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Our sister in Syria reports back on her latest adventures including live qurbani on the streets of Damascus, Beirut’s shocking billboards and her unique university experiences in a city that’s biased towards females...

So I’ve begun my second term in Damascus university, after a short break back in the UK. SubhanAllah I wasn’t fully able to realise whether I would prefer Syria to the UK until I went back again. On the way home I was so excited, Heathrow airport had never appeared soo beautiful! Mmm breathing fresh air and seeing calmer life was something I’d definitely missed! Naturally, being an east London addict, I went to Whitechapel market and was astounded by the number of Asians (I hadn’t seen desi faces in ages!). I proper savoured lunch at my favourite PFC, ain’t nothing quite like 99p chicken and chips!!

 I left for Cardiff the following night (my home city) but due to delays I arrived pretty late. I’d forgotten the fear that creeps into my heart when standing alone, in the middle of Cardiff at night. I stood outside the train station waiting for my sister to pick me up, and felt a little comfort in the fact that there was a police van just down the road. A bunch of drunkards were walking past and I was just reading my duas. Then a drunk man comes up very close to my face and says the most vulgar thing a man has ever said to me, he grabs my hijab, lets it go, and walks off. Perhaps it’s not surprising that I got into the car and burst out crying and wondering why I was back!! Anyways, after seeing my family and catching up with friends I felt back at home again. Leaving them once more was hard, but subhanAllah I was also happy to be back in Syria once I arrived. There’s a certain barakah in my time that I quite obviously lack when I’m in the UK, and Alhamdulillah there was a new regime introduced into the flat of compulsory tahajjud and no sleeping in the blessed time after Fajr! Alhamdulillah this term has been quite different to the last. My best friend from London is over to stay for 2 months to study Arabic and it just so happened that my American flat mate’s best friend came from the States for 2 months aswell. So, we currently have 6 people living in a 2 bedroom flat! Alhamdulillah, Allah’s been kind and it’s been really good fun. SubhanAllah I’m glad to be a girl, I can’t imagine what the condition of a house full of 6 guys would be like (ewwww!!).

 This term I have a lot more deen classes in English so I’m being able to benefit in terms of detail, which isn’t usually possible without having the strongest grasp on the Arabic language. Wallahi, the women here continue to blow me away. Their passion for the deen and their complete sacrifice of their time and money for the sake of spreading the deen of Allah is just incredible. A friend told me that Damascus was sexist in favour of girls, I fully agree subhanAllah,  I think it’s the best place for a talibat al ilm!(student of knowledge).  I don’t really feel for the guys, they have plenty of opportunities everywhere else in the world! I did a tour of the Ḥadīth School that I told you that I was studying in. It’s in the walls of the Umayyad mosque and used to be the masjid’s storage area. Imam Ghazali’s room, where he wrote his Ihya uloom ud-din, is in the school and it is said that most mujaddids, if they visited Damascus, would spend time in this part of the building in seclusion. I found out that the school is actually the only one in the world specifically dedicated to the study and preservation of the 6 books of Ahadith (as well as the Al-Muwatta of Imam Malik). I spoke to girls who had memorised the entire collection of Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim in just 4 months each! The only similar school in existence is for men and is found in India. So for the first time I’ve seriously considered returning to Syria to study full time in the ḥadīth school after my degree, should Allah allow it inshAllah. Suddenly I’ve realised life is so short and we struggle to persevere in things which are of no lasting benefit, what really matters is the next life subhanAllah, a life of eternity which we seldom give what it truly deserves of our time and preparation.

I found out that Ibn Taymiyya’s father used to give khutbahs in the Umayyad masjid. There’s also a spot in there where Khidr (from Surat al Kahf in the Qur’an) apparently prayed. SubhanAllah there’s so much history in this land and so I’ve decided to do my extended Arabic essay on whether or not Syria is a blessed land. It’s going to require a lot of research so inshAllah I fill you guys in on a lot more historical stuff as I discover it for myself inshAllah, I’m so excited!

Anyways, I wanted to tell you about Lebanon, the so called Paris of the Middle East. My mum had come to visit me for 2 weeks during Eid. So she got to do “a day in the life of Nishat”, alhamdulillah she enjoyed herself. My mother has this deep rooted passion and interest in the deen and Arabic language (Mashallah) so she thoroughly loved Syria. For Eid ul Adha we spent the first day in Damascus, with Eid Salah in the morning, then Salatul Jummah followed by a beautiful session of adhkaar and nasheeds. There were vans of sheep on the roads and the local meat shop had live qurbani going on! Then they’d hang the sheep upside down to drain it and chop up the pieces. The entire crew was made up of men of different ages including young boys of about 10 years old! It’s amazing what the kids here learn from a young age. In the evening we went to Homs and then made our way to Lebanon. We went in a car and had some issues at the checkpoints because sometimes the officers like to cause hassle if they’re bored. Alhamdulillah I was zonked out in the car so I missed the trouble! We first went to Tripoli, Lebanon’s second largest city and a major ex-Crusader stronghold. The city is dominated by its Mamluk style architecture but as we didn’t stay there very long, there isn’t much else I can tell you about it. We then drove on to Byblos, an astoundingly beautiful city which is one of the world’s oldest constantly inhabited towns. It’s mentioned in the Bible as Gebal and is supposedly the birthplace of the modern alphabet. We saw the Crusader castle built there by the Franks which was overlooking some next level beach! It was Sunset Beach style!!
On the coastal side, we went to a cave called Jeita Grotto which used to be one of the 7 wonders of the world. I’m not surprised, subhanAllah it was gorgeous!!! We got to it in a cable car and then had to walk for a while before we reached the entrance to the cave. All phones and cameras were confiscated as photography is strictly forbidden. I wish I could have taken photos to show you guys but khair, just try imagining it with me for now. So it’s this HUGE cave with stalactites and stalagmites having grown into different shapes of different sizes completely surrounding us. It actually looked like some old temple, as the structures could pass as figures of different idols. Instead of looking icy however, the entire thing was different shades of caramel. I just wanted to eat it!

You could walk further and further up but we had to stop at one point as one of my friends was feeling a bit woozy from the heights and claustrophobia of being in a cave. Instead we went further down, where a little boat would take you for a serene ride in the waters inside the cave. It was a beautiful and very romantic place. I just remember thinking how beautiful Allah must be if His creation is so beautiful, subhanAllah.

 So then we went to Beirut, possibly my least favourite place in the world. On the highway down to Beirut we passed several shocking billboards. There was a billboard of a girl kissing a guy and it said underneath it “and I don’t even know his name!” It was an advert for beer. Then there was another one with a beautiful woman on it and it said “plastic surgery made me this beautiful!” It’s next to normal to have had a nose job in Lebanon; you see many white plastered noses walking around. We went to a beautifully majestic Masjid which is supposed to be a smaller rendition of the blue domed Masjid in Istanbul. It was attached with Hariri's shrine, quite an extravagant display for him and his close followers who got killed in the assassination.

SubhanAllah I felt out of place wearing hijab, and I was continuously shocked at the people’s clothes and attitudes. All the women look like they’re on a catwalk, wearing the craziest things with the craziest colours. And the men seriously think they’re God’s gift to humanity!! We were stood at the sea front in the evening, and there were random motorbikers driving past, stopping, revving, clouding up the street and then disappearing from the fumes. Then this guy stops his car, plays music really loud, and starts dancing as if he’s in a club on the side of the main road! Beirut at night looked like a toned down version of Las Vegas, no way would you think you were in a Muslim country! I was glad to be back in Syria after that.

Ok this time I PROMISE to tell you about my uni experience in the next issue inshAllah! Also I’ll fill you guys in on Syrian weddings, another domestic animal incident, and hopefully tell you about my trips to Jordan and Kuwait which I have planned for the next month, may Allah make them possible inshAllah.

My salaam and duas,
Nishat

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Comments (5)

3  Written by wow, on Wednesday, 03 March 2010 18:13 Jzk for this, I look forward to each of your instalments, really inspiring Report

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