بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمَانِ الرَّحِيم
The
dream...
About a year and a bit ago
I had a dream.
I was on a bus and as though I was
on a tour with people we arrived somewhere that looked like the grand Colosseum
on the outside..
It had old broken walls and I
remember seeing a horse with a rider on it suspended within its walls
I know that’s really weird, but
alas.. such are dreams..
But that wasn't the strangest thing
about this place, indeed the strangest thing about it was that beyond those old
mud-brick broken tall walls,
was the Ka'ba.
Scholars say the first dua you
supplicate to Allah upon sighting the Ka'ba is a 100% guaranteed-to-be-granted
dua
So what better dua to make than
"O Allah accept all my duas!"?
I can still hear Umm Abdur Rahmans
voice saying this so emphatically:
This is tijara (trade) with
Allah, and Allah loves that we trade with Him.
So there I was in my dream, looking
at the ka'ba and I recited in Arabic
"Allahuma ij'alni mim
mustajibaat ad da’waat.."
O Allah make me of those whose
supplications are accepted..
Now my Arabic is pretty weak, I'm
not sure if I had said it correctly in Arabic with the right vowel-ing and the
right pronunciation.. But that's what I said in the dream subhanAllah...
I was so ecstatic to have had a
dream like that... Truly, it made me feel so elated; what a blessed dream from
Allah! I couldn't but help but have a small tiny blinker of hope in the back of
my mind that perhaps Allah will accept all my du'as because I saw the Ka'ba and
made that dua, albeit in my dream! Why? Because me being
anywhere in the vicinity of the real Ka'ba in Makkah Al Mukarramah didn’t ever
cross my mind, I never imagined myself there- seriously... I have pictures of
the ka’ba all over my room, it’s all over my Islamic calendar, every month I
flip admire it and that’s about as close as I ever got to the real deal, It's
strange but I don't think I even dreamed of going there, realistically
speaking, how could I, I am a uni student, I’m poor most of the time, I’m in exams
nearly every month, whenever I go overseas it’s straight to Egypt to visit the
family, my adorable teta and then back to Australia.. I mean seriously people,
I’ve been in Australia for 22 years and I haven’t even gone to Queensland which
for any Arab living in Sydney that's a strange thing! So Makkah? Yeah
right..
Where
things get interesting...
Buuuuuuuuut then something very
interesting happened...
My older sister decided she'd go on
Hajj that year- 2010...
Quite random, out of the blue,
really sporadic but that’s my sister for you, she just puts something in her
mind and does it, mashaAllah.
I, for some reason decided I wanted
to go with her to her Hajj preparation course organised by Daar
Aisha- my Shari’ah college coz that’s who she was going with
And honest to God
I cried my eyes out when Umm Abdur
Rahman spoke about Madinah and described it
Thats when it really hit me
She’s going with my beloved Shari’ah
college
and I wasn’t.
Wow, no words could describe that
moment.
I couldn't go because I was
1. A student living on a student
budget for the past 5 years
2. I had exams during the 2010 Hajj
season for my last semester of my Masters degree-
but really 1. is where the dream
crumbled at.. 2. was just adding salt to the wound.
It burnt pretty bad. I couldn’t
fathom that someone so close to me, who shared a wall with me to be quite
exact, was about to go to the two places I didn’t even dream were possible of
going to. She had obliterated the impossibility that I was sitting and nesting
on so feverently and it was almost as though Allah had shown me through her
going; that Makkah and Madinah are a reality for anyone He Wills.
Truly this dunya isn’t about cause
and effect- Allah will make any cause cause any effect- whether it’s logical to
us or not. It felt like Allah was saying to me, if I want someone to come to My
House, I will bring them,
believe it.
Then I thought khalas! 2011 is my
year! I mean heck, If my sister goes this year there is *no*way*jose* I’m not
going next year!
I set my one year short term master
plan it was the cause and effect logic ms plan-it-all kinda plan.
At the time I finished my master of
Pharmacy; I had to do one year of paid intern training to get registered as a
pharmacist. I'll secure my year long internship and work long ugly hours (by
force anyway) and save up and go at the end of the year..
Sounds all good yeah?
Hmm..
Salt
on my open gaping wound!
It was by Allah's Will that I didn't
end up getting an intern position.
I was in Egypt from December 2010
till March 2011 and that is when they were taking all the interns and so I came
back and missed out...
I tried looking for a position for 7
months..
Pain was the name of the game.
And as the 2011 Hajj season crept
in..
I lost all hope of me going...
2011 wasn't to be my year after
all..
No words to describe the feeling.
Then, as if that wasn't bad enough,
I kept getting emailed by Daar Aisha
(my Shari'ah college) constantly advertising the 2011 Al Haramain Hajj
package..
It was soooooo painful, I'd go to
class and Umm Abdur Rahman (Umm AR) would happily announce and
keep announcing the package, “Hajj Haramain package is open for
2011!”
I was so cut.
