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Hajj. it’s definitely a trip i will NEVER forget. all trips after this will probably suck. lol. truth be told though, it wasn’t a piece of cake. but then again Hajj isn’t suppose to be a breeze, you’re suppose to work for it and pray like no other that your sins will be wiped clean and that your dua’s will be accepted.

Alright so ill rewind to the very beginning, December 11th, the pre-getting ready to get the heck outta the US beginning. the day after finals ended i had to head back home and pack and think about every necessity i needed to take with me. i also had to make sure i had a stupid zip lock bag so i can take any miniature items with me on the airplane without it getting trashed. i hate airports, good lord. anywho i didn’t go to bed till 2am and i had to be up by 4am. i didn’t really mind it though cause i knew i would just pass out on the airplane.

So, our first destination is New York. we landed in La Guardia around 9am, where my uncle and aunts came to scoop us up and take us to their house because our flight to Egypt wasn’t until 6pm or so. NY was fun, i got to eat a gyro off those little stands on the street, and my brother got yelled at by an old women because his wallet accidentally fell outta his pocket. it was pretty hilarious, you had to be there.

Dude i love airplane food. i don’t know why. a lot of people think its gross but i think its absolutely delicious. i think its only because i have this mindset that anything that i find that is zebiha must be fantastic and delicious. haha. So alright, we’re on the airplane heading to Egypt. 14 hours of sleep? well sorta. in the beginning i wasn’t all that tired so i just kinda stayed up and looked around and a movie was playing on the mini tv just above my seat. it was that ridiculously stupid movie called hairspray. i don’t know why but even though i thought it was stupid i still continued to watch it. oh well right after that i passed out. the only times i woke up was when the stewardess came by to pass out drinks or meals.

We’re finally in Egypt! we meet with our group, HajjUSA, where the sheikh, sheikh adly, told us what we had to do while we were in Egypt. basically this is the place where we had to change into our Ihram and prepare for what we have to do right when we get to the hotel in Mecca. Girls don’t really have a particular thing to wear for their Ihram like the men do. The guys would have to wear ONLY two pieces (meaning nothing else but those two pieces, not even underwear) of this towel like material. One part looking as if their wearing a lungi, and the other draping over them like a shawl. anywho, funny story: since some of the guys there were pretty young and new to wearing Ihram, they didn’t know how to sit properly in them. So as one of the guys were sitting down, and you know when guys sit down they kinda stretch out their legs a bit, one of the guys kinda exposed….himself to everyone. and yes including some of the women. lol so when the sheikh saw this, he yelled out “BROTHERS, I KNOW you guys are NEW to IHRAM BUT PLEASE for our sake, CLOSE YOUR LEGS or find another way to sit!!” it was pretty hilarious, i still laugh whenever i think of it cause the sheikh was so funny when he said it.

Moving on, after we get on the plane it takes us approximately two hours before we reach the Jeddah airport. boy was that airport a mess. firstly, the stupid airplane lost our luggage for a good 45 minutes which was nerve wracking because we thought we wouldn’t get it back. but thankfully after we got it back we had to go sit down with our group and wait it out till the buses came. our bus didnt come till 1am or 2am. i was madddd tired and i hated the airport because they had no american style bathrooms if you know what i mean. ewwww..thinking about those bathrooms makes me shiver with fear. anywho man did it take a long time for us to get to mecca, a good 7 or 8 hours i think. i cant really remember cause at this time i’ve passed out on the bus and i have no idea what time it is because my phone went janky on me and didnt tell me the right saudi arabia time. so after sitting down on the bus for that long, kinda hot and hungry, we reach Mecca! yayaya! so by this time its like 1030ish, and its nearly jummah time! so after we clean up a bit we rush to the Haram. Man was it beautiful, MashAllah. seriously i was so amazed of how everything was amazingly put together. alright mistake number one. right before we enter we leave our shoes in the shoe rack thing. ill get back to why it was a mistake later. anywho as we enter, my mom was telling me how to look down till we reach the railing because right when you have your first look at the Kaba your suppose to make hardcore dua. Also, since we arrived near jummah time, the place was so JAM PACKED!!!! good lord it was so hard getting through the crowds and i felt bad if i stepped on someones toes. plus there wasn’t really a walkway, you kinda just had to weave your way through the people.

Alright so the moment comes….im reaching the railing….as im approaching my heart seriously started racing. so im walking..and walking…and after a couple more steps my mom goes, okay be ready we’re almost here….then after 5 more steps my mom goes ALRIGHT LOOK! so i glanced up and OH MAN, was it amazing! It was soooo unreal. pictures of the Kaba defiantly cant compare to staring at the real thing. the sun was shining bright and as the light hit the Kaba it seriously looked so amazing that i was lost of all words. i tried not to blink while i was making dua, i didnt want my first glance to go away. it was just THAT spectacular. man…thinking about it still gives me the chills..

Alright so right after that, we hit mistake number two, and that is, thinking that we can complete tawaaf one hour prior to jummah. i mean come on i even knew that that was impossible! did i mention it was nearly time to pray jummah? good lord, what were the aunties and uncles thinking. alright so it takes us literally 50 minutes to do ONE ROUND OF TAWAAF. yes, ONE round. actually i dont even think it was even one round, it was more like 3/4ths of a round, thats because since everyone is there because uh yeah lets see, its JUMMAH, there was no room to even walk. alright so lets do a little math, lets add, thousands of people and smelly men and pushing and shoving and dehydration and hunger and crazy turks and barely any room to walk, together and what do we get? A tawaaf that didn’t count apparently. thats because we firstly didn’t finish the first round, then we had to stop, find a place to sit and listen to the Khutba, and finish jummah before we can start back up again. so right now its like 230ish and since its been that long, one of the aunties said that it didnt count and we have to redo the first tawaaf. right now im really tired and about to pass out because i didnt drink or eat anything since the Jeddah airport. but i had to pull it together and stop whining like a little baby. alright since i wasnt the only one who was tired we all chilled for 20 minutes so that mostly all the people who came for jummah left. after that, tawaaf was a breeeeeze. suddenly it got so much cooler and since i spotted the zum zum coolers i had a cup in my hand while i was making tawaaf. as you know right after tawaaf we headed to do Safa-Marwa. that wasn’t that bad either, walking up and down the same pathway wasn’t that difficult. okay Umrah is now complete, Alhamdulillah.

I never came back to mistake number one did it? okay so mistake number one, leaving our shoes on the shoe rack. well for me Alhamdulillah no one took my shoes. but for my poor poor brother, someone took his clark sandals. he has a good explanation on why he was forced to use his clark sandals to go to the Haram. you can ask him about the explanation whenever you see him lol it isn’t my place to tell, even though i just realized he could have held onto his shoes while he was making tawaaf. but then again who really wants to lug around their shoes?

okay sooo we used those 3 days to relax, eat sharwma’s and burger king and praying at the Haram as much as we can. It was nice. Shopping was okay. Surprisingly everyone in the stores knew bengali or urdu. man our people are like the mexicans there…its ashame, but then again they get to be close to the Kaba their whole lives, in one way its also a blessing.

Hajj begins.

So the Hajj process is pretty standard, you do tawaaf and safa-marwa. After that whole ordeal, we packed up and headed to….MINA. Mina was….swell. We had an air-conditioned tent which was nice..sometimes. It really amazed me of how people can act while they’re in Hajj. The women are so catty and seriously will blow up in your face if you accidentally bump into them or something. Anywho i won’t go into detail of how everyone acted. Also throughout all this, patience is seriously very hard when you’re out there. that is seriously one big test. Alhamdulillah we all made it out alive lol.

After spending a couple of nights in Mina, we headed to Arafat. The place everyone will Insh’Allah be on the day of Judgement. It was nice, we stayed in a nice, pretty tent and prayed and made dua till maghrib. After maghrib though there was a problem. Another group stole our bus! And since we needed that bus to head to Muzdalifa we were stranded . i was really looking foward to spending the night under the stars in Muzdalifa. Since our bus didn’t arrive till 1am. it took us 6 hours to get to Muzdalifa, which was kinda pointless because we were suppose to be there till Fajr time. So that being said all we did was get out to collect some rocks, then get back on the bus and head back to Mina.

Doing jamarat was cool. the walking part? not so cool. i think we had to walk 3 miles to get there and 3 miles back. im surprised i didn’t get that tanned. we went mid-day and i forgot to bring an umbrella..stupid me. ah well the actual jamarat process took like 10 minutes. i did get shoved a couple times by little asian men when i was trying to throw the rocks. it was pretty funny to tell you the truth.

Alright, on the last day of doing Jamarat, we headed back to Mecca to do our farewell tawaaf. After we said farewell we all headed back to our hotel we had in the very beginning. Around 3am or so we got on a bus and head to Madina!

We didn’t get to Madina till Maghrib time. Madina was so peaceful and CLEAN. It was kinda shocking when i first got to Mecca and i saw how dirty it was…it was really weird. why wouldn’t people want to keep the HOLY LAND all nice and clean? Anywho back to Madina. Since we got there right when Maghrib hit, and we all wanted to clean up and shower. We prayed in our hotel then went down to check out the place before Isha. The Mosque was soooooo beautifulllll. i lovedddd it. the weather there was nice too, it was kinda chilly but it was a good chilly. alright so after Isha, we decided to wait a bit so we could go see the Prophet’s (SAW) grave and his companions, Abu-Baker and Umar (may Allah be pleased with both of them).

So i heard a rumor that im still not sure of. Someone told me that near the graves, there were 4 plots. One for the Prophet (SAW), 2 for his companions, and apparently an empty grave that was suppose to be for Prophet Isa (peace be upon him). Can someone please help me and tell me whats true and whats false? anywho, as we waited to see the grave and pray our 2 rakats, people started getting angry. people seriously are REALLY REALLY impatient. one woman started getting into a HUGE fight (in arabic) with one of the nakabis who were directing the people into the room where the graves were. im gonna guess the fight was about how long the wait was. we waited a good 2 hours before we went in, stood infront of a sheet. and prayed. i was kinda disappointed cause you really don’t get to see anything. theres just a white partition and you just know that behind the white partition are the graves. i heard that only men get to see the actual graves which isn’t fair..i guess. anywho my brother said that he barely got to see anything because there was this foggy looking glass thing covering the grave and you cant really see the graves.

One thing i noticed, is that the Mosque was SOOOO beautifully decorated. everything was so neatly engraved and sculpted. every detail was amazing.

Anywho, after that, for the next couple of days we did shopping and prayed as much as we could at the Mosque. it was seriously really peaceful. by the end of the trip though i started getting kinda sick, esp 2 days before we were suppose to leave. i had a huge fever and i couldn’t stop coughing. a cough that still hasn’t gone away ah well, ill get better soon enough.

After our days were up, it was time to pack up our stuff and get on a bus back to Jeddah. As i look back, as much as i complained (which is bad i know) i had an amazing experience which i defiantly thank Allah for even giving me a chance to do and i also owe it to my parents for giving me the opportunity of a lifetime, Insh’Allah they will be rewarded a zillion times over and over. i pray that i’ll be able to go back to Mecca to do Hajj a million times over.

I’ll be posting pics Insh’Allah soon, once i get more pictures from my brothers camera, and once i figure out how to upload a mess load of awesome pics!

This concludes the best trip i will ever have, Alhamdulillah. =]

Tags: Hajj

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.