10 days in Damascus

Salaams to all!! Alhamd, we are doing great, no complains at all. Life Alhamd here is good... just to let you know what we have decided, Sabiha and I will both publish posts so there is more to read because of the infrequency of our blog updates. sorry about the infrequency but we are real busy and have to come to an Internet cafe to update, and its hard to find time.

ok...so 10 days in Sham already, crazy its been that long already, but you know what, it feels like we have been here 10 months, lol, not really, but at least 1 month...lol, so funny how that works... normally when we go on vacation time flies by, but i guess we are not on vacation...lol... we are real busy with school and the haram, and now the Holy Month of Ramadhan, it definitely keeps us wrapped up... we figured out they dont recite Dua Iftitah here, kinda sucks, we wanted to get the whole spiritual experience of it, but we will likely have to do it ourselves. no biggie...

On friday we went to Hamidiya, thats where Sayyida Rukaya is buried (bibi sakina). definitely a heart wrenching experience. we first walked through bazare sham, everything was closed because it was friday, however the person who took us explained to us that it took the Ahlul Bayt AS three days to walk that area, which took us about 10 minutes. So sad, cause you can imagine how much heart ache they must have been going through. Real sad!!! then we went to the area where Yazid's court used to be and then went into the Umayyad mosque. Very big. We saw the tomb of Hazrat Yahya (John the baptist) and then saw the Mimbar of Imam Zaynul Abideen AS. Very spiritually uplifting... we took pictures that IA we will upload soon, when we have our own Internet.. pray that we get it soon :) it was almost the time of juma so the ladies were behind this partition, however we all walked to the tombs and then were politely asked to separate..lol.. however we left, cause we wanted to go pray at Sayyida Rukaya. From there we walked to this area where they have the Mihrab of our 4th Imam... let me tell you how sad that area was. not only was the Mihrab there, but also the tray that they placed Imam Hussein's (AS) head in was there. Also, some say the head of Imam Husein is buried there, but not everyone agrees with that. Either way we paid our respects. Real sad as you can imagine.

From there we started walking to Bibi Rukaya. We saw the ruins of Yazid's palace, funny that all of the Ahlul Bayt's (AS) tombs are standing with such reverance, however there is hardly nothing left of Yazid's palace. It was pointed out to us that where Yazid's palace was and where Bibi Sakina is burried, is a good 3 walk, yet when she was crying, it could be heard all the way to Yazid's palace. Can you imagine???? then we finally got to Bibi Rukaya AS and prayed our Juma namaaz there, ofcourse it was in arabic, and the amazing thing was that we understood a good portion of it. Alhamd. We then paid our respects to this honorable lady and made our way home. What a day and what an experience. On top of that it was our first day of fasting and we were exhausted due to the walking and heat. But definitely worth it!!

Other then that, we have met some high ranking people here in Sham. We met Sheikh Halimi who is the representative of Ayatullah Sistani in Damascus. We were given a 20 minute audience with him where he gave each one of us a copy of the Holy Qur'an. Also, he gave us his business card with his personal cell phone number and said if anyone gives us any trouble, give them his card and tell them to call him, and he will take care of it... lol, really cool!!! A double bonus that day was that also in Sheikh Halimi's office was Syed Mohsin from Qum, who is the representative of Ayatullah Sistani in Qum. We were informed that whenever we send a question to Ayatullah Sistani, it is Syed Mohsin who answers all of them. It was a pretty great experience.

A few days later we went to go see Ayatullah Husseini who is the representative of Ayatullah Khamenei in Damascus. He gave us an audience of nearly an hour where he answered 1 question from each one of us. While we were sitting there, guess what i did? lol, i spilt the cup of tea that was given to us all over his carpet and table. LOL, i was trying to say something to apologize, and Alhamd the correct word popped into my head, "Afwan" and i repeated it a few times and he looked at me and smiled, and made a gesture as if to say dont worry young man...lol... i think i left a little bit of an impression on him...lol..

wow, long blog huh...lol... our classes are going real well. I have to say, sabiha is a genius, she is by far the smartest one if our class, and when i mean by far, it is no exageration. Alhamd, luckily she is my wife :) but she has a great grasp of the language and is amazing at memorizing vocab. I on the other hand have to struggle with it, but luckily i have someone as smart as her to help me out at home.

IA we will update again soon, until then, remember us in you duas during this Holy Month and we will iA do the same.

Till then, take care... Ma-as Salaam.