The journey of a Sufi (Part 5: Our new home)

We boarded a bus to our new house in Damascus, and later I learnt that the Arabic word for the capital of Syria is called ‘Dimashq’. And from time to time I got fond of this word, and so allow me to use it every now and then in my whole story. In the bus, I sat next to Sufian, one of the two of the earlier-comers of the group. Among us, he was the most muscular and a well-built guy. He’s a year or two older than me, forgive me for the fact that I’m a forgetful person. On our way to Dimashq, I spent most of the minutes looking at the outside view through the side window rather than talking. It’s normal I guessed, being a first timer in a totally different land with a self-searching heart within.


The unique public transports on the road

While taking in the looks from the outside, I thought to myself, ‘What a country!’. The first thing that amazed me was the buildings there. All were almost with the same design; rectangular in shape, and gray-brownish in color. I could say most of them were blocks of building and no bungalow especially in the city area. The Syrian people lived in apartments. But there were hardly tall skyscrapers to be found in Dimashq. My first opinion was that Syrian people are kind of living a moderate life. From a chat with Sufian I found out that technology has just entered Syria since the past five years. No wonder when seeing the public transports used on the roads in the town. Lots of them were vans and taxis. I could also see busses green in color with LED display showing their destinations, all of them seemed to me like new busses. And Sufian said it’s true, because the busses have just entered Syria around two to three months before.



The boxes of apartments

It took about half an hour to reach Dimashq by bus. We were dropped off at a pedestrian next to a road I don’t know where. The four of us were zero especially me, so we let the three of our first-arrived friends lead us. By the way, I forgot to mention that Sufian once came to Syria around two years back with a different group also from UIA. So no doubt you could see him with the other two waving for taxis and at times normally talk the taxi drivers into sending us together with tons of our luggage to our house. After their struggle, Alhamdulillah we managed to get two taxis. On our way to the house, being amazed by the first-time experience, I took pictures of the buildings and the streets through the taxi side window while Sufian did the talking with the taxi driver. In the back, I sat with Hafiz and Abu. We were so excited with the conversation. Sometimes I heard Hafiz tried to speak one or two simple sentences in Arabic.

“kaifahaluka?”which means how are you.
“Alhamdulillah” the driver answered.
“Ismi Hafiz” Hafiz introduced himself.

That was a brave start of him to learn Arabic. I being who I am, preferred listening than talking. I knew, as a language learner, you won’t be able to speak a language if you don’t listen.


It only took approximately 10 minutes to reach our house. But it always makes us bewildered how a first time experience makes time feel quite long. The late afternoon sun was still visible when we reached our new house. It’s situated in a neighborhood of apartments. Hey, guess what, it’s an underground house! I believed it’s hard to find such an experience living in an underground house in Malaysia. The house was not large in size, quite small. With two bedrooms and three people for each room. The kitchen, toilet and bathroom were all small size. In the living room, there were two long cushions and a coffee table, and a refrigerator. Both of the bedrooms were side by side, and next to these rooms were an open place with no roof called ‘Sahah’. Sunlight came washing from above it.

The steps to our underground living

Jiju and Abu in the living room

Our tiny little kitchen

Everything was for us complete except for one thing which I guess you know. We don’t have a TV! And another thing, the house was also unequipped with ceiling fans, be it our bedrooms or in the living room. Strange enough, an underground house stabilizes the temperature. Meaning to say that when it’s cold outside, the inside would be warm. And when it’s hot outside, the heat is lesser in the house. Despite the size and the lack of equipments of the house, all of us were grateful to be given a place to live.
Like always, the silent cry within me whining.

‘Before all these things happen I never thought I would be here. I never thought that before I was born and more earlier than that, before the world and the universe is created, God has written that me stepping my foot here had long be my fate. It was all already written. So God, You know while I don’t know, show me the way that you wanted to show me. The way that you see it, but I can’t see it.’



Proud to be malaysian

The 'hingusan' kid

The cold breeze was waving outside as if calling me to take a stroll and see new things. So Abu and I decided to go out and have a walk before the night embrace the whole Dimashq. During our walk, I couldn’t believe my eyes looking up at the plain serene blue sky. There was not any single roll of white clouds. It’s quite strange because the sky in Malaysia is always spotted by rolls of white cotton clouds. Furthering down the hood street, we found quite a number of Malaysia-made car. The most visible were Proton Waja, Gen-2 and Perodua kelisa. We can’t help but be proud and grateful to be Malaysians. Returning home, we bumped into a kid who tried to make a conversation with us. I thought to myself, ‘This kid is still a kid, but wow, he speaks damn good, like a grown-up I should say. Unfortunately we hardly understand a thing of what he said because he spoke ‘ammi (local dialect). From his gesture I guessed he wanted to help us taking our picture as he’s pointing at my camera.

We hurried inside to prepare for the night prayer at the mosque nearby. Yes, the next post would be about it.

-ali-