flaming lips

today we (nadiya, naveed and I) went to masjid al-azhar to pray juma’a (friday prayer). it is one of the most beautiful mosques in egypt in my opinion. however, it gets really crowded during juma’a time, especially the women’s side. but there was an old woman who was in charge of directing other women where to sit during juma’a. she was a cute old woman...sorta reminded me of my grandmother. she was short and stocky, with a round sweet face and wrinkled skin and she was wearing white...very angelic looking. but oh my! she sure wasn’t! when the 3 of us entered the women’s section, we stood at the entrance for a second to determine where to sit. but this old woman didn’t even give us a chance to think. she jabbed me in the back with her pointy fingers and demanded us to go to the back. i was scared of her and we did as we were told. after we sat in our assigned seats, i continued watching this old woman in action. she pushed other women to their places, made others move if they weren’t sitting in a straight line and even scolded a BABY for crying during the khutba!

for some reason, after juma’a, the women like to argue. unfortunately, i’ve seen this happen every time i’ve been to masjid al-azhar. i don’t know what they argue about but it always involves a screaming match between two really big tough arab women. it’s like watching sumo wrestling without the wrestling.

after juma’a, we decided to sit around the marble courtyard for a bit and do some work...it’s a peaceful and cool retreat from the crowd and heat of cairo. naveed and nadiya brought their qurans with them and i brought my calligraphy homework to do. people were sitting around with their families and eating. others were pacing back and forth memorizing verses from the quran. still others were sleeping or sitting by themselves contemplating on life. children were running and playing in the courtyard. as i was doing my calligraphy, this old man saw my work and was very impressed. he said something in arabic as he was passing. i didn’t get it...but he was smiling and seemed to be praising my work. i was happy.


some strange lady drank from my water bottle and i couldn’t stop her ‘cause i know there’s a hadith about the rewards of giving water to a thirsty person. i had a big bottle of water out as i was doing my calligraphy and i happened to step away from my things for a few minutes. the next thing i knew, this lady had polluted my water with her backwash. her lips were around my water bottle! i had to bite my tongue from screaming at her. i was actually nice and told her to keep the bottle ‘cause i wasn’t going to drink from it anymore but she refused. first of all, i don’t understand how anyone could just approach a half drunk bottle of water and drink from it without knowing who it belongs to or how long it’s been there or where the water is from, etc. secondly, i don’t understand why she didn’t just go to one of the 6 water stations around the masjid!

afterwards, we decided to climb the minaret (pic was taken from on top of the minerat). this is the 3rd minaret i’ve climbed in egypt. it’s always a wonderful experience to climb the minaret of an old mosque. just imagine, back in the day, the mu’azzin (person who calls everyone to prayer) used to climb the minerat 5 times a day. it’s nice to imagine yourself in his shoes....plus, it’s good exercise.