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Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Part 2 of my travels

So the next day day two of my travels, I was flying from Dubai to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. We made Ihram in our hotel, the intentions, and the prayer, because of some complicated thing I really can't explain, but we wouldnt have time to go to a Miqat for our first Umrah. It felt so good even before I even left the hotel, that state of total purity and spirituality. And in the hotel lobby, when we were checking out, we saw all these people in the state of Ihram. I can't describe that feeling of unity. So went on the plane for like and hour and half. Then we reached Jeddah. Again as I got off the plain the heat wave struck. It really is disguting lol. A family friend who was on vacation at Jeddah with his family like I am in Bngladesh offered to keep our extra luggage that was meant for Bangladesh at his mother's house. And a distant relative of ours whose husband lived in Saudi helped out too. We took a mini van from the airport to our hotel in Makkah. It took about an hour. So we arrived around midnight. We hadnt had any rest or food but we decided to do Umrah anyway that night. Oh my gosh when I saw the Kabbah for the first time. I mean you see pictures of it but ..... oh my gosh. So we did Umrah and we stayed at the Masjid until Fajr. So since we hadnt eaten since the day before, had no rest or anything, we got really really dizzy. It was exhausting. The fajr adhan had been done but the actually jammat was like 45 minutes later. And conveniently no spoke Engliah. We managed to make it through prayets and collapsed on our beds and slept til way late in the day. My parents manged to pray all five prayers in the masjid, but my sisters and I weren't always strong enough. So I'd usually pray once in the hotel room. Luckily we stayed at the Makkah Hilton towers, which is literally right next to the masjid, and the prayers, even the jammat can be heard. So I could pray from my room. My younger sister wasnt feeling well when we weren't doing Umrah, we really didnt eat well those days. Just junk and we were really tired. I was fine during the times we made Umrah mashallah. And even my sic year old sister perfomed Umrah. So we stayed three nights and manged to make three Umrahs.
   Then we wet to Madinah. Thankfully much less crowded. We stayed again right next to the masjid. The fist we arrived we checked in and while my two younger sisters got some rest I went with my parents to pray Asr. It was really windy so I designer looking sunglasses and purse ( for keycard with me). I hadnt emptied my purse before so it had my phone and ipod ( even though I took out all the music before going there) in there. I have something to take up with those, as my sister and I called them, burqani gaurds (haha), they were really strict and wouldnt let women in with phones. ipod was okay, but no phones and cameras. I was really ticked and dissapointed because I wanted to take pics of the inside. Its just so beautiful. So my mom went in there first prayed, then came out held my purse, and then I went inside. We were already too late for jammat anyways. There was a young mother with an infant and toddler with a phone, and they wouldn't let her either. The men's security was a lottttt less strict, so my dad did all the camera work. We went on jiharra and so Arafat, battlefield of Uhud, the prophet's grave, etc. We left at the end of the week. driving back to Jeddah and then took a connecting flight back to duvai and went to Dhaka.
  I'm contuning part three in a seperate post ( I'm back home now!) i think this is getting a bit too long.

1 comments:

muslimah93 said...

Mashallah!!! May Allah accept your umrahs. Ameen!!! =)