Ramadan Journal '16 | Week Four
19:30
The entire Muslim population: "Ramadan has flown by so fast!"
It truly, truly has. It makes me sad that I'm writing this in the final week of the month, with less than seven days to go till Eid. It honestly feels like the fastest Ramadan I have ever experienced; I'm looking back and thinking where on earth did that time evade us? It came and went in the blink of an eye and as I'm journaling, I'm doing it with a little bit of a heavy heart but also with a little excitement because let's face it, after a hard month of fasting, it's hard to not get excited about the approaching of Eid.This post is going up early and so I've also included the 29th and 30th days in the last of this Ramadan journal. And lastly, to all of my celebrating readers, wishing you all a wonderful Eid! I hope this month gave you the spiritual fulfilment you were looking for and the strength to go on through the rest of the year doing the absolute best you can. Have a super lovely, happy, blessed day <3 x
Day 22 | 6pm
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| 6pm: my praying time |
That moment when you realise you miscalculated the amount you have to pray a day to finish the Quran in thirty days. Hah. Now I'm having to play catch-up because of my mathematical incompetency.
Day 23 | Throwback
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| Gangilonga Rock; Iringa, Tanzania |
Throwing it back exactly two years to when I travelled to Africa to work in their labs and shadow their dental clinics. I look back at those six weeks of my life and feel an incomprehensible ache because I lived and learnt so much. I met some unforgettable people, people that I'm still in touch with today and I think it's incredible that two years later, I can write to someone I worked with in a lab in impoverished Malawi, someone who I knew for a mere four weeks, living thousands of miles away, who I now consider a dear friend. It feels like it was just yesterday I was there with them, comparing two lives that are worlds apart, and wishing that life could be a little more fair to people more worthy than me. I made some unreal memories; I witnessed the birth of a child, I visited an orphanage in Tanzania, and I saw the heart-breaking, devastating effects of poverty on men, women and children alike.
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| Me & little Zeke // Iringa Orphanage |
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| Me & baby // Post-witnessing the miracle of life |
I experienced the drama of the third-world when one of our cars caught fire on the way from the airport, when the local market went up in flames one night, when we nearly killed a kid as we day-tripped to Zambia from Malawi and then having our car almost run out of petrol in the pitch black of the isolated African motorway...I just so happened to be editing some of my blog posts two days ago, and as I went back to those posts I wrote so many months ago - yep, you can read all about those exciting things and see more of my fabulous pictures here - I found myself laughing at the sheer incredulity of the crazy things that happened. Nostalgia hit hard.
I went back through all my old photos and I thought "did this trip actually happen?" I'm so glad I blogged it; I'm so happy that I made the decision to write about everything that happened every day of that trip because looking back, I felt myself re-living those beautiful, hilarious, gut-wrenching memories. So many recorded moments, slipped in between little pockets of time that are a little worn around the edges and the colour's slightly faded - but they're there. And I'm so grateful. Because that trip was a trip of a lifetime.
It was a trip that changed my life.
Day 24 | Black & White
I'm going to miss my quiet nights in my little praying space.
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| And I found my healing in prayer |
Day 25 | Write
Day 26 | Tradition
When I was a little girl, I loved henna. I don't know what it was about it, but I adored putting it on and having my hands look super pretty and having the kids at school the next day getting really excited over my "tattoo". Bless them. (I also love the scent of it...don't judge me). My cousin is amazing at henna patterns and for as long as I can remember, it was a tradition for me to go to my aunty's house the night before Eid, as soon as we got the news that the moon's been sighted, for her to put it on for me. We'd be there till about midnight, trading Ramadan stories and slyly eating the Eid treats before Eid's even begun. And we did it for years. It was always our thing. But then as Ramadan shifted in the year and the fasts got longer with the days not ending till 11pm, it was no longer practical (nor fair on her) so I stopped going, and I just didn't love it as much as I once did.
I then took it up myself. When I was applying for dentistry a lifetime ago, I thought henna art would be a great way to not just build up a manual dexterity profile, but also for me to get back into it. And I loved it! I took a few lessons although it was mainly self-taught through copying pictures off Pinterest and watching Youtbe videos before going on to make my scrapbooks and portfolio for interviews and the like. And yes, the night before Eid, I take out my henna cone and stay up till about 2am putting it on myself. I am obviously far from being a henna artist and I wouldn't dare try it on other people, and the dentistry life is well behind me now, but I love that I can now somewhat do it myself and that something so personal to me that comes with lovely childhood memories, is now a hobby that I can call my own.
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| Henna nights & Eid vibes |
Day 27 | Self
| "Tawakkul is standing in front of the Red Sea - as Prophet Musa did - with an army behind you, and not even flinching, knowing that Allah will get you through" - a reminder to myself that He is on my side, always
| "Tawakkul is standing in front of the Red Sea - as Prophet Musa did - with an army behind you, and not even flinching, knowing that Allah will get you through" - a reminder to myself that He is on my side, always
I am grateful for the simple things in life. The things I take for granted day in, day out. Like the air I breathe, the food on my table, the roof over my head. I am grateful for my parents; the sacrifices they made and the effort they still put into giving me and my brother the best life we can have. I am grateful for a loving family and a happy childhood. I am grateful for the brother who is, in so many ways, my closest friend. I am grateful for the privileged life that I have been blessed with, a life that I don't deserve and didn't earn. I am grateful for the doors that were closed and the doors that were opened. I am grateful for the accepted prayers and yet also the detours and heartbreaks and failures. I am grateful for the three years I spent studying a subject I love with all my heart - I know how lucky I am to have experienced that. I am grateful for the friends those three years blessed me with - they were the backbone without whom I couldn't have gotten through. I am grateful for the times I was saved when I couldn't save myself. I am grateful for being given a second chance. I am grateful for the friends who never left; the friends who make me want to do better, to be better. The friends that inspire me. I wouldn't be half the person I am today without them. I am grateful for being born into a religion that millions are deprived of. I am grateful for every day that I am gifted with to prove myself worthy of it. I am grateful that I was lucky - so beyond lucky - to live through another blessed month and I pray and pray and pray that I live to see the next. I am grateful that I forget, I forget that every breath I take is a gift and I forget how lucky I am to be living this life and I forget that I have so much of what other people are praying, begging, crying for, I forget I forget I forget and yet He lets it go. I am grateful that every time I let Him down, He gives me the chance to redeem myself. I am grateful for that mercy among countless mercies that I find myself so undeserving and unworthy of.
Day 29 | Prepare
My Eid gifts are wrapped and ready to go!
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| So...this was a success ;) |
Day 30 | Thank you
Thank you to my readers who have kept up with my thirty days of journaling and who keep up with my blog in the days in-between; you are the reason I keep on writing and the lovely feedback I get from so many of you means the absolute world. It just needs one reader for a writer to write and more often than not, that reader is ourselves..to know that there are hundreds of you out there reading my posts, it means more than you can ever know. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
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