Vas Bunga

Kakak masih ingat? Kakak hadiahkan vas bunga cantik bikinan kakak ini ketika acara mother's day di kelas 2. Terima kasih ya nak. Kemaren ibu beli pink roses itu di garage sale rumah Mariana dan Valeria. Wananya pas dengan vas bunga dari kakak. Cantik!Subhanallah...

macaroni schotel

Beef Steak ala kadarnya

Banana cake

Dalam hidup...

Kita bebas memilih

Apapun pilihan kita, akan dipertanggungjawabkan kepada Yang Maha Pemberi (Allah Ta'ala).

Setiap pilihan pasti ada konsekwensinya,

langsung (di dunya) maupun di akherat kelak

Hanya pada-Mu kita memohon yang terbaik yaa Allah...

"Allahuma inni as-aluka al-huda wat-tuqo wal-'afaafa wal-ghina"

A Boyhood In Ras Tanura

Send this article to a friend.

A Boyhood In Ras Tanura

Boys are boys wherever they grow up… only the advantage change…
Written by William Tracy
Photographed by Burnett H. Moody

It always amused me to see people's reactions in the States when I told them where I lived. "Saudi Arabia?" they would say. "You mean in the desert?" And I would say, yes, in the desert, and they would say, "Well, gee, that must have been interesting!" Then they would hurry away to tell their friends about this oddball who grew up in an oil camp on the Arabian Gulf.

At the time I thought they really did consider it interesting. I didn't realize that to many people in the United States growing up anywhere but in America seemed more peculiar than interesting. "How," they sometimes asked, "can a boy grow up without, oh, football games on Saturday, snowstorms, ice skating, cutting the lawn in summer or burning leaves in the fall or going walking in the woods in the spring, or, well you know..."

As it happened, I did not know, not really. I went to Saudi Arabia when I was only 11 years old. Oh, I do have vague memories of a few things in Illinois—frost on the windows, maybe, the smell of fresh cut grass, the Memorial Day parades, or the sight of tall trees against the sky. But for the vivid memories, the bright warm memories of boyhood, I have to go back to Saudi Arabia, to the night the plane from Cairo dropped out of the darkness onto the Dhahran airstrip, the night our new life in an old land began ...

It was 1946. The war was over—World War II, that is—and my mother, determined to join my father after a year's separation, had packed us off to New York and onto a freighter bound for Alexandria (it was called The Black Warrior, I remember). Then we took a train for Cairo and, after a week of false starts, a plane for Dhahran. When we landed we straggled across the airfield like a small untidy parade. My mother was first with my baby sister Sally cradled in one arm on a bulky WAC's purse. I was second, clutching her hand, and my brother Jimmy was last, trotting along at the end of a sort of leash with which, I felt, I had dragged him half way around the world.

It was terribly hot and very dark, I recall, and the loud speaker from the Dhahran Airfield was just broadcasting the beginning of "Inner Sanctum," one of my favorite programs at home. I remember the sound of the creaking door. And then I saw my father. He was standing on the apron waiting for us, a tall thin man, almost a stranger after our year's separation. He was dressed in white, I remember, and he had sunglasses strapped to his belt. We ran to meet him ...

Later, my father introduced us to the Snyders with whom we were to spend the night before going on to Ras Tanura, a new community where Aramco had built a refinery. One of the Snyders was a boy named Myles who was two years my senior and who, in the 15 minutes it took to drive to the Snyder house, became my closest friend.

"See those flames?" he asked in a low voice. I looked out through the darkness and saw the dancing lights of the gas flares from a gas-oil separator plant. "They're volcanoes," he said. "Live volcanoes, really!"

A few minutes later he pointed to the silhouette of twin minarets on a mosque near the road. "Cactus!" he hissed. "Saguaro cactus!"

And both times I believed him.

In the months to come, Myles was to teach me all sorts of new things: how to find green scorpions under driftwood on the beach, how to catch lizards behind the neck so that you weren't stuck with a writhing lizardless tail between your fingers. He was to introduce me to spiny-tailed "dabbs," meat-eating "warals" and suction-toed geckos; to desert hedgehogs and foxes, and even once—on a wilderness trip with a geologist—to a hunchbacked striped hyena. It would be Myles too who would, one year in Dhahran, lead me under the camp fence on daring hikes to distant fiat-topped hills, and to the charred crater blasted by a misplaced Italian bomb. But that would come later. That first night he contented himself with making the new kid think that the flares were volcanoes. As I dozed off in the Snyders' living room, I heard his voice echoing in my head, "Live volcanoes, really!"

The next morning we headed for Ras Tanura in a four by four army surplus truck. We drove past Aramco's Dammara Seven, the company's first producing oil well, past pyramid-shaped Jabal Shamal on the left, and past the fishing villages of al-Khobar and Dammam. Later, we saw crystal white salt fiats and scattered palm groves over which loomed towering dunes. As the truck drove along, occasionally shifting into four-wheel drive to push through patches of drifted sand, we saw flocks of long-haired black goats, clusters of low Bedouin tents, and the huge stiff-legged white donkeys of the Eastern Province, with spots of orange dye on their backs. We saw our first camel standing against the horizon and noted a sign by the road cautioning us that "camels have the right-of-way."

All this, which would become so familiar to us, was new that morning. Some of it, unstirred by centuries, had begun to disappear even then; all of it would change a little in the next few years. All except the searing heat and the scorching beige glare of the desert which reached halfway into the sky. Beside the road were the catalysts of the change; the high-tension power line, the flares of the gas-oil separator plants ("Live volcanoes," huh?) and the rows of pipelines with mounds of clay for the camel caravans to cross. Then the towers of the new refinery appeared beyond the long finger of Tarut Bay and we drove onto the narrow Ras Tanura headland to the house where we were to live.

We had one of the first group of 30 stucco family houses built in "American City," now Nejma. The houses, painted in brilliant colors as if to challenge the monotony of sand and sky, were arranged four deep along the shore. They had spacious yards of white beach sand, and patios of flat "faroush" stone taken from the bottom of the bay. From our dining room we could watch the changing moods and colors of the Gulf: misty silver and mirror-still at dawn, clear aquamarine and violet at mid-day, chalky green during a storm and washed lime-blue when the storm was over. It was unforgettably beautiful.

In Ras Tanura, in those days, most of the early facilities were located in temporary wooden barracks. There were a clinic, a laundry, a barbershop, a mail center, and a recreation hall in which were located a library, a snack bar, a billiard room and a bowling alley.

For the hard-hatted sheet metal construction workers, the recreation hall was the center of their off duty life. Here they balanced the day's sweat with a night of pre-prohibition beer drinking and high-stakes poker. Across the street was the Mess Hall which served all the bachelors, including married men whose families had not yet arrived, and "bachelorettes," the first few nurses and secretaries who had been persuaded to come out to Saudi Arabia, Nearby were flood-lit tennis courts (used by us kids surreptitiously for roller skating). There was also an outdoor theater, with straw mat sides to keep out the strong north wind. We went to the movies winter and summer, although in winter it meant wrapping up in blankets. But often on mild nights in the spring and fall the sky and its stars offered a better show than the one on the screen.

The refinery, I remember, had just gone "on stream," as everyone soon learned to say, and little Ras Tanura began to celebrate its ever-increasing post-war production with splendid holidays on the beach every time we racked up a 100,000 or a 150,000-barrel day. These were most often Employe Association picnics with donkey races (the big white ones were safe bets), buried coin hunts for silver riyals and Indian rupees, and, on very special occasions such as the 4th of July, feasts of watermelon from al-Kharj, southeast of Riyadh.

Other big occasions in those days were the monthly (or sometimes semimonthly) arrivals of the refrigerator ships, for the ships brought fresh vegetables. I remember the sight of the women hurrying to the commissary carrying heavy canvas bags of clinking silver coins since paper money had not yet been introduced.

There was always construction underway and that meant lots of bricks and planks that enterprising boys could manage to "borrow" despite the efforts of the Safety Department to keep us at bay. Rightly or wrongly we considered Safety Department personnel and "Security" our mortal enemies. They discovered our board-covered tunnels beneath the sagebrush hillocks at the edge of town and bulldozed them under. They discouraged our long bicycle rides on the hard-packed beach at low tide by building a fence. They cut us off from the deserted coast where huge shells dried in the sun, where oar-tailed sea snakes warmed themselves on the sand and sand crabs tunneled below, leaving little castles by their front doors. We were never completely foiled, however, and swam outside the fence to walk as far as the magnificent sand dunes where we could somersault down to the bottom without harm, or play "king of the mountain."

Meanwhile, as we explored Ras Tanura and its environs, my mother was making a determined bid to tame the desert. In our first house the only garden we had was an accidental growth of tiny palm shoots that sprang up when dew dripped from the sloping roofs onto date pits left by construction workers who had made a habit of eating lunch in the shade of the house. But when we moved to a new house and when soil had been trucked in, Mother planted the beginnings of a garden and between the sandstorms which periodically swept across the beach wall, nursed it to life. First she planted a crop of alfalfa. Then she put in creepers of Bermuda grass which had to be poked into the earth one by one and painstakingly sprinkled with the hose each evening. Then she put in oleander bushes and tamarisk and acacia trees, buried dried seaweed and fish near the roots to fertilize them and, because of the wind and the shallow soil, tied them upright to sturdy poles. Some flowering plants could be obtained from the company's nursery: frangipani, climbing red, orange and purple bougain-villea, hardy periwinkle, dwarf poinsettia, but there were also four o'clocks grown from seeds sent out from my grandpa's farm in Ohio. I remember how strange Ras Tanura looked the first year green trees began to poke above the roofs all over town, throwing circles of shade onto the ground and softening the skyline.

Before then we had spent a year in Dhahran. It was the year my sister Sue was born. We lived in a house on a hill from which you could see the smoke from the flares on the island of Bahrain. On the other side of the house in Dhahran, I recall, lived a boy named Jim McCarthy who introduced me to an intriguing little book about the facts of life. Another neighbor, Louella Beckly, lent me scores of Carolyn Keene's Nancy Drew mystery stories. They were both "big kids" like Phil Braun, who could swim faster on bis back than most of us could crawl. But big or little, there were plenty of them since the families in Saudi Arabia were young and large. There was always a new wing under construction at the school and new faces on the bus or at the mail center. Since someone was always leaving for long vacation or going "outside" to school, there were also familiar faces disappearing too. Myles Snyder, for one.

After the year in Dhahran we moved back to Ras Tanura and I made new friends. One was Joe Studholm and the other a boy named Jim Mandaville. Jim was a genius of many talents, we all knew, because he threw shoes at his brother Jack (who could pinch you with his toes when wrestling), identified desert plants and fragments of pottery, rode horses, and built radios and model airplanes. He was a "girl hater" at the time and a party hater. To his chagrin, his mother helped organize the Teen Club.

Since we lived on the shore, I guess it was inevitable that we would come to know the sea and its inhabitants. Some of us, at least, like D.T. Gray, my cousin, and Miles Jones, with whom I ranged up and down the coast in quest of all that it had to teach us.

Miles lived in a house in the Marine Terminal area on the tip of the Ras Tanura peninsula. Because the house was the oldest in town it was infested with earwigs and centipedes and for some reason that I can't remember we were convinced that there was a mongoose in the attic which had escaped from one of the tankers from India.

When D.T. and I spent the weekend with Miles we would hike across the narrow sand spit to the abandoned arrow-shaped palm frond fish traps there, and wade cautiously in the slimy sand, watching for sand dollars and sea urchins and feeling mud sharks and skates slither across our nervous toes. We caught baskets of fish for fertilizer and great blue crabs, and quantities of huge pink shrimp which we cleaned and ate doused in tomato catsup. We also decimated the population of a certain snail which had the bad luck of shutting itself in with a dime-sized trapdoor of some beauty which we called cat's-eye. We held our noses as we boiled kettles of them, pried their protective seal from the sticky body, dried them in the sun, and bathed them in glistening olive oil. We ran our fingers through piles of them like misers. They were too chalky to be valuable, of course, but to us they were priceless.

But great as it was, there was more to life than just leisure and mischief. There was also school. School then was held in a portable building on a steel frame that was hauled in on a truck and perched on four large concrete blocks. Sam Whipple was the principal but he was also our teacher, and our friend. He was short and balding and could run faster than any of the boys in junior high.

One day, when the seasonal wind had whipped around and under the school for several weeks, we felt a sudden window-rattling jolt and the building lurched. The sand had blown away from the base of one of the concrete supports. The Safety Department moved in at once and took precautions and put out bulletins, but we thought it had been great fun when all the volleyballs and baseball bats behind Mr. Whipple's desk began to roll lazily down to the far corner of the room.

In cool weather in our school we frequently went out on excursions, sometimes driving all day on sand tracks to the Hofuf oasis with its maze of caves and eroded sandstone pillars, its hot springs, donkey drawn wells, covered suqs, and old walls. We took the three step journey by dhow, rowboat, and donkey cart to Tarut Island where thousands of tiny turtles lived in the irrigation ditches beneath jungles of palms. We climbed like lizards over the crumbling Portuguese forts in Dammam and Qatif, and visited the last of the great winter encampments of the Bedouins.

Like all American boys, of course, we had a Boy Scout troop, but although we learned our first aid and Morse and semaphore in the prescribed fashion, our company trips were quite different. We always had an extra truck loaded with firewood and water. No amount of woodsman's lore would have provided either in that territory. In Tarut Bay we camped on uninhabited Za'al Island which was separated from the peninsula only by a broad mud flat and narrow reef channel, but gave us a splendid feeling of freedom and remoteness when the water rose and the tidal current was running. There we skinny-dipped and hunted tern's eggs, and at night herded schools of needlefish onto the beach by sweeping a powerful three-battery flashlight beam along the dark surface of the bay.

Ras Tanura was so small that having a party meant inviting every kid in camp. The girl hater clique was not big on "scissors," "walking the plank," "sardines," "inchy pinchy," or "country club." They once fled from a party with Nancy Bradfield's birthday cake in tow. But I think even the girl haters were secretly impressed by Mary Beth Harrity when she floated on her back in the Gulf. Of course she was a "big kid" and only came to Ras Tanura during vacations from the American Community School in Beirut, Lebanon. She brought back unbelievable stories about boarding school which we all believed and could hardly wait to experience for ourselves. In the meantime, enjoying our last year at home, we made dribble castles on the beach, threw sun-dried stinging jellyfish at each other, ran barefooted across melting asphalt roads, and chased locust swarms from the gardens, knocking them down with tennis rackets.

We thought ourselves to be a special breed of kids in those days. And maybe in some ways we were. We spoke Arabic, we had met the famous King Ibn Sa'ud. We knew real Bedouins and all of us had been around the world at least once. Our thick green passports were gay accumulations of visas and permits from as many nations as there were pages, and our arms and inoculation certificates were both full of shots. We had, furthermore, lived through the incomparable excitement of watching a town come to life in what, to us at least, was a new and exciting land.

But now, suddenly it was time to leave again—off to high school in Beirut. It wasn't really very far and we were coming back every holiday, but still, when the special red and silver Kenworth bus headed out to the airport that day, there was more than one red-eyed mother and silent father aboard.

We drove, I remember, past the same dunes, and the same palm groves, and even, I thought, the same herds of goats that I had seen that first day when we left the Snyders' house. My father had become noticeably quiet as we passed the halfway coast guard house and as Jabal Shamal appeared on the horizon, he began to fidget uneasily.

"Er, ah, Billy,..." We bounced past the gas flares ("Live volcanoes, really!"). "Well, Bill ..." We jolted past the main gate of Dhahran and down past the twin minarets ("saguaro cactus") towards the airfield. It was 1950. Had it only been four years? "Son," my father gulped and looked around and leaned towards my ear. A gargled whisper: "Is there, er, anything you'd like to know about, er ...girls?"

Which is as good a place as any to end my memories, my bright warm memories of those, yes, innocent years growing up in Saudi Arabia.

William Tracy is now Assistant Editor of Aramco World Magazine. His parents, Mr. and Mrs. Frank W. Tracy, left Saudi Arabia last February after more than 20 years with Aramco.

This article appeared on pages 16-23 of the July/August 1968 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.

See Also: ARAMCO—PERSONNEL—PROFILES,  RAS TANURA, SAUDI ARABIA

Check the Public Affairs Digital Image Archive for July/August 1968 images.

• Current Issue
• Indexes
• Departments
• About Us
• Search
• Copyright and Permissions
• Feedback
• RSS

Copyright © 2004-

Ibu tahu kalian akan merasa kehilangan rumah ini....suasana di sini...our home sweet home, sekolah, guru2 & teman-teman kalian, 'our friendly community' dan pantai...terutama kakak...Ibu tahu ini akan berat untukmu...tapi kita mengikuti ayah, yakinlah Allah tak akan menyia-nyiakan anak-anak yang patuh pada ayahnya. Buat ibu, kemana pun ayah mengajak ibu akan ikut. Ayah sangat menyayangi kalian. Mungkin ada hal-hal yang kalian tidak bisa dapatkan di sini dan ibu yakin, Allah akan menggantikannya di tempat yang lain.

Ibu juga akan merindukan dapur mungil kita...tapi Ibu yakin selagi apa yang kita lakukan karena ketaatan pada Allah dan juga pada suami, semoga Allah akan memberi ganti yang lebih baik dan berkah untuk kita semua, utk ayah, kakak, Muhammad dan juga ibu...amiin. Cheer up and be happy kids!!!!!

Video Kajian "Keluarga Sakinah"

Qudwah Hasanah

MasyaAllah...laa quwwata illah billah...

Dialah qudwah ku...

Wajahnya selalu basah karena wudhu

Salat fardhunya diusahakan selalu berjamaah di masjid

Sedihnya jika ia kelelahan hingga terlelap dan tertinggal salat berjamaah di masjid.

Sejam menjelang subuh ia terbangun, jika dilihatnya aku tidak kelelahan ia bangunkan aku

Mengajakku qiyamul lail..

Subhnallah keinginannya untuk lebih dekat pada Allah dengan sehari berpuasa, sehari berbuka ala  nabi Daud as

Meskipun tak rutin, ia berusaha membimbing iqra Muhammad

Berdialog dengan kakak, mengupas berbagai topik

Kerasnya ia dalam mendidik kami karena kekhawatirannya jika kami lebih condong pada dunia atau pun sesat.

Aku tahu ia mencintaiku, mencintai anak-anaknya...dan kami pun mencintainya karena Engkau yaa Allah.

Cintailah ia  yaa Allah. Kabulkanlah doanya yaa Allah:

"Robbanaa hab lanaa min azwaajina wa dzurriyaatinaa qurrota a'yun waj'alnaa lil muttaqiina imaamaa."

"Ya Tuhan kami, anugerahkanlah kepada kami istri2 kami dan keturunan kami sebagai penyenang hati, dan jadikanlah kami imam bagi orang-orang yang bertakwa." (QS Al Furqoon:74)

Anak Gadisku

Shahla keeps answering my ques or giving me her point of view based on Islam...jazakillahu khair, yaa habibti.

...my daughter likes music and singing (she joins band at school) than learning Qur'an but Alhamdulillah she still want to come to halaqah once a week 

here you already mention about 2 major fitnah in this modern world which is discourage in Islam. as per Prophet SAW prophesy music will be wide spread - a minor sign of last days. Music is a tool of shaitan to corrupt our soul very quickly but quietly. I can tell this very cofidently as I was singer...........Allah has refuge me from music alhamdulillah HE is very kind.

May Allah protect you from those fitnah my dear daughter...maybe not now but oneday... insyaAllah. I realize that you are much better than me, masyaAllah laa quwwata illah billah...everybody knows that you're too young to wear jilbab but "it's a part of training" your dad said. He had ordered you to perform 5x a day shalat fardu since you turned to 7, Subhanallah and you did fasting very well at age 8, masyaAllah..InsyaAllah....if Allah will...may Allah give you opportunity that oneday you do Hajj and may Allah make everything easy for you...ameen...Allah loves you my dear...as He loves me too and has refuged me from jahiliyah life in the past. Astaghfirullah..I cry for my sins, may Allah forgive me. My dear daughter, I'll always love you...

Sahabat

Shahla Ahmad dan mbak Haryati adalah wanita berhati lembut dan baik sekali...
Keduanya sahabatku tercinta...
Semoga aku bisa menjadi sahabat terbaik buat kakak sebagaimana kedua sahabat baikku itu terhadapku.
Sabar dan berusaha tidak menyakiti hatiku. Subhanallah...semoga Allah merahmati mereka...amiin.

Kemaren kakak bilang, "Bu...Ansya sayang sama ibu..."
Alhamdulillah.....Juga ketika aku menyuruhnya utk menyapa Mr. Walker (guru kelasnya) dgn bahasa Jerman (Guten Morgen, Wie geht's ihnen, Herr Walker!) Arantxa berkata, "Malu ah, bu! Dia kan guru laki-laki...dulu waktu sama Mrs. Miner Ansya sih biasa aja bilang,"Mrs. Miner...You're awesome..." Aku setuju dengannya. Alhamdulillah dia punya rasa malu terhadap lawan jenis. It's okey, malu sebagian dari iman.Alhamdulillah...

Stephanie

Sore kemaren aku mengajak Muhammad putar2 camp...dia ingin ke pantai, kubiarkan dia turun dari mobil sementara aku menunggu di dalam mobil saja. Lama-lama kasian juga Muhammad sendirian, ada seorang gadis sebayanya di sana dan Muhammad jadi rikuh karena malu...akhirnya aku keluar juga. Kuhampiri Muhammad sementara ibu dari gadis kecil tadi berjalan dari arah berlawanan denganku juga menghampiri anaknya (sepertinya habis menyusuri pantai bersama anak gadisnya yg lain & seorang anak laki2 kecilnya dalam stroller). Seperti biasa kami berucap salam..."Salamu'alaykum...." "Wa'alaykum salam...."

Subhnallah, ibu gadis kecil tadi adalah wanita inggris yang menikah dengan pria asal Saudi. Matanya mirip dengan mata Carla, warnanya kebiru-biruan. Ia mengenakan kerudung hitam, melekat rapat dikepalanya. Pakaiannya kemeja motif kotak berwana biru putih lengan panjang dipadu dengan celana jeans. Namanya Stephanie...Kami ngobrol sebentar tentang camp dan sekolah anak-anak...ternyata dia baru setahun tinggal dalam camp sebelumnya diluar camp karena utk karyawan saudi lokal tidak mudah mendapatkan rumah dalam camp. Sekolah pun, anaknya sekolah di sekolahan Saudi dengan bahasa pengantar Arabic karena karyawan lokal tidak dapat fasilitas sekolah Amerika dlm camp. Namun apa yang keluar dari bibirnya..."Alhamdulillah...I'm happy, my daughter can learn arabic while at home we speak english."

Ketika saya tanya, apakah anakmu dapat pelajaran Qur'an di sekolah?

"Yes, sure!Alhamdulillah...."
Berbeda sekali dengan Dania, teman saya yang orang saudi. Dia kesal sekali karena anaknya tidak bisa melanjutkan elementary of American School selepas kindergarten. Alasan yang sama, karena pemerintah Saudi tidak mengijinkan anak-anak lokal sekolah di international school (semacam protection buat mereka).
Rencananya Dania ingin tinggal di Amerika bersama kedua anaknya, dia melanjutkan kuliah lagi sementara anak2nya sekolah sedangkan suaminya tetap mencari nafkah di Saudi....tapi saya belum bertemu Dania lagi sekarang ini.

Subhanallah...Allah yang telah mempertemukan kita, sister Stephanie

Sebagaimana Allah mempertemukan aku dengan  Shahla, Sarah, Summaya (wanita Sudan), Safareen, Tasnim...semuanya sisters yg baik2 sewaktu aku di KL...lalu Sophia, Hanadi, Rola, Saba, Habiba, Awi, Rozy, Carla, Sita, Shanaz, Barbara, Alia dan banyak lagi muslimah sejak lahir maupun muslimah yang belum lama yang aku kenal disini..oya Khadijah, wanita Canada yg menikah dgn pria Mesir subhanallah dia pun ikhlas mengenakan hijab dan cadar karena cintanya pada Allah....(Alhamdulillah taufik & hidayah Allah pada mereka) dan banyak lagi sisters lainnya di dalam camp ini...juga teman2 Indonesia seperjuanganku mbak Diana, Dyah serta sahabat terbaikku mbak Haryati...juga guru2ku yang berbangsa Saudi, ummu Jud dan Fatimah...Semoga Allah merahmati kalian.

Muhammad dan aku sangat menikmati main di pantai kemaren sore itu. Sayang...kakak tidak ikut, dia kedatangan teman-temannya Priyanka dan Asma di rumah. Muhammad bertanya,"Bu, kok orang from England muslim?" "Dia married sama muslim man dan dia jadi muslimah. Some muslimah british I know, they are very proud to be muslimah and wearing hijab too. MasyaAllah...."

InsyaAllah I'll take you both to the beach on Wed afternoon. Enjoy our life here before we have to leave this beautiful place if Allah will. I know we'll miss this place so much but don't worry, there will always be a beautiful part of our life wherever we are...keep thankful to Allah. Alhamdulillah....SMILE!!!!

Setiap Orang Adalah Guruku

Setiap orang adalah guru bagiku....bahkan dalam amarahnya, makiannya, kecamannya, hinaan, cibirannya...aku bersyukur sekali karena di dalamnya sarat dengan pelajaran bagiku...
Tak perlu sakit hati, apalagi mengupasnya dengan orang lain (ghibah, fitnah, namimah).
Jika tak tahan menanggung beban sendiri, aku menangis dalam pelukan suamiku. Tapi itu hanyalah luahan emosi sesaat. Mengadu kepada Allah saat tengah malam sunyi, memohon ampunan-Nya sesungguhnya lebih menenangkan qalbuku.Namun kata-kata menenangkan dari suamiku juga sangat berati bagiku (masyaAllah),"Ade harus kuat. Aku yakin ade kuat makanya aku memilih ade..."

Allah lah yang menguatkan aku, mas...MasyaAllah...

kalimatuthoyyibah inilah yang seringkali kuucapkan..."Laa hawla wa laa quwwata illah billah."

Pada dasarnya aku lemah, sangat lemah.Tapi prinsipku, selagi apa yang kulakukan dengan nama-Mu yaa Allah, karena-Mu yaa Allah, di jalan-Mu yaa Allah (maksudnya ada tuntunannya dalam Al Qur'an atau As-sunnah, biarlah apa kata orang, semoga aku mampu istiqomah menjalankannya...amiin) tanpa bermaksud menyakiti anak-anak sendiri juga orang lain, merusak orang lain apalagi memecah belah persaudaraan...hanya kulakukan dari diri sendiri dulu dan keluarga intiku saja (suami dan anak-anakku)...aku yakin, insyaAllah tak ada keraguan apalagi ketakutan dalam diriku...

Teringat shahida Summaya  yang tewas dalam menegakkan agama Allah...atau Bilal yang sabar dalam mengesakan Allah ketika ditindas kaum musyrikin hingga pertolongan Allah datang padanya, Abu Bakar ra memerdekakannya, subhanAllah..semua yang aku rasakan tak ada apa-apanya dengan perlakuan kaum yang menindas orang-orang terdahulu itu...subhanAllah...mereka tetap teguh dalam imannya, menegakkan agama Allah. Mereka pun guru terbaik dalam hidupku. Semoga kisah tentang mereka yang kubaca bukan sekedar wacana tapi menginspirasiku utk senantiasa mengagungkan-Mu dalam setiap napas dan langkahku. Allahu Akbar!

Back to School

Anak-anakku...
Ingat doa yang baru ibu ajarkan! Sebaiknya dibaca sehabis shalat subuh atau pagi hari sebelum keluar rumah utk mencari ilmu.
"Allahumma inni a'udzubika ilman nafian wa rizqon thoyibban wa amalan mutaqobalan"
"Ya Allah sesungguhnya aku mohon pada-Mu ilmu yg bermanfaat, rezeki yg baik dan perbuatan yang diterima."
Senangnya ibu bisa menunggui kalian di rumah, kalian pulang utk makan siang atau pulang sekolah.
Bahkan kadang-kadang ibu sempatkan untuk antar & jemput kalian sekolah.
Ibu sayang sekali sama kalian. Maafkan ibu krn tidak lagi memasang foto kalian atau foto kita sekeluarga di sini..yg penting kalian selalu ada dalam hati, pikiran dan hidup ibu. Semoga ibu bisa menjadi ibu sekaligus sahabat buat kakak yang sekarang mulai tumbuh remaja.InsyaAllah I'll always be with you if you need me...

Back to Routine Life...Alhamdulillah

Senangnya berkumpul lagi dengan suami. Anak-anak juga senang ketemu ayahnya setelah liburan panjang di tanah air. Sekarang kembali mengerjakan tugas rutin..ibu masak lagi buat keluarga, mengatur rumah, mencuci & menyetrika pakaian, mengurus keperluan suami, membimbing anak-anak belajar, segala urusan domestik & sedikit sekali urusan sosial/kemasyarakatan (karena kemampuan saya yang terbatas) insyaAllah dimulai hari ini...Bismillah...Semoga Allah memudahkan segala urusanku dan kami sekeluarga, berkahilah hidup kami ya Rabbana...amiin.
"Rabbana atina min ladunka rahmatan wa hayyi' lana min amrina rashada."amiin....3x

Salama

Ingat Carla jadi ingat juga sama sister yang lain, Salama...wanita Jepang bercadar hitam...masyaAllah, subhanAllah...ini emailnya yg belum sempat saya balas. Astaghfirullah...

Wa alaikum salaam wa rahmatullah wa barakkatuh.

I hope that you and your family are well inshaAllah.

Of course I remember you alhumdulilah and I am sorry that I have taken so long to reply.

It's very nice to hear from you and I hope Allah accepts your haj inshaAllah ameen.

I actually live in Hail which is about 700km from Riyadh and 450km North East of Madinah and this is my fourth year here.

I have been a muslim for about 10 years now and I'm very happy to be muslim alhumdulilah. I wish all my family and friends could be
muslim as well. Please pray for this inshaAllah.

For me, I don't have much time to use the internet and it is easier to contact by sms or text message so I will give you my mobile number inshaAllah
0509954xxx. Please continue to write emails but I will probably text you back if  you give me your number.

I hope to hear from you soon.

Wa salaamu alaikum,

Your sister, Salaamah.

Wedding Invitation

Aku mengenalnya (Carla Rogers) ketika pertama kali bergabung dalam halaqah yang dibimbing Sophia Samour, istri dokter Samour. Carla Fatimah (namanya sekarang), seorang perawat bagian emergency di klinik. Waktu itu ia baru setahun setengah hijrah pada agamanya yang fitrah, agama yang dibawanya ketika baru dilahirkan, Islam. Carla yang mungil tampak manis dengan hijab yang dikenakannya, masyaAllah...Belum genap setahun aku mengenalnya Carla memutuskan kembali ke Liverpool, UK. Alhamdulillah aku masih sempat janjian dan bertemu dengannya di hari terakhir sebelum ia meninggalkan Ras Tanura. Wajahnya tampak pucat, tangannya dingin, ia kurang tidur, kelelahan, kondisi fisik melemah/kurang sehat karena sibuk mengepak barang-barangnya sendiri.Kubisikkan kalimat doa, "Semoga Allah menguatkanmu dan imanmu di mana pun kamu berada, Carla." Ia mengangguk & mengatakan doaku sangat berati baginya. Begitu ia sampai di kampung halamannya dgn selamat, ia segera mengabarkannya pada teman-temannya dan juga aku. Dan sekarang undangan pernikahan pun masuk dalam inboxku. Aku turut berbahagia untuknya. Tapi aku tidak bisa menghadiri pernikahannya yang secara Islam. Hanya doa yang bisa kupanjatkan untuknya, semoga Allah meridhoi pernikahannya...amiin dan teruntuk calon suami Carla & Carla
"Allahumma barakalahu laka wa alaika jami'ah wa bainakumma fii khair."

The time for the Mosque states 1800hrs for Nikah (Marriage) but it will actually be around 1700hrs that people will gather there for Lecture etc.

I understand its an awkward day for most of you, with work the next morning and also that it is quite short notice but I would LOVE to see you there and really hope you can make it. 

The Saturday Mendhi Party (Henna) Is ladies only i'm afraid. Dress code ladies....anything you want. 

Dress code for Sunday is obviously modest dress, especially in the Mosque...arms and legs. Ladies, You don't have to wear a scarf. Bright clothes are more than welcome....Think Bollywood NOT Timmy Mallet. And please remember to take your shoes off at the entrance of the Mosque before entering :-) 

I know i've been telling you Birmingham is not that bad...and it's not where i'm living and working right now but I have to warn you....where the Mosque is, is quite a dump....prepare to be shocked. Prob think Gramby St crossed with a typical Delhi back street During the riots, ha ha. Actually not that bad but not far off.

Love you all xxxx

Assalamu'alaikum sister Carla,

Thank you so much for this wedding invitation.
I'm always thinking of you...
I'm so happy for you but sorry I can't be there with you.
Only my prayers which always be with you...
Wishing your happiness in your marriage life fee dunya wal akheerah and may Allah Ta'ala bless you and your husband with lovely children...ameen.

Lots of love,
yessy

Thank you sister,

Your prayers mean a lot to me.

Inshallah we will have children.

I will be sure to send you on some photos of the day.

You are always in my thoughts,

Salam Allahkum xxx