member of the human race

I'm back in Manchester and I still cant believe I have been and gone, it's like a dream.

I'm so tired and I have this cough but I'm loving it cause I had this cough since the first day of hajj and its been with me since and I feel like its a part of the hajj that I have brought home with me and I don't want it to go away... The actual rituals don't exhaust you its the travelling that does and we did a lot of travelling to get to Saudi but it is so worth it and if some one told me that I had to do it again then I would without any hesitation.

remember that week where I was moping around all depressed because I thought I wasn't going, I was convinced that it was postponed for a whole year, and subhanallah out of the blue we get a visa, but the problem was obtaining flights, everything was packed and we where told to be on standby because any minute the phone will go off to tell us to get ready and to be at a meeting point, so our bags where packed and it was a case of waiting..... Me and my mum had gone to Asda to get some provisions and stuff and we got back home around half past 3, my dad announces that we are leaving tonight at 9:30 pm after that it was dashing here there and every where, I was meeting a couple of friends at 7 cause one of my dearest friends was going back to Malaysia forever so it was a going away dinner, half an hour before I was leaving my mum says to me:

mum: white African did you have your shower?

me: shower? Why, can you smell something? (at which point I was getting all paranoid sniffing myself exageratingly)

mum: (slaps me on the head) don't be silly, I mean the shower where you do your niyah for ihram?

me: oooooooooooooooh, no am I supposed to?

mum? Yes, my god I thought you new

me: apparently not, stop assuming I know things.. And with that I ran to have the fastest shower known to mankind....

with all the preparation and what not it still had not sunk in, at 9pm I was at didsbury mosque waiting for the coach to arrive, mashallah people had come to say there sallams and the atmosphere was truly amazing, we had an introductory talk by the brother in charge of the group, it still didn't sink in...
















coach arrived and at around 3 am we got to heathrow airport, our flight to Damascus airport was not until 8am, so we played with foil from someone's sandwich and made different shapes out of them as well as generally get on each others nerves, especially me and my youngest brother..

this is just a portion of peoples luggage:



eventually it was time for checking in and then of to departure, where it felt like we had to sit and wait forever but as always nothing really is forever so we boared the plane to Syria. 5 hours the flight was and eventually touch down at Damascus airport, where we had to spend 14 hours at transit, lets just say that we really got to know the staff at the airport, I didn't realise Syria was so ummmmmmmmmmmmmm..... airporty....

eventually we boarded the plane to take us to Jeddah, it was a flight like no other, every single person on the plane was going to perform hajj, at a certain point the pilot announced that we had crossed the miqat, all the men got up and changed into there ihram, we all made wudu and prayed to rakas on the plane then started the takbir labbayk allahuma labbyk, labbayka la sharika laka labbayyak'.. That's when it started to hit me, I'm nearly there, subhannallah looking around me on the plane brought about such unexplainable feelings.

I wanted to post more pic but blogger needs a case of jamarat type of punishment...

will type up some more...