Quite a bit has happened since the last time any of us wrote here. Some bad, mostly good. Alhumdulillah, our lives are full of good. We moved to Orlando. Life is pretty cool here. We've made good friends, have a very nice Muslim community with a bunch of classes, and we're surrounded by God fearing people.
The cat in the last post died. That was Little Cat. He was like a rock star dying young. Probably some poisonous berries or something. We've since acquired two more, Big Cat and New Cat, both from the masjid. And by acquired, I mean the boys ran after them in the parking lot until they caught them, jumped in the car and waited for Dad to finish chatting in the masjid, upon which they told him the cats really want to come home with us. He accepted.
Ameer is getting big, masha'Allah. He's looking like a man. Sometimes for Fajr he comes in my room to wake me up and I think, "OMG, who the hell is this man in my room with the strangely deep voice?!" I know it's not my dad's voice. I'm just surprised it's his.
Aisha and I are volunteers for Al Maghrib. It's an interesting thing to get involved in and we have built in friends. I love them.
There's a lively community of Muslims here. Of course they're not without their drama, but I don't think any community is. There's a huge population of Guyanese people, and they're always a riot. Guyana is pretty close to Trinidad, where Dad was born. There's also a pretty good population of Moroccans but I kinda think that's just because Disney World is here.
We went to the Great Muslim Adventure at Six Flags in New Jersey for Eid. The entire park was closed just for Muslims, for Eid. It was awesome. We saw Shaykh Yusuf Estes again. We're fans. He didn't recognize me though. Again. We also saw an old friend from Jordan in New York who we'd been missing. Earlier this year we went to Texas, made the usual stops. Cafe DuMonde in the French Quarter of New Orleans, of course. ;) We got feather masquerade ball masks and I walked around the French Quarter in mine. If there was any place to do it, it was there.
I taking an Arabic class here. I've been going for about a year and a half. It's really good masha'Allah, the teacher is serious. Like Nazi serious, but we always have fun. I can't help but have fun. We're using the Medina Arabic course, same as they use in Medina University. We're halfway through the last book now. Sometimes I dream in Arabic. I don't always know what they're saying, but it's in Arabic nevertheless. In Egypt, we ended up (unintentionally) learning mostly Ameya, or colloquial Arabic. Here we're learning Fusha though, the language of the Quran.
Shazad died. He was our cousin, but really he was our brother. There wasn't anyone who was closer to us than Shazad. Sometimes he spent four nights a week at our house. He died in October. In sajdah, prayer, with his head on the floor worshipping Allah. Shazad died in sajdah.
We found out about 1:30 am one night. We were already up. The next day my mom, dad, and Aisha went out along with his mother, my dad's sister, to go do the things that needed to be done about it. I stayed home with the kids. Siraj and Ayoub got up early and asked me if they could watch cartoons. Ameer and Anissa were up when we got the call, but Siraj and Ayoub, 9 and 6 respectively, were in bed. They didn't know. I went downstairs with them, plugged the wifi in and told them I wanted to tell them something first.
I sat down and I guess they felt something because they became quiet and sat down without saying anything. I was still for a few moments, I really didn't want to start crying in front of them. I said, "You guys know that when ever person is still a tiny, tiny baby in their mother's belly, Allah sends an angel to them to write down four things." They nodded their heads in agreement, gaze fixed intensely on me. "They write down his deeds" I continued, "They write down what kind of job he's going to have, if he's going to go to Heaven or Hell, and they write down at what age he is going to die." "Okay" they said. Ayoub looked over at Siraj. "And so, Allah decided from when he was a tiny baby, that Shazad would die now."
Siraj stared at me. "Shazad died?" he asked. "Yes." A few moments passed. "Shazad died?" Ayoub asked. "Yes, Shazad died."
They would sit quietly, still for long periods of time after that, just processing I think. We were all processing. We were all grieving.
Everyone was talking about the boy who died in prayer afterwards, masha'Allah. I was immensely proud of him. I am immensely proud of him.
We're still kinda raw from it. This was Shazad. Our Shazad. There's been a lot written about him. It will follow.
A couple weeks later we had a huge family reunion. It was a few months already in the planning until one day someone called my dad and told him they've been planning a reunion of all 13 of his brothers and sisters and their masses of children next month... at our house. They were supposed to come at the end of the month, but Shazad died at the beginning of the month, so five of the 13 siblings came for his funeral and six more came for the reunion, plus the two that live here. That month our house had a revolving door for guests coming and going. He would have loved it.
We saw family we haven't seen in a while. We've always been able to keep good contact with all of our family though alhumdulillah, and really, I think my immediate family is probably closest to everyone in our family. Some of them who came hadn't seen others in years. That's been remedied though. Insha'Allah our next meeting won't be so long away.
So, even though this blog has been abandoned for the past almost two years, we're still kickin. We're doing well. Alhumdulillah, alhumdulillah. Waiting for our next adventure.
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