the past week has been an extremely emotional one for me, never have i cried so much in my life.
my father is in hospital with pneumonia and at one point i would say it was touch and go, now hamdullilah hes much better in comparison to how he was.
my father regularly takes groups to Bosnia to visit orphans, widows and projects down there, at the same time Bosnia is meant to be an extremely beautiful place to visit and my father loves the place.
so he regularly takes groups to Bosnia about 2-4 times a year. he had a successful trip in june/july and decided to organise one after ramadan from 23rd September.
he usually rents out a van and drives the group from Italy, into Croatia and eventually entering Bosnia.
after a few days he fell ill, he ignored it as usual and carried on with the trip, obviously the travelling, lack of sleep as well as rest made it worse yet he kept telling himself its a cold and will go away, the group noticed that he didn't look well and would comment on this but he ignored there concern and carried on exerting himself and pushing his limits.
my fathers friend had accompanied him and had rented a car which he was driving and would follow my father, on the last day when the group where being taken to Italy to catch the flight home my fathers friend got lost and crashed the car, my dad had no option but to carry on driving the group as they had a flight to catch.
he dropped the group at the airport but refused to fly home as he wanted to make sure his friend was fine and to sort out flights for him as he was stuck in Croatia.
but he was soooooooo weak by now that he found himself falling asleep at benches and seats without meaning to fall asleep, in the end he decided to book a hotel and stay the night, rest and try to help his friend in the morning.
back in England we where un aware of any of this as on the day he was meant to fly back he accidentally left his mobile with one of the group members so we had lost contact with him and when the group came back they informed us of how ill he looked which completely made me and my mum go mad with worry.
the question was how in the world where we going to locate him, 24 hours had already past and he hadn't contacted home yet, and by then we where getting all sorts of ideas as to could have happened to him and it was out of the normal for him not contact and let my mum know how he was or where he was.
the next day after a fretful sleep i saw my mum at work and asked whether baba had rang to which she started to cry and said no. i decided to take matters into my own hand and began to look for hertz number in Slovenia and Italy to contact them and ask whether my father had returned a van so as to scratch out the idea that he had crashed it over there, but hertz where not helpful at all, hertz uk said they needed a credit card number to locate that type of information which i didn't have, and when i asked for the Slovenia and Italy numbers they kept giving the wrong number, it would either be a dead number or some tourist company who didn't deal with rental companies, i had rang about 25 numbers by then and i was getting frustrated...
i put my head on the desk and asked Allah to guide me in finding my dad.
after a while i decided to try to hack into his email, i was successful and found that all the emails that where sent to him from myself had not been opened so that made me worry more as i new he had his lap top with him and Italy is full of cafes with wifi. i began to scroll down his emails and after a while i noticed that an email for a confirmation of a hotel booking had been recently sent for the 30th, when i oped the email i found a hotel booking from the 30th to the 2nd October after the group came home, i got excited and started to look for a telephone number for the hotel, found one and rang the number, an Italian man answered and i asked whether he spoke English, he said a little, i asked for my father giving him his full name and he said 'memento' and went of for 10 minutes, all the while i was frantically waiting for him to get back to me.
after what seemed to me to be years, i heard the phone being picked up and my dad spoke and when i heard his voice i broke down i couldn't even talk i was soooooooo upset and crying and my father was confused and asking what the matter was.
after i had calmed down i started shouting at him telling him off for not ringing us to let us know he was ok, it was then that i noticed that my dad didn't sound to good, actually he sounded very delirious, and sometimes he sounded aware of what he was saying and other times he sounded like he was drifting of, he told me he thinks he has a flight booked but wasn't sure when and what time but i could access the details from his email which i did and i told him the times and that he needs to be at the airport that night 1st October, to be back at liver pool at 11.30pm.
after the phone call i ran to find my mum to let her know that i managed to locate him and she reacted with extreme joy.
that night, me, my husband and my mum drove to Liverpool and waited for him to appear, after midnight my dad walked through the arrival doors and my mum and i where in complete shock as to how he looked, he could barley walk, he had lost soooooooo much weight and he was unrecognisable.
we drove him straight to the hospital where they diagnosed pneumonia, he is also diabetic and his sugar levels where high, he hadn't eaten for 4 days when we saw him.
i am soooooooo grateful to Allah for bringing him back to us safe and sound and that hes back in the UK and at least we know where he is, he needs no less than 6 weeks rest.
i have never seen him soo weak in my life nor so fragile so please dearest bloggers remember him in your duas.
i guess its too early in the morning for tabet, breakfast at manchester airport..
duty free in istanbul airport, 6 hours transit killerrrrrrr
the leader bashar al asad not in the flesh of course but his pictures are every where in syria, i guess like most arab countries its compulsary to plaster there face in all buisnessess as well as street corners like the above.
the shrine of ruqayayh the daughter of al hussain, they have built a huge mosque around her shrine sponsored by Iran.
inside her shrine.
the ommayad mosque minaret
in the courtyard of the mosque.
this is the tomb of prophet yahya's head (john the baptist), the story goes that his head was a request for mahr from a woman who hated prophet yahya.
inside the tomb.
inside the mosque, the feeling was so nice, kids playing, people resting, praying, contemplating etc..
stepping out into the courtyard, theres a building that has the above signes that translates to the 'tomb of the head of al hussain' the son of the great khalifah ali karam allah wajha. apparently the rest of his body is buried in cairo.
inside the tomb.
from the outside, thabit posing.
many people tie green ribbon around the railings of the tomb, i have no idea what this indicates, many where rubbing there scrafs and material on the tomb asking for blessings and cures for diseases, why ask the dead when one can ask allah?????
like this lady for example!!!
and this one..
rules and regulations of entering a mosque...
plastered on the mosque wall outside are many requests like the above 'kidney any one?'
the market opposite the mosque..
the holes in the ceiling are bullet holes from the french during the occupation.
round the corner from the great mosque is the tomb of salah al deen, the liberator of palestine, may allah have mercy on him, such a great man..
his tomb..
