and then our exile

There is so much to learn. That's what i'm feeling today. So much to learn, so much for /me/ to learn, in terms of lugha and din and adab and every type of 'ilm imaginable. So much. i feel like most of my life till now has been spent...not wasted, because it hasn't been, but that i could've done so much more, and now i'm... i want to try to stay here till the end of summer (till, like, just before university starts.) instead of leaving at the end of June. *That's* what i'm feeling today.

--

when i got here from Egypt i saw some dude with a broom and i was like...he's...sweeping...the...street. what's he doing that for? (E.)

Let the Games begin: am set up for another month at the university. Which is okay, i guess. Also, though, meetings with Shaikh Anas or somebody else nearly every afternoon, and doing an Englisch/Arabisch exchange with someone else about three times a week, and going through a book of simple fiqh with a roommate in the evenings. Still feel like i need a ramrod for a back, though, and if i don't straiten/straighten up within the next few hours i'll sink, and much of my time here so far has been spent in transition (i've been here a month and a half already??). But.

Ramadan on Friday. inshaAllah, i mean. (i asked Khalid--Sayyid Khalid--how he knew it'd be then, and he told me ["listen, my son."] a story involving government officials and visa permits. Har.)

Things of recent:
(--an /intense/ pomegranate. i think i reel yet.
(--remember when i was going on and on about accidentals, months ago? that the world today were organized on the basis of ad hoc and arbitrary designations of qualities that take neither human worth nor personage into account, and oh dear what can i do except rage against it from my insulated North Amerikkkan existence? well, i went to the Canadian embassy a few days ago, to have a brown uniform give me brusque orders i ignored ("eh? what do you want?") and then decided to obey, because the last time i tried playing with uniforms i got shown to the door, and i didn't want to find out how things were done here. The end of an extremely long queue of patient Syrians aiming for Canada in the mid-morning sun. Waved around my passport, though, and suddenly i shone in scintillating halos, and got my business done, and was walking awae. Which kind of made me sad.
(--these days, i am seeing many people who look oddly like other people on the other side of the globe. At some masjid yesterday, "this is how Farooq may look ten years from now." In the courtyard of a museum, German tourist who was MikeH. The bus back from Kafar Suseh: KasimR. Even JavedA. But ok, i'll stop saying strange things now.
(--A last thing about Sami---what in the dunya? it sounds like there's a marching band going past Abi Nour? Ha? i'm...going to go investigate.