and then our exile

[december] brought continuity; i would spend many hours writing, and also many hours talking/discussing/laughing with roommates and the other foreign students who came every few days to drink tea and eat sami biscuits with whoever was free. i eventually gave up on making the tasmee’ every morning; early in the month i fell sick again, and upkept extremized sleep. many winter rains, so many attempts at definition. on the 15th my father and sister arrived to visit their son and brother in Damascus, and i got to play host in the land i had lived for four months; sitting together i remembered what it was to have a family. trips to other parts of Syria: to the south, through dry lands, Bosra and Darya, Dar'aa and Nawa. Finished Hidayatur-Rahman.

[january] and northward, to the lush valley and the purple sea. Homs and Hosn, a castle rising out of the mist; Lattakia and Qal'ah Salahuddin, orange orchards and the sheer beauty of the green mountains and the mediterranean ending where the sky begins; a raining Tartous (it is always raining in Tartous.) and then back to Damascus. Next was Halab and Raqqah, once more through the brown desert, and so many buses taken. familie left on the 12th, and before then i had finished Nur ul-Iydah. restless, i would leave the house and walk for hours through the streets of the city, in the early hours of night and the mid-afternoon. buying books and the days were made of grey, and i would write for hours. "my spine holds a chaos contained." Eid, gatherings of tullaab, a sharh of Arba'een Nawawi, and i started going to the weekly Bukhari dars by Shaikh Na'eem. watching futurama and classes with 'Aamir in Jaami' Khuzaymah. one roommate left, two others moved in, Asrar of birmingham shareef and Qasim of sheffield.

[february] continued the cold, continued the classes started, but that the arabic and tajweed with 'Aamir now included the burda and arabic poetry, trying to translate some of it and trying to understand all of it. strange dreams and "life is within my reach", nightly we drank hot chocolate and i often made pancakes. reading rene guenon and debating with roommates, vague mixups with the MKB, continuity of the pattern of life. on the 26th Emad and i crossed over into the Lebanon, spent the day in Beirut.