The Sacred City of Light

OhMyGod I was ready!

We arrived at the ELAF hotel, part of the haram itself and a 30 second walk to the masjid- or 5 seconds if you run lol, and we got in during the time of Asr.

It was actually quite a long wait in the foyer as we sorted our rooms.

But I took out my “dalail al khayraat” book and started reading. This is quite the interesting book! It was compiled by al imam Muhammad bin sulayman al juzuliy. A book which its entirety is salawaat on the messenger sallalahualayhiwasalam. Incredibly amazing book and how appropriate to recite it during my stay in Madinah! This book has an interesting story behind it. Once the imam was travelling and he came across a well which was dried out, he wanted to make wudu, so a young girl came and spat in the well and the well began to “well” up with water. The imam was shocked at this and he said to her, what is it about you that Allah would give you such an ability (ie Karama)!? She said I send much salawaat on the messenger every day. Upon hearing this the imam decided that he would seclude himself and write an entire book that was purely merits of salawaat and salawaat on the messenger sallalahualayhiwasalam- now coined dalail al khayraat. I aimed to get through the entirety of this little book while I was in Madinah. So that’s 10,000 salawaat and completing dalail al khayraat- my mission. Add to that praying 40 prayers on time with the imam at the masjid without missing a single one- this as the messenger reported peace be upon him:

Narrated by Anas bin Malik (ra) that the Prophet (Peace be upon him) said: Anyone who prays 40 prayers in my Mosque without missing a single one, then for him is freedom from hellfire, freedom from torment and freedom from nifaaq. 

(Reported by Ahmad and Al-Tabarani in his Al-Awsat

and it’s narrators are trustworthy)

Yes, I had a secret to accomplishing all this! ;) 

So the wait in the foyer ended and I got my key still in the time frame of asr subhanAllah and I ran upstairs to my room made ghusul out of adaab of entering the sacred precinct of the haram & ran back downstairs only to find umm AR sitting on the couch still waiting on her room key with a heap of the group still and I asked her earnestly can I go to the haram and pray!? Not that she would say no, but I was so excited I couldn’t believe some people were still waiting and I was ready, I felt like maybe I was doing something wrong or I still had something to do? I told her I was ready and she gestured that I may go as in I’m free as a bird!

*yaaaaaaaaaaay*

Whoooooooah!

I was sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ecstatic. Didn’t care to wait for company or a friend to come and enjoy the experience with me! I had it set that I wanted to pray those 40 there with the imam I wasn't missing maghrib for anything! I was sooooooooooo happy! OhMyGod! Me in Madinah al Munawwarah, near the grave of my Messenger, the beloved of Allah, with thousands of people, lining up, ready to receive the adhan for maghrib in the cool breeze of the water fans and the most incredible atmosphere I have ever experienced in my life. I entered the haram the sunset casting sensational colours in the sky, the masjid was blending in somehow and there I was walking at a pace looking around, trying to take it all in, it’s so big and incredibly beautiful and it’s nothing like what it looks like on TV on the Saudi satellite channel! Nothing! Nothing prepared me for what Masjid an Nabawi looked like on ground!

It.

Was.

So.

Beautiful.

Here in Australia you subconsciously block out all these “haram” things

Inappropriate anything and everything that God and any good conscious doesn't approve of

But as soon as you step foot into the haram of Madinah

That entire weight is lifted off your shoulders

And you feel light as a cloud

Here you are Muslim practising surrounded by Muslims who are practising

Everyones in hijab jilbab niqab

All the men have their kufis uftans and miswaks

No one cares about their day jobs

Our day job is salah

subhanAllah

salah, thats it.

They come with their amazing cultural identities with them

People of all different sizes, tongues, colours, races, appearances, clothing

All there lining shoulder to shoulder

Reciting in Arabic together after the muathin

Praying together behind the one imam

It wasn’t the biggest cultural shock to me

But i can imagine it was to nearly everyone else

Sydney is multi cultural

A melting pot of all different cultures and ethnicities so this wasn’t the biggest surprise for me seeing all these different people

But most of those people that were there I’m sure they’ve never seen so many people that look so different to themselves all collected together in the one city. Ever.

1,000 seconds!

Everything we do out of good deeds in Madinah is x1,000 so we were warned not to waste time there, that we should constantly be doing dhikr constantly doing salawaat never stopping because one hour wasted is 1,000 hours wasted one minute wasted is 1,000 minutes wasted 1 second wasted is 1,000 seconds wasted. If you’re going to do shopping do it in one day or better yet half a day or even less. I didn’t even want to enter the shopping centre, but how rude not to go back with pressies for the family, so I decided I’d leave it till day 4 absorb Madinah first, establish my connection with it then quickly get the shopping over with like pulling off a band-aid on a sore quickly and as painlessly as possible!

Alas day 2 came and I needed to buy a black scarf, I literally ran into the shopping mall and on my way out- running, I slipped and bruised my shin, that’s how paranoid I was about getting out but, I kept running like a criminal on hot pursuit! SubhanAllah there is something so draining about the malls in Makkah and Madinah- and anywhere else for that matter, they suck the spirituality out of you, even though you are in the most holiest of places, it still has this magnetic force that just drains your spiritual being. You know you are so close to the Best of Creation, but when your in the mall, it's as though it made no difference that you were in Australia or Madinah, the spiritual high is gone. SubhanAllah. I've never really liked malls tbh. Alhamdulilah. 

The daily schedule in Madinah...

We would gather together and pray all the girls with Umm AR at every salah in particular area outside. As much as I loved the masjid inside, praying outside was my favourite place to pray the 5 salahs.

Daily schedule went something like this:

~ Pray tahhajud,

~ Wait till fajr,

~ Pray fajr

~ Recite surat Yasin together in a big group-

I was so happy because my tajweed teacher was with us; Allah created her to be a tajweed teacher, that’s just what she was born to do, God I love her!

~ Admire the most amazing sunrise the world has ever offered our eyes

Then we’d all collect together go the grave of the messenger from the outside- because Saudi has a phobia to women being inside or near a grave-

~ Give our Salams and good-morning to our beloved  sallalahualayhiwasalam and his two greatest companions Abu Bakr and Umar radiyaAllahu anhuma- subhanAllah!

~ Head back to the hotel eat breakfast,

~ Sleep till 10:30am then meet at umm AR’s room to have our daily prep lessons

~ Go pray Dhuhur together,

~ Go back to the hotel order room service for lunch,

~ Sleep some more till Asr

~ Pray ‘Asr at the Haram then recite Surat Al-Waqi’ah together

Strike up conversations with all the ladies around us in sign language

~ Wait around till maghrib pray maghrib and read Quran on our own or do our own dhikr,

~ Pray isha

~ Collect again go to the green dome send our salams to the messenger sallalahualayhiwasalam and his companions radiyaAllahu ‘anhuma

~ Make our duas then we’d go sit a couple of hundred meters away with the dome right before us and send 1,000 salawaat on the messenger together as a group...

~ Head back to the hotel sleep till tahhajud

Restart the process again the next day

It sounds hectic, but it flowed like water! That was pretty much the structure of each day and the most amazing thing about it all was that regardless of the fact that we had come from Australia- other side of the world upside down-travelled for about 20 hours non-stop, no one that I know had any symptoms of jet lag whatsoever. The structure of our days was like that every day from day one! SubhanAllah!