hello, goodbye

so it’s been a while since i’ve last blogged. my apologies. a lot has happened and i’ve had so little time to sit down and write about them.

asmah and naba moved into our apartment around the middle of june. we had a lot of fun during our last days in egypt together. never went to sleep before 2 or 3 am...sometimes after fajr.

nadiya and i went to palestine and jordan for about 10 days. we had an amazing experience. i’ll try to blog about it later, insha’Allah.

nadiya, naveed and i took a one day trip to alexandria. the ride was supposed to take 2 hours but it took about 2 hours to get out of cairo. so basically, it took 4 hours to get there. unfortunately, i was sitting next to this burly egyptian guy who was trying to hit on me. he wrote his number on a slip of paper and kept trying to give it to me. he was also wearing a wedding band...how disgusting. i felt sorry for his wife. anyway, i met up with my ex-teacher, ustadh muhammad at the imam busiri mosque. that’s the imam who wrote the burda (the greatest classic poem in the arabic language in praise of the prophet muhammad (s) during the 13th century). afterwards, we ate at a fish market, got some dessert and took a taxi back to cairo.

i am now back in chicago. yes, i have said farewell to al-qahira which had welcomed me with arms wide opened. took me in like a lost orphan. i really felt like i belonged there. i miss it...my life there, the people, my friends, my teachers, my roomies and of course, the noise, the pollution, the heat, the satanic cats, the hustle and bustle of the crowded streets, the little ironing boy ringing our doorbell everyday asking if we needed anything ironed, the man on his donkey cart yelling, ‘bikya! bikya!’ asking for unused furniture, books and other junk and angry taxi drivers chasing after us demanding more money.

i received a nice welcome when i returned to the states. everyone seemed excited to have me back. my friends even surprised me with a welcome back cake. i was touched. but after all that, it sunk in that i was back to life in the u.s. looking for a job, living under my parent’s roof, the pressure of being an unmarried daughter, etc. i went out...to the mall and other places and felt like an alien...out of place...everyone seemed so strange to me...the way they dressed, the way they looked, the way they talked. and then i got sad...really sad. reverse culture shock.