Popays

so here we are nearly 6 months into our course - incredible eh? its seems as though sometimes time is just flying by - and at other times 4 years seems a long ways away. that's how it always is i suppose.

the past few days have been raining which means all the roads are muddy...its next to impossible to go out and not come home with muddy shoes and spots all over the back of your pants lol all the drivers still drive crazy - not like in some places where trafic slows down in the rain - la laysa hakadha huna ( no not like that here).

so last night, the administrator of our course (Hussein Ravji) was kind enough to take us out for dinner...jaffer and i and the other couple...we were all super excited as he was taking us to popeyes - we got there and guess what? it was actuallly 'popays' not the popeyes we know, but nonetheless it was great...lots of variety on the menu and was nice to just hang out and get away for a bit.

Its almost time for Arbaeen - 40 days since the martydom of Imam Hussein AS, and we hear its going to be crazy busy over here... we thought that Ashura was busy, but they said nearly 3 times as many people, we cant even imagine but definitely looking forward to it. We expect to meet a lot of people here, we already know that Sabiha's uncle is coming, as well as someone from LA, and we expect lots of Khojas.... lol

A couple of days ago we got a call from a guy who is living in Qum, his wife knows Sabiha from TO, dont know how they got our number, but its pretty cool they got a hold of us, they are coming down for a week, so we look forward to meeting them. He said that he reads our blog in Qum, the question i have is that how can Iran allow access to view blogs when Syria doesnt..lol.. all good though.

other than that not much else going on here...we have weekly lectures in the evening at our school which is great...different speakers come so we get to practice our listening and then have short discussions after... Today we heard a majlis from Sheikh Ali who works at Ayatullah Sistani's office and the amazing thing was we understood the whole lecture, no joke, though we have no doubt that he lowered the level of his arabic. Its really cool that we can understand and sorta speak this beautiful language. Our first week here a teacher told us that Arabic is like a key and this key opens up thousands of doors, we are beginning to really understand what he meant. Today we read Dua Kumayl and we understood most of it (without reading the translation), pretty darn AMAZING!!!

We learnt something amazing in one of our classes, and many of you might appreciate this. As we know, Our Prophet (PBUH) and his famiy were generous and sharing, however there was one fruit that they ate by themselves, and that is a pomegranate. Ofcourse they would always give another one to their guests, but they would finish the entire pomegranate themselves. And that is because as we all know that it contains the seeds of paradise. But more then that, and here comes the amazing part: It is said in traditions, that if one eats an entire pomegranate, first thing in the morning, before anything else, the entire pomegranate, all the seeds, Allah SWT removes the whisperings of Satan from your heart for 40 days!!!! and if someone eats 2, then He removes Satan for 100 days and 3 for 1 year!!! Can you imagine.... Try it, i know we will!!!!

Other then that, all is good, will leave you for now, will write more later.

alhamd kul shai jayyid huna. saqta al matar katheer min ams wa kul share' wasekh jiddan wa lakin alhamd matar baraka



Ma'asalaam