found in North America, Europe, and Asia. They are found all over the world as they can adapt to fit any environment. Weasels will eat anything, and they do devastating damage to the domestic fowls such as chickens and ducks, eating the eggs as well as the small chicks. For many Egyptians, the weasel is a great nuisance. They are often found living in the city, even in the walls of houses like mice, stealing food wherever they can find it.” Source.

I also learned a little about Egyptian foxes. This one’s a Fennec Fox. They are known for their big ears which are sensitive enough to hear large insects, such as beetles and locusts, walk on sand. Their fur repels sunlight during the day and conserves heat at night. The soles of their feet also have a thick layer of fur that serves as protection from the hot sand. I would love to see one of them next:

You can read more about the wildlife of Egypt here.

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Part of traveling is knowing that you will be absent for events in the lives of the loved ones left behind.

For me, it’s the hardest part.

The passing of a loved one is something that hits you so hard it’s like the world was temporarily yanked from underneath your feet. It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you can be all the way in Africa and still feel it. If you decide to travel one day and find yourself in a similar circumstance remember that you can still try to be there for your loved ones who are dealing with it on the home front. Call them and check on them, send them something, contact a friend and have them provide food and company to your family on behalf of you.

Remember most of all that it is Allah’s Decree that you cannot be home at such a time. Qadr Allah Wa Maa Shaa Fa3la.

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