Wednesday 1st December 2010
This was such an amazing day. I have to thank Ismail uncle and Fatma Auntie for that. Ismail uncle works at Marmara university Ilahayat campus and managed to set me up for a chat with a group of his students. They were lovely! Bless them.
They all study Islamic Theology- which is amazing in itself- and most of the ones I met were foreign students. Foreign in so much as they came on scholarship from abroad but they were all of Turkish origin. I hadn’t really chatted to any young people whilst I was in Turkey so this was a real treat. We had open discussions about all sorts of subjects from Muslim Integration in western society to the Mavi Maramara incident to the awareness of Turkish youth when it comes to development subjects. It was rly rly interesting and I am so grateful for the opportunities that Allah keeps presenting me with.
The discussions were lively and it was great to see that as youth we all seem to have this zeal for change, for the betterment of society and to uphold a better image of Muslims around the world. We want to help change our societies and improve our Muslim community. We understand the obstacles in front of us and yet we are positive for the future and engaged in producing the right results. It’s great to see how much we share- despite all our different backgrounds we agreed on all these subjects.
The whole day gave me faith in our future and shone this wonderful glaring positive light on all humanity.
After the university we went to Fatma Aunties sisters place. She has set up an English school and homework group called Zenith with a group of friends. It was lovely meeting them all and they were all so nice to us! We are always getting fed in this country. :o) It was good to share experiences and views as well and afterwards we headed off to dinner at Buyuk Camlica where we remained chatting and laughing until quite late alhumdulillah.
We met the funniest guy there as well, bless him. He was the host at the restaurant and spoke the funniest English, with a slight posh accent. He came from a small village (also Laz I believe) where once upon a time the Queen mother’s sister had once visited (?), something like that anyway and had actually slept in their house. Crazy, no?
Honestly, I have met so many lovely people here in Turkey, how is everyone else going to match this?
Thursday 2nd December 2010
Today we managed to set up a meeting with some ladies at IHH, the organisation that has now become famous due to the Mavi Marmara and Flotilla incident. They are the biggest charity in Turkey, I believe, and doing some incredible work around the world- yes they do work on projects other than Palestine, hundreds of them. Alhumdulillah through a friend of Fatma Auntie’s and Tougba Auntie’s I was able to meet these wonderful people and learn more about this brilliant organisation.
I had the chance to interview a sister Zeliha who was on the Mavi Marmara herself. I will be writing up the interview in full for Ctrl.Alt.Shift insha’Allah so look out for it. Their experiences are amazing, saddening and inspirational. It makes me want to make sure I am on the next Flotilla, alongside everyone else I know. For me, if ever there was a cause which symbolised the total and utter injustice in this world and the blatant abuse of power by our leaders, it is Palestine. May Allah help those suffering and surviving there.
The people I met in this office and the talks I had with them really have solidified in me the need to work for the International community and the betterment of our global society, be it as a development worker, in the media or doing community work.
Afterwards we explored the area of Fatih, where the IHH office is based, a little. The area is quite historic, it has the old Islamic Ottoman university there. It is also quite religious i.e. the people there tend to be “practising” Muslims. It also has lots of great hijabi friendly shops- long sleeves, long tops, full length dresses etc for all occasions. They even have hijabi wedding dresses there! I will definitely know where to go and shop next time.
Afterwards we made our way to Fatma Auntie’s pharmacy near the Florence Nightingale hospital (I think), near which we met up with another charitable organisation called Yardemis. It is quite a small organisation run minly by volunteers. Here I met three men who had been out to various projects in Pakistan, Ethiopia, Palestine, Bosnia etc. Insha’Allah I will be writing up my interviews with them for muslimsinengland.com. That’s the plan anyway. As always their message was to get involved, go out there and see the problems first hand if necessary and do something to make a change. They were passionate about the problems they had seen and keen to make a difference. They were all business men with contacts at hand but I think we all need to realise that we don’t necessarily need to be in this position to make a difference. Remember “many hands make light work”. We all have our strengths and we should ensure we use them for the betterment of humanity if we can. That’s my aim in life- find my strength and work it! ;o)
Friday 3rd December 2010
Spent the night at Noortaj Khanum’s place and alhumdulillah in the morning had no trouble catching the flight to Doha!
Although somehow I seem to have lost the security lock for my backpack which has rly rly peeved me off because I bought it specially!! Ahhhh, Jenny! Just my bad luck eh? Guess I will have to find a new one now......
On my flight I met a lovely New Zealander whose name I never did ask but who had been travelling now for about 3 years. Jealous much? Anyway he had just been form Japan to China to Kazakyzstan to Turkey and was now on his way back to Japan and Auz. *sigh* Had a lovely chat with him but haven’t rly learnt the art of how to part with people I meet yet, I am sure that will come, so it was a little awkward in the end. I kind of wish now that I had swapped details with him- I am off to New Zealand on this trip too after all!
My arrival in Doha was quite funny really. The usual Lamees silliness! I arrived and missed the notice with my name on it- probably because all you see when you exit the gate is a crowd of men so you take a quick scan and then look away. So I ended up calling my friend like 15 minutes later saying “Have you forgotten me?”, only to realise that I had missed the driver. Eventually we found him and I had a nice swish ride to her apartment in the family 4x4- typical Qatar style! We had so much to catch up on we chatted all the way- I had missed her loveliness so!
I couldn’t quite get over the oddness of Doha, especially after Istanbul. It was just so....... NEW! Lots of empty space, new cars, new apartment blocks, lots of new buildings- the oldest must be like from the 60s. It was crazy!
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