Are you crazy? You must have a good reason! And to your benefit, there are plenty of good reasons…especially if you are Muslim, Jewish, or Christian! It’s the Holy Land for crying out loud! We started off on our journey with the intent to make pilgrimmage. Here are several tips and hints we learned the…
It’s Sunday today. We haven’t even been home for 24 hours yet, but we must go shopping. We emptied our refrigerator clean before we left. And though family members cooked food for us to eat, we’ve had enough of eating the same meal three times a day and eating dinner food for breakfast. What we…
We rushed back to our little apartment in Nachlaot. We had an hour to finish packing and pray isha. Our landlord triple-booked us–we were moving out at 7:30, and the house cleaners and new residents were moving in. We have a lot of bags…for three people, each of us basically has two pieces of luggage…
Everyday for 20 days, I’ve awakened to the sights, smells, and sounds of Jerusalem. For twenty days, Jerusalem has been “home”. But today, we say “goodbye” to our home. We say goodbye to Jerusalem and all of the lovely people and places we’ve met. So we started off the day as we usually do, but…
We were greeted by a strange man today. You know the kind…the one that talks, sighs, and grunts to himself in the street and makes you want to walk the other way. The kind that will say anything to you without hesitation. The kind of crazy sage that speaks some truth amidst their chaos. He…
Eilat is truly a vacation within a vacation. Yesterday all I could tell you about was how beautiful it is here and the abundance of marine life. Today, we see the people and the city for what they are. It seems to be extremely HOT here everyday…so much so that if there was one day…
Hmmmm…Ramallah had me going there. Today we are on vacation. We are journeying….to Eilat!!! The hot spot in the south of Israel touching the Red Sea…beach town…coral reefs…blue skies smiling at me. We left at 6am to make the four hour drive to the south. Sorry, can’t tell you much of what happened during the…
After seeing the city shut down on Friday, today we were privileged to see the Old City wake up. The city wakes up around 7am and sleeps around 6pm on a normal day. A beautiful sight of mostly empty streets…It’s all just now coming full circle, just as we are about to leave this blessed…
Welcome to Nachlaot (pronounced Nah-latt or Nah-la-watt). Our new home. And yes, it is in the Jewish part of town, but don’t hate. It’s the cheapest place we could find for the length of our stay. And I like to think of it as an experiment in dawah and Israeli treatment of Muslims in general.…
Because we love the feeling that we get at Nabi Musa, we decided to go to Nabi Musa for jumua–surprise! Jumua wasn’t there..all the towns close their shops and head for Al Aqsa. But, surprise! My hubby had the honor of leading prayer there! Again, it was a great feeling to be asked to be…
Today we drove one-hour to Tel Aviv for a relaxing day at the beach. We liked this beach much more than the Dead Sea. It was SO much cleaner and the water felt nice and warm with a rumbling tide. There were also little black fish to keep us company in the shallow end and…
Today we were vagabonds. We still need a break–we’ve almost checked everything on our lists, but still we must see the Prophets Lut (Lot), Ibrahim (Abraham), Yaqub (Jacob), Yunus (Jonah), Alyasa (Elisha), and possibly Yusuf (Joseph), too, peace be upon them all. There are some disputes concerning where some of them lay…but we will try…
Taking a break today, we wandered around the city, finding a little cavern-restaurant that set a nice warm mood right outside the cold security entrance for the Western Wall. You know there’s a metal detector for entrance, but we dared not enter. We’ve had enough of security procedures thus far. Even at Al Aqsa, we…
Within the precincts of Jerusalem are the tombs for the prophets Dawud/David and Shamwil/Samuel (peace be upon them both), and today we went to go see them. David (as) is located on Mt. Zion in Jewish custody. His tomb is partly a synagogue, museum, and overlook of the city. We were the only Muslims going…
Abu Hurayrah (ra) reports that the Prophet (saw) said, “The angel of death was sent to Musa. When he came to Musa, Musa punched him in the eye. The angel returned to Allah and said, “You sent me to a servant who does not want to die”. Allah ordered the angel, ‘Return to him and…
A whole week has now gone by, and being here still seems surreal. On one hand, it seems like we’ve been here forever and on the other, it seems like time goes by too quickly…the trip to this beautiful land will be over before we know it. And I don’t know if I want to…
We woke up at 5am today to make the 6:30am Eid-ul-Fitr prayer at Al Aqsa. We had to make sure we gave ourselves enough time to go through the crowds, which was a shuffle dance to the masjid. It was nice to not see the primary color umbrellas of the merchants that cluttered Damascus Gate…
After praying dhuhr in the Old City at al Aqsa, as we always do, we headed to Bethlehem today. It was harder to find the checkpoint than in Ramallah. We had to go through a checkpoint with a don’t enter sign. We still don’t know if we legally entered, as we entered through what seemed…
Today we journeyed to Ramallah again for a shopping trip with Ana. I must say, I am truly grateful for Ana. If you have the privilege to meet her in this life, then count yourself as blessed. She has a wonderful story to tell, but it’s a privileged story that’s not for me to tell…not…
Today we had the honor of having a personal tour through the Old City from one of its residents, Omar. As a tour guide, no one could have been better because Omar was around our age, truly fluent in both English and Arabic, and accustomed to living in both the States and Jerusalem. In other…
Today we went to Ramallah to visit Ana again. We had a yummy iftar at her house and met her in-laws. Visiting Ana’s neighborhood of Surda is a little bit of a flashback to my childhood visits to my great-grsndmother’s farm. Her whole house is embraced with fruits and vegetables, including grapevines, fig trees, olive…
Today we went through our first checkpoint–it didn’t take us much time to assimilate, did it? Actually, we’ve blended in with the locals pretty well–we now know where to park and when after looking at some visual cues in the form of color coding on our street (blue and white means you can park there,…
I wore my green Kuwaiti jean skirt suit today. I call it my mix and mingle suit. I like it because it’s completely open to interpretation and outside of exclusive religious clothing boundaries. I could easily be Christian, Muslim, or Jewish in this outfit based on how I wear my headscarf. And I was counting…
Abu Hurayrah (ra) relates that the Prophet (saw) said, “You should not undertake a special journey to visit any place other than the following three Masjids with the expectations of getting greater reward: the Sacred Masjid of Makkah (Ka’bah), this Masjid of mine (the Prophet’s Masjid in Madinah), and Masjid Al-Aqsa (of Jerusalem).” In another…
I’m being hit by a lot of conflicting ideas. It requires patience, sincerity of intent, and a prayer for guidance on my part. I want to go to Jerusalem. I want to live and breathe its spiritual history. I want to live out the hadiths of the prophet Muhammad (saws): Zaid Ibn Thabit (ra) reports…
THE SANDAL 